Uncategorized – Tech Freedom

Weekend Edition 53: AI ALL the Things & More

WE 53 Blog
3 Letter Agencies Warn of “New” Ransomware Threat
Lastpass: Strengthen Your Passwords, Y’all
NeuraLink Enters Initial Human Trials
AI Regulation: Possible?
Moar AI… AI ALL THE THINGS
AI Legal Troubles
TIkTok Troubles
Google Antitrust Trial Phase 1: Start
Signal Researching Quantum-Proof Encryption

WE 1 – Warning About Snatch Ransomware
The Feds (FBI and CISA) are warning us about a new evolution of the Snatch, ransomware-as-a-service package. Some version of it or other has been floating around for about 5 years now. Here’s what it has been seen doing lately (incidentally, this only hits Windows machines), once it infects a machine, it will force it to reboot into Safe Mode, and from there, it will run roughshod over your files, encrypting them without anything to stop it. These US agencies issued the following advice to prevent infection or limit the reach of an infection:
§ Reduce threat of malicious actors using remote access tools by:
§ Auditing remote access tools on your network to identify currently used and/or authorized software.
§ Reviewing logs for execution of remote access software to detect abnormal use of programs running as a portable executable [CPG 2.T].
§ Using security software to detect instances of remote access software being loaded only in memory.
§ Requiring authorized remote access solutions to be used only from within your network over approved remote access solutions, such as virtual private networks (VPNs) or virtual desktop interfaces (VDIs).
§ Blocking both inbound and outbound connections on common remote access software ports and protocols at the network perimeter.
§ Implement application controls to manage and control execution of software, including allowlisting remote access programs.
§ Application controls should prevent installation and execution of portable versions of unauthorized remote access and other software. A properly configured application allowlisting solution will block any unlisted application execution. Allowlisting is important because antivirus solutions may fail to detect the execution of malicious portable executables when the files use any combination of compression, encryption, or obfuscation.
§ Strictly limit the use of RDP and other remote desktop services. If RDP is necessary, rigorously apply best practices, for example [CPG 2.W]:
§ Audit the network for systems using RDP.
§ Close unused RDP ports.
§ Enforce account lockouts after a specified number of attempts.
§ Apply phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA).
§ Log RDP login attempts.
§ Disable command-line and scripting activities and permissions [CPG 2.N].
§ Review domain controllers, servers, workstations, and active directories for
§ Audit user accounts with administrative privileges and configure access controls according to the principle of least privilege (PoLP) [CPG 2.E].
§ Reduce the threat of credential compromise via the following:
§ Place domain admin accounts in the protected users’ group to prevent caching of password hashes locally.
§ Refrain from storing plaintext credentials in scripts.
§ Implement time-based access for accounts set at the admin level and higher [CPG 2.A, 2.E].
So that said, be careful, and most of you who watch or listen or read this probably aren’t IT pros at major corporations which would be worth targeting. The main notable targets have been government agencies or big companies. If you do not work somewhere where there is sensitive information which would be worth holding for a ransom, you likely don’t have too much to worry about from this particular malware attack. Connor may have other thoughts, but most individuals probably don’t have anything much to worry about from the gangs who rent access to this tool.
https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/fbi-and-cisa-issue-warning-about-dangerous-new-ransomware-strain
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa23-263a

WE 2 – LastPass: We’re Gonna Need Y’all to Step Up
I don’t know if you remember, but late last year, there was a major data breach at the well-known password manager, LastPass. Now, they are requiring all users to lengthen their master passwords to at least 12 characters to slow down future attackers. This is a good idea, but how about changing the way they do business? Why is this on their clients to clean up the mess? Isn’t there something more that LastPass could or should do to prevent this sort of mess in the future? Not much else to say here, other than to suggest that you go FOSS and use a self-hosted BitWarden or something like that, so that your passwords aren’t stored in some cloud somewhere that simply begs to be hacked because it is centralized data.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/lastpass-requires-users-to-update-master-password-to-at-least-12-characters

WE 3 – We Are Borg, Resistance Is Futile
Neuralink, AKA Musk’s pet project to trans-humanize us by embedding chips in our brains which can link up with computers. This is cool on a purely technological level, but creepy and stupid AF on a practical one. I mean, what nerd hasn’t ever dreamed of being able to work their computer at the speed of thought, rather than being limited by how fast you can type or move the mouse physically? On the other hand, this is a proprietary chip that Elon wants to put in everyone’s brains. Could they have a facility for reverse communication as well, such that suggestions from the computer or your smart tv or radio or streaming service could be placed directly into your brain? I’m not a fear guy, but this freaks me out, genuinely. If it were limited to 1-way linkage, and only ever used for people who cannot physically work with their phones or computers, and only gathers absolutely crucial data to make the thing work better vs profiling users, then I MIGHT be slightly more open to it. At this point, I trust this project about as much as I trust Musk… About as far as I can throw him. Early in this piece, and in the title, I mentioned trans-humanism and the Borg, from Star Trek. I have reason to believe that this is the end that they are aiming for, where humanity becomes merged with machines and humans are no longer really human anymore. We’ve talked about trans-humanism before, but it has been a minute, so let’s get into that, briefly. Trans-humanism is the belief system which states that humanity as it is, is flawed, but we have the technological know-how to fix it, and that we should. Think of this as a combination of the Borg and the 6 Million Dollar Man/ Robocop/ Inspector Gadget, only in real life. This is where these people, including Musk and Gates, want to take the human race. The Borg, if you didn’t know, live a collective existence, where they all hear the thoughts of the collective and have specific tasks to perform, and that is the extent of their lives. No individuality, any one drone can be modifed to replace any other. No private thoughts, no feelings, just the collective. But, back to present day reality, and the reason we are talking about this: Neuralink has now been approved by the FDA to begin human clinical trials. That freaks me the hell out, tbh.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/elon-musks-neuralink-puts-out-call-for-humans-to-try-its-brain-implant

WE 4 – AI Regulations: Possible, or Not?
Some think yes, others are not so sure. Others are hair-on-fire about the whole thing and are desperate to get this done, ASAP. The UK and the US are working independently to understand and try to rein in the whole AI phenomenon. The UN is also starting to weigh in, and has a preliminary report due on the issue by the end of this year. Jimmy Wales, of Wikipedia, believes that it is not doable to try to control it at this point. All of these would-be regulators, he thinks –probably accurately- don’t understand it hardly at all. In his view, the genie is out of the bottle. He compares the governmental efforts to regulate it to the notion of trying to control something like Photoshop now. Another skeptic about global regulatory efforts is Pierre Haren, who has been working on AI for 45 years, and was part of the team that created Watson at IBM. Remember Watson? I do. No one talks about that AI anymore, but then it wasn’t “generative” like GPT, LLAMA, or PaLM are. His skepticism stems from the geopolitical realm, more than the technical realm. His concerns are quite valid, about countries who would choose to disregard regulations (which they have a habit of doing in other areas already), if they don’t fit with their desired ends. That said, Mr. Haren is “flabbergasted” by the proliferation of generative AI tools and models, he thinks that it is no mere parrot. Perhaps he knows better than I do, having worked on the field for longer than I’ve been alive, but that level of focus may also cloud his judgment. That is allot of time to pour into a single type of project. So far, we have been talking about the scenario at a global level, as the UN has its sights set on solving regulatory issues there, so that all member states must adhere to those regulations (we all know how well that has gone with even our own country, much less “rogue” nations like North Korea, Iran, or Pakistan). Now I’m going to turn to the UK and their efforts, more locally.
In the UK, their CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) has been working feverishly to develop a set of AI foundation model principles. Here are their suggestions (all principles are, really):
· Accountability: AI foundation model developers and deployers are accountable for outputs provided to consumers.
· Access: Ongoing ready access to key inputs, without unnecessary restrictions.
· Diversity: Sustained diversity of business models, including both open and closed.
· Choice: Sufficient choice for businesses so they can decide how to use foundation models.
· Flexibility: Having the flexibility to switch and/or use multiple foundation models according to need.
· Fair dealing: No anti-competitive conduct including self-preferencing, tying or bundling.
· Transparency: Consumers and businesses are given information about the risks and limitations of foundation model-generated content so they can make informed choices.
These seem innocuous enough, but do they actually DO anything? Usually, these sorts of things don’t do much, as they are just governmental suggestions, but they are thinking hard about all of this. They are concerned about many things, perhaps worried or even panicked would be better words. Their prime concern is with market dynamics and whether the playing field is fair for the small, or the new to the market who aren’t named Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, or any of the other “big guys” in the field right now. It is all more or less nonsense. Maybe I’m being a little harsh, but government controls over free market systems are a non-starter for me. Do I see that they are currently, if begrudgingly, necessary, but I hate the notion of needing a nanny state to boss around companies which are too big to be good for humanity.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66853057
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3706991/uk-regulator-outlines-ai-foundation-model-principles-warns-of-potential-harm.html

WE 5 – AI ALL the Things
Microsoft is injecting all of its software with its GPT-4 based Copilot AI, from Windows to MS365, to Photos, to Paint, to Spotify and Edge browser. This is starting to roll out on Tuesday. Are you comfortable with all of your Microsoft products being empowered with AI to gather all of your data? Google itself is adding Bard to Gmail, Youtube, Docs, and across much of its cloud stack, as we speak. So, per the title of this piece, AI ALL the Things. Most of Microsoft’s software stack is now “AI-boosted”. Google’s cloud stack, plus Youtube, is largely Bard-ed now. This privacy assault purely motivates me to ditch these solutions as much as possible. AI is a privacy nightmare, and Microsoft is driving it off the cliff in order to gather as much data on its users as possible, as if the rootkit-cum-OS that is Windows, plus all of Microsoft’s other software stack wasn’t enough in terms of scraping data from their users. Again, same story with Google/Alphabet, right now, since many use their cloud as their internet OS: from Search, to email, to entertainment/information, to other cloud software (Docs, Sheets, etc). On one hand, this is cool. That is, if we do not consider anything like privacy or security in the midst of this thing. I mean, we have talked about how Microsoft has almost bragged about the fact that they single-handedly created this mad rush to implement generative AI such as it is right now. The reality is that OpenAI, Google, and the rest of the industry around generative AI products were operating under a much more careful way of approaching the issue, with privacy as front and center as a model which requires as much data as these large language model based AIs require in order to do what they do and continue to improve. The whole thing is sketch to me, anyway. However, my primary concern is for privacy and honoring the rights of individuals versus just driving ever harder for greater and greater levels of tech progress. The question is progress toward what, exactly? A future where humans never use their brains for anything taxing or rewarding? A future where we cannot think for ourselves? Maybe we are already mostly there, which is a disturbing thought. My response to that is, stand up and think for yourselves. Don’t just take my opinions or anyone else’s as gospel. Challenge everything. Do your own damn research and make up your own mind. I am not perfect in this regard, but I do try to grow in that regard. I will never give up my autonomy, such as it is, to a machine. I do not ever plan to use these things, even if it puts me behind the curve. My content will always be mine. My thoughts will be mine as much as humanly possible.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsofts-copilot-ai-coming-to-windows-on-sept-26
https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-latest-windows-11-update-drops-on-september-26-163553126.html
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3707074/google-adds-its-bard-chatbot-to-gmail-youtube-docs-and-other-apps.html

We 6 – OpenAI Sued… Again
This time by George R.R. Martin, writer of the book series which was adapted into the disgusting if smash hit, Game of Thrones. He has another well-respected author, John Grisham on board with the suit. They claim that the GPT models are infringing on their copyrighted materials in order to make itself “smarter”. The case alleges that the LLMs in question have “engaged in theft on a mass scale” because the authors’ works have been used without giving them proper remuneration for utilizing their intellectual property. Is it really a copyright claim or is it that they are afraid of being replaced, as the “expert” in the article cited below suggests? I do not believe that generative AI, such as is publicly available now can “create” anything unique. It is all derivative of the copious amounts of data that they are able to scrape from around the web, whether locked behind a paywall or not. I am a firm supporter of intellectual property and copy rights, whether Connor is too much of a socialist to agree with that stance or not. We will butt heads on this for a long time, no doubt, and the argument on the air was likely something fun to hear, but the bottom line is that as someone who is a content creator of sorts, a blogger and streamer who takes news articles and applies his own spin to them to make usually fairly left-leaning news stories read in as unbiased of a way as possible, I cannot fully espouse not providing means for a creator of anything which is valued by members of the public at large to make a living from their labor, whether a labor of love or passion or not. Connor feels that anything put on the internet should be free game. To be clear, he is no more a fan of AI and the generative AIs out there than I am. However, he feels that IP and copyright are stupid, and that artists and authors should simply labor for the love of what they are doing and keep their day jobs to feed their families, unless they are commissioned to produce a piece or other creative output. We recently had this discussion, and decided that we were never likely to see eye to eye on this issue, and that he is a walking ball of contradictions.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66866577

WE 7 – DALL-E 3 Released
OpenAI’s image generation AI has had its third major version drop recently. It is now able to accurately place text in images (could be a memer’s dream). Like GPT-4, this will be baked into MS Copilot for all of its products. This is a privacy nightmare. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse at this point though. I don’t have much of benefit or much that is positive to say about this development, so I will cut this section short.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/openai-unveils-new-and-improved-ai-image-generator-dall-e-3

WE 8 – TikTok Back in the Legal Hotseat
TikTok has been used to start allot of mess because people have so little discernment and common sense these days. This has led to some good things, but also many very bad ones. Certain viral videos have spurred spurious murder accusations, ginned up riots in various places, and created mayhem where none should have existed before. This is a dangerous tool. Unscrupulous people who just want the eyeballs and notoriety have fabricated stories and even interfered with the proper carriage of justice. Internet sleuthing has its place, don’t get me wrong. Do your research as best you can so that you can form educated opinions about things, rather than just following the herd. That said, not many can really be trusted as sources of information. Trust but verify. Look for real evidence, whether it supports the opinion you prefer or not. Disconnect from the matrix. Stop doom scrolling on social media sites, whether YouTube, TikTok, Telegram, X, or anything else. Use your brain. Don’t just get caught up in the furor of the moment. End the outrage cycle. TikTok is not being sued for this, yet, but perhaps it should be. Then again, do we hold the gun responsible in a shooting or the shooter? If the user base dried up overnight, TikTok wouldn’t last long. I know I’m nobody, with a next-to-nil following at this point, but for the love of all that is holy, break your addictions to these platforms. Get away.
The EU is fining TikTok for privacy violations in regard to childrens’ data on the platform. Let me reiterate that: the EU is slapping TikTok with a $368 million fine for not protecting kids’ data and for utilizing dark patterns on the platform to keep people from limiting the platform’s data gathering apparatus. The platform is, of course, taking issue with the ruling, protesting that they have remedied most of the problems which the Irish Data Protection Commission found with the way that the platform did things with user data. We will see if this fine sticks. This is not the first time that the platform has been slapped in the Eurozone, either. The UK fined them for similar issues back in April, but that fine was basically a slap on the wrist, at $16 million. They make that sneezing at this point. If these slow boiling regulators are cracking down on them, we have a couple of questions to ask ourselves:
1) If the privacy protections on the platform (which exists to gather data on its users, by the way) are so lax, then why do we use it?
2) If it has destroyed lives, then why continue using it?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/15/tech/tiktok-fine-europe-children/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66719572

WE 9 – Google’s Battle is Just Beginning
The DOJ’s suit about Google search’s monopolistic practices is just beginning. They have been in discovery for the better part of a couple of years now, but opening arguments have just happened in the last week or two as I write this. I wish I had seen this article last week, but here we are. The government’s case is ultimately similar to ones the giant has faced elsewhere in the world, that its dominance in search and ads are not natural, but created through the company’s ability to generate contracts with browser and other app creators to embed their engine as the default (even in Firefox), then punish them for breaking that contract. Are you still one of the 89% of the market which utilizes Google Search instead of taking your data elsewhere? Why is that? Convenience? Haven’t been convinced that they do not neutrally serve results, but base them on their own algorithms and the ad spend of the companies which pay for it? I could tee off on this for a dog’s age, but I want to focus on the case at hand. To be clear, I am not saying that their results are bad, just biased in very intentional ways. If the engine didn’t work, the world would have rejected it long ago, the way they did with Ask.com and other similar search engines in days gone by. Remember Ask.com? Maybe I date myself. Yeah, I’m dating myself. Ask was originally Ask Jeeves, which was one of the first search engines out there, and one of the first which could understand full sentence queries. Google was a joke in comparison back then. Google’s dominance in the market is what is in question, whether it is natural and due to innovation, or artificial and due to anti-competitive practices which have stifled or even extinguished competitors. The government’s case hinges on the latter supposition. I hope that Alphabet gets its ass handed to it, and is broken up over its gross disregard for user privacy. That is just me, though. What do you guys think? Will this case actually lead to something positive for the public, or not?
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3706516/gloves-come-off-during-day-one-of-googles-antitrust-trial.html

WE 10 – Signal to Boost Encryption
Signal is already moving to strengthen its encryption algorithms to prevent quantum computers from breaking it. This may seem premature, but if you look at what quantum computers can do vs traditional systems (and Connor doubtless will contradict what I’m about to say), it is important to try to stay ahead of the curve. Quantum computers take advantage of the uncertainty of things at the quantum level to add a third option to the traditional binary of electronic computing. This third option allows for, according to some, more data to be processed at a far higher rate of speed than in the fastest and most powerful of traditional computers.This can make the complex math which underlies much of cryptography to become child’s play to crack and decipher, rendering previously strong forms of encryption essentially pointless, as even brute forcing it becomes far more doable than on the most powerful of server clusters and super computers, much less common consumer hardware. Quantum computing is not readily available to the public, much less (less than state-level) bad actors, at this time, but is being worked on at a similar clip to large language models right now. This could lead to it being a real issue in the next 5-10 years. I am actually more concerned about that than I am about generative AI morphing into a general AI that can actually think for itself and take over the world. That said, though, it is quite a ways off, but I am glad that the team at Signal is already working on this issue.
https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/signal-is-adding-quantum-level-encryption-to-help-keep-customers-safe

Weekend Edition 45

by admin Uncategorized

Weekend Edition 45: Microsoft, AI, and SBF...

Microsoft in Hot Water… Again (EU and Perhaps US)

Tech Regulation? Graham Cracker Partners with Pocahontas

AI News

FOSS Google Maps Alternative? Yes, Please!

SBF Nonsense

RIP Kevin Mitnick

Mastodon is for Free Speech

WE 1 – Euro Commission Investigating MS

Slack complained in 2020 about the fact that Microsoft has decided to bundle Teams with both Office 365 and Microsoft 365. The Commission finally has gotten around to investigating the claim of anti-competitive practices. Wouldn’t be the first time, and won’t be the last time Microsoft has run afoul of regulators in regard to software monopoly behavior. Shoot, I remember the Netscape suit from 25 years ago because Microsoft had been bundling Intermittent Exploder (Internet Explorer, IE) with Windows from 95 SP 2 up into 98, and making it harder for people to adopt the honestly better Netscape Navigator browser. Microsoft narrowly avoided being “trust busted” and split into separate companies in the early 2000s. Here we are again. I’m going to hazard a guess that MS will get slapped by the EC. If they don’t, I’ll be surprised. As always, though, the idealist in me hates that we need to have bloated over-powered governments and agencies in order to keep the big boys in line. There’s so much greed and frankly immoral and unethical practices in the business world because most execs and management types are stuck in a poverty loop in their heads which makes them feel like they need to do anything and everything to get ahead because there is never enough. The reality is that there is enough and more than enough for all of these companies to have pieces of the growth pie. They don’t need to have this scarcity mindset which causes them to do shady shit.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-may-regret-bundling-teams-with-365-subscriptions

WE 2 – Microsoft Back in the Crosshairs Here at Home

Senator Wyden, of Oregon, is pushing for Microsoft to be held accountable for what he calls “negligent cybersecurity” due to how two major state-sponsored hacks have been leveraged against Microsoft and its users: SolarWinds (Russia, 2020) and now the Outlook hack which slammed the US Federal government (China, 2023). Sen Wyden wants Microsoft to be forced to change their policies to be more proactive in protecting its customers, perhaps to even change their EULA, which he wisely realizes will take a whole-government effort to make happen. He wrote a letter to the DOJ, FTC, and CISA to apply pressure to Microsoft. We will see what happens here. I can see this going one of three ways, from least likely to most likely:

A) Microsoft kowtows to Wyden and changes their EULA without fines or anything
B) The Gov’t agencies refuse to do anything
C) Microsoft winds up getting fined heavily, fights it, wasting more money, and we get to laugh at them.

As always, we will keep up on this and report as there is more to say about it.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-senator-its-time-to-investigate-microsoft-for-negligent-cybersecurity

WE 3 – Senators Graham and Warren Team Up

Wonder twin powers, activate! LMAO. Graham Cracker and Pocahontas agree on something? Oh wait, that’s right, the South Carolinan senator is a RINO extraordinaire. Why wouldn’t he partner with someone like Elizabeth Warren? They are both interested in adding more power to the federal government. It’s like looking at two identical cars with slightly different paint jobs. Anyway, enough denigrating these people, let’s talk about the legislation that the a co-sponsoring. It is called the Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act, and would create something akin to the CMA or the Euro Commission here in the US, but specifically focused on regulating tech, and Big Tech in particular. This regulator will be able to sue companies — or even force them to stop operating — in response to various potential harms to customers, rivals and the general public, including anticompetitive practices, violations of consumer privacy and the spread of harmful online content. Doesn’t that sound just peachy, guys? Another government agency dedicated to invading your privacy and trying to control your thinking through another official layer of forced censorship from the feds.

I just feel so warm & fuzzy inside when the government wants to usurp even more of our constitutionally guaranteed rights by overstepping its constitutional limitations. Oh boy! On the other hand, the primary ostensible reasons for this regulator are to handle privacy and competition issues for these tech giants. Sounds like a mess to me. Since when does the US government care a lick about our privacy? They do handle competition, in the form of anti-trust cases on the part of the DOJ for the last 150 years or so, since Standard Oil and the railroad robber barons were punished by the DOJ at the end of the Gilded Age. However, privacy has hardly been touched in terms of meaningful efforts from the federal level. Individual states, such as California, have passed significant legislation in the last handful of years, but even those have been hard to enforce in the best of times. I don’t have a better solution off of the top of my head, but I know that more centralized power which is a-constitutional is never a good long-term solution for these problems. We need to lobby our senators to express our distaste for this constitutionally ignorant piece of legislation. Tell them to vote against this nonsense.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/27/tech/big-tech-regulation-new-federal-agency/index.html

WE 4 – AI News for the Week

4-1 – OpenAI Loses Head of Trust & Safety

I guess I missed this story last week… The maker of ChatGPT lost its Head of Trust & Safety lat week, not to death, but to attrition, as he decided that he needed to step down “in order to spend more time with his family”. Since the chatbot was released, he found his role expand rapidly to the point where it was taking over his life. This leaves the small company needing to shuffle personnel until it can find a good replacement for him. This is a crucial moment as OpenAI is undergoing allot of well-deserved scrutiny over their viral chatbot. Props to him for knowing when to bow out, though. On the other hand, the cynic in me is questioning the move… Is there something sketchy happening in that department which is about to be revealed? Is he resigning to get ahead of that tidal wave? Time will tell, as always.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/21/tech/open-ai-trust-safety-head-exit/index.html

4-2 – What is Google’s Secretive Genesis Project?

Genesis sounds like a generative AI tool meant to automatically aggregate existing stories into a single, styled piece. It has yet to be announced, but journalists have dug in and prodded people in the “know” and found bits and pieces about the project. Is this a good thing? Have the egg heads at Google managed to tame the specter of hallucination enough to make this thing actually make sense in a newsroom? Think of this as The Drudge Report on steroids, minus a human team doing the info gathering. These things cannot hope to replace the instincts and capabilities of real, human journalists. All they can do is look at things posted online and aggregate and collate them. Could this be helpful? Sometimes, perhaps, but as with the rest of these generative AI tools, it could easily be used to amplify bad information, not misinformation, necessarily, mind you, but just wrong information, repeated many times over. This sounds like a recipe for propaganda. Do we need more mockingbird propaganda? I’m gonna say no… In fact, I’m thinking, “Hell no”. This sounds like a bad idea, across the board, to me. What do you guys think?

https://www.cnet.com/tech/googles-genesis-ai-tool-could-write-the-news-it-should-be-stopped/

WE 5 – Google Maps to Have Another FOSS Competitor?

Looks like the engineers over at the Linux Foundation have spun off a new foundation: Overture Maps Foundation. It is populated with also-rans in the map space: Microsoft, TomTom, Meta, and Amazon. They are pooling their map data in a common, open source database meant to be the seedbed for new map apps. The license allows each contributor to take whatever they want, as long as they continue contributing to the project dataset. If they fork it and don’t feed new data back into Overture, they will have to manage their own data moving forward, and that is costly and time consuming. Google spends upwards of $1 billion per year, either on maintaining its data or purchasing other mapping companies. Is this project ready to be applied to a new app that is even competitive with OSMAND+? No, not yet, though they have sourced much of their data from that project, which has been under development for 18 years. I’ve used it and some of its off-shoots, and steer people in that general direction when they try to break away from big tech map apps as they degoogle their lives. It is certainly a project to keep tabs on, though, and I am excited by it.

https://gizmodo.com/google-maps-alternative-overture-maps-data-linux-1850675768

WE 6 – SBF Nonsense

6-1 – Leaking Diaries from Caroline Ellison

Sounds like SBF is pretty desperate, here. He has leaked his former partner’s Google Docs journal entries, selectively, showing that she didn’t believe that she was equipped or suited to run Alameda Research, so therefore her conviction in her trial is fitting, and when she is believed to testify that they had agreed to defraud the customers of FTX, that her testimony should be disbelieved. Thus the DOJ alleges in their latest accusation. He shared these journal entries, selectively, with the NY Times, such to taint the jury to believe that Ellison’s testimony should be discounted. The fact that he shared these things with the press is flat wrong. Given, if she wanted these things to be private, she never should have written them using a Google product. I have to wonder how he got ahold of these files to begin with. Did she give him her password? Did he appropriate them as the administrator of the company account she used to write these things? Did he hack it in some way? This article doesn’t say how he came by these pieces of information… It seems to me that that is a crucial piece of information, here. Was it moral or even ethical to take the actions he did to share it with the Times? No. Then again, if even a handful of the allegations against him are true, this certainly shouldn’t be beyond him to do. What do you guys think?

https://gizmodo.com/doj-accuses-sbj-of-leaking-caroline-ellison-diary-ftx-1850663571

6-2 – SBF Now Facing Fewer Charges than Before

The list of charges is getting pared down due to one excuse or another… By the end of this, I doubt that this highly connected front man for the establishment will ever really serve time for his numerous crimes. Between connections and contributions, he is very protected from any real fallout from his wrongdoing. The two most recent dropped charges are related, allegedly, to the nature of the extradition permission received from the Bahamian authorities late last year. The first charge to be dropped was related to bribery, but the most recent one had to do with campaign finance regulations. I think these are convenient excuses, personally, if you couldn’t tell. If these charges were actually investigated, it could potentially take down some very powerful DC swamp creatures, and we can’t have that, now can we? Just like how Epstein and Maxwell trafficked children to no one, apparently. All of his former coworkers from FTX have already pled guilty to criminal charges, and are cooperating with investigators to make sure he gets nailed. We’ll see how many of these charges actually exist by the time he faces trial on October 2, 2023, as well as a second trial next March. Prosecutors filed another 5 charges on top of the 8 major ones for which he had originally been extradited last year. It is the latter 5 charges which seem to keep getting dropped out of deference to the Bahamian government. If all of the initial 8 charges stick, and he has the book thrown at him (I doubt that outcome very highly), he would face 100 years in white collar prison. His connections and well placed donations will shield him from from much of that, and he, if my gut serves correctly, will likely get what amounts to a slap on the wrist. I doubt that he will ever see prison, much less for 100 years. We will see in a handful of months, though.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/investing/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-charges/index.html

WE 7 – Ever Heard of Kevin Mitnick?

He was one of the best known of the early hackers. He was known, in his early days, for planning and executing some daring attacks on major corporations, such as Pac Bell. His first hack attack was carried out when he was only 16, and he entered the DEC network and stole their OS. He wasn’t convicted for that for another 9 years. He served 12 months in prison for that, then toward the end of his 3 years of supervised release, he broke into the Pac Bell voicemail system, which triggered him going on the lam for 2.5 years. During that time, he attacked dozens of other organizations, always staying one step ahead of the FBI, that was, until February 1995.

He was convicted and served 5 years in prison, to get let out early and to reinvent himself as a public speaker and white hat hacker. He was only 59 when he passed this week, after a 14 month battle with pancreatic cancer. He was so respected in the hacking community that there was a groundswell of support from other hackers, who tend to be very individualistic, culminating in a “Free Kevin” movement. He spent the last 20 years advising numerous Fortune 500 companies as well as government agencies through his firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, as well as his position on the board of KnowBe4. He spent the last 20 years developing and implementing penetration testing methods, tools, and helping companies and organizations to become less vulnerable to black hat attacks. He was known as one of the earliest users of social engineering tactics, such as phishing. I think he might have made up for his shenanigans early in life, what do you think?

https://gizmodo.com/kevin-mitnick-famous-hacker-dies-at-59-1850659160

WE 8 – CSAM on Mastodon? (and everywhere else) Say It Ain’t So…

Ok, let’s cut through the BS in this article, the scare tactics to discourage people from moving over to a freer and decentralized platform for micro-blogging, shall we? This piece is a thinly veiled hit against one of the main competitors to Twitter/ X. I am not a huge fan of any micro-blogging apparatus, but when you write a piece like this, with a headline like this: Mastodon Has a Child Abuse Material Problem, Like Every Other Major Web Platform, then I will take issue with you. They start off the article gatekeeping hard for mainstream platforms, but then are forced to admit that even these centralized platforms have a big problem with this material that has no right existing. The piece starts with a half-hearted explanation of what mastodon and the fediverse are, through clenched teeth, as it were. They call it insecure, not user friendly, and cannot have the kind of “guardrails” which are needed to curb things like CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material… Speaking of bloodless terms, we are talking about child porn related images and videos).

Late last year, there was a survey done by security researchers, who at the time, found a bevy of security vulnerabilities, some stemming from the the architecture of the platform itself (being decentralized and “instance” based, where each instance is operated by anything from a single person to a small organization), and others such as the fact that while it is FOSS, the code base had not been scrutinized very carefully until the massive influx of people fleeing Twitter after Elon bought it and threatened to make it more free speech friendly. There are significant issues in the code base which had not been addressed as of now about 8 months ago, that is an eternity in the world of software. The nature of FOSS is that it will always have vulnerabilities, but generally those issues get fixed quickly after being discovered. So that issue is moot.

As far as it being less than ideal in terms of user-friendliness, I can vouch for that. The instancing system is confusing right now, even for me. Something needs to happen, sort of like with the main servers for Jitsi, where the primary instances get beefed up and easier to sign up for.

In terms of the “guardrails” issue, every platform has an infestation of sick people who use it. Yes, they will go where there are fewer controls, that is human nature, however, even where there are “guardrails”, there are big problems. We need to adopt 0 tolerance policies for those who create and distribute these sorts of materials. They get caught, they get swift justice. No child should ever be subject to the kind of actions which are often depicted in CSAM.

https://gizmodo.com/mastodon-fediverse-child-abuse-material-stanford-resear-1850670857

Weekend Edition 43

by admin Uncategorized

Weekend Edition 43

US Gov Emails Hacked By China

Proton Cloud App Released for Windows

Windows AI: Yikes

Meta & OpenAI Sued for Copyright Infringement

SEC VS Ripple Labs

MSFT-Activision Merger News

Broadcom-VMWare Merger News

WE 1 – Ruh-roh, Raggy, Outlook Hacked By Chinese Gang

Oh boy, this is a real gem, ain’t it? Even some US Federal government (see US Mafia) accounts were accessed by a gang called Storm-0558. 25 organizations were breached through a hole discovered in the Azure cloud platform, which powers Outlook, along with the rest of Office 365 and many other things besides. We don’t know how many or which government organizations were breached, but wow. Microsoft didn’t even pick up on this. The IT goofies at the federal government did. Microsoft has patched the exploit, allegedly. The exploit had to do with forged credentials for the Microsoft account authentication system through Outlook Web Access and Outlook.com. Both the consumer and enterprise systems were affected for user authentication tokenization. After being notified, Microsoft did patch it, but the breach went as high as the US Secretary of Commerce. That’s a big deal. Microsoft shouldn’t have needed to be notified, their cybersecurity professionals should have seen it in progress if they are as good as they claim to be. Come on, this is Microsoft. Then again, this is Microsoft, the very company who popularized the notion of computer viruses with the help of people like McAfee and Peter Norton. The very company which refused to effectively make Windows and its other products more networking and multi-user friendly from the get go, nearly 40 years ago, now. Networking and multi-user features were tacked on in Windows 3.1, and through 9x, until they migrated to the NT kernel for 2k and XP. In contrast, Linux was designed from the ground up with multi-user and networking capabilities. This makes it inherently more secure than Windows and its ilk. If you want to be more resistant to most malware, check out Linux, seriously, guys. It isn’t just for nerds or hackers, regular users can benefit from it just as much. I’m not implying that there is 0 malware for Linux, but even with it basically running the internet (yes the servers that enable you to read this are running on Linux, and I am writing this on a computer which while made by Microsoft, is running Linux, and if you watched the stream above, that was produced on a Linux-based computer as well). Linux runs the internet, including much of the Google, Azure, Oracle, and AWS cloud ecosystems, so if it is stable and performant enough for mega corporations like those, then why would it not be good for you? Join the 3% of desktop users who have made the switch to greater security, performance, longevity, stability, and privacy. Ok, stepping off of my soapbox now.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/chinese-hackers-breach-us-government-email-accounts

https://techfreedom.pro/free-your-pc

WE 2 – Proton Drive Releases Windows App

Google better watch out, there is a privacy-first cloud app for windows now. If you’re not familiar with them and want greater privacy than using the Google ecosystem could ever provide, then you owe it to yourself to check this out. They have a free tier which provides 1GB of end-to-end encrypted, automatically syncing file sharing through their cloud. You may know Proton for their privacy-first email service, or their VPN, but now the Swiss-based privacy company is building out their cloud ecosystem, to eventually include most of the common pieces of Google Workspaces. For now, they have a Windows app, are working on a MacOS one, and after that is done, they’ll work on a Linux client. Good stuff. Perfect? No. Good, absolutely. As always, your best bet is to have a personal nextcloud instance/ server, whether on your own hardware, or in someone’s cloud if privacy is your #1 concern. One great place to host that, if you have about $50/ mo to throw around, and don’t mind paying $3/ month per user, is Altha Tech. I’ll drop a link below.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/computing-security/google-drive-watch-outprivacy-first-proton-drive-lands-on-windows

https://althatech.com

https://proton.me

WE 3 – Windows AI in the Microsoft Store… Hmmmm…

Here’s what’s happening: MS is rolling out an AI Hub in the Store which is AI-curated to push AI-powered apps. Right. Not only that, but soon, they’ll be rolling out AI-summarized review snippets for the Store. I’m reminded of a scene in Star Wars: Episode 2 when C3PO and R2D2 stumble into the droid foundry on Geonosis, and 3PO comments, “Droids building droids, how perverse.” Given, we aren’t quite there, yet, but the potential is there, for a chatbot to actually generate the code to produce an app, if someone asks. It has all the information it needs from GitHub (which is owned by Microsoft, remember) in order to actually build something for you, based on the code of many other programmers and developers who submitted their codebases to the repositories there. That is weird. I don’t like that in the least. Is it all too much at once, anyway? Only time will tell if Microsoft’s zeal for using the tech that it purchased from OpenAI will be good or will ultimately backfire on them. Part of me wants it to backfire and burn windows to the ground, like in the scene in “What About Bob” where Dr. Marvin’s house gets torched, and the elderly couple whom he had snatched it out from under were sitting there saying, “Burn, baby, burn.” Sorry for the sudden burst of dated references, but oh well, here they are. If AI makes you uncomfortable, try Linux to have a computer that will do as you tell it, and nothing more, once you understand it.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/windows-11-gets-more-ai-but-is-microsoft-pushing-its-luck

WE 4 – Sarah Silverman & Others File Class Action Against OpenAI & Meta

This case is related to how LLMs (Large Language Models) are trained indiscriminately. These authors claim that their revenue streams have been adversely affected by chatGPT and LLaMa, which have been trained using their materials. This is something that I saw coming from the first time I heard about generative AI. I knew there would be intellectual property (IP) issues because if something exists online, it will be utilized by these models, whether it is behind a paywall or not. The way that these LLMs work is that they need as much content as possible in order to “learn” how language works, so that they can “generate” phrases, sentences, paragraphs, emails, and whole essays. It can also “generate” things in specific styles, such as similar to Ms. Silverman, or Steven King, or Maya Angelou. This is the capability which these plaintiffs are taking issue with. Is this Fair Use? Whose definition of Fair Use are we going by? This is where things get interesting for the AI players, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and others. We shall see.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66164228

WE 5 – SEC vs Ripple Labs: Good News?

I usually try to hold off for 24 hours, minimum, before I hop on a story, but this JUST happened yesterday afternoon. Judge Torres gave both parties mixed news. On the positive side for us lowly retail investors, she decided that at least as of 2020, XRP was not a security for retail purchasers through exchanges. At the same time, she ruled that the SEC had grounds for believing that industry level investors (banks and the like) who had bought back then as a vehicle for cross border transfers (allegedly quicker and cheaper than SWIFT, if you recall, and this was the primary basis of the token/coin) knew what it was and that for them it is and was a security, as they netted a tangible benefit from it. It will continue to trial at some point in the medium term, and if you have it anywhere but a warm or cold storage wallet, hurry and move it if you plan to hodl for much longer. Do not take this as financial advice, I hold some XRP so am understandably excited by these developments. It is a mixed bag, on the whole, but if your exchange-held XRP has been stuck for the last couple of years, and you want to hodl some more because you believe that it is solid now that it has beaten this case, transfer it. If you want to wash your hands of it, then do so. Beware capital gains taxes, though, spendthrift old uncle Depends wants to take a chunk of your profits when you cash out. So it is up to you, but we’ll be moving ours asap. We will follow this story as it develops.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-says-sec-lawsuit-vs-ripple-labs-can-proceed-trial-some-claims-2023-07-13/

WE 6 – Microsoft/ Activision-Blizzard Merger News

The FTC lost its case to block the merger, after the EU approved it last month. Now the UK’s CMA (Competition & Market Authority) is the last body standing in the way of this merger which would reshape the video game industry. They do not like it, and it is supposed to be finalized in the next month or so. Their chief complaint is the same as it was a few months ago when they blocked the deal. The companies would have to restructure their deal in order to get another round of consideration from the CMA, which means it would not close on time. Then again, deals of this nature rarely go off without a hitch, and the partners have kind of bent over backwards with these regulators over the course of the last 9 months or so (since it was announced) in order to convince them that it wouldn’t destroy the cloud gaming market through monopoly on Microsoft’s part. Sure MSFT isn’t gunning to corner the gaming market…. Riiiight. I believe you, Brad Smith. No, no, no… I really don’t, and I was being about as sarcastic as I could just there. Just to be clear. I trust nothing that Microsoft says, in fact, I suspect them of doublespeak whenever they open their mouths. For that matter, why would Microsoft want the tainted company in the first place, when they know that they’ll need to clean it up like crazy in order to not sacrifice their ESG score? If you guys are unaware, there have been many claims of sexual harassment coming out of the cesspool at Activision-Blizzard for the last 10-15 years. Investigations have started, but either stalled out or resulted in developers and management simply getting slapped on the wrist because they were good at their job and it was bringing in mass amounts of money for the company.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66099230

WE 7 – Another Merger to Watch…

Broadcom (manufacturer of networking equipment) is looking to purchase the virtualization giant, VMWare. On the surface this expensive move doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. It would make sense, moreso, at any rate. But after thinking about it, the networking adapter maker would make a move deeper into servers with this, as most servers are virtualized. If you didn’t know, virtualization allows people to more or less create computers out of thin air. You see, with something like VirtualBox, or its bigger brothers, you can section off the resources of a single set of hardware into two or more virtual machines, each with its own resources, users, and data. This is a force multiplier, but can also lead to problems if machines are not thoughtfully provisioned. So, why would Broadcom want to branch off into virtualized hardware? They want a bigger piece of the server market pie, so to speak. The EU has approved, but with caveats: Broadcom must make the tools to insure adapter compatibility available to third parties, so that they can’t put an undue squeeze on competitors like Marvell. They also must provide the source code for drivers to insure interoperability for competitors with VMWare. This still has to clear the CMA in the UK and the FTC here in the US. Long road to travel, yet before this one can close. The CMA will probably pick it apart as they have done with the Microsoft/ Acti-Blizz deal. This would be the second or third largest similar deal in history (depending on if the gaming deal goes through or not), at an eye-watering $61 billion.

https://www.engadget.com/broadcom-gets-eu-approval-for-its-61-billion-merger-with-vmware-150140942.html

Weekend Edition 36

by admin FOSS News, Tech Freedom, Uncategorized, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 36: Some Things Should Never Need Discussion

WE 36.1 – A Story that Never Should Have Needed to be Written
Pardon me as I pick up the pieces of my heart off of the floor. I am both disgusted and completely disheartened by this subject matter. I first stumbled across porn when I was about 12. I knew what it was, but found myself at that particular site after mistyping the address for a Tolkien fan forum that I was quite active in at the time. Yes, I have been that big of a nerd for that long. I was nerding out in Tolkien forums at 11 and 12 while you were playing video games and playing outside. I needed that much of an escape. That fateful stumble happened one night on a system my dad built for my grandma to get email on, it was connected to something like Copper.net or netzero dial-up. I think it was something like a Celeron in an NForce AIO motherboard. Anyway, enough about the machine itself, it actually sucked, but did what it needed to, barely. The point of this trip down memory lane was to open up the topic of kids finding their way to porn in their own time. It has been a problem as long as the internet has been a “thing”. This is not news that a) kids get sucked into porn earlier and earlier (doesn’t help when the books in the school and public libraries and that their demonized teachers are reading them in class are little more than porn) b) Big Tech needs to do more about this, so that not just anyone can “happen” upon porn while perusing a site or app like Twitter and that c) porn has a detrimental effect on anyone it touches (performers, viewers, producers, etc). If parents were able to actually parent their kids, then studies like this would never need to be undertaken. I’ve talked about this before, and my stance has not changed. This study showed that the behavior and language of kids as young as 8 has been negatively impacted through porn consumption. *SARCASM WARNING* Wait, wait, wait, I thought that all porn and all sexuality was inherently good for everybody… *SARCASM WARNING* I thought that kids should be treated just like adults when it comes to sex… Isn’t that what the fruitloops and would-be or have-been kiddie diddlers who have infected our education system have been shouting at us about for the last several years? Why, yes, yes that has been the message. That is purely demonic. They know that porn has destroyed their own lives… They are probably incapable of having regular, consenting relationships and intimacy with adults, partially, perhaps, because they were groomed and abused as kids themselves, and likely are addicted to porn themselves. Alright, enough of a tangent there… Let’s get back to the body of the article, now, as I try to recover from my episode of dry heaves and weeping over these kids.
What kinds of exposure were these kids getting on Snapchat and Twitter, you ask? Adult nudity and violent porn in profiles and posts. These things are allegedly not allowed for the under-18 set, but they of course find their way to accessing it, and/or it isn’t taken down as quickly as would be ideal by the platforms. One thing to keep in mind about this is that Twitter has made lots of money from the attention that e-thots, models, and adult performers have generated on the platform over the years. I’m not convinced that it will EVER be clean enough to warrant use by me or anyone in my family. Not only that, but diddlers post their exploits and hunt for more victims there as well. No thanks. Parents, step up. Parent your children. Protect them from this filth by keeping them off of these platforms and teaching them the right way to handle those sorts of things. The best way to deal with sex in discussion with your kids is to actually have a discussion about sex and porn with your kids. Do not allow the schools or the media to do it for you if you value their innocence. You set the tone. *begin rant* Dads, if that means that you need to figure out how to break free from porn yourselves, then do so. Easier said than done? Absolutely. Worth doing in order to really be a man and lead your family with honor rather than shame? Damn straight it is. Moms, if it is a problem for you as well, other than with your husbands, please learn to break free as well. Your kids need both of you to be whole and sane. Get rid of any of this garbage from your homes, devices, places of work, vehicles, etc (wherever you might hide it, whether physical or digital media). *end rant*

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65534354
#porn #kids #cutitoff #burnitwithfire #protectyourkids #thetalk #techfreedom #weekendedition #TechFreedom

WE 36.2 – AI News
WE 36.2-1 – “Godfather” of AI Speaks Out
This is a fearporn piece. This gentleman, Geoffrey Hinton, was a pioneer in neural networks, which were a foundational technology for the large language models which undergird most of what we call AI these days. He echoes many of the concerns from the open letter from late March. I am not a fan of AI, but even at that, fear tactics over employment issues, AI controlling the world, AI possibly exterminating the human race, etc are pure histrionics. These histrionics are meant to lead to hysteria because hysteria = fear and the Bible says that when we fear something, we more or less manifest it in our lives. We focus on the fear, empowering it to become realized in our lives, unless we break the cycle and focus on building something positive instead. It would be one thing if the guy were coming forth with more than vague fears, but had some solutions other than, “Let’s stop working in this area.” Which he is thankfully not advocating. I don’t have a pony in this show, and don’t have time to dive into this allegedly sticky issue to come up with a workable solution, either.
#ai #fearporn #meh #TechFreedom #weekendedition
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/tech/hinton-tapper-wozniak-ai-fears/index.html

WE 36.2-2 – Bing AI Available to All Who Sign in Through Edge.
Microsoft has started to actualize their plans to roll ChatGPT functionality through all of their ecosystem, Bing, Word, Excel, Outlook, and eventually Windows itself. This sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. Not only is Microsoft one of the worst about respecting your privacy, but now they are wholly embracing this generative AI thing, the chief danger of which, that I see, is the fact that it is a privacy black hole on its own. They record every response, every prompt, to “learn” from you so that it can seem more realistically human. Microsoft + AI should give you goosebumps in the privacy arena. That’s not to mention the fact that they exist to “learn from you”, so that it can more effectively sound like you. I do not think that the publicly available AI’s could ever replace any human being at anything. If anyone is foolish enough to try to let one replace them, then they deserve to be replaced. Good riddance. Use discernment when you use these TOOLS, people.
Aside from all that, why would you volunteer your info to Microsoft that much more by using Bing? Particularly signed in? Come on, people. Do your searching elsewhere.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/04/tech/microsoft-bing-updates/index.html
#bingAI #msft #weekendedition #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
WE 36.2-3 – Bard to Be Rolled Into Google Search Fulltime
Google Search is going to look a bit more like Brave Search, moving forward, based on the unveiling at Google’s annual I/O conference last week. That means that Bard will now offer AI summaries of all of your search queries before your results actually show up. How do you feel about that? Are any of you still using Google Search, at this point? If you are, why? It has been demonstrated ad nauseam that not only do they spy on your searching, keeping track of every query, but they actively rearrange the results to push a very globalist, WEF & UN-approved set of results. I’m sure that Microsoft’s Bing does the exact same thing, though, so yeah, neither of these are good options if you want unbiased, private search results. What might be better? Well, if privacy is all you are after, then take a look at Duck Duck Go and Brave Search (ironic to me that their initials are BS, lol), or if you want less biased, but still private searching, take a look at Mojeek, SwissCows, or MetaGer. If you want to try your hand at running your own search engine, spin up a VPS and install SearX and try it out. These are things that I would point out in one of my Freedom Consultations.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/ai-search-google-io/index.html
#google #bard #search #TechFreedom #FOSSNews #weekendedition

WE 36.2-4 – ChatGPT Stuff…
Sam Altman is set to testify before Congress on Tuesday, alongside IBM’s Chief Privacy and Trust Officer, and a professor who is a self-described “AI hype critic”. This testimony is more theatrics, likely, as the Senate starts to try to wrap their aged heads around this technology in order to perhaps create some more government overreach in the form of “commonsense guardrails” to regulate this new thing, in keeping with what Depends’ handlers put out recently as a priority in DC. Good luck, Senators. Most of the members of that sub-committee probably wouldn’t know what AI was if it bit them on the face. How can they possibly regulate something they can’t comprehend? This is not ageism, this is just common sense. Most people my age (probably including myself) don’t have a firm grasp on what this AI thing really is, so how can people who barely know how to use a cell phone figure it out based on a bit of testimony?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/openai-ceo-congress-testifying/index.html

Can you pass exams using ChatGPT? Possibly, but as I’ve said repeatedly, do not rely on it anymore than you would a Wikipedia article. Use it as a starting point, if at all. Never turn in anything directly from an AI generated piece. Always tweak it, always polish it, make it yours. You also never know if you will wind up with a hallucinated alleged source. Be careful and always use your God-given mind and discernment. However you choose to use it or not, always remember that it is just a tool. Never simply outsource your thinking to a machine.
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-65316283
#weekendedition #ChatGPT #OpenAI #samaltman #Congress #privacy #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

WE 36.3 – Twitter News
Musk says that he is about to roll out encrypted messaging and calling on Twitter. The acid test, he says, is that even if someone held a gun to his head, he wouldn’t be able to snoop on your DMs or calls. This would make it more competitive with Meta, WhatsApp, Mastodon, and BlueSky. This sounds like a solid move from Elon and co, first one, perhaps, in months. We’ll see if it starts to save the foundering platform. Who knows, right?

Well, it is time for a little Dune2K.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/twitter-calls-messaging-elon-musk/index.html
#twitter #encryption #dms #calls #cool #weekendedition #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

https://rumble.com/c/TechFreedom

https://rumble.com/c/Spiritualityntech

https://rumble.com/c/c-2966394

FOSS News Big Show 1

by admin Big Show, Distro News, FOSS Fun, Foss News, FOSS News, Tech Freedom, Uncategorized

Big Show 1

FOSS News 1 – Big Show

Distro News

Manjaro Talos Released

Ubuntu Double Header

Alma vs Rocky: Which is the Best CentOS Alternative?

FOSS News

How to Set Up Your Own VPN with WireGuard

LibreOffice 7.5.3 Released

11 Ways to Be More Private

FOSS Fun

Discord Makes It Easier to Find People

Heroic Launcher Gets Hotfixed

Proton 8.0-2

#FOSSNews #Linuxnews #Linux #Distros #Howtos #FOSSFun #TechFreedom #Manjaro #Ubuntunews #almalinux #rockylinux #wireguard #Lireoffice #privacy #valve #steam #Proton #heroiclauncher

FOSS News, Linux, How-tos, Gaming, Tech Freedom, all sorts of good stuff

Distro News

DN 1– Manjaro 22.1 “Talos”

On April 21, the Manjaro team released their latest round up system updates, codenamed “Talos”. As is typical with this very tested, Arch-based distro, they lag behind the bleeding edge by a few months. I still use Manjaro on my streaming PC and my wife’s laptop, though I have migrated my surface and our other machine away from that, as it seemed to break things or cause unnecessary slow-downs for those machines. Manjaro is very much a solid distro, and is a good starting point if you want to try the Arch side of the Linux family tree, as it is safe, yet still essentially a rolling release. So, what’s new in this ISO?

GNOME 43.5
- redesigned system status menu
- in-house Layouts Switcher application
- Gradience
- Custom dynamic wallpapers
- Manjaro green theming is back
KDE
- 5.27.4
- Gear 22.12
- Wayland support as cornerstone (Manjaro team is very excited by this)
  - I’ve spilled much digital ink talking about the latest in KDE as these updates are released, typically on a monthly cadence, and the latest is actually Gear 23.04 and Framework 5.105, not 22.12. This is the nature of Manjaro, though. They make sure that the packages they roll out to users (generally) are rock solid and stable, so unless you feel the need to live dangerously, this is a solid option for you.
Xfce
- Finally on 4.18
- New file highlighting feature in Thunar
- Recursive search in Thunar
- Panel preferences changes
- Panel length in pixels vs %
- Panel can now stay on top of windows, so the bottom of a window goes below the panel, rather than covering or sitting flush against it
- Control Center is now the one-stop shop for all desktop module settings
New Kernel 61 LTS ships by default, but options for 5.15 and 5.10 LTS as well.

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-22-1-talos-released/139155

DN 2 – Ubuntu Double Header

2.1 – Update PSA

Make sure that you update to the latest kernel patches from Canonical if you are running Ubuntu, as there were a pair of critical vulnerability exploits which got patched recently: CVE-2023-1829 and CVE-2023-0386, both of which could allow a local attacker to escalate their privileges to root level without a password. The first one was a flaw in the traffic-control index (TC-Index), which required the devs to shut that down in order to fix it. The second was an issue with the OverlayFS file system, which controls the copying process from one UID to another.

These patches affect 22.10, 22.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS users, so run the update via terminal as you usually would: sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade should grab and install these for you with no problems.

https://9to5linux.com/canonical-issues-new-ubuntu-kernel-updates-to-fix-two-local-privilege-escalation-flaws

2.2 – Bionic Beaver (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) is End-of-Life

Just a heads up, here. LTS versions of Linux are supported for 5 years, and we are at the end of that time frame now. If you have any systems running 18.04 still, I suggest upgrading, if it is at all practicable to do so for you. Or you can move to Ubuntu PRO, which will offer extended support through expanded security maintenance (ESM) updates until 2028. Just thought you should know, just in case we have some stragglers or people out there who really have a mission-critical need for 18.04.

https://news.itsfoss.com/ubuntu-18-04-eol/

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DN 3 – Alma VS Rocky: Which is the better CentOS Replacement?

This article lays out several points of comparison, ranging from ease of installation, to extensiveness of documentation, to performance, and ease of use. They both inherited the CentOS installer, so if you liked that, you’ll love the Rocky and Alma Linux installers. I’ve not worked with any of them, personally, but it looks straightforward enough, as it should. Both Alma and Rocky Linux are aimed squarely at enterprise use cases, just as CentOS was. This means that they are geared to be ultra-stable and secure. It is also very easy to migrate from a CentOS install to either Rocky or Alma Linux. All you need is their script to run, and it will switch you right over. One benefit that Alma has is that they have also included upgrading in their migration script. So not only will it laterally migrate you from CentOS to Alma, but it will update & upgrade you to the latest version of Alma Linux all in one go. Rocky Linux also has migration tool, but as I just said, it doesn’t have the ability to upgrade you to the latest version in one fell swoop, but that is ok. Alma Linux is slightly faster in the benchmarks, but the difference is pretty negligible. As for ease of use, they are pretty close to identical, and both ship with GNOME templates for workstations. Rocky Linux has far better documentation, so maintaining and repairing it is easier than Alma, which has a much more sparse, but that can be made up for by the great community support that exists, on the very active subreddit and mattermost channels. Rocky also has community support on their subreddit and mattermost channel, however, they are not as quick to answer questions as the Alma Linux community is. So these distros are pretty darn close, in my book. I’m not looking for an enterprise distro, but if you are, either of these are great options, from what I can tell.

https://www.maketecheasier.com/almalinux-vs-rocky-linux/

FOSS News

FN 1 – Your Own VPN? Just Like That…

As long as you have a VPS set up somewhere, you can easily set up docker and install Wireguard on it and have your very own, truly private, virtual private network. So right now, we will talk through the process, if you don’t mind. I unfortunately do not have a spare VPS anywhere, so I can’t SHOW you how this works.

First, make sure you have Docker and Docker Compose installed on your server. Most distros are pretty simple in terms of how to get that done, and I trust that you can look that up for yourself, if you don’t know how to get it done right now. So the first step is to check if Docker is installed:

Docker —version

If it returns a version, you are good to go, move on to installing Compose, which will allow you to install and run multi-container apps (which is what this will require).

If not, simply install Docker by following the appropriate install directions for your distro, then do the same for Docker Compose.

Here are the directions for Docker Compose:

sudo curl -L “https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-linux-$(uname -m)” -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
- sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
After that, you’ll need to install the appropriate containers for Wireguard Server and WireguardUI:.
First you’ll need to create and navigate into a directory called wireguard
- mkdir wireguard
- cd wireguard
  - Once there, You’ll need to use your favorite text editor (VIM, Nano, Gedit, ect) to create and edit a file called docker-compose.yaml
    - vim docker-compose.yaml
      - Once the file is open, simply copy the following lines of code into the file:
        version: “3”
        services:
        # WireGuard VPN service
        wireguard:
        image: linuxserver/wireguard:latest
        container_name: wireguard
        cap_add:
        – NET_ADMIN
        volumes:
        – ./config:/config
        ports:
        # Port for WireGuard-UI
        – “5000:5000”
        # Port of the WireGuard VPN server
        – “51820:51820/udp”
        # WireGuard-UI service
        wireguard-ui:
        image: ngoduykhanh/wireguard-ui:latest
        container_name: wireguard-ui
        depends_on:
        – wireguard
        cap_add:
        – NET_ADMIN
        # Use the network of the ‘wireguard’ service
        # This enables to show active clients in the status page

network_mode: service:wireguard

environment:

– SENDGRID_API_KEY

– EMAIL_FROM_ADDRESS

– EMAIL_FROM_NAME

– SESSION_SECRET

– WGUI_USERNAME=admin

– WGUI_PASSWORD=password

– WG_CONF_TEMPLATE

– WGUI_MANAGE_START=true

– WGUI_MANAGE_RESTART=true

logging:

driver: json-file

options:

max-size: 50m

volumes:

– ./db:/app/db

– ./config:/etc/wireguard

All you should need to do is change the WGUI_username and WGUI_password fields to your desired values, save and exit from the text editor, then you will actually download the container images and set them up thusly, from the above directory:

docker-compose up -d

It should take about a minute for them to download and be set up this first time, but after that, it should only take seconds to start the respective containers, as they won’t need to download every time you start them. After they have started up, you can open your browser of choice, then navigate to the IP address of your server, like so:

https://my.server.address.here

Enter your username and password (which you changed before you downloaded the images), if you are indeed following these directions. Then click “sign in”.

If you are very concerned with security, which, lets face it, if you are making your own VPN, you probably are, then you should look into installing a reverse proxy such as either Caddy or Traefik,to secure your access to WireguardUI.

Next, you’ll need to configure your new Wireguard VPN server. Simply copy the following batches of code into the Post Up and Post Down script fields, respectively:

Post Up:

iptables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

Post Down:

iptables -D FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

After this, hit the Save button in the bottom left (below the fields you just populated) Apply Config button in the upper right corner, then confirm by clicking Apply in the dialog box that pops up. After this, you will click over into the Global Settings tab on the left hand side of the window.

Check to make sure that the auto-populated public IP address is accurate, if it is, great, if not, you will have to find and enter the IP address of your server, and you can set DNS servers for your VPN, so say you want to add AdGuard, a PIHole, or perhaps content filtering to protect you and your family from garbage online (such as porn, gambling, drugs, or other sketchy things). On that subject, you could also set up your own DNS filtering through ControlD (https://controld.com), or add AdGuard and perhaps CleanBrowsing DNS addresses before you Save and Apply Changes.

Finally, in order to connect to your new VPN, you’ll need to set up a new client or two, so click the New Client button, and enter a user name and email, but leave the rest blank/ as they populate it. Then hit the Submit and Apply Config buttons, and your first client should be automatically set up and ready to use.

Next, we need to figure out how to connect to this VPN client, right?

Right, we do.

Here’s how to get it done on your Linux PC:

Click the Wireguard Clients tab on the left hand side of the WireguardUI window. You should see the client(s) you just set up.

Click the Download button on the client in question, then rename it something recognizable so that it is easier to do the next step:

Open your terminal

Copy this command:

nmcli connection import type wireguard file <yourfilename>.conf

Then open up your Settings app, navigate to the Network Connections section or tab, and you should see the WireGuard VPN connection available to you and then click it and click connect. After this, it should show up as connected, so if you ping your VPN server’ s private IP address, it should return a positive result, and lo & behold, you are connected to your brand new VPN. You can also confirm by going back to your WireguardUI window and looking at the Status tab.

But what about phones? Have no fear, I’ve got you covered:

Download the official WireGuard VPN Client app from your app store of choice, then open it and tap Add a Tunnel, then Create from QR Code. To get the QR code you need, go back to the WireGuard Clients tab again, and pick your client, and click the QR Code button, then capture the QR code with the app on your phone, and all should be set up for you. Once that is done, simply enable the profile, and you are protected.

https://linuxiac.com/how-to-set-up-wireguard-vpn-with-docker/

FN 2 – LibreOffice 7.5.3 Released

This one will be much shorter than the last story, as I won’t be talking you through installing and configuring anything, just reporting on a maintenance release for a popular FOSS office suite. I have often covered these releases on Tech Tips Tuesdays in the past, but they are a thing of the past now. Here we are… LibreOffice 7.5.3. This release squashes 119 bugs found in the previous release, and if you are a LibreOffice 7.5 user, you should certainly update to this as soon as you can, so that you can stop encountering those bugs. The 7.5 series will be actively developed until 7.6 comes out sometime this November. That is all. I used to use LibreOffice for everything, but recently began switching to OnlyOffice, which tends to be more stable and is easier to link up to NextCloud, as well. These days, I only use LibreOffice personally to read off my show notes on my streaming PC. That is not to say that it is crap, but the simplicity and closer compatibility of OnlyOffice feels like a better fit for me now.

https://9to5linux.com/libreoffice-7-5-3-is-now-available-for-download-with-119-bug-fixes

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FN 3 – A Privacy Listicle from It’s FOSS

This is has 11 ideas, so we’ll more or less copy what he says, then comment on them a bit.

1. Secure & Hide Your Email

You can use email aliases to keep your actual email address private. We have a list of tools to help protect your email address. Choose any options like SimpleLogin or use the email alias addresses your email provider allows creating.

https://simplelogin.io

Also, try using secure email services like Tutanota or ProtonMail for the best experience.

I hadn’t really thought about this… I should start doing this on my own, for sure. I have a few protonMail addresses, but don’t use them because I had already set up with Zoho for email and collaboration for my domains. Until Proton has an ecosystem as diverse as Zoho’s, I can’t see myself moving away from Zoho. True, as far as privacy and security, Zoho is not in the same realm as either Proton or Tutanota. The major leg up that they have, in my opinion is that they are geared to be a drop in replacement for Google Spaces and Office365 online (including Outlook, to a certain extent), but will not scrape your data for relevant Ad data or other, more nefarious things. The other two are end to end encrypted to the point where if you lose your password and do not have a recovery method set up, you will lose all of your emails.

https://zoho.com

https://proton.me

https://tutanota.com

2. Secure Your Internet

Use a secure or encrypted DNS like NextDNS or ControlD

Use a VPN to encrypt your internet connection

ProtonVPN and Mullvad VPN would be two excellent options, offering open-source clients and Linux support.

Funny, I just mentioned ControlD earlier, didn’t I? The encrypted DNS is key, 100% of the time, the VPN you can get by without unless you are out on public WiFi.

3. Secure Your Search Activity

I harp on this weekly. The top options here are probably Swisscows, Mojeek, Metager and SearX. A distant placing would be Brave Search. The reason I say that Brave Search has fallen from favor is that with the enfolding of AI, their index has shifted to the Left, where it used to be fairly balanced, if not conservative-leaning. All of them are far better than Yahoo, Bing, or Google Search, in terms of keeping your information under your control, though, so take your pick, try a few and see which one scratches your itch best. SearX is unique in that you can and should host your own instance, in a way, that is the ultimate in privacy, as you control the engine for your instance.

https://swisscows.com

https://mojeek.com

https://metager.org

https://github.com/searx/searx

https://search.brave.com

4. Use a Privacy-Focused Browser

Some popular options are Brave, LibreWolf, and Vivaldi. Only one of these is actually FOSS, in fact, the Vivaldi team will not even allow the browser to be packaged as a flatpak. Brave is not FOSS, either, but with a few tweaks, it certainly passes the privacy sniff test. LibreWolf is 100% FOSS, as it is a fork of FireFox, but geared to be about as private as possible without going Tor. For instance, it defaults to deleting all history and cookies every time you close the browser, so be aware of that.

https://brave.com

https://librewolf.net

https://vivaldi.net

5. Do Not Install a Program You Don’t Know

Be careful with the stuff you download and run on your computer, whether you’re a Linux, Windoesn’t, or MacOS user. Research apps before you randomly install things, they could just be malware. Ankush is right that there are a few tells that any piece of software is probably ok:

Make sure that it is reasonably popular
Not brand spanking new
Is FOSS and has a stable release or 2
Read the privacy policy to make sure any app is not just a black hole for your private data.
Never just simply download unverified files from an email.
Only grab software from official channels, unless the developers suggest getting it somewhere else.

6. Utilize All Privacy Tweaks and Options

Take a look at the privacy options for every single app and system-wide on your phone or computer. It will probably yield dividends for your privacy, as often it is possible to make things more private than they are by default, but you have to look for the settings in order to change them.

7. Use Secure Password Managers

Use something like KeepassXC or BitWarden, or even the Nextcloud password manager (tied to your own instance, ideally) to keep your passwords and credentials safe from prying eyes, and thereby keep your data safer. Don’t use browser based options, they can be more readily hacked.

https://keepassxc.org

https://bitwarden.com

8. Keep Your Notes Secure

If you take notes on your devices, these may be some of the best options for privacy.

Standard Notes and CryptPad are great and offer end to end encryption by default. There are of course others which are just as good. Just go hunting a bit.

https://standardnotes.com

https://crytpad.org

9. Store or Backup on a Private Cloud Platform

You should always have multiple secure backup solutions in place, to make sure that your data is safe from disasters (whether natural or electronic), as well as from intruders. Most of us don’t have the time or know-how to set up and manage our own home storage servers for backup, so the next best solution is a secure cloud, such as Mega or pCloud, or a FOSS alternative like LibertyStratus, which is essentially a fork of NextCloud, which is the best self-hosted option out there for this. With NextCloud, you could create an instance on your own hardware, or set up a VPS with a hosting company and create other users and share files and communicate in your own little cloud whenever you’d like.

https://mega.nz

https://pcloud.com

https://libertystratus.org

https://nextcloud.org

Https://althatech.com (great little hosting company that I write blogs for)

10. Use Private Messengers

You can always utilize open-source and encrypted messengers like Signal (cross-platform) to secure your communications.

If you want a bit more privacy than that, you could spin up your own matrix server and connect to it with element or fluffy chat, or any of these other options (https://matrix.org/clients).

11. Specialized Distributions

If you are adventurous and want to try an entirely different operating system tailored to give you a private experience, you can pick Tails OS, Whonix, or Qubes. These are the best for privacy, and each one has different approaches to the problem. Tails is designed to not have persistent storage, so if you unplug your flash drive from a computer, your data is gone. Whonix is designed to be run in a VM, where Tails is meant to be purely a live environment option. Qubes, on the other hand, can be installed normally, but is entirely containerized in such a way that once you close an application, all its data is irrevocably lost.

https://whonix.org

https://tails.boum.org

https://qubes-os.org

https://itsfoss.com/improve-privacy/

FF 1 – Discord to Finally Make Usernames Make Sense

Are you a Discord user? Have you noticed that the usernames have always been a bit too random to easily search for friends? I’m not on discord, though I may hop on at some point kinda soon to actually participate in ministry there. We’ll see how that goes. I may invite him on to talk about his project, which is largely based on open source tech, if I’m not mistaken. He is a brilliant guy, actually leaves me feeling wanting when I talk to him because he knows so much. But I digress. I don’t know much about Discord, other than it is a voice chat tool which is often used by gamers, similar to Mumble and TeamTalk. I guess I’m just not that much of a gamer… Certainly not in this season of my life. Part of me misses it, but I like to be busy, and my plate is pretty full these days, so I’m good.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/05/discord-username-system-changing-to-make-it-easier-to-find-people/

FF 2 – Heroic Games Launcher Gets a new Hotfix

What needed a fix this time around? Well, it looks like users were having trouble getting past the captcha when trying to sign into Epic. Let’s see what else they worked on, shall we?

They’ve also added some keyboard shortcuts now too:
Command Or Control+R: Reloads the app.
Command Or Control+Q: Quits the app.
Command Or Control+Shift+I: Opens the dev tools.
Command Or Control+K: Opens the Heroic settings screen on the frontend.
Command Or Control+L: Opens the library screen.
Command Or Control+J: Opens the downloads screen.

Full changelog:

[Tech] Refactor Game Managers by @BrettCleary in #2578
[FIX]: Fix winemenubuilder not being disabled by @Etaash-mathamsetty in #2630
[FIX]: Fix playing status (again) by @Etaash-mathamsetty in #2626
[Enhancement]: When selecting item from search bar, it will take you directly to item’s game page by @JordanPlayz158 in #2614
Fix missing game settings info in logs by @arielj in #2638
[Enhancement]: Provide Wine-ge/Proton-ge latest version via wine manager by @Nocccer in #2513
[Enhancement] Add logic to Stores feature by @redromnon in #2622
[Fix] Searchbar and autoComplete UI by @redromnon in #2621
[Fix] Ignore Logitech’s G29 by @arielj in #2570
[Fix]: Blank screen on startup by @Nocccer in #2612
[FIX] Image search on Add Game Screen blocking finish button by @flavioislima in #2657
[Fix] Captcha not working on epic games page by @flavioislima in #2658
[GOG] Fix url for horizontal images for GOG downloads by @arielj in #2661
[FIX] Proper kill wine processes when hitting Stop Button by @Etaash-mathamsetty in #2666
Allow ‘null’ as lifespan so cachestore does not expire by @arielj in #2664
[Fix] Steam Shortcuts with missing runner by @flavioislima in #2660
[UX] Add Keyboard global shortcuts by @flavioislima in #2659
[i18n] Updated Translations by @weblate in #2636

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/05/heroic-games-launcher-271-hotfix-1-fixes-up-epic-games-login/

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FF 3 – Proton 8.0-2 Released

Here’s another small update, which pulled in some of Proton experimental’s work to, for one thing, make the EA app work again, since they keep messing with everybody over there at EA. Aside from that, here is a shortlist of things that got pulled in from experimental:

Fixed Baldur’s Gate 3 getting stuck on a black screen in Vulkan mode.
Fixed Divinity: Original Sin: Enhanced Edition and Divinity Original Sin II: Definitive Edition crashing on launch.
Fixed Path of Exile crashing.
Fixed memory leak in Trackmania and Ubisoft Connect overlay.
Improved Elden Ring compatibility compared to Proton 8.0-1. It can still be finicky.
Fixed Red Dead Redemption 2 and other games not starting after switching from Proton Experimental to stable.

Hmmm… I remember talking about the Path of Exile thing recently… Makes me want to play again, but I don’t dare until I get a better computer. Oh well… Thus is life. I also don’t really have time to get back into it. I was pretty deep in it for about 4-5 years right after it left beta, 10 years ago. Then kids happened and I realized that it wasn’t worth my time to play a dark A-RPG. I digress again, though… Good that major games like RDR and Elden Ring are getting plenty of love, as always. One thing you can generally count on in FOSS development is relatively incremental improvements happening on a regular basis. Enjoy your games, y’all.

FOSS News – April 2-6, 2023

by admin Distro Monday, FOSS Fun, FOSS News, Linux, Uncategorized, Weekend Edition

Distro Monday 52

DM 52.1 – Straight Ubuntu or Mint?

What’s the difference anyway? Isn’t Mint based on Ubuntu? Actually, there are quite a few noticeable differences. Yes, Mint is derived from Ubuntu, just as Ubuntu is derived from Debian. There is also a Debian edition of Mint (which, personally, I would point you to). Personal preferences aside, what are the big differences?
· Mint
o Has only 3 Desktop environments (all are GNOME forks from yesteryear)
§ Cinnamon (in-house development, flagship option)
· Easy to use, instantly familiar for windoesn’t users, fairly lightweight
§ Xfce for the very resource-conscious
· Extra lean, bare-bones, may remind you of windoesn’t 9x by default
§ Mate which is also relatively light and quick, based on an older version of GNOME than Cinnamon is
o Has Timeshift to allow you to undo dumb choices on the computer easily
o Update manager is very easy to use
o Flatpak rather than Snap support by default
o Community based
· Ubuntu
o Supported by Canonical, LTD.
o This is “Linux” to most people who are not familiar with Linux
o By default, ships a heavily tweaked version of GNOME, with modded dash-to-dock and a few other things as well
§ Also has numerous other desktops, from LxQt to Xfce, Budgie, KDE, Cinnamon, Unity, and a host of other options which are community supported rather than being official iterations from Canonical
o Snaps, because no one else wants them
o Easy to use, I suppose, but not as easy as Mint
o Vanilla Ubuntu is disorienting because of the tweaked GNOME they ship, but if you want a more windoesn’t feel, as I said earlier, they have several other possible flavors with different desktop environments available, which is far more extensive than Mint.
I do not put any stock in Ubuntu, personally because I do not appreciate the deals they’ve made with the Devil in order to build their business to where it is today. On one hand, I suppose it has helped to raise the profile of Linux, and Ubuntu has become a more commonly used platform for servers and other enterprise-level applications. However, they compromised deeply and are almost treating their branch of the Linux family tree like a proprietary OS. I respect the Mint team for stripping out much of that garbage, and having the foresight to start a Debian edition of Mint. Is Mint perfect? No. Due to the bases on which they build, they are slow on the uptake for updates and upgrades, but that makes them more stable and less prone to break than my personal preferences, currently.

https://linuxiac.com/linux-mint-vs-ubuntu/#main

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DM 52.2 – New ISO for OpenMandriva rolling edition out now

I talked about OpenMandriva a couple of months ago, but it is the descendant of a legendary Linux distro, Mandrake Linux. I talked about it a then because they just rolled out the first version of their rolling release edition, codenamed “Rome”. Well, this one is roughly on par with Arch in terms of being bleeding edge, so let’s find out what changes they’ve made here:

· Linux 62 kernel series
· Latest From
o KDE
o Mesa graphics stack,
o Wayland
o XOrg Server
o LLVM/Clang
o GNU Binutils
o GCC
o GNU C Library
o systemd 253
· LibreOffice 7.5.1 office suite
· Firefox 111
· Chromium 110
· Krita 5.1.5
· digiKam 7.9
· GIMP 2.10.34
· Calligra Suite 3.2.1
· SMPlayer 22.7.0
· VLC 3.0.18 video players
· VirtualBox 7.0.6
· GNOME 43.3
· LxQt 1.2

OpenMandriva Lx 23.03 Released with Linux 6.2, Mesa 23, and KDE Plasma 5.27

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DM 52.3 – blendOS: One Distro to Rule Them All?

I talked about this when it first came out, and even daily drove it on my Surface (not a representative sample) for about a month. The concept is cool. It is based on Arch, which gives you the rolling feel along with the excitement of being on the bleeding edge of development for the OS, but also gives you access to containerized ways to use APT and DNF package managers if you really want or need to. This, in concept, as I said, is a sweet setup, almost ideal, really. However, I do not think that it is ready for mass adoption yet, as on my system (again, not any kind of representative sample for computers in general, as it has been a thorn in my backside since I bought it about 2 years ago), it became unstable and sluggish far more quickly than it should have in my opinion. Perhaps I didn’t use it as intended, as I used the basic, standard pacman to install packages most of the time. I didn’t take advantage of the semi-immutability offered by the containerized version of pacman, though I did play with DNF and APT just a little. Which package managers are in play, here?
· apt
· dnf
· yum
· pacman
· yay
· Blend

It currently uses a distrobox implementation, and this is admittedly in the early stages of development, so my experience will not necessarily be representative in your case, either. I installed the KDE version (big shock, I know), and used it as normal for about a month, when it started to break pretty badly on me and I couldn’t get what I needed to do done easily because of instability. It also ships with the Flathub store app as an app which can fully install flatpaks, rather than simply downloading their flatref files for something else to install. I mentioned distrobox, but it will not be around in this distro for much longer, as it will be replaced with podman very soon. They will also soon be shipping a GUI config tool for the containers, rather than relying on CLI to get the job done. It is a cool option, and perhaps when it is more stable, I will try it again, and do it more properly this time. Is it the One? Not at this time, but I will keep an eye on it as it develops. I like the idea of an immutable Arch install, though that kinda messes with my head, to be honest.

https://news.itsfoss.com/blendos/

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TTT 52: Ubuntu PSA & Linux Mobile News

TTT 52.1 – Running Ubuntu? Here’s Another Reminder to Keep it Updated
Well, Canonical has released a new round of CVE (Critical Vulnerability Exploit) Patches, so run your updates to close these 9 attack surfaces down for your machine:
· CVE 2022-2196
o Could leave your VMs open to leaking private data from either the host or a fellow guest OS
· CVE-2022-42328 and CVE-2022-42329
o Which are both race conditions in the Xen networking backend and could cause the kernel to crash
§ What’s a race condition?
· A situation where two drivers are trying to access the same resource at the same time, and do not get scheduled properly by the kernel and it causes problems, often a denial of service (crash, etc)
· CVE-2023-0266
o a use-after-free vulnerability discovered in the ALSA subsystem that could allow a local attacker to crash the system by causing a denial of service
· CVE-2023-0469
o a use-after-free vulnerability discovered in the io_uring subsystem
· CVE-2023-1195
o another user-after-free vulnerability found in the CIFS network file system. Both vulnerabilities could allow a local attacker to cause a denial of service (system crash) or execute arbitrary code
· CVE-2022-4382
o A race condition in the USB Gadget file system implementation, which could lead to a use-after-free vulnerability in some situations and allow a local attacker to crash the system by causing a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code
· CVE-2023-0045
o a flaw in the prctl syscall implementation that made the kernel fail to protect against indirect branch prediction attacks and allowed a local attacker to expose sensitive information
· CVE-2023-23559
o an integer overflow vulnerability found in the RNDIS USB driver that could allow a local attacker with physical access to cause a denial of service (system crash) or execute arbitrary code by plugging in a malicious USB device

https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-22-10-users-get-new-linux-kernel-security-update-9-vulnerabilities-patched
#TTT #patches #ubuntu #security #Linux #PSA #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
TTT 52.2 – UB Touch OTA-1 Out Now for you Linux Mobile Devotees
Wow, I just talked about OTA 25 last week, and the devs shocked us with the first rebased OTA update already… Welcome to Focal Fossa, everyone. What else is new with this surprise (limited) release? Which devices is it currently available for?
· Devices
o Fairphone 4
o Google Pixel 3a
o Vollaphone 22
o Vollaphone X
o Vollaphone
· New Stuff
o Focal Fossa LTS
o Lomiri UI
o The systemd init system
o Ayatana Indicators
o Waydroid
o a new porting style for device porters
o support for building many components against GCC 12 and Qt 5.15 LTS
· Improvements
o fix for an issue when trying to mute the phone’s microphone during phone calls
o a fix for a context menu issue in the Morph Browser
o fixes for various issues when receiving MMS messages.
o XWayland integration
o support for running legacy X11 apps on Lomiri,
o support for PIN codes between 4 and 12 digits
o updates broadband provider data
o adds support for USB-C USB-PD
o improves PAM/logind integration
o and refreshes various Lomiri effects.
· New
o Morph Browser
§ received hardware-accelerated video decoding with support for up to 2K video playback and video chat support
o Camera app
§ supports barcode reading
o Messaging app
§ now lets you zoom in on conversation text using a pinch and spread gesture, and the Addressbook app now lets users add notes for a contact and a URL address

https://9to5linux.com/first-ubuntu-touch-ota-release-based-on-ubuntu-20-04-lts-is-out-now
#TTT #UBTouch #Linuxmobile #updates #FOSS #TechFreedom #FOSSnews

Free Your Internet

Internet Freedom

One-stop shop for getting you and your business transitioned off of Big Tech online platforms and tools, so that you have control of your data once again. I will also help you to find better alternatives.

#TTT #techtips #TechFreedom #internetfreedom #nogoogle #nometa #noyahoo #nomicrosoft #Truth
TTT 52.3 – Ventoy 1.0.90 With Support for Even More Stuff
The boys and girls on the Ventoy team have expanded support even further by adding updated LibreElec and Chimera Linux to their repertoire. That means that the easiest USB/SD Card/ external storage bootable media creation and management solution that much better. If you ever

https://9to5linux.com/ventoy-1-0-90-adds-support-for-libreelec-11-0-and-chimera-linux
#TTT #FOSS #Linux #crossplatform #ventoy #multiusb #TechFreedom #FOSSnews
a.
10 Things My Wife Thinks You Should Know about Tech Freedom.

#TechFreedom #wifeysauce #getfree #explainer

FFW 37: Counter-Strike 2: Confirmed and More

FFW 37.1 – Counter-Strike 2 is For Real

I covered the likelihood that it would be coming soon about a month ago… Valve has confirmed and told us that it, along with a huge upgrade for Source 2 would drop by this summer. I suggest you look at the videos in the article below if you want more of a tease. I don’t play, but know that many do, and there will be lots of good stuff being improved and changed in the new game vs CS:GO. Here is a short list:
· responsive smoke
· sub-tick updates for more responsive gameplay
· overhauled maps
· Source 2 tooling for the community
· your whole inventory carries over from CS:GO
· higher resolution models for basically everything
· improved visual effects
· an upgraded UI
· And more

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/counter-strike-2-from-valve-releasing-summer-2023/

#FFW #Linux #FOSSnews #CS2 #valve #steam #linuxgaming #TechFreedom

FFW 37.2 – What Happened to AMD GPUs in DOTA2?

If you play DOTA2 and run it on a Linux box with an AMD GPU, you may have noticed reduced fluidity in the game of late. This is due to an updated Graphics Pipeline Library issue causing the driver, while in game to consume a ridiculous 3GB of RAM. Luckily, this bug has been squashed after it was demonstrated to developers working on the project, and it now takes a more reasonable 450MB RAM vs the 3 GB they were seeing. On the other hand, unless you are adventurous, you may not have seen it anyway. However, that feature will be enabled by default in the next version of the MESA stack, so getting that bug squashed now is excellent. Good on you, Devs.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/amd-radv-driver-will-soon-stop-eating-ram-with-some-games/

#FFW #Linux #DOTA2 #AMD #gfxdirvers #bugssquashed #performance #FOSSnews #linuxgaming #TechFreedom

Freed Computer

https://techfreedom.pro/freed-computer/
https://techfreedom.pro/free-your-pc/

#freedcomputer #linux #nospying #safe #TechFreedom #Truth

FFW 37.3 – NVidia Graphics Driver News

We have a new full version of drivers from Dr. Huang and team Green. What’s new in this one?

· Indirect Branch Tracking support
· Better Xfce support
o New profile to prevent degradation when
§ OpenGL compositor backend is enabled along with G-SYNC
§ suspend and resume support when using GSP firmware
· ZSTD compression to shrink the installer and make it quicker
· Better flatpak support
· improved support for Wayland apps running on using the PRIME render offload feature on a system with an integrated AMD GPU
· And more…
As always, check the link if you want more information on this driver release.

NVIDIA 530.41.03 Graphics Driver Brings Better Xfce Support, Faster Installer

#FFW #Linuxgaming #nvidia #graphics #drivers #updates #TechFreedom #FOSSnews

What to use instead of Big Tech online:

#techtips #TechFreedom #justsayno #nomorespying #advice #Truth

WE 31: Violence, Banks, and AI, Oh My!

Bob Lee Stabbed to Death in SF
Credit Suisse Buyout News
Amazon Vs Labor and UK May Sue Over Cloud Monopoly
AI News
Tiktok News

Weekend Edition, Cashapp founder stabbed to death in SanFran, Credit Suisse & UBS, Amazon Labor Union Woes, UK signals lawsuit over AWS and Azure in UK stifling competition, pResident Depends holding meetings on AI, chatGPT makes wild accusations, Head of Signal Foundation reaffirms dedication to never adopt AI tech in the Signal system, Other popular Chinese Apps, TikTok opinions

WE 31.1 – Bob Lee, Founder of CashApp Stabbed to Death
Sad story to start off the day, but I’m committed to doing some sort of human interest piece at the top of the weekend edition from now on. It would appear that Bob Lee, who was a fixture in Silicon Valley for the last 20 years or so, first as an engineer at Square, then when he founded CashApp later, was stabbed to death in the Rincon District of San Francisco. Many will miss him, he sounded like a genuinely great guy. Good bye, Bob.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/tech/bob-lee-tech-executive-death/index.html
#cashapp #boblee #rip #sadday #square #cashapp

WE 31.2 – Shotgun Wedding in Switzerland
UBS and Credit Suisse tied the knot, so to speak, in a very rushed ceremony due to the failing health of Credit Suisse over the last handful of months. Swiss authorities pushed them together, and both parties were willing, for the most part, however, others around them are questioning the pairing. some are concerned that it concentrates too much risk in UBS specifically and Switzerland generally. We will see what becomes of this union which apparently will take 3-4 years to completely effect, due to the gargantuan nature of both partners. It looks like there will be significant layoffs as these two big banks become one, after all it doesn’t make sense to have reduplication of efforts when part of the point of mergers like this is to streamline operations. Some shareholders were pretty mad at the meetings which each bank held in the beginning of the week. Markedly moreso on the Credit Suisse side than on the UBS side, but no one was really happy that they didn’t get a vote in the matter. Sure, the UBS shareholders were happy to have one fewer competitors in the world, but having a major deal like that crammed down their throats tempered their enthusiasm a bit.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/05/ubs-holds-first-shareholder-meeting-since-controversial-credit-suisse-takeover.html
#UBS #creditsuisse #mergers #banking #highfinance

WE 31.3 – Amazon in Trouble More?
31.3a – Ever Hear About the Amazon Labor Union?
Well, they won their court case a year ago, but Amazon still refuses to acknowledge that they exist. A guy named Christian Smalls, who was let go from one of the NY Amazon warehouses back in 2020, decided that workers needed to unionize to protect themselves from the increasingly poor working conditions they faced in the warehouses. As you can imagine, it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses for the fledgling union, because even though they won the first battle, which is simply to be able to organize at all, there have been other hurdles. Personality conflicts, differences of opinion, and of course resistance from the behemoth that they are trying to organize in order to have a voice in order to bargain with. Amazon has hardly bothered to notice that this ragtag, grassroots group, headed by an individual whom Amazon lawyers thought was “not smart or articulate” a few years ago. It will be interesting to see what happens with the ALU’s efforts to move any further than they have already, which is quite something. I’m neither a huge fan of mega-corps like Amazon nor of the overtly socialist nature of unions, which is already starting to manifest itself in Mr. Smalls. He travels all over the country, wearing Versace, and hobnobbing with celebrities, then passes down pronouncements as if from on high.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/tech/amazon-labor-union-one-year-later/index.html

31.3b – AWS and Azure to Face Anti-trust Litigation in UK
OFCOM, the UK communications regulator looks poised to bring a case against both tech monsters’ cloud divisions for being anti-competitive. What are they looking at here, though? In the words of the Ofcom’s director, they have found, “High barriers to switching are already harming competition in what is a fast-growing market. We think more in-depth scrutiny is needed, to make sure it’s working well for people and businesses who rely on these services.”
In light of that, they have decided to refer the matter to the Competition and Markets Authority, who is ready to do an investigation of their own, actually seems to be champing at the bit, so to speak. They have already reviewed preliminary findings from Ofcom and is primed to look into the matter. The issues that led to Ofcom referring them to the CMA center around high egress fees, artificial technical barriers to interoperability with other providers, as well as incentive fee structures meant to encourage clients to only use one cloud provider for all their needs. This strikes me as a fairly open & shut case, as far as I’m concerned, but the giants, including Google, which speak for between 65-75% of the cloud market in the UK are all using these tactics (not all that differently from here in the States). Well, we will see what these regulators do and can do to these big dogs. I have my doubts that it will wind up as anything more than a slap on the wrist for these tech giants, but who knows, maybe they’ll be out for a pound and a half of flesh this time instead of 3 ounces. I’ll keep an eye on it, but it sounds like the earliest there is likely to be more movement on this issue will be something like November.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/tech/amazon-microsoft-uk-cloud-services/index.html
WE 31.4 – AI News
31.4a – Johnathan Turley: Falsely Accused of Harassing a Student by a ChatGPT Hallucination
Wow… Dr. Turley is a rare “conservative” within the halls of legal academia, and has never done anything like what chatGPT hallucinated he did to a student, this thing even fabricated a WaPo article about the incident. I have to wonder how much of this happens on a regular basis as people overuse that damned thing for crap it was never intended to do. So a colleague of Dr. Turley’s from UCLA, who was doing some research on harassment accusations against law professors via chatGPT. It manufactured this whole thing, which strikes me as about the same level of nonsense as a hit piece in a tabloid, a blatant example of libel, only there is no one to sue over it. Of course, Dr. Turley has never taken students on trips in 35 years of teaching law, much less has he ever even been accused of anything untoward… Obviously there was never a WaPo article about a non-existent incident. So, if it can make things up whole cloth like that and no one is available to refute the spurious claims, then that gets added to the list of sources for future research. Dr. Turley is trying to say that these tools are untrustworthy in this opinion piece, and I have heard of other similar things happening, so I tend to agree with him on this.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2023/04/03/chatgpt-misinformation-bias-flaws-ai-chatbot/11571830002/

31.4b – pResident Depends Holds Meetings About AI
Wow, his handlers must really be trying to focus everybody on this issue for some reason, just like the Trump indictment earlier this week. This article is kind of unfocused and feels a bit rushed, to me, but that is beside the point, it is a story about Brandon Depends. He can’t even pay a visit to the necessary on his own successfully (see stain on his pants at the Vatican, lol), much less speak coherently about any topic, not even ice cream. “You know, the thing…” this clown is a colossal embarrassment and humiliation for our country. We were at least semi-functional under Trump and his admin. The cracks were certainly beginning to show then, but the level of dysfunction in this country now is almost incomprehensible to me. I digress, though. They are supposed to meet and talk about the “risks and opportunities” of AI, in the face of the runaway success of tools like chatGPT. They are also likely to push congress to pass legislation to allegedly limit the data collection of Big Tech companies in America. As long as that bill isn’t as much of an inversion of the rights of US citizens enshrined in our Constitution, or is not really about something else, like limiting free speech in the name of protecting us from “misinformation” which is anything that an administration chooses to deem as “wrongthink” or inconvenient, such as in the RESTRICT Act. That monstrosity needs to be shouted down harder than Dinesh D’Souza at U Mass Amherst a few years ago. If it were really what it claimed to be instead of a blank check for the Secretary of Commerce to sign whenever they feel like it to shut down inconvenient information being shared on social media, because apparently bans and shadow bans aren’t enough, shoot, even jailing someone over a meme and a joke shared during the 2016 election is apparently not enough for them, they want absolute control of the internet, just like the CCP has with their “Great Firewall”. But again, I digress. I am glad to hear that the privacy of Americans is suddenly on the radar for Resident Depends.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/biden-to-discuss-ai-risks-and-opportunities-in-meeting-with-advisors.html

31.4c – A Bright Spot for Signal
The president of the Signal Foundation is making lots of noise about how they will never incorporate AI tools into the encrypted messaging app. Does she want a cookie or a ribbon? The app is meant to be a tool for more private communications, not a data farming enterprise like social media is in general. She also made it clear that they hold onto as little user information as possible to still be able to provide the services that they do through the app. This puts me a bit more at ease about using Signal, however, I am very uncomfortable with the people who endorse it, such as people with thoroughly mixed reputations such as Edward Snowden. However, that is not the point right now. The point is that they are standing up to pressure to incorporate some of those God-awful privacy violators called “generative ‘AIs’” into their non-profit based private communication app. Good on them.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/signal-president-meredith-whittaker-learned-what-not-to-do-from-google.html

WE 31.5 – Tiktok Thoughts
31.5a – Public Sentiment About the Ban
As of a week ago, half of the people surveyed by Pew Research were behind the idea of ban, overall, and most (64% of) respondents were aware of the CCP connections for TikTok and ByteDance, most (60% of) GOP-aligned people were in favor of the ban, while only 43% of Dem-aligned respondents were favorable toward the idea. I feel like there is a huge influence operation underway about this issue, precious little real information on either side of the issue, and I am finding myself leaning toward supporting TikTok’s continued operation in the country, but not because I actually like the platform, which I don’t, I think it can be and often is used to manipulate people in certain ways which are counter to their well being. Rather because I get very, very uneasy when the two wings of the political bird of this country come together on anything, as 95% of the time, whatever that issue that got overwhelming bipartisan support winds up stripping us of freedoms and rights which should be guaranteed by the limits placed on the government by the documents upon which this country allegedly rests (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution).
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/31/tech/tiktok-ban-pew-survey/index.html

31.5b – Is TikTok the ONLY Popular Chinese App in the US and UK?
Simple answer: No.
What else is there? CapCut (a popular video editor often used to create videos for TikTok), Shein (a fashion app aimed at younger millennials and Gen Z), and Temu (an online shopping app which has quickly overtaken WalMart and Amazon for the younger set). If we are really concerned about China getting our data, then we need to be consistent and ban all of these other big China-related apps – these are just the 3 biggest, other than TikTok, though, out of thousands of others. Ooh, how many mobile games which are little more than shinier, more engaging methods of data harvesting are there that should be banned similarly, if we are to be concerned with TikTok purely due to its alleged CCP ties? Either it all needs to be shut down faster than a nerd asking a prom queen out, or our gov’t needs to shut its increasingly corrupt and inept trap about all of this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65072407

Humility and Wisdom, ICYMI Feb 5-11

by admin Devotions, memesplanation, Tech Freedom, Uncategorized

Sunday, February 5, 2023

Memesplanation 2/6/23:

Memesplanation 2/7/23:

Memesplanation 2/8/23:

Memesplanation 2/9/23:

Memesplanation 2/10/23:

Memesplanation 2/11/23:

A Quick Rundown on Setting up Thunderbird (a FOSS desktop email client)

by admin Degoogle, Internet, Live Free, Tech, Tech Freedom, Uncategorized

How to set up Thunderbird for your Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail accounts

1) Use the Automatic Setup Wizard

Select the Service Provider (Yahoo, Hotmail, Google)
Enter your credentials (address/username and password, and it should automatically connect and begin to download your emails.
If that doesn’t work for some reason…

2) Use the Manual Setup Tool

Gather the following information from your provider (each provider is a little different, in terms of where you find this info)
1. incoming mail server and port (for example, “pop.example.com” and port 110 or “imap.example.com” and port 143)
2. outgoing mail server and port (for example, “smtp.example.com” and port 25)
3. security setting for the connection with the server (for example, “STARTTLS” or “SSL/TLS” and whether or not to use secure authentication)
Input your credentials
Click OK, and if you put everything in correctly, the process of downloading your emails should begin.

ICYMI: TF Devotions January 22 – 28 2023

by admin Uncategorized

Devotions from the last full week of January 2023, in one convenient place:

Devotion 1/22:

Memesplanation 1/23:

Memesplanation 1/24:

Memesplanation 1/25:

Memesplanation 1/26:

Memesplanation 1/27?

My Palm Sunday Devotional Video from Rumble

by admin Uncategorized

A few thoughts on Palm Sunday… What if Jesus had made the people stop praising him? This piece delves into that eventuality.

If this post does well here, I will post more of my devotions and videos here as well.

Thoughts on Palm Sunday (Luke 19:37-40, TPT)

As soon as he got to the bottom of the Mount of Olives, the crowd of his followers shouted with a loud outburst of ecstatic joy over all the mighty wonders of power they had witnessed. They shouted over and over, “Highest praises to God for the one who comes as King in the name of the Lord! Heaven’s peace and glory from the highest realm now comes to us!”
Some Jewish religious leaders who stood off from the procession said to Jesus, “Teacher, order your followers at once to stop saying these things!”
Jesus responded, “Listen to me. If my followers were silenced, the very stones would break forth with praises!”

Lord,
As we look at Palm Sunday again this year, I ask that you would highlight something in this passage for us. Let us see something in this familiar narrative that we might have missed in the past. Thank you, Lord. Come and embody the text for us, Holy Spirit. Amen.

As the people hailed him publically, as king and Messiah, the powers-that-were got nervous. They were, on one hand, scared of what the Romans would do if the people really tried to make Jesus a literal, political king. They didn’t want to see another insurrection and a violent smack down from Rome. On the other, they were scared that they were losing power over the people who had had their leadership inflicted on them for generations. So as the Hosanna’s were happening, they told Jesus to shut the crowd up. They didn’t want blood in the streets, nor did they want to see Jesus supplant them, as they hated him for standing up to them, anyway. So what was the deal with his response? Was he being literal, or just figuratively saying that there would be no way for him to shut them up? I think he was being literal, because as the Son of God, in that moment, if humans ceased praising him, the earth itself would have cried out in some literal, audible way. I know that literal interpretations are not “sophisticated”, but these people were not sophisitcated, for the most part. Not saying that metaphors would have been wasted on them, but the blunt and literal is hard to escape, in terms of meaning, right? So, let’s imagine if the crowd would have been silenced… first, there would have been a stillness, then a clattering, as the vibrations of praise died away… it would have been, at first, a clattering, but then the stones’ actual voices would’ve been amplified in some way so that all the humans could’ve heard them praising Jesus. All would have heard the very rocks lifting up their voices to proclaim the King of Kings. However, that was not the purpose of Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday was about the People recognizing him, even over the objections of the powers that masqueraded as their leaders. The People were done with Rome. They wanted freedom, and would follow anyone that they percieved to be genuine in desiring and might be able to lead them to that goal. High taxes, oppressive military occupation with ancient enemies in the garrisons throughout Judea and the surrounding areas, and just being ruled by people who do not believe in YHWH… this was all too much, and formed a powder keg that would only take a spark to set off. Jesus never personally made those signals, even though he was very cognizant of fulfilling Prophesy regarding Messiah, but He was not about earthly politics or religion. He came to teach us how to reconnect with God, to commune with God… to tabernacle with God, if you will. But I digress… the stones would have been audible in the worship that they already were giving to God for Jesus. They do have voices. They are alive. Most of us cannot hear because we have been conditioned and taught that they do not and are not, respectively. We are programmed to believe that rocks are inanimate. They are not.