● 01.16.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 16/01/2023: Microsoft RNDIS Ejected From Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 7:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ FOSS Weekly #31 – Discourse 3.0, Rust in Chromium, Kernel 6.2 and more | FOSS Weekly

• Welcome to this week’s edition of FOSS Weekly! This post includes updates from lots of open source projects, Linux hardware maker System76, KDE, and more. We also have some interesting releases this week.

Server

=> ↺ Working and Importance of a Bare Metal Server | Spiceworks

• A bare metal server is defined as an advanced physical server designed to deliver a set of services dedicated to a single customer. This article explains the fundamentals of a bare metal server, how it works, and its importance in today’s digital world.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” Cinnamon Quick Overview #shorts – Invidious

• A Quick Overview of Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera”

=> ↺ Episode 3:14: GeckoLinux and the Side Quest

• Coming up in this episode

• Helping one helps the other A little off the beaten path The history of GeckoLinux And our experience What will we think of next?

=> ↺ Using Software Like Vim, Emacs and Xmonad Changes You (Hopefully For The Better!) – Invidious

• I have been asked a few times by viewers of the channel: “Why do you make so many videos about Vim, Emacs, Xmonad and other nerdy software?” Well, I have my reasons why I like to urge people to try out these kinds of extremely customizable and extensible programs.

=> ↺ You’ll never be happy with the Steam Deck 2 – Invidious

• I’ve had my Steam Deck for nearly a year at this point and there’s a small–but incredibly vocal–minority of folks who already want new Steam Deck hardware. The question is why? Let’s dig into this and see if their concerns are justified.

=> ↺ Steamdeck as a Desktop – Invidious

• No, do NOT modify the system. This guide shows you how to retain the system while adding package management and the things you need to make the steamdeck your desktop!

=> ↺ Network Nirvana | LINUX Unplugged 493

• Chris’ sticky upgrade situation, and we chat with the developer behind an impressive mesh VPN with new tricks.

=> ↺ GNU World Order 495

• ktnef , ktorrent , ktouch , kturtle , kubrick from the Slackware kde package set.

=> ↺ Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” Xfce overview | Light, simple, efficient – Invidious

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” Xfce and some of the applications pre-installed.

=> ↺ Top 6 Python One liners YOU NEED RIGHT NOW – Invidious

• 6 Python one liners. Generally these tips & tricks are various ways of using sets, iterable unpacking and itertools to do some powerful things in Python

=> ↺ How to install Intellij Ultimate on KDE Neon – Invidious

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

=> ↺ Desktop Portals Changed The Linux Desktop Forever – Invidious

• XDG desktop portals are so incredibly useful and have been a massive boon for Flatpaks but not only flatpaks they’ve also been incredibly useful for improving Wayland as well.

=> ↺ Video: All the cores that got added to the MiSTer FPGA in 2022 | www.montanalinux.org

• A big thanks to Lu for putting this together!

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux community presses for RNDIS to be marked as broken

• The next Linux kernel cycle we could see upstream disable their driver support for Microsoft’s Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS) protocol due to security concerns.

• RNDIS is the proprietary protocol used atop USB for virtual Ethernet functionality but its support outside of Microsoft Windows has been mixed. It is not y used in cross-platform environments and due to security concerns the upstream Linux kernel is looking to move the RNDIS kernel drivers behind the “BROKEN” Kconfig option so they effectively become disabled in future kernel builds.

• Ultimately once marked as “BROKEN” for a while, the drivers will likely be eventually removed from the upstream source tree.

=> ↺ USB: disable all RNDIS protocol driver

• The Microsoft RNDIS protocol is, as designed, insecure and vulnerable on any system that uses it with untrusted hosts or devices. Because the protocol is impossible to make secure, just disable all rndis drivers to prevent anyone from using them again.

• Windows only needed this for XP and newer systems, Windows systems older than that can use the normal USB class protocols instead, which do not have these problems.

• Android has had this disabled for many years so there should not be any real systems that still need this.

=> ↺ Linux Preparing To Disable Drivers For Microsoft’s RNDIS Protocol

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Alejandro Piñeiro: v3dv status update 2023-01

• We haven’t posted updates to the work done on the V3DV driver since we announced the driver becoming Vulkan 1.2 Conformant

• But after reaching that milestone, we’ve been very busy working on more improvements, so let’s summarize the work done since then.

=> ↺ Simon Ser: Status update, January 2023 · emersion

• This month’s status update will be lighter than usual: I’ve been on leave for a while at the end of December. To make up for this, I have some big news: we’ve released Sway 1.8! This brings a whole lot of improvements from wlroots 0.16, as well as some nice smaller additions to Sway itself. We’re still working on fixing up a few regressions, so I’ll probably release wlroots 0.16.2 soon-ish.

• Together with Sebastian Wick we’ve plumbed support for more data blocks to libdisplay-info. We now support everything in the base EDID block! We’re filling the gaps in our CTA-861 implementation, and we’re getting ready to release version 0.1.0. As expected EDID blobs continue to have many fields packed in creative ways, duplicating information and contradicting each other, ill-defined in many specifications and vendor-specific formats.

• I’ve continued working on the goguma Android IRC client. I’ve wired up automatic bug reporting via GlitchTip – this helps a lot because grabbing logs from Android is much more complicated than it needs to be. Thanks to the bug dashboard I’ve fixed numerous crashes. I’ve also sent upstream a fix for unreliable notifications when UnifiedPush is used.

Applications

=> ↺ The 6 Best Automation and Orchestration Tools for Linux

• Managing and coordinating multiple Linux machines can be hard. But not if you have got these automation and orchestration tools installed.

• Whether you have a few PCs or a large IT infrastructure, orchestration and automation tools can help you bring in a lot of efficiencies and enable you to simplify the management of complex tasks and workflows.

• The main orchestration and configuration software can handle all sorts of repetitive workloads such as OS and application installation, removal, updates, etc. Here are some of the most common orchestration and automation tools for Linux.

=> ↺ Discover Your CPU’s True Limits With Stress-Terminal UI for Linux

• Learn your Linux machine’s maximum limits by stress testing your CPU with Stress-Terminal UI.

• Everyone is familiar with the experience of buying highly specced hardware, only to get it home and realize that it wasn’t quite what you thought it was.

• Discover the true potential of your CPU by putting it through stress tests in your Linux terminal with Stress-Terminal UI.

=> ↺ How to Create a Custom Web Browser with Nyxt – Make Tech Easier

• Nyxt is a lightweight modern web browser that focuses on functionality, usability and extensibility. It borrows concepts from both Emacs and Vim to provide a way to navigate the web with only your keyboard.

• This article aims to guide you through the process of installing the Nyxt browser on Ubuntu. Further, this article also aims to show you how you can configure Nyxt to fit to your own personal workflow.

=> ↺ 15 Best Music Tag Editors for Linux Systems

• Are you seeking to modify the metadata of multimedia files? Look no further than music tag editor software! This unique range of software is essential for storing song information, including artist names, titles, and lyrics. As an added bonus, you can easily embed images into your audio file. Fortunately, several compatible options are available on Linux – many being open source and completely free to download! Investing in music tag editor software will make organizing your digital library easy-breezy.

• ID3 is the leading audio tag format, offering two versions – ID3v1 and ID3v2. Besides those, there are additional tags like FLAC, OGG, AIFF, Mp3/Mp4/MWA/WAV, and more. The main purpose of an audio tag editor tool is to arrange files seamlessly so they can operate smoothly when needed.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Learn zip Command in Linux Using Examples

• Tutorial showing the basics of zip terminal command in Linux, with explanations of various examples.

=> ↺ Sort Command in Linux with Practical Examples – TecAdmin

• The sort command in Linux is part of the GNU Coreutils package. This command is used to sort lines of text in a specified file or from the standard input in an ascending/descending order. The sorted output can be written to a file or displayed on the standard output. The sort command is a simple and powerful tool that can be used in various scenarios, from sorting data in a file for further analysis to preparing data for a report.

=> ↺ How to Check Docker Container RAM and CPU Usage – kifarunix.com

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to check Docker container RAM and CPU usage.

=> ↺ How to keep Snap packages up to date with the refresh command

• I’m all about using the right tool for the right job. With my go-to Linux distribution, I mostly use apt for package installation. However, since some of the applications I use aren’t found in various apt repositories, that package manager does not get the sole responsibility for installing, updating and removing applications from the systems I work with.

=> ↺ Resolving the Error updating runtime error in Flatpak

• You may receive the Error updating runtime response in Flatpak when trying to update one or all of your installed Flatpak applications. There is usually a trivial fix for this error, as Flatpak includes serveral ways to help users troubleshoot the root cause and apply a fix. In this tutorial, we will take you through the step by step instructions to resolve the Error updating runtime error message in Flatpak on a Linux system.

=> ↺ Solving the Error installing application in Flatpak

• The Error installing application response in Flatpak is a generic error message that may occur whenever Flatpak runs into some trouble with installing an application. The most common cause for this type of error is something simple like specifying an application that does not exist, or is not available in any of your configured remote repositories. But this error could also be indicative of more serious problems with Flatpak.

• In this tutorial, we will explore several causes of this error and show some troubleshooting steps that you can take to get your Flatpak tool working correctly again, and hopefully get your intended application to finally install. Follow along with the step by step instructions below on your Linux system to get Flatpak working again as intended.

=> ↺ How to fix the Permission denied error in Flatpak

• The Permission denied error message in Flatpak may occur whenever Flatpak runs into some trouble either with installing or updating an application. This error usually indicates that the current user does not have the correct permissions to install or update an application, and can usually be fixed with sudo command or the –user option. In this tutorial, we will explore several causes of the Permission denied error in Flatpak, and help you resolve it on your Linux system to get Flatpak working as intended once more.

=> ↺ How to install Synthesizer V Studio on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Synthesizer V Studio 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.

=> ↺ How To Install Kernel Headers on Ubuntu – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Kernel Headers on Ubuntu. For those of you who didn’t know, Kernel headers are files that provide the necessary information for building kernel modules, which are programs that can be loaded into the kernel at runtime to extend its functionality. These headers contain information about the internal data structures and function calls used by the kernel, and they are required for building out-of-tree kernel modules, which are modules that are not included in the official kernel source code.

• 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 Kernel Headers on Ubuntu Linux. 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.

=> ↺ Flatpak offline repository usage

• There may be a case where you need to use Flatpak offline, such as in a secure environment that has computers which are restricted from accessing remote Flatpak repositories such as FlatHub. In such a case, it is possible to create your own offline Flatpak repo, load it with the software you choose, and then allow other computers to download software from it. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create an offline Flatpak repository that you can install Flatpak applications from on a Linux system.

=> ↺ Flatpak: Enhancing Security with Application Sandboxing

• There are a few reasons for Flatpak’s popularity, but one of its most alluring features is how it utilizes application sandboxing to enhance the security of the host Linux system. Flatpak isolates all applications into their own sandbox environment, so they only have limited access to the host system’s resources and files. This enhances security by ensuring that malicious or vulnerable applications have limited opportunities to compromise any part of the host system.

• In this tutorial, we will discuss this component of Flatpak in detail, to help users understand how application sandboxing enhances the security of your Linux system. Distribution independent package managers like Flatpak are commonly touted as the future of Linux package management, and their ability to sandbox applications is one feature that is gaining them a lot of widespread support.

=> ↺ Understanding Flatpak Security and Permissions

• One of Flatpak’s best features is its ability to run each installed application in a sandboxed environment, which isolates it from the host system and other apps or services. Flatpak also extends granular sandbox controls to the end user, allowing them to delegate access to apps as they see fit. For example, it is possible to tell Flatpak to allow a certain app to have access to your file system.

• System administrators can decide which Flatpak applications have network access, file system access, hardware resource access, etc. This is faciliated with default Flatpak commands, or more easily with a GUI application like Flatseal. In this tutorial, you will learn about Flatpak security and permissions and how to modify them on your Linux system.

=> ↺ Uncovering the Variances Between sudo and su Commands in Linux

• While the sudo and su commands are both ubiquitous in Linux, for neophytes, it can be unclear when to opt for one rather than the other due to their syntactical similarities as well as overlapping functions. To simplify things, sudo and su are two distinct commands that can be used to switch user contexts within a Linux environment.

• [...]

• The sudo command is designed to provide temporary privileged access or superuser status to users who are not logged in as root. This is done by temporarily changing the user context to that of the root user. With sudo, users are restricted to executing specific commands for which they have been given access rights.

• On the other hand, su stands for ‘substitute user’ and will allow any logged-in user to switch their current session’s privileges to that of another user. Unlike the sudo command, su does not require any verification or authentication to switch users.

=> ↺ The ultimate Steam Deck starter guide – Dexerto

• Getting a Steam Deck is one thing. Using it to the fullest potential? That needs an entire guide. From the basics to the things, you’d never think about.

=> ↺ How to set up MySQL on Fedora | FOSS Linux

• MySQL is one of the ancient and most reliable open-source RDBMS( relational database management systems) trusted by many users daily. If you are wondering, RDBMS is a service or, say, the software utilized in creating and managing databases based on a relational model. By saying open-source, we mean this software can be downloaded, used, and modified by anyone. It is, therefore, free to use and easy to understand.

=> ↺ How to Install Kodi 20.0 via PPA in Ubuntu 22.04 | 22.10 | 20.04 | UbuntuHandbook

• Kodi media center finally announced the new major 20.0 release! Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu/Linux Mint based systems.

• Kodi 20, code-name ‘Nexus’, is a big release with 4,600 commits since the last v19. It features AV1 media decoding support for several platforms. As well, it allows add-ons using inputsream.adaptive to play AV1 streams.

=> ↺ How to use the Shared Folders feature in VirtualBox 7

• I use VirtualBox every day for the deployment of virtual machines. One feature I regularly use is Shared Folders, which makes it easy to share files and folders between guest and host. By doing this, I can create specific files and folders on my host and then share them with any virtual machine I create. I can do this without having to copy/paste, drag and drop, or send via email.

=> ↺ How to list all serial ports on Linux – PragmaticLinux

• This article explains how to list all serial ports on a Linux system. Typically a filename in the format of /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyACM0.

=> ↺ How to Install Zen Cart on Ubuntu 22.04 – LinuxTuto

• Zen Cart is a free, open-source e-commerce application with wide community support. It is written in PHP and requires a MySQL database.

=> ↺ How To Install Apache Spark on Rocky Linux 9 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Spark on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Apache Spark is a free and open-source cluster-computing framework used for analytics, machine learning, and graph processing on large volumes of data. One of the key features of Spark is its in-memory data processing capabilities. It uses a data structure called a Resilient Distributed Dataset (RDD) that allows it to store data in memory and perform operations on it quickly. Spark also supports SQL-like query languages, such as SQL and DataFrame API, which makes it easy for developers to perform complex data operations.

• 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 Apache Spark on Rocky Linux. 9.

=> ↺ Check your email in Thunderbird on a Chromebook

• If you use Thunderbird on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux, and want to use it on your Chromebook, this guide is for you. Follow along as we go over how to install and set up the Thunderbird email app on Chromebook.

Games

=> ↺ Godot for AA/AAA game development – What’s missing?

• Godot 4.0 is coming out soon. It includes major improvements all across the board in features, performance, and usability. Still, one of the biggest questions the community has is: How does it compare with mainstream commercial offerings?

Distributions and Operating Systems

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ PikaOS: Ubuntu Built for Gamers and GNOME Lovers Alike

• PikaOS is a brand new Ubuntu-based Linux distribution aimed at gamers, offering a vanilla GNOME experience with some exciting features.

• One thing is sure about the Linux world: infinite distributions are available. Every user can find a distribution that matches their tastes, beliefs, and understanding, whether a complete beginner or a seasoned Linux wizard.

• Every year, new ones arise on the Linux horizon. Some stand the test of time, while others fade away after failing to attract the minimum but a mandatory mass of users and developers to ensure their existence.

• Today we’ll look at a brand new distribution that’s making its way into the Linux world. Please, meet PikaOS.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 770

=> ↺ The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 770

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ This pen plotter gets nervous when observed | Arduino Blog

• The whole purpose of machine automation is to eliminate human needs and errors. A CNC machine doesn’t get tired, doesn’t need breaks, and performs a task exactly the same way every time. But what if that weren’t true? What if machines experienced human emotions and let it affect their work like we do? That’s the idea behind Devlin Macpherson’s Nervous Drawing Machine.

• By all outward appearances, this is just a standard two-axis pen plotter. Like many laser cutters and 3D printers, it has a stepper motors controlled by an Arduino board that follows g-code commands. A command might be something like “move the X axis 2mm to the right.” By chaining hundreds or thousands of those commands together, the machine can follow complex toolpaths that form letters, symbols, pictures, or anything else. Macpherson equipped the pen plotter with a continuously fed roll of paper so it can draw indefinitely.

=> ↺ Substituting a flex sensor for an inexpensive light-dependent resistor | Arduino Blog

• In order to build wearables that react to movement, most people tend to reach for accelerometers, gyroscopes, and flex sensors. But due to their higher cost, one of teacher Gord Payne’s students wanted to create a low-cost alternative that could be easily sourced and integrated into projects.

• A typical glove with finger movement tracking normally incorporates flexible strips, which vary in resistance based on the extent of their deviation from the starting angle. By reading this value with an Arduino board’s analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and mapping the resistance with a formula, the total angle can be found with decent accuracy. The student’s idea, however, substituted this special material for a flexible tube that has an LED on one end and a light-dependent resistor (LDR) on the other. When kept at the starting position, all of the light from the LED is able to hit the LDR, and any bends introduced from bending the tube cause less light to reach the other side.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ How to update apps on your Android phone – Android Authority

=> ↺ Google’s Discover feed makes better use of your Android tablet’s display space

=> ↺ Android 13 QPR2 could make the Lock Screen more customizable

=> ↺ Xiaomi is almost ready to bring Android 13 to its international devices

=> ↺ Android 13 is now rolling out to 2021′s unconventional Asus Zenfone 8 and Zenfone 8 Flip – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Nokia XR20 receiving new Android 13 Build update | Nokiamob

=> ↺ Android Auto finally has an audio progress bar headed your way

=> ↺ Android Auto ‘Coolwalk’ redesign missing for many

=> ↺ ‘Ready to place same Android regime for India and EU?’ SC asks Google | Latest News India – Hindustan Times

=> ↺ People are only just realizing there’s an Android setting that makes lost phones ring even on silent mode | The US Sun

=> ↺ Google’s Android Gaming Software Comes to More PCs Through an Official Hack – Review Geek

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Firefox 109 Adds Unified Extensions Button, Manifest V3 Support – OMG! Ubuntu!

• A new stable release of Mozilla Firefox is available to download.

• Firefox 109 is the first release of the browser this year but, as we’ve come to expect, the changes offered up are relatively minor overall — but that’s not a bad thing!

• The biggest new feature is the new Unified Extensions button in the toolbar. This button streamlines the toolbar area when multiple extensions are installed, plus surfaces extensions that run in the background (which you may forget are installed) so you can see if they affect the current page, plus manage, pin, report, or remove it.

=> ↺ Quirks, Site Interventions And Fixing Websites – otsukare

• Site Specific Hacks are pieces of WebKit code (called Quirks internally) to change the behavior of the browser in order to repair for the user a broken behavior from a website.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

=> ↺ WP Briefing: Episode 47: Letter from the Executive Director

• On episode forty-seven of the WordPress Briefing podcast, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares her vision and current thinking for the WordPress open source project in 2023. Rather read it? The full letter is also available.

=> ↺ Letter from WordPress’ Executive Director, 2022

• Last month at State of the Word, I shared some opening thoughts about “Why WordPress.” For me, this is an easy question, and the hardest part is knowing which lens to answer through. The reasons that a solopreneur will choose WordPress are different than the reasons a corporation would. And while artists and activists may have a similar vision for the world, their motivations change their reasons, too. That’s why I always focus on the philosophical parts of the answer because I know that I am speaking as an advocate for many types of WordPressers. I have a few other reasons, too, which you may not be aware of as you use our software every day.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Started learning SDL v1.2 came to a stop

• As posted yesterday, I’m a glutton for punishment sometimes

=> ↺ JavaScript developers: Here are the top trends and tools | ZDNET

• The 2022 State of JavaScript survey of nearly 40,000 developers has identified the most popular, emerging and waning technologies used by JavaScript developers.

• The annual JavaScript survey, whose sponsors include Google, highlights new frontend frameworks, such as Solid and Qwik, that are challenging stalwarts like React. It also looks at rendering frameworks, testing tools, mobile and desktop development, and various build tools.

• The survey assesses each technology based on their retention ratio and user count. High usage/high retention technologies (a measure of satisfaction based on whether a person would continue to use it or avoid it) are safe to adopt, low usage/low retention are considered ‘harder to recommend’, and high usage/low retention are worth reassessing if used.

=> ↺ Status update, 16/01/2023 – Sam Thursfield

• The tech world is busy building “AI apps” with wild claims of solving all problems. Meanwhile it’s still basically an unsolved problem to get images and text to line up nicely when making presentation slides.

• I’m giving a couple of talks at FOSDEM in February so i’ve been preparing slides. I previously used Reveal.js, which has some nice layout options (like r-stretch and r-fit-text), but pretty basic Markdown support such that I ended up writing the slides in raw HTML.

• A colleague turned me onto Remark.js, a simpler tool with better Markdown support and a CLI tool (Backslide), but its layout support is less developed than Reveal.js so I ended frustrated at the work necessary to lay things out neatly.

=> ↺ GCC 13.0.1 Status Report (2023-01-16), Stage 4 in effect now

• The GCC development branch which will become GCC 13 is now in regression and documentation fixing mode (Stage 4) until we reach zero P1 regressions and branch for the release.

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ 2023.03 Advent Radux – Rakudo Weekly News

• Brian Duggan wrote a nice blog post about their use of the Raku Programming Language in their solution of 2022 Advent Of Code problems (/r/rakulang comments).

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ Gunnar Wolf• Back to Understanding Computers and Cognition

• As many of you know, I work at UNAM, Mexico’s largest university. My work is split in two parts: My “full-time” job is to be the systems and network administrator at the Economics Research Institute, and I do some hours of teaching at the Engineering Faculty.

• At the Institute, my role is academic — but although I have tried to frame my works in a way amenable to analysis grounded on the Social Sciences (Construcción Colaborativa del Conocimiento, Hecho con Creative Commons, Mecanismos de privacidad y anonimato), so far, I have not taken part of academic collaboration with my coworkers — Economics is a field very far from my interests, to somehow illustrate it. I was very happy when I was invited to be a part of a Seminar on «The Digital Economy in the age of Artificial Intelligence». I talked with the coordinator, and we agreed we have many Economic Science experts — but understanding what does Artificial Intelligence mean eludes then, so I will be writing one of the introductory chapters to this analysis.

Hardware

=> ↺ What Can You Do On a $30,000 SGI Octane2 from the 1990s?

• In the 1990s, SGI was the go-to vendor for high-end 3D graphics computers, especially for use in scientific visualization, game development, and the burgeoning field of CGI for movies and television.

Proprietary

=> ↺ US blocks $400m Army HoloLens spending, spares R&D funds

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Servo to Advance in 2023

• We would like to share some exciting news about the Servo project. This year, thanks to new external funding, a team of developers will be actively working on Servo. The first task is to reactivate the project and the community around it, so we can attract new collaborators and sponsors for the project.

• The focus for 2023 is to improve the situation of the layout system in Servo, with the initial goal of getting basic CSS2 layout working. Given the renewed activity in the project, we will keep you posted with more updates throughout the year. Stay tuned!

Security

=> ↺ Dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden • The Register

• For better or worse, we still need passwords, and to protect and organize them, I recommend the open source Bitwarden password manager.

• LastPass is perhaps the world’s most popular password manager. It’s also arguably the most broken password manager. There’s a better, safer open source alternative.

• But before I dive into Bitwarden, let’s talk a little bit about why LastPass is problematic. Late last year, LastPass CEO Karim Toubba revealed that an August security incident had been much worse than they’d first admitted. Instead of simply losing internal source code and developer documents – bad enough – they’d also lost customer account information and vault data.

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

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, lava, libapreq2, net-snmp, node-minimatch, and openvswitch), Fedora (jpegoptim, kernel, kernel-headers, kernel-tools, and python2.7), Mageia (ctags, ffmpeg, minetest, python-gitpython, w3m, and xrdp), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (dpdk and libxml2), Slackware (netatalk), SUSE (apptainer, chromium, libheimdal, python-wheel, python310-setuptools, and SDL2), and Ubuntu (linux-aws, linux-gcp-4.15, maven, and net-snmp).

=> ↺ Hacked Cellebrite and MSAB Software Released – Schneier on Security

• Cellebrite is an cyberweapons arms manufacturer that sells smartphone forensic software to governments around the world. MSAB is a Swedish company that does the same thing. Someone has released software and documentation from both companies.

=> ↺ Getting started with ROS security scanning | Ubuntu

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST), or static analysis, is a testing method that analyses your source code to find, track and fix security issues that make your application vulnerable before they become a real problem. It is a low cost way to dramatically increase the quality and security of your application, without needing to compile or run it.

=> ↺ Flaws and features in the Flent network testing tool – http://blog.cerowrt.org/

• I spent last weekend ranting about the flaws in multiple new web speedtests from cloudflare, speedtest, netflix and others. It’s not fair, scientifically, to not whinge about the flaws (and “features”) in my own network tests. Still, Flent has been the test tool of choice for the core researchers in the bufferbloat effort for 12 years, it’s widely available, and I wish more BOFHs, vendors, CTOs, SREs and sysadmins used it, intelligently, to analyze their devices and networks, and shared new tests of their own to help spot incorrect network behaviors. I’m going to describe multiple features and multiple flaws in using flent for this in this post in detail, but first, a plug!

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Hidden Email Addresses in Phishing Kits | Netcraft News

• Ready-to-go phishing kits make it quick and easy for novice criminals to deploy new phishing sites and receive stolen credentials.

• Phishing kits are typically ZIP files containing web pages, PHP scripts and images that convincingly impersonate genuine websites. Coupled with simple configuration files that make it easy to choose where stolen credentials are sent, criminals can upload and install a phishing site with relatively little technical knowledge. In most cases, the credentials stolen by these phishing sites are automatically emailed directly to the criminals who deploy the kits.

• However, the criminals who originally authored these kits often include extra code that surreptitiously emails a copy of the stolen credentials to them. This allows a kit’s author to receive huge amounts of stolen credentials while other criminals are effectively deploying the kit on their behalf. This undesirable functionality is often hidden by obfuscating the kit’s source code, or by cleverly disguising the nefarious code to look benign. Some kits even hide code inside image files, where it is very unlikely to be noticed by any of the criminals who deploy the kits.

• Netcraft has analysed thousands of phishing kits in detail and identified the most common techniques phishing kit authors use to ensure that they also receive a copy of any stolen credentials via email.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ You Move, They Follow: Uncovering Iran’s Mobile Legal Intercept System – The Citizen Lab

• A confidential source sent the online news organization, The Intercept, a series of internal documents and communications providing details on what appear to be plans to develop and launch an Iranian mobile network, including subscriber management operations and services, and integration with a legal intercept solution. Some of this communication included representatives of the Communications Regulatory Authority of Iran (CRA). In October 2022, The Intercept shared this material with Citizen Lab researchers for analysis. The following report provides a summary of our analysis of this material and discusses its wider implications.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Gamers, have you been Pwned? We send our comments on the proposed amendments to the IT Rules, 2021 in relation to Online gaming

• Just when we thought that no new set of stakeholders could be further negatively impacted by the IT Rules, 2021, the government released the proposed amendments to the IT Rules, 2021 in relation to Online gaming. Not only will these proposed amendments significantly increase compliance burden for a diverse range of gaming entities, it also, once again, attempts to expand the scope of the IT Act, 2000, which does not regulate online gaming. After publishing an initial analysis and conducting a members’ briefing call, we have sent our detailed comments to MeitY on the proposed amendments. We list our range of concerns, several of which were incorporated after speaking to stakeholders who will be directly impacted by them, such as online game developers, and online gamers.

Monopolies

=> ↺ What the Federal Trade Commission’s move to ban noncompetes could mean for the US workforce – Vox

• Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan is ringing in the new year with another step in her effort to reinterpret or reapply the agency’s rules to stop what she sees as systemic anti-labor and anti-competitive actions. This time, she’s going after noncompete clauses, framing them as anti-competitive and therefore under the agency’s purview.

• The FTC announced on Thursday that it proposed a rule that would ban the practice of forcing workers to sign noncompete clauses, which forbid employees from working for their employer’s competitors for a certain amount of time after they leave.

• “The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy,” Khan said in a statement. “Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand. By ending this practice, the FTC’s proposed rule would promote greater dynamism, innovation, and healthy competition.”

Patents

=> ↺ Exclusive: EPO to meet in-house critics to discuss quality

• Members of the Industry Patent Quality Charter had criticised the office for failing to engage with their concerns over patent quality

• The EPO has agreed to meet with a group of in-house counsel at major corporations to discuss concerns over the quality of patents granted by the office, Managing IP can confirm.

• An EPO spokesperson said yesterday, January 10, that the office would meet with members of the Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC) to discuss specific examples of where quality did not meet their expectations.

• Counsel at companies including Bayer, Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, and Volvo set up the group last year and pledged to focus on quality over quantity in their own patent filings.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Public domain: a belated step forward, two huge steps back – Walled Culture

• The Center’s post about the Public Domain Day 2023 lists some of the riches that (belatedly) will enter the public domain in the US – notably the Sherlock Holmes stories. It reminds us that these were due to become freely available in 2003, but then copyright was extended and they were locked up even longer. Those 20 years represent lost opportunities for contemporary artists to build on the great works that are now available – for no real reason other than the fact that the copyright industry always wants copyright lengthened and strengthened.

• Those 20 years were also a time when unique surviving examples of works – for example, silent films stored on fragile media – could be lost forever. The law often forbids people from making backup copies of this material without permission, underlining that copyright law is the very antithesis of something that preserves culture, as is frequently claimed.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Amateur Radio Log 2023-01-16 Mid-day (Fairbanks, AK, US)

• Tried working DX SSB again on 20-meter from Fire Station 42, during the lunck break (21:00-22:00 UTC). Could hear much though in the phone frequencies. Heard a digital signal down at 14.084.50 at around 21:17 UTC. I picked up a phone coversation also on 14.277 MHz at around 21:46 UTC. There was one strong station and some weaker stations, but I was not able to catch a callsign. I heard a few english words such as “propagation” but mostly it was a foreign language conversation. It sounded like french — one of those French pacific islands, perhaps?

=> ↺ Greetings from LA

• I came in to this with no idea what I was in for. What quickly became apparent was just how good the band was. All the musicians involved can play – the organ playing in “Devil’s Eyes” stands out, and there’s some great guitar later on. For me it’s too heavy on the improvisation which is great to watch live, but set down on record it didn’t catch my interest.

• The orchestration, the blues rock, the relentlessly sleazy lyrics – none of interested me. So when album closer “Make It Right” came around with its orchestra-backed-ode-to-S&M, I was ready to escape L.A.

=> ↺ A sense of belonging

• Out of loneliness, I tried to get involved in mainstream blogging platforms. I first went to Medium, which attracted me for its so-called “minimalism”. I got quickly lost in an ocean of content that felt very impersonal. The superlative is the rule there (“10 awesome tools to be a better person, etc.”).

Technical

=> ↺ Should we allow spiders in space

• Last night I was searching for something on Google related to a post on someone else’s gemlog. On accident autocorrect on my phone filled “gemini” into my full url, to which i clicked search as I was not paying enough attention. The first results found was my site (which is cross host in HTTP) pointing to the gemlog post I was researching. As the gmi to html proxies can work as a full on proxy, apparently Google had scrapped my page enough to index my response and the subsequent links it contained.

• The part that was messed up is that the other person’s post shows up under my domain.

=> ↺ Everyday Games

• It’s the beginning of a new year and I’ve dusted off an old smartwatch to help me with my new year’s goal of exercising and staying active more. I started to feel a bit guilty, relying on Samsung and Google’s proprietary systems to help me track things like heart-rate, time spent exercising, etc.

• We all know the dangers of this kind of data. We’ve seen how it can be used to manipulate and market to us. I used to live in Dundee in Scotland, a hub for gaming app development, and I remember meeting people who had PhDs in data science, but whose job was now optimising feedback mechanisms in mobile games to maximise playtime, etc.

=> ↺ Higher Order Calculator 1993 to 2023

• Some time around 1993 I retraced the creation and transformation of the Higher Order Calculator program presented in “The UNIX Programming Environment” by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike. I did explore a number of additional features back then, I did use it daily for quite some time. Eventually I replaced it with emacs/calc. However, these days I was playing with redo and I remembered that using bison/yacc to generate C code from a description of the grammar actually produces two files, y.tab.h and y.tab.c in one call — a challenge for any build system. But 30 years later, addresses on my machine are 64 bit wide, and gcc has grown rather picky about acceptable code. So I set out to bring this piece of code to newer times.

=> ↺ Re: Screen Time

• I sent a version of this gemlog to ~jsreed5 as an email, but I figured it’d work as a gemlog as well, with some additional thoughts.

• [...]

• As I stated above, my life this past weekend wasn’t radically different, but it was different. Instead of putting the kids down and immediately sitting on the couch with my spuse, I picked up a book and read on the couch. I ended up finishing Isaac Asimov’s Foundation (the first one), and immediately wanted to go out and get the second one, but it was too late, so I picked up my Kindle and continued reading the Furyck Saga. I also ended up writing in my hardcopy journal, something I haven’t done since July…July! As is always the case when I haven’t written in there, I feel a bit slow and clunky, but the juices started flowing again, and not surprisingly, I write about Gemini, and screen time.

• 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

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.