● 08.05.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 05/08/2022: KIO Admin, GitLab’s Betrayal

Posted in News Roundup at 2:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• The laptop is a Fujitsu Futro MA574, and I read somewhere that it has 32-bit Windows. From other reading, it seems that 32-bit Windows must have 32-bit UEFI.

• Unlike Linux, that can run 64-bit Linux on a 32-bit UEFI, as long as the kernel has “CONFIG_EFI_MIXED” set.

Audiocasts/Shows

• In this video, I am going to show how to install Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon.

• Today we are looking at Peppermint OS 08-02-2022. It is based on Devuan 11, Linux Kernel 5.10, XFCE 4.16, and uses about 700MB of ram when idling.

• In this video, we are looking at Peppermint OS 08-02-2022.

• There has been debate about Creative Commons 0 for quite a while on whether it’s actually good to use as a software licence and recently Fedora made the decision that it’s not but what do you think

Instructionals/Technical

• WildFly is an open-source and cross-platform application server developed by RedHat. Learn how to install Wildfly with Nginx as a reverse proxy on Rocky Linux 8.

• GoTTY is a lightweight Go language-based command-line application that enables Raspberry Pi users to access and control the device terminal on their browsers. It turns your CLI tools into a web application, thus allowing you to see your Raspberry Pi terminal using the IP address of your device. It’s useful when someone wants to access your device terminal to work on a project.

• The bottom command is an open-source command-line utility that enables Linux users to monitor the performance of their systems, such as CPU resources, system temperature, memory information, network resources and much more. Since this tool supports both Linux and ARM-based architecture, thus you can install it on your Raspberry Pi to monitor your device performance.

• This article shows you the most straightforward approach to install the bottom command on Raspberry Pi to monitor your system performance.

• The SD is the backbone of your Raspberry Pi device because, without it, you won’t be able to use an operating system on your device. The reason is that most operating systems don’t support USB boot on your Raspberry Pi device. Thus, having a good-speed SD card is necessary for the users to enjoy a smooth desktop environment. If you somehow purchase an SD card for your Raspberry Pi device and you don’t have information about whether the card is good enough for a smooth desktop experience, you should need to perform an SD card test.

• This article provides a way to determine your Raspberry Pi card speed, as this will help you continue with the current SD card or purchase a new one for your device.

• Redis sorted sets store unique elements in an ordered manner. Hence, it can be used in low latency applications such as priority queues, real-time leaderboards, secondary indexing, etc. Each of these set elements is assigned a rank and placed in ascending order based on the score value. Several commands are available to add, update, and remove the sorted set members efficiently. The most important thing about sorted sets is that after the addition or removal of a set member, it still manages to maintain the member ranks and order.

• The list is a popular Redis data type that stores a sequence of strings based on the insertion order. One list can hold more than 4 billion elements. The unique fact about the Redis list is it maintains the HEAD and TAIL properties where the elements can be inserted from both sides. Usually, the LPUSH and RPUSH commands are used to insert the elements into a list. Meanwhile, the brand new list is created with the specified key. All the list commands behave the same way where a new list is created when passed with a non-existing key.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to analyze PCAP files using Malcolm network traffic analysis tool. Malcolm can be used to analyze offline full PCAP files or can be used to monitor and analyze live network traffic. Malcolm is integrated with Suricata and Zeek (formerly Bro). These two tools can be used to analyze PCAP files.

• Opera is a renowned web browser used by millions of users worldwide. Here’s how to install it on your Linux machine.

• While most Linux distributions come with Firefox, every major web browser now has a Linux version—even Microsoft’s own Edge. With Chromium-based browsers becoming the web’s de facto default, Linux users may need one to supplement Firefox.

• Opera is a great Chromium-based alternative, and it’s been around even longer than Firefox. It includes modern staples like sync and ad-blocking, plus VPN and a crypto wallet. The unique Workspaces feature, which brings virtual desktop-like organization to your web browser, is truly a killer.

• Almost anyone who deals with videos may have heard of FFmpeg before. For those who are unfamiliar, FFmpeg is a free and open-source program that can convert any video format to another and alter its codecs.

• FFmpeg supports nearly all audio/video codecs (H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, AAC, OPUS, and more), file formats (MP4, FLV, MKV, TS, WEBM, MP3, etc.), and even streaming protocols (HTTP, RTMP, RTSP, HLS, etc.).

• Here’s how you can install and use FFmpeg to process audio and video files on Linux.

• Learn the commands to install – the PostgreSQL GUI interface pgAdmin 4 tools on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish Linux to manage Databases using a web-based graphical user interface.

• Just like popular phpMyAdmin to graphically manage MySQL or MariaDB databases, here we have pgAdmin. It is also a free and open source software to provide a graphical interface to develop and administrators of PostgreSQL databases. The open source license of pgAdmin is inherited from the PostgreSQL project. pgAdmin runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and other Unix derivatives.

• However, unlike Linux pgAdmin on Windows and macOS can easily be installed to manage remote or local running PostgreSQL.

• Well, that pgAdmin offers two types of installation one is Desktop Deployment and other Server Deployment.

• In this post, we will show you how to install GLPI on Ubuntu 22.04.

• GLPI is a web application that allows us to deploy a fleet management system. It has also evolved and with it, you can also manage hardware, software, and data centers by linking the asset inventory to the helpdesk.

• Let’s get started.

• Here’s a neat effect that I saw at goinkscape.com. It uses clipart of a magnifying glass and an object of your choice. I’m using a red crayon.

• Last month, I took you through how to set up VLC to watch live, OTA (over the air) broadcasts via a USB TV tuner. This month, let’s take a look at how to do the same with MPlayer.

• MPlayer is one POWERFUL multimedia powerhouse program. Did I mention that it was powerful? As with anything that wields that much power, it can sometimes present a level of complexity that is daunting, as it strives to cover as many multimedia bases as it can. In fact, MPlayer will often play files that other multimedia programs simply shrug at.

• MPlayer is a multiplatform program, with versions for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. MPlayer is also “desktop agnostic” That means that it doesn’t use either the Qt or GTK+ programming toolkits, opting instead for good, sound code that runs equally well regardless of which programming toolkit is employed.

• The Linux kernel sends signals to processes about events they need to react to. Well-behaved scripts handle signals elegantly and robustly and can clean up behind themselves even if you hit Ctrl+C. Here’s how.

• This tutorial will explain the steps to upgrade preinstalled LibreOffice 6.4 to latest version 7 or later at Ubuntu Focal Fossa LTS 22.04. This will give you many benefits come from newest version, including, new Candy and Yellow Ideas templates in Impress and better Tabbed / Ribbon user interface in all.

• Spotify needs no introduction. It is the most popular music streaming service.

• You can play Spotify in a web browser, but using the desktop application would be a better option if you use it extensively.

• Why? Because you can control the playback with the media key, get notifications for the songs, and don’t need to worry about accidentally closing the browser tab or window. The desktop client gives a wholesome experience.

• Spotify provides a repository for Ubuntu and Debian. But what about installing Spotify on Arch Linux?

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install CMake on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, CMake is an extensible, open-source system that manages the build process in an operating system and in a compiler-independent manner. It also is quite sophisticated to support complex environments requiring system configuration, preprocessor generation, code generation, and template instantiation. Additionally, CMake can generate wrappers and executables in any combination, making it very versatile.

• 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 CMake on Rocky Linux. 9.

• In this guide we will learn how to install and configure Squid Proxy server on a Ubuntu 22.04 server.

• Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator. It runs on most available operating systems.

• Squids reverse proxy is a service that sits between the Internet and the webserver (usually within a private network) that redirects inbound client requests to a server where data is stored for easier retrieval. If the caching server (proxy) does not have the cached data, it then forwards the request on to the web server where the data is actually stored. This type of caching allows for the collection of data and reproducing the original data values stored in a different location to provide for easier access.

• A reverse proxy typically provides an additional layer of control to smooth the flow of inbound network traffic between your clients and the web server.

• Today we are looking at how to install ClassiCube on a Chromebook in 2022. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

• “The two most significant challenges that server administrators face when attempting the SASL configuration on Linux or any other platform are the installation channel and the choice of the mechanisms you want to support with SASL.

• You can install SASL using the tarball installation method or the UNIX package installation methods. Again, there is an array of mechanisms that SASL can support.

• You can choose to support plaintext mechanisms such as LOGIN and PLAIN mechanisms. You can also opt for any type of shared secret mechanism. Shared secret mechanisms include CRAM-MD5, SCRAM, or DIGEST-MD5. Finally, Kerberos authentication protocol users may also choose GSSAPI for Kerberos 5 or KERBEROS_V4 for Kerberos version 4.

• This article is specific and will discuss the SASL installation using the shared secret mechanism (CRAM-MD5). Again, this article will use the LDAP protocol. Thus, only attempt going through this guide once you have LDAP-SASL properly running in your systems.”

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release.

• Bundles packaging improvements

• Qt 5.15 LTS used in Windows and macOS bundle

• With this release we take care about upgrading the Qt framework with a LTS version. Since Qt 5.15.2, the framework is only published privately to the registered clients from the Qt Company. By chance, the KDE project deals with the Qt company to provide a rolling release of the whole Qt framework including all the most important patches. This is the Qt collection patch used from now by the digiKam AppImage bundle. This allows digiKam to benefit from important fixes as to support the most recent version of Mysql and Mar iadb database in the QtSql plugin. Even if Qt 5.15.5 is just released as open-source, more than one year later 5.15.2, we will continue to use the Qt Collecti on Patch, as the last customer Qt5 release is 5.15.8. So there exists again a serious gap between the open-source and the customer versions of Qt.

• I’ve gotten annoyed with the inability to manage system files so I’ve made a KIO worker that enables Dolphin to view and edit files as root.

• The way this works is actually fairly exciting. It’s pulling off worker chaining: The admin worker itself contains gloriously little logic, all it does is translate all worker calls to dbus calls, and those dbus calls go out to a privileged polkit helper. The polkit helper then translates the URIs from admin:///foo to file:///foo and uses the regular KIO API to recreate the request in root-scope. KIO then, behind the scenes, acts just like it would in dolphin proper, using the existing file worker code to execute the file operations.

• The advantages are amazing! It’s fairly little actual code (albeit a lot of boilerplate). Since it’s an ordinary worker on the Dolphin side we can expect all file operations to just work™ because really admin:// is just like trash:// or desktop://. Because ultimately the file worker is actually in charge of doing the work, all things are generally expected to work (it’s the same code that powers regular file operations).

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• We had aarch64 builds of the runtime since the very early days of Flatpak (long before Flathub), and you could manually build your applications for aarc64 natively or by using qemu. Now you will also be able to download aarc64 builds of GNOME applications straight from the Nightly repository so all 3 of you out there with such machines can finally rejoice.

• The person mostly responsible for this is my good friend Julian Sparber who got around shorting through all the infrastructure needed and baited me into fixing the edge cases. Special thanks also to Bart for taking care of the GitLab Runners as usual.

• Gnome finally has an extension to enable rounded corners for all app windows, and customize the window borders!

• Start in Gnome 40, more and more applications use GTK4 toolkit for rendering their user interface. So, you have modern apps with rounded (bottom) corners and classic GTK3 and Qt apps with sharp (bottom) corners.

• To make your system apps look consistent, this project is created and works on Ubuntu 22.04, Fedora 35/36, Arch Linux, Manjaro Linux with GNOME.

Distributions and Operating Systems

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft OFFICIALLY killed off Internet Explorer, otherwise known as IE, in June of this year. The raucous cheering noise echoed throughout the computer world, glad to be finally done with this scourge upon web browsers. IE 11, the latest and last version, was officially released on October 17, 2013… nearly NINE YEARS AGO… with the nearly as infamous release of Windows 8.1.

• To commemorate the milestone occasion, the Mozilla team sent a cake to the folks at Microsoft. But this might not be the end just yet. The IE core engine is hanging around as “Internet Explorer Mode” in the new Microsoft Edge browser, and it’s looking like Microsoft plans to continue supporting that until 2029 at the earliest. Once that happens, maybe it’ll be an occasion for another cake… or maybe a steak dinner?

• AbiWord is a lightweight and powerful word processor with many features. Started back in 1998 and continuing to this day, AbiWord is well known in the open-source community, although development seems to have slowed down somewhat in recent years. In this article, I’ll take a quick look at this small and efficient word processor.

• Linux is unbeatable when it comes to supporting older hardware. Do you have a 10 year old laptop? Sure, no problem. Linux will thrive on it. But, can you really expect Linux to support old, obsolete hardware F-O-R-E-V-E-R? It wasn’t all that long ago when Linux support for floppy disk drives was going to be dropped because the kernel modules were no longer being maintained. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t even seen floppy disks available for purchase in over a decade, after seeing them available just about everywhere for years. For what it’s worth, I do still have two USB floppy disk drives available for use (and I’ve used them only once since I became a Linux user), but because they use a USB interface, they don’t use the kernel’s floppy disk drive driver. Instead, the Linux kernel sees the USB floppy disk drive merely as another USB storage device. If I recall correctly, someone stepped up at the 11th hour with an offer to support the antique barely-used driver, saving it from being omitted from the Linux kernel.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

•  The openSUSE Tumbleweed produced five snapshots since last Thursday that have so far been released.

• Among some of the packages updated this week besides those listed above in the headline were curl, ffmpeg, fetchmail, vim and more.

• Snapshot 20220802 was released a couple hours ago and updated just four packages. The update of webkit2gtk3 2.36.5 fixed video playback for the Yelp browser. It and webkit2gtk3-soup2 also fixed a couple Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures. An update of yast2-trans provided some Slovak translations.

Fedora Family / IBM

• In the week of July 05, 2022, it became public that Lennart Poettering was no longer working for Red Hat, having been hired by Microsoft. Such an event should have no repercussions whatsoever, were it not for who Lennart Poettering is, were Microsoft not the company it is, and were the future of GNU Linux not at stake here.

• [...]

• We must not forget Steve Ballmer’s famous quote: Linux is a cancer that attaches a sense of intellectual property to everything it touches.

• Now the question remains: Who is the cancer now? Because Microsoft is sticking to everything related to Linux, and like a parasite, will control its host (The Last Of Us sends regards).

• However, it has been some time since Microsoft gave up fighting openly against Linux, and decided to infect it from the inside in order to be better able to erode it, with less resistance and more ease.

• As Brian Lunduke, in his article Microsoft’s growing control of Linux, tells us: Microsoft controls: The largest open source hosting on Earth, a large portion of the Linux conferences, The Linux Foundation, The Open Source Initiative, and prominent Linux developers. (It’s not just Lennart who has moved to Microsoft, many open source developers are already working for it: Steve French, Matteo Croce, Matthew Wilcox, Tyler Hicks, Shyam Prasad N, Michael Kelley, Guido Van Rossum, the father of the Python language).

• [...]

• Systemd is just software. It does no harm by itself. The problem is the people (and the corporations that control it).

• Since its creation, from how it was conceived, in 2010, it has, in 12 years, achieved a position of dominance in the Linux ecosystem, where other solutions have taken decades, being improved upon.

• But, the rush to make systemd a “standard,” was, without soft words, a power struggle.

• A power struggle between Red Hat and Canonical, which also had a solution, Upstart, that competed with systemd.

• [...]

• Not to mention Github, which, under Microsoft’s direction, suffered a mass exodus to other platforms (Gitea, Gitlab, SourceForge, etc…), because Microsoft would abuse the code hosted there (as it ended up abusing).

• So, I leave the Ned Stark meme to you the reader, and like him, I say: Prepare for impact!

• Asia Development Bank’s IT modernization project was boosted by the adoption of Red Hat Ansible and Hashicorp Terraform. Learn about the initiative.

• The annual Red Hat Australia and New Zealand Partner Awards recognise our dedicated partners in the region for their ongoing commitment to delivering end-to-end customer solutions and expertise using Red Hat’s open source technology portfolio.

• At Red Hat, we believe that the future of IT is driven and supported by an ecosystem of highly skilled, aligned partners committed to working hand-in-hand with Red Hat and each other. Successful businesses depend on creative, nimble and resilient ecosystems of partners, and we are proud to have an ecosystem that empowers customer success through sustained innovation in open source technologies across industries to jointly deliver results with greater confidence.

• Internal and external pressures in the last decade have pushed service providers to begin transforming their processes and adopt technology company, or “techco”, characteristics. Agile organizational structures and processes that leverage software are some initiatives companies have embarked on. Other approaches include flexible workforce, and ecosystem partnerships to create new and exciting services for customers.

• For example, the APAC region is very varied in both the approach and progress of its service providers. Some of the most advanced 5G networks in the world can be found in China, Japan, and Korea, with service providers looking to deploy 5G standalone (SA), following the allocation of spectrum, whilst others in South Asia and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) remain focused on getting adequate coverage of 4G while working to roll out 5G.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Canonical is usually quite dependable when it comes to Ubuntu releases. When a new version of the Linux-based operating system is expected, it usually becomes available on time.

• Sadly, Ubuntu 22.04.1 won’t become available today as expected — a huge gut-punch to the Linux community. Why is Canonical disappointing fans of the operating system? Well, it seems a serious bug has caused the tragic delay. This serious issue causes snaps not to run on computers that use the OEM install option.

• Canonical’s Lukasz Zemczak announced the new on the Ubuntu developer mailing list earlier, noting that an “unexpected issue” affecting OEM installs and Snaps was discovered late in testing. Given the relative severity of the issue with regards to the Ubuntu desktop experience (see below for details) the scheduled release has been punted/postponed/put-off by a week.

• So what’s literally the issue here?

• The issue affects installations that were done by PC manufacturers offering Ubuntu preinstalled. After the user accounts were set up, they would be unable to use Snap, Ubuntu’s newer package management system.

• Ubuntu 20.04 is nowhere near end of life, but 22.04 is starting to hit its stride.

• As is fairly well understood now, the first release of Ubuntu in each even-numbered year is a Long Term Support (LTS) release. Ubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa” gets support and updates until 2025 and won’t reach its official end-of-life until 2030. “Jammy Jellyfish” – the 22.04 release – is the replacement LTS version, receiving mainstream support until April 2027 and arriving at its end of life in April 2032.

• However, users of the previous LTS release don’t start to receive upgrade notifications until the subsequent LTS gets its first point release. For Jammy, if all goes well, that should be today: August 11 is the planned release date for Ubuntu 22.04.1. Canonical has published a list of bug-fixes on its Discourse, and you can also track its status on Launchpad.

• Among many others, 22.04.1 contains a fix for the latest speculative-executation flaw, Retbleed. This has led to speculation about a new law of computer speed changes.

• The latest ROS2 release came out just a few weeks ago. ROS2 Humble targets Ubuntu 22.04 and is also a long term support (LTS) release, meaning that both the underlying Ubuntu operating system and the ROS2 release get a full 5 years of support.

• Since installing operating systems on robots is often a pain, I only use the LTS releases and so I had to migrate from the previous LTS, ROS2 Foxy (on Ubuntu 20.04). Overall, there aren’t many changes to the low-level ROS2 APIs as things are getting more stable and mature. For some higher level packages, such as MoveIt2 and Navigation2, the story is a bit different.

Devices/Embedded

•  We’ve already seen compact Raspberry Pi CM4 based router boards with two Ethernet ports from DFRobots, Seeed Studio, and MCUZone. 52Pi CM4 Router Board expands on the same principle but also offers HDMI output, a 40-pin GPIO header for Raspberry Pi HAT expansion boards, and a small OLED information display.

• The board also includes two Gigabit Ethernet, plus the WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity from the Raspberry Pi CM4, and the extra features make the board larger (146x50mm) than competitors. But that makes the platform that much more flexibly, and can be used as a gateways for all sorts of projects thanks to the wide range of Raspberry Pi HAT available in the market.

• Typewriters may be long past their heyday, but just because PCs, word processor software, and cheap printers have made them largely obsolete doesn’t mean the world is better off without them. Using a typewriter is a rich sensory experience, from the feel of the keys under your fingers that even the clickiest of PC keyboards can’t compare with, to the weirdly universal sound of the type hitting paper.

• So if life hands you a typewriter, why not put it back to work? That’s exactly what [Artillect] did by converting an 80s typewriter into a Linux terminal. The typewriter is a Brother AX-25, one of those electronic typewriters that predated word processing software and had a daisy wheel printhead, a small LCD display, and a whopping 8k of memory for editing documents. [Artillect] started his build by figuring out which keys mapped to which characters in the typewriter’s 8×11 matrix, and then turning an Arduino and two multiplexers loose on the driving the print head. The typewriter’s keyboard is yet used for input, as the project is still very much in the prototyping phase, so a Raspberry Pi acts as a serial monitor between the typewriter and a laptop. The video below has a good overview of the wiring and the software, and shows the typewriter banging out Linux command line output.

• There are a number of cheap “4G LTE WiFi modems” available from Chinese devices makers are basically tiny computers/mobile routers powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processors and Android-based software.

• But hackers have discovered that they can be modified to run mainline Linux software like Debian 11.

Open Hardware/Modding

• For anyone who is new to the product, the Librem 5 USA is our premium phone that shares the same hardware design and features as our mass-produced Librem 5, but with electronics we make in the USA using a separate electronics supply chain that sources from US suppliers whenever possible. This results in a tighter, more secure supply chain for the Librem 5 USA. The Librem 5 USA uses the same PureOS as our other computers and so it runs the same desktop Linux applications you might be used to, just on a small screen. PureOS on the Librem 5 USA demonstrates real convergence, where the device becomes more than just a phone, it becomes a full-featured pocket-sized computer that can act like a desktop when connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, or even a laptop (or tablet!) when connected to a laptop docking station. All of your files and all of your software remains the same and follows you where you go. Applications just morph from the smaller screen to the larger screen when docked, just like connecting a external monitor to a laptop.

• Stepping on LEGO bricks is a meme for a reason: it really @#$%&! hurts. LEGO brick design is ingenious, but the engineers did not consider the ramifications of their minimalist construction system. We’ve seen people do crazy things for Internet points, such as walk across a bed of LEGO like they’re hot coals — or in Adam Beedle’s case, build a LEGO-firing turret specifically to shoot plastic bricks under a person’s feet.

• This project consists of two distinct sub-systems: the mechanical turret that launches the LEGO bricks and the targeting system that recognizes feet. For the former, Beedle devised a clever rubber band-based mechanism that cranks into position with a rack and pinion. An Arduino Uno rotates the pinion with a continuous-rotation servo motor. The pinion gear has a few teeth missing, so it releases the rubber bands and flings the loaded LEGO brick after a few rotations. Another brick then drops down from a hopper and the cycle repeats, resulting in automatic firing.

• Every car sold in the last few decades is equipped with an engine control unit, or ECU for short. Its job is to control nearly every aspect about the vehicle’s performance by reading various sensors and acting upon those inputs accordingly. However, some older rides aren’t nearly as performant as they could be, which is why YouTuber Robot Cantina wanted to modify their 1997 Saturn coupe for better fuel efficiency.

• To accomplish this goal, Robot Cantina created a lean burn system that works by making the ECU think the engine is burning more fuel than the actual amount, thus decreasing fuel consumption. They took a cheap air/fuel mixture sensor and connected its input to the engine’s manifold. Due to how it outputs a wideband, linear voltage, the signal had to be converted with an Arduino Uno into a narrow, lower voltage range via a lookup table.

• Those cheap wire-arm head massagers are great at giving your scalp a nice, relaxing rub. But they’re handheld implements that force the user to either manipulate the massager themselves or talk a partner into performing the task. David McDaid decided that the experience would be much more pleasant if a robot took care of the hard work, so he built this Stewart platform head massager.

• A Stewart platform is a dexterous manipulator often used with robotic end effectors or for orienting equipment. The standard setup requires six linear actuators, each with universal joints on both ends. The actuators mount between two plates in an arrangement that gives the top plate six degrees of freedom (DoF): pitch, roll, yaw, and linear movement in each of the three spatial axes. A Stewart platform is perfect for this application, because it lets the robot move the head massager in a variety of different ways that mimic manual movement.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

• Help improve the Free Software Directory (FSD) by adding new entries and updating existing ones. Every Friday we meet on IRC in the #fsf channel on Libera.Chat.

• Join the FSF and friends Friday, August 12, from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.

• We spent this past weekend in Los Angeles at the SCaLE 19X conference and it was a great time. Three of our board members were speakers at this year’s conference. Aeva Black’s keynote presentation was on Saturday, July 29th. They discussed what Open Source maintainers can begin doing to prepare for federal SBoM (software bill of materials) requirements under discussion in Congress today.

• New OSI board member’s Josh Berkus and Amanda Brock also spoke at this year’s event. Berkus spoke about voting software. He explored the Open Source options available for voting software and spoke in-depth into how Elekto works. Brock talked about the state of Open Source in government. She discussed how Open Source software got to this position, challenges and risks faced, and the needs of curation and stewardship to build critical infrastructure in 2022 and beyond.

Programming/Development

• The Register reports that GitLab is planning to start deleting repositories belonging to free accounts if they have been inactive for at least a year.

• GitLab is a software development, hosting and deployment company that’s proven popular with open source software developers and which currently hosts many popular projects. But according to a report from The Register, some of those projects could disappear soon.

• That’s because GitLab is said to be planning to start deleting inactive projects from users on GitLab’s free service tier if they haven’t been updated in the past 12 months. In order to stave off deletion, developers just need to issue a commit, open an issue, or otherwise show that the project is active. But there’s a decent chance that this policy could still lead to deletion of many older software projects that haven’t been updated in a long time, but which may still be in use or which may be relied upon by other software projects.

• As Kubernetes grows and matures, features may be deprecated, removed, or replaced with improvements for the health of the project. Kubernetes v1.25 includes several major changes and one major removal.

• “The “setenv ()” function is used in C programming for adding or updating a variable in the environment which is in the calling process. This “setenv ()” function contains three parameters. The envname, envval, and the overwrite are the three parameters of this “setenv ()” function in C. When we want to update or add some new variable in the environment, then, we utilize this “setenv ()” function. It is not mandatory for setenv () to be re-entrant. A function doesn’t need to be thread-safe if re-entrant behavior is not necessary.

• In this guide, we will explore this concept in deep detail and will provide codes where we will utilize the “setenv ()” function in C programming. We will also discuss the syntax of this “setenv ()” function here in detail in this guide and will show you how to pass the parameters to this “setenv ()” function in C programming.”

Python

• We are all aware that an object function and function constructor can be used to refer specifically to a class variable. The setattr() method is the only other alternative to this one. In dynamic programming, where the variable name is not static, the setattr() method is helpful. The dot operator is inapplicable in that situation. Using the user input as an illustration, it sets the value of an object attribute. A value is assigned to an object’s attribute using the setattr() function in Python. It accepts an object, a string, and an unspecified value as parameters but doesn’t provide any output. When we wish to give an object a new attribute and assign a value to it, it is useful.

• You will gain knowledge about the setattr() method of Python in this article, while we cover what it accomplishes, when to employ it, and when it is unnecessary. Regardless of whether the attribute is present or not, the method is used to define an attribute’s value for an object.

• We cover the combinations() function by utilizing the Itertools. However, it is crucial to comprehend its utilization before delving further into the topic. Let’s first have a look at it. We frequently experience combinations or permutations when performing different calculations. But even though we may compute numbers, dealing with large values would be challenging sometimes. Think about what might occur if we had tools that could make this determination for users.

• In addition to the tools used to effectively loop through data known as Itertools, Python offers its users many important operations and structures that facilitate a simpler dealing with the data. A for-loop-steppable data structure can be iterated over using the Python library called Itertools. Iterator algebra is created using this module as a quick, memory-efficient technique, either alone or in combination. This module includes features that make the optimal use of computing resources.

• Additionally, using this module tends to make the code easier to read and maintain. Itertools is a built-in package in Python that enables us to manage the iterators effectively. They simplify the process of iterating across iterables like lists and strings. The Islice() is one such Itertools feature. This section is devoted to the islice approach in its entirety.

Java

• An access modifier is a special kind of variable declaration that controls how and where other code can use the declared class, variable, or method. This blog will explain what access modifiers are and the three different levels of visibility for classes, methods, and variables with some practical examples.

• Understanding the scope of your code is essential for writing readable and maintainable programs. Access modifiers are one way to achieve this goal. They tell other users of your code how you want them to interact with specific methods or variables. If you’re new to Java programming, these concepts may seem confusing at first glance; however, once you learn about them once or twice, they become much clearer. Keep reading to learn more about access modifiers in Java.

Leftovers

• There have been a lot of changes going on for me in the past few months. Without going onto a lot of details that I would rather not share, I’ve changed a lot in my personal and online life and I’ve taken on some new interests and possible changes in my future.

• This blog has been running in one form or another for many years and I don’t want to get rid of it but it will be mainly focused on things that interest in me in the Usenet world.

Security

• GwisinLocker is a new ransomware family that targets Linux in industrial and pharma companies with sophisticated “double extortion” ransomware campaigns.

• CISA and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) have published a joint Cybersecurity Advisory on the top malware strains observed in 2021. Malicious cyber actors often use malware to covertly compromise and then gain access to a computer or mobile device. As malicious cyber actors have been using most of these top malware strains for more than five years, organizations have opportunities to better prepare, identify, and mitigate attacks from these strains.

• F5 has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in multiple products. A privileged attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

• Cisco has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in Cisco Small Business RV160, RV260, RV340, and RV345 Series Routers. A remote attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system. For updates addressing lower severity vulnerabilities, see the Cisco Security Advisories page.

• CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. These types of vulnerabilities are a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risk to the federal enterprise. Note: to view the newly added vulnerabilities in the catalog, click on the arrow in the “Date Added to Catalog” column, which will sort by descending dates.

• The first day of school is right around the corner. Whether that brings some relief, gives you jitters or both, we’re here to support families with one major thing: internet safety.

• For parents, thinking about the dangers of the web can be scary. But it doesn’t have to be. While the internet isn’t perfect, it’s also a wonderful place for learning and connecting with others. Here’s what families can do to make the best of it while staying safe this school year.

• In our reports we attempt to outline the most relevant things that have been going on in the past month. As a brief introduction, the reproducible builds effort is concerned with ensuring no flaws have been introduced during this compilation process by promising identical results are always generated from a given source, thus allowing multiple third-parties to come to a consensus on whether a build was compromised. As ever, if you are interested in contributing to the project, please visit our Contribute page on our website.

Finance

• Walmart has had a problem with too many managers since at least when I worked there in the mid-2000s.

• Now Biden’s “Democrats have an election. Don’t say recession.” has claimed more victims, and I doubt they’ll be the last.

• The corporate layoffs are a complete blood bath all over America as companies tighten their wallets and try to get spending under control so that they’ll survive and can appease Wall Street with layoffs during falling revenue.

• It’s an old, old, trick.

• I certainly have no love for Donald Trump. I didn’t vote for him. But if Trump was in office, the media would be wall-to-wall “recession” right now. You’d be hearing it 24 hours a day. They’re holding off because of Biden.

• They want Biden. They want Democrats. That’s why they’re not going to throw them any hard balls about the economy, Monkeypox, mass layoffs, hyperinflation, or any of the other messes we’re in.

• I can’t bring myself to vote for either party in Illinois this year.

• Pritzker is just Biden in miniature. He’s trying to contain public anger until after the election. Trying to buy my vote with $50 of the taxes the state stole from me to begin with leading up to a major gas tax hike that drains it all back out of my wallet and then some. It’s an insult.

• The other guy, the Republican, Darren Bailey, is a straight up Nazi, and a dumbass.

Censorship/Free Speech

• I want us to consider the implications of this new reality: In three of the four most populous countries in the world, governments have now given themselves the power to order that the internet be wiped of citizens’ posts that the authorities don’t like.

• Indonesia — the world’s fourth-most populous country, and a democracy — is in the process of implementing what civil rights organizations say are overly broad regulations to demand removal of online speech that officials consider a disturbance to society or public order. Most major internet companies, including Google, Meta, Netflix, TikTok, Apple and Twitter have effectively agreed to go along with the rules, for now.

• Indonesia’s regulations are another sign that strict online controls are no longer confined to autocratic countries like China, Iran, North Korea and Myanmar. They are also increasingly the realm of democracies that want to use the law and the internet to shape citizens’ discussions and beliefs.

• In free societies, there has long been a tug of war over free speech and its limits. But one of the enduring questions of the online era is what governments, digital companies and citizens should do now that the internet and social media make it both easier for people to share their truth (or their lies) with the world and more appealing for national leaders to shut it all down.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

• I’ve found I rarely have the motivation to write really long and in-depth posts recently, and yet I have a strong motivation to write medium-length posts such as this one. This is my gemlog so I don’t know why I keep holding myself to writing standards instead of just writing what I feel like, so I’m at least going to try writing more stuff like this rather than just not writing anything as I’ve been doing.

Misc.

• I remember that time when I went to see Terry at his house, which was a ways out south of Rodiqum. It was still clear of the U34 out there, back then. We ate some macaroni or something, and set down there in the room.

• And he had this whole rear axle hanging on the wall, like someone would with a stag’s head for a trophy. Rusty, with the housing undone to show the gear. Probably like some old gm 10-bolt 2:29 or something.

• whilst i consider this as a prototype renovation i expect that i’ll be using the workmate 536 for a few tasks to confirm that they work.

• Last week (28 July), the Irish government reached an agreement on targets for carbon reduction across multiple sectors.

• The background: legislation has already been passed stating that Ireland must reduce its carbon emissions by 51% by 2030. Think of the passing of this legislation as phase 1.

• Phase 2 involved negotiating how that number would be reached, sector by sector (energy sector, transport, agriculture, housing, etc.).

• Today I had a few different reasons for venturing out. We only had enough food left at the house for the kids to eat lunch so I needed to pick something up for myself to eat while we were out. That’s not entirely true but we didn’t have anything else *easy* to make and I didn’t feel like making something that took much time or effort :-P. So I picked up a pita to go and then we found a nice shady spot under a tree to park and eat. The kids entertained themselves running up and down a hill and looking at wildlife in the lake.

Programming

• I think that the human readable rendering of a csv file in a gemini client is a good feature as such. On the other hand, let’s not forget why we use tables, we don’t make databases. This approach forces you to multiply as many files as you want to integrate tables, which seems to me to be a very cumbersome way of working.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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