Leftovers: Videos, Games, Security, Microsoft, Rust...

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 16, 2022

• Mint Xfce WISHES to be this good. Linux Lite 6.0 - Lightweight Linux ep. 4 - Invidious

  After many years, I try out Linux Lite 6.0 in my quest to find out what sacrifices you make when using a lightweight Linux distribution.

• 290: 7 Linux Gadgets You Might Not Know About Plus The Great Debian Debate of 2022 - Destination Linux - TuxDigital

  This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to be talking about hardware gadgets you may have never heard about, but will have you screaming “take my money”. Then we will be discussing the great Debian debate of 2022. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those penguins marching!

• Status update, August 2022

  It is a blessedly cool morning here in Amsterdam. I was busy moving house earlier this month, so this update is a bit quieter than most.

  For a fun off-beat project this month, I started working on a GameBoy emulator written in Hare. No promises on when it will be functional or how much I plan on working on it – just doing it for fun. In more serious Hare news, I have implemented Thread-Local Storage (TLS) for qbe, our compiler backend. Hare’s standard library does not support multi-threading, but I needed this for Helios, whose driver library does support threads. It will also presumably be of use for cproc once it lands upstream.

• Adventure game graphics with DALL-E 2 - Et tu, Cthulhu

  I recently got access to OpenAI's DALL-E 2 instance. It's a lot of fun, but beyond its obvious application as a cornucopia of funny cat avatars, I think it's now fit to use in certain kinds of creative work.

  There are already plenty of good articles out there on the model's strengths and weaknesses, so I won't go over that here other than to note that it's not a threat to high art. It's got an idea of what things look like and how they can visually fit together, but it's very vague on how they work (e.g. anatomy, architecture, the finer points of Victorian-era dinner etiquette, art critics), and object inpainting aside, it doesn't rise to the level of realism where I'd worry too much about the fake news potential either.

  However, with human guidance and a carefully chosen domain, it can still do some very impressive things. I've suspected that adventure game graphics in the point-and-click vein could be one of those domains, and since I'm helping someone dear to me realize such a game, I had the excuse I needed to explore it a little and write this case study.

• The NSA Wants the Network Locked Down [Ed: No, it wants it back-doored (for itself only)]

  The NSA’s Kubernetes Hardening Guide offers a lot of advice on implementing the best defense-in-depth approach to your workloads. Part of that guide outlines how Kubernetes users can secure and harden the network.

• Windows 11 KB5016629 is causing new issues, Microsoft confirms one bug

  KB5016629: This month’s latest security update for Windows 11 is causing new issues for some folks, according to reports and Microsoft’s own updated documentation.

• Microsoft finally admits Xbox One sales were less than half of the PS4

  Official Xbox One sales have largely been a mystery, but now Microsoft is finally admitting the obvious: the PS4 outsold the Xbox One — by a lot. Microsoft stopped reporting its Xbox One sales figures at the beginning of its 2016 financial year, focusing instead on Xbox Live numbers. The change meant we’ve never officially known how well Xbox One was holding up compared to the PS4 after the Xbox One’s troubled launch.

• Contribute to the diagnostic translation effort!

  The Rust Diagnostics working group is leading an effort to add support for internationalization of error messages in the compiler, allowing the compiler to produce output in languages other than English.

• Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego Bets on Application Containerization with the Help of SUSE Rancher | SUSE Communities

  Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego is betting on the implementation and use of containerized business applications in accordance with CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) standards. In cooperation with Linux Polska Sp. z o.o., among others, the bank implemented in production the SUSE Rancher containerization platform, an intuitive tool that facilitates the management of multiple Kubernetes clusters. The solution will significantly speed up the process of developing and deploying business-critical applications in line with DevOps and CI/CD best practices.