● 11.01.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 01/11/2022: Godot’s New Foundation and OpenSSL’s Bug Hype Debunked

Posted in News Roundup at 5:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ Linux Fu: Easy VMs | Hackaday

• It wasn’t long ago that we looked at easily creating Docker containers from the command line so you could just easily spin up a virtual environment for development. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could do the same for virtual machines? You can. Using Multipass from Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, you can easily spin up virtual machines under Linux, Mac, or Windows. Granted, most of the virtual machines in question are variations of Ubuntu, but there are some additional images available, and you can create your own.

• Once you have it installed, starting up a new Ubuntu instance is trivial. If you have a set configuration, you can even set up predefined setups using a YAML file.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Linux Putting An End To This 30 Year Old CPU!! – Invidious

• Linux has this legacy of supporting pretty much everything you can imagine but that’s starting to get in the way of writing certain pieces of modern code so Linus Torvalds is considering dropping support for the Intel 486 platform after all these years.

=> ↺ [Misleading headline] BIG TECH makes LINUX. Is that a problem? – Invidious

=> ↺ 10 Linux Terminal Tips and Tricks to Enhance Your Workflow – Invidious

• Are you a Linux user and/or administrator? These 10 terminal tricks will show you some new and exciting ways you can enhance your workflow, shorten longer tasks, and even have a little fun along the way. Thanks to Linode for sponsoring this video.

=> ↺ LeftWM is like XMonad but without the Haskell/Hassle – Invidious

• In the past couple of weeks, I’ve revisited LeftWM.

Applications

=> ↺ 6 free alternatives to Microsoft Word | TechRepublic

• If you’re tired of paying for Microsoft Office features you don’t use, here are free alternatives to Word you can download and start using today.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Force Linux Users to Change Password at Next Login

• Linux users must change their passwords from time to time to keep their accounts secure. And as a system administrator, it’s your responsibility to nudge them if they forget to change the password and continue using it for a long time.

• On Linux, user passwords are set to expire after 99,999 days by default. However, you can override the default settings and set the passwords to expire immediately.

• Here’s how to force Linux users to change their passwords at the next login.

=> ↺ How to Install Flatpak Apps in Ubuntu and Other Linux

• A beginner’s guide on how to install Flatpak in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.

=> ↺ How to Secure an SSH Server in Ubuntu – Make Tech Easier

• SSH (Secure Socket Shell) is a command line interface and protocol for securely getting access to a remote Linux server. It provides a secure and encrypted communication over a network and allows data to be exchanged over a secure channel between two servers. It is widely used by system admins to control and manage their web servers remotely. This tutorial shows you how to secure your SSH server.

=> ↺ How to Monitor Linux Server Health with Command Line Tools – VITUX

• If you work on Linux servers, you need to check the disk, CPU, and memory usage on your system.

=> ↺ Enforcing Compliance of Container Environment Variables

=> ↺ How To Fix “package Dependencies Cannot Be Resolved” Error In Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | Itsubuntu.com

• If you are having issues like “package dependencies cannot be resolved” while installing some packages in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS then this Ubuntu 22.04 LTS tutorial post is for you. We have the solution for the “package dependencies cannot be resolved” error In Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

=> ↺ Set Up a Cloudflare Tunnel to Expose Local Servers to the Internet

• If you are running a local server at your home on an old laptop or PC—such as a Plex Media server, a file server, a web server, or any other server—you can expose it to the internet by using the port forwarding option in your router. However, it’s neither secure nor recommended to access a server that way in a production environment.

• We will show you how to expose your local servers securely with an HTTPS connection to the internet using the free Cloudflare Tunnel service—without disclosing your public IP.

Games

=> ↺ Godot Engine – Godot’s Graduation: Godot moves to a new Foundation

• When Godot was first open-sourced in 2014, it was a very small project mostly developed by Ariel and Juan. Even after open-sourcing, contributions to Godot were almost exclusively made by volunteers. Over time, and to our surprise, many users expressed a wish to contribute financially to the project to speed up development.

• Creating a foundation at the time would have been too costly and difficult, so we turned to Ton Roosendaal for advice. Ton introduced us to the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), which is a charity located in New York.

• The SFC was a fantastic fit for Godot. They work as a non-profit home for several high profile FOSS projects (such as Git, Samba, Wine, etc) and they have tested and proven rules to ensure that donations are only used for the benefit of projects, as well as rules to avoid conflicts of interest. They allow open-source projects to grow and prosper and focus on their project while the SFC handles non-profit governance, accounting, and legal issues (including successfully walking back on Non Disclosure Agreements to ensure that all our work can happen in the open); essentially aggregating the work required for the operation of a not-for-profit organization.

=> ↺ Announcing Godot’s Graduation from SFC! – Software Freedom Conservancy

• The Godot Game Engine joined Software Freedom Conservancy in 2015, and we’re incredibly proud of their growth and improvement since then, empowering people everywhere to make their own games. The team that they have in place funded by the project for this work and the level of resources that the project has grown to need, now means that it is time for them to start their own independent organization. Working with them has given us so much hope for the future of software freedom in the game design and creative space, in which they play such a vital role. We can’t wait to see their new organization thrive.

=> ↺ Kart Racing Game SuperTuxKart 1.4 is out! How to Install in Ubuntu | UbuntuHandbook

• The free open-source kart racing game, SuperTuxKart, released the new stable 1.4 version. Here’s the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu Linux.

• SuperTuxKart 1.4 fixed a dependency bug for MacOS user, meaning it’s now running again for macOS ranging from 10.9 to 10.14 (Mavericks to Mojave).

• The release also introduced experimental support for Vulkan renderer, for low CPU usage and better multi-platform support. User may try it out by either typing “/vulkan” in networking lobby and restart the game, or starting the game with –render-driver=vulkan argument.

• A new character Godette, the mascot of the Godot Engine, is introduced in the release. And, the Konqi now has a newer and maturer look.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Learnings from Building an AppImage

• For some time I am offering an AppImage of Kraft to make installations for users as easy as possible. Unfortunately real linux packages are big effort for the variety of distributions, and having one way to rule them all seems very appealing.

• My first AppImage versions were pretty faulty when looking into details. So I spent some time to improve it recently, with the great help of the friendly people from AppImage community.

• Here is my little report about what I have learned. If there is something I can do better, please let me know (unless it is use $OTHERTOOL).

=> ↺ Fosstodon!

• I may retire the Twitter handle I got in 2010, but as a label it’ll live on in my Mastodon handle.

• Insofar as I think about my “social media” profile at all, I’ve come to realise that the things I actually control are the most valuable.

=> ↺ Work-work (in glass) | [bobulate]

• Huh, I realised I had written “farewell” to Blue Systems and Calamares back in may – Calamares is still trundling along at a much reduced pace – but have not yet written about where I went to work. So, let’s fill in a little of that. I work at Vimec, which makes glass inspection machines. I went to work there because I know nothing about glass inspection, but I do know about C++, Qt, and CMake. So I’ll learn about glass while doing my usual software things.

• One of the things I notice is how “Open-Source”-ish work is. Vimec is a small company, and I can best describe a work day as “like a KDE sprint, but only from 9 to 5”. I sit down at a Linux workstation, log into KDE Plasma (backed by Active Directory, that’s the corporate angle there), poke at GitLab to see what went down overnight, git pull to see what’s up, and then fire up the editor of my choice to get stuff done.

• [...]

• I suppose I should have learned this, from prior job changes, but I notice that at the end of a day of KDE-like programming, I don’t have much energy left over for more actually-KDE programming. I sit down to do a little light Python or Haskell more than C++ these days, for kicks.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Making Rust attractive for writing GTK applications

• Rust, the programming language, has been gaining traction across many software disciplines – support for it has landed in the upstream Linux kernel, developers have been using it for games, websites, low-level OS components, and desktop applications.

• The gtk-rs team has been doing an impressive amount of work during the last few years to make the experience of using GObject-based libraries in Rust enjoyable by providing high-quality, memory-safe bindings around those libraries, generated with gir from the introspection data.

=> ↺ Trying out Zola

• For nearly two years I have been inactive on my blog despite spending time making a fancy website, but I can no longer afford the extra code to maintain and infrastructure work to keep it running. So I decided to move the posts I had on the old website to a statically generated one while waiting for the CI to pass during the gtk-rs hackfest.

• One of the annoyances I had with static websites generators is that they were too slow. Add to that Jekyll is written in Ruby and it was too difficult to get any rubygem installed on my machine.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Updates for October, 2022 ⋅ elementary Blog

• This month featured a slew of minor updates and translation updates on OS 6.1 as a side effect of preparing stable builds of OS 7, but the focus for the team is solidly on putting the finishing touches on the new major release.

• If you’ve been following along on the OS 7 Project Board, you’ll have noticed that all of the blocking window manager issues have now been resolved! Major shoutouts to Corentin Noël and David Hewitt here for finishing those off. I also want to give a special thanks to Bobby Rong, the maintainer of Pantheon on NixOS, for noticing a couple of regressions that slipped through the cracks and quickly reporting them upstream.

• At this point the outstanding tasks for releasing OS 7 largely have to do with builds, infrastructure, etc. We’re really in the home stretch now! But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to sneak in some last minute polish. I’ve been revisiting the App Icon Redesign Project and have several outstanding branches here that will hopefully make it into 7.0. Micah Ilbery and I have been working on modernizing the look of app icons on elementary OS, including increasing the border radius of tile icons, improving contrast and use of color, and adding a bit more dimensionality to icons that make use of overlaid glyphs.

New Releases

=> ↺ Release Announcement: Nitrux 2.5.0 – Nitrux — #YourNextOS

• We are pleased to announce the launch of Nitrux 2.5.0. This new version combines the latest software updates, bug fixes, performance improvements, and ready-to-use hardware support.

Screenshots/Screencasts

=> ↺ Linux Lite 6.2 Updates – Invidious

• Today we look at Linux Lite to see what is up in the next release. This is the 6.2 RC1 which supports the Linux Kernel 5.15 by default but supports up to 6.0. We look at the system memory, default applications, and more.

=> ↺ Linux Lite 6.2 Run Through – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at Linux Lite 6.2.

=> ↺ Linux Lite 6.2

• Today we are looking at Linux Lite 6.2. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.15, based on Ubuntu 22.04, XFCE 4.16, and uses about 900MB of ram when idling.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Red Hat Satellite 6.11.4 has been released

• We are pleased to announce that Red Hat Satellite 6.11.4 is generally available as of September 29, 2022.

• Red Hat Satellite is part of the Red Hat Smart Management subscription that makes it easier for enterprises to manage patching, provisioning, and subscription management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure.

• The erratum for this release includes…

=> ↺ Only The Agile And Adaptable Survive

• Red Hat is not just the top Linux software vendor and the driving force behind IBM’s hybrid cloud ambitions. It is by far the most agile part of Big Blue.

=> ↺ Sharing Red Hat Insights with your Technical Account Manager for better collaboration

• I have been working as a Technical Account Manager (TAM) with Red Hat for around a year now. I love interacting with my customers, working with them on shared goals and providing proactive tips on how to get the most out of the Red Hat products they are using.

• One of the Red Hat tools that I love to share with customers is Red Hat Insights. Red Hat Insights itself is a great tool, and is included in many Red Hat subscriptions (including Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift). It can really help you understand risks within your environment and any areas you should be focusing on.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Linux Mint is getting a ‘show the desktop’ button just like Windows – Neowin

• The Linux Mint team has just shared what it has been working on through October. There are quite a few improvements it has been making, but one notable one is the corner bar, which is very similar to the ‘show the desktop’ button on Windows that lives in the bottom right of the taskbar. Other changes include fewer password prompts, Flatpak support in Update Manager, and some visual refinements.

• The new corner bar coming to Mint is less noticeable than the show the desktop button on Windows, however, it can be configured to be more powerful than the Windows implementation. Using customizable settings, you can choose the click action, the middle click action, and enable or disable peek at the desktop on hover. As the corner bar is in the lower right, you don’t even have to think about where to move the cursor.

• Password requests have also been worked on, so they’re less intrusive. They’re no longer needed when using Synaptic and Update Manager, nor when removing a Flatpak. These programs will instead ask pkexec to remember your password, so you don’t need to enter it more than once. This should make things a little more convenient.

=> ↺ Linux Lite 6.2 is out • The Register

• Linux Lite 6.2 is the latest version of this increasingly inaccurately named distro. In effect, it’s a niftily customized remix of Xubuntu 22.04.1.

=> ↺ Linux Lite 6.2 Released, Based on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS – OMG! Ubuntu!

• A new version of the Linux Lite, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution aimed at lower-spec’d computers, is available to download.

• Linux Lite 6.2 is based on the Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS point release and Linux kernel 5.15, plus a tweaked version of the Xfce 4.16 desktop environment and its associated assembly of apps. Modern machines can run Linux Lite but the distro is tailored towards those on older and/or resource-limited hardware.

• “This release is mostly comprised of UI adjustments, up to date software and bug fixes,” Linux Lite creator Jerry Bezencon says in a release announcement posted on the Linux Lite forums.

• Updated versions of bundled software, including the latest update in the LibreOffice 7.3 series and the most recent release of Google Chrome, come as standard.

=> ↺ What to Expect at the Ubuntu Summit 2022

• As the Ubuntu Summit draws near, we have an update to share with you all. We have a new timetable that can help you plan your days. There are some pretty neat people coming too! If you can’t participate in-person this year, we completely understand. That is why we have remote participation in mind as well. So read on to check out the updates in more detail!

=> ↺ Public cloud for telco – Part 3: Microsoft Azure

=> ↺ Elektrobit Partners with Canonical to Pave the Way to a New Era of Software-defined Vehicles

• As the industry transitions towards software-defined vehicles, the new partnership will make it easier than ever before for car makers, suppliers, and developers to create the next generation of vehicle applications, while meeting stringent automotive standards.

=> ↺ Install Firefox 106 on Ubuntu / Linux Mint – Tips On Unix

• This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install firefox 106 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04, and Linux Mint 21.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ System-on-module combines NXP i.MX 8M Mini Arm CPU and Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA

• Based on the block diagram above, the FPGA and CPU are interfaced via PCIe x1, I2C, and interrupts.

• MYiR provides two Yocto-built Linux images based on Linux 5.10.72 and U-boot 2021.04 and all drivers for peripherals, one with Qt, and the other without. There’s no mention of specific software or sample code for the Artix-7 FPGA, so you’d probably be expected to use Xilinx tools like the ISE Design Suite.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Year-End Savings Start Now with $200 off on Librem 14 Laptop – Purism

• PCMag has highlighted our Librem 14 as one of the top gifts in the tech space. The article 8 Techie Gifts for the Security Expert in Your Life highlights:

• “All Linux computers aren’t created alike, though. Purism’s Librem 14 stands out from the pack in several ways. First, it runs PureOS, a security-focused Linux distro created by Purism that powers laptops and cell phones. The fact that it’s open-source means experts can comb through it and flag any flaws. It’s also (according to Purism) “designed chip-by-chip, line-by-line, to respect your rights to privacy, security, and freedom.”

=> ↺ Huge LED globe becomes Halloween helmet | Arduino Blog

• Some Halloween costumes are creepy, others are racy, and a few, like this one, are just plain cool. LEDs have been common since the 1960s, but they can still stand out when done well. As it turns out, one way to achieve that is by arranging 378 of them around a big globe and wearing that globe on your head like Redditor HGRDOG14 did for Halloween this year.

• We’re hesitant to call this a “Halloween mask” because of its sheer size, but “enormous glowing Halloween helmet” doesn’t have the same ring to it. HGRDOG14’s creation started as a 24” beach ball. They then covered that in papier mâché to create a rigid shell and removed the original beach ball. After that, they covered the papier mâché sphere in strips of WS2812B individually addressable RGB LEDs. Those strips have 30cm spacing between LEDs and HGRDOG14 staggered each longitudinal strip in order to arrange the LEDs in the pattern you see.

=> ↺ Making a puppet ride an RC tricycle | Arduino Blog

• Inspired by a remote-controlled Radio Flyer tricycle in which Kermit pedaled around at Maker Faire New York 2018, Donald Bell wanted to create his own version that could bring similar magic to people who interact with it. It began with the same Radio Flyer tricycle as in the original video, except this one was modified a bit differently.

• An overarching goal that Bell wanted to achieve was keeping the tricycle as stock as possible, which meant placing all of the electronics underneath the rear axle. Movement is provided by a single DC motor just below one of the wheels that connects via a timing belt for added safety. Meanwhile, the trike is able to steer thanks to a 24V high-torque servo motor that rotates to push a rod back and forth, thus turning the front fork to either side. Controlling all of these parts is an Arduino Uno that receives information from an RC receiver module.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ LINMOB.net – Weekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (43/2022): An impressive Gadget

• Also: Progress reports by Mobian, Manjaro and Nemo Mobile, a nice video on SqueakPhone and a lot of the usual!

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ How to Work on Taskcluster Github

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ Community support needed: We want to use our users personal data – LibreOffice Design Team

• While our proprietary competitors constantly (mis)use user data to improve the UX of their products, we are maneuvering in thick fog. And whenever we try to reach out to our users to decide about design directions, we mainly get feedback from white, male nerds [1]. You hopefully see the problems this implies.

• The only solution is: We need to be able to evaluate usage information from everyone else too. While preserving the privacy of our users of course.

Programming/Development

Python

=> ↺ 6 Best Python IDE(s) and Code Editor(s) – Top List of 2022

• We list the six best Python code editor(s) for Ubuntu and other Linux distros and Windows in 2022.

• Python is everywhere today, and it is arguably the C programming language of the modern era. You can find Python everywhere, from websites, apps, data science projects, and AI to IoT devices. So being a popular programming language of this decade, it is essential to know the development environment of Python, where developers create applications, especially if you are starting afresh.

• Many Python development environments are available with features and utilities catering to your need. Some of them are useful for beginners learning Python by setting up the environment and other users for heavy Python development and complex setups.

• Here, in this post, I will touch upon the best of them that would help you pick one for your own need and use case.

Leftovers

Proprietary

=> ↺ Chinese Hackers Using New Stealthy Infection Chain to Deploy LODEINFO Malware

• The latest set of attacks, observed between March and June 2022, involve the use of a bogus Microsoft Word file and a self-extracting archive (SFX) file in RAR format propagated via spear-phishing emails, leading to the execution of a backdoor called LODEINFO.

=> ↺ Researchers Disclose Details of Critical ‘CosMiss’ RCE Flaw Affecting Azure Cosmos DB

• Microsoft on Tuesday said it addressed an authentication bypass vulnerability in Jupyter Notebooks for Azure Cosmos DB that enabled full read and write access.

• The tech giant said the problem was introduced on August 12, 2022, and rectified worldwide on October 6, 2022, two days after responsible disclosure from Orca Security, which dubbed the flaw CosMiss.

=> ↺ Developer tries to get Linux running at boot on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023, but largely fails

Security

=> ↺ OpenSSL dodges a security bullet | ZDNET

• At first, it looked like the OpenSSL 3.x security bug was going to be truly awful. While it was feared to be a critical error that could lead to remote code execution (RCE), upon a closer examination it turned out to be not so horrid after all.

=> ↺ OpenSSL Releases Security Update | CISA

• OpenSSL has released a security advisory to address two vulnerabilities, CVE-2022-3602 and CVE-2022-3786, affecting OpenSSL versions 3.0.0 through 3.0.6.

• Both CVE-2022-3602 and CVE-2022-3786 can cause a denial of service. According to OpenSSL, a cyber threat actor leveraging CVE-2022-3786, “can craft a malicious email address to overflow four attacker-controlled bytes on the stack. This buffer overflow could result in a crash (causing a denial of service) or potentially remote code execution,” allowing them to take control of an affected system.

=> ↺ iTWire – OpenSSL patches released, UK sec expert’s judgment justified

• The OpenSSL Project has released fixes for two vulnerabilities in the open-source cryptographic library, with the severity of both rated “high”. The accompanying documentation has justified the advice of British security expert Kevin Beaumont not to get carried away by hype over the expected announcement, as iTWirereported.

• The project said it had released advisories about “CVE-2022-3786 (“X.509 Email Address Variable Length Buffer Overflow”) and CVE-2022-3602 (“X.509 Email Address 4-byte Buffer Overflow”)”.

=> ↺ OpenSSL 3.0.7 released [LWN.net]

• The much-anticipated OpenSSL 3.0.7 release, which fixes some high-risk security problems, is available. The release notes list two vulnerabilities (CVE-2022-3786 and CVE-2022-3602) that have not yet been documented on the OpenSSL vulnerabilities page. LWN commenter mat2 has provided the relevant information, though. It is worth updating quickly, but many sites do not appear to be at immediate risk.

=> ↺ OpenSSL 3.0.7 Fixes Two High-CVEs with Buffer Overflow

• The highly anticipated OpenSSL 3.0.7 is now released, fixing two high-severity CVEs. All the major Linux distributions across desktops and, most importantly, server admins have been waiting for this fix since it was reported last week by the OpenSSL team. Due to the criticality of this package, some distro releases got delayed (such as Fedora 37), and probably some patching activities across the industry.

• Both the high severity fixes are due to buffer overrun, which impacts the entire OpenSSL 3.0.0 series (i.e. from 3.0.0 to 3.0.6). Alarming, it may sound, but these two vulnerabilities have been out in the wild for almost a year since the 3.0.0 release in 2021.

• The first CVE-2022-3786 triggers when a malicious email address with arbitrary payload with character “.” (decimal 46). The second vulnerability, CVE-2022-3602, also deals with another payload with the same email address in name constraints, checking for X.509 certificates.

=> ↺ OpenSSL Releases Patch for 2 New High-Severity Vulnerabilities

• The OpenSSL project has rolled out fixes to contain two high-severity flaws in its widely used cryptography library that could result in a denial-of-service (DoS) and remote code execution.

• The issues, tracked as CVE-2022-3602 and CVE-2022-3786, have been described as buffer overrun vulnerabilities that can be triggered during X.509 certificate verification by supplying a specially-crafted email address.

• “In a TLS client, this can be triggered by connecting to a malicious server,” OpenSSL said in an advisory for CVE-2022-3786. “In a TLS server, this can be triggered if the server requests client authentication and a malicious client connects.”

=> ↺ Security updates for Tuesday [LWN.net]

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (python3.7), Gentoo (android-tools, expat, firefox, libjxl, libxml2, pjproject, sqlite, thunderbird, and zlib), Oracle (compat-expat1), Slackware (php8 and vim), SUSE (kernel, libtasn1, podman, and pyenv), and Ubuntu (libtasn1-6).

=> ↺ CISA Upgrades to TLP 2.0 | CISA

• Today, CISA officially upgraded to Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) 2.0, which facilitates greater information sharing and collaboration. CISA made this upgrade in accordance with the recommendation from the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams to upgrade to TLP 2.0 by January 2023.

=> ↺ CISA Releases One Industrial Control Systems Advisory | CISA

• CISA released one Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisory on November 1, 2022. This advisory provides timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.

=> ↺ Deepfakes: What they are and how to spot them – Help Net Security

• The term “deepfake” is used for photo, video or audio content that has been manipulated to make it seem that the subject is doing or saying something they never did or said. This content is created by using AI and machine learning techniques.

• Some deepfakes are obvious and we can detect them with the naked eye by looking for inconsistencies. With increased sophistication of deepfake technology, though, deepfake detection technologies had to be and have been developed in recent years.

=> ↺ XSAs released on 2022-11-01 | Qubes OS

• The Xen Project has released one or more Xen Security Advisories (XSAs). The security of Qubes OS is affected. Therefore, user action is required.

=> ↺ QSB-085: Xenstore: Guests can crash xenstored (XSA-414)

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ iTWire – Ex-CIA head Pompeo served with lawsuit over alleged Assange spying

• Former US secretary of state and ex-head of the CIA Mike Pompeo has been formally served with a lawsuit which claims he provided oversight for a criminal conspiracy to violate Fourth Amendment rights of American lawyers and journalists inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

• Pompeo is one of the defendants in the case, which also names the CIA, security firm UC Global and UC Global director David R. Morales Guillen. They are accused of spying on WikiLeaks publisher and founder Julian Assange and his visitors while he took refuge in the embassy.

• A statement from the Assange Defence Committee said the suit was served on the former CIA head as he was posing for photographs at the John Ashbrook Memorial Dinner in Ohio on 29 October.

• The plaintiffs, who include renowned civil rights activist and human rights attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler, attorney Deborah Hrbek and journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz, visited Assange while he was in the embassy.

• [...]

• Plaintiff Margaret Ratner Kunstler blasted the threat such surveillance poses to constitutional liberties.

• “If a foreign journalist can be prosecuted for publishing factual documents, then no journalist is safe,” she said. “And apparently Mike Pompeo believes that attorneys representing journalists should not be safe either. These actions are outrageous.”

• The suit claimed these actions were authorised and approved by Pompeo.

• Assange is currently being held in Belmarsh prison in the UK, pending an appeal against his extradition to the US which was approved by British Home Minister Priti Patel on 17 June.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Public Knowledge Welcomes Competition Win as Federal Judge Blocks Publishing Merger – Public Knowledge

• Yesterday, a federal judge blocked the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. The proposed merger would have created a publishing giant responsible for half of the top-selling books from the first- and fourth-largest publishing houses, further consolidating an already concentrated marketplace. The Department of Justice sued to block the merger last year in a complaint highlighting the potential harms to authors, other publishers, and readers. Public Knowledge celebrates this long overdue reinvigoration of antitrust law and enforcement in the all-important publishing industry, and looks forward to equally bold actions to free e-books and combat Big Tech dominance.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Me Boot Sequence

• Traditionally speaking, October has been a time of shutting down, tuning out, and imploding. It has been this way for as long as I can remember and my symptoms have only worsened as time progresses. Recently Octobers have been almost unbearable.

• Towards the end of September every year I start to feel my psyche shift. I get what I have inaccurately been calling “stressed,” the symptoms of which include the following: I become more irritable, my muscles tense up and refuse to relax (especially in my neck and shoulders), my menstrual cycle goes awry, I don’t get any restful sleep, I develop an annoying twitch in my left eye, I hallucinate, my memory stops functioning, I am easily overwhelmed, I have bouts of confusion, and I have serious difficulties thinking and speaking properly. Halloween marks the grand finale. Then, November comes over me like a cool mist on a still early morning and I start to breathe normally again. Well, whatever normal means.

=> ↺ Settling in to the new house

• It’s pretty early in the morning for me as I write this, having grown accustomed to afternoon shift over the past five years. I’ve been up since about 7:30 local time sipping coffee, slicing vegetables and listening to a nice Jazz session featuring Danny Gatton and a young Joshua Redman. I’ve just finished filling the crocpot with Roma tomatoes, sweet yellow onion, green bell pepper and three varieties of beans. Browning some ground beef to add and in about 8 hours we’ll be eating bowls of chili on a fall day.

=> ↺ Extreme fortunes, Brevard, NC edition

• Last week, Bunny and I ate at the Twin Dragons Grand Buffet (and if there was a website, I’d have linked to it). After dinner I checked my fortune cookie and lo:

• [Fortune cookie fortune that says “Vous savez bien apprécier des belles choses.”] Maybe if we were eating in a Vietnamese restaurant, this would make sense. [1]…

=> ↺ Autumn in Small Town on West Coast

• The sky is cloudy grey that’s makes one wonder if today the day that the rain will finally come to this very dry land suffering from this summer’s harsh punishment. it’s have finally begun to feel more like Autumn, but the trees were delay charging their colors and slowly begin to shed some of their colors off. and all I can do is stay in my shelter and keep warm preparing for the weather to slowly get colder by each passing day. of course, there are dangers that occur in the colder months. mists that blind your field of view but touching your skin with chilly breezes hitting against your face and small water particles landing on your hands that are invisible. but you’re greeted by frost cover plants and tricky grey passageways waiting for you to fall. along with multiple color vehicles passing through the rocky black paths. living in a small town in west coast is full of unexpected surprise but at the same time can be a bit dangerous at night.

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: UFHLOPE Wordo: ADMIN

Politics

=> ↺ Oxymoronist: Ministry of Truth

• The attempted launch of the Disinformation Governance Board, aka Ministry of Truth, met with a backlash, but the attempts to gain tighter control over public discourse are obviously ongoing. Although this predominantly concerns social media, the efforts are not limited to the largest ones. An Intercept article reports on some leaked DHS documents, commenting: “How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech.” They provide some additional insight into the Hunter Biden laptop story, but fail to mention the embarrassing split up with Glenn Greenwald, who had wanted to report on it on the Intercept.

Technical

=> ↺ Give Me Your Best OpenTTD NewGRFs

• I’ve finished my NewGRF that adds tea to OpenTTD. It’s not publicly available yet, because I want to test it more and see if there’s anything that should be tweaked.

• Now I want to know which mods you all like! Specific vehicles, town names, scenarios, height maps, industries, etc. Anything that makes it fun to start earlier than 1900, or playing later than 2050? Anything that makes gameplay more interesting in general?

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Twitter and autonomy

• There’s space for disagreement and nuance (what do we mean by “the most” and “affected”? what happens when similarly-affected people disagree?); no two cultures that abided by this rule would look alike. But it’s completely incompatible with capitalist relations of production, even under the stewardship of liberal democracy.

• Since there seems to be a bit of an exodus from Twitter at the moment, many people have been confronted by the fact that a social media company’s owner (like Elon Musk) or majority shareholder (like Mark Zuckerberg) can unilaterally make decisions that affect millions of people. Since I don’t think the world should work that way, I decided that I would no longer voluntarily enter relationships that do. I may have no choice about needing a job or being a citizen of a state, but I can sure as hell quit Facebook and Twitter. So I quit them (along with a growing list of second-stringers), and have been getting my social media fix on the Fediverse. Here, I do have a say in what sort of behavior is moderated and blocked¹, and if I decide I don’t like my instance’s policies, the system is designed to make it easy for me to find a different instance or even start my own.

• But it’s not just social media, and for me this journey didn’t start there. Most political organizations, including the majority of leftist ones, use leadership and decision-making structures that don’t follow this principle². Democracy, as we’re taught to understand it, can lead to situations where a slim majority dictates the actions of a slim minority, even when those actions have a minimal effect on the majority. Delegated decision-making (electing “leaders”) also creates such situations, especially when leadership terms are long. I spent most of the past five years in such an organization, fighting bitter fights about the org’s projects and goals, and I eventually realized that the whole enterprise doesn’t align with my values.

=> ↺ Re: Mayan and Gemini Priests

• The barrier to entry is literally installing one of the many Gemini browsers.

• It’s not rocket science. Click a few times and voila, Gemini.

• If you are that stupid, stick to Windows with a pre-installed Microsoft Web browser, I guess. But how did you get on Mastodon anyway? That requires like, registering and passwords and stuff…

• If you can’t figure out where or how to post, gees, we will miss your brilliant ideas, I guess.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

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