PIA – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Sat, 30 Jul 2022 19:14:02 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png PIA – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast PIA – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 391.5 – The Subscription Service Rabbit Hole https://mintcast.org/391-5-the-subscription-service-rabbit-hole/ Sat, 30 Jul 2022 19:02:25 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5551 Download
]]> 0:42 Linux Innards
1:24:06 Vibrations from the Ether
1:28:30  Check This Out
1:30:45 Housekeeping and Announcements

In our Innards section, we discuss the subscription services we’re using.

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

The Linux Innards

  • Bill
    • Netflix
    • Amazon Prime
    • Hulu
    • Disney+
    • Discovery+
    • Paramount+
    • HBO Max
    • Philo
    • Mozilla VPN
    • Trust.Zone VPN
    • ABC Mouse
    • Xbox Gamepass Ultimate x 3
    • Big Fish Games
    • Tutanota Email
    • Google Domains
    • GoDaddy
    • Linode
    • Bitwarden
    • Apple Podcasts
    • Github
    • Truckerpath
    • Pandora
    • Protonmail
    • Pluto
    • Tubi
    • Red Circle
  • Moss
    • Xfinity Internet
    • Amazon Prime
    • Protonmail
    • My-diary.org
    • Surfshark
    • Bitwarden
    • Namecheap
    • PurplePenguin
    • Paramount+ with ShowtimeDisney+/Hulu+/ESPN+
    • Peacock
    • Amazon Prime Video
    • PlutoTV
    • Tubi
    • Joe’s Plex
    • Bill’s Jellyfin
    • Hypnotix
    • Real Debrid
    • Trakt.TV
  • Norbert
    • Tidal
    • Google Drive
    • Netflix
    • ProtonMail
    • YouTube Premium
    • Windscribe VPN
    • Spotify
    • Patreon
    • Crunchyroll
  • Joe
    • Prime
    • Netflix
    • PIA VPN
    • Spectrum
    • T-mobile
    • Plex
    • Crackle
    • Google voice

Check This Out

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • 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!
]]> 391.5 - The Subscription Service Rabbit Hole full 1:35:22 5551 mintCast 336 – Sneaky Snek (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-336-sneaky-snek-mp3/ Wed, 03 Jun 2020 04:55:30 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4442 Then, in the news, Gnome wins, Microsoft loses, Linux moves on
In security, GitLab goes fishing
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Erik gardens, Tony Hughes bakes cars, Moss throws everything up in the air, Tony Watts goes live, Joe fills his brain, Bo fights a snake, and Leo fixes an oven

Then, in the news, Gnome wins, Microsoft loses, Linux moves on

In security, GitLab goes fishing

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Erik
    • Planting our gardens. We live in the country with some land and we have 4 separate gardens. We’re working on the last one now which is a little behind schedule for planting
    • Reopened our office with a ‘soft reopening’ with the Coronavirus. Still have the majority of my staff working remotely but we’re able to come back into the office for various items. 
    • Testing new laptops with dedicated graphics cards for the CAD and 3D design software. Looking at Lenovo ThinkPads, HP, and MSI gaming laptops. 
    • Took a 600 mile round trip to pick up a machine for use at the business. Picked up 2 ‘mini-trucks’ for using on projects – design and construction projects. 
      • The trucks are Japanese over the road vehicles but not highway vehicles in the US (for the most part)
      • Full creature comforts with a regular cab, heat, A/C, radio, wipers, etc. 
      • Four-wheel drive but you drive on the opposite side (right side) and shift with your left hand – that takes some getting used to
      • Size of a UTV but with weigh about 2000 pounds but 5 feet wide and 11 feet long
  • Leo
    • Rocco recently released a Linux Spotlight featuring… me!
    • We fixed our oven!
    • Got show audio working! CMUS
    • Playing with Cloudready. Not too bad! Virtualbox is really easy to get going for anything Cloudready doesn’t do natively.
  • Tony H 
    • More work on my models and recording another episode for HPR about the process. I’m enjoying the process although documenting all the stages of the process takes a lot of time remembering to take pictures of the stages as I go along. 
    • I started to use one of my Toshiba Z30’s as my Zoom/Jitsi box as it is easier to move around and set up in the workshop when I need to join a Zoom or Jitsi call. I hadn’t switched this Laptop on for well over 2 months and still had to fully configure my Mint 19.3 install, ran all the updates and installed Zoom and everything is great. I joined the Makerspace/LUG via Jitsi the last few weeks, just a point that for some reason Jitsi seems to be better on Chrome/Chromium than FireFox where it is a little flakey. It does work but you may wish to alter the video resolution to get a smoother experience.
    • Found a bug in my install of Kubuntu on the Dell E7440 for the next Distrohoppers, when you suspend the laptop it will not reconnect to the WiFi network. I have to reboot to get WiFi back. This has happened a couple of times, but as I rarely suspend my laptops it is not a major issue and I’m not sure if this is an issue for others. I did do some research and this issue seems to go back to 2016 it looks like a WiFi driver issue according to the Ubuntu documentation. It does say update your computer but it is fully up to date on the latest 20.04 release.
    • Continuing to bake bread and other things, I made another 2 loaves of Sourdough yesterday. Although on Monday we treated ourselves to a delivery of a traditional British afternoon Tea, as it was the Bank holiday and part of celebrating My wife’s birthday during the week as we couldn’t go out for our usual meal.
    • Since the lockdown I have been going out daily for a walk as my normal exercise at the gym can not happen, this last 2 weeks I have now got over 62 days of walking in excess of 5000 steps a day, yes I know they say 10000 is the amount to remain fit, but us oldies are advised to do 150 minutes a week and I’m blasting that.
  • Moss
    • Yesterday during the show meeting, my Linux box just was not working right, I could hear Tony Hughes great, Joe pretty well, and everyone else was breaking up. I tried a bunch of things. Nothing worked. So. Less than 2 hours before the show, I decided to switch machines. I set up my Kudu, with the i7 CPU instead of an i3 but otherwise similar specs, and loaded Mint. I decided to try out the software in advance (about 13.30 prior to a 15.00 showtime), and found Audacity 2.4.1 was just not working. After asking a few questions of Leo and Tony with no resolution, I rebooted to Pearl OS 9, where Audacity 2.3.3 was working just fine. So I went to set up Mumble, and discovered that the version in the repos does not accept our certificate. Leo told me to get the snap, so I did, and it’s working fine. I think.
    • I got KDE neon loaded to my Kudu laptop, in preparation for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest. I got everything set up in case I wanted to use it for a podcast, and, for the first time, got HexChat set up such that I log right into the mintCast room with admin privileges. Of course, that means I will never use it for a podcast, ever. Everything else is set up except that I haven’t bothered to validate my Trakt.tv and real-debrid accounts for Kodi.
    • And then the trouble started. For some reason, whether I’m connected via either wifi or ethernet, I get a yellow exclamation point stating “Limited Connectivity”. I asked around a bit, and after determining it is using exactly the same kernel as Mint (so that is not the issue), I checked the KDE Community Forums and found others had the same problem, supposedly to be fixed soon in an update. This does give me something to complain about in my review next DHD.
    • The Linux box is cruising along. After a lot of chatting with the guys in Telegram and with Leo, it seems that I don’t really need to do much in the way of upgrading it. I need to get some connectors for the Molex and data cables to be able to use them for SATA, a new (larger) SSD, and that’s about it.
    • I finally got tired of loving the look of OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 but not being able to do much with it, so I looked around a bit and installed the new Pearl OS 9. You may remember me talking about Pearl Desktop 8 a few months back, it’s been relabeled and updated. I’m getting a lot of negative comments from the peanut gallery, to the effect of if I wanted a Mac desktop I should get a Mac, but that’s fine with me. It’s almost pure Ubuntu with some Mint tools, the desktop is hybrid XFCE and LXDE with lots of Compiz Fusion, and it still uses less than 800 Mb RAM. I had to strip some political stuff from it, as the dev is very much into Qanon and Alex Jones, as shown by the included links and apps.
    • I listened to the first 15 minutes of Brian Lunduke’s current version of Linux Sucks. These have been pleasant in the past, host aside, but this one was a complete waste of my time and I just stopped. Not the worst 15 minutes of my life but it was in the running.
    • My wife and I are now into Death Masks, the 5th book of Dresden Files. and are chugging right along. She just recently noticed that we had cut off reading Temeraire and suggested we might get back to it someday. I’m still unemployed, working pretty hard to change that but there aren’t many jobs out there yet. I sent out 6 resumes last week and got 3 of them back as bad addresses, one as a vacant lot. Did a bunch more research and sent three more out yesterday, two of them to the current addresses of those which got returned. It’s sad when you find computer company addresses on the Internet which are over 5 years old.
  • Tony Watts
    • Played a real live gig last week, at a brewery
    • “Attended” a virtual Clutch concert on Wednesday
    • Renewing PIA
    • Received velour headphone cushions for ATH-M50x
    • More testing with audio/video recording 
      • Audio interface successfully tested on Android phone and Amazon tablet
      • Successful FB Live test on both Thinkpad T480 and Dell 7130, using just web browser, audio interface and internal webcam (no streaming software)
      • Played a bit with OBS on Dell 7130
    • Kubuntu on the Dell 7130
      • Suspend works properly, have not always had good luck with that on other distros
      • Only issue encountered, rear-facing camera does not work in Kubuntu but also does not work in any other Linux distro I’ve tried.  Only the front “selfie” camera works in Linux (never tried Windows? Could be hardware issue for all I know)
      • Noted Chrome automatically has touch scrolling working as a default, upon install.  The included FireFox does not.  
  • Joe
    • Worldship Humility by RR Haywood
      • Really good book.  The action was steady but not overpowering.
      • High quality audio and a good story. Will be trying other titles from the same author
    • Brandon Sanderson sequel to Skyward called Starsight
      • Very enjoyable sequel.  Lots of new information in building the world
      • A good addition to what should be a solid series.
      • Because Brandon Sanderson just needed another really good book series
    • Delta V by Daniel Suarez
      • Really good book with some solid ideas in regards to mining in space
    • Influx by Daniel Suarez
      • An interesting book if less memorable
      • About the suppression of technology to control the advancement of society 
    • Second book in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero by William Gibson
      • This series has been difficult for me to get through.  I really want to like it but it is more a series that I would have to dedicate a lot more cycles to than I have available at any given time.  So maybe the next time I am on vacation…
    • Haven’t been spending enough time listening to the podcasts that I enjoy mostly because I normally listen at work and most of work lately has been taken up with meetings.  The joys of working from home.  I used to hate the days that I would spend 6 hours of the day in meetings and now it almost feels like the norm.
    • But i did make sure to listen to Leo on the Linux Spotlight and yes i will be talking more about headphones today.
    • Second pair of Sony XB700’s.  The ones I bought for parts so I could fix the first pair.  
      • Bad battery which is why I got them cheap.  Would not charge at all and would not turn on
      • Also I removed the drivers in them to use on the other ones
      • So none of the grill or ear pads were there either
      • I also had a pair of EarPollution Moguls that were in pretty bad shape and the only good thing they had going for them in the first place was decent drivers
      • It took several iterations and test prints to get all the dimensions correct but I designed and printed the grill and driver mount as well as an expanded ear cup mod. 
      • Used a method I saw on “My Mate Vince” YouTube channel to resurrect the battery.  Pulled the battery out and connected it to a PCB USB battery charger and monitored the charge with my voltmeter.  Voltage went from 0 to 3.7 volts very quickly.  I then disconnected the battery from the charger and resoldered to the headphones and verified that the built in charger could finish the job up to 4.2 volts
      • So the Sony XB700’s are now over ear instead of on ear and have 50mm drivers instead of 30mm drivers
      • I glued the drivers into place to prevent rattling and the volume is good although if I use the enhanced bass features too much I get a bit of distortion.  I do have other drivers on the way from china or i may pick up some better ones or pull the ones i have in an old pair of tritons
      • Testing the batteries over a long period of time before gluing all the new parts in place.  Am also looking at maybe making my own mounting screw holes since I was not able to use the originals.  This would allow for modifications and fixes in the future.  But for now it looks like the battery is completely restored and i have a second pair of headphones that are really good for all day wear
    • I also think i have ruined my music listening with this being stuck at home and getting to use cans instead of the hbs 770s.  I switched back to them for jogging the other day and normally while jogging i will listen to an audiobook or podcasts but instead i decided to listen to some metal.  The only thing that was going through my mind was how tinnie it sounded and how little bass there was.  This was with the better modular drivers that i had added and it still sounded horrible.  So I may be looking for other really good in-ear drivers that I can mod to use the modular connections and improve sound quality.
    • Or I may buy some MMCX in-ears that rate well.  Then try to build my own later.  I only need one good pair to start with because I can move them to all my modular headsets.  Still, at 50 bucks, that is a bit of a splurge for me for the 
    • Traded one of the Skullcandy Crushers with the 3D printed hinge for a HP Touchsmart
      • Also made sure to 3D print a spare hinge so that if the other one breaks i won’t be in a hurry to send another one.
    • Looking at building or buying a new tower computer for my server.  But not certain where i want to go with it
      • The mini ITX and micro ATX builds seem very cool and not as expensive as i supposed they would be but it seems a bit pointless if i am planning on adding 4 hard drives.  I don’t need a lot of peripherals added but i should put a decent graphics card on for transcoding with plex.
      • I could add in a graphics card to my current build as long as it is not trying to use board power and has a seperate power connector but the server that i have is still having problems where it overheats and crashes.  I may just try a full reinstall.
    • Spent some time helping listener Dustin get resilio sync set up so that I could easily transfer some of my audiobooks over to him so he has something to listen to at work.  
      • I did see that resilio sync is not the easiest thing to set up.
      • But I still recommend it as a way for transferring large files amongst devices.
      • Granted I usually use it to sync files across my own machines.
      • Also had a really good conversation about books and fiction and what writers are good and what writers aren’t.  Didn’t get too far down the rabbit hole but it was still a good conversation.
      • Sounds like I got a new person to check out the Stormlight Archive.  I like this because I don’t have too many people to talk to about my obsessions 
    • Also been trying out some small things with plex.  Right now I have turned on the function to use ram as a temp space for the transcoding.  Dont notice too much of a difference but does seem a bit more stable.
    • Received the replacement micro sd card for my pi but have not set it up yet.  I think that I will be going with the Ubuntu OS for that.  But i will be keeping my option to switch back to raspbian open in case i cant get netflix working.
  • Bo
    • Removing a snake from my car
    • DIY coffee roaster 
    • Krita for android in beta 

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE: 

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, June 14, 2020. That’s 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 4442 mintCast 336 – Sneaky Snek https://mintcast.org/mintcast-336-sneaky-snek/ Wed, 03 Jun 2020 04:29:51 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4437 Then, in the news, Gnome wins, Microsoft loses, Linux moves on
In security, GitLab goes fishing
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Erik gardens, Tony Hughes bakes cars, Moss throws everything up in the air, Tony Watts goes live, Joe fills his brain, Bo fights a snake, and Leo fixes an oven

Then, in the news, Gnome wins, Microsoft loses, Linux moves on

In security, GitLab goes fishing

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Erik
    • Planting our gardens. We live in the country with some land and we have 4 separate gardens. We’re working on the last one now which is a little behind schedule for planting
    • Reopened our office with a ‘soft reopening’ with the Coronavirus. Still have the majority of my staff working remotely but we’re able to come back into the office for various items. 
    • Testing new laptops with dedicated graphics cards for the CAD and 3D design software. Looking at Lenovo ThinkPads, HP, and MSI gaming laptops. 
    • Took a 600 mile round trip to pick up a machine for use at the business. Picked up 2 ‘mini-trucks’ for using on projects – design and construction projects. 
      • The trucks are Japanese over the road vehicles but not highway vehicles in the US (for the most part)
      • Full creature comforts with a regular cab, heat, A/C, radio, wipers, etc. 
      • Four-wheel drive but you drive on the opposite side (right side) and shift with your left hand – that takes some getting used to
      • Size of a UTV but with weigh about 2000 pounds but 5 feet wide and 11 feet long
  • Leo
    • Rocco recently released a Linux Spotlight featuring… me!
    • We fixed our oven!
    • Got show audio working! CMUS
    • Playing with Cloudready. Not too bad! Virtualbox is really easy to get going for anything Cloudready doesn’t do natively.
  • Tony H 
    • More work on my models and recording another episode for HPR about the process. I’m enjoying the process although documenting all the stages of the process takes a lot of time remembering to take pictures of the stages as I go along. 
    • I started to use one of my Toshiba Z30’s as my Zoom/Jitsi box as it is easier to move around and set up in the workshop when I need to join a Zoom or Jitsi call. I hadn’t switched this Laptop on for well over 2 months and still had to fully configure my Mint 19.3 install, ran all the updates and installed Zoom and everything is great. I joined the Makerspace/LUG via Jitsi the last few weeks, just a point that for some reason Jitsi seems to be better on Chrome/Chromium than FireFox where it is a little flakey. It does work but you may wish to alter the video resolution to get a smoother experience.
    • Found a bug in my install of Kubuntu on the Dell E7440 for the next Distrohoppers, when you suspend the laptop it will not reconnect to the WiFi network. I have to reboot to get WiFi back. This has happened a couple of times, but as I rarely suspend my laptops it is not a major issue and I’m not sure if this is an issue for others. I did do some research and this issue seems to go back to 2016 it looks like a WiFi driver issue according to the Ubuntu documentation. It does say update your computer but it is fully up to date on the latest 20.04 release.
    • Continuing to bake bread and other things, I made another 2 loaves of Sourdough yesterday. Although on Monday we treated ourselves to a delivery of a traditional British afternoon Tea, as it was the Bank holiday and part of celebrating My wife’s birthday during the week as we couldn’t go out for our usual meal.
    • Since the lockdown I have been going out daily for a walk as my normal exercise at the gym can not happen, this last 2 weeks I have now got over 62 days of walking in excess of 5000 steps a day, yes I know they say 10000 is the amount to remain fit, but us oldies are advised to do 150 minutes a week and I’m blasting that.
  • Moss
    • Yesterday during the show meeting, my Linux box just was not working right, I could hear Tony Hughes great, Joe pretty well, and everyone else was breaking up. I tried a bunch of things. Nothing worked. So. Less than 2 hours before the show, I decided to switch machines. I set up my Kudu, with the i7 CPU instead of an i3 but otherwise similar specs, and loaded Mint. I decided to try out the software in advance (about 13.30 prior to a 15.00 showtime), and found Audacity 2.4.1 was just not working. After asking a few questions of Leo and Tony with no resolution, I rebooted to Pearl OS 9, where Audacity 2.3.3 was working just fine. So I went to set up Mumble, and discovered that the version in the repos does not accept our certificate. Leo told me to get the snap, so I did, and it’s working fine. I think.
    • I got KDE neon loaded to my Kudu laptop, in preparation for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest. I got everything set up in case I wanted to use it for a podcast, and, for the first time, got HexChat set up such that I log right into the mintCast room with admin privileges. Of course, that means I will never use it for a podcast, ever. Everything else is set up except that I haven’t bothered to validate my Trakt.tv and real-debrid accounts for Kodi.
    • And then the trouble started. For some reason, whether I’m connected via either wifi or ethernet, I get a yellow exclamation point stating “Limited Connectivity”. I asked around a bit, and after determining it is using exactly the same kernel as Mint (so that is not the issue), I checked the KDE Community Forums and found others had the same problem, supposedly to be fixed soon in an update. This does give me something to complain about in my review next DHD.
    • The Linux box is cruising along. After a lot of chatting with the guys in Telegram and with Leo, it seems that I don’t really need to do much in the way of upgrading it. I need to get some connectors for the Molex and data cables to be able to use them for SATA, a new (larger) SSD, and that’s about it.
    • I finally got tired of loving the look of OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 but not being able to do much with it, so I looked around a bit and installed the new Pearl OS 9. You may remember me talking about Pearl Desktop 8 a few months back, it’s been relabeled and updated. I’m getting a lot of negative comments from the peanut gallery, to the effect of if I wanted a Mac desktop I should get a Mac, but that’s fine with me. It’s almost pure Ubuntu with some Mint tools, the desktop is hybrid XFCE and LXDE with lots of Compiz Fusion, and it still uses less than 800 Mb RAM. I had to strip some political stuff from it, as the dev is very much into Qanon and Alex Jones, as shown by the included links and apps.
    • I listened to the first 15 minutes of Brian Lunduke’s current version of Linux Sucks. These have been pleasant in the past, host aside, but this one was a complete waste of my time and I just stopped. Not the worst 15 minutes of my life but it was in the running.
    • My wife and I are now into Death Masks, the 5th book of Dresden Files. and are chugging right along. She just recently noticed that we had cut off reading Temeraire and suggested we might get back to it someday. I’m still unemployed, working pretty hard to change that but there aren’t many jobs out there yet. I sent out 6 resumes last week and got 3 of them back as bad addresses, one as a vacant lot. Did a bunch more research and sent three more out yesterday, two of them to the current addresses of those which got returned. It’s sad when you find computer company addresses on the Internet which are over 5 years old.
  • Tony Watts
    • Played a real live gig last week, at a brewery
    • “Attended” a virtual Clutch concert on Wednesday
    • Renewing PIA
    • Received velour headphone cushions for ATH-M50x
    • More testing with audio/video recording 
      • Audio interface successfully tested on Android phone and Amazon tablet
      • Successful FB Live test on both Thinkpad T480 and Dell 7130, using just web browser, audio interface and internal webcam (no streaming software)
      • Played a bit with OBS on Dell 7130
    • Kubuntu on the Dell 7130
      • Suspend works properly, have not always had good luck with that on other distros
      • Only issue encountered, rear-facing camera does not work in Kubuntu but also does not work in any other Linux distro I’ve tried.  Only the front “selfie” camera works in Linux (never tried Windows? Could be hardware issue for all I know)
      • Noted Chrome automatically has touch scrolling working as a default, upon install.  The included FireFox does not.  
  • Joe
    • Worldship Humility by RR Haywood
      • Really good book.  The action was steady but not overpowering.
      • High quality audio and a good story. Will be trying other titles from the same author
    • Brandon Sanderson sequel to Skyward called Starsight
      • Very enjoyable sequel.  Lots of new information in building the world
      • A good addition to what should be a solid series.
      • Because Brandon Sanderson just needed another really good book series
    • Delta V by Daniel Suarez
      • Really good book with some solid ideas in regards to mining in space
    • Influx by Daniel Suarez
      • An interesting book if less memorable
      • About the suppression of technology to control the advancement of society 
    • Second book in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero by William Gibson
      • This series has been difficult for me to get through.  I really want to like it but it is more a series that I would have to dedicate a lot more cycles to than I have available at any given time.  So maybe the next time I am on vacation…
    • Haven’t been spending enough time listening to the podcasts that I enjoy mostly because I normally listen at work and most of work lately has been taken up with meetings.  The joys of working from home.  I used to hate the days that I would spend 6 hours of the day in meetings and now it almost feels like the norm.
    • But i did make sure to listen to Leo on the Linux Spotlight and yes i will be talking more about headphones today.
    • Second pair of Sony XB700’s.  The ones I bought for parts so I could fix the first pair.  
      • Bad battery which is why I got them cheap.  Would not charge at all and would not turn on
      • Also I removed the drivers in them to use on the other ones
      • So none of the grill or ear pads were there either
      • I also had a pair of EarPollution Moguls that were in pretty bad shape and the only good thing they had going for them in the first place was decent drivers
      • It took several iterations and test prints to get all the dimensions correct but I designed and printed the grill and driver mount as well as an expanded ear cup mod. 
      • Used a method I saw on “My Mate Vince” YouTube channel to resurrect the battery.  Pulled the battery out and connected it to a PCB USB battery charger and monitored the charge with my voltmeter.  Voltage went from 0 to 3.7 volts very quickly.  I then disconnected the battery from the charger and resoldered to the headphones and verified that the built in charger could finish the job up to 4.2 volts
      • So the Sony XB700’s are now over ear instead of on ear and have 50mm drivers instead of 30mm drivers
      • I glued the drivers into place to prevent rattling and the volume is good although if I use the enhanced bass features too much I get a bit of distortion.  I do have other drivers on the way from china or i may pick up some better ones or pull the ones i have in an old pair of tritons
      • Testing the batteries over a long period of time before gluing all the new parts in place.  Am also looking at maybe making my own mounting screw holes since I was not able to use the originals.  This would allow for modifications and fixes in the future.  But for now it looks like the battery is completely restored and i have a second pair of headphones that are really good for all day wear
    • I also think i have ruined my music listening with this being stuck at home and getting to use cans instead of the hbs 770s.  I switched back to them for jogging the other day and normally while jogging i will listen to an audiobook or podcasts but instead i decided to listen to some metal.  The only thing that was going through my mind was how tinnie it sounded and how little bass there was.  This was with the better modular drivers that i had added and it still sounded horrible.  So I may be looking for other really good in-ear drivers that I can mod to use the modular connections and improve sound quality.
    • Or I may buy some MMCX in-ears that rate well.  Then try to build my own later.  I only need one good pair to start with because I can move them to all my modular headsets.  Still, at 50 bucks, that is a bit of a splurge for me for the 
    • Traded one of the Skullcandy Crushers with the 3D printed hinge for a HP Touchsmart
      • Also made sure to 3D print a spare hinge so that if the other one breaks i won’t be in a hurry to send another one.
    • Looking at building or buying a new tower computer for my server.  But not certain where i want to go with it
      • The mini ITX and micro ATX builds seem very cool and not as expensive as i supposed they would be but it seems a bit pointless if i am planning on adding 4 hard drives.  I don’t need a lot of peripherals added but i should put a decent graphics card on for transcoding with plex.
      • I could add in a graphics card to my current build as long as it is not trying to use board power and has a seperate power connector but the server that i have is still having problems where it overheats and crashes.  I may just try a full reinstall.
    • Spent some time helping listener Dustin get resilio sync set up so that I could easily transfer some of my audiobooks over to him so he has something to listen to at work.  
      • I did see that resilio sync is not the easiest thing to set up.
      • But I still recommend it as a way for transferring large files amongst devices.
      • Granted I usually use it to sync files across my own machines.
      • Also had a really good conversation about books and fiction and what writers are good and what writers aren’t.  Didn’t get too far down the rabbit hole but it was still a good conversation.
      • Sounds like I got a new person to check out the Stormlight Archive.  I like this because I don’t have too many people to talk to about my obsessions 
    • Also been trying out some small things with plex.  Right now I have turned on the function to use ram as a temp space for the transcoding.  Dont notice too much of a difference but does seem a bit more stable.
    • Received the replacement micro sd card for my pi but have not set it up yet.  I think that I will be going with the Ubuntu OS for that.  But i will be keeping my option to switch back to raspbian open in case i cant get netflix working.
  • Bo
    • Removing a snake from my car
    • DIY coffee roaster 
    • Krita for android in beta 

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE: 

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, June 14, 2020. That’s 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 4437 mintCast 324 – Attack of the Releases https://mintcast.org/mintcast-324-attack-of-the-releases/ Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:35:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4060 Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more
In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo suffers from new computer ills, Tony Hughes works on his cars, Moss fiddles with more distros, it’s reading and repairs for Joe, Tony Watts is rockin’ it, and Josh goes mad and gets an iPhone.

Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more

In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Finally saved up and got the 5700XT I’ve been drooling over for months.
      • Works great in Windows
      • Not so much in Linux Mint. There was some really bad mouse stutter that really impacted desktop performance and made most games unplayable. I was on the latest development Mesa, version 20, but Kernel 5.3.
      • Had a Manjaro Gnome install that I knew was on a later kernel (5.4.2), and 5.4 had some Navi improvements that affected my card. Tried it, and the desktop was smooth, however, nothing I tried would let me play games. They would freeze and never recover. It was so bad that I couldn’t even hop to a new TTY.
      • Installed UKUU on Mint and upgraded to 5.4.2. Mint wins again.
    • While I was troubleshooting, and using Windows to play games, I couldn’t get over how much my workflow was tied to Linux. I’m glad to be back on Mint.
    • Got the wife a new AData SU800 512GB SSD and she gets my hand-me-down Radeon 380x. Both will be a nice upgrade for her.
  • Tony H 
    • Recorded Distrohoppers with Moss, and this went well.
    • Continuing to play with my diecast models and a few more were delivered this week, some of which were in quite good condition for their age so will be added to the display collection until something better comes along. I restored a Matchbox No. 5c Routemaster London Bus this week and just need to add the advertising decals, which I don’t currently have. I am planning to make my own but need both the decal paper and a colour inkjet or laser printer but as a set of decals for one model can be between £2-3 in the long run it will be cheaper to make my own and I could probably make some for sale as well.
    • I also got a portable spray booth and Airbrush with a mini compressor as Birthday gifts this week, I’ve set up the spray booth in my office/workshop in the spare bedroom and plan to test it out next week before heading up to Scotland until Xmas eve to visit my step son and brother in law.
    • Having new UPVC windows fitted to my garage in preparation for turning it into the Makerspace Workshop. When we lost our last venue we lost the ability to use the Laser cutter and 3D printer as we can not install these at our current meeting venue of one of our local libraries.
    • Joined the BDLL Euro show last night.     
  • Moss 
    • We had a great Episode 008 for Distrohoppers’ Digest, available now at your favorite podcatcher or from our website, http://distrohoppersdigest.blogspot.com. This will be our last one for the year, and our next episode will be more laid back, although I’ve already installed KDE neon on my test machine.
    • I attempted to install Haiku OS on my Kudu, but learned it does not install to UEFI, so I broke out the still-unposted IdeaPad 110. I got to a certain point, and ran into informational vacuum, needing to know how to prepare the partition. I did get a nice response from the team, but have not been able to get back to it.  I learned a lot just getting that far, and maybe I’ll go on from there soon.
    • I attempted to install  Peppermint OS 10 to my test laptop. The partitioning failed. The installer crashed the second try. I reinstalled KDE neon.
    • Sabayon was refusing to load the desktop lately. I could not log in as my username, but logging in as root got me a full-screen terminal. I posted the issue to the Sabayon forum and got a quick reply. Stating that I needed to reload lightdm, with instructions as to how. That worked. As I doubt any of our listeners are running Sabayon, I won’t post the commands I used to fix the issue.
    • I did some Timeshift backups today. I keep infrequent backups of everything except Sabayon (haven’t figured out how to load Timeshift through Entropy). As part of my efforts today, I learned that my Galago Pro identifies the external backup drive as sdb, and then finds I don’t have an sdb5, which is where my Linux Mint is installed (Pearl on sdb3). So I need to keep it unplugged until after boot, or I can’t boot to either Mint or Pearl. Odd that it isn’t identified as sdcX…
    • I had a pretty good birthday, with a pleasant gift from my mother and a lot of good wishes, plus extra hours being offered at work. I have stopped looking for work, with only one possible job not yet offered. Also, a great Thanksgiving and even a Holiday Party, with my friends at the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Education Center in Liberty Hill, TN. My wife and I feel we have found a new family.
    • And I received a donation from one of our listeners, David Lindberg. Thank you, David!  I purchased some much-needed USB-C cables.
  • Joe
    • Finished relistening to the Dresden files.  Love that series. Can’t recommend enough to everyone
      • Very well read
      • Good long series that takes some time to get through even at 4x
      • Too long since the last one but the author has had to work through a lot of issues and from what I understand the wait should not be long now.
    • Also went through the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony
      • This is a very convoluted series where all the books are very intertwined
      • Well read and well written
    • Need to catch up on Rick and Morty new season.
    • Behind on all the tv shows.
    • Bought some LG HBS 510’s 
      • Kinda old school
      • ordered 4 for 15 dollars
      • 1 no power show fully charged
      • Battery is working fine.  Can’t find a problem with the switch.  could check all the wires across for continuity.  But won’t. need the extra parts anyway
      • One of the sides went on another set
      • 1 neither side works but connects and pause play works
        • This will probably just require shortening of the cables
      • 1 left side out 
        • obvious, the casing was cracked around the earpiece and I could see that one of the connections was off.  soldered back on and glued the casing together with jb weld. It works great may go back and fill the hole with JB Weld 
      • 1 right side out, as in it is not there.  Another cracked casing but the speaker fell off
        • Was able to take one side from the one that wont turn on and swap it in.  now it just plain works
      • Should be able to fix 3.   
      • had extra glue so also glued one of the 820s with a broken band.
        • But it did not hold very well even after a couple of days worth of drying
      • The 510s are smaller and have fewer buttons than most of the ones that I have worked with but are still usable.  the sound is not terrible and they are not too difficult to work on. a single large mic that will require more testing.  Battery life is middling. the materials are a bit flimsy considering some of the fixes that I had to put in but they are also the lightest neckband headset I have used.  No one has complained about the call quality and I have not had any issue on my side of a call. the simplistic controls do take a bit of getting used to, especially when I am still switching amongst other headsets with a more standard setup.
    • Ordered another Dell Venue 7130 for 40 dollars.  Don’t know much about it yet other than it is missing the M.2 hard drive.  But it is the i5 version so it is either 4 or 8gb version.  
      • I have extra drives for it
      • Will find out if it has a good battery
      • And a good charging port
      • But there are 2 charging ports so if the usb one is bad I may have to either buy a dock or one of the high powered ones that use the same port
      • If I get it working I will either turn around and sell it or give it to one of my kids.
    • Fixed my dad’s old Toshiba Satellite L755-S5110
      • It had this problem where during startup it would get past the splash screen and start beeping horrendously
      • Figured it was the ram so I pulled the ram sticks one at a time and tested with less ram and known good ram still the same issue
      • So I removed the keyboard and started it up.  Worked fine.
      • Tested rehooking the keyboard while it was booted and it is always triggering some keys.
      • May order a new keyboard or may just use it as a settop box.
      • Second gen core i3 but still usable.  
      • Does need a new battery
      • But other than that, it would cost 20 dollars, 13 for the keyboard and 7 for the power supply to have a working laptop
      • Like 12 dollars for a battery.
    • Also was having a problem with my garage computer randomly shutting off.
      • Hard to isolate the problem because days could go by without it happening
      • After much testing of peripherals to find the issue I discovered that it was a problem with my Thinkpad USB 3.0 docking station
      • So I am looking for a decent low cost powered replacement (probably a couple of them) 
      • Preferably 7 ports and sub 10 dollars but I am not finding anything that fits the bill. 
    • Bought a Samsung gear fit2
      • Not sure how much I like it.
      • Heart rate is iffy 
      • Step count I will have to track more
  • Tony W
    • Busy as ever with music.  
      • Formed a band of my colleagues at the office and we played at the company holiday party.  It was a resounding success.  
      • Speaking of holiday party… will be doing to my wife’s work party toward end of our show, may have to drop a bit early
      • Also solo gigs, rock band, church band…
    • Mobile recording setup:
      • Dell 7130
      • Presonus Audiobox USB
        • Metal – built like a tank
        • Works out of the box with Linux, no problems whatsoever
        • Very light and portable
        • Power draws from USB – no power plug required
      • Unidirectional microphone (Either my Behringer or a borrowed Shure SM58 – doesn’t seem to be a dramatic difference)
        • I use a unidirectional mic to avoid picking up noise in my house (space heater and server right next to me, not to mention anything else in the rest of the house, kids, dogs…)
    • Dell 7130
      • Spent more time with the machine after it being a bit idle for a while.  I tend to spend a lot of time *obsessively* getting things to work like I want, and then walk away from them after that is accomplished.
      • Batteries in both tablet and keyboard actually seem to be in pretty good shape.  Linux mint indicates keyboard will last nearly 3 hours and the tablet about 7.5 hrs (have not tested this, no idea if will actually get that much, but so far can confirm the keyboard will last 2+ hrs charging the tablet)
      • Keyboard is very glitchy.  Have to dock multiple times before the tablet will recognize keyboard/touchpad (even though battery display seems to update every time)
      • Ordered a tablet keyboard cover, maybe less issues.  Will report back on that
    • New work laptop
      • Old: Dell E6430
        • I used that laptop for 7+ years.  IT dept delayed in replacing it as it was up to spec after various upgrades
        • Processor 3rd gen i7, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, new battery…
        • Replaced due to touchpad button issues (may have been a Windows only problem)
      • New: Thinkpad T480.  Great machine
        • I7 model
        • I will need a USB C dock now, for working at home
  • Josh
    • Finished my mock exams (finally) after two weeks. Sorry for the absence but they say school comes first (whatever that means).
    • Released Issue 6 of micro:mag, our most popular issue yet where we got 2000 readers in the first 48 hours.
    • Got myself some 8BitDo Bluetooth Stereo Speakers after winning a gift card during a Black Friday competition. Really good for the price and work well with Linux.
    • Last time I was on the show, I was having some trouble with Google after my Pixel 3 got RMAed.
      • 3 Months of battling with them
      • Support engineers cut me off the phone a few times
      • They can’t contact the refunds team
      • Google support is the worst
      • I really don’t want to be negative, but this has happened to many other customers too
      • We contacted the retailer where I got the phone from, John Lewis, who refunded me after trying Google support from themselves and seeing how bad it was.
    • I ended up getting the iPhone 11 Pro on a really good contract with o2 here in the UK after putting some of the refund money towards it.
      • iOS is really nice
      • Camera is incredible, especially the 4k60 video
      • Smooth performance
      • 2 Day Battery life
      • Apple devices are still too expensive and i’d never buy one outright but luckily thanks to a mix of Black Friday deals and putting a bit of money upfront from what I did have. 

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux Mint 19.3 Images Being Tested
    • Images showed up on Friday, marked as testing. Release is imminent!
  • Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for AWS
    • These images, for a little extra money, provide 10 years of support, Kernel Livepatching, Compliance profiles for things like HIPAA and PCI, and AWS Security integration.
  • Ubuntu AWS Will Use A Rolling Kernel
    • For non Ubuntu Pro instances, you’ll still be getting some goodies.
    • The rolling kernel is the typical hardware enablement kernel with AWS features built in, and all 18.04 instances will be upgraded to 5.0 from 4.15 by default.
    • You can test early to be sure things will work
      • sudo apt install linux-aws-edge
    • Or you can force your instances to stay on 4.15.
      • sudo apt install linux-aws-lts-18.04
  • Canonical Becomes Feature Sponsor for WSLConf
    • Hayden Barnes, Developer Advocate, Ubuntu on WSL, Canonical
  • Nginx offices raided for copyright dispute with Rambler (Moss)
  • Open Source Music Notations Software Musescore 3.3 Released! (Tony W)
    • For playing, printing and creating sheet music
    • Free but can use either a free or premium account for sharing with Musescore community
  • elementary OS 5.1 Hera
    • A new Greeter and first-install process
    • Flatpak Support
    • Accessibility being treated as normal options rather than things shoved away into a corner.
    • Ubuntu’s HWE 5.0 Kernel.
    • Some app improvements
    • If you’re upgrading from Juno, you won’t get the new kernel automatically. For that, run:
      • sudo apt install –install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04
  • Firefox 71
    • Picture in Picture for videos! (Windows only for now. Linux and Mac in Firefox 72)
    • Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS
    • More visible tracking protection
    • Improvements to Lockwise
    • Kiosk mode
  • Zorin OS 15.1 released (Moss)
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon first release (not official flavor yet)
  • MS Teams Is Now On Linux (second link)
  • Mac Pro is here (Josh)
    • Probably one of the most powerful consumer computers out there
    • Comes with a price for the top spec – $52,748.00
      • 2.5GHz 28‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
      • 1.5TB (12x128GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
      • Two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo with 2x32GB of HBM2 memory each
      • 4TB SSD storage
      • Apple Afterburner card
      • Stainless steel frame with wheels
      • Magic Mouse 2 + Magic Trackpad 2
      • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English
    • Base spec is $6,000 which is very expensive for what you get
      • 3.5GHz 8‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
      • 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
      • Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
      • 256GB SSD storage
      • Stainless steel frame with feet
      • Magic Mouse 2
      • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • <Moss>Remember the PIA purchase by Kape Technologies? Kape is a renamed malware company owned by a former Israeli spy (not from right wing sources)
  • New Linux Vulnerability Lets Attackers Hijack VPN Connections
    • Very in depth, but the short and sweet of it is that using this vulnerability allows an attacker to inject packets regardless of encryption.
    • People with a version of systemd released after Nov 28th, 2019 are affected. However, more distributions that aren’t on systemd are affected: Devuan, Void, FreeBSD.
    • A temporary fix would be to block bogon IP addresses. Essentially bogus or fake IPs. See: https://ipinfo.io/bogon 
  • Two malicious Python scripts caught stealing SSH and GPG keys
    • A result of typosquatting. Essentially naming libraries visually similar to confuse people into using the library.
    • Python3-dateutil was spoofing dateutil
    • JeIlyfish (the first l is replaced with a capital I) was spoofing Jellyfish. The spoofed JeIlyfish libraries were where the malicious code resided, and python3-dateutil would call the malicious JeIlyfish library.

Once the libraries are used, keys are sent to xxx://68.183.212.246:32258

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Episode will be December 29, 2019, 2pm Central US time.

WRAP-UP:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • 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 (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 4060 mintCast 324 – Attack of the Releases (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-324-attack-of-the-releases-mp3/ Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:35:14 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4055 Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more
In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo suffers from new computer ills, Tony Hughes works on his cars, Moss fiddles with more distros, it’s reading and repairs for Joe, Tony Watts is rockin’ it, and Josh goes mad and gets an iPhone.

Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more

In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Finally saved up and got the 5700XT I’ve been drooling over for months.
      • Works great in Windows
      • Not so much in Linux Mint. There was some really bad mouse stutter that really impacted desktop performance and made most games unplayable. I was on the latest development Mesa, version 20, but Kernel 5.3.
      • Had a Manjaro Gnome install that I knew was on a later kernel (5.4.2), and 5.4 had some Navi improvements that affected my card. Tried it, and the desktop was smooth, however, nothing I tried would let me play games. They would freeze and never recover. It was so bad that I couldn’t even hop to a new TTY.
      • Installed UKUU on Mint and upgraded to 5.4.2. Mint wins again.
    • While I was troubleshooting, and using Windows to play games, I couldn’t get over how much my workflow was tied to Linux. I’m glad to be back on Mint.
    • Got the wife a new AData SU800 512GB SSD and she gets my hand-me-down Radeon 380x. Both will be a nice upgrade for her.
  • Tony H 
    • Recorded Distrohoppers with Moss, and this went well.
    • Continuing to play with my diecast models and a few more were delivered this week, some of which were in quite good condition for their age so will be added to the display collection until something better comes along. I restored a Matchbox No. 5c Routemaster London Bus this week and just need to add the advertising decals, which I don’t currently have. I am planning to make my own but need both the decal paper and a colour inkjet or laser printer but as a set of decals for one model can be between £2-3 in the long run it will be cheaper to make my own and I could probably make some for sale as well.
    • I also got a portable spray booth and Airbrush with a mini compressor as Birthday gifts this week, I’ve set up the spray booth in my office/workshop in the spare bedroom and plan to test it out next week before heading up to Scotland until Xmas eve to visit my step son and brother in law.
    • Having new UPVC windows fitted to my garage in preparation for turning it into the Makerspace Workshop. When we lost our last venue we lost the ability to use the Laser cutter and 3D printer as we can not install these at our current meeting venue of one of our local libraries.
    • Joined the BDLL Euro show last night.     
  • Moss 
    • We had a great Episode 008 for Distrohoppers’ Digest, available now at your favorite podcatcher or from our website, http://distrohoppersdigest.blogspot.com. This will be our last one for the year, and our next episode will be more laid back, although I’ve already installed KDE neon on my test machine.
    • I attempted to install Haiku OS on my Kudu, but learned it does not install to UEFI, so I broke out the still-unposted IdeaPad 110. I got to a certain point, and ran into informational vacuum, needing to know how to prepare the partition. I did get a nice response from the team, but have not been able to get back to it.  I learned a lot just getting that far, and maybe I’ll go on from there soon.
    • I attempted to install  Peppermint OS 10 to my test laptop. The partitioning failed. The installer crashed the second try. I reinstalled KDE neon.
    • Sabayon was refusing to load the desktop lately. I could not log in as my username, but logging in as root got me a full-screen terminal. I posted the issue to the Sabayon forum and got a quick reply. Stating that I needed to reload lightdm, with instructions as to how. That worked. As I doubt any of our listeners are running Sabayon, I won’t post the commands I used to fix the issue.
    • I did some Timeshift backups today. I keep infrequent backups of everything except Sabayon (haven’t figured out how to load Timeshift through Entropy). As part of my efforts today, I learned that my Galago Pro identifies the external backup drive as sdb, and then finds I don’t have an sdb5, which is where my Linux Mint is installed (Pearl on sdb3). So I need to keep it unplugged until after boot, or I can’t boot to either Mint or Pearl. Odd that it isn’t identified as sdcX…
    • I had a pretty good birthday, with a pleasant gift from my mother and a lot of good wishes, plus extra hours being offered at work. I have stopped looking for work, with only one possible job not yet offered. Also, a great Thanksgiving and even a Holiday Party, with my friends at the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Education Center in Liberty Hill, TN. My wife and I feel we have found a new family.
    • And I received a donation from one of our listeners, David Lindberg. Thank you, David!  I purchased some much-needed USB-C cables.
  • Joe
    • Finished relistening to the Dresden files.  Love that series. Can’t recommend enough to everyone
      • Very well read
      • Good long series that takes some time to get through even at 4x
      • Too long since the last one but the author has had to work through a lot of issues and from what I understand the wait should not be long now.
    • Also went through the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony
      • This is a very convoluted series where all the books are very intertwined
      • Well read and well written
    • Need to catch up on Rick and Morty new season.
    • Behind on all the tv shows.
    • Bought some LG HBS 510’s 
      • Kinda old school
      • ordered 4 for 15 dollars
      • 1 no power show fully charged
      • Battery is working fine.  Can’t find a problem with the switch.  could check all the wires across for continuity.  But won’t. need the extra parts anyway
      • One of the sides went on another set
      • 1 neither side works but connects and pause play works
        • This will probably just require shortening of the cables
      • 1 left side out 
        • obvious, the casing was cracked around the earpiece and I could see that one of the connections was off.  soldered back on and glued the casing together with jb weld. It works great may go back and fill the hole with JB Weld 
      • 1 right side out, as in it is not there.  Another cracked casing but the speaker fell off
        • Was able to take one side from the one that wont turn on and swap it in.  now it just plain works
      • Should be able to fix 3.   
      • had extra glue so also glued one of the 820s with a broken band.
        • But it did not hold very well even after a couple of days worth of drying
      • The 510s are smaller and have fewer buttons than most of the ones that I have worked with but are still usable.  the sound is not terrible and they are not too difficult to work on. a single large mic that will require more testing.  Battery life is middling. the materials are a bit flimsy considering some of the fixes that I had to put in but they are also the lightest neckband headset I have used.  No one has complained about the call quality and I have not had any issue on my side of a call. the simplistic controls do take a bit of getting used to, especially when I am still switching amongst other headsets with a more standard setup.
    • Ordered another Dell Venue 7130 for 40 dollars.  Don’t know much about it yet other than it is missing the M.2 hard drive.  But it is the i5 version so it is either 4 or 8gb version.  
      • I have extra drives for it
      • Will find out if it has a good battery
      • And a good charging port
      • But there are 2 charging ports so if the usb one is bad I may have to either buy a dock or one of the high powered ones that use the same port
      • If I get it working I will either turn around and sell it or give it to one of my kids.
    • Fixed my dad’s old Toshiba Satellite L755-S5110
      • It had this problem where during startup it would get past the splash screen and start beeping horrendously
      • Figured it was the ram so I pulled the ram sticks one at a time and tested with less ram and known good ram still the same issue
      • So I removed the keyboard and started it up.  Worked fine.
      • Tested rehooking the keyboard while it was booted and it is always triggering some keys.
      • May order a new keyboard or may just use it as a settop box.
      • Second gen core i3 but still usable.  
      • Does need a new battery
      • But other than that, it would cost 20 dollars, 13 for the keyboard and 7 for the power supply to have a working laptop
      • Like 12 dollars for a battery.
    • Also was having a problem with my garage computer randomly shutting off.
      • Hard to isolate the problem because days could go by without it happening
      • After much testing of peripherals to find the issue I discovered that it was a problem with my Thinkpad USB 3.0 docking station
      • So I am looking for a decent low cost powered replacement (probably a couple of them) 
      • Preferably 7 ports and sub 10 dollars but I am not finding anything that fits the bill. 
    • Bought a Samsung gear fit2
      • Not sure how much I like it.
      • Heart rate is iffy 
      • Step count I will have to track more
  • Tony W
    • Busy as ever with music.  
      • Formed a band of my colleagues at the office and we played at the company holiday party.  It was a resounding success.  
      • Speaking of holiday party… will be doing to my wife’s work party toward end of our show, may have to drop a bit early
      • Also solo gigs, rock band, church band…
    • Mobile recording setup:
      • Dell 7130
      • Presonus Audiobox USB
        • Metal – built like a tank
        • Works out of the box with Linux, no problems whatsoever
        • Very light and portable
        • Power draws from USB – no power plug required
      • Unidirectional microphone (Either my Behringer or a borrowed Shure SM58 – doesn’t seem to be a dramatic difference)
        • I use a unidirectional mic to avoid picking up noise in my house (space heater and server right next to me, not to mention anything else in the rest of the house, kids, dogs…)
    • Dell 7130
      • Spent more time with the machine after it being a bit idle for a while.  I tend to spend a lot of time *obsessively* getting things to work like I want, and then walk away from them after that is accomplished.
      • Batteries in both tablet and keyboard actually seem to be in pretty good shape.  Linux mint indicates keyboard will last nearly 3 hours and the tablet about 7.5 hrs (have not tested this, no idea if will actually get that much, but so far can confirm the keyboard will last 2+ hrs charging the tablet)
      • Keyboard is very glitchy.  Have to dock multiple times before the tablet will recognize keyboard/touchpad (even though battery display seems to update every time)
      • Ordered a tablet keyboard cover, maybe less issues.  Will report back on that
    • New work laptop
      • Old: Dell E6430
        • I used that laptop for 7+ years.  IT dept delayed in replacing it as it was up to spec after various upgrades
        • Processor 3rd gen i7, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, new battery…
        • Replaced due to touchpad button issues (may have been a Windows only problem)
      • New: Thinkpad T480.  Great machine
        • I7 model
        • I will need a USB C dock now, for working at home
  • Josh
    • Finished my mock exams (finally) after two weeks. Sorry for the absence but they say school comes first (whatever that means).
    • Released Issue 6 of micro:mag, our most popular issue yet where we got 2000 readers in the first 48 hours.
    • Got myself some 8BitDo Bluetooth Stereo Speakers after winning a gift card during a Black Friday competition. Really good for the price and work well with Linux.
    • Last time I was on the show, I was having some trouble with Google after my Pixel 3 got RMAed.
      • 3 Months of battling with them
      • Support engineers cut me off the phone a few times
      • They can’t contact the refunds team
      • Google support is the worst
      • I really don’t want to be negative, but this has happened to many other customers too
      • We contacted the retailer where I got the phone from, John Lewis, who refunded me after trying Google support from themselves and seeing how bad it was.
    • I ended up getting the iPhone 11 Pro on a really good contract with o2 here in the UK after putting some of the refund money towards it.
      • iOS is really nice
      • Camera is incredible, especially the 4k60 video
      • Smooth performance
      • 2 Day Battery life
      • Apple devices are still too expensive and i’d never buy one outright but luckily thanks to a mix of Black Friday deals and putting a bit of money upfront from what I did have. 

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux Mint 19.3 Images Being Tested
    • Images showed up on Friday, marked as testing. Release is imminent!
  • Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for AWS
    • These images, for a little extra money, provide 10 years of support, Kernel Livepatching, Compliance profiles for things like HIPAA and PCI, and AWS Security integration.
  • Ubuntu AWS Will Use A Rolling Kernel
    • For non Ubuntu Pro instances, you’ll still be getting some goodies.
    • The rolling kernel is the typical hardware enablement kernel with AWS features built in, and all 18.04 instances will be upgraded to 5.0 from 4.15 by default.
    • You can test early to be sure things will work
      • sudo apt install linux-aws-edge
    • Or you can force your instances to stay on 4.15.
      • sudo apt install linux-aws-lts-18.04
  • Canonical Becomes Feature Sponsor for WSLConf
    • Hayden Barnes, Developer Advocate, Ubuntu on WSL, Canonical
  • Nginx offices raided for copyright dispute with Rambler (Moss)
  • Open Source Music Notations Software Musescore 3.3 Released! (Tony W)
    • For playing, printing and creating sheet music
    • Free but can use either a free or premium account for sharing with Musescore community
  • elementary OS 5.1 Hera
    • A new Greeter and first-install process
    • Flatpak Support
    • Accessibility being treated as normal options rather than things shoved away into a corner.
    • Ubuntu’s HWE 5.0 Kernel.
    • Some app improvements
    • If you’re upgrading from Juno, you won’t get the new kernel automatically. For that, run:
      • sudo apt install –install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04
  • Firefox 71
    • Picture in Picture for videos! (Windows only for now. Linux and Mac in Firefox 72)
    • Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS
    • More visible tracking protection
    • Improvements to Lockwise
    • Kiosk mode
  • Zorin OS 15.1 released (Moss)
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon first release (not official flavor yet)
  • MS Teams Is Now On Linux (second link)
  • Mac Pro is here (Josh)
    • Probably one of the most powerful consumer computers out there
    • Comes with a price for the top spec – $52,748.00
      • 2.5GHz 28‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
      • 1.5TB (12x128GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
      • Two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo with 2x32GB of HBM2 memory each
      • 4TB SSD storage
      • Apple Afterburner card
      • Stainless steel frame with wheels
      • Magic Mouse 2 + Magic Trackpad 2
      • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English
    • Base spec is $6,000 which is very expensive for what you get
      • 3.5GHz 8‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
      • 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
      • Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
      • 256GB SSD storage
      • Stainless steel frame with feet
      • Magic Mouse 2
      • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • <Moss>Remember the PIA purchase by Kape Technologies? Kape is a renamed malware company owned by a former Israeli spy (not from right wing sources)
  • New Linux Vulnerability Lets Attackers Hijack VPN Connections
    • Very in depth, but the short and sweet of it is that using this vulnerability allows an attacker to inject packets regardless of encryption.
    • People with a version of systemd released after Nov 28th, 2019 are affected. However, more distributions that aren’t on systemd are affected: Devuan, Void, FreeBSD.
    • A temporary fix would be to block bogon IP addresses. Essentially bogus or fake IPs. See: https://ipinfo.io/bogon 
  • Two malicious Python scripts caught stealing SSH and GPG keys
    • A result of typosquatting. Essentially naming libraries visually similar to confuse people into using the library.
    • Python3-dateutil was spoofing dateutil
    • JeIlyfish (the first l is replaced with a capital I) was spoofing Jellyfish. The spoofed JeIlyfish libraries were where the malicious code resided, and python3-dateutil would call the malicious JeIlyfish library.

Once the libraries are used, keys are sent to xxx://68.183.212.246:32258

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Episode will be December 29, 2019, 2pm Central US time.

WRAP-UP:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • 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 (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 4055