● 03.10.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 10/3/2022: Zorin OS 16.1 and MorphOS 3.16

Posted in News Roundup at 3:10 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• We all know people who are obsessed with tech. For the vast majority, it’s people obsessed with the more traditional forms of the media and web. Obsessing over Google, Chrome or developing on Apple.

• The most they come to really going into the details on tech and obsessing, is building out their Core Web Vitals resource center or producing the best templates to rank. And while there’s certainly an art and importance to that. After all, we all want our websites to be on the first page of Google, Linux fans and professionals take that obsessive nature to a whole new level. But why?

• An operating system is a software that manages all of the hardware resources associated with our devices. It is the bridge of communication between the software and the hardware of our smartphones/desktops/laptops. Windows, Android Ios, MacOS are the few familiar operating systems we use in our daily lives, but one such operating system not many know about is Linux. Not just our Android phones but many other devices/appliances like cars, refrigerators, wristwatches, televisions, etc., are powered by Linux.

• The topic of discussion today is what may be the top five Linux operating systems for old computers? With high-speed computing becoming more and more common, old computers are just a dumping ground. But managing such old resources can be a big challenge. The electronic components are not so eco-friendly while recycling. The affordability of modern IT resources remains a challenge for many schools, institutions, and organizations around the world. There is only one OS that can meet these demands: Linux. Not only does the OS support high-end computing, but it also supports old hardware resources. While maintaining performance, compliance, and security concerns, we can do good computing here. Firstly, we will see where we can utilize such old systems.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Why Dirty Pipe is a dirty dog, the explosive adoption of Linux at AMD, and an important update on elementary OS.

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of XeroLinux 2022.03.06 and some of the applications pre-installed.

• 1:38 The News 25:43 Security Update 34:58 Bi-Weekly Wanderings 1:00:23 Announcements & Outro

• First up in the News, Linux Mint Edge is out, PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition can be ordered, Gnome and Plasma have new versions you can test, Nvidia and Wayland play nicely on Plasma, and we are all mocking Cosmic,

• In security, FOSS is a national security issue and Microsoft decides not to force locks.

• Then in our Wanderings, Joe fixes things, Moss installs things, Bill works on things and Norbert writes things down.

• Thanks to Jason Evangelho, Nick from The Linux Experiment & Liam from Gaming on Linux! I had an absolute blast with this.

• Bash is the default shell in the majority of Linux distributions, and it has countless features and tricks to make you more efficient. Bash keeps a history of the commands you’ve typed at the prompt, but most people aren’t aware of additional functionality that the history provides you.

• Idiot’s guide to OpenBSD on the Pinebook Pro, FreeBSD Periodic Scripts, history of service management in Unix, journey from macOS to FreeBSD, Unix processes “infecting” each other, navidrom music server on FreeBSD, and more.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• More open source goodness coming at you, as Mesa version 22.0 is officially out now for Linux open source graphics drivers.

• The release announcement was short and sweet, noting Vulkan 1.3 support as one of the big features. The release notes do give a little more info, although they’re still aimed at quite a technical audience.

Applications

• The free open-source 3d modeling software, Blender released new major 3.1.0 version a day ago.

• Blender 3.1.0 introduced new Metal GPU backend for the Cycles renderer, contributed by Apple. It currently works on M1 computers running macOS 12.2+, and Apple computers with AMD graphics cards running macOS 12.3 or newer.

• The release also has big performance improvements to Geometry Nodes. Many nodes are now multi-threaded. Medium loads up to 10x faster. Memory usage reduced up to 100x in large fields.

• Blender, the all-in-one tool for 3D creation including modelling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and more has a big upgrade out with version 3.1.

• Full release notes can be seen on the Blender Wiki with a couple of highlights including: exporting .obj files is now orders of magnitude faster, playback in the 3D Viewport is now much faster, Geometry Nodes performance is much better with many nodes now multi-threaded, a new Point Cloud object can be rendered directly with Cycles to create sand, water splashes, particles or even motion graphics and lots more.

Instructionals/Technical

• If you are a programmer, especially if you’re a backend developer. It’s inevitable that you need to do something on a Linux terminal instead of a GUI. One obvious problem is that the terminal is not visual-friendly, especially when you want to check some large-size standard output (stdout).

• You must have heard and used the dig command in LInux for DNS lookup. Alternative to that, there is a dog command which is an open source tool with a beautiful interface used for DNS lookup. Its output is very attractive with different colors provided in Json format. It supports the DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS protocols.

• In this article, we are going to discuss the installation process and the use cases of dog commands on ubuntu 20.04 LTS server.

• The Bash printf command lets you write to a Linux terminal window with finer control and more formatting options than the echo command provides. Even printf ‘s odd quirks can be useful.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Fotoxx on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Fotoxx is a free, open-source program for basic image editing. Is about a GTK application with which we can also organize and manage a large collection of images, optimize photos and perform batch operations. Unlike another image editor, Fotoxx has app menus in the left pane with the ability to toggle file view, and edit photos. While providing many functions to meet the needs of serious photographers, it remains fast and easy to use.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Fotoxx image editor on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Podman on CentOS 9 Stream. For those of you who didn’t know, Podman is a container management tool engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on your Linux System. Just like Docker, it helps developers to develop, manage, and run their applications on containers.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Podman container management tool on CentOS 9 Stream.

• If you are a beginner in Unix/Linux, you might have heard the term terminal or command prompt. We’ll use these terms interchangeably in this tutorial.

• You may have experienced it yourself, a black screen with cursor beeping for you to enter some commands.

• Bagisto is a free and open-source eCommerce software written in Laravel PHP framework and it uses Vue.js – a progressive JavaScript framework. Bagisto is a hand-tailored eCommerce that allows you to build your online store in no time. It is fast, responsive, beautifully frontend, and easy to use. Bagis to is an eCommerce framework that provides multiple locales for different types of languages, multiple currencies, supports multiple store themes, and also provides a feature multistore inventory system.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Bagisto eCommerce on the Debian 11 Bullseye. We will be using the PHP-FPM, Nginx web server, and MariaDB database.

• Terraform is a tool for building and maintaining a virtual server infrastructure; it supports multiple cloud providers in one project. Terraform achieves state management through a configured graph of states and modules which can be created, extended, and managed by users.

• There are plenty of tutorials online that teach you how to use the tool, but it’s not always easy to grasp the concepts behind it all! What makes Terraform so flexible and powerful is that you have the ability to program your infrastructure in any language or even create your own language based on Python (which some people call “Terraforming”.)

• In this tutorial, we will discuss what is Proxmox VE (Virtual Environment) and how to install Proxmox VE to setup server virtualization environment to create and manage virtual machines and containers.

• PHP 8.1 is a significant update of the PHP language released on November 25, 2021. This is a standard upgrade in the future from the existing PHP 8.0 release. The new PHP 8.1 brings enums, fibers, never return type, final class constants, intersection types, and read-only properties amongst the long list of new features and changes.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install PHP 8.1 on Fedora 36 Linux by importing the REMI repository. The tutorial will install the development kit extensions and some tips for Nginx and PHP-FPM using the command line terminal.

• LibreWolf is a Firefox fork that focuses on privacy and security by eliminating telemetry, which can be invasive to your personal information, along with increased protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install LibreWolf Browser on Fedora 36 Linux. The tutorial will go over importing the official repository and gpg key and updating and removing the browser.

• Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. Brave is a privacy-focused internet browser that sets itself apart from other browsers by automatically blocking online advertisements and website trackers in its default settings.

• Brave claims that its browser puts less strain on your computer’s performance than Google Chrome. Even with multiple tabs open at once, the new Brave Software uses 66% less memory and has 50 million more active users than before – a growth of 2X in 5 years!

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Brave Browser on Fedora 36 Linux by importing the official GPG keys and repository with step-by-step instructions on installing, updating, and removing the browser, including disabling/enabling the DNF repository. As a bonus, the beta and nightly optional installation methods are included, installed alongside stable.

• DigitalOcean’s Container Registry gives you a private space in the cloud to store and distribute your Docker images. As well as offering an image repository, the service also integrates into DigitalOcean’s other services. You can deploy stored images to App Platform and use them with your Managed Kubernetes clusters.

• Dealing with pictures on your computer, you might have come across EXIF data without knowing what it is. Images with EXIF data reveal all the details about a photo such as where and when was it taken as well as with what device, amongst a host of many other things. While this is commonly a desirable feature for many, it raises privacy concerns for many others, especially if they want to share their pictures online via social media. Having file EXIF data consumes more disk space when compared to those without it. In this guide, we will take a stab at answering the question “how to remove file EXIF data in Linux?”.

• There are various tools available for Ubuntu to remove Exif data from pictures, but ExifTool works the best in my experience. It removes the metadata from the image without recompressing it, keeping it at its original quality.

• It allows you to remove the EXIF data with a variety of options, e.g., you can save the same image without the metadata or export a new copy without it.

• As you may be aware, Linux-based operating systems rely extensively on the command line to carry out tasks. After installing a simple distribution like Arch Linux, you’ll be presented with a dark terminal. The desktop environment, which makes Linux distros dynamic and user-friendly, is often overlooked.

• The majority of new Linux users are unfamiliar with desktop environments and have no idea about the desktop environment they are using.

• This tutorial will go through different methods to see which desktop environment your Linux system is currently using.

• If you’re using virtual machines (VMs) with a hypervisor like KVM or QEMU, you may need to configure a network bridge to facilitate systems communicating on the same subnet.

• One of my favorite ways to configure my network is nmtui, a user-friendly console tool for the NetworkManager utility.

• I’ll begin with an example setup. This is a common base-level deployment for virtual hosts, and the same principles apply to this configuration as they would to a structure for hundreds of hosts.

• CMS platforms are becoming a norm in the World Wide Web and Drupal is a reputable candidate in this docket. With CMS platforms, content management is easier for all users as all the needed administrative functionalities for managing website content have been met. Therefore, it doesn’t matter whether you are running a small blog site, government site, or a large corporate website.

• Drupal is powered by PHP programming language and this article guide will walk us through its installation on Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 22.04.

• By default, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish does not come with Python 3.8 in its repositories, unlike some other distributions such as Ubuntu. Python 3.10 is now the latest stable feature release series of Python 3, with Python 3.11 still in beta.

• To run some applications or frameworks on Ubuntu, you may need to install Python 3.8 on your system, for example, using the Swift programming framework. Python 3.8 is currently being worked on for security releases until its end of life on the 10th month of 2024. However, it is advisable to upgrade to newer versions if you are developing applications.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to download the latest version of Python 3.8 compile and install this version of Python on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish.

• How to insert Al Qur’an and translations into LibreOffice Writer documents? In the past we had QiOO. Now we have Insert Qur’an Text, also known as QuranLO, an extension of LibreOffice. The benefit is that it’s complete, easy to copy paste, and includes translations in English and Indonesian as well as other languages. We would love to gratefully thank Pmossie who developed this useful piece of software. Now let’s learn.

• The command-line tools that are part of GnuTLS (such as certtool and p11tool) had been using the GNU AutoGen for handling command-line arguments. AutoGen (do not be confused with autogen.sh script commonly used in Autotools based projects) does a great job in that regard, as it produces command-line parsing code and the documentation from the single source file. On the other hand, integrating the AutoGen infrastructure into a project can be tricky in many ways, e.g., it requires its own runtime library (libopts) whose interface compatibility is not well maintained. Therefore, we decided to switch to a simpler solution and we’ve finally completed the migration recently. As I spent way too much time on this, I thought it might make sense to summarize the process in case anyone comes across a similar situation.

• In this tutorial post, we are going to show the docker commands to stop one or more running containers. We will learn about how to stop or kill the running docker containers.

• How To uncommit Git Files or Undo The Last Commit. Without any further explanations, let’s have a look into the process to undo the last commit or uncommit Git’s last commit.

• The curl project has been alive for decades. We gradually introduce new features and options into the command line tool and library over time and we work hard never to break existing behavior and keep the ABI and API stable.

• Still, some features and functionalities go out of style sooner or later. Versions get deprecated, third party dependencies go stale and turn unsuitable for use.

• It has been possible to use wildcards in the sudoers file for many years. This can make configuration easier and more flexible, but it also introduces problems of its own. Regular expressions, introduced in in sudo 1.9.10, allow you to create more fine grained rules. From this blog you will learn about some of the problems when you use wildcards in your sudoers file, and how using regular expressions can resolve those problems.

Games

• Since 2010 the Free Software Foundation Europe has been organising the yearly “I Love Free Software Day”. Together with hundreds of Free Software enthusiasts we celebrated our love for Free Software on the 14th of February. To all of you who took part and celebrated the “I Love Free Software Day”, we would like to thank you so much.

• In 2022 we have worked very hard on creating something new and fun for this year’s “I Love Free Software Day”. So we have set a topic for the day and focused on Free Software games. Besides the special podcast episode about the Free Software game “0 A.D.: Empires Ascendant” with its project leader, Stanislas Dolcini, we have organised an event dedicated to Free Software games.

• Another guide for you today. For those of you who want to use the EA App on the Steam Deck (or a Linux desktop!), here’s one of the possible ways to do it using Bottles.

• Stadia is something we don’t really talk about here too much now, as Google has let it slide considerably from the original aim but it’s still going and it seems Google still has some interesting plans for it.

• Netherguild is a turn-based tactical roguelite dungeon-crawler, where you command expeditions below the earth in a desperate attempt to cure a strange plague. A proper demo is now available on Steam (also itch.io as before). Giving you a chance to explore, camp, and fight as far as you can before heading back to resupply.

• I’ve had a lot of fun with this one at various points in its development, covering it here on GOL some time ago.

• Do you like Match 3 games? Well, I do! Crown of Pain mixes together the idea of matching tiles but blends in turn-based RPG battles too.

• Now in Early Access from Jagit Games, Coldwild Games it might be a little rough going in with not enough of an explanation for now but you can quickly piece together what tiles will help. Visually quite simple with the pixel art, but the atmosphere is good enough to pull you in for that “just one more run” feeling that I got from a great many other games.

• [...]

• As a debut game from Latvia-based solo dev Jagit Games it’s good.

• I remember playing the demo for The Last Cube and being quite amazed at how good it was, and the full game is out now. The game features, as the name might suggest, a Cube — that’s you. Rolling around on your sides to get through the map and various puzzles. How Improx Games managed to make such a thing entertaining is still a mystery, it has such wonderful design to it.

• The Last Cube features a sticker system, allowing you to stamp abilities onto your cube’s sides. Some will allow you to dash through barriers, others will create makeshift stairs, and some grant the ability to spin in place for easy manoeuvring in tight places. Positioning your cube to acquire the desired stickers on the correct surface can range from pleasingly simplistic, to masochistic head scratchers as you scramble through The Last Cube’s 100+ puzzles. New mechanics are introduced at a breezy clip, rapidly expanding one’s perception of what your cube is capable of.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

•  If you’re a media aficionado using Linux, then you might be aware of some of the incredible suite of platforms available at your disposal. What you might be unaware of, however, is how vast your options are.

• Enter KDE and a family of subsystems using the KDE desktop environment. In this category of multimedia tools available to the sub-Linux system, you can find the list of options emphasized below.

• It’s time for a quick recap and review of the KDE Plasma 5.24 desktop, released a while back.

• Ever since I started contributing to Kate there has been one feature request that was being requested in almost every blog post or discussion about kate: multiple cursor support. I am happy to say that after 3 or 4 days of really pushing myself to implement this and address all the issues we just merged it (KDE Frameworks 5.92)! It will be available not only for Kate users, but for KDevelop, KWrite and any application that uses KTextEditor as its editor component.

• This is my fourth status update for Season of KDE 2022.

• In my last post I told how packaging was almost done and I was looking out to automate updates.

• [...]

• I plan to add checker data to all the remaining applications (~80) in the next 2-to 3 days. I’m also parallelly looking over to use FEDC on KDE Invent to automatically update non KDE dependencies on master manifest repo.

Distributions

• The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the immediate availability of MorphOS 3.16. This release includes numerous important performance, stability and security improvements. A new version of Wayfarer comes included with the OS and replaces the now obsolete Odyssey Web Browser. We’ve also included the Iris email client, Magic Beacon notifications system and a Command-Tab application switcher. The Synergy Client and Server applications are now compatible with the free Barrier alternative. OpenSSL3 is now available as a shared library.

• For a more extensive overview of the changes included in MorphOS 3.16, please read our release notes.

• We strongly urge new users to carefully read our installation and troubleshooting guides before they attempt to install MorphOS for the first time. Existing users can upgrade via the familiar procedure but are encouraged to read the guides as well. MorphOS 3.16 is available for download in our files section.

New Releases

• Today, we’re introducing Zorin OS 16.1 – our most advanced operating system ever. It’s packed with improvements to help you work better, updates to apps and system-level software, and support for new hardware.

• However, this launch comes during a historically calamitous occasion, affecting our family, friends, and all people of Ukraine. We want to take this opportunity to provide support and humanitarian aid to the ordinary citizens facing hardship in Ukraine and to the families fleeing the violence.

• Zorin OS 16.1 is here about seven months after Zorin OS 16 and comes with a newer kernel, namely Linux 5.13, from the recently released Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS (Focal Fossa) operating system. This provides users with better compatibility for newer hardware, including NVIDIA RTX 3050 GPUs, 12th-Gen Intel Core processors, Sony PlayStation 5 DualSense controllers, Framework laptop, Apple Magic Mouse 2, as well as other devices.

• Also new is the latest and greatest LibreOffice 7.3 office suite, along with newer versions of several pre-installed apps and core components, including the Mesa 21.2.6 graphics stack from Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS and Ubuntu 21.10, providing users with a more feature-rich desktop experience from the get-go.

• Zorin OS 16 was an exciting release with plenty of amazing features.

• Now, its first point release is here with some necessary improvements and updates.

• Let me highlight some of the key changes in this release.

• Zorin OS 16.1 is now available for download. Zorin OS 16.1 is the first point release to the latest Zorin OS 16. Zorin OS 16.1 is available for download right now from the official website. Zorin OS 16.1 is powered by Linux Kernel 5.13. The Zorin OS 16 release series will continue to be supported with software updates and security patches until April 2025.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

• A Software Bill of Materials (aka SBoM) is something you’ve probably never heard of, but in future years they’ll hopefully start to become more and more important. In May last year the US president issued an executive order titled Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity in which it outlines the way that critical software used by various branches of the government should be more traceable and secure. One of the key information captured in a SBoM is “who built what from where” which in open source we’re already familiar with, e.g. “Red Hat built your Linux kernel in a datacenter in the US” rather than “random person from the internet build your container on their laptop using Debian Sarge” and in the former case we also always have the hash of the source archive that was used to build it, and a lot more. Where this concept breaks down is firmware, where lots of different entities build each subsection in different ways, usually due to commercial and technical constraints.

• Firmware is often lumped together as one thing, both technically as-in “one download” and conceptually when thinking about OS security. In reality a single firmware image might contain a FSP from Intel, several updated CPU microcode blobs for a few different CPUs, a CSME management engine, an embedded controller update, a UEFI system firmware a lot more. The system firmware is then made up of different file volumes, each with a few dozen EFI “PEI” binaries for initial system start-up and then a couple of hundred (!) “DXE” binaries for things like pre-boot networking and things like fingerprint authentication, mouse and keyboard input.

• In the executive order from last May, firmware was explicitly excluded from the list of software that required a SBoM, on the logic that none of the infrastructure or specifications were in place, and it just wasn’t possible to do. Needless to say I’ve been spending the last few months putting all the pieces together to make a firmware SBoM not just possible, but super easy for OEMs, ODMs and IBVs to generate.

• Following discussion on the mailing list, the Fedora team is taking another small step away from x86-32 support, with developers urged to stop building i686 versions of “leaf packages” – in other words, packages that nothing else depends upon.

• This means building applications for 32-bit chips, not the Linux distribution itself. That’s long gone. Various distros started to discuss dropping 32-bit support in 2016. Ubuntu stopped offering an i386 desktop installation image after version 17.04 and a server image after 17.10. (For the especially pedantic: there was a netboot image for 18.04 if you wanted to roll your own, and Lubuntu offered a 32-bit desktop of 18.10.)

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux in version 8 (RHEL 8) comes with modules, a packaging concept that allows system administrators to select the desired software version from multiple packaged versions. This article shows you how to manage Perl as a module, as well as how to manage the CPAN modules provided by Perl, in RHEL 8.

• Apache Kafka is designed for performance and large volumes of data. Kafka’s append-only log format, sequential I/O access, and zero copying all support high throughput with low latency. Its partition-based data distribution lets it scale horizontally to hundreds of thousands of partitions.

• Because of these capabilities, it can be tempting to use a single monolithic Kafka cluster for all of your eventing needs. Using one cluster reduces your operational overhead and development complexities to a minimum. But is “a single Kafka cluster to rule them all” the ideal architecture, or is it better to split Kafka clusters?

• This 49th edition of the Kafka Monthly Digest covers what happened in the Apache Kafka community in February 2022. Some new minor releases are in the works that may be of interest. I’ll also discuss new KIPs and open source releases in January 2022.

• In today’s fast-evolving hybrid work environment, it’s more important than ever to offer your IT employees professional development opportunities. Consider this expert advice to design a program with impact

• Red Hat Summit 2022 registration is officially open! Red Hat Summit is taking place on May 10 and May 11, and you can sign up today! If you want to take part in all of this year’s virtual Red Hat Summit goodness, you should take a few moments to register now.

Devices/Embedded

• iWave’s rugged, IP67-protected “iW-639RH” panel PC is available in 7- and 10.1-inch sizes and runs Linux and Android on an i.MX8M Mini. Specs include 2x GbE, 2x CAN, 3x COM, 3x USB, DIO, ADC, and M.2 B-key.

• iWave has announced an IP67-rated HMI panel computer designed for outdoor applications in areas such as mining, agriculture equipment, construction machinery, marine equipment, locomotives, and warehouse machinery. The i.MX8M Mini powered iW-639RH comes with high-luminosity 7- or 10.1-inch touchscreens

• The iW-639RH ships with a feature-rich SDK with Linux 5.4.70 and Android 9.0.0 that integrates various CAN and Modbus protocols. The SDK includes web and remote desktop applications, GUI libraries, analog video streamers, and more. Automotive protocol stacks are available on demand.

• Since day one, we’ve been leading the push to empower consumers with viable alternatives to the make-use-dispose trend in electronics. Keeping products in use longer decreases their environmental footprint, therefore easy repairability of products is essential. No surprise that Fairphone fully supports the Right to Repair. It’s a huge part of our mission to change the industry.

• In 2013, we started by turning an off-the-shelf product into the most repairable phone simply by offering spare parts and repair guides, that was the Fairphone 1. It wasn’t perfect, but we had to start somewhere. From there, we’ve continually raised the bar by challenging ourselves and the industry by making modular smartphones that are durable and easy to repair. Our design proved that doing something unconventional can deliver significant benefits. It also proved that our chosen path was never going to be a cakewalk. Since then, we’ve come a long way, long shots and setbacks included. It has always been a continuous process towards fairer supply chains and products – And the same holds true today.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Back in August 2021, mechatronics engineer ‘engineer2you’ had the idea to create a fun CNC plotter that easily mounts to a pair of points along a wall and traverses across the surface to draw on it, essentially becoming a self-contained mural-making robot. The jellyfish-looking device, named Fumik, is able to sketch patterns within a 5×3 meter area and it does this with the help of an Arduino Mega 2560.

• In this project, we’re going to be making an all-in-one indoor air quality monitor with an IOT dashboard using an infrared CO2 sensor from DFRobot and a BME280 environment sensor.

• CO2 is a colourless and odourless gas that is a by-product of combustion, produced by gas heaters and stoves, and also by metabolic processes in humans and animals. It typically exists in a concentration of around 300-400 ppm (parts per million) outdoors, but when the average adult exhales, they can produce a concentration almost 100 times greater than this. With poor ventilation, the CO2 concentration in an indoor space can build up quite quickly. Early signs of increased concentrations of CO2 include the inability to concentrate and tiredness, while high concentrations of CO2 can lead to headaches, dizziness and even difficulty breathing, and eventually loss of consciousness.

• Ideally, we’d like to keep the concentration of CO2 in an indoor environment below 1,000 ppm, anything above this starts to lead to drowsiness and impaired concentration and the upper limit for what is considered to be safe is 5,000 ppm – so that’s actually the upper limit for our infrared CO2 sensor – since it has been specifically designed for this sort of use.

• Picovoice Leopard and Cheetah offline, on-device speech-to-text engines are said to achieve cloud-level accuracy, rely on tiny Speech-to-Text models, and slash the cost of automatic transcription by up to 10 times.

• Leopard is an on-device speech-to-text engine, while Cheetah is an on-device streaming speech-to-text engine, and both are cross-platform with support for Linux x86_64, macOS (x86_64, arm64), Windows x86_64, Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi 3/4, and NVIDIA Jetson Nano.

• Tiny I2C, UART, or SPI displays are usually not difficult to connect to a breadboard with a few jumper cables, but Breadboard Mates TIMI-130 display makes that neater with a design made specifically for the breadboard, plus hundreds of pre-designed user interfaces/pages to simulate buttons, LED matrices, gauges, and other widgets.

• TIMI stands for Tiny Intelligent Modular Instrument, and TIMI-130 comes with a 1.3-inch color TFT IPS LCD, plus two 5-pin headers to power and connect the display to the breadboard through UART or I2C and update the widgets and values with simple commands.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

• Let’s take a closer look at the benefits cloud services can provide to IT departments, application development teams, and organizations as a whole.

• Hello! A couple of days I wrote about tiny personal programs, and I mentioned that it can be fun to use “secret” undocumented APIs where you need to copy your cookies out of the browser to get access to them.

• A couple of people asked how to do this, so I wanted to explain how because it’s pretty straightforward. We’ll also talk a tiny bit about what can go wrong, ethical issues, and how this applies to your undocumented APIs.

• Browser maker Brave has developed a new way to ground “bounce tracking,” a sneaky technique for bypassing privacy defenses in order to track people across different websites.

• Bounce tracking, also known as redirect tracking, dates back at least to 2014 when ad companies were looking for ways to avoid third-party cookie blocking defenses.

• “Bounce tracking is a way for trackers to track you even if browser-level privacy protections are in place,” explained Peter Snyder, senior director of privacy at Brave, on Tuesday.

• “Privacy respecting browsers try to prevent sites from learning about your behaviors and activities on other sites. Bounce tracking attempts to circumvent these protections by gaming how your browser behaves when you browse from one site to another.”

• Say a website embeds a third-party script from info.tracker. When the website is visited, the third-party script tries to read third-party cookies from info.tracker that have been stored in the visitor’s browser.

• If it can’t – because third-party cookies are blocked – the script redirects to the info.tracker domain by writing a new URL to the browser’s window.location object or via some link hijacking method like injecting an info.tracker iframe into the original website.

Mozilla

• Since the public launch of Firefox Relay, thousands of users have signed up for our smart, easy solution that hides your real email address to help protect your identity. Thank you all for your tremendous support for our Firefox Relay product. This signals a demand for people who want to preserve their privacy by limiting the places their personal email address is used.

• We are always looking for ways to improve Firefox Relay and your comments shape our products. Today, we’re adding user-requested features that deliver the emails that you care about which includes tickets to catch the train or watching your favorite band in concert, or getting the emails you want whether it’s getting shipping information or confirmation on the products you buy or updates to service and privacy policies.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• End user support is provided by volunteers via email and online resources: community support. On the website and the wiki there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos. Donations help us to make all of these resources available.

• For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners, with long-term support options, professional assistance, custom features and Service Level Agreements: LibreOffice Business.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• I make my living working with and evangelizing Drupal. So there’s definitely some applicability to the saying, “when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

• In truth, I had considered using some static site solutions like Gatsby or Jekyll and then using free hosting options from GitHub or GitLab.

• However, one of the things I enjoy about Drupal is how quickly I can create and adapt content structures and have the ability to draw on the considerable library of community-provided modules to extend its capabilities, all of which you can use for free.

Programming/Development

• As programmers and tech writers, we are creators, and we are knowledge workers. We strive to do rare and valuable work, regardless of the circumstances, what Dartmouth professor Cal Newport calls deep work. Deep work is hard and difficult. At Canonical, we are specifically committed to doing things that are simultaneously hard and difficult, doing them all the time, and sustaining that work over long periods of time.

• Last week, we had an engineering sprint, which is a live gathering of Canonical’s engineering knowledge workers from all over the world. Normally, we have them every six months, but we hadn’t had one for almost exactly two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

• When he opened the sprint, our CEO began by speaking about the events in Ukraine, because these events were on everyone’s mind. Without addressing them, that weight wouldn’t be lifted and we couldn’t focus on doing good engineering work, live and in person, for an entire week. We would not be able to work deeply because of the creeping, subconscious distraction.

• Over the last two years, Canonical has worked extremely well, despite the horrifying spectre of a global pandemic, and our society moved almost seamlessly from pestilence into war. Even though we are people who pride ourselves on our technical focus and, often, on our agnostic view toward circumstance, we can’t help but be distracted by these issues. It affects our concentration, which thus affects our ability to do hard and difficult, rare and valuable things. Yet we at Canonical have done them. And we will continue to do them. And so can you, whether you are doing open-source on a paid or pro-bono basis, in daylight or moonlight, in the open or in secret.

• I can’t speak for other Canonical employees, but I can tell you about how I use technology to help me keep my head when all about me are losing theirs, to paraphrase Kipling. At Canonical, we want to be the best open-source company, ever, in the world, period. Much of that is technical in nature, but at least some of it is about how to use that technology to be good at open-source — in fact, to be good at anything that is hard and difficult, at any endeavor that strives to produce rare and valuable results.

• As explained in my previous post, we do have some features already in mind for syslog-ng 4, even though the work on creating a long term set of objectives for the syslog-ng project is not finished yet. One of the themes I that I have working code for already, is typing.

• A quick search of the internet reveals a plethora of books for programmers. No one has time to read even a minuscule fraction of the available books.

• What you need is a curated list of programming books. Better than that. A curated list of free programming books. Free and open source books still have a cost — your precious time. And just because a book is free/open source doesn’t, itself, signify any great quality to the work. Hence the need for some recommendations for free books to help you learn C, C++, Java, Python, R, or whatever language takes your fancy.

• The books we’re recommending will help increase your technical skills and make you proficient in the language of your choice. And some of them even provide a little light relief on the way. Humor can be a great aid to learning.

• Many of the books we recommend offer a solid foundation in learning the relevant programming language. Some are very specialist, some offer a quick overview. There are books targeted at people who have zero programming experience, as well as programmers who have learned one or two languages but are looking to widen their skills. Other books are targeted at an intermediate and/or expert level. All are worth reading.

• Some of the books are available to purchase in printed form. Showing your support in this way can be a great motivation for the authors to carry on releasing free books.

• The series is expanding although it’s pretty comprehensive already. And we’re adding new languages, so remember to bookmark this page.

• Qt Modeling Language (QML) is a hierarchical declarative language for user interface layout with a syntax similar to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).

• It can bind to C++ objects via Qt’s meta object system and also supports inline JavaScript. It’s much like HTML or XAML but without the XMLness.

• Here’s our recommended free books to learn QML.

• Qt WebEngine has been out for Qt 6 since 6.2, but I would still like to talk a bit about what is different in WebEngine in Qt 6, and what will change in the Qt 6 time frame.

Leftovers

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Pseudo-Open Source

Privatisation/Privateering

Linux Foundation

• The DENT Project, an open source network operating system utilizing the Linux Kernel, Switchdev, and other Linux based projects, has announced that DENT 2.0 is available for immediate download. The “Beeblebrox” release adds key features utilized by distributed enterprises in retail and remote facilities, providing a secure and scalable Linux-based Network Operating System (NOS) for disaggregated switches adaptable to edge deployment. DENT provides a smaller, more lightweight NOS for use at the small, remote edges of enterprise networks.

Security

•  Getting in the habit of utilizing pentesting for your specific server or web app or any other ethical use case is generally regarded as one of the best security practices you should include in your arsenal.

• It doesn’t only guarantee foolproof security for your network but gives you the opportunity to discover security holes in your system before a malicious actor does so they may not be zero-day vulnerabilities.

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr and kernel), Fedora (cyrus-sasl, mingw-protobuf, and thunderbird), Mageia (kernel-linus), openSUSE (firefox, kernel, and libcaca), Oracle (.NET 6.0, kernel, kernel-container, and ruby:2.5), Slackware (mozilla-thunderbird), and SUSE (firefox, mariadb, and tomcat).

• ATTENTION: Exploitable remotely/low attack complexity

• [...]

• Axeda Desktop Server for Windows: All versions

• Are you a pen-tester or just someone interested in keeping the security levels of your network as high as possible? Nessus is a widely-used vulnerability scanner that allows you to perform a variety of network vulnerability scanning tasks using a web-based GUI. Here we show you how to take advantage of all the great features this industry-leading vulnerability scanner offers.

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

• CISA is aware of a privilege escalation vulnerability in Linux kernel versions 5.8 and later known as “Dirty Pipe” (CVE-2022-0847). A local attacker could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system.

Defence/Aggression

• It has been interesting to notice how unimportant and ineffective cyber operations have been in the Russia-Ukraine war. Russia launched a wiper against Ukraine at the beginning, but it was found and neutered. Near as I can tell, the only thing that worked was the disabling of regional KA-SAT SATCOM terminals.

• The World Economic Forum’s recorded history has been manufactured to appear as though the organisation was a strictly European creation, but this isn’t so. In fact, Klaus Schwab had an elite American political team working in the shadows that aided him in creating the European-based globalist organisation. If you have a decent knowledge of Klaus Schwab’s history, you will know that he attended Harvard in the 1960s where he would meet then-Professor Henry A. Kissinger, a man with whom Schwab would form a lifelong friendship. But, as with most information from the annals of the World Economic Forum’s history books, what you’ve been told is not the full story. In fact, Kissinger would recruit Schwab at the International seminar at Harvard, which had been funded by the US’ Central Intelligence Agency. Although this funding was exposed the year in which Klaus Schwab left Harvard, the connection has gone largely unnoticed – until now.

• My research indicates that the World Economic Forum is not a European creation. In reality, it is instead an operation which emanates from the public policy grandees of the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixonian eras of American politics; all of whom had ties to the Council on Foreign Relations and the associated “Round Table” Movement, with a supporting role played by the Central Intelligence Agency.

• There were three extremely powerful and influential men, Kissinger among them, who would lead Klaus Schwab towards their ultimate goal of complete American Empire-aligned global domination via the creation of social and economic policies. In addition, two of the men were at the core of manufacturing the ever present threat of global thermonuclear war. By examining these men through the wider context of the geopolitics of the period, I will show how their paths would cross and coalesce during the 1960s, how they recruited Klaus Schwab through a CIA-funded program, and how they were the real driving force behind the creation of the World Economic Forum.

Censorship/Free Speech

• On March 04, 2022, the European Commission sent a content removal request to Google requiring all content by RT and Sputnik, Russian Federation’s State-controlled media outlets, to be de-indexed from Google’s search result.

• Associate Professor of Law at UCD Sutherland School of Law, Dublin, TJ McIntyre found the related content removal request sent to Google by the European Commission in the Lumen Database and discussed it in a Twitter thread. This notice was sent within the context of the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine and the ensuing information war online that attempts to sway the narrative. The European Union also addressed this information war on March 02, 2022, by introducing a Regulation which imposed restrictive measures on online platforms in view of “Russia’s actions destabilizing the situation in Ukraine” and its “international campaign of media manipulation.”

• The government move to regulate the social media and OTT platforms through enacting some regulations came under criticism of 45 international organisations, including Human Rights Watch, on Monday. The proposed Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission Regulation for Digital, Social Media and OTT Platforms, if passed, will undermine encryption and weaken the online safety, the organisations said in a letter to the BTRC. It will imperil the people’s freedom of expression and rights to privacy, they added. They also urged the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission to reconsider the move and withdraw its decision. ‘If enforced, the regulations will have a deleterious impact on human rights, and put journalists, dissidents, activists and vulnerable communities, in particular, at greater risk,’ they said. The organisations made the comment in a joint letter issued to the BTRC on Monday following the publishing of the draft of ‘the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission Regulation for Digital, Social Media and OTT Platforms’ on February 3, 2022.

• Also: Four tech lobbying groups spent nearly $2 million on Facebook ads criticizing antitrust bills.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Over the past two weeks, the international community has watched the crisis in Ukraine escalate into war. In the midst of this crisis, the tech sector finds itself as a player in the conflict, caught between government and regulatory demands to limit or restrict services and growing pressure from the public and civil society to take urgent action to prevent human rights harms.

• However, this crisis really began in 2014, giving companies operating in the region at least eight years to develop policies and practices for a situation like this. What we’ve seen instead is the outsized power of the tech sector being wielded in an inconsistent manner as decisions to leave, stay, or limit and restrict services deeply impact the lives of individuals in the region. For example, in 2020, Telegram decided to reinforce its infrastructure in preparation for potential internet shutdowns and blockings during the Belarus elections, allowing millions of Belarusians to document and report on the protests and associated human rights violations that authorities preferred to keep in the dark. Similarly, as war broke out in Ukraine, Google disabled live traffic data on Maps to keep Ukrainians safe. On the other hand, in September 2021, Apple and Google decided to pull an app by opposition party leader Alexey Navalny’s team designed to inform Russian voters about electoral candidates in their district on election day.

• Many technology companies are currently struggling to maintain operations in Russia, not only due to an unprecedented number of economic sanctions and export controls imposed by the U.S. and the E.U., but also due to Russian government pressure, including the so-called landing law which requires companies to set up legal entities in the country, making them more vulnerable to government demands, as well as a new law adopted after the invasion of Ukraine which punishes anyone spreading “false information” about the invasion with up to 15 years in prison. In response, some companies have suspended their services in the country altogether.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Today, Access Now, Wikimedia Foundation, and over 35 civil society organizations called on U.S. President Biden and his administration to ensure the people of Russia and Belarus are not cut off from the internet. The signatories deplore Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and urge that further restricting the internet in Russia and Belarus will only accelerate violence and repression.

• Signatories to the letter are concerned that the U.S. government and like-minded governments may be considering disrupting internet access in Russia and Belarus through new sanctions. Limiting internet access will hurt individuals attempting to organize in opposition to the war, report openly and honestly on events in Russia and Belarus, and access information about what is happening in Ukraine and beyond.

• “We call on the Biden Administration and allied governments to ensure their sanctions do not tighten Putin’s grip over information and ideas,” said Peter Micek, General Counsel at Access Now. “People in Russia and Belarus struggle to find accurate news, and the internet, for all its faults, remains the last open space for free flowing discourse. The President and Treasury Department should signal to tech companies — and governments supporting Ukraine — that cutting internet services in Russia or Belarus will be counterproductive.”

• Calcutta HC has stayed an internet shutdown order dated 03.03.2022 (‘Suspension Order’) issued by the State of West Bengal. The Suspension Order was challenged in a petition filed by Ashlesh Biradar on various grounds including that it was unlawfully issued under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (‘CrPC’). The Calcutta HC agreed with the submissions of the Petitioner and found it fit to pass an interim order. Senior Advocate Ranjan Bachawat represented the Petitioner and was briefed by R. Ginodia & Co. IFF provided legal support.

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