● 05.21.23

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● Links 21/05/2023: WordPress 6.2.2 and ESPClicker

Posted in News Roundup at 6:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Applications

• ls is a command to list computer files. ls is specified by POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification. When invoked without any arguments, ls lists the files in the current working directory.

• The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a package of GNU software containing implementations for many of the basic tools, such as cat, ls, and rm, which are used on Unix-like operating systems.

• There are many enterprising developers that look to update and enhance many of the commands available in coreutils. ls is no exception.

• Here’s our recommended replacements for ls. They are all command-line programs published under an open source license.

Instructionals/Technical

• I found the following to be a rather decent solution for having HTML tables overflow the inline edges of smaller/tighter/narrow viewports. Try resizing the width of the browser window if viewing this page on a larger screen.

• Getting System Tap up and running on F38 has involved chasing down a few modules.

• Commonly, you get shorter battery life (run time on a full charge) on GNU Linux compared to other operating systems, as your favorite distribution is probably not optimized for laptops, and your laptops are not Linux-optimized. However, as a Linux user, you still can get a better laptop battery life thanks to TLP.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Kubernetes on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

• Getting error sudo unable to resolve host name or service not known after executing the sudo command, then read these steps to fix it up. As you know, while installing a new operating system like Debian, Ubuntu, or any other Linux distribution, installers ask you to set the hostname.

• MCTP stands for Management Component Transport Protocol. While it is designed around a server, it is also designed as a network protocol. As such, the Linux implementation makes use of the Socket interface and the Kernel plumbing for dealing with network protocols. To support a new transport mechanism, you implement a new device driver specific to that transport mechanism that implements the struct net_device contract, which includes implementing the functions for struct net_device_ops.

• Before I write a full implementation, I want to write something that only echos a packet back to the receiver. This mimics the behavior of the mctp-echo server in the user tools, and can make use of the mctp-req echo client.

• The Ubuntu Software Center provides a graphical user interface to easily install and manage various software packages.

Games

• Love your deck-building roguelikes? Well there’s a Luck of the Draw Humble Bundle just for that so here’s what’s included and the compatibility on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.

• Build your own little bundle with a discount on Fanatical, as their Bundle Fest once again comes to a close and the latest bundle worth a look is the Prestige Collection.

• We’ve seen the 1993 id Software classic DOOM running on so many pieces of unexpected hardware, as “Will it run DOOM?” has become something of a test for any new device. But will it run in the circuitry of a 1970s or 1980s TV set? Not quite, but as [lukneu] has demonstrated, it is possible to render the game using the set’s inbuilt Teletext decoder.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• KWin developer Xaver Hugl put a lot of work into HDR support in KWin during the recent HDR hackfest and Plasma sprint, and as a result, the first parts have now been merged for the Plasma 6.0 Wayland session! This also lays the groundwork for color management on Wayland. It’s an interesting and complex subject, so if you’d like to know more, check out Xaver’s excellent blog post on the subject.

• While you’re here, let me also do a bit of self-promotion. Fellow KDE contributor Neofytos Kolokotronis and I will be giving a virtual pre-Akademy talk at the University of Macedonia in a few days, on May 23rd. Learn more and register here!

Distributions and Operating Systems

• For those unfamiliar with it, Bodhi Linux is a lightweight Linux distro based on Ubuntu long-term support releases. It uses an Enlightenment-based desktop and Moksha window manager by default. The distro is notable for its resource efficiency and modularity, both enable it to run well on low-end hardware.

• Bodhi Linux 7.0 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. This foundation means users get access to better hardware support, security and performance improvements, and a repo stocked to the rafters with newer versions of apps, tools, and software.

Devices/Embedded

• The BTT Pad 7, or BIGTREETECH Pad 7 in full, is a 7-inch touchscreen display that ships with the CB1 Allwinner H616 system-on-module compatible with Raspberry Pi CM4. The display is mostly designed for 3D printers with its SPI and CAN Bus interfaces, but it can also be used as a standard tablet PC. So today, I’ll switch the CB1 with a Raspberry Pi CM4 Lite module and report my experience doing the conversion and using it as a Raspberry Pi CM4 tablet PC running Raspberry Pi OS, and test it with a 3D printer with Klipper in another post later on.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Integrating non-smart devices into your home automation system can be a cumbersome process, involving the wiring of multiple modules. However, [Pricelesstoolkit] has created the ESPClicker – a compact, ESP8266-based module that can remotely “press buttons” and simplify this process.

• I promised I’d install Linux Mint alongside macOS to see if that could bring back some of the iMac’s old spark, and it’s done just that. A machine that would struggle to even watch a YouTube video without stuttering has been transformed into a spritely, responsive system.

• Here’s how the owners of ageing Macs can bring their old hardware roaring back to life.

• The Pico controls a series of LEDs that line up with the keys on a keyboard (or piano). The LEDs illuminate on specific keys so the player knows which key to press next in the song. When not in use, it can also demonstrate a nice gradient effect. The Pico charts out songs by interpreting MIDI files to determine the note and length of time the note is played for.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• The way A4PDF aims to solve the issue is to stay low level enough. It merely exposes PDF primitives directly and ensures that the syntax of the generated PDF is correct. It is up to the caller to ensure that the output is semantically correct. This should afford every application to easily and directly map their document output to PDF in just they way they want it (color managed or not, annotated or not and so on).

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• Future users of large data banks must be protected from having to know how the data is organized in the machine (the internal representation). A prompting service which supplies such information is not a satisfactory solution. Activities of users at terminals and most application programs should remain unaffected when the internal representation of data is changed and even when some aspects of the external representation are changed. Changes in data representation will often be needed as a result of changes in query, update, and report traffic and natural growth in the types of stored information. Existing noninferential, formatted data systems provide users with tree-structured files or slightly more general network models of the data. In Section 1, inadequacies of these models are discussed. A model based on n-ary relations, a normal form for data base relations, and the concept of a universal data sublanguage are introduced. In Section 2, certain operations on relations (other than logical inference) are discussed and applied to the problems of redundancy and consistency in the user’s model.

Licensing / Legal

• We read this news with mixed glee and horror: a company called Telly is giving TVs away, for the low price of having to live with an always-on advertisement bar and some pretty stringent terms and conditions. Break the terms, and they’ll repossess your TV. If you don’t give them the TV, they have your credit card on record and they think the set is worth $1,000.

Programming/Development

• I recently read Daniel Lemire’s The absurd cost of finalizers in Go (via), which reports on a remarkably high cost of using a finalizer to insure that C memory is freed. Lemire’s numbers aren’t atypical; in my own testing in a different environment I found a rough factor of ten difference between directly calling C malloc() and free() and using a finalizer to call free().

• TL;DR: Be careful when using the word menu. Be certain you have chosen the term that accurately describes the control you want.

Leftovers

• “Why is our collective mood so sour? We are awash with material wealth, and technology provides us with unprecedented powers. But this veneer of well-being masks a deeper crisis. …  Our institutions are crumbling, leaving us vulnerable and aimless.

Science

• A defecting CSIRO scientist has labelled the agency an “extravagant consulting company” due to its involvement in a controversial deep sea mining project. Suzanne Arnold reports.

• CSIRO has become an “extravagant consulting company,” according to Professor David Karoly who cut ties with the agency in May last year.

Education

• An image of a shooting target — with two bullet holes to the head and five scattered around the chest — serves as a warning to visitors who climb the brick steps and pass the American flag to reach Eric Jensen’s front door.

• “If you can read this you’re in range,” the sign says. Another warning, posted near the doorbell, states: “No Solicitation. … This property charges $50 per minute to listen to any vaccine/medical advice.” He ordered that one in 2021, after mobile units offering COVID-19 vaccines began riding through his community outside Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Hardware

• Graphene isn’t easy to produce at scale. But making small batches of graphene is doable in a few ways. [Robert Murray-Smith] decided to try producing “flash graphene.” This requires a big capacitor bank that is moderately expensive, so he decided to explain a different technique he read about using an ordinary laser cutter. Check it out in the video below.

• You can babysit your 3D printer 100% of the time, or you can cross your fingers and hope it all works. Some monitor their printers using webcams, but [Simit] has a more stylish method of keeping tabs on six 3D printers.

• In recent years small drones have gone from being toys and photography tools to a deadly threat on the battlefield. Kamikaze drones have become especially prominent in the news due to their use in the war in Ukraine by both sides. While we haven’t seen coordinated swarms being actively employed on the modern battlefield, it’s likely only a matter of time, making drone swarm defense an active field of development in the industry.

• When it comes to our analog designs, op-amps tend to be just another jellybean part. We tend to spec whatever does the job, and don’t give much of a thought as to the internals. And while it doesn’t make much sense to roll your own op-amp out of discrete components, that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to be learned from doing just that.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• It leaves a mark.

• Kit Knightly A new study from Northwestern University has concluded that the majority of “Covid19” patients put on ventilators were actually killed by bacterial pneumonia, not the alleged virus. You can read that paper here.

• Schools can require pupils to keep their phones silent and out of sight during class time. However, without tightening current laws, it is not possible for them to completely ban the use of mobile phones throughout the entire school day.

Proprietary

• Using AI, in particular generative models such as GPT, are in contention within academics. The purity of academics resides in students writing on their research and having their work peer-reviewed. But how can you now be sure that the student wrote the paper and how can you trust its content? Many universities, including the OU have written about it. The OU published an article in Modulair about it. Generally, the consensus seems to be that it is ok to use AI as an assistant, but you must write your texts.

• For me AI has proven to be a valuable assistant. Here are some ways in which I found AI to be extremely useful: [...]

• If you hang around with computerists long enough, they start talking about the Semantic Web. If you can represent human knowledge in a way that’s easy for computers to understand it will be transformative for information processing.

• But computers, traditionally, haven’t been very good at parsing ambiguous human text.

Windows TCO

• Their description of potentially involved data is consistent with Karakurt’s claim that the information they obtained includes “many lines with SSNs, almost 1000 of credit cards, other detailed personal information, medical records and tons of corporate data.”

Security

• Several important security issues have been found in the Linux kernel, including a slab-out-of-bound read problem (CVE-2023-1380), a heap out-of-bounds read/write vulnerability in the traffic control (QoS) subsystem (CVE-2023-2248), and an out-of-bounds write issue in the kernel before 6.2.13 (CVE-2023-31436). The vulnerabilities have received a National Vulnerability Database (NVD) rating of “high-severity” due to their high confidentiality, integrity and availability impact.

• Several important security issues were identified in the runC Open Container Project. It was discovered that runC incorrectly performed access control when mounting /proc to non-directories (CVE-2023-27561), and incorrectly handled /proc and /sys mounts inside a container (CVE-2023-28642).

• These bugs could possibly allow an attacker to escalate privileges or bypass AppArmor, and potentially SELinux.

• A runC security update that fixes these flaws has been released. We strongly recommend that all impacted users apply the runC updates issued by their distro(s) as soon as possible to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of their systems.

• The security of your containers builds on a foundation formed from the images you use.

• WordPress 6.2.2 is now available!

Defence/Aggression

• The BSF said that four luminous strips were also found attached to the consignment for easy detection of smugglers.

• Two months ago I wrote an article entitled “Fascist judges” about the concerted move by judges in England to outlaw jury nullification.

• With Israel divided after Netanyahu’s victory, the country faces an unexpected enemy: Palestinian unity.

• Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Meduza has adopted a consistent antiwar position, holding Russia responsible for its military aggression and atrocities. As part of this commitment, we regularly update an interactive map that documents combat operations in Ukraine and the damage inflicted by Russia’s invasion forces. Our map is based exclusively on previously published open-source photos and videos, most of them posted by eyewitnesses on social media. We collect reports already available publicly and determine their geolocation markers, adding only the photos and videos that clear this process.

• On May 5, the playwright Svetlana Petriychuk was arrested by the Russian authorities just before boarding a flight from Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. Shortly afterwards, she and director Zhenya Berkovich, who produced her play Finist the Bright Falcon in 2021, were both charged with “justifying” terrorist propaganda. In her play, Petriychuk told the story of hundreds of Russian women who had been recruited by the Islamic State, married members of the extremist group via Skype, and moved to Syria to join them in the jihad. When they ultimately returned to Russia, many of them were convicted of terrorism and sentenced to years in prison, in spite of the trauma they’d endured. In 2022, Zhenya Berkovich’s production of Finist the Bright Falcon won two prestigious Golden Mask theatrical awards in Russia. One of them was for best costume design; the other honored Svetlana Petriychuk and her play. Petriychuk’s longtime colleague, the dramatist Mikhail Durnenkov, told Meduza about Svetlana, her swift rise as one of Russia’s most promising new playwrights, and what her plays are really all about.

• European Commission Statement Hiroshima, 21 May 2023 Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians themselves.

• The head of the Russian private army Wagner claims his forces have taken control of the city of Bakhmut after the longest and most grinding battle of the Russia-Ukraine war, but Ukrainian defense officials have denied it. In a video posted on Telegram, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said the city came under complete Russian control at about midday Saturday. He spoke flanked by about half a dozen fighters, with ruined buildings in the background and explosions heard in the distance. However, after the video appeared Ukrainian deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar said heavy fighting was continuing. Fighting has raged around Bakhmut for more than 200 days.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Japan for diplomatic talks with the leaders of the world’s most powerful democracies as they tighten sanctions meant to punish Moscow over its 15-month invasion of Ukraine. Japan says Zelenskyy’s decision to visit Hiroshima stems from his “strong wish” to participate in talks with G7 and other countries that will influence his nation’s defense against Russia. Bolstering international support is a key priority for Ukraine as it prepares for what is seen as a major push intended to take back territory seized by Russia. Among other leaders, Zelenskyy met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to brief him on Ukraine’s peace plan, which calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the country before any negotiations.

• Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday his Wagner fighters had completed the capture of Bakhmut – the eastern Ukrainian town of little strategic importance but great symbolic significance. Ukraine, however, rejected the claim, saying fighting was still going on. Read our live blog below to see how the day’s events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

• The Ukrainian army says it has intercepted over a thousand Russian missiles and nearly 2800 drones since the beginning of the year – but keeping Ukraine’s civilians safe from air strikes is still an immense challenge. FRANCE 24′s Emmanuelle Chaze met the volunteers who provide the searchlights supporting Ukraine’s air defence.

• An armed group tried to enter Russia’s Belgorod region from Ukraine, report Telegram channels Baza, Mash, and Shot.

• Wagner Group founder Evgeny Prigozhin says that his troops have taken full control of Bakhmut.

• Pope Francis has asked Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, head of the Italian bishops conference, to carry out a peace mission to try to help bring an end to the war in Ukraine, the Vatican said on May 20.

• The International Criminal Court (ICC) said it is “profoundly concerned” about Russia’s move to issue a warrant for the arrest of an ICC prosecutor and judges who earlier had issued a war-crimes arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of illegally deporting children from Ukraine.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is set to continue his diplomatic push in Japan on May 21 as he bids to bolster support for his country’s defense against the Russian invasion following vows by Western allies to supply Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets.

• For the first time since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the United States has lifted sanctions imposed against a Russian individual.

• The leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) leading economies have urged China to “press Russia” to end its invasion of Ukraine and withdraw its forces from Ukrainian territory.

• The Vatican says Pope Francis has tasked a leading Italian cardinal with a mission it hopes it can “ease tensions” in the Ukraine war and lead to path of peace

• Russia’s defense ministry says forces of the Wagner private army, with the support of Russian troops, have seized the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut

• He urged his supporters to stay the course and tried to convince fence sitters like India and Brazil that there is no middle ground.

• The head of the Russian paramilitary group said his forces had captured the eastern city, a claim Ukrainian officials were quick to deny even as they called the situation “critical.”

• What was once the American century is now potentially the century of the G-3: China, India, and the US.

• There was no response from Ukraine, which earlier had insisted that fighting continued. President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Japan, meeting with leaders from the Group of 7.

• The city has for months been the center of the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Here’s a look at the critical moments.

• Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, once a caterer for the Kremlin, has made capturing the city a personal obsession.

• As leaders of the Group of Seven countries gather in Hiroshima, Atlantic Council experts share their insights on what is coming out of the summit about Russia, China, the global economy, and more.

• Ukraine, this month, pressed ahead with three days of maneuvers that gained ground on the flanks of Bakhmut. But Russian forces still appear to hold the center of the strategic city.

• Security concerns are preventing searches from being carried out on the Russian side of the border this summer, reports the Finnish news agency (STT).

• There is space for South Korea to participate in aspects of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and other minilateral structures aimed at maintaining international order and security in the Pacific.

• Sudan’s warring factions have agreed to a new short-term ceasefire after several previous attempts to broker a truce that holds have failed

Environment

• Although thefts slowly began creeping up in 2019, they grew in 2020 and boomed in 2021 mostly because of the pandemic, the experts I spoke with told me. Like everywhere else in the world, workers couldn’t mine, process, and ship these metals due to restrictions. And if they did, it’s likely there were other hurdles and disruptions along the supply chain.

• The fact that people weren’t driving their cars as often during the beginning of the pandemic combined with higher valuations for these metals created a perfect storm to incentivize catalytic converter theft.

• Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies are sitting down with a carefully chosen set of counterparts from other countries during their summit in Japan in an effort to expand the G7’s sway and to include voices from the so-called Global South

• G-7 leaders are struggling to reconcile climate goals with the need for stable and affordable energy supplies.

• The U.S. finds itself caught between defending President Biden’s climate change agenda and aiding allies intent on increasing their access to fossil fuels.

• For politicians, discussing climate change in a province enriched by oil money is fraught.

Energy/Transportation

• Perhaps the most unlikely feature of high-stakes budget negotiations going on in Washington is a debate over permitting

Overpopulation

• People overusing water for agriculture and development, and human-caused climate change are the primary drivers of the decline, particularly in natural lakes, said Fangfang Yao, the study’s lead author. In reservoirs, dirt and sand piled up behind dams also played a major role in declining water levels.

• The findings were staggering, the authors said.

Finance

• Behind the deep philosophical differences between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy lies a more mundane issue — how to get any deal through the House.

• Zoom in: The White House seized on Friday’s breakdown in debt ceiling talks to argue for its preferred approach to a deal — a bipartisan bill that will rely on a big chunk of Democratic votes. Talks restarted Friday night after Republicans announced a “pause” earlier in the day.

• The individual did not file 160,000 euros in earnings.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The Group of Seven wealthy democracies have urged China to push Russia to end its war on Ukraine

• Science fiction is filled with dazzling cities constructed on the Moon and Mars, but it will be a huge challenge to bring these extraterrestrial bases into reality. Nonetheless, the dream of establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon has been gaining momentum, especially as NASA and its partners prepare to return astronauts to the lunar surface this decade as part of the Artemis program.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Far-right Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan, who burned a copy of the Quran earlier this year, has been reportedly arrested in absentia in Sweden.

• A Chinese comedian was severely punished on Wednesday for making a joke about the People’s Liberation Army and his production company fined roughly two million dollars. This incident demonstrates that Chinese censors are now turning their attention to the small but growing world of stand-up comedy in China, which until now has enjoyed a certain measure of freedom.

• Normally on Saturday we have our “this week in history” posts, highlighting Techdirt stories from many years ago. But this week I wanted to highlight a story that didn’t happen on Techdirt, but turned into a Techdirt thing. Twenty years ago today, actress/singer Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman for daring to photograph her coastal mansion as part of his (fascinating) project to photograph the entire west coast of the US from a helicopter to track erosion over time.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Hundreds of Atlantans spoke out against the proposed authorization of $33.5 million taxpayer dollars for the Atlanta Police Foundation to fund the construction of ‘Cop City’ during the public comment section at city council on Monday.

• The complaint—filed by six erstwhile Twitter workers—accuses Musk of transforming the company’s headquarters into a so-called “Twitter Hotel” without the proper permitting.

• When you rely on your powered wheelchair to get around, any delay in repair is not only a quality-of-life issue, but a matter of life and death. Yet a constrained market for wheelchair service and repair makes delays for repair of weeks or even months common.

• This is Monopolies 101: when there is only one option for getting something done, quality and customer service go down while prices go up. One of the main goals of the Right to Repair campaign is to foster an open market for repair and service that offers real choice and price competition to consumers.1

• But today, a skewed market for wheelchair repairs often results in even simple, mechanical repairs taking weeks or months to complete. In this report, we’ll assess the reasons that repair choice is constrained and investigate policy options for state and federal leaders such as so-called “right to repair” laws that provide wheelchair owners with access to the information, software and parts to repair their own equipment. We’ll also review the results of a survey we conducted of 141 American wheelchair users that provides insights into the state of wheelchair repair, and whether wheelchair users believe that right to repair reforms would improve conditions.

• This final episode of The Daily Weekly season 14. The team is capturing the ongoing Graduate Student instructor strike and the widespread impact on student’s academic experience during the winter semester.

• Meryem Ismayil was distraught over father’s detention and mother’s interrogation by police.

• The United States condemned the regime of authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus, saying it was “unjustly holding over 1,500 political prisoners.”

Monopolies

• What Swift didn’t also use, however, was a separate Ticketmaster program called Face Value Ticket Exchange. This would have prevented brokers and others from reselling tickets for more than face value (plus fees).

Patents

• With less than 2 weeks to go before 1 June 2023, it was about time for the UPC to tie several loose ends and to clarify various questions before becoming (more or less) fully operative.

Copyrights

• With more than a million monthly visits, The Proxy Bay was one of the most popular Pirate Bay proxy information portals. Hosted on GitHub, the site also was a thorn in the side of rightsholders, which attracted the attention of UK police. While initial takedown efforts failed, The Proxy Bay eventually disappeared a short while ago, along with several dedicated proxy sites.

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