This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2023/01/05/krita-5-1-5-released/.

● 01.05.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 05/01/2023: Krita 5.1.5 Released and NVIDIA 525.78.01 Graphics Driver Ready

Posted in News Roundup at 11:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ 12 Free Alternatives to Windows Operating Systems

• Does Windows cost too much? Here are several free alternative operating systems. Linux is just the beginning!

• Need a new operating system that doesn’t cost a penny? You might have heard about Linux, the free and open-source alternative to Windows. However, there are many other free operating systems for laptops and desktop PCs.

• Capable of performing standard computing tasks, these free operating systems are strong alternatives to Windows.

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ MacBook Pro 2015 update: The winner is Pop!_OS : Dissociated Press

• After a few tries to put Fedora on the MacBook Pro 2015, I auditioned a number of other Linux distros and wound up going with Pop!_OS.

• I gave Chrome OS Flex a brief spin, but it wasn’t quite my jam. If you like Chrome OS and have an old PC or Mac you’d like to give a little more life to, I give it a thumbs up. I was able to install some regular Linux apps on it as well as the standard Chrome apps, but found Firefox to be sluggish and generally just didn’t click with Chrome OS.

• Tried installing Ubuntu but a disk configuration stage during install the dialog just didn’t accept input. Not sure what was up with that so I decided to try something else.

• A little research suggested that Pop!_OS might not support WiFi on the MacBook Pro, but I decided to throw the live USB at it and see whether wireless worked or not. Turns out, it did without a fuss and the install was quick and painless.

=> ↺ 10 Harsh Realities Of Using Linux

=> ↺ Time to Vote in Our Best Linux Distro 2022 Poll!

• [Editor’s note: Don’t forget, if you select “other” in our poll, you should scroll down past the ads at the bottom of the article and post a comment with the name of the distro that would have received your vote if it were there. That way, it can be included in the second round of voting next week and will have a chance to win.]

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Microsoft’s Open-Source Theft No Longer A Secret – Invidious

• A video I put together covering the class-action lawsuit against Microsoft, Github and OpenAI. It is no longer a secret that Co-Pilot is stealing huge chunks of open-source code and the light of scrutiny is being shown on Microsoft.

=> ↺ FLOSS Weekly 713: “Let’s Put Thoughts on the Blockchain” – LastPass Databreach, Linux Desktop 2023, Blockchain

• Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman and Jonathan Bennett kick off the new year with a round table discussion regarding the world of open source. The hosts are joined by a special guest for this discussion, Leo Laporte. It’s a great discussion regarding open source security, centralized versus decentralized products on the web, and much more.

=> ↺ How to install Lightworks on KDE Neon – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Lightworks on KDE Neon.

=> ↺ Dope Tech Talk Collab w/ Derek from @DistroTube #keepittechie #techtalk – Invidious

=> ↺ 3 FRESH Distros to try in 2023… – Invidious

=> ↺ Steam Deck 6 MONTHS LATER: Still a BUY? A Review REACTION – Invidious

• Is the Steam Deck worth buying 6 months later? Well lets react to this guys review to see if according to him it is still a buy!

=> ↺ New Year, New OS? – Try FreeBSD in 2023! – Invidious

• It’s a New Year, and many of us make a resolution or two – and maybe one that can be included in your collection – to try FreeBSD! It’s never been easier, it doesn’t have to hurt and you may even learn something new!

=> ↺ Video: LibreOffice project and community in 2022

• Here’s a quick recap of what we did in the LibreOffice community in 2022! Well, just a few of the many things 😉 Thanks to everyone who contributed last year! (PeerTube version of this video here.)

• Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

=> ↺ BSD Now 488: Old ping(8) bug

• Finding a 24 year old bug in ping(8), The Role of Operating Systems in IOT, Authentication gateway with SSH on OpenBSD, FreeBSD 12.4 is out, and more

=> ↺ The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 984

• who knows I was not there.

=> ↺ The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 986

• joel whips out the pocket knife, beware.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ 2023: Linux rusting away into non-FOSS territory – Build rnote and you will see | systemd-free linux community

• Linux 6.2-rc2 kernel is out as the last commit in kernel.org at the start of the 2023 year. RUST is here, the initial code-base is included in the kernel. At least Arch seems to be disabling it for now, at the beta level at least, we shall see.

• Rust is not just a language, as people commonly think, it is much more. It is a building environment, system, and a mode change of the philosophy of building packages from source. Rust incorporates its own git system in pulling code in from 2nd and 3rd parties. So if you have never gotten into the real FOSS practice of auditing code before you build, try and audit this stuff. If building in C you thought was a practice similar to building sand castles, by comparison, this is like building sand castles with quick-sand ON QUICK SAND.

• Rnote is a crappy little gui similar to the old MS paintbrush, like a childrens’ sketching pad. No, it is worse, it doesn’t even save in popular image formats but only its own. Autosave is on. You get the picture? This is gtk4 only “crap”! Not only that, you can’t find a configuration file for it anywhere in your user’s home, and for preferences to be changed and be saved, dbus should be running. Why does a kids’ sketching pad program need dbus to save its own preferences/choices/settings?

• But this crappy little gui is built with rust. Before you start building you may have no clue what dependencies it is going to need, or the initial building source provides little clues of configurations for the build and where is it pulling code from. ONE of the sources is Google, among other favorite FOSS contributors that happen to be multinational conglomerates out to make trillions for shareholders. We are talking about many GBs of endless source being pulled in. Rust stores this code in cargo, like trashcans of it full of crap. How do I know if I restart the process 2′ later the source of the dependencies hasn’t changed? Aahhh… some excited RUST-fan will point out you can save those tons of trash code into those tin-cans.. so you can assure “reproducibility”. If for a tiny little gui we have 80GB of 3rd party code that needs to be stored for reproducibility, imagine what your building machine will look like for a minimal distro full of rust packages.

=> ↺ Wrapping up 2022 [LWN.net]

• Yet another year is coming to a close; that can only mean that the time has come to indulge in a longstanding LWN tradition: looking back at the predictions we made in January and giving them the mocking that they richly deserve. Read on to see how those predictions went, what was missed, and a look back at the year in general.

=> ↺ 6.2 Merge window, part 1 [LWN.net]

• Once upon a time, Linus Torvalds would try to set a pace of about 1,000 changesets pulled into the mainline each day during the early part of the merge window. For 6.2, though, the situation is different; no less than 9,278 non-merge changesets were pulled during the first two days. Needless to say, these commits affect the kernel in numerous ways, even though there are fewer fundamental changes than were seen in 6.1.

=> ↺ Enabling non-executable memfds [LWN.net]

• The memfd interface is a bit of a strange and Linux-specific beast; it was initially created to support the secure passing of data between cooperating processes on a single system. It has since gained other roles, but it may still come as a surprise to some to learn that memory regions created for memfds, unlike almost any other data area, have the execute permission bit set. That can facilitate attacks; this patch set from Jeff Xu proposes an addition to the memfd API to close that hole.

• A memfd is created with a call to memfd_create(), which will return a file descriptor referring to the region. That descriptor can be treated as an ordinary file, in that it can be written to or read from; it can also be mapped into a process’s address space. Normally the first step will be to call ftruncate() to set the size of the region; after that it can be populated with data and passed to another process. One interesting characteristic of memfds is that they can be “sealed” with a call to fcntl(), an operation that disallows any further changes to the stored data. Sealing allows a recipient to know that the contents of a memfd will not change in unexpected ways in the middle of an operation.

=> ↺ The intersection of shadow stacks and CRIU [LWN.net]

• Shadow stacks are one of the methods employed to enforce control-flow integrity and thwart attackers; they are a mechanism for fine-grained, backward-edge protection. Most of the time, applications are not even aware that shadow stacks are in use. As is so often the case, though, life gets more complicated when the Checkpoint/Restore in Userspace (CRIU) mechanism is in use. Not breaking CRIU turns out to be one of the big challenges facing developers working to get user-space shadow-stack support into the kernel.

• The idea behind shadow stacks is simple: in addition to the normal program stack (which holds return addresses, local variables, and more) there is a special memory area, called the “shadow stack”, that stores only return addresses. Whenever a CALL instruction is executed, the return address is pushed onto both the normal and the shadow stacks. When, later, a function ends with a RET instruction, the return address that’s popped from the normal stack is compared to that on the shadow stack. If they match, the execution continues; if they don’t, a violation of control-flow integrity has just been detected.

• Recent x86 processor models implement shadow stacks in hardware, meaning that no instrumentation is required for a program to get the protection that shadow stacks provide and that the cost of using a shadow stack is negligible. Once the feature is enabled, the CPU takes care of pushing and popping the return address on the shadow stack and comparing the return addresses. If the return addresses do not match, the CPU generates a control protection exception. To support shadow stacks, the x86 architecture has been extended with a model-specific register (MSR) that controls the use of the shadow stack and its features. There are also shadow-stack pointer MSRs (one for each possible privilege level) and a set of instructions for manipulating shadow-stack contents.

• The discussion about how kernel should support shadow stacks for user space started a long time ago, but it has still not concluded. One of the difficulties in enabling this feature is the possibility that some applications will be broken by shadow stacks because they use non-standard ways to change their control flow. The list of problematic applications includes GDB, various JIT engines, and, of course, CRIU.

=> ↺ Nuphy Air75 Wireless Receiver does not work on Linux

• Any way, there is probably some complicated way to nicely ask the kernel to load hid-apple based on some USB vendor ID or something, but I’m not planning to dig into this further. I am just using it in wired or Bluetooth mode. I’m just writing this down because I couldn’t find anyone even describing the problem on the Interwebs. There are a lot of answers about using fnmode when using wired or Bluetooth. Nobody seems to have asked about the wireless receiver. Another fun tidbit is that all these new wave low-profile mechanical keyboards (Nuphy, Keychron, possibly others) seem to just identify themselves as an Apple Magic Keyboard when in their “Mac” mode.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ NVIDIA 525.78.01 Graphics Driver Released with Better Support for Vulkan X11 Apps

• NVIDIA 525.78.01 is here to improve support for Vulkan X11 applications by addressing a regression that prevented the G-SYNC/G-SYNC Compatible Visual Indicator from being displayed and by fixing bug that could cause apps to crash with Xid 32 errors when using the VK_KHR_present_id Vulkan extension.

• It also fixes a crash with the nvidia-settings control panel that occurred when using a newer control panel with an older version of the NVIDIA graphics driver, as well as a bug resulting in excess CPU usage in hybrid graphics configurations where an external monitor is connected to a discrete NVIDIA graphics card and configured as a PRIME Display Offload sink.

=> ↺ Simon Ser: Status update, December 2022

• Following last month’s wlroots release, we’ve started the Sway release candidate cycle. Kenny Levinsen and Ronan Pigott have helped fixing the bugs and regressions that popped up, and I hope we’ll be able to ship the final release next week. I also plan to release wlroots 0.16.1 with the fixes we’ve accumulated.

• In other wlroots news, Manuel Stoeckl and I have continued to work on the Vulkan renderer. A lot more pixel formats are now supported for textures, and the buffer synchronization issues should all be sorted out. Next we’d like to add support for rendering to high bit depth buffers for color management purposes. This is a bit more involved since there is no shader stage which runs after blending, so I’d like to experiment with compute shaders to see if they’re better suited for us. That ties in with the renderer API redesign I’ve been planning for a while: the new rendering API should make it easier to use compute shaders, and already shows a nice perf boost for the Pixman renderer.

• I’ve been debugging some issues with USB-C docks where outputs wouldn’t turn back on after a plug-unplug-replug cycle. The result is an i915 patch which fixes some of issues, but it seems there are more where that came from. Ultimately this class of bugs should get fixed when we add support for atomically turning off multiple outputs at once in wlroots, but this will require a lot more work.

• Alexander Orzechowski and I have been pushing surface-invalidation, a new Wayland protocol to help with GPU resets. GPU resets destroy the whole GL/Vulkan state on the compositor side, so compositors which can recover from resets are left with nothing to draw. The protocol allows compositors to request a new buffer from clients.

=> ↺ Mike Blumenkrantz: Right Out The Gate

• While the blog was on break, some of you might have noticed that VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer was released with my greasy fingerprints on it.

• You might also have noticed that Zink didn’t have a day-one MR.

• The thing about Schrödinger’s Specification is that it only remains constant while you’re directly observing it. As soon as you look away, it becomes an amorphous entity changing in unknown and confusing ways.

Applications

=> ↺ Monitorets is a Cute System Monitor Widget for Linux – OMG! Ubuntu!

• Like, not everything made for Linux needs to plug an existential hole, break down boundaries, revolutionise computing as we know it™, etc. It’s fine for things to exist just because they’re nice to look at — and hey: if my site’s been a champion of anything these past 13 years, it’s of borderline useless tat to litter our desktops with).

• I’m saying all of this upfront — hi, btw 👋 — because I know that the thing I’m spotlighting below is going to leave a few of you reading this scratching your chins in bemusement.

• And I want you to know that I get why.

=> ↺ Pinta 2.1 Release Introduces WebP Support. But You Can’t Use It Yet Unfortunately

• Pinta is a free and open-source drawing app for Linux that offers a ton of features in a relatively small package.

• It is one of the best Linux tools for digital artists available.

• Its last major release was in January 2022, introducing improved Hi DPI support, GTK 3 port, and more.

• Marking 2023′s first release, Pinta 2.1 promises to offer even further refinements.

• Notice the new Pinta icon in the image above? Well, that’s one of the changes.

=> ↺ Pinta 2.1 Release Brings WebP Support, Screenshot Feature on Wayland

• A new release of Pinta 2.1 is here, bringing a year’s worth of updates.

=> ↺ 9 Open Source Free SIP and Softphone clients

• SIP client apps enables the user to make internet telephony calls without extensive setup. Many companies have SIP server and VoIP infrastructure ready for employees and customers. SIP client are also called soft-phone, as it looks similar to basic phones with similar functionalities. In this post, we list the best open source and free SIP/ VoIP clients to use without fear of being tracked.

=> ↺ What’s your favorite Mastodon app

• Mastodon is an open source social networking platform for microblogging. While it has a web-based interface, many users prefer to use a client to access Mastodon. Clients are programs or applications that allow users to access and interact with the Mastodon platform from a variety of devices, including computers, tablets, and phones.

• I moved to Mastodon from Twitter back in 2019, and I’ve been experimenting with a number of different clients ever since. This is a list of my favorite Mastodon clients so far.

=> ↺ 30 Best File Managers and Explorers [GUI + CLI] for Linux

• In Linux file and directory management is so important that users always want to have a simple and easy-to-use file manager or file browser.

• But sometimes having a feature-rich and highly configurable file manager for performing both simple tasks such as searching, copying, moving, creating, and deleting files, and complex operations such as remote access of files and SSH connections is very vital.

=> ↺ 9 Best Free UPnP and DLNA Media Servers for Linux

• The acronym UPnP stands for ‘Universal plug and play‘. It’s a service that enables devices on the LAN to seamlessly discover and communicate with each other, the goal being to allow video streaming, data sharing, and gaming across devices without manual setup.

• DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is a set of guidelines that define how digital media is shared across devices on a local network. DLNA leverages uPnP for interconnectivity and allows devices on a home network to find each other and share media files.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Install darktable on Ubuntu

• Alternative to Adobe Lightroom, darktable is a free and open-source photography workflow application and raw developer preferred by many professional photographers for image editing.

• darktable comes packed with many powerful features and is easily available on all major Linux distributions. You can install darktable on Ubuntu via the command line using either APT or Flatpak. The tool is easy to use and learn on any Linux distribution.

=> ↺ How to password-protect a document with LibreOffice | ZDNET

• If LibreOffice is your office suite of choice, and you need to protect a document with a password, you’re in luck, as the feature is built in and simple to use.

=> ↺ How to Install a Teleport Cluster on Debian 11

• Teleport is an open-source that can be used as an access plane for your global infrastructure.

=> ↺ What Do ‘sudo apt update’ and ‘sudo apt upgrade’ Do?

• Linux has an advanced package management tool called Advanced Package Tool, commonly referred to as APT (apt).

=> ↺ How to Show Progress During File Transfer with Rsync – ByteXD

• The (capital) -P option lets you show the progress during file transfer with Rsync.

=> ↺ 2 Methods to Connect WiFi Using Terminal in Arch Linux and Other Distros

• This quick guide explains the steps you need to set up and connect to WiFi using a terminal in Arch Linux and other distros.

• This guide is ideal for those scenarios where you are stuck with a terminal without any GUI and no other wired internet connectivity is available. These steps help you to manually detect the wireless card and device and connect to the WiFi hotspot with password authentication via the terminal.

• This guide uses iwd (Net Wireless Daemon) and nmcli to connect to WiFi via a terminal.

=> ↺ Self-host Your Own Internet Archive With ArchiveBox – OSTechNix

• This tutorial explains what is ArchiveBox and how to install ArchiveBox in Linux, and finally how to self-host your own personal Internet Archive with ArchiveBox.

=> ↺ How to Install and Configure Varnish with Apache on Ubuntu 22.04

• Varnish Cache is a high-performance HTTP accelerator designed for high-traffic dynamic websites.

=> ↺ How to Install NetBox Network Documentation and Management Tool on Ubuntu 22.04

• NetBox is an open-source IP address (IPAM) and datacentre infrastructure management (DCIM) web application used to manage and document…

=> ↺ How To Install Lighttpd on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Lighttpd on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Lighttpd is a lightweight and open-source web server that is designed to be fast and efficient. It is well-suited for use on systems with limited resources or for handling a large number of concurrent connections.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Lighttpd web server on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

=> ↺ How to Install phpPgAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04 – RoseHosting

• In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to install phpPgAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04 OS.

• phpPgAdmin is a web-based software used for managing the PostgreSQL database. PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system. PostgreSQL can be managed through the command line, but for novice users, the better option is phpPgAdmin web-based GUI. In this blog post, we will install the PostgreSQL server first, then the phpPgAdmin. Also, we are going to use the Apache Web server so that you can access phpPgAdmin via the domain name.

• For this installation, we will need around 20 minutes. Let’s get started!

=> ↺ How to sudo in Kubernetes | Enable Sysadmin

• Kubernetes provides two options to escalate permissions temporarily: impersonation headings and the impersonate verb.

=> ↺ How to install Cloudron on Ubuntu 22.04

• In this tutorial you will learn how to Install Cloudron on Ubuntu 22.04

• Cloudron is a self-hosting solution that allows you to host apps on your server. Cloudron comes handy when you need to host more than one app on your server, for example: hosting a blog content management system such as wordpress and an email client.

=> ↺ Install Sqlite3 on Ubuntu

• Being one of the least complex database engines, the sqlite3 is preferred by beginners as well as advanced users.

• Unlike most database systems, sqlite3 doesn’t require a server and can be embedded into the end program.

• This makes sqlite3 stand out as a lightweight, user-friendly, and portable solution.

• So in this tutorial, I will show you how you can install sqlite3 and how to create a simple table in Ubuntu

=> ↺ Day 73: size container features

• In my previous posts about size container features I’ve only used the min-width feature, but there’s actually more you can query.

• container-type: inline-size establishes size containment only on the inline axis. There is no block-size option because it wasn’t possible for browsers to implement, but there is a size option, which establishes size containment on both dimensions of the container. According to Miriam Suzanne, you should be careful using this option because I may cause side effects, but it allows you to query more than just the width/inline-size.

=> ↺ Day 72: the masonry-auto-flow property

• If you’re creating a masonry layout, the packing algorithm puts items into the column with the most space by default. This can cause accessibility issues. The masonry-auto-flow property gives us control over the automatic placement of items in a masonry layout.

=> ↺ Day 71: the masonry keyword

• The masonry keyword allows you to create masonry grid layouts.

=> ↺ Thinking Systematically

• This got me ruminating on design systems work, but also system abstractions in general.

• Thinking systematically, you begin to see abstractions in the one-offs which helps you translate the execution of a specific design to traits of a generalized one.

• What am I talking about? Take color, for example.

=> ↺ Why I still have an old-school cert on my https site

• People sometimes ask me why I don’t use Let’s Encrypt, and it’s a long story. It has a lot to do with just how damn evil the protocol is. It looks like it was created by people who had been drinking FAR too much of the web kool-aid, since it’s chock full of terrible things. It should be a small amount of drama to start a process, receive a magic string, sock it away somewhere at a magic path, then poke the validator and say “go for it”. Then you just check back and see whether it worked or not.

=> ↺ Konami Code Domain Name

• Yup, copy and paste that into your browser and it will resolve.

=> ↺ Emojis in domain names, punycode and performance

• Punycode is a tricky format. Thankfully, domain names are made of labels (e.g., in microsoft.com, microsoft is a label) and each label can use at most 63 bytes. In total, a domain name cannot exceed 255 bytes, and that is after encoding it to punycode if necessary.

• Some time ago, Colm MacCárthaigh suggested that I look at the performance impact of punycode. To answer the question, I quickly implemented a function that does the job. It is a single function without much fanfare. It is roughly derived from the code in the standard, but it looks simpler to me. Importantly, I do not claim that my implementation is particularly fast.

=> ↺ Booting Gentoo on a BTRFS from multiple LUKS devices

• This is mostly a reminder for myself. I installed Gentoo on a machine, but I reused the same BTRFS filesystem where NixOS is already installed, the trick is the BTRFS filesystem is composed of two partitions (a bit like raid 0) but they are from two different LUKS partitions.

• It wasn’t straightforward to unlock that thing at boot.

=> ↺ Thoughts on an implementation of Gemini mentions

• I also did a second implemenation that addresses all these points (and the code for this version is very similar to the other one). I guess I’ll see which one becomes more popular.

=> ↺ Does a Blog Need to Integrate?

• Having RSS integration on your site is hugely important.

=> ↺ How to Install Google Chrome on Manjaro Linux

• Google’s Chrome browser is the most popular worldwide and is known for being fast, reliable, and secure and has a vast ecosystem of extensions and apps. By default, it is not installed on Manjaro Linux but is available from the AUR, which is short for Arch Linux user repository. The following tutorial will demonstrate using the terminal cli how to install all three builds of Google Chrome stable, beta, and developer (unstable) on Manjaro Linux using the command line terminal.

=> ↺ How to Install DeaDBeeF on Manjaro Linux

• DeaDBeeF is a free, open-source music player for Linux, Android, and other UNIX-like that supports various audio formats, including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and WAV. The following tutorial will show you how to install the audio player on Manjaro using the Arch Linux user repository and command line terminal.

=> ↺ Install Latest MS Paint Alternative Pinta in Ubuntu and Other Linux

=> ↺ Changing firmware config that doesn’t want to be changed

=> ↺ 9 Useful “mv” Command in Linux with Examples

• In this beginner’s guide, we will discuss some practical examples of the mv command. After following this guide, Linux newbies will be able to rename and move files and directories easily from the command line interface.

• Files and directories are the building blocks of the operating system. As regular users, we interact with the files and directories on a daily basis. Often times we rename or move files from one location to another for better organization. Definitely, we can perform this operation using the Graphical User Interface (GUI). However, most Linux users prefer to use the mv command due to its rich functionality.

• In this easy-to-understand guide, we will learn the basics of the mv command. As the name suggests, the mv command is used to rename or move files and directories.

• In this guide, we will learn about the mv command using practical examples. Beginners can use these examples on a day-to-day basis while working with Linux systems.

=> ↺ The Quickest Way to Append Text at the Beginning of a File in Linux – TREND OCEANS

• There are no specific commands or operators for these tasks, but don’t worry. We’ve figured out how to add text to the beginning of a file in Linux, and we’ll show you how.

=> ↺ Understanding the Role of /dev/sda in Linux

• When a Windows user encounters a Linux system for the first time, their first thought is: where are the “C:/“, “D:/“, or “E:/” drives?

• So, my innocent Linux newbies, you must know that Linux doesn’t have any concept of local disk like in Windows; here, each and everything represents a file.

• Before you understand exactly what “/dev/sda” is (primary object of this article), you must first know about what files are and the different types of files in Linux.

=> ↺ OTRS Guide: How to create groups and add permissions

• OTRS is a very powerful open-source ticketing help desk solution that any business would be smart to consider. I recently walked you through the installation of OTRS and now it’s time to dive in and start getting the system ready for work.

=> ↺ How to list dependencies of a RPM package using DNF

• If you would like to learn how to list the dependencies of an RPM package using DNF, then you have to read this post. So, when you are going to install an RPM package, you will know exactly what it requires from the system.

• As we all know, RPM is a package format for Red Hat or SUSE Linux derivatives. Like DEB format packages, RPMs contain instructions and binaries about applications to be installed on Linux.

• However, an RPM package might need other packages to be installed, and today we will find out what they are in a quick and easy way thanks to DNF

=> ↺ How to install Gacha Nox on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Gacha Nox on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

=> ↺ Your Ubuntu Linux PC Won’t Boot? 5 Common Issues and Fixes

• You’ve switched on your computer, preparing to do some work, edit a document, mix a composition, or just play a game… but something goes wrong. Ubuntu won’t boot.

• Sadly, as reliable as Linux is in general and as popular as Ubuntu is, sometimes it runs into problems, just like Windows 11 or macOS. In most cases, you’ll be able to work around this.

• Whether you’re using Ubuntu Desktop or Ubuntu Server, here’s what to do if Ubuntu doesn’t boot.

=> ↺ Troubleshooting Linux, analyzing processes, and more tips for sysadmins | Enable Sysadmin

• Check out Enable Sysadmin’s top 10 articles from December 2022.

=> ↺ Systemd Tutorial – Learn How to Use Systemd to Manage Your Linux System

• The secret to controlling services on your Linux system lies in understanding how to use systemd effectively.

=> ↺ Systemd Unit Files Everything You Need to Know – ByteXD

• systemd is the mother of daemons. Daemons are services running in the background without user interaction.

=> ↺ Installing Caddy and PHP 8.1 on Ubuntu 22.04 with Ease

• This guide provides step-by-step instructions for installing Caddy and PHP 8.1 on Ubuntu 22.04 and obtaining a free SSL certificate.

• Caddy is a free, security-focused, HTTP/2-enabled web server written in Go, designed to be simple, efficient, and portable. In addition, it offers modern capabilities such as virtual host support, reverses proxy functionality, and so on. Still, Caddy is the first web server to automatically obtain and renew SSL/TLS certificates using Let’s Encrypt.

• Yes, Nginx has reigned supreme as the preferred choice for web servers in recent years due to its lightning-fast performance and many features. However, despite being a relatively new project, Caddy’s popularity has skyrocketed due to undeniable characteristics like the ease of use, speed, and native SSL support. So, it is quickly becoming the web server of choice for many developers and system administrators.

=> ↺ Automatic container updates with watchtower – Major Hayden

• Watchtower keeps an eye on your running containers and updates them when new containers appear upstream.

Games

=> ↺ Hail, traveler. Welcome to Farr.

• Most new visitors don’t know about Mrs. Riddenbutter’s, but you should do yourself a favor and enjoy some of her hospitality and a tankard or two of her ale. Double-click on her door to open it, and step inside. Riddenbutter works the bar, and the smart traveler should speak with her. Drop an idea on her to get her chatting. Like most people, she likes to talk about this and that and the other thing, and she’ll also frequently respond with information that’s more local in nature.

=> ↺ Indie game character filled platform-battler ‘Fraymakers’ arrives January 18th

• After a successful Kickstarter back in 2020, Fraymakers is getting set to hit Early Access on January 18th. Developed by McLeodGaming, who also made Super Smash Flash 2, a very popular Smash Bros fangame.

=> ↺ An Epic Quest To Build The Ultimate Game Boy

• If you didn’t grow up clutching Nintendo’s original DMG-01 Game Boy, it might difficult to see the appeal in 2023. It had the ergonomics of a brick, the system’s unlit LCD screen utilized a somewhat nauseating green color palette, and when compared to its contemporary competition like the Sega Game Gear or Atari Lynx, it would certainly appear to be the inferior platform. But despite its faults there was just something magical about the machine, and those who have a soft spot for the iconic handheld are always eager to relive those glory days.

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ 9 Best Free and Open Source Tiling Window Managers

• A window manager is software that manages the windows that applications bring up. For example, when you start an application, there will be a window manager running in the background, responsible for the placement and appearance of windows.

• It is important not to confuse a window manager with a desktop environment. A desktop environment typically consists of icons, windows, toolbars, folders, wallpapers, and desktop widgets. They provide a collection of libraries and applications made to operate cohesively together. A desktop environment contains its own window manager.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ TSDgeos’ blog: The KDE Qt5 Patch Collection has been rebased on top of Qt 5.15.8

• The Commercial Qt 5.15.8 release introduced two bugs that have later been fixed. Thanks to that, our Patchset Collection has been able to incorporate the the fix for one of the issues [1] and revert for the other [2] and the Free Software users will never be affected by it!

=> ↺ Krita 5.1.5 Released

• We’re releasing today a new bugfix release. This is mainly important for Android and ChromeOS users where sometimes Krita would be very slow opening or creating a new image, or loading an image.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

=> ↺ Nitrux 2.6.0 Takes Bold Steps: Drops apt, Adds Flathub and Pipewire

• Nitrux Linux is based on Debian that features a modified version of KDE Plasma desktop called NX Desktop. This unique Linux distribution brings its own set of Nitrux applications built upon Maui kit and Qt. Nitrux is systemd-free and uses OpenRC as an init system. With all these unique features and stunning looks, it is one of the best Linux distributions today.

• Nitrux 2.6.0 is bumped up to be a considerable major version due to critical updates since its prior release, 2.5.1 in December.

• Here’s what’s new.

Fedora / Red Hat

=> ↺ DevOps: 3 steps to plan and execute a successful project | The Enterprisers Project

• While DevOps isn’t a new phrase or idea to anyone in the tech industry, it has become a buzzword in recent years. Such is its popularity that it is now crucial to understand how best to structure and deploy a DevOps team, and there are several different views and methodologies on this.

=> ↺ Community Blog monthly summary: December 2022 – Fedora Community Blog

• In December, we published 22 posts. The site had 6,642 visits from 3,538 unique viewers. 911 visits came from search engines, while 495 came from Fedora Magazine and 64 came from Twitter.

=> ↺ How libabigail 2.2 supports multiple debugging formats | Red Hat Developer

• Numerous debugging formats must be supported on Linux systems for C and C++ programs. This article describes the formats supported by libabigail, a tool for creating and unpacking debugging formats, and explains how the redesign of libabigail supports multiple formats.

=> ↺ How to use Fabric8 Kubernetes Client | Red Hat Developer

• While working with Kubernetes Client, you would mostly be working with standard Kubernetes resources whose model is provided by the library itself. However, it’s not always possible to provide a concrete model type while accessing a Kubernetes API object (e.g. in case of Custom Resources). Fabric8 Kubernetes Client’s GenericKubernetesResource API can be used in these scenarios. It allows objects that do not have java POJOs registered to be manipulated generically.

=> ↺ Kubernetes 1.26: Retroactive Default StorageClass | Kubernetes

• The v1.25 release of Kubernetes introduced an alpha feature to change how a default StorageClass was assigned to a PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC). With the feature enabled, you no longer need to create a default StorageClass first and PVC second to assign the class. Additionally, any PVCs without a StorageClass assigned can be updated later. This feature was graduated to beta in Kubernetes 1.26.

• You can read retroactive default StorageClass assignment in the Kubernetes documentation for more details about how to use that, or you can read on to learn about why the Kubernetes project is making this change.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian-based siduction gains snapshots, new recovery tools and moreDebian-based siduction gains snapshots, new recovery tools and more

• The latest release of siduction – a Debian “sid” based meta-distro – sneaked in before the end of the year, but while it dropped some features, it gained some important new ones too.

• As we mentioned when introducing Rolling Rhino, siduction is the best-known rolling release derivative of Debian. If it’s not obvious, the name is a pun on “sid”, the codename of Debian’s unstable development branch, and the word “seduction” – which possibly reflects the seductive lure of always running the latest and greatest, where the price you pay is a lack of stability.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Monthly News – December 2022 – The Linux Mint Blog

• The end of 2022 was as hectic as it was exciting. We managed to stick to our schedule and reach our goals just before the holiday season.

• 91 reports were addressed during the BETA including a handful of release blockers. As always I want to address special thanks to all the people who helped us find bugs.

• Linux Mint 21.1 was then released for download on the 20th of December and as an upgrade the day after. It was a huge success. The fact that it was close to Christmas played a role. The new artwork gave the release more visibility than usual. We gathered very positive feedback on some of the new features and the improvements that were pushed into this release. We were really happy to see your reactions.

• The donations for December were higher than ever at $25,470. The number of donors reached 721 last month. To us this is a clear message that we made a lot of people happy with our work. We’re delighted! Many thanks for these donations!

• In your feedback we also identified future areas of improvement. For instance, we noticed not everybody liked the new folder icons. This is something we’ll tackle in 21.2.

• Before starting the next development cycle we’ll focus on a series of bug reports which were marked as non-urgent and which didn’t block the release. Some of them got fixed already so we’ll push a series of package updates this week.

• LMDE 5 is already up to date with Linux Mint 21.1, it received its backports just before the holidays. Some of the mint tools will be backported in Linux Mint 21 early this year.

• Many thanks to you all. We hope you have a great year 2023!

=> ↺ The Ubuntu Linux Operating System – OSNote

• Ubuntu Linux is one of the most popular Linux operating systems. It’s an open-source operating system that is user-friendly and secure. In this article, I’ll look at the history and some of the features of Ubuntu.

• [...]

• The Ubuntu Linux operating system is developed by the company Canonical, powered by the Linux kernel, and based on the Debian Linux distribution. For beginners: Ubuntu has an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GNOME) that makes using your a breeze. Ubuntu is designed with security in mind, which means there are fewer risks when surfing online or installing new software. There are plenty of applications available for free in the Ubuntu software installer. Software packages use the .deb package format.

=> ↺ Year of The Broken Desktop – Alan Pope’s blog

• This morning I attempted to start work on my desktop PC and couldn’t. The screen is black, it doesn’t want to wake up the displays. I used the old REISUB trick to restart, and it boots, but there’s no output on the display. I did some investigation and this post is mainly to capture my notes and so others can see the problem and perhaps debug and fix it.

• The setup is an Intel Skull Canyon NUC connected to an external GPU enclosure which contains an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. I’ve previously blogged about this weird machine, get more details there. I have since upgraded the GPU since that post, however.

• There are three displays connected to the GPU, and no displays connected directly to the PC itself. I’m running Kubuntu 20.04.1. I did all my updates a couple of days ago, but have not rebooted since.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Have you heard? Nicla Voice is out at CES 2023! | Arduino Blog

• As announced at CES 2023 in Las Vegas, our tiny form factor family keeps growing: the 22.86 x 22.86 mm Nicla range now includes Nicla Voice, allowing for easy implementation of always-on speech recognition on the edge.

=> ↺ Arduino brings birthday cake to life | Arduino Blog

• A good birthday cake is all about the decoration. Usually that comes in the form of fancy frosting, fondant flourishes, and crazy candles. But what if you got electronics involved? That’s the question Natasha Dzurny answered when she used an Arduino to bring a birthday cake to life with epic LED lighting.

• WS2812B individually addressable RGB LEDs, commonly referred to by Adafruit’s “NeoPixel” trade name, are unique because a user can control the color and brightness of every LED in a chain through a single data wire. Each LED passes the data along to the next, with control commands going to the addressed LED. The user can control as many LEDs as they want using only a single digital I/O pin on a microcontroller.

=> ↺ The Best Arduino Alternatives of 2022

• Arduino boards are popular open-source microcontrollers, but they’re not all that’s out there. Check out the best Arduino alternatives!

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Banana Pi BPI-CM4 Amlogic A311D system-on-module launched for $95 – CNX Software

• Banana Pi BPI-CM4 system-on-module powered by an Amlogic A311D hexa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor and compatible with the Raspberry Pi CM4 module has now been launched for $95 and up.

• Banana Pi introduced the Raspberry Pi CM4 compatible module with Amlogic A311D CPU last May with some 3D renders and specifications, and we expected a launch in Q4 2022 or Q1 2023 at the time. The Banana Pi BPI-CM4 is now available together with a carrier board so let’s have another look.

=> ↺ Inside the 8086 processor’s instruction prefetch circuitry

• The groundbreaking 8086 microprocessor was introduced by Intel in 1978 and led to the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and server computing. One way that the 8086 increased performance was by prefetching: the processor fetches instructions from memory before they are needed, so the processor can execute them without waiting on the (relatively slow) memory. I’ve been reverse-engineering the 8086 from die photos and this blog post discusses what I’ve uncovered about the prefetch circuitry.

=> ↺ Anything’s a portable speaker if you’re brave enough

• The fact that this JBL soundbar supports Bluetooth was what sealed the deal. Just make sure to keep the setup a fair distance away from any bigger bonfires, liquids and bugs, and you should be good to go.

=> ↺ ESP32 vs. Arduino Uno: Which One Should You Get? – IoT Tech Trends

• When you’re starting out with microcontrollers, you may read about ESP32 vs. Arduino Uno. One is a fancy board filled with functionality to the brim. The other is an iconic tool that’s inspired countless roboticists around the world. Here we look at both ESP32 and Arduino Uno to see which one you should choose.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ DON’T UPDATE: Some Samsung phones bricking bricked after One UI 5 Android 13 update – has your digital twin been digitally assassinated by friendly fire?

• Multiple reports have emerged of Samsung smartphone owners in South Australia, and now “two” other Australian states, having their phones go into a bricked boot loop mode after updating to the One UI 5.0 update featuring Android 13, but which models are affected, and is there a fix?

=> ↺ Redmi Note 12 Pro+ review: Misguided priorities | Android Central

=> ↺ The best games like Vampire Survivors for Android

=> ↺ Android 14 may finally fix your phone’s awful share menu

=> ↺ Qualcomm’s ‘Snapdragon Satellite’ feature to bring satellite connectivity on premium smartphones | Technology News,The Indian Express

=> ↺ Android warning as camera glass is shattering ‘for no reason’ on certain smartphones – see what devices are affected | The US Sun

=> ↺ RT-RK announces LAVA: a tool for generating Android APIs for accessing ADAS functions

=> ↺ Google proclaims official Android RISC-V support – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Banana Pi BPI-CM4 Amlogic A311D system-on-module launched for $95 – CNX Software

=> ↺ Android users urged to check phone settings now as millions set for major update – World News – Mirror Online

=> ↺ Top 9 Fixes for Android TV Not Playing Videos – Guiding Tech

=> ↺ Samsung’s super-low-cost Galaxy A14 5G is official with high-res screen and Android 13 – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Carrier-locked Samsung Galaxy A32 5G receives Android 13-based One UI 5 in the US – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ How to Add MagSafe to Android Phones – Review Geek

=> ↺ India tribunal declines Google’s request to block Android antitrust ruling | Reuters

=> ↺ PS2 emulator for Android ends due to developer woes – Android Authority

=> ↺ TCL rolls the dice in Vegas: three budget-priced Android phones, a low-priced tablet, and AR glasses – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Best Podcast apps for Android in 2023 – Dignited

• Podcasts have become an increasingly popular way to stay informed, entertained, and engaged, and there are now many apps available for Android devices that make it easy to discover and listen to podcasts. In this post, we will explore some of the best podcast apps for Android, highlighting their key features and benefits.

• Whether you are looking for a simple, easy-to-use app or one with more advanced features, there is a podcast app out there that will suit your needs. So, without further ado, let’s dive into our list of the best podcast apps for Android.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Beyond microblogging with ActivityPub [LWN.net]

• ActivityPub-enabled microblogs are gaining popularity as a replacement for Twitter, but ActivityPub is for more than just microblogging. Many other popular services also have open-source alternatives that speak ActivityPub. Proprietary services operated by commercial interests usually deliberately limit interoperability, but users of any ActivityPub-enabled service should be able to communicate with each other, even if they are using different services. This promise of interoperability is often limited in practice, though; while ActivityPub specifies how multiple types of content can be published, the kinds of content that can be displayed or interacted with vary from project to project.

• The ActivityPub protocol describes how servers can exchange Activity Streams. Microblogs mostly emit activities related to status updates (which is called a “Note” in ActivityPub parlance), but there are many other types of objects that can be described in these streams. ActivityPub projects that aren’t microblogs mostly specialize in publishing activities related to one or more of these other types of objects; instead of notes, they publish pages, images, or videos. All types of objects are allowed to contain some common fields, including a name and a URL; software that doesn’t understand a particular type of object may fall back to using these fields to display a link to the object on its original server instead, or may simply choose not display the object at all.

• Unless otherwise noted, all of the projects mentioned in this article are released under the terms of the AGPL 3.0.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ Don’t do this: creating useless indexes

• Indexes are not bad, but can really harm your workload if not used the proper way. Defining a great indexing policy is an everyday job as the application queries, the data and the data model will change. Also, remember Postgres creates btree indexes by default but there are a lot more than mono column btree indexes in Postgres. Read chapter 11 of the Postgres Documentation to find out more about indexes in Postgres!

Licensing / Legal

=> ↺ Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI Accused of Software Piracy, Sued for $9B in Damages

• GitHub Copilot was designed to streamline software development by enabling developers with relevant artificial intelligence-generated code suggestions as and when they type the code. Meanwhile, the code it is trained on is licensed under the MIT license, GPL, Boost Software License (BSL-1.0), BSL 2, Eclipse Public License, Mozilla Public License 2.0, the Apache license and others.

• Litigants claim that Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI ingested and distributed licensed materials (i.e., the training code) without appropriate attribution, copyright notice, or adherence to licensing terms.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Fault-Tolerant SFTP scripting – Retry Failed Transfers Automatically | Linux Journal

• The whole of modern networking is built upon an unreliable medium. Routing equipment has free license to discard, corrupt, reorder, or duplicate data which it forwards. The understanding of the IP layer in TCP/IP is that there are no guarantees of accuracy. No IP network can claim to be 100% reliable.

• The TCP layer acts as a guardian atop IP, ensuring data that it produces is correct. This is achieved with a number of techniques that sometimes purposely lose data in order to determine network limits. As most might know, TCP provides a connection-based network with guaranteed delivery atop an IP connectionless network that can and does discard traffic at will.

• How curious it is that our file transfer tools are not similarly robust in the face of broken TCP connections. The SFTP protocol resembles both its ancestors and peers in that no effort is made to recover from TCP errors that cause connection closure. There are tools to address failed transfers (reget and reput), but these are not triggered automatically in a regenerated TCP session (those requiring this property might normally turn to NFS, but this requires both privilege and architectural configuration). Users and network administrators alike might be rapt with joy should such tools suddenly become pervasive.

=> ↺ Rebuild mozc with Mozc UT Dictionary – ひとりしずかに。

• When rebuilding mozc with Mozc UT Dictionary, it may be better to build in docker container because you don’t want install unused IM development packages.

=> ↺ Git Change Remote URL to SSH (from HTTPS) – TecAdmin

• Git is a distributed version control system that is widely used for tracking changes in source code during software development. It allows developers to collaborate on projects and keep track of their changes without the need for a central repository.

• One way to access a Git repository is via SSH (Secure Shell). SSH is a network protocol that provides a secure way to communicate with a remote computer over an unsecured network. Using SSH can be more secure and efficient than other methods, such as HTTP or HTTPS, for accessing Git repositories.

=> ↺ Qt 6.4.2 Released

• I am happy to announce that we have released Qt 6.4.2 today.

• As a patch release, Qt 6.4.2 does not introduce any new features but contains ~ 150 bug fixes, security updates, and other improvements to the top of the Qt 6.4.1 release. See more information about the most important changes and bug fixes from Qt 6.4.2 release note.

=> ↺ Why Modeling Finds Bugs (Without Model-Checking)

• The main impetus for these changes is that I’ve left Twitter. While it will assuredly improve my mental well-being, it’s not a great change for my professional prospects. I’ve leaving behind a large audience, a reliable source of client connections, and a medium to share unrefined software thoughts.

=> ↺ State Machines III: Type States

• I’ve been writing a bit about state machines recently. In my last post I explained how we could potentially leverage arbitrary self-types and anonymous enums to support type-level state machines as a first-class construct. Which is cool, but it had some readers asking: “How does this improve on the existing type state pattern?” Which is fair!

• Well, to start off by answering that question: it’s only after authoring that post that I learned that “type states” have a name! I was familiar with the pattern, but I didn’t realize it had a name. If you’d like to learn more about them, Will Chrichton gave an excellent presentation about API design which also covers type states.

=> ↺ 26 programming languages in 25 days, Part 1: Strategy, tactics and logistics

• In the end:

• on 12 days, I had to learn a new programming language from scratch, and then use it to solve that day’s puzzle;

• on 4 days, I used languages where I had very little experience; and

• on the other 9 days, I used languages I had known well at some point.

• Ultimately, I used 26 languages, because I combined two on Day 21 (sed and bc), turning the experience into a rapid-fire “breadth-first search” of programming language space.

=> ↺ 26 programming languages in 25 days, Part 2: Reflections on language design

• Here are my two high-level reflections from the experience:

• Good design in the first part of each puzzle – especially more functional techniques and abstractions – tended to make the second part easier. So, in general, functional languages seemed to have the advantage in the puzzles.

• Using better algorithms and data structures was far more important than having a “faster” programming language. There was never a time where rewriting in another language felt like the right way to get better performance.

• Read on for more specific reflections on language design.

=> ↺ On OKRs

• I’m solidly in favour of a planning architecture of some kind for any team-size collection of people greater than about 5. (Hell, arguably above 2, but let’s keep overheads down.)

• I’ve had the opportunity to try OKRs across a number of teams and companies, and I’ve found them useful overall. Those of us who’ve been in large companies or planning-focused small companies will have encountered a number of approaches to planning before. OKRs take their place amongst this number, I think; neither clearly the best (but absolutely not the worst), they are great for certain kinds of things but not for others.

• Let me be more precise.

=> ↺ A Programming Language DataBase – 2022 recap and roadmap for 2023

• 2022 was a breakout year for a Programming Language DataBase (PLDB). We are now used by over ten thousand people in a slow week and probably were used by over a million people on the year (I can’t be too exact since our stuff is public domain and we don’t do much tracking). Some of the world’s top software people got in touch with us and we now provide analysis on how to make their companies’ languages better. Not bad for a research effort started by a kid from Brockton without a PhD! I am 100% convinced that someone can (and will) revolutionize research in any and every domain simply by copying our tech and creating a high-quality public domain CSV file for their domain.

=> ↺ A confusing lifetime error related to Rust’s lifetime elision

• Earlier this week, I ran into a confusing situation with lifetimes and the borrow checker while working on my Lox interpreter. It took me a little while to figure out, and it’s an instructive situation.

• Here’s a reduced-down version of what I was working on. It’s an interpreter, so there is a scanner which produces tokens. Ideally these tokens are references back into the underlying original string so that you can avoid any more memory allocation.

=> ↺ 6 tips for building an effective DevOps culture

• Why would you want to build a DevOps culture? There are many benefits to the streamlined collaboration of the development and operations teams. A major goal is efficiency: Increasing the speed of new software deployments and reducing idle time for workers. Fostering trust between colleagues can improve employee satisfaction, produce new innovations, and positively impact profitability.

• DevOps is a broad philosophy with a range of interpretations. In other words, you can visit 40 companies and find 40,000 different ideas about using DevOps effectively in the workplace. This diversity of opinion is actually a good thing–so many perspectives are useful for building stronger teams. This guide will look at the top tips for encouraging better collaboration between colleagues within a DevOps culture.

• Each section offers a different aspect of DevOps culture and looks at ways to introduce it into your workforce.

=> ↺ Boston students win 2022 NASA Space Apps global championship

=> ↺ Quick Start: Pico W with WipperSnapper

=> ↺ New guide

Python

=> ↺ MQTT and Raspberry PI Pico W: Start with Mosquitto (MicroPython)

• Raspberry PI Pico W brings connectivity to your projects. Mosquitto is one of the most reliable, simple and fast communications for IoT projects.

=> ↺ The Python on hardware news for this week!

=> ↺ Finding people’s use of /usr/bin/python with the Linux audit framework

• Our Ubuntu systems have had a /usr/bin/python that was Python 2 for more or less as long as we’ve had Ubuntu systems, which by now is more than fifteen years. Over that time, our users have written a certain amount of Python 2 programs that use ‘#!/usr/bin/python’ to get Python 2, because that’s been the standard way to do it for a relatively long time. However, Python 2 is going away on Ubuntu since it has on Debian, and as part of that we’re probably going to stop having a /usr/bin/python in our future 24.04 LTS servers. It would be nice to find out which of our users are still using ‘/usr/bin/python’ so that we can contact them in advance and get them either to move their programs to Python 3 or at the very least start using ‘#!/usr/bin/python2′. One way to do this is to use the Linux kernel’s audit framework. Or, really, two ways, the broad general way and the narrow specific way. Unfortunately neither of these are ideal.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ Program Picker With Zenity

• Zenity is a small utility program for building simple graphical widgets and menus. I’ve never had use for it before, but a few days ago I ran into a situation that it just so happened to be perfect for.

Rust

=> ↺ This Week In Rust: This Week in Rust 476

• No calls for participation this week. Keep an eye out for more places to contribute next week!

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ CDs Like Baseball Cards

• So I suggested CDs. To this younger set, they are still interesting. They are still physical. They still have artwork and liner notes. As an object, vinyl still beats CDs, I think, but they can always progress there if they’d like. Oh, and playing a CD is a much more straightforward process.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Personal Blogging was Never Dead, It Has Changed

• It would first help to know the definition of personal blogging, I would define it having your own website to write and publish the content that you want. Some may say that having your own website means paying for a domain, but I’m not going to gate keep what a personal blog is.

• There are always people raving about how personal blogging should come back, and more people should do it. While there will be people who are motivated by that and will blog. There are also many generations who won’t, for many the definition of blogging has changed.

=> ↺ HOWTO: Avoid temptation — why avoiding temptation is harder than you think

• As a result, three regions emerge around every temptation:

• 1. the akratic zone, where willpower alone can’t save you anymore;

• 2. the danger zone, where willpower will eventually falter if you stay too long; and

• 3. the safe zone, where willpower is stable enough to resist indefinitely.

=> ↺ The Terminal Brag Shelf

• Unfortunately, seeing everything neatly arranged here with lots of room for more books, more room than I can possibly write to fill, my first thought was: I must overflow this bastard.

=> ↺ Something’s Rotating In The State Of Denmark: A Clock

• If you visit the Copenhagen City Hall, you’ll see an ornate mechanical clock. By itself, this is unremarkable, of course. There are plenty of ornate clocks in city halls around the world, but this one has a fascinating backstory that starts with a locksmith named Jan Jens Olsen. Unfortunately, Jens didn’t actually complete the clock before his death. It would take 12 years to put together the 15,448 individual parts. However, he did manage to see most of the clock that he had been designing for 50 years put together.

=> ↺ Hollywood Jazz Trio

• We lived around the corner from a Shakey’s pizza joint off Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. I’d just got discharged from the VA after a short stint in the Air Force, where I crazed out the first night at Lackland AFB boot camp, and was sent to the base hospital dissociating and ending up answering the psychiatrist’s questions with what he later termed “bizarre metaphysical overtones,” which got me honorably discharged a few months later, sans any GI Bill. Mark, a friend of mine from back East, who’d just flown West and moved in with his brother, who was then living in Hollywood, told me to join out there. Fresh start. So, out I went to La-La Land.  And here I was standing at the counter to pick up our pepperoni pizzas. I came in twice a week for happy hour specials that featured ridiculous amounts of pizza and pitchers of beer. A Dixieland band played widely as I paid the tab, grabbed my pies, and left.

• Coming into my apartment building a Latino guy named Manuel (pronounced like the artist Buñuel’s, but without the tilde). He was in his 40s I guessed, quiet, nervous, always smoking. He looked a little like James Dean, from the way he dressed and groomed, but one who’d been beaten half to death a few times. He didn’t look you in the eye right away. He sometimes hung around the front steps, stirring.

=> ↺ Suicide, 3D printed and AI-monitored | Stop at Zona-M

• As far as I understand this pod, called Sarco, would circumvent restrictions on assisted suicide and “demedicalises death” because it can be only operated from the inside. The person who needs it sits inside, closes the pod and pushes a button all by himself, without any need to convince anyone else, medic or not, to “assist” in any way. I have no expertise or intention to comment on this in any way, so let’s look at the rest.

• [...]

• Yeah, right. The Sarco design files are special files that cannot be copied, are hosted on servers that nobody will ever succeed to crack, and will be only downloaded by users with equally unbreakable computers. Sure. Or, by the time I am writing this, those files have already been copied on God knows how many unhautorized computers.

Science

=> ↺ Machine Learning Makes Sure Your LOLs Are Genuine

• There was a time not too long ago when “LOL” actually meant something online. If someone went through the trouble of putting LOL into an email or text, you could be sure they were actually LOL-ing while they were typing — it was part of the social compact that made the Internet such a wholesome and inviting place. But no more — LOL has been reduced to a mere punctuation mark, with no guarantee that the sender was actually laughing, chuckling, chortling, or even snickering. What have we become?

=> ↺ Irving Wladawsky-Berger: Why Are Enterprises Struggling with Blockchain?

• “Blockchain, the technology underpinning bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, for years has been viewed by some companies as a way to drive industry-transforming projects, among them the tracking of assets through complex supply chains,” according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Blockchain Fails to Gain Traction in the Enterprise.”

• “So far that hasn’t happened.”

• Blockchain technologies first came to light in 2008 as the architecture underpinning bitcoin, the best known, most valuable, and most widely held cryptocurrency. Over the years, blockchain has evolved in two major directions. One continues to focus on blockchain as the underlying platform for bitcoin, as well as for the large number of cryptocurrencies, digital tokens, and other crypto assets that have since been created. The other focuses on blockchain as a distributed data platform for collaborative applications involving multiple institutions, such as supply chains, financial services and healthcare systems.

Hardware

=> ↺ Stewart Platform Keeps Its Eye On The Ball

• Although billed as a balancing robot, [Aaed Musa’s] robot doesn’t balance itself. It balances a ball on a platform. You might recognize this as something called a Stewart platform, and they are great fun at parties if you happen to party with a bunch of automation-loving hackers, that is. Take a look at the video below to see the device in action.

=> ↺ The Flight Of The Dremel

• A few months ago we featured a model aircraft whose power plant came courtesy of an angle grinder. It was the work of [Peter Sripol], and it seems he was eseiged by suggestions afterwards that he might follow it up with a helicopter built using a Dremel rotary tool. Which he duly did, and the results can be seen in the video below the break.

=> ↺ Zen And Glowing Air Bubble Displays

• When you work in a medium for long enough, and you learn how it works more and more deeply, you eventually become its master. [Yukio Shinoda] is probably master of the LED bubble display.

=> ↺ A White-Light Laser, On The Cheap

• Lasers are known for the monochromatic nature of their light, so much so that you might never have thought there could be such a thing as a white laser. But in the weird world of physics, a lot of things that seem impossible aren’t really, as demonstrated by this dirt-cheap supercontinuum laser.

=> ↺ Making a Sci-Fi Soldier’s Helmet from Harbor Freight Parts – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers!

• On this episode of CreateSciFi, Tony decides to go to a Harbor Freight with no idea what he’s going to make.

• He decides to let the products he encounters inspire the idea. He ends up finding a safety helmet and a face shield and from there he decides to create a helmet for a sci-fi soldier.

=> ↺ NXP i.MX 95 processor features Cortex-A55, Cortex-M33, and Cortex-M7 cores, eIQ Neutron NPU – CNX Software

• NXP i.MX 95 is an upcoming Arm processor family for automotive, industrial, and IoT applications with up to six Cortex-A55 application cores, a Cortex-M33 safety core, a Cortex-M7 real-time core, and NXP eIQ Neutron Neural Network Accelerator (NPU).

• We’re just only starting to see NXP i.MX 93 modules from companies like iWave Systems and Forlinx, but NXP is already working on its second i.MX 9 processor family with the i.MX 95 application processor family equipped with a higher number of Cortex-A55 cores, an Arm Mali 3D GPU, NXP SafeAssure functional safety, 10GbE, support for TSN, and the company’s eIQ Neutron Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to enable machine learning applications.

=> ↺ The immense stupidity of uselessly wireless tools | Stop at Zona-M

• When I took that screenshot of their website, that huge hardware store had a handful of wired drills, mostly really expensive ones, but literally 10 or 15 times more wireless drills. All this for a customer base that is 90% people like me, that is occasional hobbysts, for whom wired or wireless would make zero to very little practical difference.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ A record number of America’s kids were injured or killed by gunfire in 2022

• In the year since, more than 6,000 children and teens were injured or killed in shootings, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. That’s the most in a single year since the database began tracking nine years ago.

• As the epidemic of gun violence continues to wreak havoc on the nation, here’s how shootings affected America’s children in 2022.

=> ↺ FDA Rules That Retail Pharmacies Can Offer Abortion Medication

=> ↺ An Entire Decade of Benefits Denial for Vets After Toxic Chemical Exposure?

• Camp Lejeune, a military base in Jacksonville, North Carolina, was established in 1942 to train future Marines for World War II. While it is known as the home of “Expeditionary Forces in Readiness,” the facility also has a long history of contamination with toxic chemicals such as perchloroethylene, vinyl chloride, trichloroethylene, and benzene. In 1982, volatile organic compounds—gasses released by these solvents—were found at Camp Lejeune.

• Furthermore, since 1966, military firefighters and trainees have been using the fire suppressant known as Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) to extinguish jet fuel and petroleum fires, which only worsened pollution. This firefighting foam contains PFAS, a group of over 5,000 dangerous substances often dubbed “forever chemicals,” in a concentration of up to 98 percent. With each use, AFFF contaminates the environment with these chemicals. Some take over a thousand years to break down, hence their nickname.

=> ↺ The NFL: America’s Billion Dollar Blood Sport

• American football has always been a blood sport.

• It needs to change or die.

=> ↺ ‘Will Save Lives’: Warnock Hails Start of $35 Insulin Copay Cap for Medicare Recipients

• A provision capping Medicare recipients’ insulin copayments at $35 a month took effect on the first day of the new year, a change that Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock applauded Tuesday as a crucial victory that lawmakers must work to extend to all people who need the lifesaving medicine.

=> ↺ As US Moves On From Pandemic, Demand for Covid Vaccines Wanes in Global South

• Four months after U.S. President Joe Biden said in a television interview that “the pandemic is over,” global immunization experts are warning that “pandemic fatigue” may be contributing to declining demand for Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries, even as vaccination rates in the Global South are far below the World Health Organization’s target.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Four cyber concerns looming in the new year

• Cyberattacks have surged in recent years, with the health care system and other critical sectors increasingly coming under digital assault as the threat of malware like ransomware and foreign spyware continues to evolve.

• Last year in particular saw officials and lawmakers renew their focus on cybersecurity and seek to secure the country’s critical sectors from rising cyber threats. The issue is expected to continue to take center stage in the coming year, as many of those threats are still escalating while the cyber sector is confronting an ongoing workforce shortage in its efforts to bolster the U.S.’s digital defenses.

• Here are four cyber concerns expected to take priority in 2023.

Security

=> ↺ New Linux malware found targeting WordPress sites

=> ↺ more BS of the same “flavour”

=> ↺ Linux Backdoor Malware Targets WordPress Sites with Outdated, Vulnerable Themes and Plugins

=> ↺ misleading

=> ↺ Security in the smart home: considerations for device makers

• When people think of home security they usually think of an alarm system with a keypad next to the door. These days, however, home security should have two meanings. I’m here to talk about the second: cybersecurity. In other words, security in the smart home.

• A recent investigation found that a shocking number of leading smart home devices contained outdated SSL libraries. An outdated SSL could leave the door open for malicious actors to listen in on network traffic. In the smart home context, that traffic could include extremely personal information such as when you’re at home or away. This kind of security threat is far from being the only one; consumer device security breaches are consistently in the news. Clearly, this is a significant issue.

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

• Security updates have been issued by Fedora (binwalk), Oracle (kernel and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (webkit2gtk3), Slackware (vim), and Ubuntu (libksba and nautilus).

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ GO 1.20 Cryptography

• The first second release candidate of Go 1.20 is out![1] This is the first release I participated in as an independent maintainer, after leaving Google to become a professional Open Source maintainer. (By the way, that’s going great, and I’m going to write more about it here soon!)

• I’m pretty happy with the work that’s landing in it. There are both exciting new APIs, and invisible deep backend improvements that are going to make code more maintainable and secure in the long run. All the main work mentioned in the planning post got done, and then some (but not the “stretch goals”). The whole release is pretty exciting, too, and you should check out the release notes (although the cryptography parts might not be complete yet).

=> ↺ How to move away from RSA for SSH keys

• For a while cryptographers have feared that RSA is vulnerable to a quantum computing algorithm known as Shor’s Algorithm. I won’t pretend to understand it in this article, but the main reason why it’s not deployed is that the hardware required to attack RSA keys in the wild literally doesn’t exist yet (think literally tens of generations more advanced than current quantum computers).

• A group of researchers have just published a paper that posits that it’s likely you can break 2048-bit RSA (the most widely deployed keysize) with a quantum computer that only uses 372 qubits of computational power. The IBM Osprey has 433 qubits.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Not quite a successful prediction about tracking Apple stuff

• Just a hair over 10 years ago, I wrote a post lamenting the fact that my WiFi-only original iPad (which was new at the time) was probably a mistake. After all, if I took it outside my house and away from the one wireless network it knew, it was now cut off from the Internet. If someone stole it or if I left it behind somewhere, there would be no way to track it down or wipe it.

=> ↺ New Louisiana law requires digital ID to access online porn, raising ques

• Called House Bill 142, the new law requires websites containing 33.3% or more pornographic content to verify viewers’ age using a government-issued form of identification, a process known as “reasonable age verification.” The law was officially set into motion on Jan. 1 after it was introduced last year by Rep. Laurie Schlegel (R-LA) — who was inspired by musician Billie Eilish’s comments on the harmful effects of watching porn — and approved in June by Gov. John Bel Edwards.

=> ↺ German federal state to train hundreds of police drone pilots

• North Rhine-Westphalia is a nationwide pioneer in aerial surveillance

=> ↺ Kenyan Telco urged to delete biometric data collected for SIM registration

• Global human rights watchdog Access Now has called on a mobile telecommunications company in Kenya, Safaricom, to delete all face biometrics data collected from citizens between November 2021 and April 2022 within the framework of an ongoing SIM card registration process in the East African country.

• In an open letter, the rights organization accused the telco of unlawfully collecting facial images of Kenyan citizens for the SIM registration exercise in violation of multiple laws in Kenya. The laws, according to the watchdog, include the Kenya Information and Communications (Registration of SIM cards) Regulations 2015; the Data Protection Act 2019; the General Data Protection Regulations 2021, the Kenya Information and Communication (Consumer Protection) Regulation 2010, and the Consumer Protection Act.

=> ↺ Egypt’s new high-tech capital: Smart city or surveillance trap? | Context

• The gleaming tower blocks and high-tech facilities of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s flagship new capital are a far cry from Cairo’s congested streets and crumbling facades.

• In the New Administrative Capital that is taking shape in the desert, lampposts double up as WiFi hotspots, keycards grant access to buildings, and more than 6,000 surveillance cameras keep watch over the first of its 6.5 million residents.

• A single mobile app allows the city’s inhabitants to make utility payments, access public services and register complaints with the authorities.

=> ↺ Parenting tech is booming, watch out | Stop at Zona-M

• Thinking with their OWN brain has never been more important for parents.

• Nesta just announced a new report about “what’s next for parenting tech”.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ ‘There Is More Than One Solution Needed to the Problem of an Insurrection’

• Janine Jackson interviewed Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert about the January 6 report for the December 23, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

=> ↺ Opposition politician sends bailiffs to Ministry of Foreign Affairs

=> ↺ In the wake of a black swan In trying to predict the effects of sanctions, economists in Russia and abroad failed to realize that 2022 had no economic precedents — Meduza

• Shortly after launching the invasion of Ukraine, Russia topped the global list of sanctioned countries, incurring three times more cumulative sanctions than Iran. As Russia lost half of its foreign assets, the U.S. dollar exchange rate spiked to 130 rubles. Responding to the Central Bank’s monthly survey, Russian economists projected an eight-percent shrinkage of the country’s GDP and a 20-percent annual inflation rate, while also predicting that the dollar conversion rate would hover around 110 rubles. But none of those forecasts materialized, thanks to the fossil fuel exports that generated a trade surplus, and to fiscal policies that helped cushion the ruble. Meduza’s special correspondent Margarita Lyutova explains how the Russian economy managed to survive 2022, and what challenges might be awaiting it in 2023.

=> ↺ Kirill Romanovsky, correspondent for RIA FAN, has died — Meduza

• War correspondent for the pro-Kremlin news outlet RIA FAN (Federal News Agency) has died, reports his friend and RIA FAN author Abbas Juma, on his personal Telegram channel.

=> ↺ „I can’t breathe!“, a man who picked up his father at a German police station had to shout

• Officers in southern Hesse overwrite incriminating video after police violence

=> ↺ Occupying authorities in Zaporizhzhia report five dead and 15 wounded in a strike in Vasylivka — Meduza

• Five people were killed, and 15 received injuries of varying severity, following an attack on the city of Vasylivka, in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia, says acting governor of the occupied territories, Yevgeny Balitsky.

=> ↺ The true war of attrition begins Meduza sums up what happened on the battlefield in 2022 — and what it portends for the year ahead — Meduza

• Late in 2022, the war in Ukraine reached a new turning point. Russia conducted its “first wave” of mobilization and partially eliminated the personnel deficit that contributed to its numerous military defeats in the fall. Now, the Russian army might face a shortage of a different resource: artillery ammunition. Meanwhile, Ukraine is experiencing a shell shortage of its own. Overcoming the deficiency won’t be easy: the West, which is assisting Ukraine with supplies, has largely exhausted its available stockpiles. It is against this backdrop that Russia and Ukraine are fighting a protracted artillery battle around the cities of Soledar and Bakhmut, which is rapidly eating away at the remaining ammunition on both sides. Increasingly, it seems the true “war of attrition” — as many began referring to the war in Ukraine almost as soon as its hot stage began — will take place in 2023. The outcome of this stage will hinge primarily on which side is better able to adapt to its worsening ammunition shortage.

=> ↺ Patrick Lawrence: The Sino-Russian Summit You Didn’t Read About

• The New York Times coverage of the recent summit between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping misses some of its most important details, writes Patrick Lawrence.

=> ↺ The Threat Business: Russia or China?

• For those in charge of US national security, the central challenge is identifying threats and determining how to counter them. The Biden administration has cast China and Russia, in that order, as the major threats to US security.

=> ↺ Call for Solidarity Actions with Anti-war Activists in Russia

• This is a call for solidarity with Russian anti-war activists by Ilya Budraitskis on behalf of The Russian Socialist Movement.

• For over a decade, Russian antifascists have commemorated January 19 as their day of solidarity. This is the date when in 2009, in the center of Moscow, the human rights and leftist activist Stanislav Markelov and the journalist and anarchist Anastasia Baburova were gunned down by neo-Nazis.

=> ↺ Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp From the Ukraine War?

• NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, known for his staunch support for Ukraine, recently revealed his greatest fear for this winter to a TV interviewer in his native Norway: that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a major war between NATO and Russia. “If things go wrong,” he cautioned solemnly, “they can go horribly wrong.”

• It was a rare admission from someone so involved in the war, and reflects the dichotomy in recent statements between U.S. and NATO political leaders on one hand and military officials on the other. Civilian leaders still appear committed to waging a long, open-ended war in Ukraine, while military leaders, such as the U.S. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, have spoken out and urged Ukraine to “seize the moment” for peace talks.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Key US Allies Collaborate On Espionage Laws Considered Harmful To Whistleblowers And Journalists

Environment

=> ↺ Afghanistan’s Taliban administration in oil extraction deal with Chinese company

• Afghanistan’s Taliban-led administration is to sign a contract with a Chinese company to extract oil from the Amu Darya basin in the country’s north, the acting mining minister said on Thursday.

• The contract would be signed with Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co (CAPEIC), officials told a news conference in Kabul.

=> ↺ China and Philippines agree to ‘manage differences’ on South China Sea

• Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his Philippine counterpart Ferdinand Marcos Jr. have agreed to strengthen economic ties and resume talks on oil exploration, as they look to revive their economies amid the pandemic downturn and friction over contested areas of the South China Sea.

=> ↺ Climate Devastation Continues in California as Megastorm Sparks Fresh Fears

• Hot on the heels of a major winter storm that inundated Northern California with torrential rains and deadly flooding, residents of the Golden State braced Wednesday for what’s expected to be an even more devastating storm—the latest climate chaos to wreak havoc in the U.S. West amid a worsening planetary emergency.

=> ↺ Will New CEO Tim Sweeney Clean Up Liberty Mutual’s Climate and Human Rights Record?

• You have likely never heard of him, but Tim Sweeney just became a critical decision maker when it comes to the fate of the fossil fuel industry’s global expansion plans. As of January 1, 2023, Sweeney is the new CEO of Boston-based insurance giant Liberty Mutual, which is one of the biggest coal, oil, and gas insurers in the world.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Sam Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty

• In addition, the complaints against Ms Ellison suggest that Mr Bankman-Fried instructed his business partner (and former romantic partner) to prop up the price of the ftt token. Mr Bankman-Fried had created this cryptocurrency himself, and given it to Alameda free of charge, so that the hedge fund could use it to borrow even more money from other crypto institutions. Having set up numerous ways for Alameda to borrow as much as possible Mr Bankman-Fried then used the firm as his “personal piggy-bank”, according to the sec—disbursing political donations, buying property and making venture investments. Ms Ellison and Mr Wang appear willing to corroborate that these events took place.

Finance

=> ↺ urllib3 in 2022

• In total urllib3 received $26,615 USD in financial support and distributed $18,622 USD to maintainers and community contributors. We’re thankful for the financial support we receive from our sponsors. Without funding our team wouldn’t be able to compensate maintainers to continuously lead, upkeep, and secure urllib3. Without funding, we couldn’t reward contributions from our team and the community and larger project like urllib3 v2.0 would either never be finished or take even longer than the year+ it’s taken already to ship. Let’s dive into our sources of financial support in 2022 and how the money was spent: [...]

=> ↺ GOP House Speaker Drama Sparks Fears About Debt Ceiling Fight

• The refusal by U.S. House Republicans to collectively get behind a speaker candidate in six rounds of voting so far this week has renewed concerns about the coming fight over raising the debt ceiling to prevent an unprecedented government default.

=> ↺ The Cartel Economy & the Telecom Cartel

• The U.S. economy is consolidating with ever-larger conglomerates gaining ever-more power.  In July 2021, the White House issued “Fact Sheet: “Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy” that stated:

• Much has been said about “Big Tech” companies – i.e., Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook) and Microsoft.  And there is also Big Phama (i.e., Johnson & Johnson, Roche Holding, Pfizer, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly), Big Oil (Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips) and Big Tobacco (i.e., Altria, Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco).

=> ↺ Why Must Americans Walk Life’s Tightrope Without a Safety Net?

• Republicans are about to seize control of the US House of Representatives, where the Constitution says all taxation and spending must originate. And the result won’t be difficult to predict.

• This Spring will be the 20th anniversary of my radio program. During that entire time, I’ve run a contest for anybody who can name even one single piece of legislation from the past 40 years (since Reagan) that was:

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Twitter’s ‘Cost Cutting By Not Paying Bills’ Now Going To Increase Legal Fees

• It’s no secret that Elon Musk is desperately trying to cut costs at Twitter, the company he overpaid for and saddled with approximately an extra billion dollars a year in interest payments by leveraging the buyout. He’s cut staff somewhere around 75% and we still keep hearing rumors of further cuts. He’s turning off data centers as well. Though, as part of all this, he’s also driven away a huge percentage of Twitter’s revenue, as well as any sort of momentum towards growth.

=> ↺ Journalists (And Others) Should Leave Twitter. Here’s How They Can Get Started

• Summary: Elon Musk has demonstrated contempt for free speech in general, and journalism in particular, with his behavior at Twitter. He is also demonstrating why it is foolhardy for anyone to rely on centralized platforms to create and distribute vital information. Journalists — among many information providers and users — should move to decentralized systems where they have control of what they say and how they distribute it. And philanthropic organizations have a major role to play. Here is a way forward.

=> ↺ Amazon says it will cut over 18,000 jobs, more than initially planned

• Tech companies are picking up in 2023 where they left off last year, preparing for an extended economic downturn. Salesforce said on Wednesday it would reduce headcount by 10%, impacting over 7,000 employees. Both Amazon and Salesforce admitted that they hired too rapidly during the pandemic.

=> ↺ Amazon CEO Says Layoff to Exceed 18,000 Jobs

• Amazon has more than 1.5 million workers including warehouse staff, making it America’s second-largest private employer after Walmart. It has braced for likely slower growth as soaring inflation encouraged businesses and consumers to cut back spending and its share price has halved in the past year.

=> ↺ Amazon Will Lay Off 18,000 Employees, CEO Andy Jassy Says

• Amazon will eliminate “just over 18,000 roles” at the company, CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to staffers Wednesday, well more than previously expected by the ecommerce giant.

• The layoffs will occur across “several teams” but the majority of job cuts are in the Amazon Stores group and its People, Experience and Technology (PXT) organization, Jassy said in the memo, which the company posted on its blog site.

=> ↺ Amazon to cut more than 18,000 jobs, CEO says

• Some of the layoffs would be in Europe, Jassy said, adding that the impacted workers would be informed starting on January 18.

=> ↺ Meta Fined More Than $400 Million After Regulator Rules

• At issue is Meta Ireland’s change in May 2018 — when GDPR went into effect — to its terms of service requiring Facebook and Instagram users to accept a contractual legal basis for processing their data for the purposes of behaviorally targeted ads. A pair of complaints lodged at the time by European users argued that the change amounted to “forced consent,” because they would be prevented from using Facebook or Instagram if they declined to agree to the new terms. The DPC ruling, announced Wednesday, found that Meta Ireland provided users “insufficient clarity as to what processing operations were being carried out on their personal data” and that the company is “not entitled to rely on the ‘contract’ legal basis” in connection with behavioral-based advertising for Facebook and Instagram.

=> ↺ Kari Lake refers to herself as the ‘real’ and ‘duly-elected governor’ of Arizona in interview

• In an interview on the far-right Real America’s Voice, 2022 Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake referred to herself as the “real” and “duly-elected governor” of Arizona — despite having lost the election, lost the court cases challenging the election, and despite her opponent having been sworn in as governor this week.

• She went so far as to claim that the election against her was rigged “in broad daylight,” without any actual evidence of this having happened, and called for removing key local officials who oversaw the election in Phoenix, including Republicans.

=> ↺ We Need to Talk About Kevin

• It’s a paradox worthy of a Zen koan: How does one gain leadership of a party that’s ideologically opposed to governing? The one animating principle of Kevin McCarthy’s immaculately unprincipled career has been the pursuit of maximal congressional power—but power in today’s Trumpified House GOP caucus is almost entirely a function of self-dramatizing grievance. In a political conclave made up of Twitter main characters, there’s no room for an aspiring content moderator—even one as cheerfully invertebrate as McCarthy.

=> ↺ Retired Congressman Fred Upton Being Considered for House Speakership

=> ↺ Did McCarthy Open the Door for MAGA Republicans to Block His Speaker Bid?

=> ↺ Day 1 of GOP-Led House Shows Party Disunity as McCarthy Fails to Win Speaker

=> ↺ House GOP’s Top Priority If They Ever Get a Speaker? Protect Wealthy Tax Dodgers

• Republicans began their control of the 118th Congress Tuesday with a narrow majority that failed six times to elect a speaker but had in hand “hit-the-ground-running” plans to pass legislation that critics say will “protect wealthy and corporate tax cheats” by rescinding tens of billions of dollars in new Internal Revenue Service funding in the Inflation Reduction Act.

=> ↺ Noam Chomsky: Another World Is Possible. Let’s Bring It to Reality.

=> ↺ Every Day of the Year: Point Your Compass Toward the Occupation

• In the occupied West Bank, the New Year began like the old one ended – with Israelis killing Palestinians. Adam Ayyad, 15, became 2023′s first child victim when he was shot by soldiers raiding his refugee camp. 2022 was the deadliest year in two decades for Palestinians living under the Occupation: Aged 12 to 80, they were shot in the head, eye, back, running away. Adam’s will lamented all “I wished I could do” if not living “in a country where realizing your dreams is impossible” – and where 15-year-olds make wills.

=> ↺ ‘Congress Must Stop Funding Apartheid,’ Tlaib Says as Israel Razes West Bank Homes

• As chaos continued in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, the first Palestinian-American woman ever elected to the chamber took aim at Israel’s new far-right government for its plans to forcibly displace over 1,000 Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta region of the illegally occupied West Bank.

=> ↺ Will the International Court of Justice Finally Condemn Israel’s Illegal Squatting in Palestine?

• Juan Cole writes on the United Nations General Assembly request that the court to weigh in on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

=> ↺ Culture of Hope: 2022 and the Margins of Victory in Palestine

• Another critical year for Palestine has folded. While 2022 has wrought much of the same in terms of Israeli military occupation and increasing violence, it also introduced new variables to the Palestinian struggle – nationally, regionally and internationally.

• Palestine, the War and the Arabs

=> ↺ American Politics is Designed to Minimize “Reckonings”

• “The question,” Bonnie Kristian writes at The Daily Beast, “isn’t whether we want a Republican reckoning or not. It’s whether we want the dream of mass public repentance for bringing Trump to power or the reality of Trump remaining out of power.”

=> ↺ Keeping Montana Montana

• Unlike in normal years, the 2023 Legislature finds itself wallowing in a fiscal surplus caused by massive infusions of money from the federal government so many of the incoming legislators continually denigrate. But of course they’re not giving the federal money back. Instead, the incoming Republican supermajority leans toward massive development and urbanization of our state. This year the challenge won’t be trying to find the fiscal resources to meet our state’s many very real needs, but simply trying to keep Montana Montana — and not New Jersey, Maryland, Colorado, Utah, or Texas.

• Granted, there are many versions of what “Montana” means. That’s no surprise given the vast diversity of Montana’s enormous landscapes. If you live in the western side of the state your concept of Montana is likely shaped by the snow-capped, sky-piercing mountains on the skyline. Here huge expanses of forested lands flow down to wide valleys with beautiful rivers and streams internationally famous for their abundant wild trout that remain capable of natural reproduction instead of being dumped from a hatchery truck.

=> ↺ 26 Dems in Congress Urge DOJ to Continue Moratorium on Federal Executions

• Arguing that “the death penalty is cruel, racist, and fundamentally unjust,” U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley on Tuesday led over two dozen congressional Democrats in calling on the Biden administration to continue its 18-month pause on federal executions.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Concerns Over Disinformation Grow After Musk Relaxes Twitter Ban on Political Ads

• As advertisers depart Twitter in the wake of Elon Musk’s recent takeover, the billionaire owner continues to shake up the social media platform, which on Tuesday relaxed a ban on political and issue-based advertising put in place for over three years.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Iranian actor jailed for supporting protests has been released

• At least 516 protesters have been killed and over 19,000 people have been arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has closely monitored the unrest. Iranian authorities have not provided an official count of those killed or detained.

• The protests began in mid-September, when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. Women have played a leading role in the protests, with many publicly stripping off the compulsory Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Nate Thayer, Journalist who Interviewed Pol Pot, Dead at 62

• “He had a lot of ailments, he was seriously ill for many months,” the brother told AFP.

• Nate Thayer spent years reporting on Cambodia politics and society, including the Khmer Rouge, the brutal communist regime that left more than one million people dead between 1975 and 1979.

• Beginning in 1989, he worked for The Associated Press, and then publications like the Phnom Penh Post and the Far Eastern Economic Review, building contacts in the dangerous jungle border region of Thailand and Cambodia.

=> ↺ Liberty for Julian Assange

• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s vindication seems– maybe, perhaps, imaginably—achievable. It’s enough for me to publish my singular New Year resolution– not a wish, but a firm resolution– to more actively contribute to growing pressure to free Julian Assange, the mistreated, vilified and imprisoned, brave and brilliant founder of WikiLeaks.

• It’s a finite issue, unlike negotiations to end a raging war or a global agreement on climate controls. Yet freeing Assange had appeared almost insurmountable not long ago. Whereas, given the painstaking pursuit to free Assange by a pitifully small coterie of determined supporters, some success may be at hand.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ ‘They Shot Them Down Like Animals’: Massacre at Peru’s Ayacucho

• On December 15, 2022, while helicopters flew overhead, members of Peru’s national army shot down civilians with live bullets in the outskirts of the city of Ayacucho. This action was in response to a national strike and mobilization to protest the coup d’état that deposed President Pedro Castillo on December 7.

• On December 15, hundreds of university students, shopkeepers, street vendors, agricultural workers, and activists gathered at the center of Ayacucho to express their discontent over the removal of Castillo and continued their mobilization toward the airport. Similar action was witnessed in several other cities across the southern Andean region of the country.

=> ↺ Metaphors of Belligerence: Wars by and Against Nature

• It all seemed familiar.  Anthropomorphised Mother Nature in vengeful mood; humans wondering if they might meet a frozen demise in trapped vehicles; the planners taking stock as to how best to cope with grim circumstances.  The New York State governor Kathy Hochul was happy to stick her head out in declaring the latest lethal winter storm in Buffalo to be nothing less than a “war with Mother Nature, and she has been hitting us with everything she has.”

• Having found her less than imaginative metaphor, the governor ran with it, suggesting that Mother Nature had laid waste to the region around Buffalo.  “It is [like] giong to a war zone, and the vehicles along the sides of the roads are shocking.”

=> ↺ The problem with some Artificial Intelligence is NOT discrimination | Stop at Zona-M

• This has two consequences. One is that, if algorithmic decision is unsuited to certain tasks to begin with, finding when it discriminates is certainly possible, as discussed in this paper, but at best it only makes the algorithms FAIL… more fairly than before.

• The other obvious consequence is that there is little, possibly very little substance in the belief that human oversight may significantly correct and improve algorithmic decision-making, once it has been implemented. Assuming all the stakeholders know that it was implemented, of course, which too often is NOT the case.

=> ↺ TSA’s Opt-In Facial Recognition Program Doesn’t Seem All That Optional In Real Life

• Nearly a half-decade ago, the DHS began rolling out biometric scanning at international airports. The early efforts targeted foreign travelers, but it was always clear the DHS (and its underling, the TSA) ultimately desired facial recognition tech to be the status quo in US airports.

=> ↺ Grab A US Military Device Full Of Biometric Data For Only $68 At Ebay! [Sponsored]

• The War on Terror will never end. It’s a multi-billion dollar boondoggle that ensures we will always live in fear, even if we realistically have nothing to fear. The war we waged for the hearts and minds of Afghanistan residents lasted long enough that soldiers participating in another US losing effort weren’t even born when the war began.

=> ↺ More Women Are Being Incarcerated as Jail Populations Near Pre-COVID Levels

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Re-Nominated by Biden, Senate Urged to Confirm ‘Public Interest Champion’ to FCC

• Digital and consumer rights advocates on Wednesday called on the U.S. Senate to swiftly confirm longtime public advocate Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission after President Joe Biden announced her nomination for a second time, more than a year after the telecom industry launched a spending blitz to keep Sohn from joining the regulatory panel.

=> ↺ How 3 African activists are combating internet shutdowns

• Authoritarian governments are increasingly turning to internet shutdowns to silence dissidents and curb protests. Devex spoke to three African activists about their experience and how they are working to protect the human rights that depend on the internet.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Twitter Hit With $228.9m Copyright Infringement / Repeat Infringer Lawsuit

• Celebrity photo agency Backgrid has filed a $228.9m copyright infringement lawsuit against Twitter after thousands of its photographs were uploaded by users of the social media site. Ordinarily, Twitter would enjoy ‘safe harbor’ protection but according to Backgrid, Twitter failed to take action in response to DMCA takedown notices, and failed to terminate ‘repeat infringers’

=> ↺ Capcom Kneecaps Fan Remakes Of ‘Resident Evil’ Games The Company Isn’t Planning To Remake

• You might think that perusing Techdirt posts on the topic of fan-made video games using the IP of others would yield you only one kind of story in which threats and lawsuits abound. Fortunately, that’s something of a misconception. While there are indeed plenty of stories of that nature, there are also examples of studios and publishers that have figured out a way to embrace their biggest fans. Paradox built an affiliate program to allow its fans to create “official” games, such that there would be no threats of litigation for doing so. Sega has likewise been lenient with fan-games, even going so far as to poke fun at its competition for doing otherwise. Even Blizzard got into this act with at least one fan-made game.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ D&D’s Trope Overlay

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: DGHNOUT Wordo: BRATS

=> ↺ Racoon Toilet

• As I get ready for bed, most of me is hoping that the racoons stay away tonight so I can finally sleep, but a decent chunk of me misses their silly, serious faces and hopes that they will try to make their pilgrimage to my roof in order to take a dump.

• Racoons, as I found out, like a quiet, out-of-the-way places to defecate safely. Once they find a good place, they will go back there, and the pile will grow. It is not particulary gross but can be a breeding ground for a few parasites and diseases. My roof is, apparently, a perfect place, and the three juvenile racoons make their way up the fire escape to their chosen toilet at night.

=> ↺ A Question on Spelling

• The English language, being a amalgamation of several predecessors, has many strange spelling rules. Some of these rules, however, vary from one dialect of English to another. A well-known example of this is the spelling of words that end with an “e” and an “r”: in America English, the common spellings are “meter”, “liter” and “center”, while other forms of English use the spellings “metre”, “litre” and “centre”.

Technical

=> ↺ RocketFeed: Gemfeed to Atom Converter

• I’m not sure how many people out there on gemini are subscribing to atom feeds vs plain old gemini feeds, but I spent part of today writing a quick program to get an atom feed from a gemfeed. I’m now using it to generate the atom feed of my posts from my log index page.

• 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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