● 12.27.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 27/12/2022: 60+ Times More Windows Malware Than GNU/Linux Malware in 2022

Posted in News Roundup at 9:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• Finally, with some free time at last, I decided to perform a full upgrade of 4 of the distros that I have in my laptop.

• Manjaro Ruah becomes now Manjaro 22 (Sikaris). This was taken care of by Octopi without any problem.

• Mageia 8 had not big deal upgrading some packages.

• MX Linux also had like 76 packages to upgrade and everything went smoothly.

• OpenMandriva ROME 22.11 is the most challenging distro for me to upgrade now. I used to mess up the upgrade by not reading the forum post before, but I learned my lesson. So, I visited this post here, where rugyada kindly reminds one of the commands to do the upgrade correctly: sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf –best –allowerasing distro-sync

Desktop/Laptop

• New 2022 figures have claimed some surprising results in what the most popular operating systems were in 2022

• The 2022 Stack Overflow Developer Survey (opens in new tab) reports that Linux-based software is now more popular than Apple’s macOS as developers apparently flock to other systems.

• Linux distros, representing 40% for both personal and professional use, which are recognized as being some of the most customizable and adaptive operating systems for developers. The 40% share is up from around one quarter in each of the previous five years, which shows a significant shift to Linux that may continue into 2023.

• A new survey from Stack Overflow shows that significantly more developers use Linux than a Mac, though Windows maintains a huge lead over both.

• “Each year we explore the tools and technologies developers are currently using and what they want to use,” the vaunted developer resource explains in its 2022 StackOverflow developer survey. “We have the favorite Loved, Dreaded, and Wanted data as well as Worked With vs. Want to Work With, which shows us precisely what developers used in the past year and what they want to work on in the following year.”

• As for the platforms that developers use, Windows retains its lead, with 62.33 percent of respondents using Windows for personal use and 48.82 percent using it for work. Linux is number two, with 40 and 40 percent, respectively, while the Mac brings up the rear with 31 and 33 percent. Interestingly, Microsoft’s Windows Subsystem for Linux is in fourth place, with 15 and 14 percent usage, respectively, which indicates that the popularity—or necessity—of Linux with developers is even higher.

• For non-developer “synchronous tools,” Zoom and Microsoft Teams are tied for number one with 56 percent usage, followed by Slack (53.43 percent) and Google Chat (20 percent). As for “asynchronous tools,” Jira Work Management is in first place by a wide margin (50 percent), followed by Confluence (40 percent), Trello (33 percent), and Notion (20 percent).

Audiocasts/Shows

• In this video, I cover how to Install and Use on yay in Arch Linux. Yay is used to install packages from the Arch User Repository.

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” Cinnamon and some of the applications pre-installed.

• Recently, I decided to check out ThinLinc – a remote desktop solution for Linux. With client apps for Linux, macOS and Windows – it’s easy to set up and configure. In this tutorial, I’ll give you an overview of the solution and walk you through the process of setting it up.

• System76 recently expanded their line of Linux laptops with a new Oryx Pro model – complete with DDR5 and a 4K OLED display! In this video, Jay will give you his thoughts on this latest model.

• A quick video covering the newest release of Manjaro. This video covers the Gnome version of the distro and discusses whether or not it is the best version of any Gnome Distro.

• NCDU shows disk usage and can be installed with sudo apt install ncdu or any package manager.

Kernel Space

• Following the Linux Kernel 6.1 release two weeks back, the merge window for Linux Kernel 6.2 is now closed, and that too, on Christmas day of 2022. Without further delay, Linus released Kernel 6.2 for everyone to test.

• Furthermore, Linus mentioned that the final release might get delayed due to fewer activities during the holiday week.

• Let’s take a look at what arrives in Kernel 6.2.

Applications

• Many users associate desktop Linux with their daily repetitive grind. However, we are always on the look out for applications that help make Linux fun to use. It really is a great platform for entertainment.

• Some document viewers offer a good range of different formats. Although they are not dedicated comic book viewers, Evince and okular have support for the common comic book archive files, and merit mention here.

• Got photo images but not clear enough? Or you want to convert them into 4K resolution without losing quality? This app can help!

• It’s upscayl, a free and open-source app for Linux, Windows, and macOS. It uses AI modules to upscale single or batch of photo images into 7680×5120 (or double resolution 15360×10240).

Instructionals/Technical

• The Google-built Android Studio is a perfect match for developing apps on the vast mobile operating system. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Android Studio on Manjaro Linux using the Arch Linux user repository (AUR) and the command line terminal.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Scribus on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Scribus is a free and open-source desktop publishing (DTP) application that allows users to create and edit documents such as brochures, magazines, and newsletters. It contains all the functionality that a high-end program would have, including image editing, vector drawing, and layout creation. Scribus is suitable for use on a wide range of platforms, including Linux, macOS, and Windows, and it is available in a range of languages.

• 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 Scribus 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.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Microsoft Fonts on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Microsoft Fonts, also known as Windows Fonts or TrueType Fonts, are a collection of font families that are used on the Windows operating system. These fonts are designed to work seamlessly with the Windows operating system and are used by a wide range of software applications, including Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and many other programs. In addition to being used on the Windows operating system, Microsoft Fonts are also available for use on other operating systems, including macOS, Linux, and mobile platforms.

• 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 Microsoft Fonts on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

• A Virtual Private Network is a tool that lets you browse the internet with some degree of anonymity. While OpenVPN is an open-source network connection protocol used to facilitate a secure tunnel between two points in a network. OpenVPN is both a VPN protocol and software that uses VPN techniques to secure connections. It is one of the most popular and well-known VPN protocols among VPN users. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenVPN on Ubuntu 22.04 server.

• Most Linux Distributions use open-source fonts to substitute Microsoft’s iconic typefaces like Arial, Courier New, and Times using Red Hat Liberation family to replace these similar-looking but different sizes, but you may require the original fonts for work purposes or to make your document work. The following tutorial will teach you how to install Microsoft TrueType Core Fonts on Manjaro Linux utilizing the command line terminal with the Arch Linux user repository (AUR).

• Want to view and modify PDFs on Ubuntu? Consider installing Foxit PDF Reader, a simple and easy-to-use PDF viewer for Linux.

• In search of a good PDF reader for your Ubuntu system? Foxit PDF Reader is easy to install and works fantastically with PDF documents on both Ubuntu and its derivatives.

• You can install Foxit Reader either graphically or using Ubuntu’s command-line interface (CLI). Here’s how to get started.

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Audacity on KDE Neon.

• VirtualBox 7.0 is the latest free and open-source (FOSS) hypervisor version. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install VirtualBox 7.0 on Linux Mint 21 or Linux Mint 20 release by importing the official virtual box repository and installing the most up-to-date version using the command line terminal. The extra benefit for users using this method is that you will receive them instantly from the VirtualBox repository when updates drop instead of waiting for improvements or security fixes to be ported down by the Linux Mint team or Ubuntu.

• Ventoy is a free, open-source tool to write media’s ISO image files directly onto storage media to create bootable USB flash drives. The following tutorial will teach you how to install Ventoy USB Bootable Image Creator on Manjaro Linux utilizing the Arch Linux user repository (AUR).

• Today, we are going to see how to encrypt and decrypt files from command line in Linux using a free utility named GNU Privacy Guard (shortly GPG or GnuPG).

• There are, of course, plethora of methods, and applications are available to encrypt and decrypt files in Linux. But, encrypting and decrypting files with GnuPG is the easiest method.

• The default shell in most of the Linux distributions is bash. Bash is solid and a legacy utility. However, it lacks some customizations, such as nice colours, cursor support, etc.

• You can use another shell, zsh to enjoy additional tweaks and help you to extend your Bash shell experience.

• This crisp guide explains how to install zsh, oh my zsh and apply the powerlevel10k theme.

• Here’s how to get Kali Linux on a Windows machine with very little hassle.

• Kali Linux is the primary Debian-based Linux distribution used for information security purposes such as security research, penetration testing, password cracking, and more. It is mainly used by white hat or ethical hackers to test the integrity of a system or a network.

• If you cannot install Kali Linux on your PC directly, you can easily install it on Windows through a virtual machine. Read on as we guide you on installing Kali Linux on a Windows PC.

• Smartphones are increasingly invasive, with tracking technology, user accounts, and apps recording your activity. If you’re looking for a way to strip things back but still use a smartphone, a Linux phone is an option. But where do you start? The answer may already be in your pocket, thanks to Ubuntu Touch.

• Maintained by UBports, Ubuntu Touch is now available on more smartphones than ever before. Want to try it out? Here’s how to download and install the Ubuntu Touch Linux operating system for mobiles.

• Jenkins is a free and open-source automation server that facilitates software development processes. Here’s how you can install it on Ubuntu.

• Jenkins is the most sought-after tool used for automating software development. The automation software allows you to easily integrate various DevOps stages in your project.

• Jenkins has great community support. The best thing about the tool is that it is easy to install and learn on any Linux system. Let’s see how you can install and configure Jenkins on Ubuntu 22.04.

• ServerCat is one of my favorite tools for remotely accessing and monitoring Linux servers. With a beautifully designed UI and user-friendly structure, anyone can use this tool to access remote Linux servers.

• But ServerCat has a few other tricks up its crafty sleeve. One such trick is the ability to batch-execute Docker deployments to any supporting server you have connected. With a single command, you can deploy containers to all of your Docker servers and then monitor them to make sure they’re running as expected. I’ll show you how simple it is to do just that by batch-deploying an NGINX container to multiple servers hosting Docker containers.

• Do you need a good CAD application on your Linux workstation? Try out LibreCAD. It’s a 100% free and open-source app that is a great drop-in-replacement for Linux users looking to create CAD apps. Here’s how to set up LibreCAD on your Linux system.

• In Linux, the file permissions determine who can access and modify a file or directory. By default, the owner of a file or directory has full control over it, but it is also possible to grant or restrict access to other users or groups. If you want to change the permissions of multiple files or directories at once, you can use the `chmod` command with the `-R` option to recursively change the permissions.

• In this article, we will explore how to recursively change the file permissions in Linux.

• Update Alternatives is the command available on Linux to change the default program preference using the terminal. We can use it to create, remove, maintain, and display information about the symbolic links comprising the Debian alternatives system.

• Although, sometimes even after changing the app’s default value, still it not works. For example, you set Chrome as the default browser, and at the time of opening some link on the system, it selects firefox.

• It is because of the priority value set by the apps on our system. Here we learn the command to change the priority of applications using the Update Alternatives command.

• Want to check whether the downloaded file is corrupted or not? The easiest way is to verify its checksum.

• In simple terms, the checksum can be considered a digital fingerprint of a file made up of characters and numbers.

• You will find checksums while downloading files from the internet such as software packages, ISO files, etc.

• So let’s jump to the ‘how to’ part.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• In the summer of 2022, I participated in Google’s Summer of Code, contributing to the Thunar file manager at XFCE, with the help of my mentor Alexander Schwinn. It’s been about a month since my GSoC term was officially over, and after a hectic couple weeks, I’ve finally decided to sit down and write down the closing blog post.

• [...]

• This is the big one. While adding support for undo and redo, one of the most crucial things for me was doing it in an elegant way that would make it easy to have multi-level undo and redo.

• How we decided to do this was to maintain a global linked list, containing information about the last performed operation, including what type of an operation it was, what files were involved in it, etc. This allowed it to be as trivial as moving a few pointers around to keep track of the state of the system once an undo or a redo is performed. The actual undo/redo operation is simply executing either the inverse of the last performed operation, or executing the exact same operation that was last undone.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• GNOME 43.2 is packed with lots of changes to improve edge resistance and window snapping, window resize, window screenshots, screencast UI, as well as Night Light support, scrolling in clients with no high resolution scroll support in RDP sessions, Flatpak applications bypassing X11 permissions, and always visible cursor in virtual streams.

• It also improves support for Mali GPUs and newer Intel (i915) systems and enhances Wayland support by adding black padding to fixed-size full-screen windows, preventing Wayland popovers from blocking the Activities Overview, and fixing the Wayland keyboard to actually send pressed keys on enter.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Red Hat / IBM

• Suppose you want to use GDB, the GNU debugger for C and C++ programs, to debug a program invoked from a shell script. You might have trouble knowing what is going on in the program because the script might give it a complicated run-time context, setting environment variables in various ways depending upon the machine, architecture, installed programs, etc. with which it’s being run.

• A good example of such a script is /usr/bin/firefox. On my Fedora 35 machine, the firefox script is 290 lines long. It mostly sets a lot of environment variables, but it also contains commands to make directories, remove files and directories, and make symbolic links. All these changes can have impacts on the binary when it runs. Near the end of the script, a command invokes (via exec) another script named run-mozilla.sh.

• The run-mozilla.sh script itself is 356 lines long. It also sets environment variables and eventually invokes (also via exec) the Firefox binary. Additionally, the script provides options that allow you to debug the Firefox binary with a debugger, though for this article we won’t use those options.

• Once upon a time, businesses took a measured, sometimes glacial, approach to rolling out new technology. But the pandemic flipped the script on digital transformation, accelerating digital transformation for nearly three-quarters of all businesses by months, if not years. And the speed of adoption increased across all aspects of an organization – from improving operations and new digital business models to delivering seamless customer experiences and adopting new workforce models.

• Data science as a practice continues to make its way into the spotlight. Digital transformation technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, and edge computing are gaining adoption, and data science is powering them. Let 2023 be the year your organization prioritizes data science. Check out these most-read articles to advance your journey.

• Add the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) badge to your resume with the help of these study guides.

Debian Family

• Today is the anniversary of Ian Murdock’s suicide. It is four years since the Debian Christmas lynchings of 2018. Two Debian Developers, Charles Plessy and I, observed the environment was so toxic that it could kill somebody else. One month later, Lucy Wayland passed away all too soon.

• Wayland was transgender. Some people knew her by her original name, Jon Ward and her IRC nickname aardvark.

• Transgender people don’t spontaneously die. There are a range of interconnected problems involving their environment. Debian was clearly part of Wayland’s environment.

• Earlier this year, I contributed several blog posts to the debate about the Frans Pop Debian.Day suicide. Later, I looked at the way the burden of 14,000 messages on debian-private may have been a factor in the mistakes made by an underage developer in 1998.

• There are significant similarities between the deaths of Ian Murdock, Frans Pop and Lucy Wayland. They were all male, in their mid-forties. They were all talented and hard-working people. Murdock and Wayland both consumed alcohol, there is no mention of whether alcohol was a factor or not for Pop. They were all single and complained about being alone. Of particular note, it looks like Murdock was alone at Christmas.

• Now it is time to look at the hard evidence showing Debian progressed from transgender threats to a transgender death in the space of less than one year and demonstrate the plausible links between Debian harassment culture and the high mortality rate of transgender people in general.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Canonical scrapped its plans to bring Ubuntu to smartphones and tablets years ago. But the independent developers at UBPorts have been keeping the dream alive since 2017.

• Now they’ve announced a release candidate of a new build of Ubuntu Touch that marks a major milestone: it’s the first version of the Linux-based operating system based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

• Ubuntu Unity maintainer Rudra Saraswat writes today about the new features and improvements coming to the Unity 7.7 desktop environment, which will be available next year as part of the Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) release.

• In an attempt to bring back the “old-school UI concepts” from when Canonical was still developing the Unity desktop for Ubuntu, Unity 7.7 promises a redesigned Unity Dash that’s more in line with what Lomiri (the Unity8 fork used in the Ubuntu Touch mobile OS from UBports) currently offers, as well as a redesigned Unity Panel to be slightly bigger and more visually appealing than what you get in Unity 7.6.

• It is not difficult for new users or those who are shifting from Windows 7 or 10 Operating systems to Linux distro when you have the right one. Thus, here we are with some best Ubuntu desktop alternatives Linux distros for beginners who want something similar to Canonical’s OS but better in terms of usage.

• No doubt, Ubuntu is one of the most popular and best Linux among new users because of easy-to-use commands, huge package repository, and online tutorials. However, if you don’t like its interface and want something much easier to use, thus you should look at the alternatives we are listing here.

• 2023 is already here, and if this plan comes to fruition, it will impact Ubuntu’s focus and future development in some way. So, let’s analyze the likely ramifications.

• First, we need to answer the question: why does a company opt to go public? Whether a company is brand new or has been in operation for years, it may decide to go public via an IPO. However, in the mainstream case, companies seeking to expand often use an Initial Public Offering to generate funds via access to capital markets. So, the most significant benefit of an IPO is the additional funds raised.

• Furthermore, when a company moves to IPO, it sells shares to the public. I.e., it is a capital raise event. So, it is much easier to raise money once publicly traded. Also easier to attract employees by paying higher salaries with out-of-thin-air-newly-issued shares when public.

• In other words, ideally, an IPO would allow Canonical to raise funds through the sale of company shares, potentially leading to more money and human capital being invested in the development of Ubuntu.

• However, on the other hand, switching to the IPO model always involves changes in the company’s vision and direction. In this regard, it is also essential to consider how this move could affect the open-source nature of Ubuntu and the community-driven development model. So let’s see how this affects the average Ubuntu user.

Devices/Embedded

• SONOFF ZBMINI Extreme (aka ZBMINI-L2) is an ultra-compact Zigbee smart switch that can control home appliances and lights without a neutral wire and can fit into almost any mounting box.

• The tiny wireless switch can fit into the smallest EU-type/86-type/120-type mounting box, and works with gateways supporting the Zigbee 3.0 protocol such as ZBBridge Pro, NSPanel Pro, SmartThings Hub, Amazon Alexa Echo speaker, and so on. It also supports external switches, voice control, eWelink app control, and other features.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

FSF

• For IDAD 2022, FSF staff took to the streets to ask passersby what they think about digital sharing. Read our wrapup and watch the first in a series of videos we are releasing in the coming days.

• In our sixteenth annual International Day Against DRM (IDAD), we stood up for the freedom to share cultural works, continuing our fight against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). Each year, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) rallies anti-DRM advocates from all over the world for a day of action against digital restriction. This year was no exception, building on the recent efforts we’ve made in our year-end fundraiser to draw attention to something vitally important for the free software movement and cultural endeavors alike: the freedom to share.

• In addition to our call to use DRM-free media as a springboard for starting a conversation about DRM with a friend or loved ones, we took to the streets of Boston to interview passersby on how they felt about digital sharing. At first, it seemed like a strange request to our interviewees, but its supposed “strangeness” highlights the success corporations like Disney and Netflix have had on the public consciousness. Just what does make a digital file so different that we’re barred from sharing it with a friend in person, or passing it down the family line like our favorite books? The results that we received were interesting to say the least, and we’ll have more to say about them in the future.

Programming/Development

• Today, another 1,000 commits have been recorded as done by me in the curl source code git repository since November 2021. Out of a total of 29,608 commits to the curl source code repository, I have made 17,001. 57.42%.

Leftovers

• Around the same time, I was also trying to support two good friends who were undergoing nervous breakdown due to criminal harassment and who, in late summer, were in deep distress. Now, if you’ve paid attention to my last few years’ retrospectives so far, you know I’ve had my share of dead friends in the past, so no, not this time, not on my watch.

• I told my clients about my reduced availability during that time, and focused on helping those friends—from mere emotional and logistical support (“I have extra capacity. Use it.”, I said) to “last minute evac to the airport”, as they had to exile themselves for their own safety (because this is the harassment they’ve been going through). They have now left the country forever. It pains me that I won’t be able to see them around much anymore, but if that’s what it takes for them to stay alive, so be it.

• It started out as a dark, life-threatening situation, and they are now safe and sound, albeit an ocean apart. I guess that’s a reasonable outcome.

• Here begins my yearly roundups of the favourite books and movies that I consumed in 2022, to be published over the next few days.

• Just as I did for 2020 and 2021, I won’t actually reveal exactly how many books I read in the last year. I didn’t get through as many books as I did in 2021, however, but that’s partly due to reading a significant number of long nineteenth-century novels — in particular, those books that American writer Henry James once referred to as “large, loose, baggy monsters”…

• However, in today’s post I’ll be looking at my favourite books typically filed under fiction, with ‘classic’ fiction following tomorrow.

• Works that just missed the cut here include John O’Brien’s Leaving Las Vegas, Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor and possibly The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, or Elif Batuman’s The Idiot. I also feel obliged to mention (or is that show off?) that I finally read the 1,079-page Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace this year, but I can’t say it was a favourite, let alone recommend others give it a try unless they are in the market for a sturdy under-monitor stand.

• This year had a lot of things happen in it, world-wide, as is always the case.

Proprietary

• We have released Qt 5.15.12 LTS for commercial license holders today. As a patch release, Qt 5.15.12 does not add any new functionality but provides bug fixes and other improvements.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

• Google has announced that two of its latest privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), including one that blurs objects in a video, will be provided to anyone for free via open source. The new tools are part of Google’s Protected Computing initiative designed to transform “how, when and where data is processed to technically ensure its privacy and safety,” the company said.

• The first is an internal project called Magritte, now out on Github, which uses machine learning to detect objects and apply a blur as soon as they appear on screen. It can disguise arbitrary objects like license plates, tattoos and more. “This code is especially useful for video journalists who want to provide increased privacy assurances,” Google wrote in the blog. “By using this open-source code, videographers can save time in blurring objects from a video, while knowing that the underlying ML algorithm can perform detection across a video with high-accuracy.”

• The second tool lets developers “perform computations on encrypted data without being able to access personally identifiable information,” Dent says.

Security

• Albanian prosecutors on Wednesday asked for the house arrest of five public employees they blame for not protecting the country from a cyberattack by alleged Iranian hackers.

• Prosecutors said the five IT officials of the public administration department had failed to check the security of the system and update it with the most recent antivirus software.

• They are accused of “abuse of post,” which can attract a prison sentence of up to seven years.

• The next step would be to arrest managers at software companies for not releasing patches fast enough. And maybe programmers for writing buggy code. I don’t know where this line of thinking ends…

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (gerbv), Fedora (webkitgtk), and SUSE (ca-certificates-mozilla, freeradius-server, multimon-ng, vim, and vlc).

• The LastPass password manager has been breached by hackers, meaning your master passwords could be for sale, reports David Rutland. The true severity of the breach, which was first reported in August, was detailed in a December 22 blog post from LastPass.

• “Personal details and password vaults containing the sign-in credentials of millions of users are now in the hands of criminals. If you’ve ever used the password manager, LastPass, you should change all of your passwords for everything, now,” Rutland says.

• Personal details and password vaults containing the sign-in credentials of millions of users are now in the hands of criminals. If you’ve ever used the password manager, LastPass, you should change all of your passwords for everything, now. And you should immediately take further measures to protect yourself.

• A Linux vulnerability with a CVSS score of 10 has been found to affect SMB servers and can lead to remote code execution.

• A new flaw has been discovered in the processing of SMB2_TREE_DISCONNECT commands which can lead to remote code execution in servers with ksmbd enabled. KSMBD is an in-kernel SMB file server that was mostly written by a team at Samsung Electronics that was merged into the 5.15 kernel on August 29, 2021. This kernel server implements the SMB3 protocol in kernel space for the sharing of files over a network.

• According to the Zero Day Initiative, “The specific flaw exists within the processing of SMB2_TREE_DISCONNECT commands. The issue results from the lack of validating the existence of an object prior to performing operations on the object. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code in the context of the kernel.”

• As the year comes to a close, AV-TEST, one of the major anti-malware solutions assessment firms, alongside AV-Comparatives, has shared some interesting statistics regarding malware growth in 2022. The data shows there were close to 70 million new malware samples on Windows, which dwarfs that on macOS, which only saw around 12,000 samples. Hence, the number of malicious files on Windows is over 5,000 times compared to that on mac. The comparison with Linux is far more favorable for Windows as close to 2 million samples were captured on Linux. However, the Windows numbers are still more than 60 times higher.

Environment

Energy

• As temperatures plunged this weekend, Americans in much of the country were told to turn down their thermostats and avoid using large appliances to prevent rolling blackouts. The cascading grid stress came at an awful time but was all too predictable to anyone paying attention.

• The interconnected U.S. grid is supposed to be a source of resilience, but the government’s force-fed green energy transition is creating systemic vulnerabilities that politicians don’t want to acknowledge. Utilities and grid operators weren’t prepared for the surge in demand for natural gas and electricity to heat homes, which occurred as gas supply shortages and icy temperatures forced many power plants off-line.

Monopolies

Software Patents

• After Fedora and OpenSuse decided to break there MESA packages I thought we were done talking about this whole patent encumbered codec situation with h264, h265 and vc1, oh how wrong I was. Steam OS 3 and Manjaro are back to make me worried once again

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

• I became a bit concerned that my relocation/garbage-collection speed might make the system sluggish.

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