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Posted in News Roundup at 11:18 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers
In the twenty-ninth episode of the WordPress Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy reminds us of our WordPress roots — blogging — and discusses the basics of starting your first blog on WordPress.
Has Fedora pulled ahead of Ubuntu? We take a look at the new Fedora 36 and Ubuntu 22.04 releases.
The 5.18-rc3 kernel prepatch is out for testing. “It’s Sunday afternoon, and you all know what that means. It’s time for another release candidate. (Yes, yes, it’s also Easter Sunday, but priorities, people!)”
Atlassian Corporation Plc is a software company founded in 2002 that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. It employs over 7,000 people and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.
Atlassian produces a range of proprietary software including software for collaboration, development, and issue tracking software for teams. Atlassian dominates several markets where it still has intense competition.
Broadly speaking, they offer software in three large buckets: These are software development tools; help desk software, or IT service management; and workflow management software. When you think of Atlassian, think project management and collaboration tools.
Many of their programs use a number of open source components. And their GitHub repositories hold lots of open source code. But their main range of software is proprietary. This series looks at free and open source alternatives to Atlassian’s products.
A new generation is coming up with an alternative version of conventional commands. Can we accept them to replace the legacy of Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie? Does it have the necessary changes that can bend us to move with a new command?
I have pulled out the exa command from the plethora of alternative commands, which claims to be a modern tool of the “ls” command.
Using Linux is fun with the CLI mode in the terminal section. There are tons of commands that can make your Linux journey smoother if you just know the right command. There are many commands in Linux that require to be associated with the url or path of the file. While writing a command, remembering both the command and path is really havoc, and it slows down the efficiency. With the ln command in Linux, you can easily generate, connect, and assign soft and hard links inside the command shell. The full form of the ln is the link command; it helps us to generate links to files and directories on a Linux system.
Jellyfin is a free, open-source multimedia application designed to organize, manage, and share digital media files to networked devices on an internal network and can be accessed remotely desired. It is a cross-platform and alternative to such other significant players, Plex and Emby. You can access it from a range of devices such as Mobile, Tablets, TV, and PCs or popular media devices like Roku or Nvidia shield. Jellyfin also serves media to DLNA and Chromecast-enabled devices and can fetch metadata just like Plex and Emby do to organize your media into categories in a rich multimedia experience.
In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to rename a directory in Linux.
It’s another in our simple, beginner-friendly tutorials to get you accustomed to the Linux CLI.
You’ll often need to rename a directory/folder – it’s one of the most frequent tasks I do on all of my Linux servers and PCs.
Ubuntu is distributing more applications as the universal Snap package, but some users don’t like them. So I’m writing this tutorial for those want to completely get rid of Snap and prevent it from being installed back.
NOTE: Before getting started, please backup your app data, e.g., Firefox bookmarks. Attention that Ubuntu Software will also be removed after following this tutorial.
To run Microsoft Windows applications in Ubuntu Linux, Wine or CrossOver (paid version) is a good choice. And here’s how to install and use Wine in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
In this tutorial, you’ll see 2 ways to install Wine in Ubuntu. Choose either one that you prefer.
Java is a general-purpose, class-based, object-oriented multipurpose programming language that is popular due to the design of having lesser implementation dependencies, meaning that the compiled Java code can be run on all platforms that support Java without the need for recompilation. Java is also fast, secure, and reliable, therefore. It is widely used for developing Java applications in laptops, data centers, game consoles, scientific supercomputers, cell phones, etc.
The tutorial will look at installing the OpenJDK version instead of the default Oracle JDK. The difference between these two is licensing. OpenJDK is an entirely free, open-source Java with a GNU General Public License, and Oracle JDK requires a commercial license under the Oracle Binary Code License Agreement. Other differences are release schedules and other factors that come into play; however, performance is the same.
FileZilla is an easy-to-use, free FTP client with cross-platform support. You can download it for Windows or Linux on both server and client sides! It also supports sftp connections, so you can transfer files without having them wrapped up in (.zip) archives too much—this way, there’s less traffic on your network while still getting everything done quickly.
Remmina is a remote desktop client written in GTK+, aiming to be useful for system administrators and travelers who need to work with many remote computers in front of either large monitors or tiny netbooks. It supports the following protocols: RDP, VNC, NX, XDMCP, and SSH. Among its features are Multi-Monitor support, Tabbed sessions, port forwarding, proxy support, and easy access to typical applications like Firefox or LibreOffice. Remmina also has a robust plugin system that can be used to extend its functionality.
Fotoxx is an open-source program for basic image editing. It can be used to organize and manage extensive collections of images, optimize photos in various ways, including adjusting color balance or brightness levels on individual targets within a photo, and perform well-performing batch operations with several at once! This application also has app menus that reside on the left side, where you’ll find options such as pointing out specific files (like dime.), viewing all captured media discs, and much more.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Fotoxx on Fedora 36 Linux using the default Fedora appstream, along with tips on updating and removing the image software using the DNF package manager with the command line terminal.
KeePassXC is an application that can be used by anyone who wants to have a high level of security for their data. The cross-platform feature can be used on any computer, and the light interface makes it easy to use. Additionally, the application is published under the GNU General Public License terms, which means it is open source and free to download and use.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install KeePassXC on Fedora 36 Linux using one of the following installation methods with DNF or Flatpak utilizing the command line terminal, along with some tips on maintaining the software in the future.
Slack is one of the most popular collaboration communication platforms in the world. Since it was initial launch in 2013, it has grown. It is now favored amongst development teams and corporations to integrate many services, run groups, meetings, etc. Slack works to create channels for your teams, topics, customers, or co-workers. Slack also features voice and video calls and file sharing when face-to-face meetings are impossible.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Slack on Fedora 36 Linux using two different methods the DNF package manager utilizing a COPR repository or the natively installed third-party Flatpak package manager using the command line terminal.
After you download and install Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish you may wonder what to do next or how to best customize your Ubuntu 22.04 system to make everything you do as efficient as possible.
This guide helps you to identify things to do after installing Ubuntu 22.04 that are right for your specific needs. We list below our recommendations and link to other guides that provide you with more detailed instructions on how to achieve a specific system configuration or customization.
The objective of this tutorial is to show the reader a quick-start method of testing a Webcam on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. You can usually plug in your webcam and have instant access to it. If you have a built-in camera, that should also work without any extra configuration.
Tar (Tape ARchiver) is one the most useful utilities in the toolbox of every Linux system administrator out there. With tar we can create archives which can be used for various purposes: to package applications source code, for example, or to create and store data backups.
In this tutorial we focus on the latter subject, and we see how to create full, incremental and differential backups with tar, and more specifically with the GNU version of tar.
Setting up a VPN is a great way for a server to share network resources with a client. Configuring one, however, can seem a little intimidating to some users. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to setup a VPN using OpenVPN on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish, while managing to avoid advanced configuration and technical jargon along the way.
The objective of this tutorial is to learn how to identify internal and external IP address on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux. This can be accomplished via command line and GUI. We will cover the step by step instructions for both methods below.
There are a few tools at your disposal for checking disk space on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. These tools and commands can be used to check a hard drive’s capacity and the size of the files on it, or just to check the size of a particular directory or file.
We’ll show you how to get a visual representation of how the hard drive space is being used on your system, as well as a few commands that you can enter into the terminal to quickly find the stats you need on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.
In this tutorial you will learn how to create a bootable Ubuntu 22.04 USB startup disk. Two methods of bootable Ubuntu 22.04 USB startup disk creation will be shown. To be specific we will be creating a bootable Ubuntu 22.04 USB using any existing Ubuntu Desktop or by using command line on any GNU/Linux distribution.
This Ubuntu 22.04 guide introduces the new Ubuntu 22.04 and explains how to get this operating system and how to install it on your computer. It also provides you with comprehensive instructions on how to use Ubuntu 22.04.
We include the introduction to command line and bash scripting, followed by things to do after installing Ubuntu 22.04 with the focus on software recommendations for the Ubuntu 22.04 system.
In this tutorial you will learn how to change the default Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop to macOS theme. Although in this tutorial we will perform the installation of macOS Mojave theme the steps bellow should be applicable to perform the installation of any other macOS style theme.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install BleachBit on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, BleachBit is software that can be used to optimize your PC’s performance and free up disk space. With BleachBit you can free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn’t know was there.
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 BleachBit clean your system and free disk space on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
Secure Shell, popularly known as SSH, is a secure network protocol that allows users to securely connect to remote hosts such as servers. It is based on a client-server architecture and uses two main authentication methods – password and ssh-key pair authentication.
The SSH-key pair authentication employs the use of SSH keys which are cryptographic keys used to authenticate and secure communication between the client and the server. SSH-key pair authentication is preferred over password authentication as it provides safer authentication which is not susceptible to brute-force attacks.
The introduction of Linux in the operating systems ecosystem has become more of an opportunity than a threat. Its design objectives have made it possible for many users to create numerous careers and projects just from learning Linux.
One such opportunity is remote desktop viewing and management. Not to say that this milestone did not exist before the introduction of Linux but this operating system distribution has made things easier due to free and open-source licenses associated with most of its application packages.
openSUSE is a very stable distribution sponsored by SUSE, which is a pioneer in the use of Linux and has a business model based on open technologies. Although in the server environment openSUSE is not as popular as Debian or RHEL-based distributions, there are many sysadmins who rely on it. So today, you will learn how to install Nginx on openSUSE 15.
The new Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is fast approaching, with it recently receiving its official codename Jammy Jellyfish. For now, the schedule is set for release on April 21, 2022, but this may change in the future at a moment’s notice.
SQLite is a free, lightweight relational database management system (RDBMS) in a C library. SQLite is not a client-server database engine. Instead, it is embedded into the end program. Primarily all programming languages support SQLite, which how languages embed the program is with a file with .sqlite3/.sqlite/.DB extension. The software is a popular choice for local/client storage such as web browsers, Android devices, etc. The list is quite extensive.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install SQLite 3 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa using the command line terminal with two different installation methods.
No, it is no Duff beer if that rings a bell. Today, we are talking about the Duf disk utility, an open-source, free “Disk Usage Free Utility” written in Goland and released under an MIT license. The disk utility supports multi-platforms such as BSD, Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems.
Duf is a command-line utility to find disk usage in Linux and Unix-like systems terminals. One of the excellent features of Duf is its ability to display the disk usage details in a beautiful, user-friendly layout in tab form. Some extra features with Duf include disk usage out in JSON output.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa by downloading the package directly from the project’s Github and installing it using the command line terminal. The tutorial will also focus on some common-use commands.
The terminal is a great Linux tool. With it, we can do many things and if we install other programs we can extend its functionality even more. Want an example? Today, you will learn how to convert JPG images to PDF using the terminal.
Hello techies, as we know that Ansible is the most popular automation and configuration tool available for all Linux distributions. Ansible is free and opensource software which is used to configure mange remote Linux and Windows hosts.
One of the benefits of using Ansible as automation tool is that we don’t need to install any agent on remote systems which we want to manage via ansible. It works on ssh protocol (or port 22).
We track ProtonDB extensively at Boiling Steam, because it’s a trove of data that can be used to learn more about several aspects of the Linux Gaming Market. One of things we check is the number of games with equivalent ratings of Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Borked (just like it is/used to be on WineHQ). Back in 2018, ProtonDB asked its users to rate how each game fared based on their experience, which led to inconsistencies: One’s Gold is another one’s Platinum.
To remedy to that, ProtonDB introduced a new ratings system since late 2019, asking instead specific questions about what worked/did not work with each game, and deriving a calculated rating based on that.
Are you planning to do some gaming on Arm devices? You need to take a look at the box86 and box64 projects, which are really quite impressive. Since the majority of software (especially games) are built for x86 processors (the usual Intel / AMD crop), Arm needs something stuck in between to get them running and that’s exactly what these projects do.
Split across 32bit and 64bit, box86 and box64 both recently had major updates and a fun highlight on both is that the developer noted they have plenty of fixes and improvements to get both Steam and Steam Play Proton working — so Linux gaming on Arm is about to see a nice boost with these.
The Multicellular evolution has begun, for the open source game Thrive that is. Currently in Early Access, it continues to show off an impressive design.
With version 0.5.8 the first big addition is a prototype of the Multicellular Stage. For this, once you’ve gained the nucleus and binding agents, you will be able to jump onto the next stage of life. As it’s in the early stages of development though, it’s somewhat limited with only the Budding reproductive method available right now. Before this part of the game is fully sorted, they continue working on the microbe stage. The other big addition is signalling agents, enabling you to communicate with allied cells which opens up the game even more.
ProtonUp-Qt gives you an incredibly easy way to install compatibility layers on Linux like GE-Proton (formerly Proton GE), Lutris-Wine, Luxtorpeda and more.
The developer just recently put up version 2.6.1, which as a bit of a highlight should now work nicely with the Flatpak version of the Heroic Games Launcher (for the Epic Games Store). This is especially good for the Steam Deck, where I imagine most people will be using the Flatpak, since it’s easy to install and update via the Discover software centre.
Who dares implement Core War over Gemini? It would join Astrobotany in the game’s department on Geminispace.
We have some Big changes in the Upcoming Beta 3, one of those that will be the main focus is expanding from 8 Desktops to 16 Desktops. Yes, that’s right, we have Doubled the Desktop Layout styles for Beta 3. There are also lot of big bug fixes, new features and a lot of rewriting of existing code as Shift evolves and finds itself. The Release Date has not yet been decided, but it will be soon, We estimate we will make the announcement Within Weeks and the release will be quick and swift.
LXQt is a lightweight Qt-based desktop environment.
With the latest LXQt 1.1.0 update, the desktop experience depends on Qt 5.15, the LTS version of Qt 5 series. The release announcement mentions that they started working on Qt 6.0 port but needed a more stable version.
Let me briefly highlight what’s new with the new release.
The latest update for the lightweight desktop environment comes packed with new theme improvements, panel updates, and new configuration options.
You can learn more about it in our coverage.
The newly released Podman 4.0 features a complete rewrite of the network stack based on Netavark and Aardvark, which will function alongside the existing Container Networking Interface (CNI) stack.
Netavark is a Rust-based tool for configuring networking for Linux containers that serves as a replacement for CNI plugins (containernetworking-plugins on Fedora). Aardvark-dns is now the authoritative DNS server for container records. Along with the new stack comes distro packaging changes along with repository availability changes for Fedora 35.
MLCube is a new open source container based infrastructure specification introduced to enable reproducibility in Python based machine learning workflows. It can utilize tools such as Podman, Singularity and Docker. Execution on remote platforms is also supported. One of the chairs of the MLCommons Best Practices working group that is developing MLCube is Diane Feddema from Red Hat. This introductory article explains how to run the hello world MLCube example using Podman on Fedora Linux.
As organizations grow, we discover a lot of internal realities and challenges at a team and leadership level that are holding a company back. As teams emerge and expand they often find that there is a management problem. Specifically, those who sit in the middle of the management structure are seen as a blocker.
In financial services, for example, managers tend to lean towards job security, which leads them to be more risk-averse or less experimental. That attitude doesn’t bring progress or innovation. In the fast moving world of technology, where speed and agility are key, having a management layer that is slow or unable to keep pace with change isn’t tenable.
This layer of management has come to be known as “frozen middle management.” However, we need to ask ourselves: What is the real underlying cause of middle management becoming frozen?
Red Hat CodeReady Studio will reach end of life on April 19, 2022. The project is transitioning to community development and support as part of the JBoss Tools project. This article breaks down all the information you need to know along with the future roadmap.
Red Hat certifications span our entire technology portfolio, bringing confidence to individuals and organizations alike. Whether it’s enterprise architecture certifications, core Linux system administration skills, developer knowledge of specialized frameworks, or emerging technologies like containers and cloud, Red Hat knows the skills that are needed for success.
Earning a Red Hat Certification is an industry-recognized achievement and we want to help you share your accomplishment with your professional network, friends, and family. To that end, we are proud to offer Red Hat digital credentials via our third-party issuance partner, Credly.
The BETA of the new Upgrade Tool is now available for testing.
It can be used to upgrade LMDE 4 to LMDE 5.
The new Linux Mint upgrade tool it’s fully configurable and comes with features like a fully graphical upgrade experience, performs more checks to ensure the upgrade process will go smoothly in different scenarios, it’s localized in various languages, preserves the user’s choice of mirrors and doesn’t force you to remove your custom repositories or PPAs, and warns you about orphaned packages, but lets you keep them.
Last month, Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 5 was released to the world. Code-named “Elsie,” many fans of the operating system probably did a fresh install right away. Understandably, however, some users are still running the previous version of the distribution, LMDE 4 “Debbie.”
If your computer is still running Debbie, but you want to easily move onto Elsie, I have some great news. Today, the Linux Mint developers officially release the new LMDE Upgrade Tool in Beta. It is important to note this tool is only to be used with LMDE at this time, and not the “regular” Ubuntu-based Linux Mint.
The new Xubuntu documentation is finally complete. Two years, eight contributors, and numerous Zoom meetings resulted in over eighty commits refreshing our user docs. Incredibly, we managed to land all of the updates in time for the Xubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish” release.
The beta version of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) has arrived, opening the window for testing in advance of the final release the major upgrade release next month.
New features include desktop environment enhancements with GNOME 42, visual changes, and added functionalities. Also included will be app refinements and a new screenshot app.
This new release finally brings accent colors to the Ubuntu distro. Playing catchup with this feature, Ubuntu will get what other Ubuntu-based versions already enjoyed. Also expect an improved dark mode/light mode experience and an upgraded system-wide dark mode implementation.
However, adopters will also get disappointments with this pending release. The GNOME implementation with Ubuntu 22.04 lacks a horizontal dock.
Ubuntu 22.04 will continue the ongoing transition from the deb package to Snap. Improved Raspberry Pi performance should be apparent with the addition of zswap performance.
Spring Break 2022. It was my first real opportunity to travel in exactly two years, after a little thing called a global pandemic scuttled a family trip to (of all places) China. You lose a lot of road warrior muscle memory in that time. What to pack, and how to pack it. Dealing with airports and other travelers.
FOMO used to stand for “Fear Of Missing Out” in my corner of the Internet, but Edge Impulse’s FOMO is completely different, as the “Faster Object, More Objects” model is designed to lower the footprint and improve the performance of object detection on resource-constrained embedded systems.
↺ PICO-TGU4-SEMI is a Tiger Lake mini PC for robotics and industrial IoT applications – CNX Software
The mini PC also comes with two antenna openings, so while not explicitly listed in the specifications, the mPCIe socket could be used to add a wireless module. AAEON provides support for Windows 10 64-bit and Ubuntu 20.04 with Linux 5.8.
I found a good deal on an excellent used Google Pixel 3a XL on eBay and made an impulse buy. That being said, this is my third phone; I own a nice flagship Samsung Galaxy, and work has given me an iPhone 11 (which I solely use for work).
OpenTracks is a free, and open-source app that helps people track their sport activities without having to worry about their privacy.
Unlike many apps, It comes without any ads, or malicious trackers or scripts, even without in-app purchase, as all features are open.
Disabilities significantly impact people’s lives. As someone with dyspraxia and dyslexia, I can tell you that is true. One thing that mitigates my difficulties is the technology I use, such as a screen-reader and task manager. I’ve set up an ecosystem of sorts that helps me manage a variety of difficulties that I believe could be useful to you whether or not you have dyspraxia or dyslexia. If you love good software and want to improve how you work, then maybe my workflow will be helpful to you, too.
Happy Friday, everyone –here’s what the Apache community has been up to over the past week…
ActivityWatch is an open source, free, privacy-first, cross-platform, and a great alternative to services like RescueTime, ManicTime, and WakaTime.
Currently, ActivityWatch can be installed on Windows, Linux, macOS, as well as Android.
Booktype is web based, single-source publishing software for creating books, reports, manuals and more. It is an open source platform for editorial teams working on complex projects.
It is a free, open source platform that produces beautiful, engaging books formatted for print, Amazon, iBooks and almost any reader and book-viewer within minutes.
Booktype makes it easier and quicker for authors, companies, and organizations to edit and publish books.
When I joined my current company, we were a small team and built things quickly. We could write code and if it turned out that it didn’t work, then whoever was the author would have to fix it.
This, of course, is not good software engineering.
We did realise that testing was something worth doing but it wasn’t fun, so we hired an external company to write tests for the code we’d written. This seemed like a really smart thing to do as it let us code more and “not check our own homework” but this was still not good engineering.
Later, with a change of CTO, the tests came in-house. For any code we wrote, we’d also have to write unit tests ourselves. The goal was to achieve 100% code coverage. I didn’t enjoy this, and I didn’t think that it worked terribly well either. Engineers write tests that pass for the code they’ve written and thus the tests are much less likely to catch edge cases. Perhaps this was a step backwards. For sure, what it did for me was to put me off engineering and drive me out of core development. I moved to technical pre-sales where it’s still useful to write code for demos and POCs but that code doesn’t have a long life, the expectation being that it is thrown away soon after use.
JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. It is a data format interchange, which is a fancy means of saying it’s a way of storing and transferring data. It has become widely deployed for quite a large number of use cases. And although the name implies JavaScript, JSON is used with other languages, such as Python, Ruby, PHP, and Java. More important, however, the JSON format is also used for Docker and Kubernetes manifests, so it’s absolutely crucial to understand how JSON works for anyone interested in cloud native development.
Pdb is a powerful tool for finding syntax errors, spelling mistakes, missing code, and other issues in your Python code.
Object-oriented programming offers java constructors that are used to initialize/allocate the memory to the newly created object. In java, the constructor of a class gets executed when we create an object of the class using the “new” keyword. In java, a constructor can be a “Default Constructor” or a “Parameterized Constructor”. The parameterized constructors allow us to initialize each instance of a class with different value(s). In this write-up we will learn how to perform addition on two numbers using a Java parameterized constructor.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (abcm2ps and chromium), Fedora (cacti, cacti-spine, and fribidi), and Mageia (crun, docker-containerd, libarchive, mediawiki, and ruby).
In this case, what’s needed is a way to mitigate the damage before an update can be applied to stop the exploit from spreading across your network. One such solution is open source Pantacor lightweight container technology that allows you not only sign, verify and guarantee code updates, but also enables early detection and isolation when a bad actor or CVE is identified.
How well do your Linux security practices stack up in today’s challenging operating environment? Are you following the correct processes to keep systems up-to-date and protected against the latest threats? Now you can find out thanks to research independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute.
The research sponsored by TuxCare sought to understand better how organizations are currently managing the security and stability of their Linux-based systems. The results allow all organizations operating Linux-based systems to benchmark their processes against their peers and best practices.
Most infrastructure teams have moved on from running just one or two clusters. It’s now common to operate multiple clusters across various divisions and, perhaps, even across multiple clouds. Within this multi-cluster reality, it becomes difficult to keep an up-to-date inventory of all existing Kubernetes clusters, let alone their unique frailties. This can easily result in over-permissive states that break the rule of least privilege.
The Citizen Lab’s core mission is to undertake research on digital threats against civil society. During the course of our investigations into mercenary spyware, we will occasionally observe cases where we suspect that governments are using spyware to undertake international espionage against other governments. The vast majority of these cases are outside of our scope and mission. However, in certain select cases, where appropriate and while preserving our independence, we decide to notify these governments through the official channels, especially if we believe that our actions can reduce harm.
We confirm that in 2020 and 2021 we observed and notified the government of the United Kingdom of multiple suspected instances of Pegasus spyware infections within official UK networks.
In 2019, WhatsApp patched CVE-2019-3568, a vulnerability exploited by NSO Group to hack Android phones around the world with Pegasus. At the same time, WhatsApp notified 1,400 users who had been targeted with the exploit. Among the targets were multiple members of civil society and political figures in Catalonia, Spain. The Citizen Lab assisted WhatsApp in notifying civil society victims and helping them take steps to be more secure.
The cases were first reported by The Guardian in 2020. Following these reports, the Citizen Lab, in collaboration with civil society organisations, undertook a large-scale investigation into Pegasus hacking in Spain. The investigation has uncovered at least 65 individuals targeted or infected with Pegasus or spyware from Candiru, another mercenary hacking company.
Forensic evidence was obtained from victims who consented to participate in a research study with the Citizen Lab. Further, victims publicly named in this report consented to be identified as such, while other targets chose to remain anonymous. Confirmed cases of Pegasus and Candiru hacking (i.e. when the spyware is successfully installed on a device) are referred to as “infections” or being “infected” throughout the report, while “targeted” refers to an act of targeting with Pegasus or Candiru spyware that may or may not correspond to a forensically-discovered infection (i.e. because a device was unavailable for analysis, or is an Android which is more difficult to forensically analyse). “Hacking” is used as a global term to describe the act of targeting and/or infecting devices.
Good journalism standards call for a reporter to have at least two sources for factual information before reporting a story. It’s on that basis that we’re writing this post to express our continued concerns about the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA) making its way through Congress.
On April 5, The Wall Street Journal reported (note: paywall) that a significant amendment to the JCPA is making its way through both houses of Congress. The current version of the bill, which we’ve criticized here and here and here, proposes to create a four-year “safe harbor” from antitrust law, allowing print, broadcast, and digital news companies to band together to negotiate compensation terms for their news stories with the largest online platforms. A day later, Politico’s Morning Tech newsletter reported (note: also paywalled content) that they had seen a revised draft and recapped what is new about it. Unfortunately, the sponsors have not released the language of their amendments and changes for the public to see yet, so all the public has to go on right now are reports from news outlets who also may benefit from the bill.
Taken together, the reports do nothing to address the concerns we’ve articulated about the bill. In fact, they may make them worse. One reported change – which, among others, had been rumored for weeks – would introduce a version of the same baseball-style arbitration process that exists in the Australian bargaining code upon which the JCPA is modeled. If publishers and tech giants can’t come to an agreement on payment for content after six months, publishers could initiate “final offer” arbitration, under which an arbitrator panel chooses one side’s final offer to settle the dispute. This provision, coveted by advocates for the bill, was intended to force and keep tech platforms at the negotiating table.
I argued against car burning as bad for climate, and because people might get hurt, and because not helping us reach our goals (which is an open and just society where racist policies like what Paludan is proposing is off the table).
The protests and the car burning is getting interpreted as crimes and the inherent message is completely scrubbed away in the media. I was like “the costs in resources and human lives outweigh the benefits” but… there aren’t even any benefits.
This is what Paludan wanted to happen. He tricks the media into pushing his false narrative that it’s all about the book, “see how they act just because I wanna burn a book”.
We’re in a racist hegemony where the destroyer of democracy is protected and canonized as an incarnation of democracy, and those under the boot are demonized, and othered as undeserving of democracy.
One of the most visible differences between Gopher and WWW or Gemini is the concept of Gophermap. This concept is something that could be easily misunderstood. Because there is not any distinction between menu or structure pages and content on other platforms. It’s hard to get all nuisances of that division.
We could imagine that in the early years of the Internet it had been handy to extract the structure of site navigation. The main purpose of that must have been an efficient way of transferring that part of every site. It could have been also the only way to minimize things which are needed to be done on the client side. All that things are now only artificial limitations without any purpose in the modern fast and broadband networks.
But the idea of overall hierarchy of Gopher holes (sites) could be not so obsolete as it seems to be. After all, on every modern site, we invent a way to create a navigation structure. And after it, we build it into page content. If we would think about it, it doesn’t make sense to do so.
We have now also the whole movement of making that mixed structure and content pages more readable (so-called WCAG specifications). Because many of that self-made ideas, of menu and sites structure, aren’t well done. Sometimes there is problematic to navigate them for ordinary people.
So we are trying to invent the wheel again. We started from the Gophermap idea, then make the step into the world without any limitations in the area of site navigation, to realize that this simple element of every site takes too much effort to be well done and start to standardize it.
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