After Parler, Google Targets Blockchain-based ‘Free Speech’ Social Network Minds

Google Play Store sent a "24 hour warning" to Minds and they removed major functionality from the app. Minds is also working on a contingency plan to avoid meeting the same fate as Parler.

today's leftovers

• How one hacker's push to secure the internet became a crucial part of Mac, Linux, and Windows operating systems [Was: "How Jason A. Donenfeld created secure VPN WireGuard, included in Linux"

• Fedora program update: 2021-02

  Here’s your report of what has happened in Fedora this week. Self-Contained Change proposals for Fedora 34 are due by Tuesday 19 January. The mass rebuild begins on 20 January. Not next week, but normally I have weekly office hours in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else.

• App Spotlight: Dictionary

  Among the easily installable and ad-free apps within the PureOS store is Dictionary. This is a simple tool that lets you search through numerous online or local dictionaries and translation sources.

• Comet Lake-S appears on COM Express

  Portwell’s Linux-ready “PCOM-B655VGL” Basic Type 6 module features Intel’s up to 10-core, 10th Gen Comet Lake-S plus up to 32GB DDR4, 3x DDI, 4x SATA III, 4x USB 3.2 Gen2, and PCIe x16 and 8x PCIe x8 Gen3.

• RetroPie booze barrel

• 20 years of Drupal: Founder Dries Buytaert on API first, the end of breaking compatibility, and JavaScript bloat

  Content management system Drupal is 20 years old, prompting its founder to talk to about its evolving role, why it shifted from a policy of breaking compatibility with each release, and concerns about JavaScript bloat causing issues for those with poor connectivity. "When I started Drupal 20 years ago I built it for myself, for me with my friends," Buytaert told us. That was at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in 2000. He wrote a small message board. When he graduated he put it on the web, intending to call it dorp, which is Dutch for village. He mistyped it as drop, creating drop.org. Drupal is derived from the English pronunciation of druppel, Dutch for drop. Buytaert is now project lead for Drupal and CTO of Acquia, a cloud platform for marketing sites.

• What Can We Learn From SQL’s 50 Year Reign? A Story of 2 Turing Awards

  Many of the programming languages we use today were not introduced until the 90s (Java was introduced in 1996). However, there is one programming language that is still as popular today as it was when it was introduced nearly 50 years ago: SQL.

  This article will discuss the events that led to the introduction of relational databases, why SQL grew in popularity, and what we can learn from its success.

• ScyllaDB NoSQL database to improve with Project Circe

  The open source SycllaDB NoSQL database continues to gain new features and users as it ramps up its plans for 2021. At the Scylla Summit 2021 virtual event which ran from Jan. 12-14, ScyllaDB CEO Dor Laor shared new features and the roadmap for the NoSQL database's future. A key part of ScyllaDB's roadmap is Project Circe, a yearlong initiative that aims to bring new performance and consistency to the database. The Summit was also highlighted by multiple users that outlined their ScyllaDB deployments, including Ticketmaster, Expedia Group, Zillow and GE Healthcare.

• "Studio" Tour Of An Australian Linux Zoomer

  Ever wondered what my "studio" actually looks like outside of the normal shot, well today you can find out and I use the term studio very loosly, this is my bedroom with some lights set up but none the less it's a make shift studio and it's what I use to make 15+ videos a week.

• DistroToot Is Now Accepting New Members

  DistroToot is my own personal Mastodon instance. Mastodon is a decentralized, federated micro-blogging platform. Essentially, it is a free and open source Twitter. People have asked me if I would open up DistroToot to accept other members (not just myself).

Software: DUF, Systemd Applet, and PDF

• duf - Disk Usage/Free Utility for Linux, BSD, macOS & Windows - nixCraft

  We use the df command to show how much disk space is free on mounted file systems in Linux, macOS, and Unix-like systems. We also have the du command to estimate file space usage. We now have another fancy and fantastic looking tool called duf to display statistics on free disk space in Unix, Linux, macOS, *BSD, Android, and Windows written in Golang.

• Systemd Applet Release - Michael Jansen, Drive By Coding

  Given no one seems to be interested in working on the applet (boo) I decided to tackle the bug myself. Apparently the fact it worked previously was the result of happenstance. The systemd manager processes only send out signals after at least one process told them to do so. It seems that some process did that on my computer before but no more.

• 5 Best free PDF editors for Ubuntu Linux in 2021 [Ed: Some of these are proprietary software, which GNU/Linux users do not need for any practical reason]

  PDF readers and editors are a popular part of our day-to-day work related to documents, ebooks, presentations, whitePaper, and more because of PDF’s portability and security. However, when it comes to reader application for PDF files, you will generally find a one on Linux desktop systems, easily. However, PDF editors may still need to be installed, which are available only a handful. Adobe developed the PDF (portable document format) in such a way that it can present the layout in the final document as it is, anywhere, regardless of the OS system or software in which you are going to use it later. Therefore, editing PDF files afterward is not an easy task- apart from the standard note and comment functions. However, Adobe offers a professional PDF editor for Mac and Windows but that also has limited capabilities. This means we can edit all PDF files not thoroughly like we do Word documents.

Programming Leftovers

• Better Fujitsu A64FX Support Arrives For GCC, LLVM Clang Compilers - Phoronix

  The high performance Fujitsu A64FX ARM processor now has the possibility of performing even better if relying upon the upstream open-source compilers from GCC and LLVM. The Fujitsu A64FX, which powers the "Fugaku" supercomputer among other accomplishments, has seen open-source compiler work going back a year while now the latest upstream GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and LLVM Clang are seeing more complete support.

• 4 DevOps books to read this year | Opensource.com

  We have just entered 2021, and DevOps will become much more relevant. It is smack dab in the spotlight given that the world is experiencing a pandemic and businesses are fighting to stay digitally relevant and competitive.

• Vger security analysis

  I would like to share about Vger internals in regards to how the security was thought to protect vger users and host systems.

• After years of dithering companies are embracing automation

  Bosses have boasted of automating their operations for years without an awful lot to show for it. Covid-19 has spurred them to put their money where their mouths are. Hernan Saenz of Bain, a consultancy, reckons that between now and 2030 American firms will invest $10trn in automation. Nigel Vaz, chief executive of Publicis Sapient, a big digital consultancy, says that the downturn offers bosses the perfect cover. “The unrelenting pressure for short-term financial results from investors has temporarily been suspended,” he says. “Firms are not just going back pre-pandemic, but completely reimagining how they work,” says Susan Lund, co-author of a forthcoming report from the McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank. A recent survey by the institute’s sister consultancy found that two-thirds of global firms are doubling down on automation.

• Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 1.0.6: Some Updates

  The Rcpp team is proud to announce release 1.0.6 of Rcpp which arrived at CRAN earlier today, and has been uploaded to Debian too. Windows and macOS builds should appear at CRAN in the next few days. This marks the first release on the new six-months cycle announced with release 1.0.5 in July. As reminder, interim ‘dev’ or ‘rc’ releases will often be available in the Rcpp drat repo; this cycle there were four. Rcpp has become the most popular way of enhancing R with C or C++ code. As of today, 2174 packages on CRAN depend on Rcpp for making analytical code go faster and further (which is an 8.5% increase just since the last release), along with 207 in BioConductor.

• Use Bash Strict Mode (Unless You Love Debugging)

  Let's start with the punchline. Your bash scripts will be more robust, reliable and maintainable if you start them like this:

  	#!/bin/bash
  	set -euo pipefail
  	IFS=$'\n\t'
   

  I call this the unofficial bash strict mode. This causes bash to behave in a way that makes many classes of subtle bugs impossible. You'll spend much less time debugging, and also avoid having unexpected complications in production.

  There is a short-term downside: these settings make certain common bash idioms harder to work with. Most have simple workarounds, detailed below: jump to Issues & Solutions. But first, let's look at what these obscure lines actually do.

• Java Built-In Functional Interfaces Cheatsheet and Examples

  In order to use lambda expressions in Java 8, you need a functional interface. For most of your needs, you can use the already built ones in Java which are as follows...