● 04.21.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 21/04/2023: FutureSQL 0.1.0 and Wine/Proton 8.0-1

Posted in News Roundup at 12:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• Not one, not two but three product announcements from System76 today as they’re launching a range of new Linux powered laptops. First is the Serval WS that will be getting a refresh but they’re also bringing back the Adder WS and the Bonobo WS.

• System76 said all of them can be configured with up to 64GB RAM, have at least a 144Hz display and up to 8TB of storage. In the case of the Serval WS it has a 165Hz screen, and the Bonobo WS can have up to 12TB of storage. So there’s something that will hopefully fit every need.

Server

• The April syslog-ng newsletter is now on-line [...]

Applications

• I’m happy to announce the first release of FutureSQL, a library for accessing SQLite (and other databases) in Qt projects without blocking.

• It also features a migration system and automatic result deserialization.

• EasyOS has a few of Roger’s (radky in the forum) superb applications, including PupApps, slightly modified by Roger to work with EasyOS and renamed to EasyApps. Apart from the name change, it is still almost entirely PupApps underneath, and is installed at /usr/local/PupApps.

• As suggested in my initial announcement of apt-sigstore my plan was to look into stronger uses of Sigstore than rekor, and I’m now happy to announce that the apt-cosign plugin has been added to apt-sigstore and the operational project debdistcanary is publishing cosign-statements about the InRelease file published by the following distributions: Trisquel GNU/Linux, PureOS, Gnuinos, Ubuntu, Debian and Devuan.

Instructionals/Technical

• Hey there! If you’re new to Linux, you may have heard the term “environment variables” and wondered what they are and how they work.

• Discover how to find all files with a specific extension in Linux using powerful command-line utilities like ‘find’ and ‘grep’. This guide will walk you through the process, helping you streamline your workflow and manage your files effectively in a Linux environment.

• Learn how to share a folder on Ubuntu for access from Windows using the Samba protocol. This guide will walk you through the installation, configuration, and permission settings necessary for seamless cross-platform file sharing.

• Tar.gz is one of the most common file compression formats in Linux today. Unlike ZIP, RAR and 7ZIP, it is a combination of two different file formats: TAR and GZIP. This tutorial shows how to unzip a tar.gz file using both graphical and command tools that are already a part of your Linux distribution.

• Hello friends. We really like working in the terminal, as it is very efficient and suits both sysadmin and desktop users. However, the use of aliases sometimes goes unnoticed and is a trick that, when used well, can save a lot of time in the terminal.

• Segment your home network easily with a VLAN on a Mikrotik router.

• Learn the step-by-step process to upgrade to Ubuntu 23.04 from Ubuntu 22.10 and enjoy the latest features and improvements!

• AI in Linux terminal? Yes, that’s a thing and it is getting popular.

• Introduction Hey there, fellow MySQL enthusiasts! Are you ready to dive into the exciting world of binary logs? If you’re a database administrator or just someone who loves to tinker with MySQL, you’re in the right place.

• Here are the steps on how to upgrade your current Ubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu to Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster.

• MusicBrainz Picard is a powerful, open-source music tagging and organizing tool designed to help users easily manage their digital music libraries. Developed by the MusicBrainz community, Picard boasts various features that make it the go-to choice for many music enthusiasts.

• RawTherapee is a powerful and versatile open-source photo editing software that handles raw images captured by digital cameras. The application offers a wide range of professional-grade features and tools, making it an excellent alternative to commercial software such as Adobe Lightroom.

• Video and Graphics editors using Linux systems can easily install open-source Blender 3D CAD application on Debian Linux such as 12 Bookworm and 11 Bullseye using the command terminal or GUI.

• Start accessing your command line server or desktop by installing Cockpit on Debian 12 Bookworm or 11 Bullseye using this tutorial’s given terminal commands.

• Those who are developers or want to build some package on Linux from its source need to have essential tools for it. And installing build-essential on Debian 12 or 11 Linux it will provide a set of packages and tools for that.

WINE or Emulation

• The Wine stable release 8.0.1 is now available.

• Valve’s Proton, which allows Windows games to run on Linux, has been now updated to version 8.0, bringing even more games to Linux OS and Valve’s Steam Deck. The latest update is probably one of the biggest yet and much awaited re-base, bringing an extensive list of fixes, as well as a list of new games that are now playable.

Games

• A short piece of news. We don’t usually cover news about upcoming games, and this is not even directly Linux related, so this will be a exception.

• Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface to launch all your games.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Thank you once again to the KDE community for having me as part of this amazing Free & Open Source project through their annual program Season of KDE (SoK). Please see this and this blog post for background information about the work described here.

• In these final weeks of SoK23 I have reproduced in Selenium the entire KdeEcoTestGcomprisScript.txt script, which emulates user behavior in different GCompris activities.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Fedora Family / IBM

• There seems to be a lot of misinformation and low quality content out there on how to use a theme with Flatpak. So I’m going to break down how it all works.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster has been released. You can now update or download Ubuntu 23.04. Ubuntu 23.04 Lubar Lobster comes up with some new features and upgrades from existing Ubuntu. Meanwhile, It is not a Long-Term Support version.

• Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster” is released on Thursday, April 20, 2023. Ubuntu 22.10 is at the end of its life in July.

• >Ubuntu 23.04 is now ready for you to download. It comes with some improvements to Azure Active Directory support, a new Steam snap, GNOME 44, and two new flavours: Cinnamon and Edubuntu.

• Ubuntu 23.04, codenamed Lunar Lobster, has crawled out of beta and onto public release today.

• The latest reincarnation of Canonical’s widely used Linux operating system brings with it a number of added features and some refinements ranging from improvements to the standard desktop interface and Snap package manager to some additional enterprise features and Linux kernel 6.2.

• The Xubuntu team is happy to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 23.04.

• Xubuntu 23.04, codenamed Lunar Lobster, is a regular release and will be supported for 9 months, until January 2024.

• Xubuntu 23.04 features the latest Xfce 4.18. Xfce 4.18 delivers a stable desktop environment with a number of performance improvements and new features to enjoy. In particular, the Thunar file manager benefits from a new image preview feature, undo and redo functionality, file highlights, and recursive search. Check out the Xfce 4.18 tour for more details!

• Xubuntu 23.04 also welcomes Xubuntu Minimal as an official subproject. Xubuntu Minimal is a slimmed down version of Xubuntu that only includes the bare essentials: the desktop, a few Xfce components, and the Xubuntu look and feel. Longtime Xubuntu fans may better know this as Xubuntu Core. After nearly eight years of being a supported, but community-built project, we’re happy to finally publish downloads along with the main Xubuntu version. Many thanks to the community for keeping the dream alive all these years!

• Arriving alongside the Ubuntu 23.04 release are new versions of official community flavours. This time around there’s a newbie in the pack: Ubuntu Cinnamon, welcomed into the Ubuntu flavour family back in March after several years as an unofficial Ubuntu remix. In this post I share a concise overview of what new features and changes are present in the most popular Ubuntu flavours, along with downloads links so you can download them to test out yourself.

• Ubuntu 23.04 not only brings many new features to the table for enterprise users, it has plenty of features to please its home-user base as well.

• Ubuntu 23.04, codenamed “Lunar Lobster”, is here. This release continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, partnering with the community and our partners, to introduce new features and fix bugs.

• New installer, Active Directory login and gaming performance enhance Ubuntu Desktop for work and play in the latest interim release of Ubuntu.

• Ubuntu Desktop 23.04 is the first and only Linux distribution to enable native user authentication with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

• PGConf.be 2023 will be held in Haasrode, Leuven, about 25km from Brussels.

• The conference will take place on May 12th, 2023. Registrations are open.

Leftovers

• The following is probably mostly obvious to anyone who had been using Twitter for the last decade. But for those who are just confused what the whole hubbub around Twitter “verified checkmark” is all about, here goes!

• A long while ago Twitter started making certain accounts “verified”. This was supposed to combat impersonation (and in that it was even quite effective, apparently). But since the “verified” checkmark was given by Twitter on Twitter’s sole discretion, and since it mostly went to Large, Important Accounts (celebrities, politicians, and so on), it quickly became a status symbol of sorts. “Witness me, for I have the Verified Checkmark, therefore I am considered Important!”, that kind of thing.

Science

• There are ways of controlling the new technology—but first we have to stop mythologizing it.

• Amid the legalization of marijuana in many states, the market for cannabis edibles has become a showcase for clever design.

Hardware

• Seagate Technology, a data-storage company based in Dublin, Ireland, agreed to pay $300 million to the federal government after two of its subsidiaries sold hard drives to Huawei, despite US sanctions on the Chinese telecommunications company.

• Taiwanese officials have urged their US counterparts to tone down their rhetoric about the dangers of relying on Taiwan chips.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• A recent joint study by the National PET Centre and the UKK Institute found that reducing sitting time alone does not improve endurance, and that at least walking or exercising is needed to improve it.

• Endurance is an essential measure of heart and cardiovascular health. The best way to improve endurance is by engaging in physical activity. However, Finns tend to engage in too little physical activity, and adults sit for an average of nearly ten hours a day.

• Normal ageing is associated with progressive cognitive decline. But can we train our brains to delay this process? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), HES-SO Geneva and EPFL has discovered that practising and listening to music can alter cognitive decline in healthy seniors by stimulating the production of grey matter.

• The researchers followed over 100 retired people who had never practised music before. They were enrolled in piano and music awareness training for six months.

• A new report by UNICEF reveals that 67 million children worldwide missed basic vaccinations over the past three years, with a drop in vaccination rates recorded in 112 countries. The report, entitled “The State of the World’s Children 2023: For Every Child, Vaccination,” highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare systems, limited resources, conflicts, and instability, and the decrease in vaccination confidence.

• Emerging adulthood (ages 19 to 25 years) is a developmental stage characterised by increased mental health problems, particularly depression and anxiety.

• Online peer emotional support is one mental health intervention that has demonstrated positive implications for the psychological well-being of emerging adults in current research literature.

• The US Supreme Court Wednesday released an order temporarily extending access to the abortion pill mifepristone, giving the court more time to consider the suspension of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the drug over 20 years ago.

Security

• The action, initiated in the Federal Court, has been brought by two lead applicants, a school teacher and a government employee.

• The law firm raised the possibility of filing such an action in September 2022, soon after Optus had revealed the massive breach.

• At the time, Optus advised customers that driver licence details, proof of age/proof of identity documents, Australian and international passport details, Medicare card numbers and invalid/incomplete ID document numbers had all been exposed.

• Rochester Public Schools (RPS) experienced a cyber attack that had significant consequences on their technology systems, which resulted in them being taken offline. However, in the wake of the attack, the staff, teachers, and students of John Marshall High School have managed to find benefits in learning without the use of screens in the classroom.

• Initially, when the cyber attack forced the school to implement a no-screen policy, there was some skepticism about the effectiveness of the learning process. Teachers were unsure if their students would be able to keep up without relying on technology. In contrast, students were concerned about not being able to access their assignments online.

• Telecommunication services providers in Africa are the target of a new campaign orchestrated by a China-linked threat actor at least since November 2022.

• The intrusions have been pinned on a hacking crew tracked by Symantec as Daggerfly, and which is also tracked by the broader cybersecurity community as Bronze Highland and Evasive Panda.

• Domino is a relatively new malware family consisting of two components, a backdoor named ‘Domino Backdoor,’ which in turn drops a ‘Domino Loader’ that injects an info-stealing malware DLL into the memory of another process.

• On April 18 at least six police officers from the National Operations Department (NOA) of the Swedish Police visited the Mullvad VPN office in Gothenburg with a search warrant.

• They intended to seize computers with customer data.

• The Peruvian company Euromotors is dedicated to the sale of new and used automobiles, maintenance services, and the sale of original spare parts. Euromotors is made up of a group of 12 companies: Euromotors, Euroshop, Altos Andes, Euro Camiones, San Bartolomé, Eurorenting, Euroinmuebles, One, Eurolift, Revo Motors, Euroconnect, and International Camiones del Perú.

• Capita have finally admitted a data breach, but still do not think they need to disclose key details of the incident to customers, regulators, impacted parties and investors. So in this piece we shall dig into the details using open source intelligence, and prove Capita was penetrated by Black Basta ransomware group using Qakbot phishing to deliver hands on keyboard access for weeks — and question if the playbooks organisations are using to handle ransomware groups are fit for purpose in 2023.

• Point32Health, the parent company for Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, said in a memo on its website that it identified a ransomware incident on Monday, affecting the systems it uses to service members, accounts, brokers and providers. A spokesman for the insurer said the outages were mainly affecting members covered under Harvard Pilgrim Health Care’s commercial plans and New Hampshire Medicare plans, though it was not impacting those on the Tufts Health Plan.

Defence/Aggression

• Fighting has erupted among the armed factions that deposed the country’s dictator and promised to make a democracy. What caused relations between the previously allied groups to fall apart?

• Tashkent-based lawyer Sergei Mayorov has called on Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev and other officials “to stop torturing” lawyer and journalist Dauletmurat Tajimuratov, who was handed a 16-year prison sentence in late January over anti-government protests in the Karakalpakstan region last year.

• The governor of the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia, Aleksandr Uss, has resigned after his son Artyom escaped house arrest in Italy, where he faced extradition to the United States, and appeared in Russia.

• The European Union’s border-protection agency, Frontex, began its official deployment in North Macedonia on April 20, extending its operations outside the bloc to a fifth country.

• One of the exercises will be held for three days in waters off the port city of Qingdao, said China’s Maritime Safety Administration.

• North Korea’s foreign minister Choe Son Hui issued a statement criticising the US and other G-7 countries.

• The Kyiv city council plans to terminate the land lease agreement with the Russian Embassy amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

• A man has been shot to death at a Starbucks coffee shop in an upscale neighborhood of Mexico City, and police say he apparently had links to a northern Mexico drug cartel

• “Confronting 1915 is a necessary step to build democracy, equality, and peaceful coexistence on solid foundations today,” the April 24 Commemoration Platform has said.

• UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed Monday proposed a conference in Afghanistan to discuss recognition of the country’s Taliban government.

• The US Department of Defense (DOD) Thursday announced the transfer of Said bin Brahim bin Umran Bakush, a prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay, to Algeria. With his transfer, 30 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay.

• The US has withdrawn from the war in Afghanistan, but the war profiteers are still raking in big bucks through the revolving door that is the military industrial complex.

Environment

• As part of a political trip to the United States, Colombian President Gustavo Petro visited Stanford to talk about the importance of combating climate change. He also discussed the political climate in Peru.

Energy/Transportation

• Eco tech brand Framework has announced its latest laptop, the Laptop 16. We explain why Framework’s laptops are different and how far they go to solve the problem of electronic waste…

• A new report from U.S. PIRG finds that Chromebooks’ cheap design and short lifespan means people are treating them as disposable, and is creating piles of ewaste.

Finance

• In the face of likely back-to-work legislation, public servants are on a historic strike for better wages and to defend public services

• Virgin Orbit has set a deadline of May 14 for bids on its business, the bankrupt rocket-maker said in a court filing this week.

• BuzzFeed News, one of the signature news brands of the last decade, is shutting down. Jonah Peretti, co-founder and CEO of parent company BuzzFeed, told employees in an email on April 20 that the company will discontinue its namesake news vertical and focus instead on HuffPost…

• Over 155,000 Canadian public sector workers Wednesday went on strike as bargaining between the federal government and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) continues to stagnate, potentially impacting Canadians’ ability to access some government services.

• Real Estate platform Far Home’s study offers a snapshot of the monthly costs of living for expats residing in Mexico.

• World stocks pulled further away from multi-week highs touched earlier this week, with sentiment dampened by disappointing Tesla earnings and worries about the US debt ceiling. The pan-European STOXX 600 index, which hit 14-month highs on Tuesday, was down one third of a per cent in morning trade.

• Gain a fresh perspective on climate change and ecological sustainability with author Keith Akers as he delves into the impacts of fossil fuel extraction, the ecological crises facing our planet, and the radical changes needed for a sustainable future.

• Join Lee Camp and Ben Norton as they delve into the changing world order, the rebellion of Latin America against Western hegemony, the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, and much more.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• A Which? Investigation reveals fake reviews are still being traded on Facebook,

• despite promises of a crackdown

• The company is also laying off 15% of staff across all departments.

• The company president emailed staff to inform them at 7am Eastern time on Thursday.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Rupert Murdoch may have to pay for Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies, but who’s going to reimburse American democracy?

Censorship/Free Speech

• Reddit’s favorite site for sharing porn is going to automatically delete all adult content soon.

• A Hong Kong busker known for performing an English rendition of protest song Glory to Hong Kong has pleaded not guilty to organising a prohibited group gathering. Oliver Ma, 24, wearing a pinstripe blue and white collared shirt, denied the charge at Eastern Magistrates’ Court on Thursday morning.

• The Hong Kong government barred several government-registered media outlets from covering a National Security Education Day event last Saturday, ignoring emails and evading questions by phone when challenged as to why. It comes despite repeated calls from top officials for the media to to tell “a good Hong Kong story.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Report from provincial police calls shooting an ‘accidental discharge.’

• Lawmakers hit out at the government for failing to update them, as ministers cite ‘sensitive’ investigations

• Weaponization of the federal government, indeed

• Public Knowledge urges the FTC to move swiftly to prohibit the use of noncompete clauses as an unfair method of competition.

Monopolies

Patents

• Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 409.

• It occurred to me recently that although I’ve done dozens of speeches and interviews over the past 20 or so years on libertarian aspects of intellectual property, or IP, that is, on IP policy, I’ve never done any in depth lectures for libertarians on IP law itself.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Woke up this morning to late Spring snow. Decided to write about it.

• Some time ago I got tired of my seemingly never-ending todo list, full of technical project ideas (not necessarily software development), personal tasks, etc., and decided to strip it down to the bare minimum.

• So I recently went back to using a personal wiki as my main organizational/notes solution, and in the spirit of going back to previously used tools, I decided to dust off this gemlog. Will I ever post here again after this one? I don’t know but then again I seem to be circling back around to old tools on a vaguely regular basis.

Technical

Internet/Gemini

• The Illustrious Members of the Midnight Pub are invited to read and eventually comment (preferably in that order) the History of the Gopher Protocol, with an addendum on the Gemini and Spartan Protocols. The essay is available from the server of the Midnight Pub and can be accessed from a Gemini client or also from a World Wide Web client, at the Uniform Resource Locators…

• 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.