today's leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 17, 2023

• FFMPEG: Powerful Multimedia Processing Tool (Installation + Usage)

  FFmpeg (a.k.a. Fast Forward MPEG) is a robust, free, and open-source framework packed with a vast suite of libraries and programs for handling basic to advanced multimedia processing.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • SUSE's Corporate Blog ☛ Revolutionizing GNU/Linux Distributions with an Adaptable GNU/Linux Platform

    A better lifecycle for GNU/Linux distributions It is time to challenge the status quo of GNU/Linux distribution generation to create a new version that better addresses the industry’s current challenges. The solution is a container GNU/Linux distribution that is designed for cloud native workloads.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Andy Holmes: GNOME Online Account and the STF

    One of our goals for the Sovereign Tech Fund is to modernize platform infrastructure, in line with the mission to support security and resilience in open source software. For GNOME Online Accounts, this meant tightening up the code base and shifting focus to prioritize open protocols.

    A significant portion of the backend was refactored and tested in tandem with the GNOME Settings side of Online Accounts. By working with development tools like AddressSanitizer we identified and fixed a number of memory and type safety issues in both projects and helped to ensure the resiliency of any new

    # What did we do

    The first thing we wanted to do was get a general WebDAV provider merged. This work was a multi-phase community effort and the majority of the work as part of the STF was adding and testing more thorough and resuable code for DAV discovery and configuration.

    The new WebDAV provider then became a base for the Nextcloud provider, which is now simply a branded version.

• Games

  • Dedoimedo ☛ ArmA 3 & Spearhead 1944 DLC - Less is more

    The one and only true First Person Shooter (FPS) game in the world has a name: ArmA 3. Since its inception, Bohemia Interactive's franchise of realistic war simulation has always been focused on modern-era combat and technology. Operation Flashpoint was all about the 1980s Cold War. ArmA 2 covered the modern battle landscape. ArmA 3 takes the conceptual futuristic battlefield and brings it close. The game has never been about the olden days, ergo World War Two.

• Windows TCO

  • The Register UK ☛ Kraft Heinz suggests we simmer down about Snatch ransomware attack claims

    This is undoubtedly good news for baked bean and ketchup fans fearing empty shelves in supermarkets, gaps where there should be plenty of tinned food and condiments, this close to the annual Christmas feast-a-thon. You may recall the great Clorox cleaning supply shortage of 2023 – the result of a significant cyberattack on that corporate giant.

• Licensing / Legal

  • Kyle E Mitchell ☛ Copyleft Intolerance and the Defining-Open Mind Trap

    “Software as a Service” would only consign “ASP” to the rusty buzzword bin later, when the platform-as-a-service companies made it cheaper and easier for Web app development companies themselves to take hosting in-house—to become their own ASPs—even at micro small scale, by renting fractional server resources instead of racks or dinky virtual servers. So when Affero, a Free Software-allied Web app company worried proprietary moochers would take all its lunch money, approached the FSF for what eventually became AGPL, the weakness in GPLv2 that needed fixing was occasionally “the Google problem”, but more lastingly “the ASP Loophole”.

• Education

  • John Hopkins University ☛ How EZIE-Mag Pushes to Make Science More Accessible and Inclusive

    Before launch, the EZIE team at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, will make and freely distribute approximately 700 magnetometer kits (nicknamed EZIE-Mag) to teachers and students across the United States, with a specific focus on Indigenous schools.

    These kits will let students build their own science-quality magnetometers. These lunchbox-sized instrument suites allow anyone to make measurements, which will be combined with EZIE’s measurements made from space to finally unlock the mysteries associated with this vast electrical current circuit.

  • Off Guardian ☛ WATCH: Open Source Education – #SolutionsWatch

    We all know the problem’s with the public miseducation system. But what’s the answer? Corbett in the Classroom, of course! Join James Corbett as he explores his new page, OpenSourceEducation.online, and talks about the inspiration for this idea (and the guerrilla marketing campaign that is accompanying it) with Ernest Hancock of FreedomsPhoenix.com.

• Chromium

  • Barry Kauler ☛ Download Chrome browser in menu

    The latest release of EasyOS has Chromium browser builtin, with menu entries to download Firefox or Vivaldi, for those who would prefer not to use Chromium.

    For the next release of EasyOS, I am thinking of going back to Firefox builtin, as have resolved some problems with it.

    So, for those who would prefer Chrome or a Chromium-based browser, I intended to have more choices in the menu. To start the ball rolling, have created 'chrome-skel-ask-20231215.pet', a package that will create "Download latest Chrome" in the menu, as shown: [...]