● 11.10.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 10/11/2022: Deepin 23 Alpha and Thunderbird Supernova Preview

Posted in News Roundup at 12:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of Ubuntu Budgie 22.10 and some of the applications pre-installed.

• All Things Open is a technology conference that’s focused on open source. I was there in Raleigh North Carolina this year for the event, and in this video, I’ll give you an overview of my experience there.

• When we think of Linux we think it’s this super well designed project where everybody knows what they’re doing but in reality it seems that it may be a little bit more haphazard with hacky code like this existing.

Kernel Space

• If you care about Linux and what goes into maintaining the kernel, you know how important Greg Kroah-Hartman is to stable releases and much more. On this can’t-miss episode of FLOSS Weekly, Kroah-Hartman gives deep, knowing, and good-humored answers to questions from Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, and Jonathan Bennett.

• The Linux security module (LSM) mechanism was created as a result of the first Kernel Summit in 2001; it was designed to allow the development of multiple approaches to Linux security. That goal has been met; there are several security modules available with current kernels. The LSM subsystem was not designed, though, to allow multiple security modules to work together on the same system. Developers have been working to rectify that problem almost since the LSM subsystem was merged, but with limited success; some small security modules can be stacked on top of the “major” ones, but arbitrary stacking is not possible. Now, a full 20 years after security-module support went into the 2.5 development kernel series, it looks like a solution to the stacking problem may finally be getting closer.

• The practice of requiring copyright assignments for contributions to free-software projects has been in decline for years; the GNU Binutils project may be the latest domino to fall in that regard. The Linux kernel project, unlike some others, has always allowed contributors to retain their copyrights, resulting in a code base that has widely distributed ownership. In such a project, who owns the copyright to a given piece of code is not always obvious. Some developers (or their employers) are insistent about the placement of copyright notices in the code to document their ownership of parts of the kernel. A series of recent discussions within the Btrfs subsystem, though, has made it clear that there is no project-wide policy on when these notices are warranted — or even acceptable.

• In early September, a patch series implementing fscrypt integration for the Btrfs filesystem included this patch adding, among other things, a one-line Facebook copyright notice.

• At the recently concluded Netdev 0×16 conference, which was held both in Lisbon, Portugal and virtually, Stanford professor John Ousterhout gave his personal views on where networking in data centers needs to be headed. To solve the problems that he sees, he suggested some “fairly significant changes” to those environments, including leaving behind the venerable—ubiquitous—TCP transport protocol. While LWN was unable to attend the conference itself, due to scheduling and time-zone conflicts, we were able to view the video of Ousterhout’s keynote talk to bring you this report.

Graphics Stack

Applications

• AI tools have exploded in our times. Repetitive tasks that used to take countless hours before and a lot of people to finish, now take few minutes to complete. Thanks to the advancement in artificial intelligence and the related fields.

• Today we are introducing a nice tool for Linux users, called Upscayl. It is an open source AI image upscaler and enhancer that is mainly designed for Linux systems, but also works on Windows and macOS.

• You probably know that if you tried to increase the resolution or zoom in a PNG or JPG image, then you will lose some quality of the image while doing so. However, the benefit of this software is that it can do the upscaling you want, with very minor loss in quality, thanks to the AI algorithm it uses while doing the upsclaing.

• The AI algorithm, known as Real-ESRGAN, allows programs to “predict” the missing pixels while upscaling images, which enhances the quality of the output images. Upscayl is just a program that implements this AI algorithm for Linux desktop users.

• You can download the software by heading to its releases page on GitHub, and downloading the latest version suitable for the OS that you are currently using. Linux users for example are advised to download the .AppImage file (and right click it –> Allow executing as executable) in order to use the software without a hassle.

• As with all new fwupd releases, version 1.8.7 is here to add support for more hardware, including more Linux laptops from Star Labs (probably the upcoming StarFighter laptop), fingerprint lenfy devices, ELAN haptic hardware, Goodix GF3258WNC, Anker Thunderbolt 4 Mini Hub, QSI Godzilla Creek Reference Hub, as well as experimental support for Intel discrete GPUs.

• Some new features are present as well in this release, such as support for xz-compressed metadata, which should reduce the bandwidth used to download firmware files by approximately 25 percent, a new HSI check for the leaked Lenovo ‘Key Manifest’ hashes, as well as the ability to measure system integrity when installing UEFI updates and record more host DMI data when submitting a report for DBX failures.

• This series highlights best-of-breed utilities. We cover a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides.

• AES Crypt is file encryption software that uses the industry standard Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to easily and securely encrypt files.

• AES (also known as Rijindael) is a symmetric encryption algorithm. The algorithm was designed to be efficient in both hardware and software, and supports a block length of 128 bits and key lengths of 128, 192, and 256 bits.

• [GIMP] Version 2.99.14 is supposed to be released soon and whenever it comes, it will arrive with two more major changes.

• The most important one deals with the much hated floating selection that used to seriously annoy users. Now, whenever you paste something into GIMP, it becomes a layer rather than a floating selection.

• We’re happy to announce Kiwi TCMS version 11.6! This is our first release after the very positive reception we had at WebSummit 2022!

Instructionals/Technical

• Got a new Raspberry Pi? This guide walks you through each step of installing Raspberry Pi OS on your Raspberry Pi device with ease.

• The Raspberry Pi is currently the most widely used single-board computer. Its uses are nearly unlimited; users use it to learn programming skills, build hardware projects, for server needs, do home automatons, or just as a desktop replacement.

• With so many Linux distros and packaging methods available, it’s no wonder that developers often choose to distribute their programs in a format—like AppImage—that can be executed by any Linux system. But AppImages are painful to manage and don’t easily integrate with your system menu.

• Fortunately, there’s a solution that can help you use AppImages as if they were regular Linux apps.

• Debian is known amongst the Linux community for its gold standard in being stable, and a common drawback can be that the packages, especially after the new Debian release ages are that they are often years behind what is currently available as they only receive security and bug updates to keep packages stable. Now for most environments, this is acceptable. Still, it can be very frustrating for users needing specific packages to be upgraded to utilize the features or fix annoying non-critical or security-related bugs. However, the great thing about Linux and using repositories is that you can use what is known as backports or experimental repositories, which are packages taken from the next Debian release, which is nearly always the testing repository and adjusted recompiled for usage on Debian stable.

• The following tutorial will demonstrate how to enable the backports, along with an example of how to search and install a package with extra on the same practice with the experimental repository on your Debian desktop or server.

• Debian users know that the releases mean stability, so instead of installing Nvidia Drivers by default and keeping them updated when new releases arrive, you will find the Nouveau open-source graphics device driver installed on your system for Nvidia video cards for desktop users. For the most part, this is acceptable; however, if you use your Linux system for graphical design or gaming, or maybe you require Cuda support for development or headless driver support, you may need better drivers.

• The following tutorial will teach you how to install Nvidia Graphic Drivers using Debian’s repositories and to install the drivers directly from Nvidia repositories, which have both open-source and property drivers available.

• If you are a Python developer, then you know that it pays to have recent versions to take full advantage of the language. Today, you will learn how to install Python 3.11 on Ubuntu 22.04. In addition to this, you will be able to set one as the default on the system.

• Today we are looking at how to install MetaTrader 5 with the Deriv broker on a Chromebook.

• If you have any questions, please contact us via a YouTube comment and we would be happy to assist you!

• In this video, we are looking at how to install FreeCAD on Linux Mint 21.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install TinyCP on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, TinyCP is a most popular lightweight control panel, that provides a wide range of features on a Linux system, which features include control domains, mailboxes, databases, VPN, FTP connections, etc. Currently, TinyCP is available for Ubuntu and Debian users only.

• 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 TinyCP lightweight Linux control panel on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

• Want to find the lyrics of a song you’re currently listening to? Check out lyrics-in-terminal, a command-line app to view song lyrics on Linux.

• Listening to music relieves us of stress and makes us more productive at the task at hand. Occasionally, you might want to sing along with the euphonious melody of your favorite song but may end up struggling to identify the correct verse instead.

• Luckily, you don’t need to leave the comfort of your /home and fire up a web browser to search for lyrics online. lyrics-in-terminal is a command-line app that displays song lyrics within the Linux terminal.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Cortex on Ubuntu 22.04/Ubuntu 20.04.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Gatsby.js Node Framework on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Gatsby is a React-based build time static site generator that uses Webpack and GraphQL. You can integrate different content, APIs, and services seamlessly into one web experience in real time.

• 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 Gatsby.js Node Framework on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

• Learn how to install the recently launched version VirtualBox 7.0.x or upgrade the existing one on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal LTS using the command terminal.

• We already have the Virtualbox to install on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 using their official repository. However, the version available through it will not be the latest one. Well, you would already know about this open-source platform. It is developed by Oracle to run virtual machines on Windows, Linux, and macOS using virtualization technology.

• The updated version of VirtualBox has many improvements some of them are: Virtual machines can be fully encrypted now; Improved theme support on all platforms; reworked the new VM wizard to integrate the unattended guest OS installation; Added a new utility similar to “top” or “resource monitor” and more. For a full list, one can visit the official change log page.

• In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to install and configure Elasticsearch on Ubuntu 22.04

• Elasticsearch is a search engine based on the Lucene library. It is distributed, scalable, and open-source software used to store the collected data. On a daily basis, the administrators use elasticsearch because it has many features such as high availability, various sets of APIs, support for more than one index, native Java API, and many more.

• Installing Elasticsearch on Ubuntu 22.04 is a straightforward process that can take up to 15 minutes. Let’s get started!

Distributions and Operating Systems

• CachyOS has been created to serve as a Linux distribution for everyone, even while being based on the more complex Arch Linux.

• CachyOS has one goal, to create a beginner-friendly Arch-based Linux operating system that can be used by anyone, regardless of how much experience they might have.

• One might think Arch wouldn’t be the best distribution to serve as a base for such an operating system, but the developers have opted to go that route. And with the help of KDE Plasma, which is installed by default, the distribution certainly shows promise that they’ll achieve their goal.

• Of course, if KDE Plasma isn’t your jam, you can go with Cutefish, i3, GNOME, Openbox, Wayfire, LXQT, bspwm, Kofuku, or XFCE.

• Like most Arch spinoffs, CachyOS has a GUI installer that is just as point-and-clicky as any user-friendly Linux distribution. Another thing you might find interesting about CachyOS is the developers include a custom version of Firefox, called Cachy Browser, which is focused on privacy, security, and freedom.

New Releases

• A new “world” is coming for you! Deepin 23 Alpha is officially released by the first root community of desktop OS in China — deepin community!

• Deepin 23 Alpha is the second version of Deepin 23. Based on the new “Flow Design” concept, deepin 23 presents you with fashion UI interfaces and considerate interactive experiences. In terms of functions, it actively responds to the feedback from deepin users, develops and integrates many practical functions to meet user requirements in different scenarios. What is more, it fixes a large number of usage issues, preinstalls some Linglong applications, and comprehensively improves system compatibility and smoothness. Welcome to try it!

Fedora Family / IBM

• It is not often that you see a Fedora change proposal for a version of the distribution that will not be available for 18 months or so, but that is exactly what was recently posted to the mailing list. The change targets the C source code in the myriad of packages that the distribution ships; it would fix code that uses some ancient compatibility features that were removed by the C99 standard but are still supported by GCC. As might be guessed from the long runway proposed, there is quite a bit of work to do to get there.

• As usual with Fedora change proposals, this one was posted to the Fedora devel mailing list on behalf of its owner, Florian Weimer, by Fedora program manager Ben Cotton; it is also available in an updated form on the Fedora wiki. At the moment, Fedora 37 is imminent, but the proposal targets Fedora 40, which is currently slated for the northern-hemisphere Spring of 2024. The goal, as described by the title is “Porting Fedora to Modern C”.

• Linux distributions were, as a general rule, designed during an era when most software of interest was written in C; as a result, distributions are naturally able to efficiently package C applications and the libraries they depend on. Modern languages, though, tend to be built around their own package-management systems that are designed with different goals in mind. The result is that, for years, distributors have struggled to find the best ways to package and ship applications written in those languages. A recent discussion in the Fedora community on the packaging of Rust applications shows that the problems have not yet all been solved.

• The initial spark for the discussion was this Fedora 38 change proposal driven by Panu Matilainen. The RPM package manager has long carried its own internal OpenPGP parser for the management of keys and signatures for packages. This parser seemingly pleases nobody; the proposal describes it as “rather infamous for its limitations and flaws” and puts forward a plan to replace it with the Sequoia library, which is written in Rust (and which was covered here in 2020). The use of Rust provides the sort of safety net that is welcome in security-relevant code like this, but it can also be a red flag for developers who worry about how Rust fits into the distribution as a whole.

• Inevitably, there were complaints about this proposal. Kevin Kofler, for example, asked why a library written in C had not been chosen. According to Matilainen, efforts to find such a library have been underway for years without success. The most obvious alternative, GPGME, is unsuitable because it is built around communicating with an external GPG process, “which is a setup you do NOT want in the rpm context where chroots come and go etc.”. Neal Gompa agreed that the GPGME model creates pain in this context, and seemed to agree that there was no better alternative than Sequoia despite his own disagreements with the Rust community. “So here we are, in a subpar situation created by bad tools because nobody cares enough about security anyway”.

• Atempo has partnered with CIQ to complete the certification of Rocky Linux for all of Atempo’s offerings. Atempo is one of Europe’s largest data protection and data management solutions providers. CIQ is the company building the next generation of software infrastructure for enterprises running data-intensive workloads atop the Rocky Linux enterprise Linux distribution. The certification means that customers can deploy Atempo solutions powered by Rocky Linux with confidence that the technology stacks are integrated for optimal performance with the Rocky Linux enterprise Linux distribution.

Devices/Embedded

• Librem-EC 1.11 for the Librem 14 laptop includes several improvements targeting device stability and reliability. As with our previous posts on the EC, it has been quite an adventure investigating corner cases! Update to this release with our update instructions, and as always the source code is available.

• I’ll then need some time to test OpenWrt 21.02 and features such as WireGuard and OpenVPN, AdGuard Home, Tor Anonymity, and soon.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Imagine if you could identify a component and its schematic label by simply touching that component on your PCB. Imagine if you selected a pin in KiCAD and it started glowing on your real, physical PCB so you can find it easily. Imagine if you could see through your PCB’s solder mask to view the traces underneath. All of those things — and much more — are possible with this Augmented Reality Debugging Workbench (ARDW) system.

• ARDW pairs tracking camera computer vision with projection mapping for fantastic augmented reality examination of PCBs. Touch a component with the special probes and ARDW will project the component’s name and label onto the table next to your board. Select a component or a component’s pin in KicAD and ARDW will project a highlighted overlay on the physical board showing you where it is. ARDW can even guide you through automated debugging by highlighting probe points and checking your measurements as you take them.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• This is a write-up of my experience with self-hosting services. I hope it’s useful and encouraging to people that wishes to get started in this art.

• [...]

• For some people, I’m a paranoid, I avoid social networks and use Linux.

• [...]

• Armed with that motivation, a dusty Raspberry Pi 2 and 64GB SD Card, I set to adventure myself. First I had to decide which OS to install. Ubuntu, Debian or Raspbian didn’t appeal to me. Having previous good experience with Arch Linux ARM I thought why not. Despite claims out there that Arch is not reliable, I never had any serious trouble with it for the last 7 years as my main system or in 2 years of self-hosting.

• Once the OS was installed, another decision had to be made, how to manage services. Some people insist in using packages provided by the distribution. I knew this would have limited success, after all, I couldn’t depend solely on packagers and AUR. Some people really like to suffer more than necessary and use Kubernetes for home labs. If you have time, multiple boards and motivation to learn Kubernetes, go ahead, it is just not my case. There is also Portainer and Ansible, which I didn’t really consider. Finally, I settled on using Docker with compose files. This approach has been serving me well, there are alternatives, there are even distros (e.g. Umbrel) which automate the installation and maintenance of services (I’m not talking about packages and systemd services). For now I’m happy with the balance of control, simplicity and maintenance effort.

• The surge of people joining Mastodon and the Fediverse the past few days has been inspiring. I’m optimistic about the potential for a better web, but experience keeps whispering in my ear.

• Right now, people are fired up and ready to try new things. They’re happy to sign up, post a few “toots” to Mastodon, and think about a better web where things are decentralized and users have more control of their destiny. You know, the standard “DIY is better” package. Like when everybody started baking their own bread at the start of the pandemic in 2020.

• More than two years later, there’s a lot less baking going on and I doubt that Fleischmann’s is having as much trouble keeping up with yeast demand.

• It’s cliche at this point to mention “the year of the Linux desktop,” but there’s a lot of similarity between adoption of Linux and achieving any kind of critical mass on federated social media.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• In 2023, Thunderbird will reinvent itself with the “Supernova” release, featuring a modernized interface and brand new features like Firefox Sync. One of the major improvements you can look forward to is an overhaul to our calendar UI (user interface). Today we’re excited to give you a preview of what it looks like!

• Since this is a work-in-progress, bear with us for a few disclaimers. The most important one is that these screenshots are mock-ups which guide the direction of the new calendar interface.

• Thunderbird’s “Supernova” release will offer us a modern interface of the open-source email, calendar, chat, and news client that introduces a revamped Calendar UI with support for defining what your weekend is and visually collapse weekends to save space, fully customizable and more accessible toolbar, and redesigned search.

• As you can see from the mockup above, the Calendar’s event search feature will now be shown at a glance on the right side of the window, in a side pane, so you can more easily find future events and increase your productivity. The search view will also display keyboard shortcut hints for even faster access.

• Social media in particular can be scary to think about when it comes to my kids, but I know it can be great too. I’m a designer and business owner who has made amazing connections online, and it has allowed me to create my own community on the internet.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• LibreOffice’s Indonesian community collaborated with the Organizing Committee of the Indonesia Linux Conference 2022, to hold a short presentation, “Implementation of LibreOffice in the Ecosystem at a University”.

• This event was held on Friday, November 4, 2022 in the 2nd Campus Hall of Universitas Muhammadiyah Sidoarjo, Surabaya – and at the same time became a pre-event running up to the Indonesian Linux Conference 2022, which was held on November 5, 2022.

• Rania Amina, leader of the Indonesia Linux Conference committee, who is also an official member of The Document Foundation, said that the LibreOffice presentation was a request from the campus community, which felt the need to introduce a powerful open source office application that has active support from the community in Indonesia.

Programming/Development

• While I’m waiting for pull requests to be processed, enjoy some visualizations of bidirectional Dijkstra (1, 2).

• This is a creation by forum member ETP, to display streaming TV channels on the desktop. EasyOS currently has the MK5 release.

• Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra and scientific computing. It aims towards a good balance between speed and ease of use, has a syntax deliberately close to Matlab, and is useful for algorithm development directly in C++, or quick conversion of research code into production environments. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 1027 packages other packages on CRAN, downloaded 26.9 million times (per the partial logs from the cloud mirrors of CRAN), and the CSDA paper (preprint / vignette) by Conrad and myself has been cited 503 times according to Google Scholar.

• WebAssembly (or Wasm) seems to be everywhere lately, with adoption of this technology growing rapidly. So, what’s the buzz all about? In this article, we’ll provide a brief overview of Wasm and offer resources to help you learn more.

Rust

Leftovers

• A few years ago, I decided that I was going to listen to every number one song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. That’s 1143 songs released between 1958 and 2022. I decided I would listen to one song per day. Why would I spend years of my life doing this? Mostly because I’m a musician. I wanted to further educate myself on the past to improve my songwriting. But I have a strange perspective. I work on data analytics and personalization at Audiomack, a popular music streaming service. So while part of my musical education was driven by old-fashioned listening, another part of it was driven by a giant data set that I built about those 1,000+ songs. After crunching some numbers, one of the most shocking things I learned is that the groups of notes we choose to make number one hits with have changed dramatically over the last 60 years. In today’s Tedium, I break down the pop chart’s underlying key change.

Hardware

• We also eagerly await this and also look forward to seeing how the Max Series evolves through the “Emerald Rapids” Xeon SPs with HBM and the Rialto Bridge GPUs in 2023 and the converged Falcon Bridge platforms and their “extreme bandwidth memory” (whatever that is) in 2024. We await every step in the roadmap, steps that Intel can no longer miss.

↺ Nvidia and Intel show machine learning performance gains on latest MLPerf Training 2.1 results

Security

• Linux servers are the backbone of the modern Internet. Today, nearly every website and service that you can access through a web browser runs on a Linux distribution. Here we show you how you can secure your Linux server.

• In the last week of October 2022, OpenSSL Project revealed two vulnerabilities found in the OpenSSL library. Both CVE-2022-360 and CVE-2022-3786 have been labeled “High” severity issues with a CVSS score of 8.8, only 0.2 points lower than what they’d need to be considered “Critical”.

• The issue lies in the verification process of certificates that OpenSSL performs for certificate-based authentication. The exploitation of the vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to launch a Denial of Service (DoS) or even a Remote Code Execution attack. Patches for the two weaknesses found in OpenSSL v3.0.0 to v3.06 have now been released.

• Digital security is getting stronger, so criminals and law enforcement alike may be more willing to physically take your laptop or storage device to gain access to your data. It’s possible, however, to protect yourself against this invasion of privacy thanks to encryption.

• This article will discuss disk encryption, its uses and types, and its advantages and disadvantages. We will also show you how to encrypt a Linux hard drive and the various Linux encryption methods at your disposal.

• 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.

• A remote attacker could exploit one of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

• A remote attacker could exploit one of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

• User can impersonate any workload identity within the service mesh if they have localhost access to the Istiod control plane.

• The ransomware group behind the Medibank Group attack claims it initially demanded US$10 million (A$15.55 million) as a ransom, but is willing to accept US$9.7 million instead – US$1 for each customer the company claims is at risk. Ransomware largely attacks Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

• “Society ask us about ransom, it’s a 10 millions usd. We can make discount 9.7m 1$=1 customer,” the attacker(s) said in a post on the dark web.

• “Medibanks CEO stated, that ransom amount is ‘irrelevant’. We want to inform the customers, that He refuses to pay for yours data more, like 1 USD per person. So, probably customers data and extra efforts don’t cost that.”

• The group’s site, which hosts a copy of the site formerly used by the REvil gang, has also released a file named abortions.csv. Security researcher Brett Callow described this action as “pure evil”.

Monopolies

• Meta, the parent organisation of social media behemoth Facebook, has announced it will sack more than 11,000 employees, about 13% of the total workforce.

• In a blog post on Thursday AEDT, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company was also adopting a number of measures “to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1″.

• The company had 87,314 employees at the end of September and this is the first time it has resorted to mass layoffs in its 18 years of operation.

• Zuckerberg said the emergence of COVID-19 had seen a move towards more online work and a big revenue spike for Meta due to the spike in e-commerce.

• Microsoft has been accused of anti-competitive behaviour in its cloud computing licensing practices, with an European trade group making a complaint about this alleged behaviour to the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.

• The group, Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe, said in a statement that it was backing two of its members, OVHcloud and Aruba, in separate complaints and was filing its own complaint to take in what it described as “serious unresolved issues” that “represents the wider European cloud infrastructure sector”.

• The complaint was filed with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (DG Comp).

• The organisation said all the documentation published by Microsoft in a bid to prevent market probes had failed to provide the detail clarity or assurance needed to assure the market that it intended to “bring a swift end to its anti-competitive licensing practices”.

Copyrights

• This celestial image has long stumped scholars: is it a lost Renaissance engraving or a nineteenth century pastiche?

• To commemorate the centenary of Marcel Proust’s death, Christopher Prendergast celebrates his use of pink, how its tone shifts from innocence to themes of sexual need, before finally fading out to grey at the novel’s close.

• The recommended cut-off dates to order from our shop by to ensure delivery in time for Dec 25th.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

• I can remember, when we got our phone land line. I can remember the first electronic calculator my dad bought: a thing with flourescent blue digits and a small thermal printer. I can remember the day, where the coax cable entered our house — even though there was no TV set at our place yet. And cable internet was unheard of. And I remember a moment, when I realized that the guy passing on his bicycle was talking to someone else on the phone! I used a type writer to write up Mom’s recipe for cheese cake. I still have and use this sheet of paper. And I did make real things. Turning wood into bowls or candle holders, sewing a bag from leather, drawings and water colour paintings, bird feeders, toys, furniture made from wood, kites and whatnot. Today I write programs and digital files, which imho do not qualify as “things”.

• Don’t get me wrong: there are a lot of wonders possible through the internet. And I don’t want to go back to the time, when internet was not accessible to me. But analog life still has big merits. Paper books work basically without electricity. Paper books will not just vanish from my cupboard. Pencils and pens can be used to write on paper. Analog film and cameras teach a different way of visually perceiving my environment. Watching slides requires electricity, sure, but the perception is different than looking at a computer screen. Photographs last for a long time without using electricity. Vinyl records and the corresponding equipment are not yet forgotten! Going to the theatre, cinema, or to a live concert is a very different experience from streaming it to your phones mini-screen and ear buds.

• Here are some brief notes on how to set up the vger gemini server on Debian using openbsd-inted and stunnel. For security, vger is run with it’s own user.

• I came up with a game based on old fantasy.

• In many books there was such a device – ansible – for instant communication over interstellar distances. It allowed to transmit about 6 bits per minute.

• It would be possible to try to do a la hackathon, when a socket is used by teams at a speed, let’s not be sadists, about 8 bits per second. On the other side of the socket sits an script language interpreter with access to some sort of data store.

• Participants need to find and upload some information through this socket faster than other teams.

Science

Internet/Gemini

• This is a quick guide for musicians who want to publish their songs on Mastodon. Mastodon supports uploading media, and music files will be embedded so that followers can listen to it from their timeline. But there’s a small trick that greatly improves the experience: adding covert art!

• It has been suggested that Pleroma has some image issues due to many of it’s instances being lax on moderation or just not sharing the values that most of the FediVerse seem to have in common. I should also note that what I have read about Pleroma vs Mastodon performance is that Pleroma loses it’s edge as the scale increases. I’m still evaluating Pleroma and have a test account on a certain instance, which I’m fairly positive about so far, but I am still looking at other alternatives as well.

• [...]

• The one I’m a bit more excited about is GoToSocial. I’ve heard the name but silly me, I didn’t realize what it was until a certain person mentioned it and I looked it up. This one is a backend only, so a frontend must be provided, but it is known to work with Pinafore on the web and Tusky on mobile. It’s also written in Go and so potentially might be able to wring out a lot better performance once it’s past it’s current Alpha state. Beta is expected to be reached around the middle of next year at the current development pace. Like Bonfire there are features which allow some more granularity on how public your posts are, which is another plus.

Programming

• This immediately reminded me of this story about Lisp being used for remote debugging on the Deep Space 1 spacecraft; just a fantastic thing to imagine doing.

• While I have a notable distaste for Rust in general, I’m actually quite a fan of its macros; although they’re not as good as Lisp’s macros (naturally, since one of Lisp’s defining features is homoiconicity which makes macros easy and powerful) they’re better than the awful text replacement macros used by really any other programming language, if the language has macros at all. IMO, macros (or ​*at least* some form of reflection) is essential to avoid otherwise unavoidable repetitive code—I’m in the miniscule minority but I sometimes end up using m4 in languages without macros instead of just biting the bullet and repeating boilerplate over and over.

• 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

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.