● 08.10.22

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● Links 10/08/2022: YunoHost 11.0

Posted in News Roundup at 2:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Instructionals/Technical

• This is pretty straightforward. Any sysadmin will know that all you need to do is to run your package manager. It’s usually yum, dnf, apt, or some other similar thing. A command similar to this is probably the way: [...]

• It’s no secret that WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems for websites and blogs all over the Internet. In fact, 43% of the web is built on the WordPress platform.

• Popularity is not only caused by the powerful blog publishing and website-building features offered by the content management system. Plugins and themes also play an important role in making WordPress a preferred choice for blog owners and web developers.

• How to fix broken packages on Raspberry Pi OS

• While using Raspberry Pi OS, sometime you might come across the broken packages error. Due to incomplete or unnecessary package installation and improper package management, Raspberry Pi OS throws this sort of error.

• In this tutorial, we will show you the method to fix broken packages on Raspberry Pi OS.

• You have to deal with this error “mvn command not found” error while trying to invoke the maven utility in Unix systems. Don’t worry we are here with the solutions for this error.

• If your Linux usage experience has led/exposed you to high-load Linux server environments, then there is a high chance you’ve crossed paths with the infamous “too many open files” error.

• This Linux OS error simply implies that too many files (file descriptors) have been opened by a process and therefore no more files can be opened because the maximum open file limit has been met. Each system user or process in a Linux environment is assigned an open file limit value which is rather small.

• In this post, you will learn how to install Jameica on Ubuntu 22.04.

• Data security is a serious issue for businesses all around the globe. Organizations may better safeguard their systems and data against internal and external attacks by doing vulnerability assessments and penetration testing. The Metasploit framework is one such penetration testing tool discussed in this essay. Metasploit is a flexible and robust penetration testing framework that can handle all aspects of the penetration testing life cycle. It is a free and open-source penetration testing framework that is accessible for almost all common operating systems.

• Metasploit Framework was created by Ruby language developers and is accessible for installation on a variety of operating systems. It supports all major Linux and Unix distributions, as well as macOS and Windows.

• In addition to command-line input, graphical user interfaces are offered for easier operation. Add-ons allow the framework to be extended in multiple languages.

• The framework has a modular structure that separates between developer and attacker duties. The attack techniques (exploits) and the code to be executed are separated. Exploits must be properly adapted to the various software and hardware vulnerabilities. When an attack technique is successful and the system can be penetrated or hacked, the code is employed.

• CRI-O is a lightweight container runtime alternative to Docker for Kubernetes. It’s an implementation of Kubernetes CRI (Container Runtime Interface) and compliance with OCI runtime (Open Container initiative).

• A common error when using the sssd daemon to authenticate via Active Directory on Linux seems to be:

• sssd[$PID]: ; TSIG error with server: tsig verify failure

• This is from sssd launching the command “nsupdate -g” to do dynamic DNS updates. It is possible to specify the DNS server in /etc/sssd/sssd.conf but that will only be used AFTER the default servers have been attempted, so it seems impossible to stop this error from happening. It doesn’t appear to do any harm as the correct server is discovered and used eventually. The commands piped to the nsupdate command will be something like….

• I won’t go into checking out or building the Kernel, as that is covered elsewhere. Assuming you have a buildable Kernel, you can build the tests with:

• make -C tools/testing/selftests

• But you are probably going to see errors like this:

Games

• After the recent SteamOS 3.3 release, it came with some unfortunate performance issues for the Steam Deck that Valve continues to address. The first was a random bit of micro-stutter that I highlighted and Valve fixed, but it seems there were other problems.

• Nine Noir Lives is an upcoming point and click adventure game that follows feline private investigator Cuddles Nutterbutter. A new brief trailer is out, showing off a very important game mechanic.

• Do you love your point and click adventures? We have another to highlight with Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack that will have Native Linux support.

• Two Point Campus is the next game from Two Point Studios and SEGA, the same lot that gave us Two Point Hospital. It comes with Native Linux support and works on the Steam Deck right away.

• Here’s a very interesting development for the world of the open source Godot Engine, as a new company named W4 Games has been formed to push it further than ever before. Founded by Godot Engine veterans Juan Linietsky, Rémi Verschelde and Fabio Alessandrelli, and veteran entrepreneur Nicola Farronato the idea is to provide commercial assistance to developers of all sorts using Godot Engine.

• The developer of ZONERS certainly had an interesting pitch when introducing their new game over email and it turns out it’s pretty fun. Scanning over my inbox recently and I come across “What if pong had lore, special moves & gay aliens?” as a title and that’s certainly one way to grab my attention.

• The popular Avatar the Last Airbender series continues to have an influence on game developers, with Emberbane being announced as an upcoming pixel action-platformer with combat revolving around a mixture of four elements with unique abilities.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• The popular security-focused distribution Kali Linux has announced version 2022.3, but the important news is outside of it.

• Kali Linux is a popular operating system designed for security professionals and Linux enthusiasts. It is a Debian-based distribution developed, funded, and maintained by Offensive Security.

• Kali Linux is a rolling release, which constantly releases updates, including feature updates. However, there are also quarterly releases, which are a good moment to catch up on what is new in Kali.

• The new version of the ethical-hacking-focused Linux distribution Kali Linux has been released, dubbed 2022.3. It ships with added tools to create a local penetration test environment. The developers have also announced a new Discord server.

• Following these last months of alpha and beta-testing, we are glad to announce the release of YunoHost 11.0 running on Debian 11 (Bullseye)!

Fedora Family / IBM

• I’ve been in the dumps lately, mainly from a combination of six years of watching our democracy go down the drain, two-and-a-half years hiding from a virus by mainly staying at home in a rural area where I don’t know anyone who’s anything like me, and a dozen or more years spent watching the open source noncorporate user community become more and more marginalized.

• Oh, and then there’s Ukraine.

• Branch offices and stores, the manufacturing floor, remote sensors, ships and planes — all of these locations represent the vast and distant frontier known as “the edge.” The edge is not new. Those branches and locations have always been out there, functioning and supporting the business. But what is new are the state-of-the-art technologies that can help you take greater advantage of the edge than ever before.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Education

• The R community in Namibia is fairly new. We just launched our group in April and have since hosted three events. So far the turnout has been quite encouraging and the gender balance is also good. Seeing an equal number of male and female participants in our sessions was heartwarming. At least 40 percent of the participants so far are totally beginners and have not used R at all. The rest of the percentage comprises graduate students. Our events have been online so far.

Programming/Development

• How fast do these programs run? We can check using a benchmarking tool such as hyperfine. Such tools handle various factors such as shell starting time and so forth.

• In this article, you’ll get a quick introduction to Make, where you’ll be shown an example C application. Don’t be worried if you’re not familiar with C programming; the application is simple to understand, and your familiarity with any language is more than enough. With this application, you’ll be guided through various ways to implement wildcards into the build process.

Leftovers

• Is it the eight titanium pins around my knees or the fact

• that for three months

• As new technology emerges, we want to see greater oversight over data collection and more investment geared toward helping parents from low-income families benefit from the potential of new technologies.

Education

• Backed by Amazon Web Service, Telstra, Accenture and Commonwealth Bank, Grok Academy will launch the Digital Technologies Applied Challenge on Wednesday at the EduTech conference in Melbourne.

• Here’s an illustrative thought experiment: imagine you have a time machine. Now pick a worker at random from some time and place in the past 5 centuries, and carry them forward by 30 years. will they be able to earn a living?

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• When the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate Sunday, Republicans successfully blocked a price cap on insulin. Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, says that despite its flaws, the bill is a win against the pharmaceutical industry’s exploitative profits. “They’re super worried that this is a break in the dam and that it will lead to more negotiation, once we, the American people, see plainly the cost savings that are available,” says Weissman.

• This, of course, is unadulterated horseshit.

Proprietary

• There’s no clear indication that Burger King has been breached, and we’ve reached out to the company to explain these random midnight burger emails. A lot of people who have received the emails don’t even remember creating a Burger King account, so it could simply be a system change that went wrong and blasted out blank orders to Burger King’s entire marketing database.

Security

• This vulnerability is a zero-day and is being exploited in the wild. Of the 118 flaws for which patches were issued on Tuesday, 17 were rated as critical and 101 as important.

• Microsoft has released updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. An attacker can exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

• Microsoft today released updates to fix a record 141 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and related software. Once again, Microsoft is patching a zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostics Tool (MSDT), a service built into Windows. Redmond also addressed multiple flaws in Exchange Server — including one that was disclosed publicly prior to today — and it is urging organizations that use Exchange for email to update as soon as possible and to enable additional protections.

• As always, please consider backing up your system or at least your important documents and data before applying system updates. And if you run into any problems with these updates, please drop a note about it here in the comments.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Jessica Burgess is charged with five crimes (three felonies, including “perform/attempt abortion at > 20 weeks, perform abortion by non-licensed doctor, and removing/concealing a dead human body). Celeste is charged with one felony, “removing/concealing/abandoning dead human body” and two misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person and false reporting. She is being tried as an adult. Some details of the case were earlier reported by the Lincoln Journal-Star and Forbes. Motherboard is publishing the search warrants and court records that show specifically how the case is being prosecuted.

• According to a sworn affidavit from Detective Ben McBride of the Norfolk Police Investigations Unit, police started with a tip from a woman who described herself as a friend of Celeste who said she saw her take the first pill in April.

• Under a Nebraska state law enacted before Roe was overturned, abortion is illegal 20 weeks after an egg is fertilized. According to McBride’s affidavit, Burgess had a miscarriage when she was around 23 weeks pregnant, soon after taking abortion pills.

• McBride then applied for and received a warrant in June for access into the digital lives of the mother and daughter, seizing six smartphones and seven laptops and compelling Facebook to turn over chats between them.

• According(Opens in a new window) to NBC News, both Jessica Burgess and Celeste were charged last month, but have pleaded not guilty. Celeste is being tried as an adult.

• “I know from prior training and experience, and conversations with other seasoned criminal investigators, that people involved in criminal activity frequently have conversations regarding their criminal activities through various social networking sites, i.e. Facebook,” Ben McBride, a detective for the Norfolk Police Division, said in an affidavit supporting the search warrant to Meta. The document states the detective believes the premises of Meta “are being used for the purpose of securing or keeping evidence related to Prohibited Acts with Skeletal Remains.”

• Facebook turned over the chats of a mother and her daughter to Nebraska police after they were served with a warrant as part of an investigation into an illegal abortion, court documents show.

• The investigation, which was launched in April before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, is one of the few known instances of Facebook’s turning over information to help law enforcement officials pursue an abortion case — but it is also an example of a scenario that abortion rights experts have warned will be more common as all abortions becomes illegal in many states.

• This is why Atsign exists. The idea is that data, especially sensitive data, such as what might come from a medical device, travels to an Atsign server in the cloud or a dedicated on-premise server running Atsign’s software and stays there. When a user wants to share their data, they can give permission for it to go to the assignee of their choice.

• And yes, the immediate result of this deal is that Amazon would be able to turn its planned Astro home robot immediately into something more useful, since the No. 1 complaint was that this device should at least be cleaning while it wandered the home annoying people. Also yes, this deal does give Amazon access to detailed maps of your home, which in turn could be used to gather even more data about you. And finally, it brings in a product portfolio that resulted in annual revenue of $1.56 billion last year, which isn’t much to Amazon, but adds to its overall smart home device portfolio that includes smart speakers, Ring and Eero.

Defence/Aggression

• Ericsson is being sued by hundreds of Americans who say the company’s alleged payment of bribes to al Qaeda and Islamic State—protection money meant to let it operate in Iraq—also helped fund acts of terror.

• The Stockholm-based telecommunications company, which was sued Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C., faces claims from more than 500 U.S. service members and civilians who were victims of terrorist attacks and hostage takings from 2005 to 2021, along with the families of those killed in attacks.

• They brought their claims under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990, which allows victims of terrorism to seek damages in U.S. courts, including against companies and individuals that aid and abet terrorism.an

• “However, the very next month Russia invaded Ukraine. Threats of using nuclear weapons have been made, sending shivers throughout the globe. RTL

• “The use of nuclear weapons is not a ‘groundless fear’ but a ‘tangible and present crisis’,” Taue said, warning that they could be unleashed through mistaken judgements, malfunctions or in terror attacks.

• In the first part of a series of reports on Afghanistan, NPR host Steve Inskeep (Morning Edition, 8/5/22) interviewed current Afghan Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid. In introducing Yaqoob on air, Inskeep referenced Yaqoob’s father, the former head of the Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar: “He was the leader who refused to turn over Osama bin Laden in 2001, a refusal that led to the US attack.”

• Steven Seagal, the American actor perhaps best known for stabbing Tommy Lee Jones in the head in the 1992 film “Under Siege,” is reportedly filming a documentary film about the “war in the Donbas,” according to Denis Pushilin, the head of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic.

• The Russian-backed occupation authorities in Ukraine’s Kherson region are planning to incorporate the parts of the Mykolaiv region that have been captured by Russia into the Kherson region, according to Kherson occupation administration representative Ekaterina Gubareva.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on Western countries to ban all Russian citizens from entering their territories. “The most important sanctions are to close the borders — because the Russians are taking away someone else’s land,” he told The Washington Post. Zelensky said Russians who have left Russia because of their opposition to the war against Ukraine should not be exempt: “Whichever kind of Russian [...] make them go to Russia.”

• Eyewitnesses in western Crimea reported a series of explosions at a military airbase on the Black Sea coast near the town of Novofedorivka. Footage shared online shows a large plume of smoke rising on the horizon from the area of the airfield. The smoke could be seen from the beaches of Yevpatoriya, almost 20 miles away.

• One of the Ukrainian soldiers captured after defending Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant from invading Russian troops has died in a prison in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, according to TASS. A source from the occupation administration who spoke to the agency claimed that the man died due to a combination of chronic health issues and “drug addiction.” The source did not reveal the man’s name.

• As China unleashed live-fire military exercises off the coast of Taiwan, simulating a real “reunification by force” operation in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ceremonial visit to the island last week, the bipartisan fervor for a new Cold War with China and Russia took greater hold in Washington.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

Environment

• The bill, which would see an unprecedented $370 billion invested in cutting US emissions 40 percent by 2030, should provide a launchpad for green investment and kickstart a transition towards renewable energy in the world’s largest emitter.

• It passed the Senate on Sunday night after months of arduous negotiations and only after a number of tax and energy provisions were tacked on to Biden’s original proposal.

• Global warming and changing weather patterns are affecting the water supply for one of the world’s most important waterways, the Panama Canal, as well as access to drinking water for millions of Panamanians, reports journalist Grace Livingstone from Panama City.

Finance

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The website of the Finnish parliament is currently inaccessible due to a denial of service attack. According to Yle, a Russian [cracker] group has posted on their Telegram channel that they are behind the attack.

• The Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee went on a four tweet rant yesterday, complaining that the FBI is conducting an investigation into the suspected large-scale theft of highly-classified materials.

• Ex-President Donald Trump and supporters expressed outrage on Monday over an FBI raid on his Palm Beach resort Mar-a-Lago. The search, according to multiple media outlets, focused on illegally removed White House records. Robert Weissman, president of the advocacy organization Public Citizen, says while the raid on a former president’s private residence is unprecedented, it is too early to tell how it will impact the ongoing investigation of the January 6 insurrection. “I don’t think that we should jump on board of being too excited and trusting of the FBI,” says Weissman.

• The FBI’s surprise raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound Monday sent the usual folks into a frenzy. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, the thirsty wannabe speaker, threatened Attorney General Merrick Garland with retribution. Various Trump toadies in the House and Senate warbled their predictable Trump love songs. Former vice president Mike Pence—who’s been trying to cautiously, maybe indecipherably, separate himself from his former lord—demanded that Garland give “full accounting” for the FBI search “immediately.” Outraged Fox News hosts seemed as prepared for this supposed breach of justice as the BBC is for Queen Elizabeth’s demise. For a while, “Abolish the FBI” trended on Twitter.

• While some supporters of Donald Trump called for defunding law enforcement or even waging civil war following Monday’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, both backers and critics of the former U.S. president believe the raid could actually boost his reelection prospects.

• Former Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin—who now condemns her former boss’ purveyance of the deadly “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen—said Tuesday on CNN’s “New Day” that the U.S. Justice Department may have “just handed Trump” the 2024 Republican nomination “or potentially the presidency.”

• “Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Donald Trump raged Monday evening after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida and broke open a safe, apparently looking for documents that Trump illegally took from the White House.

• The far-right in the United States responded ominously to the FBI’s Monday night search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida mansion, with Republican lawmakers and television personalities baselessly accusing the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department and popular as well as anonymous social media users beating the drums of a civil war.

• “Lock and load,” says the top comment related to the Mar-a-Lago search on patriots.win—a pro-Trump comment forum that emerged after Reddit banned the r/The_Donald group of nearly 800,000 for repeatedly posting racist and misogynistic content in violation of its rules against harassment and targeting.

• It was reported earlier this year that the National Archives asked the Justice Department to conduct a probe into Trump’s handling of his presidential records after more than a dozen boxes, which included classified information and under the Presidential Records Act were found to be required to remain with government record-keepers.

• Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office has requested the appointment of a special prosecutor to consider criminal charges against nine people it alleges were involved in a conspiracy to improperly obtain access to voting machines used in the 2020 election — including the presumptive GOP nominee for attorney general set to challenge Nessel in the November election.

• And sometimes when you concede ground to meet in the middle, you still end up losing. And losing is the correct word. In political debates when you don’t achieve what you’re fighting for, which should be people’s benefits and rights, you’ve lost your fight.

• The middle between civil rights and genocide, which means both sides have given up some grounds, is murder. No matter what you achieve, you’re responsible for the murder.

• Net income increased 95 per cent on the previous year, while revenue for the year ended June 2022 reached another record at $US10.4 billion ($A14.9 billion), an increase of 11 per cent.

• “An uninhabited land, no indigenous people to be seen; a barren, rocky landscape and bears with white fur that have heretofore never been seen.”

Misinformation/Disinformation

• “The figure of over 52 degrees in incorrect. It is not a figure that is in our climate database, and in fact, there is no log of a temperature above 50 degrees Celsius,” he said.

• And “even if the figure was correct, which I stress it is not, that is not proof that climate changes does not exist”, he added.

• Two years of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s text messages have now been turned over to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. The messages were first revealed in court last week in Austin, Texas, just before a jury ordered InfoWars host Alex Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages to the parents of Jesse Lewis, a 6-year-old boy killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. For years Alex Jones spread conspiracy theories that the Newtown shooting was a government hoax and the victims’ families were paid actors, resulting in online harassment and death threats for Sandy Hook families. “He will never change, but it does send a message … that this is just so important to push back against the lies and disinformation,” says New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson, who covered the case and is the author of “Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth.”

Censorship/Free Speech

• Quoting an independent study by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), Bordoloi stated in his letter reporting that while India saw only six shutdowns in the year 2014, the number rose to over the 100-mark each year after 2018. “Border regions like Jammu & Kashmir and NE states have been particularly susceptible to such blackouts, most recently with a 5-day suspension of mobile services ordered in Manipur,” he added.

• According to SFLC’s internet shutdown tracker, Manipur has faced as many as seven internet shutdowns since 2015.

• Universities have started removing books from reading lists to protect students from “challenging” content and have applied trigger warnings to more than 1,000 texts, a Times investigation has found.

• Collier County, FL, has added a “parent advisory” notice to more than 100 books in school libraries, and more LGBTQIA+ titles are being removed from districts across the country in the latest Censorship Roundup.

• Twitter reportedly froze the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official English-language account for seven days in response to a tweet by the agency on August 4 claiming that “the U.S. and its allies in Ukraine and elsewhere” may be “involved” in the “emergence of COVID-19.” (Making these allegations, Russia’s MFA singled out the U.S. Agency for International Development.) The tweet is still available online, though Twitter has added a warning stating that it violated its rules on “sharing false or misleading info that might bring harm to crisis-affected populations.”

• CNN host Michael Smerconish interviewed Roger Waters about his “This Is Not A Drill” concert tour. By comparing the 7-minute edited version that aired to the 28-minute uncut version, which Smerconish posted, it is evident that producers used the interview to try and paint Waters as a “political madman” to discredit the messages in his show.Shadowproof’s Kevin Gosztola put together this video that shows what made the CNN edit a classic example of framing dissent in a manner that was intended to strip Waters of any credibility. The beginning features the “Bravery of Being Out of Range,” which Gosztola recorded during Waters’ performance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Waters used the song from his 1992 album “Amused To Death” to indict every US president since President Ronald Reagan, who has been responsible for death and destruction as an overseer of a war machine. But instead of learning Waters is commenting on an entire system, you may think Waters has only singled out President Joe Biden if you watched CNN.As Waters shares his opinion about human rights, Taiwan and China, and the war in Ukraine, Smerconish no longer is simply a Pink Floyd fan talking to Waters. Smerconish is acting as a cop, who is there to call out anything Waters says that does not fit into the cable news network’s preferred narratives.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The end result is that, for me, it’s hard to figure out a set of laws that make a country a good place for doing business or working. Whatever that set of laws is might be antithetical to the set which makes that country not-a-dystopic-hellhole taking into account the acceleration of market forces via automation.

• Founded in the wake of the global financial crisis, Uber Technologies worked to take advantage of widespread unemployment, decades of neoliberal policymaking, and advances in geolocative and algorithmic technologies to “disrupt” the locally owned and highly regulated global taxi industry. With a lean model that pushed capital expenditures and risks onto its workforce, Uber and “the gig economy” upended transportation throughout the world. By the time Uber went public in 2019, it had established a firm global presence and a valuation of $76 billion.

• Each year, hundreds of Army soldiers face trial in military courts for offenses that range from murder to failure to report for duty.

• The military justice system largely operates separately from the civilian legal process and is unknown to many Americans. Under the system, commanders, who are not required to be trained lawyers, wield significant influence and can detain soldiers while they are awaiting trial through a process known as pretrial confinement.

• Christian Alvarado began to type as he sat alone in an interrogation room at Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army post in El Paso, Texas. He’d spent most of the previous seven hours hooked up to a polygraph, answering a military investigator’s questions about an allegation that he’d sexually assaulted a fellow soldier.

• His story had changed several times during the interview in late July 2020. The investigator told Alvarado he’d already failed two polygraph tests, then left the room so that the young soldier could type up his account in a sworn statement. With his fingers on the keyboard, Alvarado began describing the night in December 2019 that he spent in the barracks with a female soldier he’d met that day.

• We speak with Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, about his call for the creation of a diverse, interfaith humanitarian delegation to travel to Russia to bring home WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was sentenced last week to nine years in a penal colony for possessing just two ounces of cannabis oil. “Our priority should be this young lady coming home,” says Barber.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• The NBN Co continues to have a problem with the affordability of its network, independent telecommunications consultant Paul Budde says following the company’s announced of its FY22 results on Tuesday.

• Budde told iTWire in response to a query that the results were not in any way a surprise. The NBN Co said its revenue had risen by 10%, but it still reported losses of $1.46 billion for the year.

• Budde said the key to the NBN Co’s problem in becoming profitable was the fact that the average revenue per user (ARPU) had hardly moved. The figure was $45 at the end of FY21 and improved to $46 by the end of the first six months of 2021-22.

Monopolies

Software Patents

• San Francisco: Google on Monday sued high-tech speaker and audio technology company Sonos again, alleging that the company infringed on its patents around smart speakers and voice control technology.

• Google is striking back at Sonos with a pair of lawsuits alleging that the wireless speaker company is infringing on a number of its patents around smart speakers and voice control technology. It’s the latest volley in a back-and-forth battle over wireless speakers that has so far involved multiple lawsuits from Sonos, one lawsuit from Google, and one ruling in favor of Sonos that’s led to features being stripped from Google’s products.

• These new lawsuits allege infringement of seven additional patents. One lawsuit focuses on hotword detection and wireless charging, and the other revolves around how a group of speakers determines which one should respond to voice input.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• For some long forgotten reason, I was reading a post on Hacker News forums the other day. (Probably something to do with the small web). While moseying on through the replies a link was made to a really spiffy search engine that I’d never heard of. It’s called wiby.me and it has become my new favorite thing. A big reason I’m so enamoured with it is likely to do with how most of the results are for sites at least 20 years old (and haven’t been updated in equally as long), but more on that in a sec.

• The place is designed as open source so people who want to make their own tailored search engine that is focused on whatever nifty topics tickle their fancy can go ahead and do so. I’m nowhere near technically inclined to do something like that and am also very lazy so probably wouldn’t bother even if I could.

• For one thing, I definitely don’t want to discourage others because I like reading some of the very stuff I’m holding back on myself. I like reading what others are working on with gemini, and gemini is just the way to do it, after all. If I end up writing any plausibly useful software I’ll give myself a pass to join in on that conversation more. And I think you have a good point about rants. Sometimes you need to whack people over the head with an idea, not just gently prod them with it. Come to think of it, a bunch of the books I hope to give a boost here are essentially rants! Maybe I just don’t trust myself yet to create my own in a constructive way. I’ll see how I do with my writing for a while first.

• 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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