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● 03.09.23

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● Links 09/03/2023: Mesa 22.3.7, Samba 4.18.0, Peek Discontinued

Posted in News Roundup at 9:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ mesa 22.3.7

Applications

=> ↺ Peek Animated GIF Screen Recorder Discontinued!

• Peek, the popular animated GIF screen recorder application, has been discontinued! It was one of my most favorite applications, that provides an easy to use interface for recording rectangle screen area into animated GIF.

=> ↺ Samba 4.18.0 Available for Download

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ openSUSE finds an elegant solution to x86-64 version support

• SUSE, and the openSUSE project it sponsors, has a way around the issue of optimizing its distro for specific versions of the x86-64 architecture.

• This new move was announced last week and will, hopefully, resolve the issues over x86-64 support that have been causing dissent in the distros’ communities. Back in July we reported that SUSE’s new ALP distro might need x86-64-v3. Then, later, the rolling-release Tumbleweed distro considered requiring x86-64-v2. Apparently, though, enough users still ran older kit that didn’t support v2 and complained that the project leaders backed down and decided the new requirement would be dropped.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Flathub Vying to Become the Standard Linux App Store

• Linux has a plethora of package managers and app stores. There’s apt, dnf, yum, zypper, pacman, GNOME Software, Discover, and Synaptic.

• For modern Linux distributions, however, you can also add Snap and Flatpak into the mix. Those last two have, for some time, struggled to gain much traction. However, over the past couple of years, those universal package managers have finally gained considerable popularity.

• But only one of those tools is vying to become the de facto standard app store for Linux.

=> ↺ Big data basics: What sysadmins need to know

• Learn what big data is, how data is processed and visualized, and key big data terms to know.

=> ↺ 4 ways for CIOs to strike a balance between operation and innovation

• CIOs are often teetering between striving for innovation and maintaining operational excellence. With a potential recession on the horizon and lingering complications from the pandemic, what is the best way to strike a balance between the two? “CIOs are empowering everyone to challenge the status quo daily and providing the digital acumen and psychological safety required for teams to thrive in a culture of continuous improvement, experimentation, and rapid innovation,” according to Red Hat CIO Jim Palermo in our latest report in partnership with HBR Analytic Services.

=> ↺ Bridging the IT gender divide: 3 key considerations

• The lack of diversity in the technology industry is a persistent structural issue. Despite companies’ increasing investment in diversity efforts, the number of women in technical roles sits at 26 percent globally.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Dodepan: Lo-Fi Raspberry Pi Pico Music Maker

• Making chilled out beats with the Raspberry Pi Pico, this project is both a portable music maker and MIDI instrument.

=> ↺ CYBER: The Great Balloon Panic Has Been Weird But Good for Balloon Hobbyists

• The amateur ballooning community has experienced a wave of interest after the U.S. went on a balloon killing spree.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Billions of Android users warned to check phones for ‘bank drain’ apps right now – they’ll steal everything they can | The US Sun

=> ↺ Telegram’s new mode improves performance and battery life for Android devices

=> ↺ How to mirror an Android device on your TV – CNET

=> ↺ 11 Lesser-Known Android Tips to Make Your Life Easier

=> ↺ The Strange Swiveling Android Phone That Didn’t Quite Cut It

=> ↺ Android phones could soon get a hefty performance boost | T3

=> ↺ The new itel A60 is the company’s most affordable smartphone yet – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ BMW will be using Android in the cars starting this year!

=> ↺ Google Claims Android Smartphones Will Be Safer in 2023: Here’s How

=> ↺ Best Android smartwatch for your android phones – Times of India (March, 2023)

=> ↺ Google Keep ‘Single note’ widget rolling out on Android

=> ↺ OnePlus Nord CE Gets Android 13-based OxygenOS 13 Update

=> ↺ OxygenOS 13 (Android 13) update and bugs tracker (cont. updated)

=> ↺ Android 14 Developer Preview 2 Available for Google Pixel Phones – CNET

=> ↺ Android 14: latest news, rumors and everything we know so far | TechRadar

=> ↺ Android 14 Will Crack Down on Task Killers and Other Bogus “Speed Booster” Apps

=> ↺ POCO F3 Finally Receives MIUI 14 Based on Android 13 Update

Leftovers

Hardware

=> ↺ Feds Investigating Tesla For Making Cars With Steering Wheels That Fall Off

• Some Tesla Model Ys are being shipped without a bolt that keeps the steering wheel in place, according to the announcement.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ World’s oceans contain 170 trillion plastic particles, study says

• Research collated data from several marine regions, including the Pacific.

=> ↺ US intel chief: Agencies ‘divided’ over COVID origins

• Senate also told that TikTok ‘enables our adversaries’ efforts at espionage’ amid moves to ban the platform.

=> ↺ How China takes extreme measures to keep teens off TikTok

• China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. As I often say, the American people and the Chinese people have much more in common than either side likes to admit.

=> ↺ Hormone Sobers Up Drunken Mice: Study

• A hormone naturally induced by alcohol consumption accelerates the recovery of mice after binge drinking by activating neurons involved in arousal and alertness.

=> ↺ Molecular Biologist Michael Green Dies at 69

• Beyond his achievements in academia, he also cofounded three pharmaceutical companies and filed 15 patents related to cancer therapeutics.

=> ↺ Finally, Scientists Sequence Single Cells with Long-Read Technology

• By combining two innovative approaches, researchers can now sequence the full spectrum of mutational differences between individual cells’ genomes.

=> ↺ [Humor] I’m Sick All Year Round, but I’m Also Ripped: Meet the Coughing Guy at Your Gym

• I’m one neck muscle away from being unable to tilt my head down, and I’m not going to stop now just because you might catch what I have.

Security

=> ↺ Monetising hacking by shorting commodity shipments

• I’m continually asked by the maritime industry about the motivations of hackers.

=> ↺ Acer Hacker Seeks Highest Bidder for 160GB of Data

• Acer has confirmed that data from an internal server has been leaked, after a hacker claimed to have grabbed 160GB of digital swag. Customer data should not be present in this leak.

=> ↺ 3 Types of Vulnerability Scanners Explained

• Vulnerability scanners — also known as vulnerability assessments — are automated, digital solutions specifically designed to identify vulnerabilities and gaps in an organization’s website, application, and network security systems.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Revised DPDI Bill poses even greater threat to privacy rights in the UK

• Open Rights Group has responded to the publication of a new draft of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. The revised Bill fails to address the privacy concerns raised by civil society, and in fact expands the ways that businesses and government bodies can process, use and re-use our data.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Belgium, Slovenia join Lithuanian-coordinated EU cyber force

• Belgium and Slovenia on Wednesday signed a diplomatic note and officially joined the Lithuania-coordinated cyber rapid response force, the Baltic country’s Ministry of Defence said.

=> ↺ Lithuanian government considers law on barring Russian travellers

• The Lithuanian government wants the parliament to pass a separate law restricting travel of Russian and Belarusian citizens, something which is now imposed under a state of emergency resolution that needs to be periodically extended.

=> ↺ Lithuania moves to recognise Russia’s Wagner as terrorist organisation

• A draft resolution will be submitted to the Lithuanian Seimas with a proposal to recognise Wagner, a private Russian military company, as a terrorist organisation.

=> ↺ Georgians Protest Against ‘Foreign Influence’ Bill

• The new norm sets fines and jail sentences for directors of media outlets and NGOs that receive funds from other countries.

=> ↺ EU defence ministers hash out plan for sending more ammunition to Ukraine

• EU defence ministers on Wednesday discussed plans to raid their stockpiles to rush one billion euros’ worth of ammunition to Ukraine and place joint orders for more to ensure supplies keep flowing.

=> ↺ Swedish government submits ‘historic’ Nato bill to parliament

• Sweden on Wednesday set a preliminary date for parliament to vote on the government’s bid to join Nato.

=> ↺ EU defence ministers hash out plan for sending more ammunition to Ukraine

• EU defence ministers on Wednesday discussed plans to raid their stockpiles to rush one billion euros’ worth of ammunition to Ukraine and place joint orders for more to ensure supplies keep flowing.

=> ↺ Russian Soldiers Are Attacking Ukrainians With Shovels, UK Intelligence Says

• Russia is running out of ammunition, and some of its troops are relying on an iconic 19th century weapon of war.

=> ↺ Baltic ministers warn Georgia against ‘foreign agent’ law

• The foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia said on Wednesday that a bill on “foreign agents” being deliberated in Georgia raises “serious questions” about the country’s democratic prospects.

=> ↺ EU Agrees To Push Ahead On Joint Arms Buying To Aid Ukraine

• European Union countries agreed on March 8 to speed up supplies of artillery rounds and buy more shells to help Ukraine, but they still have to work out how to turn these aims into reality.

=> ↺ Russian Blogger Jailed For Covering Ukraine War Recognized As A Prisoner Of Conscience By Amnesty International

• Amnesty International has recognized as a prisoner of conscience Moscow student Dmitry Ivanov, who was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison on a charge of discrediting Russia’s armed forces.

=> ↺ NATO Chief Admits Bakhmut May Fall ‘In Coming Days’

• NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the devastated eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut may fall into Russian hands in the coming days following months of intense fighting.

=> ↺ UN Believes Video Of Ukrainian Soldier’s Killing ‘May Be Authentic’

• The UN Human Rights Office said on March 8 that it believes that a viral video showing what it called the apparent execution of a captured soldier after saying “Glory to Ukraine” may be authentic.

=> ↺ Berlin Warns Against Hasty Accusations After Nord Stream Reports

• German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned against premature accusations on March 8 after a media report said intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials indicated that a pro-Ukrainian group was behind last year’s attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

Environment

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Battery storage market predictions are trickier than ever

• Much of the current movement to decarbonize the grid involves installing many gigawatts of battery-based energy storage. Lithium-ion technology is leading the way with breathtaking advances that are addressing everything from improved performance to strategies to mitigate the risk of fires. But the rapid development is causing numerous challenges.

=> ↺ Digital technology: The backbone of a net-zero emissions future

• The urgency of the global transition to a net-zero economy, focused on solutions that enable the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, cannot be overstated.

Finance

=> ↺ Wall Street subdued ahead of US jobs data

• The S&P 500 index has edged lower as investors grapple with mixed messages from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and United States economic data ahead of the release of labour and inflation reports. Stocks fell sharply on Tuesday after Powell told US lawmakers the Fed would likely need to raise interest rates more than expected.

=> ↺ Fewer people receive benefits in Denmark despite rising unemployment

• The number of people in Denmark who receive the basic form of unemployment benefit, kontanthjælp, fell in the final quarter of last year.

=> ↺ Intel Seeks Additional $5 Billion in Subsidies for German Fab

• Intel has requested an additional $5 billion for its Germany fab as inflation drives the cost of leading-edge fabs even higher.

=> ↺ Fears pensions are being overlooked in DIY divorces

• Some spouses could lose out on thousands if pensions aren’t split during a divorce

=> ↺ Housing crisis in Finland: A study finds unprecedented increases in housing costs across the country

• Housing costs in Finland are rising at an unprecedented pace, according to a recent study by the Finnish Homeowners Association. The study found that local fees and charges are continuing to rise, with the highest increase in housing costs occurring in Kalajoki in the province of Northern Ostrobothnia, where costs have risen by almost €3,700 ($4,400) in just one year. On average, housing costs have risen by €1,671 ($1,989) in the past year, including electricity, water, and waste disposal charges, as well as property taxes.

=> ↺ House prices have returned to pre-pandemic levels, says economist at OP

• HOUSE PRICES in Finland continued to slide in January.

• Statistics Finland on Thursday released preliminary data indicating that the prices of old dwellings in housing companies dropped by 5.3 per cent year-on-year and 2.4 per cent month-on-month in January.  The year-on-year drop stood at 5.5 per cent in the six largest cities and at 4.8 per cent in other localities across the country.

=> ↺ 7 ways to prepare for an interest rate rise

• With another likely base rate rise on the way, find out how to get your finances ready

=> ↺ Laos’ inflation surges over 40% in February

• Drastic price surge comes despite government steps to limit imports and money-changing

=> ↺ 3.5 Million French Protested Against Pension Reform Plan

• On Tuesday evening, major French unions held an emergency meeting in Paris, where they agreed on two fresh demonstrations on March 11 and 15.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Apple App store and Google Play flooded with fake reviews

• Analysis of nearly a million reviews reveals how apps could be gaming the biggest app stores to mislead consumers

=> ↺ Online abuse toll means fifth of women journalists considered leaving industry

• Almost half of the women said they promote their work less online and 10% had asked for their byline to be removed.

=> ↺ Channel 4 News journalist Ciaran Jenkins to lead new data and digital Fact Check unit in Leeds

• Ciaran Jenkins is leaving his role of Scotland correspondent to become data correspondent and presenter.

=> ↺ The Origins of Netanyahu’s “All-Systems Assault” on Israeli Democracy

• A new coalition has brought extremist politics into the mainstream, but undemocratic strains go back to the country’s founding.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ The (mis)information age: How harm stemming from misinformation can be reduced

• As we look to stay informed in an age when we are constantly hounded with new information, the truth can be hard to find. Social media’s ability to inform people about different emergencies and developments, oftentimes before official news outlets report it, has created the potential for the everyday person to become a news source.

=> ↺ Weaponized incompetence is deeper than a TikTok trend

• TikTok trends come and go, but one that I can’t stop thinking about is “weaponized incompetence.” The template for this trend is quite simple: Show how poorly tasks are done when the person expected to do them is simply incompetent.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ The “Woke History” Wars

• Emma Green discusses a major debate in academia about whether contemporary politics are shaping our understanding of the past too much.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ World Uyghur Congress nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

• Group recognized for shedding light on Chinese repression of 11 million Uyghurs.

=> ↺ UN human rights chief: China has arbitrarily detained Uyghurs, separated families

• Turk also raises concerns about Tibetans, Hongkongers.

=> ↺ International Women’s Day: We must challenge discrimination women face across the digital landscape

• This International Women’s Day, ORG is celebrating the critical contributions made by the women on our staff (and all women across the digital rights space) to making technology, and in turn the world, more equitable, diverse, and inclusive.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ ‘They’re Probably Celebrating at Comcast:’ Democrats Fumbled Their Shot at a Better Internet

• A relentless industry smear campaign and a comically-corrupt Congress made short work of Gigi Sohn for FCC Commissioner.

=> ↺ BT set to expand rollout of Digital Voice

• It will restart migrating a small number of customers to its digital landline service from April

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ EPO commemorates International Women’s Day

• Theme for 2023 puts spotlight on innovation and gender equality

Trademarks

=> ↺ Three Recent TTAB Inter Partes Decisions, Briefly Noted.

• Here are three recent TTAB rulings in three inter partes proceedings: a Section 2(d) case, a Section 2(e)(1) mere descriptiveness case, and a Section 2(f) case. I present only the bottom line outcome in each, inviting you, dear reader, to explore the further if you are so inclined.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ conflicted

• i’ve never had a hard time making decisions. when conflicted with two options, i always chose fast and logically. this is why this situation i’ve encountered myself in is quite odd for me.

• i don’t remember the last time i couldn’t make a decision swiftly. i’m debating wether i should let a random chance choose for me.

=> ↺ Abyss of links

• If your capsule has URLs with numbers in them, and the resulting pages have a link to “next” that adds a constant to the current number, you have this issue, and crawlers may well crawl all the possible numbers. I found another one of these that accepted very big numbers indeed, up to the point where it gave an error about not being able to translate a string to a number.

=> ↺ Well-defined Blacks and Stark Whites

• I soaked up myriad musings stretching back to the dawn of the universe as I sat on that bench. I was the babe without a single drop of remembrance. I absorbed and penned a novel about the collective consciousness of every being that ever crossed the perimeter of the park. I experienced once again that one must remind oneself to clear the mind completely when traversing a space one has traversed before. If not, the danger of letting one’s own past interfere in the current moment looms.

• What I was trying to say, surely, in a non-elliptical tangle, was that it’d be groovy were the park an accumulator of memories from all that traversed it. A container of sorts. Given that, I’ll write about something tangential to it.

=> ↺ Spring is here!

• Formally is is still winter (night temperatures are still often under zero degrees) but during daytime temperatures are going over 10C here and my spring allergy is back once more.

• It seems that I wrote no phlog after the last SDF server OS upgrade (to the NetBSD 9.3) because only no I realised that the par(1) is not installed.

=> ↺ The Nature of Home

• I’ve found myself in Nightfall City during a layover on my journey back to my hometown, so I figured I’d take a break from typing away in some old office suite on my Motorola Droid Pro and hop into the pub while I’m here.

• Throughout my travels today, the nature of what home is has been on my mind. As a college student, studying hundreds of miles away from where I grew up, it’s a peculiar split. On the one hand, my hometown is an integral part of my identity, It’s where my partner, parents, brother, and dog are. It’s the central point where I can see all my friends who scatter to various corners of the country most of the year. It’s the place I go back to so I can connect to all of the people that are close to my heart.

Politics

=> ↺ Integration

• In Swedish politics, the faction (the blue-brown alliance of KD, M, L, and SD) that has claimed “integration and immigration” as their main talking point has policies that are the opposite of integration.

Technical

=> ↺ Low Tech in the Midwest

• The double-whammy of a warmer planet and a cooler economy has renewed my interest in reducing my consumption of resources and my impact on the world around me. To that end, I spent the last few evenings reading many posts at Low Tech Magazine ^, a site dedicated to identifying problems caused by modern technology and proposing low-tech solutions to them.

• Some of the ideas proffered by the site made me consider some of the particular challenges I face. I live in the American Midwest, not far from a large metropolis, and conditions in the area seem a tough fit for a number of the site’s proposals.

=> ↺ Hypocrisy of enterprise IT security

• Quick rant. In work I’ve been debuging issue with some customers. Recently we updated how our virtual camera works on MacOS. Before we use the DAL interface and now switched to the more secure system extension. DAL works more like how Windows implements virtual camera using Direct Show. The system loads a dynamic library into apps that wants to use it. There’s obvious problems, any DAL plugin can execute arbitrary code at that point. Including reading the process’s memory and steal confidential information. Also, since DAL is executing as another app. You need a daemon to transport video frames from source to destination.

• So Apple introduced the new API, System extensions. It runs the extension in it’s own “sandbox” (ignoring technical details here) and the system does the IPC. Basically a microkernel design so app developers can have low level access to the system while keeping system integrity. Extension can’t read anything it shouldn’t. After we released this upgrade. Some of our enterprice customers started to complain that they can’t install the system extension. We did soem debugging with them. Turns out MDM software can and commonly will block 3rd party system extensions from loading.

=> ↺ Losing Signal

• Warning to my friends : Until further notice, consider I’m not receiving your Signal messages.

• Signal, the messaging system, published a blog post on how we were all different and they were trying to adapt to those differences. Signal was for everyone, told the title. Ironically, that very same day, I’ve lost access to my signal account. We are all different, they said. Except myself.

=> ↺ Loopy links 🔄

• One thing I found by looking at where my #hashtag crawler went was that some people have a bottomless pit of links.

• The first one I saw was someone exposing a repository of the site content. That included a link to the content itself. Not a link to the actual site, but to the copy of it in the repo. That had a repo link, where you could find a site link, and so on. I spotted this when it got to several levels of site/repo/site/repo/site/repo and told the crawler to give up. I’m mildy curious how deep that could go. I suppose it’s limited by the maximum length of a gemini request (assuming that either the server or the client respected that limit).

=> ↺ Re: Why it’s bad that the web is so feature-rich

• The thing I really hate about stage 4 web (to borrow idiomdrottning’s terminology) is being gaslit by webdevs about accessibility, especially as it relates to JavaScript. When I bring up the topic, it’s like, “JavaScript isn’t harmful for accessibility. In fact, the web is inaccessible without JS.” Yeah, I much prefer being able to use the web with command-line tooling and other comfortable tools. But the thing often doesn’t even work from the environments that web designers and developers insist that I use.

• This morning, I’ve asked Deedra to pay our Internet bill, because I couldn’t manage it with either Firefox or Chromium on Linux. She tried Brave on Linux, and now she’s booted into a Windows VM. If Windows browsers don’t work, I’ll try my phone. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try Safari on her iPhone.

=> ↺ Video Switch hack

• It seems that I can’t concentrate on software much these days.

• A friend had asked me to see what I can do with a broken 80′s video switch with about 100 lit pushbuttons. Ah, I remember seeing one of these at a high-end studio back in the day. I found myself drawn to it. How does one light up dozens of incandescent lamps with a microcontroller?

• Well, all the lights were blown out, so I stuck LEDs into the switches. Reverse engineering the board I traced past the drivers to flip-flops for the lamps — and it worked. I McGivered these into a shift register through creative soldering and lead-clipping, but it the thing was unreliable and after replacing a few chips I gave up on in-circuit modification. I think that someone attached a 12-volt power supply to 5-volt logic, blowing out every lamp and making the logic flaky.

Programming

=> ↺ Returns

• I’ve got an old macbook air. The “Enter” key also says “Return” on it. An old Smith-Corona that lives near my desk also has a “Return” key. My PC just says “Enter” at me. Neither word makes a lot of sense in the modern world, but I think “Return” makes more.

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