● 01.13.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 13/01/2023: WINE 8 a Step Closer

Posted in News Roundup at 8:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Linux Distros Under The Radar In 2023

• Re-visiting 2 distros that at present are under the radar in the community.

=> ↺ Yes, it can: Ray Tracing on the Deck is REAL! (Plus other Deck News) – Invidious

=> ↺ Great Scott! | Self-Hosted 88

• Alex dives deep to find out if Kubernetes is overkill for the home and finds solutions to simplify things. And Chris has a new firmware that turns his favorite network cameras up to 11.

=> ↺ Implant This…You’ll Feel Better

• On this Weekly News Roundup, a company wants to implant a chip to control depression, Chick-fil-a is hacked, and Automattic creates a WordPress ad network. We also visit SillyVille.

=> ↺ Archcraft: Minimal Linux Based on Arch

• Today we look at ArchCraft with the OpenBox window manager and dig into the default settings. This Linux distro is not user friendly, but is powerful for those willing to learn it.

Applications

=> ↺ Easily Analyse Your Website Traffic From the Linux Terminal With GoAccess

• If you’re a webmaster and want a privacy-friendly way to monitor your website traffic, consider using GoAccess on your Linux server.

• Creating and running a website is a fun and challenging hobby—especially if you host it on a Linux system, using your own hardware or a VPS. But measuring visitor traffic and analyzing behavior can be difficult if you don’t want to rely on intrusive third-party analytics packages.

• GoAccess gathers data from your server logs and provides a beautiful terminal user interface where you can discover what visitors want from your site, and how to improve it.

=> ↺ Nala is a much cleaner, neater alternative for the APT package manager

• I’ve been using Ubuntu/Debian-based Linux distributions for a very, very long time. As such, I’ve seen package managers come and go. I’ve used APT, Synaptic, Snap, Flatpak and more. For the most part, they all do an excellent job of managing software on your system. The most prevalent system I’ve used is APT, and it’s rarely failed me.

• That doesn’t mean APT is perfect. Case in point: APT is pretty ugly for a command line tool. It can also be a bit slow, especially in later iterations where it runs several checks post-install and post-upgrade. Not that I mind those checks, but sometimes the slowdowns caused by them can be rather annoying. On top of that, APT doesn’t support parallel downloads, so larger upgrades can become even slower.

=> ↺ Best Free and Open Source Font Viewers

• Linux users may not have a plethora of fonts, but there are many lovely and usable fonts. Different Linux fonts are supplied with different Linux distros.

• A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor.

• Most computer fonts are in either bitmap or outline data formats. Bitmap fonts consist of a matrix of dots or pixels representing the image of each glyph in each face and size. Outline or vector fonts use Bézier curves, drawing instructions and mathematical formulae to describe each glyph, which make the character outlines scalable to any size.

=> ↺ KeePass2 2.53 Added FIPS Mode, Improved History Entry [Ubuntu PPA] | UbuntuHandbook

• KeePass password manager released new 2.53 version a few days ago. Here are the new features as well as PPA packages for Ubuntu users.

• The new release enhanced the History tab in Edit Entry. When editing an entry, the History tab contains the ‘Dialog (unsaved)’ to represent all data entered in the current dialog, and ‘Current (TIME)’, for currently stored in the database.

=> ↺ Remove Vocals From Audio Files With Ultimate Vocal Remover GUI (AI-Powered) – Linux Uprising Blog

• Ultimate Vocal Remover is a free and open source GUI tool to remove vocals (and more) from audio files using deep neural networks. It’s available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

• The tool, advertised as “the best vocal remover application on the internet” by its developers, uses models trained by UVR’s developers for the most part (except for Demucs v1, v2, v3, and v4 4-stem and 6-stem models).

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How To Convert Fonts To .ttf Format In Ubuntu – Make Tech Easier

• For those who are dealing with writing or design projects, it is common for you to come across a font that your application cannot support. It could be a Macintosh font, a bitmap font or an open type font (otf). For some reason or another, you just can’t get your Ubuntu machine to read them. In such cases, the best way is to convert these fonts to TrueType font (ttf).

• Fontforge is an outline font editor that allows you to create your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed, multi-master, cff, svg and bitmap (bdf, FON, NFNT) fonts. It also allows you to edit existing ones and convert one format to another.

=> ↺ How To Remove Software In Ubuntu 22.04 LTS [ All Ubuntu Version] | Itsubuntu.com

• This post describes the steps to remove or uninstall software packages From Ubuntu. There are multiple ways to remove the software from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and another version of Ubuntu. You can remove some of the software from Ubuntu via GUI and some of the software via the command line interface (CLI).

=> ↺ How To Remove A Snap Package From Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | Itsubuntu.com

• In this tutorial, we will show you the easy way to remove snap packages from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is the latest version of Stable Ubuntu and it comes with a lot of packages. However, there are some applications that you need to install via Snap. It is always wise to remove packages if they are no longer in use to make more space in your system.

=> ↺ How To Install OBS Studio on Rocky Linux 9 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OBS Studio on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, OBS Studio (Open Broadcasting Software) is a free and open-source software for video recording and live streaming. It is a powerful tool that can be used for a wide range of applications, from gaming and content creation to professional video production and live-streaming events. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. OBS Studio is popular among gamers, content creators, and professionals for its ability to record and stream high-quality video and audio.

• 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 OBS Studio open-source video recording and live streaming on Rocky Linux. 9.

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

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Dolibar on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Dolibarr is an open-source enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software that is used by small and medium-sized businesses. It is a web-based application that is designed to manage and automate various business processes, including financial management, project management, inventory management, and more.

• 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 Dolibar Web-based ERP and CRM 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.

=> ↺ Ubuntu: How to Install .deb Files

• In this beginner-friendly tutorial, we’re going to show you how to install a .deb file on Ubuntu. We’ll show you different methods of installing a .deb file, so you can choose whichever one you prefer and find easier.

=> ↺ How to Check User’s Login History in Linux

• A Linux server is operated by multiple users who can login and logout at any given time without any restriction (of course, they should have the proper privileges).

• In an occasion like a data breach, you might want to track user activity to investigate the incident, and as a sysadmin, you might want to know who, when, and from where logged into the target machine.

• In this case, you can use the last command, a fantastic built-in Linux utility.

=> ↺ How to run Scripts with ChatGPT on Raspberry PI and Python

• Create Python scripts to use ChatGPT on Raspberry PI. Guide and examples to configure it and explore this Artificial Intelligence product

=> ↺ How to install Nitrux 2.6.0 – Invidious

• In this video, I am going to show how to install Nitrux Nitrux 2.6.0 build.010123.ff.

=> ↺ How to Set up Teleport Cluster on Rocky Linux 9

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

=> ↺ How to Set Up a Video Streaming Server using Nginx-RTMP on Ubuntu 22.04

• RTMP also called real-time messaging protocol is a data transmission technology that supports live online video streaming.

=> ↺ How to Install and Use Flask in Fedora 37/36 – TecAdmin

• Flask is a popular microweb framework written in Python. It is lightweight and easy to use, making it a good choice for developing small web applications. It is designed to enable developers to create and scale web apps quickly and easily. It has a small and easy-to-extend core, with sensible defaults to get started quickly.

=> ↺ How to Install WordPress with Docker Compose

• WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world. This tutorial will teach you how to install WordPress using Docker/Docker Compose.

=> ↺ Sed Command in Linux with 15 Practical Examples – TecAdmin

• The sed command is an essential tool for manipulating text in Linux. It allows you to search for patterns in a text and perform various operations on the matching text, such as replacing it, deleting it, or printing it. This command takes input from a file or standard input.

• The default sed command doesn’t make changes to the original file until you used the -i command line parameter. The command alerts the text and sends the result to standard output. You can also redirect the text to the file as per the requirements.

• In this article, we’ll provide 15 practical examples of using the sed command to perform various tasks.

=> ↺ Timothée Ravier: OpenSSH client side key management for better privacy and security

• If you have read the ssh whoami.filippo.io post by Filippo Valsorda and the related whoarethey: Determine Who Can Log In to an SSH Server post by Andrew Ayer, you might be wondering if we can do something about it in the OpenSSH client configuration.

• A lot of OpenSSH hardening guides focus on configuration recommendations for the OpenSSH server. Since the integration of Wireguard in the Linux kernel and with clients available for all majors platforms, I have been progressively switching all my OpenSSH servers to listening only on a Wireguard interface which thus significantly reduced the pressure for strong sever side OpenSSH hardening. Do not get me wrong: it is still useful and you should still do it but it is no longer a critical priority.

• In this post I will describe a part of my OpenSSH client configuration that mitigates both of the issues mentioned in the posts above. I have been using this configuration without issue for approximately five years now.

WINE or Emulation

=> ↺ WineHQ – Wine Announcement – The Wine development release 8.0-rc4 is now available.

• The Wine development release 8.0-rc4 is now available.

• What’s new in this release: – Bug fixes only, we are in code freeze.

• The source is available at:

• https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/8.0/wine-8.0-rc4.tar.xz

• Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

• https://www.winehq.org/download

• You will find documentation on https://www.winehq.org/documentation

• You can also get the current source directly from the git repository. Check https://www.winehq.org/git for details.

• Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ Xfce 4.18 will be coming to MX 21 main repos this weekend. – MX Linux

• Xfce 4.18 will be hitting our main MX 21 repos this weekend. Users will receive the update automatically via the usual update mechanisms.

• MX 19 will not be receiving this update.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ #78 Volume Levels – This Week in GNOME

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from January 06 to January 13.

=> ↺ Looking for mentors with project proposals for Outreachy May-August 2023 – Felipe Borges

• We are interested in sponsoring Outreachy internships projects for the May-August 2023 cohort. Project ideas should be submitted before February 7.

• GNOME usually has a few participants in Outreachy, so we are looking to offer projects that are most strategic for GNOME. These include, but are not limited to, projects in the area of privacy, GTK, core experience, core applications, developer experience, and development infrastructure. More information about GNOME’s participation in Outreachy is available at Outreach/Outreachy – GNOME Wiki!

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2023/02 – Dominique a.k.a. DimStar (Dim*)

• Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

• It was another uneventful week for Tumbleweed: 6 snapshots were submitted to openQA for testing and all have returned successfully and been published. In staging, of course, the picture is a bit darker, but that’s all shielded before it reaches users and as such does precisely what we want it to do: safeguard the distro and detect issues before they are problems.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Fedora 38 Will Include a Budgie Spin

• The Fedora Project has announced it will offer a spin based on the Budgie desktop environment (DE), beginning with Fedora 38.

• Fedora is one of the most popular Linux distributions (distros) and serves as the upstream distro for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The flagship Fedora release, Fedora Workstation, uses the Gnome DE, but the project maintains a number of spins. Each of these spins uses a different DE, such as KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, and more.

• Budgie is a popular DE that was originally created for the Solus distro, but has become popular outside of Solus. The Fedora Project announced the DE will be one of its next official spins.

=> ↺ Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2023-02 – Fedora Community Blog

• Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

• I have weekly office hours on Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time) in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

=> ↺ Sylabs Launches Availability of Containerization Software for Enterprise Linux Users – Database Trends and Applications

• Provider of container technology and services for performance-intensive workloads, Sylabs, is unveiling the availability of SingularityCE within the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository. EPEL is a repository of additional packages for Enterprise Linux distribution—including Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Scientific Linux, Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, and CentOS; the announcement increases accessibility to SingularityCE’s advanced container runtime technology for strenuous workloads to Enterprise Linux users and developers.

=> ↺ 10 guides to do more with containers in 2023 | Enable Sysadmin

• Find out what’s happening in the world of containers and how to better manage this technology in Enable Sysadmin’s top 10 containers articles of 2022.

=> ↺ CentOS Community Newsletter, January 2023

• CentOS Connect has been announced as a FOSDEM Fringe event. This free event takes place in Brussels on February 3, 2023, the day before FOSDEM. If you’re attending FOSDEM, join us at CentOS Connect to learn about CentOS and connect with the people who work on it.

=> ↺ Next Open NeuroFedora meeting: 16 January 1300 UTC | NeuroFedora: Blog

• Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 16 January at 1300 UTC. The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ The State of IoT – December 2022 | Ubuntu

• Welcome to the December edition of the monthly State of IoT series. While we ended 2021 with a rosy outlook prompted by rising unit shipments and hardware spending, 2022 ended amidst supply chain disruptions, economic sanctions and an ongoing war. Despite this, we will likely remember 2022 as a transitional year in the ever-increasing adoption of embedded and IoT devices. Cybersecurity vulnerabilities in IoT devices, smart homes and a few major announcements took the headlines. Without further ado, let’s dive straight into the most prominent news across the IoT landscape from the last month of what proved to be an exciting year.

=> ↺ This search and rescue robot creates 3D maps of disaster areas | Arduino Blog

• If you look at footage from the search and rescue efforts following any disaster, you’ll see that first responders have a very difficult time navigating through rubble to find people in need of emergency care. They also have to take extra precautions, as gas line ruptures and other hazards present dangers they don’t normally face. To assist in those efforts, Ranit Bhowmick and his team built the SARDA (Search and Rescue Deployable Assistant) robot that can create 3D maps of disaster areas.

• SARDA is currently an early prototype and its capabilities are limited, but the idea is sound. It is a little wheeled robot that would (in theory, at least) rove around a disaster area while mapping its surroundings. It could work autonomously or an operator could guide it manually. While moving around an area, it would generate a 3D map of rigid objects, like walls and obstacles, and also health hazards like clouds of smoke, heat, or toxic gases. A computer at a control station would use that data to produce a digital 3D render of the environment that first responders could reference during their search and rescue efforts.

=> ↺ Preventing driver fatigue with the Nicla Vision and Edge Impulse FOMO | Arduino Blog

• Drivers who are experiencing tiredness become large dangers to both themselves and anyone else around them on the road, as reaction times, concentration, and alertness are all greatly impaired. This is why Shebin Jose Jacob decided to create a driver drowsiness detection system that can accurately tell when someone is fatigued and should pull over for some rest.

• The solution is comprised of a single Nicla Vision board, which contains a 2MP camera for collecting images, an IMU, microphone, distance sensor, and finally a dual Arm Cortex-M7/M4 processor for quickly running embedded machine learning models. Data for the project was gathered by taking many pictures and labeling the bounding boxes surrounding the eyes as either closed or open. From here, Jacob trained a FOMO-based (Faster Objects, More Objects) object recognition model on the sample images and was able to achieve an accuracy of 100%.

=> ↺ Queue: the Fun Meeting Facilitator

• Queue, the fun arduino based, led signified meeting facilitation object works by assigning an led to each person in the meeting and giving them each a set amount of time to present there idea. It would do this by utilizing the IFTTT chip in the board, connecting to a world timer and letting everyone know that there turn is up after an allotted amount of time, by flashing the LED.

=> ↺ Overview | Raspberry Pi Zero NPR One Radio | Adafruit Learning System

• If you are a NPR nerd, this project is for you.

=> ↺ A Raspberry Pi Pico Pen Holder and Calendar for Your Desk

=> ↺ Old MacDonald had a FARM, and became a safer driver – Hackster.io

• The first step in the project was creating the model, and for that I needed data. I used the Raspberry Pi and camera to take photos several hundred times while I was out driving so I had some realistic samples for what the model would be seeing. I collected around 300 images of me driving with my seatbelt on in various times of the day and different amounts of sunlight to vary the input. Here was the short Python script I developed to capture those images:

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android Studio Electric Eel includes resizable emulators and a native scrpy alternative

=> ↺ How To Edit The Quick Settings Menu On Your Android Phone And Why You Might Want To

=> ↺ How to move from an iPhone to an Android phone | TechRepublic

=> ↺ How to enable split-screen multitasking in Android 13 [Video]

=> ↺ Nothing Phone (1)’s second Android 13 beta arrives

=> ↺ Android 13 QPR2 preps ability to change Pixel lockscreen shortcuts

=> ↺ CCI’s Android ruling effect: Google warns of smartphones turning more expensive for Indian consumers – The Hindu BusinessLine

=> ↺ 7 Best Nintendo 64 Emulators for Android Devices

• The Nintendo 64 was a popular gaming console in the late 1990s. This technology is primarily known for its iconic games, like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64. So, many 90s people are still nostalgic for those classic games.

=> ↺ BMW moves to Android OS for 2023 models

• BMW iDrive OS9 will be Android not Linux based and offer a new cleaner look to the infotainment system

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Chromium

=> ↺ Programming languages: Rust is coming to Chromium and here’s why | ZDNET

• Chromium, the open-source project behind Google Chrome, is enabling new support for Rust in its otherwise C++ codebase, if only in a limited fashion for now.

• Chromium, the project underpinning Microsoft Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, and dozens more browsers, will support the use of third-party Rust libraries from C++. The team is putting in place the tools to enable Rust code in the Chrome binary within the next year, according to Dana Jansens of the Chrome security team.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ 10 Best Free Office Suites for Linux | MS Office Alternative

• When it comes to office productivity software, Microsoft Office Suite is the most widely used due to its simplicity and versatility. While Linux distros provide a number of options for choosing productivity software, one downside remains: Microsoft Office isn’t available for Linux users. However, fear not! There are numerous top-notch free office suite alternatives that come with all of the resources necessary as an effective alternative to Microsoft Office Suite.

FSFE

=> ↺ Join our team as an intern!

GNU Projects

=> ↺ GNU Common Lisp – News: GCL 2.6.14 has been released [Savannah]

• Greetings! The GCL team is happy to announce the release of version 2.6.14, the latest achievement in the ‘stable’ (as opposed to ‘development’) series. Please see http://www.gnu.org/software/gcl for downloading information.

• This is a cleanup release with respect to 2.6.13, with the primary goal of supporting current gcc-12 signed integer tree-vrp optimizations, on by default at -O2 or higher.

• There are a few portability fixes: X86_64_RELOC_SIGNED_1 support on macosx, centos readline/configure fixes, and R_RISCV_CALL_PLT support on riscv64.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Examples of floating point problems

• Hello! I’ve been thinking about writing a zine about how things are represented on computers in bytes, so I was thinking about floating point.

• [...]

• None of these 8 examples talk about NaNs or +0/-0 or infinity values or subnormals, but it’s not because those things don’t cause problems – it’s just that I got tired of writing at some point :).

• Also I’ve probably made some mistakes in this post.

=> ↺ Arch Linux – News: PHP 8.2 update and introduction of legacy branch

• The php packages have been updated to the latest version 8.2. In addition to this, a new set of php-legacy packages have been introduced. These will follow the oldest but still actively supported PHP branch. This enables users to install the latest version but also introduces the option to use third party applications that might rely on an older version. Both branches will be kept up to date following our rolling release model. php and php-legacy can be installed at the same time as the latter uses a -legacy suffix for its binaries and configuration files.

=> ↺ Godot Engine – Dev snapshot: Godot 4.0 beta 12

• After a short end-of-year break, and then a lot of heavy merging work prior to 4.0 beta 11, we found a lot of regressions – as we expected!

• Our contributors could fix many of the new regressions quickly, and we merged another big batch of important fixes and improvements. As the pace intensifies in the lead-up to the first Release Candidate, we decided to make more frequent beta snapshots for testing.

=> ↺ String types in LibreOffice C/C++ code – part 1 – LibreOffice Development Blog

• Strings are very important types of data that are using in LibreOffice. Firstly, they are useful for storing textual data, and is essentially a sequence of characters. As LibreOffice has many modules that depend on various libraries and languages, there are different string types in LibreOffice. Here, we discuss some of them.

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ This Week in PSC (093)

• Paul, Philippe, and Rik had our regular call today to talk about perl5.

• We put together some notes (at long last) for The Perl Foundation to use in their annual prospectus.

• We talked about Math-Complex, and moving its issues into Perl5 GitHub. (A nice bit of work for anybody to do, but not groundshaking.)

• We got back to the question of making Perl do SSL out of the box. Paul’s question was, “Can we bundle the CPAN dists for doing this and basically CPAN-install them at the end of normal install?” Audacious, but plausible!

=> ↺ Geizhals Preisvergleich sponsors the German Perl/Raku Workshop | Max Maischein [blogs.perl.org]

• In 2023, the German Perl/Raku Workshop will take place in Frankfurt am Main. We are very happy to announce that long time Perl supporter Geizhals Preisvergleich sponsor the workshop.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Researching for a Matrix Spec Change

• I treat my research as a living document, not an artifact. Thus, I don’t worry much about the format. The important part is to start writing everything down to have a single source of truth that can be shared with others.

• First, I write out a problem statement: what am I trying to solve? (This step might seem obvious, but it is useful to frame the technical changes in why they matter. Many proposals seem to skip this step.) Most of my work tends to be from the point of view of an end-user, but some changes are purely technical. Regardless, there is benefit from a shared written context of the issue to be solved.

• From the above and prior knowledge, I list any open questions (which I update through this process). I’ll augment the questions with answers I find in my research, write new ones about things I don’t understand, or remove them as they become irrelevant.

=> ↺ Progress Report: 2022 LunarG Actions Taken from 2021 Vulkan Ecosystem Survey Results – LunarG

• In December 2021, LunarG conducted a Vulkan SDK and ecosystem survey. Many Vulkan developers shared their requests for improvements. LunarG took those suggestions to heart and created projects to address many of the developer suggestions from the survey.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Consumer Electronics Show (and Tell) About Innovation – Public Knowledge

• Last week I went to CES, the annual Consumer Electronics Show that showcases the latest in technology, to talk to entrepreneurs and innovators, try some new products, and think about what’s next in tech. I also presented on a panel about the public policy we need to promote innovation and consumer protection, such as new antitrust and privacy laws to rein in the power of Big Tech and give small and midsize businesses like the ones we see at CES a fair shot to offer consumers an alternative. Here are a few quick notes on what I learned:

Science

=> ↺ Unpacking the “black box” to build better AI models

• These powerful machine-learning models are typically based on artificial neural networks that can have millions of nodes that process data to make predictions. Due to their complexity, researchers often call these models “black boxes” because even the scientists who build them don’t understand everything that is going on under the hood.

Hardware

=> ↺ DS Lite USB C mod install guide – Facelesstech

• The next step is to remove the old charging port, What I found was that if you added leaded solder(low melt solder) to each of the 4 anchor points and the 2 power points it makes it easier to remove. It will take time to head up and mix the old and new solder, this is because the 4 anchor points are on a ground plane which sucks a lot of the heat away from your iron.

=> ↺ QRP HomeBuilder – QRPHB -: GAA-12 Practice Guitar Amp

• Greetings! This Fall, I built the first of 2 planned practice amps. Inspired by simple 1950’s tube guitar amps I too kept it simple. In those Golden-era amplifiers, you plug the guitar in 1 jack, the speaker in the other and hit the switch. Modern solid state guitar amplifiers with effect loops, frequency compensating gain control stages and features galore may just complicate things in the guitar – amp – player interface. While perhaps cool and fancy, these added stages may carry high-value resistors that boost op-amp input current noise and also increase resistor-related Johnson noise too.

=> ↺ Renesas RL78/G15 8-bit MCU is offered in a 3x3mm package – CNX Software

• Renesas Electronics RL78/G15 is an entry-level 8-bit microcontroller with 1 KB of SRAM, 4 or 8KB of code flash memory, and offered in package sizes ranging from 8 to 20 pins, down to an 8-pin device measuring just 3×3 mm.

• STMicro has just unveiled the STM32C0 32-bit microcontroller claiming “your next 8-bit MCU is a 32-bit” with packages from 8- to 48-pins and packages as small as 1.70 x 1.42 mm and 3x3mm, and a price similar to other 8-bit industrial microcontrollers. To that, I say “not so fast STMicro!”, as Renesas has just launched the 16 MHz RL78/G15 8-bit microcontroller family with many of the same features and target use cases as the STMC32C011 sub-family.

Security

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

• Security updates have been issued by Fedora (cacti, cacti-spine, mbedtls, postgresql-jdbc, and rust), Oracle (.NET 6.0, dbus, expat, grub2, kernel, kernel-container, libtasn1, libtiff, sqlite, and usbguard), Red Hat (rh-postgresql10-postgresql), SUSE (php7), and Ubuntu (heimdal, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi,, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-hwe, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4,, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, and vim).

=> ↺ Use Any SOP Binary With SOP-Java and External-SOP – vanitasvitae’s blog

• The Stateless OpenPGP Protocol specification describes a shared, standardized command line interface for OpenPGP applications. There is a bunch of such binaries available already, among them PGPainless’ pgpainless-cli, Sequoia-PGP’s sqop, as well as ProtonMails gosop. These tools make it easy to use OpenPGP from the command line, as well as from within bash scripts (all of those are available in Debian testing or in the main repo) and the standardized interface allows users to switch from one backend to the other without the need to rewrite their scripts.

• The Java library sop-java provides a set of interface definitions that define a java API that closely mimics the command line interface. These interfaces can be implemented by anyone, such that developers could create a drop-in for sop-java using the OpenPGP library of their choice. One such backend is pgpainless-sop, which implements sop-java using the PGPainless library.

=> ↺ Kinsing Malware Targets Kubernetes

=> ↺ Microsoft facilitates the NSA with back doors

=> ↺ Attackers deploy sophisticated Linux implant on Fortinet network security devices | CSO Online

• Fortinet rated the vulnerability 9.3 (Critical) on the CVSS scale and released updates to major variants of FortiOS, FortiOS-6K7K and FortiProxy, the company’s secure web gateway product. FortiOS runs on the company’s FortiGate network security firewalls and other appliances.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Pseudonymous

• A person might think I’m illusive, writing and working under a pseudonym. It’s not that I’m hiding, if you send me an email, I’ll respond to you with an email address containing a decent chunk of my real name. It’s not out of shame I wear clothes.

• Besides bringing utility, marginalia.nu is an experiment, a bit of an art project, a place to challenge conventions and see what is and isn’t necessary.

• There is risk for a conflict of interest if your website is both your resumé and where you put your creative works and thoughts. Those are from different spheres and perhaps can’t mix too much without detriment to the authenticity of the latter.

=> ↺ Exercise Management System

• Last semester I really got out of my habit of exercising.

• The first few weeks of that semester were extremely stressful, going a camping trip in the middle of the first week of school, getting ready for dates with Jade, filling out transfer paperwork, and the standard hiccups that come when starting new classes. Unfortunately the first thing on my schedule’s chopping block was exercise; the last thing I wanted after a busy day was to work out and walking took too much time. It also didn’t help that I got hooked on nicotine for a couple months, leaving my brain with little motivation to do anything after a string of dopamine bursts. I had noticed that I was feeling a bit heavier and doing physical labor tasks like digging trenches was draining me way faster than before. I also just looked a bit more plump, not a ton of extra weight but not nothing either.

=> ↺ Star Log 2023-01-12 Evening (Fairbanks, AK, US)

• The skies cleared up unexpectedly in the evening, and we didn’t have other evening plans, so I headed out to the boat launch after putting the kids to bed. I couldn’t stay out very long because I was pretty tired, and it was a work night. I also lost a lot of time due to a problem with my eyepiece fogging up over and over again. After 45 minutes or so I realized that my facemask was somehow dispersing my breath up and over the eyepiece. So in the end I only had time for one drawing. Around 9:15pm I finished this drawing of a group of stars just a little south-west of ε Orion, which is the middle star in Orion’s belt.

=> ↺ Star Log: – Amateur Radio Log 2023-01-12 Mid-day (Fairbanks, AK, US)

• I went on another lunch-break HF adventure, this time trying out the parking lot at Fire Station 42, which is on one of the peaks of Chena Ridge. Most of the parking lot is not very helpful, since the fire station blocks most of the view to the south, but there was a little area off the left side which gave a better view. There were several vehicles there and a large metal trailer so it wasn’t quite ideal, but I think better than any of the other spots I have tried so far.

Technical

=> ↺ Is (cryptocurrency) winter coming?

• i write “unfortunately”, not because i’m fundamentally anti-cryptocurrency in principle, but because i’m not fundamentally anti-cryptocurrency in principle. i think that the concept of cryptocurrency is an interesting one, with lots of potential for providing part of the infrastructure for sociopolitical decentralisation.

=> ↺ Screen Time

• My wife and I both struggle with getting our minds to slow down when it’s time for bed. Our thoughts tend to race, and we’re not very good at talking ourselves down from a speeding mind. It was suggested to us that we try to set a regular bedtime for ourselves and that we avoid all screen time for two hours beforehand. Last night we tried it for the first time.

• I’ve tended to think of myself as less screen-addicted than my wife. She will often play Nintendo Switch or scroll Reddit on her phone for an hour or more in bed, usually right up until she falls asleep. I will also often use my phone, but I’m often doing tasks like organizing files, updating information on my capsule, or reading technical documentation of some kind.

=> ↺ A stand-alone web page as a Generator

• I’ve been working on a generator for Knives, a 2d6 based Fantasy Traveller game. You can look at it, download it, use it offline, and replace the tables with your own tables. The table format is similar to the tables Hex Describe uses.

=> ↺ Do better

• Let’s see what the license brings. Remember what I hate about the Open Gaming License (OGL 1.0a): publishers often intermix the protected Product Identity and the Open Gaming Content (OGC) so that prying the two apart and actually making use of the OGC is nigh impossible.

=> ↺ Winamp, Part II / Update

• After I got some time to check out the suggestion of Wacup, I realized that I would need to use Wine with winetricks installed to get it running. Intstead, I wanted to see if I could find #xmms and get it running. After about an hour / hour and a half, I was still not able to install it. Xmms hasn’t been updated since 2007 and while I was able to install the necessary (old) libraries it needed, it just wouldn’t compile / make, despite “./configure” working. Feeling that I’ve reached the end of how much time I wanted to invest, I abandoned it.

• [...]

• Next up, I’ll try out Wacup with winetricks, but I’ll probably just make a tinylog entry about that one.

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ The Internet of Money (Re: Orphans of Netscape)

• I was interested to read Solderpunk’s remarkable post on Gopher, “Orphans of Netscape.” I highly recommend reading the post in its entirety, but if I am understanding the post correctly, the central thesis is that smolnet use is driven by the nostalgia of a particular generational cohort for a specific moment (specifically the late 1990s) and for the future as foreseen from that moment. The post further argues that other generational cohorts are unlikely to share this position, and that that is understandable and valid. Solderpunk compares the smolnet to a retirement home, a sanatorium, and to group therapy.

=> ↺ Re Valid Urls

• So the idea that a browser should accept a url such as http://example.com//somefile.html actually sits all right with me.

=> ↺ Dreams are essential

Programming

=> ↺ Your own random generator app

• I was working on a little random generator, once again. Instead of going down the route of writing half a megabyte of random tables like I did for Hex Describe, which also needs the ability to run Perl programs or access to my website, I’d like to teach people how to write their own random generator “app”.

=> ↺ project+ certification

• as a software student at wgu, i am required to take a course which consists of comptia’s project management material. after 2 months of procrastination, a study sprint (project management term, trust me) and then two attempts, i am now officially a comptia project+ certification recipient.

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=> Techrights

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