Linux User Space – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 06 Oct 2021 05:44:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Linux User Space – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast Linux User Space – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 371 – Rounded Corners https://mintcast.org/371-rounded-corners/ Wed, 06 Oct 2021 05:37:05 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5230 In security, More bugs and more malware
Then in our Wanderings, Joe does vacation, Norbert Listens to the Doctor, Josh tries ventoy, Tony is making ice cream trucks, Leo plays D2
Download
]]> 1:49 The News
28:03 Security Update
38:05 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:19:37 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, Linux Mint Monthly updates, Ubuntu news, Windows being Windows and Steam deck news

In security, More bugs and more malware

Then in our Wanderings, Joe does vacation, Norbert Listens to the Doctor, Josh tries ventoy, Tony is making ice cream trucks, Leo plays D2

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. Youtube.

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio production
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logg
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 371 - Rounded Corners full 1:27:49 5230 mintCast 358 – The Ethical Ethos (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-358-the-ethical-ethos-mp3/ Wed, 07 Apr 2021 05:02:24 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5004 Then, in the News, Mint sends relief, Ventoy has a birthday, JingPad gets closer, new docs Man up, and AlmaLinux soothes the soul.
In Security, your smartphone is spying on you, Facebook springs another leak, and we disclose our vulnerability.
Download
]]> Download

2:24 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
39:21 The News
1:02:28 Security Update
1:20:20 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I make a handoff, Joe repairs more stuff, Moss is in the news, Tony Hughes continues the challenge, and Mike the Builder makes a bike.

Then, in the News, Mint sends relief, Ventoy has a birthday, JingPad gets closer, new docs Man up, and AlmaLinux soothes the soul.

In Security, your smartphone is spying on you, Facebook springs another leak, and we disclose our vulnerability.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Dropping FCWN, but it’s not going far.
    • Linux User Space Season 1 is wrapped up.
    • Revising some of my audio editing workflow
      1. The “Compress Dynamics” plugin replaces Audacity’s own AND the Amplify plugin.
      2. The Noise Gate by Audacity, but that isn’t installed by default, is absolutely fantastic
    • Went with a pop filter over a wind screen for this episode. We’ll see if there’s a big difference in sibilants.
  • Joe
    • Well I need to redo one of the two Razers and reverse the connections on one of the 1mores, the Razer I guess I went a bit harsh at first with the soldering iron and I need to get a new 3.5mm connector
    • I also disassembled a couple of mice with my new Pinecil soldering iron.  I like it.  The price is 25 dollars for a good working soldering iron that heats up very fast and is easily portable.  I am still looking for a stand for it that I like.
      1. I took apart the mice for the switches so that I can use them to fix a couple of other M570 mice so that I don’t have to buy more of them.  The M570 seems to have a bit of a short half life.
    • I ordered and received the Dell Latitude 5290, which cost a bit more than I wanted to pay for a tablet but I have to say that it works well.  I also discovered that there may be a good reason to switch to the i7 instead of the i5 version even with the minimal performance gains.  The i7 version has actual Thunderbolt ports instead of just USB 3.1 but I am very happy with the tablet as is.
      1. I first installed Endeavour and then added Gnome because I wanted to give it more of a try
      2. That did not last long and I had the same issues with Steam and my ongoing dislike for Gnome out of the box
      3. Switched to Mint and things started working, other than rotation which had the issue where it would rotate the screen but not the touch.  This was easily fixed by installing screenrotate in the exact same way as with arch.
      4. Steam just plain worked and looked pretty good with Torchlight and Borderlands 2, I would have tried Borderlands 3 but the game takes 112 Gb and that would have fit on the 256 Gb SSD but would not have much left room for anything else.  BL2 was installed using proton so I could use all of the DLC
      5. I will say that BL2 sent the thing from 75 percent battery to shutdown very fast but I am also not done putting the battery through its testing to make sure that it is good
      6. The only thing that I have not been able to get working is the cameras.  Neither of them work.  Didn’t work on Arch or Mint and from what I have found online no one else has been able to get them to work either
    • Ordered a 128 Gb SSD that was supposed to work and it didn’t fit into the WAN port, so I did my research the second time and found out I need a b+m SSD in order to make it work. And it needed to be a 2242 instead of the 2230 that was marked on the board.  But the b+m 128 that I ordered came and did not match the picture or the writing on the front which also said b+m the thing was only an m.  So IDK 
    • I did put a 64Gb micro SD into it but really want the faster m.2 drive either for game storage or for a second operating system.  Maybe I should get a much larger 2280 drive instead.
    • Tried to install Garuda Linux to an external drive to test it out on my tablet but after multiple tries with issues caused by the drives and not the OS I gave up the idea of running Garuda from external media and wiped out Mint on the device and installed Garuda bare bones
    • I have to say that, for Arch, it is extremely robust and takes most of the work out of everything
    • I also found out that the game that I was using as a test case that was not working in steam in endeavour was also not working in Garuda but the reason is because it was a 32-bit game.  So there is an issue with 32-bit libraries needing to be pointed to. 
    • I also should mention that I installed the Gnome version of Garuda but I will get into that in the innards section
    • Also yesterday i picked up a large volume of broken electronics for a decent price.  Lots of bluetooth and wired headphones that need some work.  Already got a couple of them working.  My current favorite is the Razer Nari Ultimate.  I will talk more about them later but some highlights are 2 DT770s, several Shure SE215 and SE315’s and several AT M30, M40, M50
  • Moss
    • In a surprise development, I got a message in Telegram from Ronnie Tucker, congratulating me as the new voice of Full Circle Weekly News podcast. I have only one person to thank for this. Thank you, Leo. Big shoes to fill, but I hope to fill them *weekly*.
    • I had some problems for a week or so with Linux Mint 20.1, the system was locking up or sometimes just the mouse buttons stopped working. A number of other people reported similar issues on the Linux Mint group on MeWe, but nothing made it to the Mint Forum. After a couple more updates, including a kernel update and two systemd updates, my machines are working fine… the Zia800 was locking up when things get plugged into the top USB port on the front of the machine but I think this has been resolved by magic. The Fellowes keyboard I bought on eBay proved to not work so we went to Voldemart and bought her a Logitech keyboard.
    • I plugged Suzanne’s Fellowes keyboard into my computer to test it, and proved it really was not working… but in doing so, I broke off the headphone jack on my nice old Koss headphones. I thought that was all, but when I plugged my other headset into the jack to do Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 021 on Wednesday, I found I could not hear anyone. Tony Hughes reminded me I had a USB soundcard on my Raspberry Pi 4 and I used it, and continue to do so. Should get a second identical card in the mail in the next couple days.
    • Tony Hughes, Dale Miracle and I recorded Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 021 last Wednesday and it is out now, following our record-breaking Episode 020 which exceeded 800 downloads. We had a great time as usual, and covered Mageia, Debian Unstable, Endeavour, and others. I’m already working on Episode 022. Episode 020 is at 818 downloads as of this recording.
    • It’s time to get your votes in on Distro Madness, Elite Eight; voting will close this Friday before moving on to the Semifinals. Surprise! Most of my readers come from mintCast listeners, so all four versions of Mint are favored to make the Final Four… but can Solus sneak in?
  • Tony Hughes
    • Lots and lots of walking. Last Monday I did a 12.5 mile walk with my wife along the coast from South Blackpool to Fleetwood to the North of us. I’m regularly doing 5+ miles a day. It is getting quite addictive to complete the virtual walk challenge I’m on.    
    • As Moss has said we recorded Distrohoppers’ Digest last Wednesday and I managed to get it all edited and Posted by Friday so all is good with the world. 
    • During the pre show chat last night I did manage to get Audacity 3.0.0 installed on Endeavor although I have not had a chance to play with it as yet. On my main box I have tried the Snap install and it opens the previous .aup files without a hitch but as it is in a snap it can only see the drive the OS is on so I had to copy a folder from another drive to the PC to try this out. One day I will work out these permission issues with Snap and Flatpak apps.   
  • Mike
    • Proton suite – VPN works very well if you’re comfortable with light CLI usage. Minor adjustments need to be made to work properly (add startup script). Drive is pretty bare bones in its current form but works perfectly, I signed up to beta test iOS app. Mail is mail.
    • Whonix – An operating system designed to help protect your privacy and anonymity. It runs on a VM and forces all programs to connect through Tor network, all clearnet connections are blocked, DNS leaks are blocked.
    • I’ve been wanting to buy a bicycle lately but the prices are so high due to increased demand and the pandemic ($1200 – $1500) that I decided to build a bicycle instead. I found a company that sells a bike partially built for a cheap price, you must complete half of it. City cruiser bicycle. I’m somewhat worried because I’m not mechanically inclined and I’ve never built a bicycle before. [Get the bike tires from Mars next year – Moss]

THE NEWS:

  • Mint News: New Linux Mint notification system. “We designed a notification system which acts as a gentle and welcome reminder and took great care not to turn it into an annoyance.” The notification system will be a desktop popup notification which can be easily dismissed and won’t reappear for 2 days. Default settings have casual users in mind and will show a notification if an update has been available for 7 “logged-in” days or older than 15 calendar days. By default the Update Manager only considers security and kernel updates. The notification system has a grace period, where if you’ve installed ANY updates in any way (update manager, terminal, synaptic) in the last 30 days then it won’t notify you. The notification system is completely configurable for more intermediate to advanced users.
    • Clem on the release for the update changes: This is planned for Mint 20.2 but it could also be backported. We’ve a journalistic slack, we can send you an invite if you contact us by email.
    • Clem noted in the comments that Flatpak will also be controllable through the Update Manager. Clem also notes that a Flatpak update from 1.6.5 to a more current one is on the roadmap.
    • Clem said of Wayland and GTK4: There are no plans to move to GTK4 right now but like anything new this is something we have an interest in and so we’re keeping an eye on it. Regarding Wayland I have no news. We’re investigating the idea of making the latest Cinnamon work with Mutter, there are many pros and cons associated with that, it’s not directly related to Wayland but it could help getting closer.
    • Clem on more Desktop Environments: Not at the moment. We’re very happy with the Cinnamon – MATE – Xfce trio.
    • Clem on usrmerge for LMDE: Although we’re likely to move to a merged system in LMDE 5, in LMDE 4 you don’t need to merge your system. First, our build environment for LMDE is not merged. Second, Debian has been aware of this issue and actively fixed it in their repositories. The Ubuntu version of plymouth produces unreproducible builds, the Debian version does not. Debian detected this issue and already patched it.
  • Londoner reminds us that ventoy-1.0.00 was released on April 5th in 2020.
  • JingOS released v. 0.8 to the public, with a lot of new features, and further announced they were starting a crowdfunding campaign for the JingPad A1 – the world’s first consumer-level Linux tablet. JingOS is intended to be a full-Linux experience for tablet computers, but with an interface that could be mistaken easily for iPad OS. They are designing a product with a 2k+ screen, Gorilla Glass, 4:3 screen ratio, and premium components, with a pen and a keyboard both available. They have Discord, Telegram, Facebook, and other forums to get involved in. It should be pointed out that they got this announcement in under the wire on March 31, there were murmurings about it being a joke.
  • Man-Pages 5.11 released featuring 50,000 line changes and 480 commits by 40 contributors. 950 pages have been changed (more than 90%). The release features various patches and bug fixes. One of the largest man-pages updates in 20 years.
  • AlmaLinux is Official

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • Your smartphone is spying on you more than you realize. Researchers from the University of Dublin have found that smartphones transmit telemetry data “back home” on average every 4½ minutes, however Android transmits 20x more data back to Google than iOS sends to Apple. This transfer happens even when the device is idle. Currently there are very few, if any, options to prevent telemetry collection. – Mike
  • 533,000,000 Facebook users have their data leaked online – Moss
  • Vulnerability Disclosure Norms
    • What are your feelings on hackers/security researchers dropping their research to the public directly without letting developers know first.
    • Do you think the typical 90-day requirement is enough?
    • Do you think companies should have an indefinite amount of time to fix issues?

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 1:26:13 5004 mintCast 358 – The Ethical Ethos https://mintcast.org/mintcast-358-the-ethical-ethos/ Wed, 07 Apr 2021 04:48:21 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5000 Then, in the News, Mint sends relief, Ventoy has a birthday, JingPad gets closer, new docs Man up, and AlmaLinux soothes the soul.
In Security, your smartphone is spying on you, Facebook springs another leak, and we disclose our vulnerability.
Download
]]> Download

2:24 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
39:21 The News
1:02:28 Security Update
1:20:20 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I make a handoff, Joe repairs more stuff, Moss is in the news, Tony Hughes continues the challenge, and Mike the Builder makes a bike.

Then, in the News, Mint sends relief, Ventoy has a birthday, JingPad gets closer, new docs Man up, and AlmaLinux soothes the soul.

In Security, your smartphone is spying on you, Facebook springs another leak, and we disclose our vulnerability.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Dropping FCWN, but it’s not going far.
    • Linux User Space Season 1 is wrapped up.
    • Revising some of my audio editing workflow
      1. The “Compress Dynamics” plugin replaces Audacity’s own AND the Amplify plugin.
      2. The Noise Gate by Audacity, but that isn’t installed by default, is absolutely fantastic
    • Went with a pop filter over a wind screen for this episode. We’ll see if there’s a big difference in sibilants.
  • Joe
    • Well I need to redo one of the two Razers and reverse the connections on one of the 1mores, the Razer I guess I went a bit harsh at first with the soldering iron and I need to get a new 3.5mm connector
    • I also disassembled a couple of mice with my new Pinecil soldering iron.  I like it.  The price is 25 dollars for a good working soldering iron that heats up very fast and is easily portable.  I am still looking for a stand for it that I like.
      1. I took apart the mice for the switches so that I can use them to fix a couple of other M570 mice so that I don’t have to buy more of them.  The M570 seems to have a bit of a short half life.
    • I ordered and received the Dell Latitude 5290, which cost a bit more than I wanted to pay for a tablet but I have to say that it works well.  I also discovered that there may be a good reason to switch to the i7 instead of the i5 version even with the minimal performance gains.  The i7 version has actual Thunderbolt ports instead of just USB 3.1 but I am very happy with the tablet as is.
      1. I first installed Endeavour and then added Gnome because I wanted to give it more of a try
      2. That did not last long and I had the same issues with Steam and my ongoing dislike for Gnome out of the box
      3. Switched to Mint and things started working, other than rotation which had the issue where it would rotate the screen but not the touch.  This was easily fixed by installing screenrotate in the exact same way as with arch.
      4. Steam just plain worked and looked pretty good with Torchlight and Borderlands 2, I would have tried Borderlands 3 but the game takes 112 Gb and that would have fit on the 256 Gb SSD but would not have much left room for anything else.  BL2 was installed using proton so I could use all of the DLC
      5. I will say that BL2 sent the thing from 75 percent battery to shutdown very fast but I am also not done putting the battery through its testing to make sure that it is good
      6. The only thing that I have not been able to get working is the cameras.  Neither of them work.  Didn’t work on Arch or Mint and from what I have found online no one else has been able to get them to work either
    • Ordered a 128 Gb SSD that was supposed to work and it didn’t fit into the WAN port, so I did my research the second time and found out I need a b+m SSD in order to make it work. And it needed to be a 2242 instead of the 2230 that was marked on the board.  But the b+m 128 that I ordered came and did not match the picture or the writing on the front which also said b+m the thing was only an m.  So IDK 
    • I did put a 64Gb micro SD into it but really want the faster m.2 drive either for game storage or for a second operating system.  Maybe I should get a much larger 2280 drive instead.
    • Tried to install Garuda Linux to an external drive to test it out on my tablet but after multiple tries with issues caused by the drives and not the OS I gave up the idea of running Garuda from external media and wiped out Mint on the device and installed Garuda bare bones
    • I have to say that, for Arch, it is extremely robust and takes most of the work out of everything
    • I also found out that the game that I was using as a test case that was not working in steam in endeavour was also not working in Garuda but the reason is because it was a 32-bit game.  So there is an issue with 32-bit libraries needing to be pointed to. 
    • I also should mention that I installed the Gnome version of Garuda but I will get into that in the innards section
    • Also yesterday i picked up a large volume of broken electronics for a decent price.  Lots of bluetooth and wired headphones that need some work.  Already got a couple of them working.  My current favorite is the Razer Nari Ultimate.  I will talk more about them later but some highlights are 2 DT770s, several Shure SE215 and SE315’s and several AT M30, M40, M50
  • Moss
    • In a surprise development, I got a message in Telegram from Ronnie Tucker, congratulating me as the new voice of Full Circle Weekly News podcast. I have only one person to thank for this. Thank you, Leo. Big shoes to fill, but I hope to fill them *weekly*.
    • I had some problems for a week or so with Linux Mint 20.1, the system was locking up or sometimes just the mouse buttons stopped working. A number of other people reported similar issues on the Linux Mint group on MeWe, but nothing made it to the Mint Forum. After a couple more updates, including a kernel update and two systemd updates, my machines are working fine… the Zia800 was locking up when things get plugged into the top USB port on the front of the machine but I think this has been resolved by magic. The Fellowes keyboard I bought on eBay proved to not work so we went to Voldemart and bought her a Logitech keyboard.
    • I plugged Suzanne’s Fellowes keyboard into my computer to test it, and proved it really was not working… but in doing so, I broke off the headphone jack on my nice old Koss headphones. I thought that was all, but when I plugged my other headset into the jack to do Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 021 on Wednesday, I found I could not hear anyone. Tony Hughes reminded me I had a USB soundcard on my Raspberry Pi 4 and I used it, and continue to do so. Should get a second identical card in the mail in the next couple days.
    • Tony Hughes, Dale Miracle and I recorded Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 021 last Wednesday and it is out now, following our record-breaking Episode 020 which exceeded 800 downloads. We had a great time as usual, and covered Mageia, Debian Unstable, Endeavour, and others. I’m already working on Episode 022. Episode 020 is at 818 downloads as of this recording.
    • It’s time to get your votes in on Distro Madness, Elite Eight; voting will close this Friday before moving on to the Semifinals. Surprise! Most of my readers come from mintCast listeners, so all four versions of Mint are favored to make the Final Four… but can Solus sneak in?
  • Tony Hughes
    • Lots and lots of walking. Last Monday I did a 12.5 mile walk with my wife along the coast from South Blackpool to Fleetwood to the North of us. I’m regularly doing 5+ miles a day. It is getting quite addictive to complete the virtual walk challenge I’m on.    
    • As Moss has said we recorded Distrohoppers’ Digest last Wednesday and I managed to get it all edited and Posted by Friday so all is good with the world. 
    • During the pre show chat last night I did manage to get Audacity 3.0.0 installed on Endeavor although I have not had a chance to play with it as yet. On my main box I have tried the Snap install and it opens the previous .aup files without a hitch but as it is in a snap it can only see the drive the OS is on so I had to copy a folder from another drive to the PC to try this out. One day I will work out these permission issues with Snap and Flatpak apps.   
  • Mike
    • Proton suite – VPN works very well if you’re comfortable with light CLI usage. Minor adjustments need to be made to work properly (add startup script). Drive is pretty bare bones in its current form but works perfectly, I signed up to beta test iOS app. Mail is mail.
    • Whonix – An operating system designed to help protect your privacy and anonymity. It runs on a VM and forces all programs to connect through Tor network, all clearnet connections are blocked, DNS leaks are blocked.
    • I’ve been wanting to buy a bicycle lately but the prices are so high due to increased demand and the pandemic ($1200 – $1500) that I decided to build a bicycle instead. I found a company that sells a bike partially built for a cheap price, you must complete half of it. City cruiser bicycle. I’m somewhat worried because I’m not mechanically inclined and I’ve never built a bicycle before. [Get the bike tires from Mars next year – Moss]

THE NEWS:

  • Mint News: New Linux Mint notification system. “We designed a notification system which acts as a gentle and welcome reminder and took great care not to turn it into an annoyance.” The notification system will be a desktop popup notification which can be easily dismissed and won’t reappear for 2 days. Default settings have casual users in mind and will show a notification if an update has been available for 7 “logged-in” days or older than 15 calendar days. By default the Update Manager only considers security and kernel updates. The notification system has a grace period, where if you’ve installed ANY updates in any way (update manager, terminal, synaptic) in the last 30 days then it won’t notify you. The notification system is completely configurable for more intermediate to advanced users.
    • Clem on the release for the update changes: This is planned for Mint 20.2 but it could also be backported. We’ve a journalistic slack, we can send you an invite if you contact us by email.
    • Clem noted in the comments that Flatpak will also be controllable through the Update Manager. Clem also notes that a Flatpak update from 1.6.5 to a more current one is on the roadmap.
    • Clem said of Wayland and GTK4: There are no plans to move to GTK4 right now but like anything new this is something we have an interest in and so we’re keeping an eye on it. Regarding Wayland I have no news. We’re investigating the idea of making the latest Cinnamon work with Mutter, there are many pros and cons associated with that, it’s not directly related to Wayland but it could help getting closer.
    • Clem on more Desktop Environments: Not at the moment. We’re very happy with the Cinnamon – MATE – Xfce trio.
    • Clem on usrmerge for LMDE: Although we’re likely to move to a merged system in LMDE 5, in LMDE 4 you don’t need to merge your system. First, our build environment for LMDE is not merged. Second, Debian has been aware of this issue and actively fixed it in their repositories. The Ubuntu version of plymouth produces unreproducible builds, the Debian version does not. Debian detected this issue and already patched it.
  • Londoner reminds us that ventoy-1.0.00 was released on April 5th in 2020.
  • JingOS released v. 0.8 to the public, with a lot of new features, and further announced they were starting a crowdfunding campaign for the JingPad A1 – the world’s first consumer-level Linux tablet. JingOS is intended to be a full-Linux experience for tablet computers, but with an interface that could be mistaken easily for iPad OS. They are designing a product with a 2k+ screen, Gorilla Glass, 4:3 screen ratio, and premium components, with a pen and a keyboard both available. They have Discord, Telegram, Facebook, and other forums to get involved in. It should be pointed out that they got this announcement in under the wire on March 31, there were murmurings about it being a joke.
  • Man-Pages 5.11 released featuring 50,000 line changes and 480 commits by 40 contributors. 950 pages have been changed (more than 90%). The release features various patches and bug fixes. One of the largest man-pages updates in 20 years.
  • AlmaLinux is Official

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • Your smartphone is spying on you more than you realize. Researchers from the University of Dublin have found that smartphones transmit telemetry data “back home” on average every 4½ minutes, however Android transmits 20x more data back to Google than iOS sends to Apple. This transfer happens even when the device is idle. Currently there are very few, if any, options to prevent telemetry collection. – Mike
  • 533,000,000 Facebook users have their data leaked online – Moss
  • Vulnerability Disclosure Norms
    • What are your feelings on hackers/security researchers dropping their research to the public directly without letting developers know first.
    • Do you think the typical 90-day requirement is enough?
    • Do you think companies should have an indefinite amount of time to fix issues?

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 1:29:17 5000 mintCast 345.5 – Linux on the Edge (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-345-5-linux-on-the-edge-mp3/ Wed, 14 Oct 2020 04:44:33 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4704 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

1:31 Linux Innards
41:23 Vibrations from the Ether
1:02:31 Check This Out
1:05:07 Outro

In our Innards section, we Introduce Josh Hawk and pick his and all of our brains.

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • To Josh: Do you think insistence on FOSS is holding back Linux adoption?
  • To All: Do you think Windows will ever be Linux based?
  • To All: Who is using Edge for Linux when it drops? Sometime later?
  • To All: Given the above, should we be concentrating on what we can do on Linux, rather than Linux distributions when promoting it to the non-Linux-using public. This comes from a recent interview with Stuart Langridge of ‘Bad Voltage’ on ‘Linux User Space’ 

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Reci Fluência
  • TBA
  • Dylan B
  • Henrik Hemrin
  • @casulemarc (twitter)

https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface

  • fjord

CHECK THIS OUT:

  • Moss
    • Amazon Echo add-on Hey Samuel! – Samuel L. Jackson
      • 1st gen Echos can only use “[LadyTube], Ask Samuel to…”
    • Ting has added Verizon to their existing Sprint and T-Mobile lines. If you were not signing up for Ting because you needed Verizon coverage, you can do it now.
      • Ting’s subscriber rolls were enumerated as fewer than 300,000 customers
      • On the other hand, Ting (along with Boost and TracFone) has been bought by Dish Network, which eventually wants to roll out their own cellular brand. Ting claims their plans will not change.
  • Joe

Announcements:

Our next show will be on October 18, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC. Check https://everytimezone.com/s/a5d26573  to convert to your local time.

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 4704 mintCast 345.5 – Linux on the Edge https://mintcast.org/mintcast-345-5-linux-on-the-edge/ Wed, 14 Oct 2020 04:22:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4697 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

1:31 Linux Innards
41:23 Vibrations from the Ether
1:02:31 Check This Out
1:05:07 Outro

In our Innards section, we Introduce Josh Hawk and pick his and all of our brains.

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • To Josh: Do you think insistence on FOSS is holding back Linux adoption?
  • To All: Do you think Windows will ever be Linux based?
  • To All: Who is using Edge for Linux when it drops? Sometime later?
  • To All: Given the above, should we be concentrating on what we can do on Linux, rather than Linux distributions when promoting it to the non-Linux-using public. This comes from a recent interview with Stuart Langridge of ‘Bad Voltage’ on ‘Linux User Space’ 

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Reci Fluência
  • TBA
  • Dylan B
  • Henrik Hemrin
  • @casulemarc (twitter)

https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface

  • fjord

CHECK THIS OUT:

  • Moss
    • Amazon Echo add-on Hey Samuel! – Samuel L. Jackson
      • 1st gen Echos can only use “[LadyTube], Ask Samuel to…”
    • Ting has added Verizon to their existing Sprint and T-Mobile lines. If you were not signing up for Ting because you needed Verizon coverage, you can do it now.
      • Ting’s subscriber rolls were enumerated as fewer than 300,000 customers
      • On the other hand, Ting (along with Boost and TracFone) has been bought by Dish Network, which eventually wants to roll out their own cellular brand. Ting claims their plans will not change.
  • Joe

Announcements:

Our next show will be on October 18, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC. Check https://everytimezone.com/s/a5d26573  to convert to your local time.

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 1:07:14 4697 mintCast 338 – Two Oh Snap (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-338-two-oh-snap-mp3/ Wed, 01 Jul 2020 04:44:18 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4504 Then, in the news, we focus on the new release of Linux Mint 20
In security, Ripple20
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Owen refurbishes, Tony prints new stuff, Moss has a panic attack, Joe attends a LUG, Bo games, and Leo upgrades to 20.

Then, in the news, we focus on the new release of Linux Mint 20

In security, Ripple20

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Owen
    • Continue to refurbish donated computers with older hardware, add RAM and SSDs, install Mint 19.3, and deliver them to families in need at my school
    • Won an Innovative Teacher award from the Fab Foundation and Chevron for this project which also came with a $1000 cash award, which also allowed me to purchase more/better RAM and SSDs
    • 3d printing PPE like face shields and ear savers
    • Ordered 2 new 3d printers via a Kickstarter campaign, one for me, one for school
    • Test driving Mint 20.04 beta after finally separating my /home directory and OS into different partitions, and a few days of being really lost in the weeds, but I had a backup so I knew it would all be OK
    • Attended a virtual STEM conference in June called Inclusive STEM and CS
    • Been learning how to use Kdenlive by using an action camera on top of my helmet and going on different bike rides each day
    • Slowly working on installing motioneyeOS on a Raspberry Pi with one of the new fancy cameras to setup a security camera due to a recent arson at my condo complex
    • Exploring Ubuntu Studio and am almost certain my main machine at home will to to Ubuntu Studio for 20.10 when it’ll be Plasma by default
    • Setup a Ventoy USB stick and started installing all.the.ISOs.in.the.world.
    • Working my way through a lynda.com course on Bash scripting to get better using the command line
    • Staying sane during shelter in place by taking a bicycle ride everyday, not new since I”m a bike commuter for almost 2 decades now, having a standing Sunday morning Zoom call with friends from around the world, walking my dog further than before and more frequently, using the kids playground at the school next to my home to work out on, and trying to think each day of at least one thing I”m grateful for.
    • Gardening, community garden, gardening on our terrace, and gardening in the front of our building
  • Leo
    • Upgraded to Linux Mint 20 on the laptop I’m recording on!
    • Still need to do the desktop, but have a few things going on this weekend, so I may not make it.
    • I’m on a new show! Linux User Space
  • Tony H
    • Baking and playing with my model cars, I also won a few eBay auctions of some nice models to go straight into the collection. Today I spent the afternoon with my sister and her husband as it was their 1st wedding anniversary and I restored a little matchbox Rolls Royce model and painted it up as a wedding saloon which they missed out on as they got married on a cruise ship last summer. My sister is into bead jewelry making so I thought something a little crafty would be appreciated, and they both loved it, so my model restoration hobby has a new fan. 
    • I’ve recently been recording a series of episodes for HPR about my diecast model restorations and I have been having problems with Firefox not letting me reserve a slot in the HPR schedule to upload the show too. It returns an error message. However If I use Chromium to book the slot, not a problem, I can then go back into Firefox and do the remainder of the process from there. It used to work just fine, I’m wondering if my ad blocking plugins might be the issue?  
    • The big story for me this week is, since the last show I purchased a new colour Laser printer, the HP Color Laser 150nw, so I can produce high quality decals for my models that require them. I bought this printer as I was led to believe that it had Linux support. I set it up, downloaded the HP driver package HPLIP from the Developers page which is a more up to date version than that in Mint 19.3, and I thought great, we are good to go. No this did not recognise that the printer was present even after restarting the printer several times with the USB cable attached to the PC. So I went into CUPS which prior to installation of the HPLIP package had not had any idea what this HP printer was, it now recognised it was there and came up with the model and a recommended driver which I installed. I tried a test print the light on the printer starts to flash but apart from a little noise from it as the paper feed whirls around nothing else happens. Several attempts later I started to suspect I had a faulty printer, but I had one last option before I gave up. Here’s where I have to say the dreaded ‘Windows word’ I got out my Dell 7250 laptop that has W10 installed as a test machine for troubleshooting windows issues for other folk, I plugged in the printer and it picked it up right away and started to install the driver, after installing I printed the test page and it worked. In one way I was relieved as my $160 / £130 I spent for the printer is not wasted but I’m more than a little disgruntled that I have to have a Windows laptop to drive the thing instead of just working on my Mint 19.3 box like it should!!!! I then had an idea and booted into Ubuntu Studio 20.04 and it picked the printer up without the addition of any other software so the moral of the story is run the latest OS you can if you want your printer to be supported in Linux.
  • Moss
    • Distrohoppers’ Digest 014 is out. We’d love to have everyone listen to it. Tony and I have a great time doing this little monthly hop.
    • Sometime after the last show was in the can but before we did Distrohoppers’ Digest, I accessed my two machines and did what can only be called Adventures In GPartEd. My desktop box went from 2 partitions to 3, and my laptop went from 3 to 4, complete with cleaning up unnecessary partitions and moving things around so much that if GPartEd *were* dangerous to use, I would have lost lots of data. It is of interest to note my desktop’s hard drive somehow had both EFI and Grub partitions; I removed and reallocated the latter, and also increased the size of my swap partition. Everything works. I’m waiting for all the distros which have been promised, including a new openSUSE, and Slackware 15.
    • Over the past couple days, I have been trying the new Mint 20 on the laptop. I overwrote the Manjaro partition… I tried Cinnamon, but found something mildly upsetting in yesterday’s show meeting and installed MATE instead, then had a couple minor catastrophes causing me to reinstall MATE… TWICE… so I was up all night again. When I get Mint 20 up to the level I need for working, probably today or tomorrow, I will reinstall Manjaro over the Mint 19.3 partition… and will lose the GRUB niceties of 19.3, which were removed in 20 because they caused some machines to not boot. I guess I can make OpenMandriva the Grubholder then, so I can still have a pretty boot menu.  For the record, my memory use in 20 Cinnamon was 1.7 Gb at rest, where in MATE it’s about 770 Mb. Both of those are high for these desktops, but I assume they will work on getting it down soon.
    • I am making an effort to use Bodhi for more of my daily stuff, rather than treating it like a fun curiosity. It is interesting to learn what stuff goes where in a superlight desktop, very different from what I’ve been used to in heavier desktops like XFCE. For instance, I created Key Bindings to turn my touchpad on and off. What I mean by “superlight”: Stacer reports 324 Mb in use with only Stacer open, and 14 Mb of that is Stacer itself. We usually call a desktop “light” if it has 550-700 Mb in use at rest.
    • I still don’t have a distro to review for next Distrohoppers’, but Mint should be out soon. I already have downloaded what should be the final, but they haven’t announced it yet.
    • I bought a new tablet, a Hyundai Technologies Koral 10×3. I was trying to order a PineTab but my wife blocked the purchase. It turns out she thought I was just trying to order another Raspberry Pi, and then, when she approved me buying it, it was sold out. Then a friend told me about her tablet, and I got excited and bought one… I probably jumped at it too quickly, and I do have a bit of buyers’ remorse, having read a few more reviews, but I’ll wait until it arrives before I bad-mouth it… or talk it up…
    • I’ve been running around with all this extra Covid money from Congress, getting  clothes and bedsheets and all the things we have absolutely needed but couldn’t afford, and spending out of pocket for my wife’s health care, which we previously had no money for and still can’t get insurance for. Also due to the Covid money, we are not currently eligible for the various low-income healthcare programs. I’m  cleaning up debt, most of which was caused by importing my wife from Canada — all the money the government and lawyers need for that to happen. Everything’s done except the debt reduction program I’m in, which will be over in less than a year. But all this good money is scheduled to end July 31, which will mean a $540 per week dropoff, and there are no legal jobs in sight.  I can’t even work in my previous employment, as I’m more of a driver risk, have a still-injured shoulder, and otherwise I’m still 67 years old. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been stuck at around 140% of poverty level, and it’s ending in 33 days.
    • As I haven’t been sleeping in bed since the accident, our Dresden Files reading has dropped off, but we’re pretty deep in the 5th book right now.
    • Enough of this. Let’s get to Joe.
  • Joe
    • Attended a virtual LUG
      • It was interesting
      • It was nice to get to see all the people that I normally hang out with at the LUG even if it was over Zoom
      • Got to help a bunch of people and learn a couple of things about top and htop
    • Jim Butcher Codex Alera
      • Good series.  The last book is the weakest but still a really good conclusion
      • Remember the new book comes out next month for the Dresden Files
        • The first few chapters are available online although i have not read them as i would rather wait for the whole book
    • Larry Correia 
      • Grimnoir
        • Trilogy with some short stories attached.
        • Alternate history book post WW2
      • Monster Hunter
        • Really good series that I keep going back to
      • Saga of the Forgotten Warrior
        • Only two books in the series so far but I am liking it
    • Book 14 of the Nate Temple series.  
      • I thought the series was starting to lag but it seems to be picking up again.  Really good book
    • Decided that if i am going to use the Pi as an sshfs gateway then I should make the internet connection a bit more stable.  The Powerline ethernet adapter that I use doesn’t provide much speed and has many drops.  I could possibly code my way around that being a major issue but I would like more reliability.  I have a few wifi adapters that i could try out but my set top box in the garage has a solid connection and good speeds on 5 GHz so i am going to use internet sharing on that to a network switch.  https://www.tecmint.com/share-internet-in-linux/
      • Also found out that the if up and if down folders do not work so i tried dhclient-enter-hooks.d
      • Which i have not been able to get to work so far
      • Trying out systemctl which i am seeing a response from using the simple statements that i was using before.  I am able to keep that service running +with an extremely simple while loop but it currently lacks flexibility on failures so i will need to write some loops that are dependant on the response from pings
    • I was able to print a mount for my 7130 that allows me to keep it directly under the monitor that I use for work.  This allows me to watch fix it videos during the slow times or when i am doing something routine.  As well as do things like type up my bi-weekly wanderings during my breaks.
  • Bo
    • ESO on stadia
      • PC and Steam accounts
      • Performance

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE

  •  Ripple20 Is a Pack of Almost 20 Bugs Affecting Millions of Devices
    • Specifically, it’s pinned to a service called Treck with DNS support
    • The bugs can cause Denial of Service all the way up to Remote Code Execution
    • Affected devices can be just about anything since this is a supply chain flaw.
      • Essentially, a vulnerable piece of software is made available by, in this case Treck, and it is then taken by manufacturers and used in TONS of devices to add additional functionality without having to write code themselves.
      • Printers, Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Smart home thingies like thermostats and light bulbs. This library is truly pervasive.
    • Update your Treck libraries to 6.0.1.67 and all is well for every bug that’s part of Ripple20.
    • Easy right? Well, no, actually. When’s the last time you updated your smart light bulb? Your UPS? This problem will be with us for years. How many people do you think will hear these advisories? It’s been out for almost two weeks at the time of this recording.
    • Folks, it really is time to ask yourself if it’s worth having someone know everything about you, or take control of your network in exchange for being able to shut off a light from two rooms away.
    • NanoLeaf light panels, the app allows you to download other people’s light patterns and put them on

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 12th of July at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4504 mintCast 338 – Two Oh Snap https://mintcast.org/mintcast-338-two-oh-snap/ Wed, 01 Jul 2020 04:25:31 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4499 Then, in the news, we focus on the new release of Linux Mint 20
In security, Ripple20
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Owen refurbishes, Tony prints new stuff, Moss has a panic attack, Joe attends a LUG, Bo games, and Leo upgrades to 20.

Then, in the news, we focus on the new release of Linux Mint 20

In security, Ripple20

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Owen
    • Continue to refurbish donated computers with older hardware, add RAM and SSDs, install Mint 19.3, and deliver them to families in need at my school
    • Won an Innovative Teacher award from the Fab Foundation and Chevron for this project which also came with a $1000 cash award, which also allowed me to purchase more/better RAM and SSDs
    • 3d printing PPE like face shields and ear savers
    • Ordered 2 new 3d printers via a Kickstarter campaign, one for me, one for school
    • Test driving Mint 20.04 beta after finally separating my /home directory and OS into different partitions, and a few days of being really lost in the weeds, but I had a backup so I knew it would all be OK
    • Attended a virtual STEM conference in June called Inclusive STEM and CS
    • Been learning how to use Kdenlive by using an action camera on top of my helmet and going on different bike rides each day
    • Slowly working on installing motioneyeOS on a Raspberry Pi with one of the new fancy cameras to setup a security camera due to a recent arson at my condo complex
    • Exploring Ubuntu Studio and am almost certain my main machine at home will to to Ubuntu Studio for 20.10 when it’ll be Plasma by default
    • Setup a Ventoy USB stick and started installing all.the.ISOs.in.the.world.
    • Working my way through a lynda.com course on Bash scripting to get better using the command line
    • Staying sane during shelter in place by taking a bicycle ride everyday, not new since I”m a bike commuter for almost 2 decades now, having a standing Sunday morning Zoom call with friends from around the world, walking my dog further than before and more frequently, using the kids playground at the school next to my home to work out on, and trying to think each day of at least one thing I”m grateful for.
    • Gardening, community garden, gardening on our terrace, and gardening in the front of our building
  • Leo
    • Upgraded to Linux Mint 20 on the laptop I’m recording on!
    • Still need to do the desktop, but have a few things going on this weekend, so I may not make it.
    • I’m on a new show! Linux User Space
  • Tony H
    • Baking and playing with my model cars, I also won a few eBay auctions of some nice models to go straight into the collection. Today I spent the afternoon with my sister and her husband as it was their 1st wedding anniversary and I restored a little matchbox Rolls Royce model and painted it up as a wedding saloon which they missed out on as they got married on a cruise ship last summer. My sister is into bead jewelry making so I thought something a little crafty would be appreciated, and they both loved it, so my model restoration hobby has a new fan. 
    • I’ve recently been recording a series of episodes for HPR about my diecast model restorations and I have been having problems with Firefox not letting me reserve a slot in the HPR schedule to upload the show too. It returns an error message. However If I use Chromium to book the slot, not a problem, I can then go back into Firefox and do the remainder of the process from there. It used to work just fine, I’m wondering if my ad blocking plugins might be the issue?  
    • The big story for me this week is, since the last show I purchased a new colour Laser printer, the HP Color Laser 150nw, so I can produce high quality decals for my models that require them. I bought this printer as I was led to believe that it had Linux support. I set it up, downloaded the HP driver package HPLIP from the Developers page which is a more up to date version than that in Mint 19.3, and I thought great, we are good to go. No this did not recognise that the printer was present even after restarting the printer several times with the USB cable attached to the PC. So I went into CUPS which prior to installation of the HPLIP package had not had any idea what this HP printer was, it now recognised it was there and came up with the model and a recommended driver which I installed. I tried a test print the light on the printer starts to flash but apart from a little noise from it as the paper feed whirls around nothing else happens. Several attempts later I started to suspect I had a faulty printer, but I had one last option before I gave up. Here’s where I have to say the dreaded ‘Windows word’ I got out my Dell 7250 laptop that has W10 installed as a test machine for troubleshooting windows issues for other folk, I plugged in the printer and it picked it up right away and started to install the driver, after installing I printed the test page and it worked. In one way I was relieved as my $160 / £130 I spent for the printer is not wasted but I’m more than a little disgruntled that I have to have a Windows laptop to drive the thing instead of just working on my Mint 19.3 box like it should!!!! I then had an idea and booted into Ubuntu Studio 20.04 and it picked the printer up without the addition of any other software so the moral of the story is run the latest OS you can if you want your printer to be supported in Linux.
  • Moss
    • Distrohoppers’ Digest 014 is out. We’d love to have everyone listen to it. Tony and I have a great time doing this little monthly hop.
    • Sometime after the last show was in the can but before we did Distrohoppers’ Digest, I accessed my two machines and did what can only be called Adventures In GPartEd. My desktop box went from 2 partitions to 3, and my laptop went from 3 to 4, complete with cleaning up unnecessary partitions and moving things around so much that if GPartEd *were* dangerous to use, I would have lost lots of data. It is of interest to note my desktop’s hard drive somehow had both EFI and Grub partitions; I removed and reallocated the latter, and also increased the size of my swap partition. Everything works. I’m waiting for all the distros which have been promised, including a new openSUSE, and Slackware 15.
    • Over the past couple days, I have been trying the new Mint 20 on the laptop. I overwrote the Manjaro partition… I tried Cinnamon, but found something mildly upsetting in yesterday’s show meeting and installed MATE instead, then had a couple minor catastrophes causing me to reinstall MATE… TWICE… so I was up all night again. When I get Mint 20 up to the level I need for working, probably today or tomorrow, I will reinstall Manjaro over the Mint 19.3 partition… and will lose the GRUB niceties of 19.3, which were removed in 20 because they caused some machines to not boot. I guess I can make OpenMandriva the Grubholder then, so I can still have a pretty boot menu.  For the record, my memory use in 20 Cinnamon was 1.7 Gb at rest, where in MATE it’s about 770 Mb. Both of those are high for these desktops, but I assume they will work on getting it down soon.
    • I am making an effort to use Bodhi for more of my daily stuff, rather than treating it like a fun curiosity. It is interesting to learn what stuff goes where in a superlight desktop, very different from what I’ve been used to in heavier desktops like XFCE. For instance, I created Key Bindings to turn my touchpad on and off. What I mean by “superlight”: Stacer reports 324 Mb in use with only Stacer open, and 14 Mb of that is Stacer itself. We usually call a desktop “light” if it has 550-700 Mb in use at rest.
    • I still don’t have a distro to review for next Distrohoppers’, but Mint should be out soon. I already have downloaded what should be the final, but they haven’t announced it yet.
    • I bought a new tablet, a Hyundai Technologies Koral 10×3. I was trying to order a PineTab but my wife blocked the purchase. It turns out she thought I was just trying to order another Raspberry Pi, and then, when she approved me buying it, it was sold out. Then a friend told me about her tablet, and I got excited and bought one… I probably jumped at it too quickly, and I do have a bit of buyers’ remorse, having read a few more reviews, but I’ll wait until it arrives before I bad-mouth it… or talk it up…
    • I’ve been running around with all this extra Covid money from Congress, getting  clothes and bedsheets and all the things we have absolutely needed but couldn’t afford, and spending out of pocket for my wife’s health care, which we previously had no money for and still can’t get insurance for. Also due to the Covid money, we are not currently eligible for the various low-income healthcare programs. I’m  cleaning up debt, most of which was caused by importing my wife from Canada — all the money the government and lawyers need for that to happen. Everything’s done except the debt reduction program I’m in, which will be over in less than a year. But all this good money is scheduled to end July 31, which will mean a $540 per week dropoff, and there are no legal jobs in sight.  I can’t even work in my previous employment, as I’m more of a driver risk, have a still-injured shoulder, and otherwise I’m still 67 years old. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been stuck at around 140% of poverty level, and it’s ending in 33 days.
    • As I haven’t been sleeping in bed since the accident, our Dresden Files reading has dropped off, but we’re pretty deep in the 5th book right now.
    • Enough of this. Let’s get to Joe.
  • Joe
    • Attended a virtual LUG
      • It was interesting
      • It was nice to get to see all the people that I normally hang out with at the LUG even if it was over Zoom
      • Got to help a bunch of people and learn a couple of things about top and htop
    • Jim Butcher Codex Alera
      • Good series.  The last book is the weakest but still a really good conclusion
      • Remember the new book comes out next month for the Dresden Files
        • The first few chapters are available online although i have not read them as i would rather wait for the whole book
    • Larry Correia 
      • Grimnoir
        • Trilogy with some short stories attached.
        • Alternate history book post WW2
      • Monster Hunter
        • Really good series that I keep going back to
      • Saga of the Forgotten Warrior
        • Only two books in the series so far but I am liking it
    • Book 14 of the Nate Temple series.  
      • I thought the series was starting to lag but it seems to be picking up again.  Really good book
    • Decided that if i am going to use the Pi as an sshfs gateway then I should make the internet connection a bit more stable.  The Powerline ethernet adapter that I use doesn’t provide much speed and has many drops.  I could possibly code my way around that being a major issue but I would like more reliability.  I have a few wifi adapters that i could try out but my set top box in the garage has a solid connection and good speeds on 5 GHz so i am going to use internet sharing on that to a network switch.  https://www.tecmint.com/share-internet-in-linux/
      • Also found out that the if up and if down folders do not work so i tried dhclient-enter-hooks.d
      • Which i have not been able to get to work so far
      • Trying out systemctl which i am seeing a response from using the simple statements that i was using before.  I am able to keep that service running +with an extremely simple while loop but it currently lacks flexibility on failures so i will need to write some loops that are dependant on the response from pings
    • I was able to print a mount for my 7130 that allows me to keep it directly under the monitor that I use for work.  This allows me to watch fix it videos during the slow times or when i am doing something routine.  As well as do things like type up my bi-weekly wanderings during my breaks.
  • Bo
    • ESO on stadia
      • PC and Steam accounts
      • Performance

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE

  •  Ripple20 Is a Pack of Almost 20 Bugs Affecting Millions of Devices
    • Specifically, it’s pinned to a service called Treck with DNS support
    • The bugs can cause Denial of Service all the way up to Remote Code Execution
    • Affected devices can be just about anything since this is a supply chain flaw.
      • Essentially, a vulnerable piece of software is made available by, in this case Treck, and it is then taken by manufacturers and used in TONS of devices to add additional functionality without having to write code themselves.
      • Printers, Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Smart home thingies like thermostats and light bulbs. This library is truly pervasive.
    • Update your Treck libraries to 6.0.1.67 and all is well for every bug that’s part of Ripple20.
    • Easy right? Well, no, actually. When’s the last time you updated your smart light bulb? Your UPS? This problem will be with us for years. How many people do you think will hear these advisories? It’s been out for almost two weeks at the time of this recording.
    • Folks, it really is time to ask yourself if it’s worth having someone know everything about you, or take control of your network in exchange for being able to shut off a light from two rooms away.
    • NanoLeaf light panels, the app allows you to download other people’s light patterns and put them on

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 12th of July at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4499