● 02.14.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 14/02/2023: Plasma 5.27 and Russia Builds M OS

Posted in News Roundup at 6:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ A new operating system has been released in Russia

• The Russian software market has welcomed a new operating system called “M OS,” which is based on the Linux kernel. The operating system is specifically designed for use in educational institutions and is being developed by the Department of Information Technologies of the city of Moscow. The team responsible for the development of electronic services and IT systems in the capital has collaborated with Russian developers to create “M OS.”

• A team of 25 developers has worked on the development of “M OS”. And the distribution kit took six months to develop. The product is already supplied to Moscow schools as part of personal computers, laptops, and interactive panels. The Moscow Electronic School (MES) project team is supporting and developing “M OS.”

Server

=> ↺ A systems design perspective on why chess.com’s servers have been melting | nicholas@web

• January 2023 was a rough month if you wanted to play chess on the most popular chess website, chess.com. Their service has been experiencing an unprecedented amount downtime because of a huge influx of users. There have been days where it’s all but unusable. It’s frustrating as a user! It’s also surely frustrating for the business behind the site.

• Chess has reached an all-time peak in popularity. In January 2023, Google search traffic exceeded the boom from the release of The Queen’s Gambit. There’s a huge influx of new or returning players, and they flock to the site with the obvious domain. Chess.com’s app has hit #1 most downloaded free game on the iOS app store.

• Part of doing good systems design is planning for capacity. A general rule of thumb is that you should design a system for up to a certain amount of growth. Beyond some point, architectural requirements will be dramatically different. Planning for capacity does not mean planning for infinite capacity, but what may realistically happen.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 216

• Canonical’s latest Ubuntu PR blunder, Mastodon and the fediverse are doing a lot better than some journalists seem to think, yet another telemetry row, the company behind Mycroft is struggling, KDE Korner, and more.   News We now have a Discord server (as well as the Telegram group, Matrix room, and IRC channel).

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Enable Ubuntu Pro and Activate ESM in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

• Still using Ubuntu 18.04 Beaver Bionic? Then don’t forget to enable Ubuntu Pro and activate the Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) for enhanced security to keep your system and its data safe from malicious attacks.

=> ↺ How to check Nginx version on Linux

=> ↺ Effective IP blocking with Iptables: A guide to secure Linux systems

• iptables are recognizable to most system administrators. It has been around for a long and is enabled by default in the Linux kernel. We may use iptables to ban a single IP address, several IP addresses, or whole networks. This may be useful if you receive repeated port scans or witness failed unauthorized access in your log files. IP blocking is a more effective security measure.

=> ↺ The 15 best practices for securing Linux with Iptables

• IPTables is a powerful firewall tool for Linux systems, but managing its rules can be a complex and confusing task. In this article, we’ll provide you with the 15 best practices for managing iptables rules effectively and efficiently, helping you to secure your Linux-based systems and prevent unwanted network traffic.

=> ↺ Dig Command: The Most Common Use Cases in Examples

• This example-filled guide shows you how to make the most of the Linux dig command to perform DNS lookups, reverse lookups, and more.

=> ↺ The BSD sockstat(1) command

• In today’s installment ofthings you already know, unless you don’t, you can usesockstat(1)on the BSDs to list open sockets.

• From themanpage(1), you can issue this command to show IPv4 sockets listening on port 22 using protocol TCP:

• [...]

• I can’t tell you how many times this has saved me during a late-night troubleshooting session, when a service claims to be up but isn’t.

=> ↺ How to install WikiJS on Ubuntu

• WikiJS is a modern Wiki Engine based on Git, NodeJS & Markdown, It is one of the open-source, and powerful Wiki Engines. It supports various databases engine like MySQL, MariaDB, MSSQL, and PostgreSQL. It is fairly easy to use and supports multi-lingual content.

=> ↺ How to install Wekan Kanban Board on Debian

• Hi. Today, you will learn How to install Wekan Kanban Board on Debian Wekan is a free and open-source Kanban Board, that allows you to manage daily tasks efficiently.

=> ↺ How To Install Neofetch on AlmaLinux 9 / RockyLinux 9

• In this guide, we will show you how to install NeoFetch on AlmaLinux 9 / RockyLinux 9 systems. Neofetch is a system information tool written in the Bash shell scripting language. On the left side is always a logo of the distribution, rendered in old-fashioned ASCII art. U

=> ↺ How To Install AdGuard Home on Rocky Linux 9/ AlmaLinux 9

• In this guide, we will show you how to install and configure AdGuard Home on your AlmaLinux 9 system. AdGuard Home is a free and open source, powerful network-wide ads & trackers blocking DNS server.

=> ↺ How To Install aaPanel on Rocky Linux 9 | AlmaLinux 9

• In this guide, we will show you how to install aaPanel on AlmaLinux and RockyLinux systems. aaPanel is a free and open source hosting Control Panel.

=> ↺ How to check Apache version on Linux

=> ↺ How to install Yum on Linux

=> ↺ How to install Brew on Linux

Games

=> ↺ The new Vampire Survivors update is trippy and pulled me back in

• Vampire Survivors is back with a brand new update that’s real trippy, and also has a little Sonic flavour to it.

=> ↺ Fanatical’s Bundle Fest is back with a 25 game bundle to start

• Fanatical are back with another Bundle Fest, where each day a new game bundle will appear so here’s what to expect from it.

=> ↺ Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer – Part 25: Quantum Axcess

• Back when I first played through Quake: The Offering I found that I enjoyed the two mission packs even more than I did the original Quake campaign, and while these were the only official addons sold for Quake, several third party expansions and total conversions exist that also had retail releases. Two of these, Shrak and Malice, were published on CD-ROM in 1997 by Quantum Axcess.

=> ↺ Gladiator battling deck-builder Alina of the Arena gets Steam Deck support

• Alina of the Arena looks like a lot of fun if you love your deck-builders, and a recent update should make it a lot better on Steam Deck (and Desktops with a controller).

=> ↺ Have plenty of free time? Check out the new Double Fine documentary

• Have a lot of time free and love Double Fine games, especially Psychonauts 2? Good news, there’s a multi-hour documentary now available.

=> ↺ itch.io has a ‘Trans Witches are Witches’ bundle that’s raised over $90K

• The Trans Witches are Witches bundle is live on itch.io featuring 69 items from various LGBTQ+ creators, aimed at rejecting “Hogwarts Legacy’s bigotry”.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Plasma 5.27 Beta

• Today we are bringing you the preview version of KDE’s Plasma 5.27 release. Plasma 5.27 Beta is aimed at testers, developers, and bug-hunters. As well as our lightweight and feature rich Linux Desktop this release adds a Bigscreen version of Plasma for use on televisions.

• To help KDE developers iron out bugs and solve issues, install Plasma 5.27 Beta and test run the features listed below. Please report bugs to our bug tracker.

• The final version of Plasma 5.27 will become available for the general public on the 14th of February.

=> ↺ KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS Desktop Is Out with New Welcome App, Tiling, and More

• Highlights of KDE Plasma 5.27 include a new Plasma Welcome app that helps newcomers to the KDE Plasma desktop environment easily and quickly configure various aspects like enabling Plasma Vaults, connecting their online accounts or mobile devices, adding more apps, etc.

• Another cool new feature in KDE Plasma 5.27 is tiling support for those with a large monitor. Tiling can be enabled and configured by pressing the Meta(Super)+T keyboard shortcut and there are three layouts to choose from. Windows can be placed in the tiled layout by holding Shift and dragging them to the edge of the screen until they stick.

=> ↺ KDE Plasma 5.27 Slated for a Valentine’s Day Release

=> ↺ KDE Eco Handbook: “Applying The Blue Angel Criteria To Free Software”

• Today is “I ❤ Free Software!” day and KDE Eco is proud to announce the publication of the first edition of the measurement handbook “Applying The Blue Angel Criteria To Free Software: A Handbook To Certify Software As Sustainable”.

• You can view the handbook at our website, where you can also download the PDF release for offline reading or for sharing with a friend or colleague.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

=> ↺ EndeavourOS Scores A Sizable Update with Cassini Neo Release

• EndeavourOS is a popular Arch Linux-based distribution which is easy to install and use. Since the last release in December, the team has worked on adopting new packages and Kernel updates from Arch repo and announced the release of Endeavour Cassini Neo.

• Here’s what’s new.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 774

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 774 for the week of February 5 – 11, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

=> ↺ The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 774

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ KiCad 7.0.0 release – Custom fonts, text boxes, SpaceMouse, crash reporting, and much more

• KiCad 7.0.0 open-source EDA software has just been released with a range of new features from custom fonts to 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse integration to opt-in Sentry crash reporting, and many more. It took over three years between KiCad 5.0.0 and KiCad 6.0.0 announcements, but only a little over a year for the release of KiCad 7.0.0. Did KiCad developers acquire superhuman abilities or did AI get involved in the development somehow? Most probably not, and instead they change the release schedule to a yearly one, so we should get annual releases of the open-source EDA suite going forward, with KiCad 8.0.0 to be released in Q1 2024.

=> ↺ DietPi v8.14 Release Is Now Available

• The February 11th, 2023 release of DietPi v8.14 comes with a new image for the Radxa ROCK 5B, Odroid N2/HC4, Orange Pi 5 and a couple of improvements and bug fixes.

=> ↺ This 3D-printed robot is made for sumo battle tournaments

• While the majority of makers are unable to afford the fancy equipment and components that go into modern state-of-the-art battle robots, there do exist lesser-known tournaments for more DIY designs, including sumo robot battles.

=> ↺ my homelab

• I have always found the term “homelab” a little confusing. It’s a bit like the residential version of “on-premises cloud,” in that it seems to presuppose that a lab is the normal place that you find computer equipment. Of course I get that “homelab” is usually used by those who take pride in the careful workmanship of their home installation, and I am not one of those people.

• Welcome to Computers Are Bad – in color.

• Note: if you get this by email, the images may or may not work right. We’re going to find out together! I don’t plan to make a habit of including images and they don’t look that good anyway, so I’m not too worried about it.

=> ↺ Here’s an open source smart home energy management solution

• On a recent Internet of Things Podcast episode, we took a call from our podcast hotline about smart home energy management. Thomas is looking for a whole home energy management solution but he has a specific requirement. He wants it to be open source.

=> ↺ Make a Tide Tracker with APIs and an e-ink display

• Tides are predictable, but it’s still easy to lose track of the times for high and low water. As a result, you might pull up at high tide to find the beach has disappeared… or at low tide, and found your boat grounded. Put an end to that once and for all with our handy tide tracker, which uses an API to download tidal forecasts for more than 600 monitoring stations around the UK. The results shouldn’t be used for navigation or other water-borne activities, but they may be just what you need to save yourself a wasted journey, or to keep an eye on the tide cycles however far you live from the coast.

=> ↺ Reverse engineering an e-ink display

• The person who bought the pricetags wanted to use them in a project, but didn’t find any documentation on how to communicate with them to display things on the screen. They donated three to Zeus with the challenge to get communication working and to draw something on the screen. This is the perfect number of devices according to bunnie’s book ‘The Hardware Hacker’ 1: [...]

=> ↺ Inside the amazingly mechanical Bendix Central Air Data Computer

• Determining the airspeed and altitude of a fighter plane is harder than you’d expect. At slower speeds, pressure measurements can give the altitude, air speed, and other “air data”. But as planes approach the speed of sound, complicated equations are needed to accurately compute these values. The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) solved this problem for military planes such as the F-101 and the F-111 fighters, and the B-58 bomber.1 This electromechanical marvel was crammed full of 1955 technology: gears, cams, synchros, and magnetic amplifiers. In this blog post I look inside the CADC, describe the calculations it performed, and explain how it performed these calculations mechanically.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi Powered Compute Blade Makes the Cut

• We’ve been tracking this project since mid 2021, and the time has been well spent. Ivan Kuleshov’s Compute Blade is a thin PCB that packs a plethora of storage options for your Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (or compatible). Kuleshov’s kickstarter has smashed its $522,209 funding goal, reaching $673,365 at the time of writing.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ The OnePlus 11 is now the best Android value — here’s why | Tom’s Guide

=> ↺ The Nokia C12 is a Throwback to a Lost Era of Android – Phandroid

=> ↺ Google’€™s easing up on the Play Store’s app stranglehold with Android 14

=> ↺ POCO X3 GT Grabs MIUI 14 based on Android 13 Update

=> ↺ Google’€™s Android Auto 8.8 is available for download now

=> ↺ Android Auto’€™s new user interface is rolling out in India: Here’s what it€’s like to use – Times of India

=> ↺ How to fix Android Auto GPS or Google Assistant not responding

=> ↺ How to Empty Trash on Android

=> ↺ What Is Android System WebView, and Is It Safe to Uninstall?

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Chromium

=> ↺ Chromium 110 packages for Slackware (the last version for Slackware 14.2)

• I have uploaded the packages for Google Chromium 110.0.5481.77 as well as its un-googled version.

Mozilla

=> ↺ Niko Matsakis: Return type notation (send bounds, part 2)

• In theprevious post, I introduced the “send bound” problem, which refers to the need to add aSendbound to the future returned by an async function. I want to start talking about some of the ideas that have been floating around for how to solve this problem. I consider this a bit of an open problem, in that I think we know a lot of the ingredients, but there is a bit of a “delicate balance” to finding the right syntax and so forth. To start with, though, I want to introduce Return Type Notation, which is an idea that Tyler Mandry and I came up with for referring to the type returned by a trait method.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ Help to translate LibreOffice into Saraiki!

• LibreOffice is available in over 100 languages thanks to the great work of our localisation communities.

FSF

=> ↺ I Love Free Software Day is here: Share your love, software, and a video

• The act of sharing takes effort because sharing anything requires us to take time out of our day to share with another person. It takes compassion because we must think of others and what their wants and/or needs may be. It also takes courage. This is because we must fight against our own doubt, battling against any feelings of failure or rejection. We must also courageously defend the freedom to share, as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS) threaten to erode people’s ability and opportunities to share, even among those living under the same roof.

Programming/Development

Jussi Pakkanen ☛ Jussi Pakkanen: Plain C API design, the real world Kobayashi Maru testDesigning APIs is hard. Designing good APIs that future people will not instantly classify as “total crap” is even harder. There are typically many competing requirements such as:API stabilityABI stability (if you are into that sort of thing, some are not)Maximize the amount of functionality supportedMinimize the number of functions exposedMake the API as easy as possible to useMake the API as difficult as possible to use incorrectly (preferably it should be impossible)Make the API as easy as possible to use from scripting languages

=> ↺ Continuing internationalization integrated into easy.sfs

• I posted about the abandonment of langpacks a couple of days ago:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202302/easysfs-internationalized-langpack-pets-abandoned.html

• The last couple of days there has been intense coding, implementing the details internationalization integrated into easy.sfs, or as a single “nls.sfs”.

• Changes to /usr/local/petget/installpkg.sh, major changes to /usr/local/momanager/momanager, and in woofQ changes to 2createpackages and 3buildeasydistro….

=> ↺ Svelte Was Made By Vue Fans

• I actually like the declarative feel of Svelte. I just don’t like that it reminds me of a product which endorses malware. I don’t think that is something to want to emulate.

=> ↺ Parsing TFTP in Rust

• For those who don’t know, TFTP is the Trivial File Transfer Protocol, a simple means of reading and writing files over a network. Initially defined in the early 80s, the protocol was updated by RFC 1350 in 1992. In this post I’ll only cover RFC 1350. Extensions like RFC 2347, which adds a 6th packet type, won’t be covered.

=> ↺ The case for atomic types in programming languages

• However, I feel that that the lie of atomic types is a genuine improvement in almost all cases, because of the increase in usability and safety. The problem with only having atomic operations is the same as with optional error checking; you have to remember to always use them, even if the types you’re operating on can be used with ordinary operations. As we all know, people can forget this, or they can think that they’re clever enough to use non-atomic operations in this one special circumstance that is surely harmless.

=> ↺ More than five whys and “layer eight” problems

• Perhaps you’ve heard of the OSI model of networking, where you have seven layers as a way to talk about what’s going on in the “stack”. I’ve seen some brilliantly snarky T-shirts that talk about “layer eight” and sometimes beyond as things like “corporate politics” and “management” and all of that good stuff.

• It turns out that when you start doing this root-cause analysis and really keep after it, the “squishy human realm” is actually the no-longer-hypothetical “layer eight” from those T-shirts.

=> ↺ ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web

• This analogy to lossy compression is not just a way to understand ChatGPT’s facility at repackaging information found on the Web by using different words. It’s also a way to understand the “hallucinations,” or nonsensical answers to factual questions, to which large language models such as ChatGPT are all too prone. These hallucinations are compression artifacts, but—like the incorrect labels generated by the Xerox photocopier—they are plausible enough that identifying them requires comparing them against the originals, which in this case means either the Web or our own knowledge of the world. When we think about them this way, such hallucinations are anything but surprising; if a compression algorithm is designed to reconstruct text after ninety-nine per cent of the original has been discarded, we should expect that significant portions of what it generates will be entirely fabricated.

=> ↺ Building a SQL-like language to filter flows

• Often, web interfaces expose a query builder to build such filters. I think combining a SQL-like language with an editor supporting completion, syntax highlighting, and linting is a better approach.

• The language parser is built with pigeon (Go) from a parsing expression grammar—or PEG. The editor component is CodeMirror (TypeScript).

=> ↺ Plain C API design, the real world Kobayashi Maru test

• Designing APIs is hard. Designing good APIs that future people will not instantly classify as “total crap” is even harder. There are typically many competing requirements such as: [...]

=> ↺ Maybe people do care about performance and reliability

• It’s well-established consensus that software is slower and more bloated than it was 20, 40 years ago. One explanation is that software engineers don’t care about their work. Another is that it’s the interplay of a lot of different factors and blaming it on apathetic devs is a convenient way to avoid understanding the actual problems.

Python

=> ↺ Update: xor-kpa.py Version 0.0.7

• I added extra plaintexts for the modulus of Cobalt Strike’s public RSA key. xor-kpa_V0_0_7.zip (http)MD5: FB8155E56234648CC3AFFD890BFE9043SHA256: 069DCA2A1901D448DBF2CF202B5CE49846EFCBAACB73BF35B20AA085AAB31BA9

Rust

=> ↺ The bottom emoji breaks rust-analyzer

• Some bugs are merely fun. Others are simply delicious!

Leftovers

=> ↺ Time magazine discusses successful tech failures

• VHS also offered longer record time per tape, which contributed to its price and convenience. But that can’t be the whole story either; Philips and Grundig had even longer recording times with their double-sided Video 2000 cassettes, but they sold even fewer than Betamax.

• It just goes to show that technical features are often not at the forefront of purchasing decisions. Companies and pundits forget this at their peril.

• ByRuben Schadein Sydney, 2023-02-14.

=> ↺ Have More Sex, Please!

• America is in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. One solution: People should have more sex — as often as they can, as pleasurably as they can.

=> ↺ Lawyers’ Solidarity in Earthquake on acts of violence in earthquake-hit areas

• Investigations should be started for perpetrators or suspects of torture immediately, say the lawyers who group under the initiative called Lawyers’ Solidarity in Earthquake.

=> ↺ WATCH: The Magic Words #SolutionsWatch

• The magic words can open doors that you didn’t even know were there. They can help you skirt the censors and the fact checkers. They can unlock minds and take your research to a whole new level. S

=> ↺ Years of negligence and cronyism underpin devastating earthquake toll in Turkey

• The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria a week ago, and the powerful aftershock that followed, have left at least 30,000 people dead.

=> ↺ Syria’s Assad requests UN help as total quake deaths surpass 35,000

• The rescue phase following the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria on February 6 is “coming to a close” with urgency now switching to providing shelter and food to survivors, United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said during a visit to Aleppo on Monday. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad asked for international aid for reconstruction at a meeting with Griffiths as the total death toll surpassed 35,000.

=> ↺ The Time I Accidentally Ended Up Combating Fraud for a Year

• Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time enjoying the Darknet Diaries podcast and it’s compelled me to finally share the entire story of the most intense year of my 20 year professional career. I was the sole developer hired by a company going through a circus-like ownership transition while criminals actively worked to defraud the 300,000 users of this 14 year old, high end marketplace.

• We experienced late nights, numerous technical challenges, worked with abuse response teams, learned a lot of lessons about phishing and fraud, high emotions, death threats and at least one person lost a business that depended on the site. Here’s the story from start to finish, including how to prevent many of these problems on your own site. Buckle up.

Science

=> ↺ Hubble captures mysterious ‘spokes’ gliding across Saturn’s rings

• The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of a mysterious show playing out on Saturn’s rings — ghostly, fleeting “spokes” that appear to move along the planet’s rings. And scientists can’t yet explain why the phenomena happen.

Education

=> ↺ Scholars discuss approaches to university historical projects

• Historians, scholars and community members gathered Feb. 10 at the Michigan League for a panel discussion about how universities should best facilitate large-scale projects that reexamine their pasts.

=> ↺ Zim govt established computer labs at over 1100 schools in 2022, election season is wild

• To be honest, that doesn’t sound impressive. There are close to 10,000 schools in Zimbabwe and more are being established at a rate of 300 per year apparently. So, to hear that a program that commenced in 2019 has equipped 32 schools with solar panels does not sound impressive.

• However, when you consider that we are talking about thousands of students benefitting, you appreciate it a little more. Should we have done more? Probably, but it’s something I guess.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ How Teens Recovered From the ‘TikTok Tics’

• A wave of teenagers who developed tics during the pandemic has receded, illustrating the powerful influence of stress on the body and the resilience of adolescents.

=> ↺ The G.O.P.’s Long War Against Medicare and Social Security

• Biden isn’t playing gotcha; there’s a lot of history here.

=> ↺ Congress braces for first GOP-led investigation into COVID vaccines

• Congress is venturing into unknown and potentially explosive territory with the first House GOP-led investigation intoCOVID-19 vaccines.

• Why it matters:It’s expected to be a showdown across the spectrum of views on vaccine safety and efficacy,

=> ↺ Hong Kong Hospital Authority to offer digital sick leave certificates

• The Hospital Authority (HA) is to begin issuing digital medical certificates from March 6, as an alternative to hand-written paper sick leave notes.

=> ↺ The Future of Long COVID

Proprietary

=> ↺ Apple updates iOS, iPadOS to fix flaw being exploited in the wild

• The WebKit bug was not credited but Apple acknowledged the assistance of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

• Contacted for comment, Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at security firm Tenable, said: “Apple released fixes to address a WebKit flaw across its iOS, iPadOS, macOS and Safari browsers.

• “The flaw, which is a type confusion bug, can be exploited when encountering maliciously crafted Web content through browsers that leverage WebKit, which doesn’t just include Safari, but also Mail, Apple’s App Store along with many other applications that use WebKit for displaying rich web content.

• “The vulnerability has been exploited in the wild, but details remain scant. More often than not, these types of vulnerabilities that are disclosed through patches are found by researchers through targeted attacks.

• “We have not yet seen widespread exploitation of these types of flaws in the wild. Even with the less likely exposure, it’s still advisable for users to apply the latest patches as a good cyber hygiene practice.”

=> ↺ Windows 11 – A year and a half later, still meh

• It’s been a year since I last “blogged” about Windows 11. Yeah, for most of the last year, I simply didn’t care enough to bother using my test instance of this operating system, for this or that purpose, or to write any content, for that matter. I let it be, completely apathetic to its look, its appeal, and the future prospect and impact for the wider Windows audience.

• Back in the day, I had tweaked the test machine to my liking – I neutered 99% of the Windows 11 annoyances, set the system with Open-Shell, removed a bunch of modern, low-IQ stuff, and then shelved it, as there is really no point or advantage to Windows 11, whatsoever, over its immediate predecessor, and also any other past version of Windows. A few days ago, I decided to power on the triple-boot IdeaPad laptop, chose 11 in the boot menu, let it load, let it update, run a few checks, and then wrote this piece. After me.

=> ↺ ChatGPT: Far More Hype Than Substance

• Much text has been written in recent weeks on the topic of the ChatGPT chat bot, its forthcoming integration into Bing and how it will change the world as we know it. While the commentary has run the entire gamut of possible responses, most of it is definitely more hype based than anything else. Today the hype dies.

Security

=> ↺ Can Linux Get Viruses? Exploring the Vulnerability of Linux Systems

=> ↺ Russian hackers claim responsibility for disrupting NATO earthquake relief efforts

=> ↺ California lawmaker seeks to end to ‘reverse warrants’ that could pinpoint abortion seekers

• Lawmakers say the overly broad surveillance tool poses a major threat to reproductive privacy.

=> ↺ New cybercrime group calling itself DarkBit attacks Israeli university

• It’s not yet clear who is behind the group, but the name could have connections to other ransomware variants such as DarkSide and LockBit.

=> ↺ City of Oakland Hit by Ransomware Attack

• The City of Oakland, California, on Friday announced that it was forced to take some systems offline after falling victim to a ransomware attack.

• The cyberattack, the city’s administration says in an incident notification, started on Wednesday night and led to network outages as a result of systems being disconnected from the internet.

• While voicemail and other non-emergency services are experiencing interruptions or have been taken offline, no critical or emergency services, such as 911 and fire departments, have been impacted.

• Oakland’s IT team is currently working with the authorities to investigate the incident and restore the affected services, but no information has been provided on when the impacted systems will be fully functional.

=> ↺ 3.3 Million Impacted by Ransomware Attack at California Healthcare Provider

• The personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) of more than 3.3 million individuals was stolen in a ransomware attack at California healthcare provider Regal Medical Group.

• The incident took place on December 1, 2022, but was discovered only a week later, and impacted the Regal Medical Group and affiliates Lakeside Medical Organization, Affiliated Doctors of Orange County and Greater Covina Medical Group.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Study finds data brokers are selling Americans’ mental health data

=> ↺ How to Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department’s Use of Flock’s Mass Surveillance License Plate Readers

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ US military says it recovered sensors from Chinese spy balloon

• The US military said on Monday it had recovered critical electronics from the suspected Chinese spy balloon downed by a US fighter jet off South Carolina’s coast on February 4, including key sensors presumably used for intelligence gathering.

=> ↺ The absurd irony of Putin’s invocation of Stalingrad

• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address in Volgograd on 2 February, in which he sought to draw moral parallels between the heroic Soviet defence of Stalingrad in World War II and the current Russian invasion…

=> ↺ Pentagon memo says object shot down over Canada was a ‘small, metallic balloon’

=> ↺ War Certainly Is A Racket

• Iain Davis In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler’s seminal book “War Is A Racket” warned of the dangers of the US military-industrial complex, more than 25 years before the outgoing US President Eisenhower implored the world to “guard against” the same thing. One of the most decorated soldiers in US military history, Butler knew what …

=> ↺ US rejects accusation that it flies spy balloons over China; still in dark over mystery flying objects

• The White House responded Monday to growing and at times fevered speculation over the shooting down of unidentified aerial objects by saying the targets could be anything from commercial craft to espionage devices, while denying that US balloons spy on China.

=> ↺ Analyst thinks this is why more unidentified objects are being spotted

• CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem says US air surveillance has increased after the suspected Chinese balloon was shot down.

=> ↺ Mauling of Russian forces in Donetsk hotspot may signal problems to come for Moscow

• The scenes are chaotic: Russian tanks veering wildly before exploding or driving straight into minefields, men running in every direction, some on fire, the bodies of soldiers caught in tank tracks.

=> ↺ Dramatic video appears to show heavy losses among Russian armored formations

• The eastern front has seen some of the heaviest fightings in Ukraine. Ukrainian and Russian sources say that the Russian mechanized brigade trying to push through the town of Vuhledar saw significant losses recently. CNN’s David McKenzie has more.

=> ↺ U.S.-China Tensions Rise Over Spy Programs Amid UFO Investigations

• The Biden administration is looking into mysterious U.F.O. encounters and pushing back against China over accusations of widespread espionage.

=> ↺ What Is NORAD, the Organization That Helps Defend U.S. and Canadian Airspace

• The plane was part of NORAD, a defense organization operated jointly by the U.S. and Canada.

=> ↺ What We Know About the Objects Shot Down in the U.S. and Canada

• Here is what we know about the objects as well as the Chinese spy balloon that were taken down this month.

=> ↺ A Spy Balloon and a Reporting Trip to China, Up in the Air

• A Times diplomatic correspondent was looking forward to a trip back to Beijing, until an international crisis erupted.

=> ↺ U.S. should be held accountable for explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines

• It is widely known that on September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported unprecedented damage that occurred the day before on three strings of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 offshore gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. On September 26, Swedish seismologists registered two explosions on the pipeline routes.

=> ↺ The IOR Power Play: Finding a Balance for Pakistan

• The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is currently experiencing a significant transformation, which is the result of the complex interplay of international relations, particularly economic and strategic interests.

=> ↺ French army officers do not want to fight against Russia

• The French Internet site “Place-armes.fr” conducted a survey among its readers – army officers – about the Ukrainian crisis and a possible war against Russia. They explain: “From November 1 to December 13, 2022, we conducted a survey, by mail and on our website.

=> ↺ Who Needs Hackers When You Have Balloons?

• Episode 442 of the Cyberlaw Podcast

=> ↺ Israel authorises nine West Bank outposts, despite US opposition

• Israel granted retroactive authorisation on Sunday to nine Jewish settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and announced mass-construction of new homes within established settlements, moves likely to draw US admonition.

=> ↺ Palestinian president urges world puts a ‘stop to Israeli aggression’ amid Arab League split

• Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Sunday accused Israel of having “crossed all red lines” in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, and urged world leaders to put an end to its actions.

=> ↺ Mayor of Russian-leased Kazakhstani city of Baikonur offers residents $3,500 each to fight in Ukraine — Meduza

• The mayor of Baikonur, the city in Kazakhstan that Russia is leasing along with the cosmodrome of the same name, has signed a decree authorizing one-time payments of 260,000 rubles (about $3,500) to residents who fight in the war against Ukraine either as draftees or as volunteers.

=> ↺ Senior law enforcement official, fired from Interior Ministry last month, found dead outside Moscow — Meduza

• TASS and another media source report that Major General Vladimir Makarov, the former deputy director of the Interior Ministry’s Center for Combating Extremism, was found dead in the village of Golikovo outside Moscow. This information is not yet officially confirmed.

=> ↺ A promise unfulfilled Scholar Sasha de Vogel explains why Russia lacks massive antiwar protests — Meduza

=> ↺ Hungarian Foreign Minister Visits Minsk Ahead Of EU Consideration Of Further Sanctions

=> ↺ Russia-Ukraine War 2.0: First Tanks, Then F16s. Where Does This End?

=> ↺ When the US Assumed Joint Ownership of the War in Ukraine

Environment

=> ↺ Myanmar’s arrested environmental activism

• In the two years since the military coup in February 2021, Myanmar’s natural environment has deteriorated as the embryonic legal and regulatory regime that was emerging during the decade of political and economic reforms…

=> ↺ Cyclone Gabrielle pounds northern New Zealand with strong winds and rain

• Around 58,000 homes are without power in New Zealand’s upper North Island on Monday as the approach of Cyclone Gabrielle brings strong winds, heavy rain and huge swells to Auckland and nearby regions.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Electric Truck Manufacturer Featured in Super Bowl Ad Got $186 Million in Taxpayer Subsidies

• Stellantis, one of the largest automakers on the planet with billions in cash on hand, got a generous handout from the state of Indiana for choosing to build its battery manufacturing plant there.

=> ↺ Europe has spent more than $800 billion shielding citizens from the energy crisis

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Klamath Countdown: Researchers Hustle Before Largest Dam-Removal Project Begins

• To anticipate the impacts of a historic river restoration, we need to understand how salmon, bats, insects, algae and other parts of the ecosystem are behaving today.

=> ↺ Covid gave Hong Kong’s pink dolphins their habitat back, but risk from cross-border ferries has returned, says WWF

• The resumption of cross-border ferry services between Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China could place Hong Kong’s declining pink dolphin population at increased risk, an environmental group has warned.

Finance

=> ↺ Faced with possible delisting, Rigetti Computing lays off staff and updates technology roadmap

=> ↺ Twilio lets go 17% of employees in latest workforce reduction

=> ↺ Paxos ordered to stop issuing Binance stablecoin by NY regulator

=> ↺ Layoffs take their toll on tech’s most interesting projects

=> ↺ Google’s YouTube Music Workers Are on Strike

=> ↺ Why Are Layoffs Contagious?

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ TikTok creators might soon put some videos behind a paywall

=> ↺ Italy’s right-wing coalition wins landslide victory in regional elections

• Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her coalition allies secured emphatic election wins in the two wealthiest regions of the country on Monday, strengthening the right’s grip on power amid growing voter apathy.

=> ↺ Georgia judge allows release of portions of 2020 election interference grand jury report

• A Georgia Superior Court judge Monday issued an order directing the release of three portions of a Georgia special purpose grand jury’s report regarding alleged 2020 general election interference on February 16.

=> ↺ Twitter delays API changes again, this time ‘by a few more days’

=> ↺ Trump’s National Security Adviser Responded to an Attack on the Capitol by Sending Personal Tweets

• Robert O’Brien claims to remember virtually nothing about what he did on January 6. I’m sure that’s among the things that Jack Smith would like to question him about.

=> ↺ Alex Saab: The Businessman Inside the DEA Informant Inside the Claimed Venezuelan Diplomat Inside the Alleged Putin “Laundry Man”

• In testimony last August, Robert O’Brien suggested that a Colombian extradited on money laundering charges to the US in 2021 is “Vladimir Putin’s laundry man.”

=> ↺ With Twitter upended by Musk, these services see an opportunity

• After Sarah Oh lost her job as a human rights advisor at Twitter late last year in the first round of layoffs following Elon Musk’s chaotic acquisition of the company, she decided to join a friend in building a rival service.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Realistic newscasts feature AI-generated anchors disparaging the US

• CNN’s Selina Wang investigates the campaign of anti-US deepfake newscasts sent out by pro-China bot accounts on Twitter and Facebook, though their origin is unknown.

=> ↺ Disinformation Researchers Raise Alarms About A.I. Chatbots

• Researchers used ChatGPT to produce clean, convincing text that repeated conspiracy theories and misleading narratives.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ The Censoring of an Iranian American Artist

• How have we forgotten that art needn’t defer to religion?

=> ↺ Can the Feds Prosecute Douglass Mackey for His Twitter Trolling?

• Because of a series of misleading memes, a troll has been charged with conspiracy “to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

=> ↺ Arkansas Proposes Requiring ID to Watch Porn Online

• After a similar bill became law in Louisiana last month, seven more states have introduced copycat legislation that force users to show identification.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ CPJ joins calls to establish independent investigative mechanism for accountability in human rights violations in Belarus

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Ron DeSantis’ latest salvo against diversity

• In January, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced plans to ban the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American studies pilot course in his state, saying that the curriculum had a political agenda. The College Board has since revised the course amid a storm of controversy — and strong evidence that DeSantis’ administration had a direct influence on the decision to gut it. The outcome, sadly, has meant diminished national education standards for this vitally important coursework.

=> ↺ ‘Beyond Rhetoric’ project works to fight racism in Genesee County

• Flint-area leaders and public health researchers, including a UM-Flint faculty member, students  and U-M’s Poverty Solutions, are sharing their process for responding to racism as a public health crisis.

=> ↺ Myanmar: Political Parties Law Shackles Opposition

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Studying the conformance of MANRS members

Monopolies

=> ↺ “Nivolumab and pembrolizumab cases”: the French Supreme Court clarifies the interpretation of Article 3 of the SPC Regulation

• In a decision rendered on February 1st, 2023, the French Supreme Court (“Cour de cassation”) overturned the decisions of the Paris Court of Appeal which had confirmed the rejections by the French PTO (“INPI”) of the supplementary protection certificate (“SPC”) applications for nivolumab and pembrolizumab.

=> ↺ Apple is trying to avoid a possible EU fine of $39 billion

Patents

=> ↺ AI and Inventorship – USPTO Request for Comments

=> ↺ Standing to Challenge Inventorship

• Krzysztof Sywula’s story has some thematic elements of the Netflix Glass Onion show.  As he tells it, Sywula was at the Santorini Island Grill with Alexis DaCosta &  Vincent Coletti talking about creating an improved app for ride sharing.  During one of the meetings, Sywula apparently sketched-out a diagram on a napkin that he gave to DaCosta and that eventually served as a basis for the patent filings in this case.  The parties continued to work together for several more years with Sywula eventually becoming the CTO.  Then came the patenting.  Sywula was excluded from being listed as an inventor on the patents, including US11087250 and US11087252; and that was upsetting.

Copyrights

=> ↺ This Tool Could Protect Artists From A.I. Image Generators

• Artists want to be able to post their work online without the fear “of feeding this monster” that could replace them.

=> ↺ GitHub, Electronic Frontier Foundation File Amicus Briefs in Yout-RIAA Legal Battle

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ 2023 Week 6: Status and Photos

• Rob’s Capsule has been fairly quiet in the last week as other projects, both real and virtual, have taken priority. I am still here, however, and I have no intentions of stopping updates anytime soon.

Technical

=> ↺ A FreeBSD Post Installation Script

• So I wrote a FreeBSD post-installation script that tunes the system for desktop use and downloads some essential packages and sets up a nice looking icewm session for the user to enjoy.

Science

=> ↺ The mysterious black behemoths controlling our galaxies

• By Anthony King It was only last year that astronomers were finally able to unveil the first pictures of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. But you couldn’t actually see the black hole itself, not directly.

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