If you use Linux on your desktop, you might have wondered if the operating system you’re messing around with has any practical uses. Fortunately, there are plenty of real-world applications of Linux today. Here are some of them.
Source: LXer – 6 Practical and Real-World Applications of Linux
Enlarge / Nissan gives a big nod to its heritage while injecting a much-needed dose of modernity into its rear-drive sports coupe. But is it enough to go toe-to-toe with the segment’s best? (credit: Nissan)
The Z badge holds a certain reverence in the world of Japanese performance. Aside from a one-year break back in 2001, Nissan’s two-seater has been in continuous production since 1969, and the formula that was established by the original 240Z still remains in place more than half a century later: eye-catching proportions, driver-focused design, and a six-cylinder engine sending power to the rear wheels.
For decades the Z was locked in a rivalry with the Toyota Supra for sports car supremacy, but in 2002 Toyota decided to pull the plug on its sports coupe. Perhaps due in part to the absence of its natural sparring partner, the outgoing 370Z—which originally made its debut in 2008—had really been starting to show its age in recent years, but any notion that Nissan could afford to rest on its laurels was put to bed in 2019 when the Supra rejoined the fray.
Rather than collaborating with another OEM to build its new sports car (as Toyota did with BMW in order to develop the new Supra), the Z is wholly a product of Nissan, and that comes with inherent benefits as well as some notable drawbacks. But as we discovered while hunting down apices on the road course at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, carving corners on the winding desert tarmac near Nevada’s Lake Mead, and cruising through Sin City, the Z fundamentals thankfully still remain intact.
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Source: Ars Technica – The 2023 Nissan Z first drive
The site GeekyTyrant is excited about Amazon’s upcoming eight-episode series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power — premiering September 2 and set in Middle-earth’s “Second Age,” thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings.)
With the film being set in a completely different age, I was expecting Middle-Earth to be very different than what we’ve seen in the past. As we’ve seen in the first trailer that was released, the show does has a similar visual style as Peter Jackson’s films, but things are definitely going to be different.
During a recent interview with Empire, Rings Of Power concept artist John Howe, teased some of the surprises that are in store:
“This isn’t the Middle-earth you remember. This is a world that’s very vibrant. The elves are not hidden away in Mirkwood or lingering in Rivendell. They’re busy constructing kingdoms. The dwarven kingdom of Moria is not an abandoned mine and the Grey Havens is not yet an abandoned city. I loved having the opportunity to explore that unseen history.”
He went on to share that the series will finally explore the oceans of Middle-Earth and says that there will be a set of seafaring elves.
Or, as Amazon’s press release puts it, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power “will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness….”
The Independent notes the show “has been in the works since 2017” — and that Prime Video bought the rights for $250m (£183m). And now Prime Video has even invited some JRR Tolkien fans to attent a preview screening of the show:
[F]ans of Middle Earth were nervous ahead of sitting down to watch footage from the show — but those nerves soon made way for excitement, with fans praising the series as well as the showrunners, JD Payne and Patrick McKay…. Fan Dr Maggie Parke said that the showrunners “kept up with the best of us”, stating: “Their passion & knowledge made me feel like they were one of us, they get it. I’m feeling very optimistic…!”
The newspaper quotes another preview attendee’s conclusion that “”We, as Tolkien fans, are in good hands! Above and beyond, I was absolutely blown away. I cannot wait to see more — it’s just beyond words.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – ‘Lord of the Rings’ Prequel Series Will Explore ‘Unseen History’ of Middle-Earth
The u-blox MAYA-W2 is a connectivity module based on the multiradio NXP IW612 chipset and provides support for standard wireless protocols such as Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and 802.15.4. radio (Thread and Zigbee).
Source: LXer – MAYA-W2 Tri-Radio includes Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and IEEE 802.15.4 support
Tolkien’s influence on video games stretches back decades. Fans have been playing games based on The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit) for almost as long as there have been video games, and for every misguided flop there has been a game that has been surprisingly OK for a licensed product. And in some cases much…
Source: Kotaku – The Best Lord Of The Rings Video Games
What did you think of Twitter Data Dash?
The Guardian describes it as “a Super Nintendo-style browser game that recaps Twitter’s private policy.”
And the Verge applauds the game — released Wednesday — for its “delightful pixel art aesthetic.”
“Welcome to PrivaCity!” reads a description of the game on the site. “Get your dog, Data, safely to the park.
“Dodge cat ads, swim through a sea of DMs, battle trolls, and learn how to take control of your Twitter experience along the way….”
The game itself is a pretty straightforward side-scrolling platformer. Each level is themed around what I can best describe as Twitter Things — one features cats wearing ad boards, another has you avoiding trolls — and your goal is to collect five bones as quickly as you can. If you get the bones, the game will explain something about Twitter’s privacy settings related to that level and even offer a button linking to Twitter’s settings. When you beat the cat ad level, for example, you’ll see a message about how Twitter customizes your experience on the platform and points to where you can turn personalized ads on or off….
Twitter introduced the game as part of a bigger push around its privacy policy, which the company has rewritten. “We’ve emphasized clear language and moved away from legal jargon,” Twitter said on its Safety account.
Gizmodo calls the game “adorable,” but also “buggy”. And they also have some quibbles with its ultimate message:
It’s a bit rich that Twitter made a game about avoiding faceless advertisers when the platform is actively doing everything it can to make ads tougher to avoid….
[A]fter watching our personas bounce from level to level with our lil blue dog in tow, it became clear that this game is less for us — or any Twitter user, really — and more for the company itself. It’s a way to paper over uncomfortable topics like “privacy” and “consent” and “ownership of our personal data” with a lil blue dog, collecting lil bones by hopping across lil stages. Just promise you won’t think about where those bones came from in the first place.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Twitter Turns Its Privacy Policy Into a Videogame about a Dog
The 5.18-rc7 kernel prepatch has been
released for testing. Linus says: “So things continue to be fairly
calm, and as such this is likely the last rc before 5.18 unless something
bad happens next week“.
Source: LWN.net – Kernel prepatch 5.18-rc7
PAPPL as the free software project started by CUPS founder Michael Sweet after departing Apple more than two years ago, this C-based framework/library for creating CUPS Printer Applications is out with a major feature release…
Source: Phoronix – PAPPL 1.2 Released With Full Localization Support, More IPP Features
Valve’s Portal, released in 2007 (!), is one of the last games you’d expect to see the humble little N64 being able to manage, and yet here we are in 2022, seeing it manage it quite nicely.
Source: Kotaku – Somehow, The N64 Can Do Portal
Transitioning to a new operating system may seem overwhelming or daunting but the joy of learning something new is worth the effort. Let’s take a look at some of the important keyboard shortcuts that work similarly on both Linux and Windows. Although Windows and Linux are inherently different, you can still use most of the shortcuts that you are familiar with, in either of the operating systems.
Source: LXer – 10 Keyboard Shortcuts That Work on Both Windows and Linux
The Record reports that the decentralized money market Venus Protocol “announced on Thursday evening about $11 million had been lost due to people exploiting the historic collapse of the Luna cryptocurrency and its sister stablecoin UST.”
Venus Protocol and several other platforms use Chainlink to provide its users with real-time price estimations of the tokens on its platform that are available for lending and borrowing. But the tool began having issues with Luna on Thursday as the price continued to fall precipitously. “As a result, it was possible to deposit UST and LUNA as collateral and borrow other tokens, with an underpriced collateral valuation….” decentralized finance researcher Vali Dyor explained.
Venus Protocol says they became “aware of errant price behavior for LUNA,” and “Upon investigation, it was learned that the price feed had been paused by Chainlink due to extreme market conditions.”
“The price on Venus was last listed at about $0.107 while the market price was $0.01. In order to de-risk this situation, the protocol was paused using PauseGuardian via multisig. Upon this desyncing event, it was discovered that 2 accounts had suspiciously deposited a sum of 230,000,000 LUNA valued at over $24,000,000. Assets were borrowed totalling around $13,500,000.”
Venus Protocol has a “Risk Fund” that will be used to cover the shortfall, the Record reports. But they added that Venus Protocol wasn’t the only one having problems:
As the price of Luna cratered overnight, exchanges and markets were forced to make difficult choices on how to approach the cryptocurrency. Binance stopped all trading of Luna and UST on its platform but the moves have done little to stop all cryptocurrency values from being depressed across the board.
DeFi platform Blizz Finance announced that it was attacked in the same way Venus Protocol was, but they did not release an estimate on the losses incurred. But they said the protocol was “drained” before it could stop the process.
And then Blizz Finance posted a post-mortem early Sunday morning:
Large amounts of LUNA were deposited and used to drain all available lendable assets… Prior to the incident the Chainlink team did attempt to notify us that the oracle would pause, however we did not receive the message in time. We were unaware of Chainlink’s minimum price circuit breaker. This behaviour is not mentioned anywhere within Chainlink’s documentation…
Blizz has no treasury or development fund and a significant portion of the stolen assets belonged to our team. As such we regret to announce the protocol has been paused and we do not intend to resume operations. We will be shutting down the front-end and closing official communication channels in the coming days….
We are very sorry for the losses incurred by our users. We thank the community for their support on this journey and deeply regret that this is how it came to an end.
They posted one additional detail on Twitter. “We are reaching out to a Chinese community who is believed to have doxxed individuals who participated in the attacks.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Luna Cryptocurrency’s Collapse Led to Multi-Million-Dollar Exploits, Closure of a Crypto Money Market
Earlier this week, David Harville, one of seven former eBay employees involved in a 2020 campaign to harass the creators of a newsletter critical of the e-commerce company, pleaded guilty to five federal felony charges, ending one of the most bizarre episodes in recent tech history.
In June 2020, the US Department of Justice charged six former eBay employees, including Harville, with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. Of the group, Harville was the final employee to admit involvement in the harassment campaign that targeted Ina and David Steiner, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.
In 2019, the Massachusetts couple published an article in their EcommerceBytes newsletter about litigation involving eBay. Responding to what they considered negative coverage of the company, the group carried out a harassment campaign that involved, among other actions, sending the couple a preserved fetal pig, live spiders and a funeral wreath. They also created fake social media accounts to send threatening messages to the Steiners and share their home address online.
According to the Department of Justice’s original 2020 filing, part of Harville’s involvement in the campaign included a plot to install a GPS tracking device on the Steiner’s car. Harville, alongside James Baugh, one of the other former employees charged in the scheme, carried with them fake documents allegedly designed to show the two were investigating the Steiners for threatening eBay executives.
Last July, a federal judge sentenced Philip Cooke, the first of the seven former employees convicted in the scheme, to 18 months in prison. At the time, US District Judge Allison Burroughs called the entire case “just nuts.” That same summer, the Steiners sued several eBay employees, including former CEO Devin Wenig, for carrying out a conspiracy to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them.” Wenig has denied having any knowledge of the campaign.
Source: Engadget – Final former eBay employee involved in bizarre EcommerceBytes harassment case pleads guilty
LEMP is an acronym for a group of free and open-source software often used to serve web applications. It represents the configuration of Nginx Web Server, MySQL / MariaDB Database, and PHP Scripting Language on a Linux operating system. This guide shows you step-by-step the installation process of the LEMP stack, Nginx, MariaDB, and PHP, in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
Source: LXer – How to Install Nginx, MariaDB, and PHP (LEMP) on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Dubbed Kinetic Kudu, Ubuntu 22.10 is slated for release later this year. Daily build ISOs are already available. Learn more here.
The post Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) Daily Build ISOs Are Available for Download appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) Daily Build ISOs Are Available for Download
Hyundai is expected to announce that it’s building “a massive electric vehicle plant near Savannah, Georgia,” reports the Associated Press, citing a U.S. official “familiar with the anticipated announcement.”
The plant is expected to bring thousands of new jobs to Georgia.
The plant could grow to include 8,500 employees and would be built on a 2,200-acre (890-hectare) site that state and local governments own near the hamlet of Ellabell, Georgia, said two people familiar with Georgia’s talks with Hyundai…. The second person said Hyundai would invest more than $7 billion and could also build some cars powered by gasoline engines at the site, with an announcement in Georgia set for May 20…
It would be the second massive electric vehicle plant announced in Georgia in less than a year. Rivian Automotive in December announced it would build a $5 billion, 7,500-job electric truck plant about 45 miles (70 kilometers) east of Atlanta.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Georgia Gets a Second Electric Vehicle Facility? Hyundai Plans B Plant
During Google I/O 2022 Alphabet rolled out Android 13 Beta 2, and it has some interesting new features that enhance the look of the OS and make search functionality more user friendly.
The new beta version of the Android operating system has two rather notable updates. First, there has been some fine tuning of animations where Google’s
Source: Hot Hardware – Android 13 Has A Thoughtful New Search Phrase Shortcut Feature
An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider:
Wrecked Russian fighter jets are being found with rudimentary GPS receivers “taped to the dashboards” in Ukraine because their inbuilt navigation systems are so bad, the UK’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, said…. “[W]hilst Russia has large amounts of artillery and armor that they like parading, they are unable to leverage them for combined arms maneuver and just resort to mass indiscriminate barrages,” he added….
Last month, Ukrainian troops paraded what they said was a Russian drone that had been covered in duct tape and fitted with a generic plastic bottle top for a fuel cap. In March, Ukrainian troops found what appeared to be Russian army bandages dating to 1978 discarded on a battlefield. In his Monday speech, Wallace said Russian vehicles “are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them” and that soldiers were using “pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks” and attaching “overhead ‘cope cages’ to their tanks.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Downed Russian Fighters Said to Be Found With Basic GPS ‘Taped To the Dashboards’
Following Saturday’s horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, online platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Twitter are seemingly struggling to prevent various versions of the gunman’s livestream from proliferating on their platforms. The shooter, an 18-year-old white male, attempted to broadcast the entire attack on Twitch using a GoPro Hero 7 Black. The company told Engadget it took his channel down within two minutes of the violence starting.
Not going to share screenshots, but the rate at which versions of the Buffalo video continue to proliferate on Facebook and Twitter is astonishing. We’ve been here before with Christchurch and it continues to happen.
— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) May 15, 2022
“Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind and works swiftly to respond to all incidents,” a Twitch spokesperson said. “The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content.”
Despite Twitch’s response, that hasn’t stopped the video from proliferating online. According to New York Times reporter Ryan Mac, one link to a version of the livestream someone used a screen recorder to preserve saw 43,000 interactions. Another Twitter user said they found a Facebook post linking to the video that had been viewed more than 1.8 million times, with an accompanying screenshot suggesting the post did not trigger Facebook’s automated safeguards. A Meta spokesperson told Mac the video violates Facebook’s Community Standards.
LISTEN: Police commissioner explains what happened today in Buffalo.
Sheriff followed up calling this shooting that killed 10 people, including a retired Buffalo police officer, a racially-motivated hate crime. @news4buffalopic.twitter.com/qTWJ3YRUyC
— Austin Kellerman (@AustinKellerman) May 14, 2022
Responding to Mac’s Twitter thread, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz said she found TikTok videos that share accounts and terms Twitter users can search for to view the full video. “Clear the vid is all over Twitter,” she said. We’ve reached out to the company for comment.
Preventing terrorists and violent extremists from disseminating their content online is one of the things Facebook, Twitter and a handful of other tech companies said they would do following the 2019 shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. In the first 24 hours after that attack, Meta said it removed 1.5 million videos, but clips of the shooting continued to circulate on the platform for more than a month after the event. The company blamed its automated moderation tools for the failure, noting they had a hard time detecting the footage because of the way in which it was filmed. “This was a first-person shooter video, one where we have someone using a GoPro helmet with a camera focused from their perspective of shooting,” Neil Potts, Facebook’s public policy director, told British lawmakers at the time.
Source: Engadget – Buffalo gunman clips proliferate on social media following Twitch removal
A list of best Linux Distributions in 2022 for every user – students, creators, developers and casual users with guidance to pick one.
Source: LXer – Top 10 Best Linux Distributions in 2022 For Everyone
