News/5
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Jump to navigationJump to search- An information theoretic model of privacy and security metrics"An information theoretic model of privacy and security metrics - or - how I learned to stop worrying about password meters and love the dice." From LibrePlanet 2021.
- Ten years of empowering activists AND everyday people through free mobile software"From bringing OTR, Tor, GnuGP, FFMPEG and SQLCipher to Android, to developing and supporting apps like Orbot, Tor Browser for Android, Onion Browser, F-Droid, ChatSecure, Haven and more, we at Guardian Project have been pretty busy for the last decade. Through ups and downs, iterations and improvements, we have a lot of interesting stories to tell about where we've been, and where we are headed." From LibrePlanet 2021.
- Care about your users: don't minify your JS!A lightning talk by Sebastian Crane at LibrePlanet 2021 where he argues that minifying free JavaScript code hurts users freedom and their ability read, understand and re-use it.
- Labor movements and the free software community"The labor movement and free software are natural complements to one another. Both rely on (often decentralized) groups of workers that commit to a higher purpose in the pursuit of building something that will advance people on a larger scale."
- Free/libre solutions to address the shortage of ventilators"Over 100 teams attempted to create free/libre solutions to address the shortage of ventilators caused by the COVID-19 pandemic; we created a large spreadsheet evaluating all of them along many coordinates."
- Informal chatter to formal decisions: How-to"So many repetitive conversations? No forward movement? Everyone getting along mostly, but not sure how to be decisive without clear hierarchy? What could legitimate authorization look like in a decentralized world anyway? This talk touches on specific steps anyone can take." From LibrePlanet 2021.
- Richard Stallman: Unjust computing clamps downHonorary Doctor Richard Stallman elaborated on the growing injustices in computing in a 46 minutes long talk titled Unjust computing clamps down at LibrePlanet 2021 on March 21st, 2021. He also briefly mentioned that he is once again a Free Software Foundation director, and that he won't be stepping down again.
- Here's how you can get all your day-to-day computing done with free software"Alice, 11, has given multiple talks at technical conferences and will go over more than 10 programs that will replace proprietary with free software." This great 40 minute talk from LibrePlanet 2021 is absolutely worth watching and sharing.
- Remote education: My children's freedom and privacy at stake"During COVID-19 confinement, I saw how all teachers were choosing proprietary video conferencing programs over free software for the continuation of online lessons. I had two options: do nothing about it and let proprietary video conferencing tools spread among my children and their classmates, or try to fight back against this injustice."
- SecureDrop Workstation: Handling unsafe documents safelySecureDrop is a whistleblowing platform originally created in 2012 for journalists to accept leaked documents safely from anonymous sources. It's used by dozens of news organizations including The Guardian, The Washington Post and The New York Times. This talk (at LibrePlanet 2021) introduces the SecureDrop Workstation, the next-generation platform aimed at helping journalists communicate with sources in a high-security environment.
- Ingestum: A libre NLP document ingestion libraryMany NLP projects that depend upon the analysis of documents are impaired by the difficulty of transforming source material into a computer-readable format. For example, PDF files are designed for human consumption but can look like a bag full of words to a computer. To address this problem engineers at Sorcero developed Ingestum, a library that is used to "devour" content sources, outputting a format that can be used for additional processing.
- Audacity 3.0 is Released With A New Project File Format and 160 BugfixesAudacity 3.0 brings several significant improvements to the popular free multi-platform audio editor for Linux, Windows and macOS. The latest version brings a new and improved project file format using SQLite3, a new "Label Sounds" sound analyzer and fixes for a whopping 160 different bugs. The severe lack of any user-interface scaling on GNU/Linux is not addressed so Audacity remains a border-line useless joke on Linux machines with high resolution monitors despite all the other improvements.
- The Mesa Graphics Library Developers Are Considering Dropping Android AOSP SupportThe developers of the Mesa graphics library, mainly used to provide OpenGL and Vulkan API support on Linux desktop systems, are debating if they should drop Mesa's support for the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) operating system. It would still be possible to build Mesa using the Android NDK toolchain.
- The Linux Desktop Could "Soon" Get Support For Vulkan With 10-Bit Color EnabledEnabling 10-bit color is a non-issue on proprietary operating systems. That is far from being the case on the GNU/Linux desktop. Enabling 10-bit color on GNU/Linux is easy enough, but things like the Vulkan graphics API, the Steam games store and launcher, the KDE Plasma and Deepin desktop environments and Chromium hardware acceleration do not work.
mpvdeveloper Niklas Haas has submitted patches to the Mesa graphics stack that make it possible to run Vulkan games and applications on GNU/Linux desktops when 10-bit color is enabled.
- LibreOffice Is Looking For Google Summer Of Code ParticipantsThe Document Foundation, the organization behind the free multi-platform LibreOffice office suite for Windows, Linux and macOS, has been accepted into Googles "Summer Of Code" program. They are currently looking for students with an interest in programming who want to get a financial stipend for working on LibreOffice this summer.
- The Rust Programming Language Is Now One Step Closer To Entering The Mainline Linux KernelThe Linux kernel community has been discussing the possibility of using the Rust programming language to write new kernel device drivers since last summer. Initial Rust support has now landed in the Linux-Next tree. This does not guarantee that Rust will be supported or even allowed in the mainline kernel, but it does mean that there is now a fair chance that Rust will eventually be required to successfully compile a Linux kernel.
- The GNU Project Is Looking For Volunteers To Write Free JavaScript Replacements For Non-Free Web AppsMost modern websites run lots and lots of non-free JavaScript programs in your web browser when you visit them. The GNU project would very much like to replace these non-free programs with free ones. They are looking for volunteers to help out with this enormous undertaking.
- Linux Foundation Should Stop Using Bots for Code of Conduct Enforcement Because Bots Fail the CommunityThe wrong assumption that bots and algorithms (or “hey hi”) can handle Code of Conduct enforcement is causing backlash/resentment/accusations against the Linux Foundation, both from guys and girls (of different backgrounds).
- The Corporate Linux Foundation is Now Using the ‘Code of Conduct’ Aggressively and Excessively to Censor People Using Bots, Not Human AssessmentInstead of protecting people, as the Linux Foundation likes to claim, it is engaging in automated social control, just like in social control networks or social control media (where mentioning the word “Memphis” gets you banned now).
- The TorProject Urges All Relay Operators To Upgrade To 0.4.5.7+ Due To Denial-Of-Service IssuesThe TorProject released three new versions of the Tor Onion Router this week, 0.3.5.14, 0.4.4.8 and 0.4.5.7. These new versions address two different denial-of-service issues. One of them could be very damaging to directory authority nodes, and only them, and the other could cause problems for both Tor relays and authority nodes. Everyone running a Tor node or relay should upgrade.
- The WWWorst App StoreThe modern World Wide Web, and specifically all the non-free JavaScript code used to power it, may be the worst kind of "App Store" since end-users have no control over what software is temporarily installed and executed on their computers.
- KDE Plasma 5.21.3 Is ReleasedKDE Plasma 5.21.3 contains a long list of smaller fixes for the KDE Plasma desktop environment version 5.21 released in February. The Plasma update comes a week after the KDE Frameworks libraries version 5.80 was released with a wide range of improvements to the various libraries the KDE Plasma desktop uses to build its various components.
- The Linux Kernel Had 3 Potential Root Access Vulnerabilities For 15 YearsLinux kernels prior to 5.11.4, 5.10.21, 5.4.103, 4.19.179, 4.14.224, 4.9.260 and 4.4.260 have three 15 year old vulnerabilities in the iSCSI subsystem that could potentially allow a hostile local user to gain root privileges. Most GNU/Linux distributions compile their kernels with
ISCSI_TARGET=yso this could potentially be a problem with all of them, though RedHats distributions are the ones with an easy exploit-avenue.
- What The Word Ubuntu Actually MeansMost free software users are familiar with the Ubuntu Linux distribution but few know what the word Ubuntu really means. There is actually a quite interesting back-story to it.
- XMRig 6.10 Is ReleasedXMRig is a cross-platform digital currency miner with support for the RandomX, KawPow, CryptoNight and AstroBWT mining algorithms. The latest version is mostly a pure bug-fix release, the
http-parserlibrary being replaced byllhttpis the only barely notable change.
- Preventing An OpenPGP Smartcard From Caching The PIN EternallyGnuPG will happily cache the PIN for hardware tokens like security smartcards forever. GnuPG does have a
cache-ttlparameter, but it is not implemented so it does absolutely nothing. Debian developer Louis-Philippe Véronneau has a solution.
- Facebook even snoops on you using your camera’s scratchesFacebook can figure out people that you might know by analyzing the pattern of dust and scratches on a camera lens.
- The GNU Project Won't Be Participating In This Years GSOCThe GNU Project has been a Google Summer Of Code (GSOC) participant the last 12 years. Google rejected the GNU projects application to be a mentoring organization this year. None of the GNU software projects, with GCC being a possible exception, will be participating in this years GSOC.
- UwUfetch 1.0 Is ReleasedUwUfetch is a simple tool similar to Screenfetch and Neofetch that gathers and displays some basic system information. The initial public version can show you your systems "OWOS", kernel, "CPUWU", "WAM" and, most importantly, "UWUPTIME".
- Wine 6.4 Is ReleasedWine 6.4 adds support for Korean Unified Hangul Code (UHC) encoding, the Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) protocol, better theming support and a dialog for editing Access Control entries. There's also 38 mostly application-specific bug-fixes.
