● 02.02.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 3/2/2022: System76 Scheduler and GStreamer 1.18.6

Posted in News Roundup at 8:53 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• Linux-based laptop OEM System76 is updating the Kudu lineup with a 2022 model that combines the high-end performance of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX APU with the mid-range Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU and the versatility of a Linux distro. Users can choose among System76’s proprietary Pop!_OS versions or the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

• Besides the powerful APU and GPU combo, the latest Kudu6 laptops feature 15.6-inch screens with 1080p resolution and 144 Hz refresh rate, up to 64 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, and up to 4 TB of NVMe SSD storage via 2x M.2 slots. Connectivity includes 2.5 GbE + Wi-Fi 6 + BT 5, while the system can support up to three external video sources through a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with DP 1.4, miniDP 1.4 connector, plus an HDMI video out.

• Additionally, there are ports such as 1x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1x USB-A 3.2 Gen and 1x USB 2.0, plus audio jacks. The new model weighs 4.85 lbs (2.2 kg) and comes equipped with a rather small 48.96 Wh battery. Standard features like a 720p webcam and multi-color keyboard are offered, as well.

• Price-wise, the base model with 8 GB of RAM and 240 GB storage starts at US$1,799, while a fully equipped model that includes mechanical keys and carrying bag would cost $US3,906.

• Quietly making its v1.0 debut today is system76-scheduler as a Rust-written daemon aiming to improve Linux desktop responsiveness and catering to their Pop!_OS distribution.

• System76 Scheduler describes itself as…

• Denver-based System76 welcomes back a familiar face to their laptop lineup with the Kudu.

• System76 has finally brought back the popular Kudu laptop workstation powerhouse. This time around the laptop is equipped with a 3rd-gen AMD (Zen 3) Ryzen 9 5900HX H-class processor with 8 cores and 16 threads. The CPU runs at 3.3 GHz but can be boosted up to 4.6 GHz.

• The Kudu is paired with NVIDIA RTX 3060 graphics and up to 64GB of Dual Channel DDR4 memory.

• According to Ben Shpurker, Product Manager at System76, “This combination makes it the perfect machine for creating on the go.”

• The 15″ FHD matte display and a thin bezel, but for creators of all kinds, the Kudu laptop can manage up to three external displays with one HDMI port, one mini DisplayPort, and one DisplayPort over USB-C.

• We’ve already featured serious Linux distros like distros for servers and distros for programming. Now, it’s time to blow off some steam with a few funny Linux distros and software.

• All of these Linux distros and software are actually usable, and they have a funny spin to them. We won’t include unique distros like Damn Vulnerable Linux, GoboLinux, or certain religious Linux distros. We might create a different list for them. In this article, we’ll only feature funny distros and software that are just a meme.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Regular Hackaday readers will know that we’re big supporters of free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) around these parts. There’s an excellent chance you are too, as so many of the incredible projects you send our way make it a habit to share their innermost details, from firmware source code to the OpenSCAD files that generate its 3D printed components. So when our recently minted Editor in Chief [Elliot Williams] was invited to join This Week in Tech’s FLOSS Weekly podcast, he jumped at the chance to represent our little corner of the Internet to the wider world of open source aficionados.

• Hackaday.com is what its new editor-in-chief, Elliot Williams, calls “a library of Alexandra for fugitive hacks”—and that’s just one of the many deep and quotable things he shares with Doc Searls and co-host Jonathan Bennett, who is also a veteran Hackaday writer. Topics range from hackable gizmo and the hacker mindset, to how great open firmware hacks become bait for cool new hackable products coming out of China.

Kernel Space

• The Linux kernel patches that alow bringing up x86_64 CPU cores in parallel when booting the system have been revised for faster boot times on today’s systems from high core count desktops to massive servers.

• This patch series led by longtime kernel developer David Woodhouse is about allowing secondary x86_64 CPU cores to be brought up in parallel. While prior versions of the patch series noted a 15x speed-up, his testing of the new “v4″ patches on other hardware is showing a drop from around 500ms down to 100ms.

• ACPI Platform Profile support on Linux has been useful for catering to balancing your power or performance preferences with modern laptops on Linux. It has worked well in general across various devices tested but it turns out to be a dud currently when it comes to AMD Ryzen powered Lenovo systems.

• ACPI Platform Profile support allows setting the power/balance/power-savings preference (among other possible profiles) on Linux with recent kernel activity that so far has seen major support available for major laptop brands like Lenovo, Dell, and ASUS. The user’s profile preference can be set via a sysfs interface or desktops like KDE Plasma and GNOME have already added convenient user interfaces for setting it nicely from the system settings area.

Graphics Stack

• Finally, NVIDIA 510.47.03 proprietary graphics driver is available for Linux-based operating systems. In this driver software, you can find support for Linux 5.17 kernel series and support for the d Vulkan 1.3 graphics API.

• Nothing too exciting. Mostly bug fixes. I managed to sneak ARB_sparse_texture_clamp in for zink just before the branchpoint, so all the sparse texturing features supported by Mesa will be supported by zink. But only on NVIDIA since they’re the only driver that fully supports Vulkan sparse texturing.

• The past couple days I’ve been doing some truly awful things with gl_PointSize to try and make this conformant for all possible cases. It’s a real debacle, and I’ll probably post more in-depth about it so everyone can get a good chuckle.

Intel

• While Intel has not publicly announced their plans around Software Defined Silicon (SDSi), the Linux kernel patches allowing activation of licensed CPU features is continuing to move forward toward mainline integration.

• Intel today is announcing Project Circuit Breaker as a broadening of its bug bounty program for “elite hackers” to help discover areas for improvement within Intel’s hardware/software security.

• Intel’s open-source “ANV” Vulkan driver for Linux systems now has experimental support for mesh shaders that work with their forthcoming Intel Arc DG2/Alchemist graphics cards.

Applications

• I really like XMPP, but I’m a little unhappy about the current general situation of XMPP. I think XMPP could do better if there were some benefits of having an XMPP address. For me one of those benefits is to have the option to have just one address I need to communicate to others. If everything is in place and well-configured, a user can be reached by mail, XMPP and SIP (voice/video calls) by just one address.

• To address this I would like to see XMPP support in mail clients (MUAs). So when you reply to a mail or write a new one, the client will do a lookup in your addressbook if the address has an XMPP field associated with it and (if not) do a DNS lookup for _xmpp-server._tcp.example.com (or the matching domain part of recipients address). If there is an XMPP address listed in mail header, that JID will be used. When the lookup is successful and an xmpp: protocol handler is configured in the system, the MUA offers an option to begin a chat with the recipient and/or displays the presence status of the recipients (depending on available web-presence or presence subscription).

• Note taking. This is one of those things that everyone does, and often, in a rather unique, individual way. Some people leave themselves reminders using physical sticky notes glued to the door of their fridge. Others have reminders in their calendar. Others yet keep information in text files on their desktop. Or you hire a person whose job is to do it for you. Many ways indeed. How about a dedicated tool?

• [...]

• ‘Tis a short review, I admit. But then, Standard Notes delivered on its promise. It’s a program that helps you keep a bunch of notes sorted and organized, you can tag your notes, protect them in case they contain sensitive information, and if you go for a full account, you can then also back them up online. Quite handy.

• Now, does that mean my days of desktop files are over? Well, no. There’s one more thing that notes are supposed to do – constantly remind you of what you should be doing. Hence the desktopness of the whole idea, in me book. But then, you can also have calendar reminders, alerts and alarms, and you could just keep notes of practical things worth remembering, in which case, notes become bookmarks, citations, or diaries. I don’t think I can solve the bigger philosophical problem of how people are meant to work with notes. If you like it tidy, Standard Notes does a pretty decent job. And we’re done.

Instructionals/Technical

• I have been working with a lot of edge devices and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) clients lately and one of the issues that I have encountered is that many of these devices have built-in Wi-Fi that I need to monitor and gather information about.

• Because many edge devices run Linux — which in turn means a wide variety of Linux versions and GUI interfaces that each supports — I have found it easier to use the command line to monitor the Wi-Fi of these devices.

• In this article, I will show you some of the command-line tools that I use to monitor Wi-Fi NICs on Linux edge devices.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install osTicket Ticketing system on Ubuntu 22.04/Ubuntu 20.04. osTicket is an opensource ticketing system.

• Today we are looking at how to install Crab Game by Dani 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.

• This tutorial will only work on Chromebooks with an Intel or AMD CPU (with Linux Apps Support) and not those with an ARM64 architecture CPU.

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Inkscape on Zorin OS 16. Enjoy!

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Lighttpd on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, Lighttpd is a free, open-source, and high-performance web server designed for speed-critical environments. Lighttpd doesn’t require a lot of memory and CPU usage which makes it one of the best servers for any project that needs speed in deploying web pages. Moreover, it also provides full support for HTTPS.

• 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 a Lighttpd on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).

• MongoDB is one of the most renowned NoSQL Database Engines. It is widely regarded as a Database that is highly powerful, scalable, and reliable to use. MongoDB leverages JSON-like documents with optional schemas to function efficiently. MongoDB supports a unique Document-based Data Model that helps developers map data and code. MongoDB further empowers application development by providing a unified and robust API for querying.

• MongoDB lets you optimize, scale, and deploy your applications seamlessly with built-in sharding, replication, performance tools, and indexing to help you run confidently in production. MongoDB ensures that your performance SLAs are met in any conducive environment irrespective of whether it’s 450 million users around the world or your first customer.

• In this video, I am going to show how to install Manjaro 21.2.2

• This blog post is about installing Magento 2.4 with OpenLiteSpeed as a web server on Ubuntu 20.04 OS.

• Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP that uses multiple PHP frameworks such as Symfony and Laminas. OpenLiteSpeed is an open-source web server that offers high performance, security and can be used for handling huge traffic for the website. Magento with a combination of OpenLiteSpeed can provide a very powerful and fast website performance.

• For this setup, we will need about 30 minutes for everything to be configured properly. Let’s get started!

• Linux whatis command is used to display the brief manual page description of Linux commands. The manual page contains a detailed description of each specified command or option. So, we can say that it helps you to provide a quick short description of a Linux command. It searches for the arguments from its index databases that are provided with the whatis command to view the short manual page description.

• We will explore in this article what is the purpose of the whatis command. We can use whatis along with different options.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• The GStreamer team is pleased to announce another bug fix release in the stable 1.18 release series of your favourite cross-platform multimedia framework!

• This release only contains bugfixes and security fixes, and it should be safe to update from 1.18.x.

• I completed my 2nd term on the board of the GNOME Foundation, and wrote a report summarizing my duties that year. At the end of these two terms, I decided to leave the GNOME Foundation board, as I felt like I had accomplished what I had to accomplish, and because I wanted to get back some balance in my personal life, as well as the ability to focus on my other non-profit work and professional duties.

• Some of the first abstractions we made when creating GNOME Builder are now available to everyone in GObject!

• In particular, writing Text Editors requires tracking lots of information and changes from various sources. Sometimes those changes come from 2nd-degree objects via the object you really care about.

• For example, with a GtkTextView that might mean tracking changes to a GtkTextBuffer, GtkTextTagTable, or many other application-specific accessory objects through the form of signals and properties.

Distributions

New Releases

• Tiny Core Linux has been updated to v13.0, following its recently established annual cadence. This veteran ultra light Linux distribution is remarkably compact by today’s standards, requiring a mere 22MB download. However, it installs and presents the user with a fully graphical UI, with a modern Linux kernel, and allows you to install and run modern applications (but keep it simple if you install this OS due to your PC being ancient).

Arch Family

• We are very happy to announce that debug packages are now available in Arch Linux. Debug symbols and source listing are provided through our debuginfod instance which can be utilized by debuggers such as gdb and delve. https://debuginfod.archlinux.org/ A couple of sponsored mirrors are providing the debug repositories while we figure out and communicate the new mirror requirements.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

• My colleague Madeline Peck have the same laptop that we each got late this past fall. It’s the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 6, and it is a dream computer, with integrated Wacom screen and stylus

• Recently though, Madeline noticed the cursor was a bit off from where she placed the stylus on the screen. The issue only seemed to be happening in Krita, but was enough to cause an issue. I suggested trying the GNOME Wacom calibration tool in GNOME Settings, thinking that even though there was a slim chance it’d help (since the issue only affected Krita), at the very least it wouldn’t do any harm and might improve the X,Y calibration of the tablet.

• It threw the calibration off a good 4 inches. Repeated calibrations using the tool didn’t improve the issue.

Debian Family

•  Raspberry Pi has been using 64-bit processors for its tiny, low-cost computers since the organization launched the Raspberry Pi 3 in early 2016. But up until now the official Raspberry Pi OS has been 32-bit only.

• Now, after months of beta testing, the folks at Raspberry Pi have released the first official build of Raspberry Pi OS that’s available in either 32-bit or 64-bit versions.

• Massive good news for the Raspberry lover as the Raspberry Pi OS 64 bit edition is now available for download. Raspberry Pi OS was available only as a 32-bit operating system.

• Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4), Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 (CM3), Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ (CM3+), Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi 400, Raspberry Pi 3A+, Raspberry Pi 3B+, and Raspberry Pi 3B will support Raspberry Pi OS.

• The 1st monthly Sparky project and donate report of 2022: – Linux kernel updated up to 5.16.4 & 5.17-rc1 – Added to repos: Signal Desktop, Mullvad VPN – NsCDE Desktop updated up to 2.0 (twice); debs built for amd64, i386, armhf & arm64 – all sparky services, including repos moved to a new, bigger server – mirror de1.repo.sparkylinux.org canceled – Sparky 5.16 Nibiru of the oldstable line released – Sparky Center LXDE updated so can be installed back to LXDE desktop

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Linux server management is an integration of cybersecurity and business objectives. Linux server management at scale is a vastly different activity from interacting with a terminal on one machine. The best Linux server management tools universally offer a server management GUI within a web browser. Implementation details matter, especially in a pay-for-compute world. Sysadmin tools that don’t have a lightweight footprint increase overall compute costs. Some of the most popular open source and free Linux server management tools scale poorly, when managing more than one machine. Requiring system administrators to perform the same tasks repetitiously across several machines increases the time it takes to manage the entire estate. Beyond inefficiency, manual administration also introduces risks associated with human error. Server management should be automated as much as possible, through policy-aware tooling that can define when different groups of machines get patched.

• The hardware powering Celestium is located in NASA’s part of the ISS. The servers run Ubuntu Linux, with a custom kernel designed to operate on resource-constrained systems.

• Despite its seemingly playful nature, the project has a very serious goal: to demonstrate data storage, onboard processing, and edge of network computing as a prototype of lunar-based cloud services.

• The NFTs minted by Celestium won’t be sold for cash. In order to receive the tokens, individuals must contribute images to a collaborative artwork that will be sent into space in March 2022 as a contemporary portrayal of humanity. They can then exchange their ‘fungible tokens’ into NFTs that signify the ownership of a specific asteroid, and its accompanying AI-generated image.

Devices/Embedded

• JetHome’s $52-and-up “JetHub H1” and $57-and-up, DIN-rail ready “JetHub D1” home automation hubs run Linux on Amlogic S905W and A113X SoCs, respectively, and provide 10/100 LAN, WiFi/BT, USB, and Zigbee. The D1 adds RS485, 1-Wire, relays, and more.

• St. Petersburg, Russia based JetHome has launched a pair of low-cost, Arm-based automation controllers with Fast Ethernet, WiFi/Bluetooth, and Zigbee connectivity. The more affordable JetHome JetHub H1 is focused on basic home automation while the more I/O-rich, DIN-rail form-factor JetHome JetHub D1 supports more sophisticated automation networks.

• We cover a lot of cyberdeck projects here at Hackaday, custom portable computers often built around the Raspberry Pi. It’s not often that we cover a computer that perfectly achieves and exceeds what a cyberdeck is trying to do without being a cyberdeck in any way, but that’s what [Subir Bhaduri] has done. In addressing the need for Indian schoolchildren to catch up on two years of COVID-disrupted schooling he’s created the pπ, a Raspberry Pi, projector, and keyboard all-in-one computer in a neat sheet-metal case that looks as though it might be just another set of spanners or similar. At a stroke he’s effortlessly achieved the ultimate cyberdeck, because this machine is no sci-fi prop, instead it has a defined use which it fulfills admirably.

• We’ve gotten used to the GPIO-available functions of Raspberry Pi computers remaining largely the same over the years, which is why it might have flown a little bit under the radar: the Raspberry Pi 4 has six SPI controllers, six I2C controllers, and six UARTs – all on its 40-pin header. You can’t make use of all of these at once, but with up to four different connections wired to a single pin you can carve out a pretty powerful combination of peripherals for your next robotics, automation or cat herding project.

• The datasheet for these peripherals is pleasant to go through, with all the register maps nicely laid out – even if you don’t plan to work with the register mappings yourself, the maintainers of your preferred hardware enablement libraries will have an easier time! And, of course, these peripherals are present on the Compute Module 4, too. It might feel like such a deluge of interfaces is excessive, however, it lets you achieve some pretty cool stuff that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The advent of USB-C and the power delivery (PD) standard have allowed for a single cable to carry both large amounts of data and power for a wide range of devices. So, while looking for a PD-capable power bank for his laptop but only coming across expensive units, Instructables user Toby Chui decided to make his own — with additional improvements, of course.

• There are already plenty of IoT development platforms, but here’s another one with Golioth that relies on a Zephyr SDK, “first-tier” support for Nordic Semiconductor nRF9160 (cellular) and Espressif Systems ESP32-C3 (WiFi), as well as a QEMU-based simulator for easy testing.

• The use of an open-source Zephyr SDK even enables them to support over 100+ hardware components, and the company, also called Golioth, says their platform scales from one device for evaluation to one million devices during deployment, thanks notably to a free Dev Tier account to get started at no cost.

• The Librem 14 is deliberately made easy to repair and upgrade. By removing just a few screws, you can easily replace the battery, wifi module, RAM, or the M.2 ssd. This is really nice if you already own hardware you’d like to put in a barebones Librem 14 order, or if you want to upgrade the hardware in your current Librem 14.

• Often, we need to power a 5V-craving project of ours on the go. So did [Burgduino], and, unhappy with solutions available, designed their own 5V UPS! It takes a cheap powerbank design and augments it with a few parts vital for its UPS purposes.

• You might be tempted to reach for a powerbank when facing such a problem, but most of them have a fatal flaw, and you can’t easily tell a flawed one apart from a functioning one before you buy it. This flaw is lack of load sharing – ability to continue powering the output when a charger is inserted. Most store-bought powerbanks just shut the output off, which precludes a project running 24/7 without powering it down, and can cause adverse consequences when something like a Raspberry Pi is involved.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• The curl “cockpit” is yet again extended with a new command line option: –json. The 245th command line option.

• curl is a generic transfer tool for sending and receiving data across networks and it is completely agnostic as to what it transfers or even why.

• To allow users to craft all sorts of transfers, or requests if you will, it offers a wide range of command line options. This flexibility has made it possible for a large number of users to keep using curl even as network ecosystems and its (HTTP) use have changed over time.

Events

• The Binary T00ls Summit 2022 (https://binary-tools.net/summit) is an informal, technical, online event oriented to authors, users and enthusiasts of FLOSS programs that deal with binary data. This includes binary editors, libraries to encode and decode data, parser generators, binary data description languages and frameworks, binary formats and encodings, assemblers, debuggers, reverse engineering suites, and the like. The goal of this event is for developers to get in touch with each other, introduce their tools, have interesting and hopefully productive discussions, and finally what is most important: to have fun. The venue of the event will be an instance of the Big Blue Button web conferencing system, accessible using Firefox, Chromium and other web browsers. We will be having a single track that will span for three days during a weekend. The summit will be held on the first weekend of March 2022, From Friday 4 to Sunday 6.

Web Browsers

Chromium

• The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 98 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux. Chrome 98 is also promoted to our new extended stable channel for Windows and Mac. This will roll out over the coming days/weeks.

• Chrome 98.0.4758.80/81/82 for windows and 98.0.4758.80 for mac and linux contains a number of fixes and improvements — a list of changes is available in the log. Watch out for upcoming Chrome and Chromium blog posts about new features and big efforts delivered in 98.

• Chrome 98 is available today as Google’s second web browser update of the new year. The Chrome 98 changes are mostly on the developer-side but with some user-impacting differences.

• Among the changes in Chrome 98 as Google’s stable browser update for February 2022 are:

• - COLRv1 color gradient vector fonts support that is motivated by wanting smaller emoji files for the web while delivering better quality. COLRv1 fonts compress well, are vector-based, and work well with gradients. Google Chrome and Google Fonts teams consider the COLRv1 specification as their successor format to the Google Noto emoji font. The emoji font size is around 20% the size as previously while also having greater rendering fidelity. More details on COLRv1 via developer.chrome.com.

• Google has released Chrome versions 98.0.4758.80/81/82 for Windows and 98.0.4758.80 for Mac and Linux. These versions address vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system.

Mozilla

• On January 13th 2022, Firefox became unusable for close to two hours for users worldwide. This incident interrupted many people’s workflow. This post highlights the complex series of events and circumstances that, together, triggered a bug deep in the networking code of Firefox.

• [...]

• As part of the incident response process, we quickly discovered that the client was hanging inside a network request to one of the Firefox internal services. However, at this point we neither had an explanation for why this would trigger just now, nor what the scope of the problem was. We continued to look for the “trigger” — some change that must have occurred to start the problem. We found that we had not shipped updates or configuration changes that could have caused this problem. At the same time, we were keeping in mind that HTTP/3 had been enabled since Firefox 88 and was actively used by some popular websites.

• [...]

• With the load balancer change in place, and a special code path in a new Rust service now active, the necessary final ingredient to trigger the problem for users was deep in Necko HTTP/3 code.

• When handling a request, the code looked up the field in a case-sensitive way and failed to find the header as it had been lower-cased by viaduct. Without the header, the request was determined by the Necko code to be complete, leaving the real request body unsent. However, this code would only terminate when there was no additional content to send. This unexpected state caused the code to loop indefinitely rather than returning an error. Because all network requests go through one socket thread, this loop blocked any further network communication and made Firefox unresponsive, unable to load web content.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• MariaDB Corporation Ab, which sells the popular open source database by the same name, said on Tuesday that it intends to become a public company with the help of Angel Pond Holdings Corporation.

• The deal, announced in a S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commissio,n [PDF] describes the Cayman Islands-based biz as a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). It was formed by Shihuang “Simon” Xie, a co-founder of Alibaba Group, and Theodore Wang, a former Goldman Sachs partner, to raise capital from investors in order to acquire another company.

• SPAC-driven deals have become popular in recent years partly as a defense against market volatility, which can complicate initial public offerings when companies try to go the traditional route to market. They also provide a clearer exit path for investors, allowing acquired firms to go public more quickly and at less cost, and to negotiate their value directly with the SPAC.

• However, US government regulators have expressed concern about the rising number of SPAC-based deals. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler last May said, SPACs raise a number of policy questions, like whether retail investors are appropriately protected and how SPACs fit into the SEC mission to maintain fair markets.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 7.3, including a large number of fixes intended to compatibility with Microsoft Office.

• A new version of the open source office suite LibreOffice has been released earlier today. LibreOffice 7.3 is available for all supported platforms. Core improvements include better interoperability with Microsoft Office document formats, performance improvements, and new handling of change tracking in tables.

• LibreOffice is one of the best-known open source office suites. It is a free Microsoft Office alternative, complete with a spreadsheet program, database tool, presentation maker, and word processor. The project was forked from OpenOffice after Oracle inherited the latter through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2009.

• Reading and writing to Microsoft Office file formats, like DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX remains a key ask of this open source office suite and something its millions of users rely on daily. Well, with the new 7.3 release, things get even better.

• Ubuntu’s default office suite LibreOffice released new major version 7.3.0 today. Here’s what’s new and how to install it in all current Ubuntu editions.

• LibreOffice 7.3 provided a large number of improvements to Microsoft Office file formats support. It now loads large DOCX and XLSX/XLSM files and some complex documents faster!

Programming/Development

• By the time of this article, digital services provide key functionality to businesses and everyday life. Due to the progress of digitization, the reliance on digital services has been growing rapidly. This process is not only shown by the growing number of inter connected devices that communicate with each other but also by the impact of unavailable services during an incident: On the 4th of October 2021, Meta (former Facebook) and all of its organizations (e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger) were unavailable for up to seven hours. The outage resulted in a huge profit loss for the company and connected businesses. [1]

• This outrage shows that modern solutions must be designed resiliently to enable service provisioning during incidents. There are multiple solutions to develop high-available and reliable services that can be applied to various levels in a system’s architecture and design. Some programming languages are specifically designed to meet these challenges. The functional programming language Erlang provides inherent functionality to develop these resilient services.

• Therefore, this article presents the exemplary design and development of a communication service based on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol in Erlang to investigate its availability features.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• Of course, those 50 lines do not include all the gubbins required to render things on a browser nor the hooks to send a smug little post out to social media so your friends can see how clever you are. However, the requisite colours are present and correct, as is the frustration factor as the attempts mount up without success.

• Thankfully, a thoughtful command line parameter (unlimit) will up the limit from six tries to quite a bit more.

• We took the script for a spin on a tame Linux box (in this case, running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) and can confirm that, after a quick chmod to make things executable, tapping in ./wordle.sh got us our fix.

Leftovers

• Among many other things, the European Union the EU supports digital transformation in partner countries. This week, for example, they signed a Joint Declaration with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. In this area, that currently suffers from high instability, digitization is a priority and an important element of dialogue at several levels, from physical infrastructures to roaming agreements and training. These are the parts that I personally find more interesting in the full Joint Declaration:

• A: Modernisation and innovation efforts at all levels of education and training will be pursued. This includes structured cooperation between EU and partner countries’ universities, VET institutions and youth organisations, as well as the promotion of youth employment, employability, entrepreneurship and skills, including addressing brain drain.

• When it comes to building decent aerodynamic devices, you want to focus on getting your geometry accurate, and making sure your parts are strong enough to deal with the force they’re generating. This build from [Engineering After Hours] delivers on those fronts, consisting of a high-downforce wing for a small RC car.

• The video points out that, at best, even a decent RC car will have pretty crappy aerodynamic parts from the factory, with a lift-to-drag (L/D)ratio of 2-3:1 at best. This means that, while they may create some small amount of downforce, they’re also creating plenty of drag at the same time.

• The dual-element wing designed here is much more efficient, hitting an L/D ratio in the vicinity of 17:1 – a huge improvement. Even a casual eye can note that the design looks a lot more like something you’d see on a full-size car, versus some of the whackier designs seen on toys.

• The wing is built with a forged carbon fiber process using 3D-printed molds, to give the wing plenty of strength. Given that it’s built for an RC car that can do over 100 mph, making sure the wing is stiff enough to perform at speed is key.

Science

• Thought experiments can be extremely powerful; after all, pretty much everything that [Einstein] came up with was based on thought experiments. But when a thought experiment turns into a real experiment, that’s when things can get really interesting, and where unexpected insights crop up.

• Take [AlphaPhoenix]’s simple question: “Are solid objects really solid?” On the face of it, this seems like a silly and trivial question, but the thought experiment he presents reveals more. He posits that pushing on one end of a solid metal rod a meter or so in length will result in motion at the other end of the rod pretty much instantly. But what if we scale that rod up considerably — say, to one light-second in length. Is a displacement at one end of the rob instantly apparent at the other end? It’s a bit of a mind-boggler.

• Do you ever have to ensure that an exact amount of time passes between two tasks in your microcontroller code? Do you know what’s the difference between precision and accuracy? Today, [Jim Mack] tells us about pushing timers and interrupts to their limits when it comes to managing time, while keeping it applicable to an ever-popular ATMega328P target! Every now and then, someone decides to push the frontiers of what’s possible on a given platform, and today’s rules is coding within constraints of an Arduino environment. However, you should check [Jim]’s post out even if you use Arduino as a swearword – purely for all of the theoretical insights laid out, accompanied by hardware-accurate examples!

• [...]

• Keeping our projects true to the passage of time can be an issue, and we’ve been at it for ages – calibrating your RC oscillator is a rite of passage for any ATTiny project. If you ever decide to have an interrupt peripheral help you with timing issues, we’ve gone in-depth on that topic in the past, with a three-part series describing the benefits, the drawbacks and the edgecases of interrupts. Going for a more modern target? Our piece on using interrupts with STM32 is a great path for trying out tools of the modern age.

Hardware

• Although the tides in the ocean are caused by the motion of the Sun and the Moon, both of which are easy to observe, accurately predicting the tide more than a few days in advance turns out to be rather difficult. The math behind the tidal movement is so complex that some of the earliest analog computers were built specifically to perform tide calculations. Sir William Thomson (better known as Lord Kelvin) designed one such “tide-predicting machine”, an impressive arrangement of gears and pulleys, back in the late 19th century.

• [Thane Hunt] needed to find a way to make a variety of different heat-seal patterns on a fluid heat exchanger made from polyolefin film, and didn’t want all the lead time and expense of a traditional sealing press machined from a steel plate. Pattern prototyping meant that the usual approach would not allow sufficient iteration speed and decided to take a CNC approach. Now, who can think of a common tool, capable of positioning in the X-Y plane, with a drivable Z axis and a controlled heat source? Of course, nowadays the answer is the common-or-garden FDM 3D printer. As luck would have it, [Thane] had an older machine to experiment with, so with a little bit of nozzle sanding, and a sheet of rubber on the bed, it was good to go!

• Most of us want our 3D prints to be perfect. But at Cornell University, they’ve been experimenting with deliberately introducing defects into printed titanium. Why? Because using a post-print treatment of heat and pressure they can turn those defects into assets, leading to a stronger and more ductile printed part.

• The most common ways to print metal use powders melted together and this leads to tiny pores in the material which weakens the final product. Using Ti-6Al-4V the researchers deliberately made a poor print that had more than the usual amount of defects. Then they applied extreme heat and pressure to the resulting piece. The pressure caused the pores to close up, and changed the material’s internal structure to be more like a composite.

• We’ve now spent several months in this series journeying through the world of audio, and along the way we’ve looked at the various parts of a Hi-Fi system from the speaker backwards to the source. It’s been an enjoyable ride full of technical detail and examining Hi-Fi myths in equal measure, but now it’s time to descend into one of the simplest yet most controversial areas of audio reproduction. Every audio component, whether digital or analogue, must be connected into whatever system it is part of, and this is the job of audio cables, sometimes referred to as interconnects. They are probably the single component most susceptible to tenuous claims about their performance, with audiophiles prepared to spend vast sums on cables claimed to deliver that extra bit of listening performance. Is there something in it, or are they all the same bits of wire with the expensive ones being a scam? Time to take a look.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

• Lovers of Linux have a new option to use on Windows PCs. Oracle Linux 8.5 recently launched through the Microsoft Store, allowing developers, IT admins, and enterprise users to run another Linux distribution on their PCs. Oracle Linux 8.5 installs through the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is available on both Windows 11 and Windows 10.

• On the last day of January, Oracle Linux 8.5, the current version of Big Red’s RHEL-alike, quietly appeared on the Windows Store.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

• Singularity, the container that powers HPC, has been moved into the Linux Foundation and renamed to Apptainer, and CIQ is here to help with the transition

• It’s become an LF Energy project, Shuli Goodman, Linux Foundation Energy’s Executive Director, explained because, “At LF Energy, we firmly believe that only open source has the speed and transformative power to change industries fast. Our mission is to decarbonize the global economy by enabling the transformation of power systems, the transition to electric mobility, and the radical efficiency of the built environment. In this regard, EVerest is the perfect addition to our ecosystem.”

Security

• A number of security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in 42 Gears’ SureMDM device management solution that could be weaponized by attackers to perform a supply chain compromise against affected organizations.

• Cybersecurity firm Immersive Labs, in a technical write-up detailing the findings, said that 42Gears released a series of updates between November 2021 and January 2022 to close out multiple flaws affecting both the platform’s Linux agent and the web console.

• According to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which detailed the novel tactics adopted by the Nobelium hacking group last week, two sophisticated malware families were placed on victim systems — a Linux variant of GoldMax and a new implant dubbed TrailBlazer — long before the scale of the attacks came to light.

Privacy/Surveillance

• (*) the official explanation that Pinassi received for the presence of Google Analytics would be that “it is exclusively aimed at logging for reasons of security of the access operations” and that (this is the best part IMHO) “it does not record and use any user tracking data” In other words, it is not clear what is it used for, period.

Environment

Energy

• Carlos Tavares, CEO of the automaker giant Stellantis, is quite skeptical, and worried too, about the real benefits of electric cars. In a recent interview Tavares made two main critiques, both aimed at ecological benefits of electric cars, and above all against what he described as a forced push, by many governments, to buy electric instead of traditional cars with internal combustion engines (ICE).

• Pumped hydro storage is one of the oldest grid storage technologies, and one of the most widely deployed, too. The concept is simple – use excess energy to pump a lot of water up high, then run it back through a turbine when you want to get the energy back later.

• With the rise in renewable energy deployments around the world, there is much interest in finding ways to store energy from these often-intermittent sources. Traditional pumped hydro can help, but there is only so much suitable land to work with.

• However, there could be a solution, and it lurks deep under the waves. Yes, we’re talking about underwater pumped hydro storage!

Finance

• It seems that the recent riots in Kazakhstan are due at least parts of them is strictly linked to the “mining” processes of the cryptocurrency called Bitcoin. On one side, it seems that the arrival in Kazakhstan of many Bitcoin mining datacenters forced to leave China has increased the overall energy consumption of the whole country enough to push the government to raise energy prices, which in turn contributed to cause the riots.

• [...]

• Regardless of how things will end up in Kazakhstan, and sincerely wishing the best to all Kazakh people… the specific effect of the riots that I summarized above is great. Maybe Bitcoin or its successors will save the world, or maybe they wont. That is another issue.

• In both cases, the effects on Bitcoin of the riots in a place many “First World” residents could not locate on a map if their life depended on it are another wonderful, perfect reminder that there is no separate “cyberspace”. There is no digital utopia where digitally savvy people live and trade, untouched by the miseries of the one, real world. We are all in this together, with or without cryptocurrencies.

• Lies, damn lies and socioeconomical indicators.

• A recent post by Filippo Celata presents a textbook example of how and why data are not neutral and, regardless of their quality, can tell stories very far froom reality if one just accepts them as they are, without further judgment.

• On December 31st, 2021 the italian government published the decree that assigns the COVID recovery funds specifically allocated for urban regeneration projects. Celata explains clearly how and why those assignments do not really match local needs.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft are weaving what I would call a worrying “Fiber-Optic Web of Power”. Here is why you should be worried too.

• [...]

• Whatever answer you give to the question above, one thing is certain: the oceans of the world are becoming more and more digital every year, first at the (privatized!) data level and now at the physical level, thanks exactly to the (privatized, again!) cables that run on their floors. This is even less reassuring, when you also consider how fragile, that is needy of really effective and transparent supervision, those cables really are: we are talking about stuff highly vulnerable to anyone that could “deploy underwater submersibles to destroy them”.

Monopolies

Copyrights

• Brad Fox tells a history-story that follows the fuzzy logics we associate with a “shaggy dog”. An aquatic dog? Maybe. The sea bends everything — even light.

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