Spotify gets a new desktop client, Firefox done goofed, Fedora stays classy and HDCP on Linux isn’t the end of the world. All this plus your emails!
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Dr Hack
Waldo
MassiveOni
Adam Stambaugh
Dan W
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Colour key – Venn Pedro
News
M’lady
https://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-27-server-classic-release/
- Limiting software availability in a server distro, unless the maintainers/packagers/developers jump through a bunch of new hoops for the sake of “modularity”, is a sure fire way to get some negative feedback.
- I’m pretty sure everyone who’s ever packaged software for a distro could have told you that from the get go.
- Also, how do you get off on creating another, completely different, packaging system for the sake of “modularity” in the face of the flatpack vs. Snaps war?
- 2017, the year of backtracking stupid decisions.
MS SSH
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/13/putty-begone-microsoft-will-ship-an-openssh-client/
- Putty is perfectly serviceable and portable.
- While I agree /w Rene it’s nice knowing this is built in.
Secure the lightning
https://christian.kellner.me/2017/12/14/introducing-bolt-thunderbolt-3-security-levels-for-gnulinux/
- Adding one more layer on top of DBus for the sake of security.
- Granted, this layer of security could entice developers to expose more stuff directly on the firmware level instead of needing their own proprietary software to access them.
Noscript is your friend
https://9to5google.com/2017/12/14/google-chrome-64-beta-features/
- This is what happens when autoplay video becomes the norm.
- Took’em long enough.
- That said, they still haven’t killed Flash.
- “on websites that display non-compliant ads”
- That’s important to note!
- It took’em a weekend to come up with a non-apology.
The Non-Apology
https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/update-looking-glass-add/
- We didn’t get paid for it so it’s all good, right?
- We’re sorry for the confusion and for letting down members of our community.
- So, you’re not sorry you pushed adware on your users without asking for permission, not giving anyone a choice to opt-in/out, or even not giving people a bit a of a heads up.
- Ladies and gentlemen, Mozilla! A soulless corporation like any other.
- Not malicious but holy hell they should have known better than to push anything, minus security updates.
- People don’t like knowing that they can do that.
The end is neigh
https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2017/12/11/why-linux-hdcp-isnt-the-end-of-the-world/
- Do you have a GLX compositor running? You can pirate the pants out of everything HDCP, then.
- It’s actually so pointless to bitch about HDCP as DRM, I’m surprised anyone at Google even gave enough of a damn to implement this.
- And, if this means 4K Netflix/Prime for Linux, the net result is actually positive.
- Also, if this means laying the groundwork for Android apps on desktop Linux, bring it!
- HDCP is the TSA of DRM.
- It’s all security theatre.
- Problem is, it don’t work half the time on devices that support it.
Smooth proxies
https://kdenlive.org/2017/12/kdenlive-17-12-0-released/
- This is a maintenance release focused on stability.
- Proxy clips were given some attention and should provide a better seeking experience as well as reduced memory usage for images.
- Appimage is available.
- Now if they could only get MTL to take full advantage of my Ryzen 7.
See Spot Linux
https://thenextweb.com/tech/2017/12/20/spotify-gives-linux-users-early-christmas-present-new-desktop-client/
- Good to see them support Linux.
- Snap only at the moment.
- Electron?
- CEF, same smell different chromium derivative.
Can’t stop the signal
https://github.com/haecker-felix/gradio/releases/tag/v7.0
- Someone looked at the radio bits of Rhythmbox/VLC and said: “That needs an application all of its own!”
- If your hobby is finding and listening to internet radio stations it might worth a look.
VLC Snap
https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/call-for-testing-vlc-3-0-0-rc1/3202?u=popey
- It’s now available for snap testing.
- Protip: Ya might consider letting people know what’s in the RC.
Plexamp
https://www.plex.tv/plex-labs/#
- Electron wrapped NOPE.
- And, and (get this) it’s not available for Linux.
Slice of Pi
Ho Ho EXTERMINATE
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/deep-learning-santa-detector/
- This is all well and good but we need motion tracking guns.
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