● 04.23.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 23/04/2023: Libreboot 20230423, Arianna 1.0.1, and PeaZip 9.2.0

Posted in News Roundup at 11:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

Graphics Stack

Benchmarks

Applications

• Hanabi is a GNOME Shell extension that allows using a live wallpaper (video) on the GNOME desktop, with support for both X11 and Wayland.

• GPU Screen Recorder is a screen recorder for Linux similar to ShadowPlay for Microsoft Windows, that makes use of the GPU to record the screen…

• QEMU, the popular emulator and virtualization tool, has just released version 8.0.0, featuring over 2800 commits from 238 authors. This release introduces a wide range of improvements and new features across multiple architectures.

• Here’s what’s new.

• Libreboot provides boot firmware for supported x86/ARM machines, starting a bootloader that then loads your operating system. It replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware on x86 machines, and provides an improved configuration on ARM-based chromebooks supported (U-Boot bootloader, instead of Google’s depthcharge bootloader). On x86 machines, the GRUB and SeaBIOS coreboot payloads are officially supported, provided in varying configurations per machine. You can find the list of supported hardware in the Libreboot documentation.

• The last Libreboot release, version 20230413, was released on 13 April in 2023. This new release, Libreboot 20230423, is released today on April 23rd, 2023.

• This is marked as a testing release, though it is basically stable. We’ve been going at it like crazy, on a big spree adding more mainboards from coreboot. Some fixes to the build system were also made, since the last release only 10 days ago.

• The priority for Libreboot is to add as many new boards as possible, from now to the next stable release (ETA Q3 2023), with many testing releases in between. Release early, release often. Rigorious testing ensues.

• Want to read web articles or study materials quicker? If you do, you might want to try a speed reading app.

Instructionals/Technical

• The hostname is an identifier every Linux Operating System has on the network. By default, the hostname is set during the installation process of the Linux Operating System. However, the user can manually set it after the installation at any time according to the requirements. Various scenarios can require you to change the hostname of your Linux Operating System, such as deploying a Local Server/domain. Also, having a more meaningful hostname allows your PC to be easily accessed instead of using its IP Address. Whatever the case is.

• If you’re a fan of Ubuntu 22.04, the popular Linux distro with its slick user-friendly interface and powerful features, you might be wondering how to keep tabs on your system’s memory usage to keep things running smoothly.

• As a Linux, Windows or macOS user, one of the most essential skills you can develop is the ability to troubleshoot network issues. The ping command is a versatile and powerful tool that can help you diagnose and resolve a variety of connectivity problems.

• Understanding how to assess network connectivity is crucial for troubleshooting and monitoring purposes. The ping command is a popular tool used to test the connectivity between two devices on a network.

• Bash, the widely popular Unix shell, offers a variety of ways to perform arithmetic operations and manipulate expressions.

• This guide shows you how to run `Vi` without an operating system, bare metal.

• A temporary failure in name resolution is a common issue that Linux users may encounter when their system cannot resolve a hostname to an IP address. This problem can occur due to various reasons, such as network connectivity issues, DNS configuration problems, or issues with the local hosts file.

• Not sure what Ubuntu version you are using? Then read this guide to learn different ways to check your Ubuntu version. Whenever you try to install any application on your Ubuntu system, all the guides and videos suggest that you to run the particular command only if you are running the specified version.

• Bash, short for Bourne Again SHell, is a Unix shell and command-line interpreter. It is widely used for scripting and automation tasks, as well as for interactive use in terminal sessions. One of the essential features of Bash is its ability to compare and manipulate numerical values.

• What is caching? Caching is a process of storing files in a temporary storage location for easy retrieval whenever the same data request is made in the future.

• As a Linux or Unix user, you are likely to encounter the Bash shell, which is the default command-line interface on most distributions. Bash built-in commands are essential for effectively navigating and controlling your system. These commands are executed directly by the shell, without requiring external binaries.

• Bash (short for Bourne Again SHell) is a powerful and versatile command-line interface widely used in Unix-based operating systems. When writing Bash scripts, you’ll often need to pass arguments and use flags to customize the script’s behavior. This article will provide a comprehensive guide to effectively utilizing arguments and flags in your Bash scripts.

• Welcome to “Mastering Arithmetic Operators in Bash: A Comprehensive Guide,” a resource dedicated to providing an in-depth understanding of arithmetic operators in the powerful and versatile Bash shell.

• Bash, the widely-used Unix shell, is a powerful and flexible scripting language that allows users to automate tasks, manipulate files, and control the flow of their scripts.

• Kodi, formerly known as XBMC (Xbox Media Center), is a powerful and versatile open-source media player that has gained immense popularity over the years. With its sleek and user-friendly interface, Kodi allows you to manage and organize your media collection like a pro.

• Exaile is a feature-rich, lightweight, and user-friendly music player tailored to Linux users. If you’re a Fedora user searching for a music player that offers unique functionality and customization options, Exaile might be a perfect choice.

• In a world where music management software is abundant, finding the one that best suits your needs can be difficult.

• Fedora users, are you looking for an all-in-one internet application suite that goes beyond the conventional offerings of popular web browsers and email clients?

Games

• Yesterday Komodo, the distributor of the Steam Deck in Japan and some other parts of Asia (Korea and Taiwan), has announced that the Steam Deck will start to be sold in stores in Japan, starting on April 29th with EDION…

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• I’m happy to announce the first bugfix release of Arianna. This release contains a lot of improvements to the accessibility of Arianna. Thanks a lot to @bgtlover@linuxrocks.online who reported many accessibility issues. Aside from fixing some bugs in Arianna, this also resulted in fixes in Kirigami, Kirigami Addons and Qt, which are on a seperate release schedule so not every bug fixes is already available. I’ll write a seperate blog post which will go into the technical details.

• Aside from the accessibility fixes, this release fixes a few crashes when parsing some books. Thanks to those who tried Arianna and reported bugs (with backtrace!).

• PeaZip is an open source file and archive manager. It’s freeware and free of charge for any use. PeaZip can extract most of archive formats both from Windows and Unix worlds, ranging from mainstream 7Z, RAR, TAR and ZIP to experimental ones like PAQ/LPAQ family, currently the most powerful compressor available.

• Open and extract 200+ archive formats: 001, 7Z, ACE(*), ARC, ARJ, BZ2, CAB, DMG, GZ, ISO, LHA, PAQ, PEA, RAR, TAR, UDF, WIM, XZ, ZIP ZIPX – view full list of supported archive file formats for archiving and for extraction.

• PeaZip provides fast, high compression ratio multi-format archiving – view file compression and decompression benchmarks for more information.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• A new version of Manjaro, a popular Arch-based Linux distro, is available to download.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Next time you swing by Flathub, the de-facto app store for Linux, you’ll be sure to notice things are look a lot fresher.

Debian Family

• The former Suicide site is no more.

• Volunteers riding the tube in London heard an announcement, “blogger under a train”. Its all over.

• Nonetheless, new volunteers have come to the rescue and forked the old sites to create a brilliant new site at https://disguised.work/debian.

• If you follow the RSS feeds, please update them using the feed URLs at the bottom of this page.

• Volunteers looked at recent stories about deaths and the community. Some deaths were suicides, some were confirmed accidents and other deaths had no official cause.

• We thought long and hard about what all these deaths had in common and found that the name Disguised Work gets to the root cause of the problem.

• Rather than focus on how they died, we want to talk about why.

• There is a new application available for Sparkers: Lite XL What is Lite XL? A lightweight text editor written in Lua, derived from Lite.

Devices/Embedded

• The ELECFREAKS Wukong2040 is a Raspberry PI Pico expansion board enabling beginners to get live with their simple to medium complexity projects, with a safe

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• ConvertO is an open-source free PDF editing app for Android devices.

• It enables you to edit, compress, merge, save PDF as well as extract images etc.

• Features

• * Add Watermark to PDF

• * PDFs Merge

• * PDF Compression

• * PDF invert

• * Images to PDF

• * Extract images from PDF

• Download

• * Google Play

• License

• * GPL-3.0

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• An open-source link management tool for modern marketing teams to create, share, and track short links.

• CueKeeper is a web-based GTD (Get Things Done) To-do system (a fancy TODO list) that runs entirely in your browser (the data is stored on your computer, in your browser).

• Realms is a free open-source Git-based wiki written in Python Inspired by Gollum, Ghost, and Dillinger. It is a fairly easy to setup, configure, and use.

• Realms supports multiple user collaboration using TogetherJS and Firepad library.

• Free Modern URL Shortener.

• Knowfox is an open-source personal knowledge management system for organizing all personal information, taking notes, record journals and more. It is a web-based self-hosted that you can host at your private server or use it directly at your local machine. It features a full-text search, a Markdown editor, photo management,

• YARA release 4.3.1 fixes 3 bugs.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• We’re happy to announce Kiwi TCMS version 12.2!

• IMPORTANT: this release contains security related updates, general improvements, bug fixes, some API changes and new translations!

• You can explore everything athttps://public.tenant.kiwitcms.org!

FSFE

Programming/Development

• Irmin is a customizable-distributed data system based on distributed version-control systems (DVCs). Like Git, Irmin allows for functions such as clone, push, pull, branch, and rebase. Users can store application-specific values and define custom storage layers.

• Node.js 20 introduces various new features and enhancements, including improved speed and security. This article looks at some of the most significant improvements and how they may help web developers.

• Over the years I got used to the simple Switch configuration tab in the OpenWRT web interface to be able to configure which ports are tagged/untagged on which VLANs which I could then bridge later to specific interfaces. This page has since been removed for a more flexible/powerful subsystem that OpenWRT is implementing called DSA. I’m still new to this, however, I had to recently configure a similar interface-to-vlan layout in this new section. It is now listed under the interface bridge configuration page but it has the similar table layout with the same set of options. For example, one LAN port as a vlan access port (untagged) and two LAN ports as vlan trunk ports (tagged) both carrying two separate vlan-networks.

• R is a powerful programming language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. In this post, we will provide a quick introduction to R using the famous iris dataset. We will cover loading data, exploring the dataset, basic data manipulation, and plotting.

Python

• In Python, the “b” notation beside regular string and the “encode()” method is used for converting the string into bytes format.

Leftovers

Science

• Secrets hidden for millions of years.

• Looking out for “disruptive potential”.

• “Imagine waking up on the bottom of a pool – it sends a shiver down the spine.”

• Do you really need to pick it?

• The electric bandage.

Education

• Voluntary recognition from Stanford would mean a quicker path to bargaining. So far, SGWU organizers say that over 3,600 Stanford graduate student-workers have signed union authorization cards.

• U-M and the Graduate Employees’ Organization have agreed the union will advise graduate student instructors to turn in all grades that were recorded — and ungraded assignments submitted — before the union went on strike.

• The university has informed the Graduate Employees’ Organization that it has bargained as far as it can on many issues, largely because GEO has made little or no substantive movement over the course of bargaining since November 2022.

Hardware

• My cousin recently got ahold of me, saying that he was having trouble with his Brother FAX-2840 fax machine/laser printer. It still worked fine as a fax machine or copy machine, but he couldn’t print to it from his Windows 10 computer.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Don’t overlook fruits and vegetables in your food safety regimens in Mexico: disinfecting produce is an essential and easy skill to learn.

• At Bolivia’s lake Lake Poopo, where there used to be water, there is now a dry bed. The lake has suffered many droughts before, but this dry spell has endured for the past 20 years due to the combined impact of increased water demand and the El Nino weather cycle.

• Climate change campaigners gathered outside Britain’s parliament building ahead of Earth Day to urge action on global warming, while volunteers worldwide geared up to plant trees and clear trash to mark the 54th annual celebration of the environment.

• Even as the nation’s drug crisis mounted, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine continued to accept funds from some members of the Sackler family, including those involved with Purdue Pharma.

• The US Supreme Court on Friday temporarily preserved access to a widely used abortion pill, freezing rulings by lower courts that would have banned or severely restricted availability of the drug.

• The WHO also advised Malaysians to take Covid-19 self-tests before heading back to their home towns.

• A top International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegate Friday said that inmates held by the US at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center are experiencing “symptoms of accelerated [aging].

Proprietary

Security

• The North Korean hacking group behind the supply chain attack that hit 3CX also broke into two critical infrastructure organizations in the energy sector.

Pro-Russian hackers have attacked Europe’s air-traffic agencyA cyber attack launched by pro-Russian hackers on Europe’s air-traffic control agency has paralyzed air traffic employee operations.

• An Australian law firm on Friday launched a class-action lawsuit against telecommunications giant Optus, seeking compensation for the fallout of a major data breach that occurred in September.  Filed in the Federal Court of Australia, the lawsuit accuses Optus of violating fundamental privacy principles and breaching its duty of care to its customers.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Hong Kong has long been a city that relies largely on cash, credit cards and Octopus. When it launched in 1997, it was only the second contactless payment system in the world after South Korea’s Upass.

Defence/Aggression

• At the entrance to the Majicavo slum on France’s Indian Ocean territory Mayotte, which authorities are seeking to evacuate and demolish, a group gathered around a poster emblazoned with the French flag.

• Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday was again at odds with Europe over Ukraine while pressing his first European tour since resuming office in January.

• For Valentyn, a Ukrainian soldier in the Donetsk region, the war’s death toll is more than a statistic. He is tasked with moving wounded troops — and dead bodies — away from the front lines, often under Russian fire.

• British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Sunday the country’s armed forces evacuated diplomatic staff and their family members…

• The three Baltic states have strongly condemned comments by China’s envoy to France who appeared to say in a recent French television interview that the former Soviet republics aren’t sovereign nations

• Russian forces hit Ukrainian cities with missiles, mortars, artillery and airstrikes over the weekend, Ukrainian officials said.

• Following a three-week trial, a French court on Friday convicted Hassian Diab, a sociology professor from the University of Ottawa Canada, to life imprisonment in absentia for the October 3, 1980 Copernic synagogue bombing in Paris, which resulted in four deaths and 46 injuries.

• As chief of defense, retired General Jarmo Lindberg was the Finnish Defence Forces’ highest-ranking officer from 2014 to 2019. A career fighter pilot who ascended through the air force ranks, he was elected to the Finnish parliament this month, representing the centre-right opposition National Coalition Party, which won the largest number of seats. He has also worked as an adviser and lobbyist.

• Visaginas, formerly a nuclear town with the most international population in the country, is negotiating its identity and future amid tensions stoked by the Ukraine war.

• “Donbass Devushka” is a prominent social media account implicated in the recent leak of classified documents on the Ukraine war. The pro-Kremlin mouthpiece, which claims to be run by a Russian woman in the occupied city of Luhansk, is in fact run by a pro-Russian former US military officer.

• Ten civilians and three soldiers were killed and 88 jihadists “neutralised” in multiple incidents across Mali Saturday, the government said, in a wave of bloodshed it described as a resurgence of “terrorist incidents”.

• Thousands of tonnes of confiscated Russian fertilizers have been sent from Latvia to Kenya, the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said April 22.

• We are in the middle of a world-changing war. This is no ordinary war, however. Most of the victims of this warfare aren’t even able to identify it as war, nor do they understand that they are combatants in it.

• It is curious to me that people do not understand that historically, perpetrators of evil have always made an effort to convince people in general that what they are doing is not evil, and in fact is good for them.

• US troops swooped in on helicopters to evacuate embassy staff from Sudan’s battle-torn capital, President Joe Biden announced Sunday, as other nations sought to help their citizens escape deadly fighting between rival generals.

• The West must make sacrifices in the present to secure the future.

• Singh and supporters accused of attempted murder, law enforcement obstruction, creating disharmony.

• President Niinistö expressed concern about reports that Russia may aim to sabotage the Nordic energy or communications infrastructure.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

Environment

• One mayor suspended classes in March after 83 students were hospitalised for heat exhaustion.

• A ferry used to traverse the banks of the Adda River, in northern Italy, but drought and an abundance of bureaucracy has closed it down.

Energy/Transportation

• Latvia’s government has halted plans to build a liquified fossil gas (LNG) terminal, although campaign groups warn that relying on fossil gas from Estonia, an option the two governments are now exploring, is a false solution.

Wildlife/Nature

• One of a kind.

Finance

• An Ex-Meta employee revealed that she got a layoff email at 4 am which said that the same day was her last day of work. Meta fired 10,000 people recently after announcing its decision to lay off 11,000 people in January.

• Bed Bath & Beyond Inc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday after the home goods retailer failed to secure funds to stay afloat.

• The company said that it would seek to sell all or some of its business, and that store closing sales would begin on Wednesday.

• The turmoil stems from a traditional rental payment system called jeonse.

• You have a job. You work, and you earn money. Whatever your position is, you make a living each day. However, jobs are not a viable construct, and the notion that we will earn our living in the future through an employer-employee relationship is destined for economic oblivion. The pandemic has jarred us all and has forced us to change in ways unthinkable. The norm now includes masks, quarantines, sanitizers, and social distancing. Webcams, online school, and working from home are becoming commonplace in the workplace. Either way, it is safe to say we are all heading toward job extinction. One woman recently posted a TikTok stating that she believes we are at “the death of careers.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The Supreme Court on Friday protected access to a widely used abortion drug by freezing lower-court rulings that placed restrictions on its usage as appeals play out.

• The court’s order seemed to vindicate a commitment in last year’s decision in Dobbs: to leave further questions about abortion to the political process.

• After abortion rights supporters swept six ballot measures last year, Republican legislatures seek to make it harder to get on the ballot, and harder to win if there is a vote.

• Nothing will change for now. That’s what the Supreme Court said Friday evening about access to a widely used abortion pill. A court case that began in Texas has sought to roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, mifepristone. Lower courts had said that women seeking the drug should face more restrictions on getting it while the case continues, but the Supreme Court disagreed. The court’s action almost certainly will leave access to mifepristone unchanged at least into next year, as appeals play out, including a potential appeal to the high court.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

Civil Rights/Policing

• Tens of thousands of Israelis packed Tel Aviv streets on Saturday for the 16th consecutive week to protest government judicial reforms they see as an attack on democracy.

• Authorities tell us that they will let us know soon what their plans are for Hong Kong’s District Councils (DCs). Hong Kong and Macau Affairs director Xia Baolong repeatedly emphasised the role and value of the councils during his visit to Hong Kong.

• The US Supreme Court ruled Friday that abortion pill mifepristone will continue to be widely accessible as the ongoing appeals process takes place.

• The Australian Federal Government Saturday announced the liberalisation of Australia’s immigration laws, which will grant New Zealanders residing in Australia a direct pathway to attaining citizenship. As of 2023, there are approximately over 559,980 New Zealand citizens living in Australia.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Online culture sure feels like it’s in a transition phase, doesn’t it? In an attempt to understand what we learned this week, let’s compare it to some prior internet-era shifts.

• Hi all – You may have noticed our site has been slower than usual, and occasionally our servers have been offline. This is because OffGuardian is being targeted by repeated DDoS attacks, our server management team have confirmed.

Monopolies

Patents

• Chief Judge Kimberly Moore cannot be the judge, jury, and executioner of her colleague.

Trademarks

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• The fiftieth day of that summer had come. The wee fellowship had already went through the eastern side of the Holy Borders into a region of raids and battles, where few ventured, and fewer still made their abode. Paladins had not ventured here in three peaceful years, for the orcs beyond the mountain had not yet recovered from their last defeats. You might expect the odd forester who counted the woods as its home. Rena could relate, though her forest home was far away in the north, orcs were as close too, and though trees and bushes differ, their souls were just as wise. Harder still, despite the stories, would be to find some criminal hiding there in the woods. No, for those, as a last resort, would favor sewers and decrepit houses where justice would be shy to enter.

• Looking for a “Christmas present for the family” I thought a 3D printer might fit the bill.

General

• A teacher once put two of us to the board; the task was to assign the months to the seasons. My thinking went along the lines of “December is pretty cold, that must be winter, therefore winter is December, January, and February.” Years later I came to understand that for some spring is defined as starting on the equinox; from that one might derive April, May, and June. This could be a rounding error; one could easily truncate down instead of rounding up. Neither of these triads were very good; we were being taught the Orthodox American System somewhere the seasons ran to three.

• The weather this last week was really all over the place. Thursday and Friday were summer days: 30c / 86f. Wearing long sleeves was really hot, and I had to use a fan in the evening. Yesterday the temperature dipped again and it was cold and grey. Today the sun came out and it went back to being hot again.

• A few days ago I watched -From Noob To Power User With Manjaro KDE- [1] and I followed the video and installed it myself. I know zilch about Arch/Manjaro, but Konsole looks really nice, as does the sweet theme with candy icons. I had a devil of a time getting jpilot (with pilot-link) to install, and even then I wasn’t able to get hotsync to work, but I’ll try again at a later date.

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

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