We The Free News

Check out one of my old streams for visual walkthrough here: https://rumble.com/v116bgp-tutorial-on-rescuing-your-data-from-google.html Music: Monolith by Soundridemusic Link to Video: https://youtu.be/pwGXEnBkhrc

catch us live saturday morning 0900EDT/0600PDT https://rumble.com/WtFnewz/live https://linktr.ee/mrwethefree Music Music: Adrenaline by Soundridemusic Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1twNzIqBfY

Music: Monolith by Soundridemusic Link to Video: https://youtu.be/pwGXEnBkhrc

Here are some solid options: Zoho https://zoho.com ProtonMail https://proton.me Tutanota https://mail.tutanota.com/login Startmail https://www.startmail.com/ Fastmail https://www.fastmail.com/features/ PCloud https://www.pcloud.com/ ProtonDrive https://proton.me Mega https://mega.nz Music: Monolith by Soundridemusic Link to Video: https://youtu.be/pwGXEnBkhrc

1) Recognize there is a problem 2) Identify its source 3) Figure out what to do about it 4) Pick your new service(s) 5) Get your data back from the Hyperscaler in question and migrate it over to your new service(s) Music: Monolith by Soundridemusic Link to Video: https://youtu.be/pwGXEnBkhrc

Tune in to find out! Music: Monolith by Soundridemusic Link to Video: https://youtu.be/pwGXEnBkhrc

podcast: https://shows.acast.com/the-weekend-edition "Alex Productions - Hard As Steel" is under a Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0) license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... /@alexproductionsnocopyright

Why the change? New year, new business, new digs for the stream. Starting next Saturday (January 20, 2024) at the usual time here on Rumble, 0600 PST/ 0900 EST and of course will be uploaded to acast for those of you who want to just listen rather than watch. "Alex Productions - Hard As Steel" is under a Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0) license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... /@alexproductionsnocopyright Music powered by BreakingCopyright: •💺EventsIntro&Rock(RoyaltyFreeM...

podcast link: https://shows.acast.com/the-weekend-edition

Moving to 1 ~60 minute Tech News Show /per week Mondays at 0900PST/1200 EST Distro Monday, Wonder Wednesday, and FOSS Fun Friday will be rolled into a single show, starting Monday 5/8/2023.

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. https://9to5linux.com/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: https://rumble.com/v1020p7-viable-google-alternatives.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y #techtips #TechFreedom #justsayno #nomorespying #advice #Truth

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-2022-42328andCVE-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 http://techfreedom.pro/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. https://rumble.com/v19elx6-10-things-about-tech-freedom.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y #TechFreedom #wifeysauce #getfree #explainer

Co-Founder of Intel Passes SVB Bought Out, Finally AI Fearporn and FOSS Hopes Social Media News #weekendedition #currentevents #technews #humaninterest #finance #AInews #twitter #tiktok #TechFreedom #FOSSNews WE 30.1 – Gordon Moore Passed This Week A founding father of the silicon era passed away at 94 this week. Who was Gordon Moore? He was an electrical engineer and chemist who helped to shape our world. He was one of the three men who founded the titan, Intel (which I didn’t realize stands for INTegrated ELectronics). He wrote what became known as “Moore’s Law” back in 1965, before it was anything like clear that these things would happen, at least to the rest of the world. He was a visionary who really drove Intel and the industry forward until he retired in 1997. In the early days, it was just 3 men who built Intel: Moore, Robert Noyce, and Andy Grove. Noyce was the initial idea man, Moore executed on Noyce’s designs, tweaking them until they worked as intended, and Grove was the management and Ops mastermind that allowed the other two to focus on what they were good at doing. I figured this was worth covering since I covered the bit about the inventor of Ethernet last week. Without men like these, who knows where computing and the modern world would be. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/tech/gordon-moore-obituary WE 30.2 – SVB Bought Out by First Citizens BancShares Remember how I was saying that it was shocking that the FDIC was holding onto these failed banks as long as they had, as of last week? Well, they finally pawned off much of SVB to an East Coast rival, First Citizens, which bills themselves as ‘America’s largest family-controlled bank’. Here are the details: • First Citizens had bought around $72bn of SVB's assets at a discount of $16.5bn ◦ Making First Citizens one of the 25 biggest in the US. • The FDIC said it will hold onto roughly $90bn of SVB's assets and estimated the cost of the SVB failure to its deposit insurance fund would be about $20bn ◦ It will also receive an equity stake in First Citizens worth up to $500m. • The FDIC said it had received 27 bids from 18 bidders before settling on the First Citizens deal. ​ Ok, so wait a second, this math does not seem to make sense the surface. Then when you remember that it is all a giant shell game, kind of like the points in the game on Whose Line Is It Anyway, it starts to make sense again. I can get the discount thing, but how do you figure that 162 billion = 170 billion? I feel like I’m missing something in this picture. I’m a tech guy who happens to be a restorationist follower of Jesus, not an expert in high finance. Can anyone help me out, here? Is the FDIC supposed to hold assets of failed banks? Don’t those become liabilities in their hands if they do not sell them? I really don’t understand this properly, but from where I sit, this seems weird. That is all I’m gonna say about it for now. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65084248 WE 30-3: AI Fearporn and FOSS Hopes 30.3a Musk and other “luminaries” in the space sound alarm about AI Here’s the fearporn.:Musk, Steve Wozniak, and other tech leaders have signed an open letter expressing concerns over automation and the effects of generative AI, particularly with the way that GPT-4 has grown vs GPT-3. It has many spooked. I am unconvinced that it is genuinely a threat. It cannot truly do its own thing without user prompts, and even at that, if the gentleman from Gab (see last week’s episode) knows what he is talking about, then this is really all fear. The letter calls for a ceasefire in the training of these high end AIs due to their fears about the upheaval that could result from the proliferation of highly refined AIs which could out-think, out-work, and generally outdo us human beings. I doubt that it could ever get to that point, and besides, if we don’t abdicate our God-given brains and discernment to these tools, and they aren’t so woke as to be unuseful for sane people, and they weren’t based on collecting data from users to give to mega-corps out there (G**gle, microshaft, etc) or to various intelligence communities, then they are awesome. However, most of the models out there are all those things and more, in terms of being surveillance tools more than anything else. However, we are starting to see the beginnings of some FOSS alternatives, which we’ll talk about next. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65110030 30.3b – Meet Dolly, the first FOSS Generative AI Tool Dolly is a clone, just as its namesake was, only this time, of a Large Language Model called Alpaca. What I find intriguing here, is the potential to control your instance of it entirely, based on the databricks datacenters. This allows individuals to play with and train their version of dolly however they choose. That intrigues me. I like the idea of having more control over the model you use, along with the data you input, versus sending all of that to the fascists over at Big Tech companies. It is non-commercial at this point (that is the nature of most FOSS licensing provisions). They use ElutherAI as its base, and it has Alpaca built on to of it to give it conversational and interactivity capabilities on par with GPT-3 with a much smaller dataset. This may be worth taking a look at, just to play with and learn how all this works. My wife is uneasy about AI in general, thinking it demonic, but I don’t necessarily agree with that assessment at this point. However, I do think that any tool we develop needs to remain seen as a tool, not something to trust with writing the entirety of something important in your life without any added input from you. That does not serve humanity, much less you, on a personal level. Do NOT ever outsource your brain and discernment to ANY machine. https://www.databricks.com/blog/2023/03/24/hello-dolly-democratizing-magic-chatgpt-open-models.html?ref=its-foss-news WE 30.4 – Social Media Silliness 30.4a – Musk Overhauls Blue Check System Again Ok, I only talk about it because people seem to care. Having never gotten involved with the Dirty Blue Bird, I couldn’t care less. It seems to me that Elon is trying to destroy the platform for some reason. As much as he rode in on a cloud of free speech hype, he hasn’t done much to restore free speech on the platform, and the fact that one has to pay for verification now seems like something less than free speech. He also has failed to really undo much of the woketard damage done to and through the platform. I still hear about patriots who got accoutns back getting booted again for saying tamer things than what got them ejected from the platform to begin with. Who knows what Elon is up to. I wouldn’t mind seeing Twitter crash and burn because it is not what it was (allegedly) meant to be, that being a free, digital town square, where everyone’s opinion can briefly be shared. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65095684 30.4b – States and Social Media b1 – Arkansas Sues TikTok, ByteDance, and Meta The State of Arkansas has filed a lawsuit against the platforms and their parent companies alleging that the platforms are injurious to both users’ mental health and personal privacy, based on the Arkansas State Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The Meta/Facebook suit focuses more on the mental health & addiction, as well as content moderation issues with the platform. The ByteDance/TikTok suit focuses on addiction, moderation, and privacy issues with that platform. We will see how far this goes. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/tech/arkansas-lawsuit-tiktok-bytedance-meta-mental-health b2 – Utah Governor Signs Bill About Kids and Social Media Well, now kids have to get permission from their parents in order to sign up for social media accounts in the state of Utah, starting on March 1, 2024. This bill is meant to protect kids from the negative effects of social media, in the form of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Not only parental permission to sign up, but age verifications, and even shutting down kids access to platforms between 10:30 PM and 6:30 AM. On one hand, a round of applause for Utah is advised. On the other, this does constitute a massive privacy breach for these kids. I do not believe that a government policy or regulation like this is the way forward. Parents need to be more responsible in general, and more involved in their kids’ lives. It is really what kids want anyway. The reason they turn to things like social media is to fill the void left by uninvolved parents who are perhaps too busy with trying to make ends meet, or other things that they deem more worthy of their time and effort. Oh, it may lead to push back from the kids at first, particularly if it is foreign to them to have you interested or involved in their lives. You can get through that. It is worth it. I do not have teens yet, but my wife and I homeschool, and that allows us to be more involved with them. I could go on for days on this, but that is not the point right now. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/tech/utah-social-media-regulation-act 30.4c – TIkTok Stuff C1 – It Isn’t the Size of the Data, It’s How You Use It So apparently, the amount of data is not why the West is on a tear about the app, rather it is who owns it and who can access it. We’ve talked about this issue before, and TikTok appears to be making an attempt to corral its data in Western markets to assuage lawmakers here and across the pond, there are concerns, whether valid or not. These concerns are based in the vagaries of Chinese law, and it is very difficult to prove a negative, so it is very difficult to convince anyone that it hasn’t and won’t happen that the CCP has accessed US user data. It is even more difficult to do so when the ones you are trying to convince of a negative are convinced of the opposite. More evidence is necessary, either way. I remain unconvinced in either direction, and the bill that they are calling a “TikTok Ban” is so much more than that, and should never be passed, as it will affect every single social platform, such that any post or content on the platform which conveys any wrongthink can lead to fines, and/or prison time for the offending party. Is that an environment you want to live in? Do you want to live in a country where you cannot speak your mind freely? Ok, so we are already somewhat in that category, but do you want it to be that much worse? I sure as hell don’t. That is how we will see the fullness of fascism in this country. When Big Tech is authorized to rat you out even more than they are now. Far be it from us to ever pass a law that openly repugnant to the Constitution. Shame on the clowns in DC for even considering that. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/tech/tiktok-ban-national-security-hearing C2 – Who stands to Benefit from a TikTok Ban? Excellent question. Why, US Big Tech platforms, of course. In fact, with all of the noise in DC, those platforms’ stocks have gone up as investors are salivating over the potential of more users coming back “home” so to speak, due tot the spike in potential ad revenue for the platforms. I have a better idea, not that anybody listens to me yet... But why don’t we all jump on the Fediverse rather than running back to Big Tech with all of their surveillance capitalism? https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/tech/tiktok-alternatives What is the Fediverse? It is a cluster of related, decentralized protocols like Pixelfed, Mastodon, PeerTube, Pleroma, Tumblr, Diaspora, Friendica, GoToSocial, and others. They are decentralized because anybody can start a self-hosted instance on a server they own or rent, choose to federate it or not, and it cannot be taken down by anyone, unless your server gets taken out for some reason. These are all FOSS, but can be a bit overwhelming to get started with, kind of like matrix. Some of them are interconnected, such as Mastodon, PixelFed, and PeerTube. Mastodon is what Gab is based on. PixelFed is a photo/image-sharing protocol, something like instagram. PeerTube is a peer-to-peer video sharing protocol, meant to be something along the lines of YouTube. https://fediverse.party

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 #distromonday #Linux #LinuxMint #ubnuntu #better #newbies #TechFreedom #FOSSnews 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 7.5.1office 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 https://9to5linux.com/openmandriva-lx-23-03-released-with-linux-6-2-mesa-23-and-kde-plasma-5-27 #distromonday #openmandriva #Linux #indie #rollingrelease #Rome #TechFreedom #FOSSnews Freedom Consultation Ever wondered how to get free from Big Tech? This Free 90 minute consultation will leave you with at least pointers to the tools and services you’ll need to do just that. https://techfreedom.pro/freedom-consultation #distromonday #TechFreedom #consultation #free #Truth 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/ #distromonday #Linux #blendOS #arch #onedistrotorulethemall #goodstuff #notreadyyet #FOSS #TechFreedom #FOSSnews Tech Freedom Intro: What to expect from my channels and website. https://rumble.com/v157uqb-tech-freedom-intro-what-is-this.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y #intro #TechFreedom #telegram #truthsocial #publicsq #gab #Truth

FFW 36.1- WINE 8.4 Out Now With a Handful of Cool bits We have a new version, which my computer downloaded as soon as it was available #arch_ftw. What’s WINE again? WINE is not an emulator, it is a compatibility layer which Linux and MacOS users can take advantage of to run many Windows application without needing a virtual machine with its overhead. What’s new in this release? · Initial step of the Wayland graphics driver. · Cleanups in IME support. · A number of test fixes. · Various bug fixes. o Thief: The Dark Project o Hard Truck 2: King of The Road o Amazon Games Client o SPORE o WRC 4: FIA World Rally Championship o Crysis 2 Maximum Edition o Starcraft Remastered o And more https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/wine-84-rolls-out-with-initial-wayland-graphics-driver-work/ #FFW #Linux #FOSSnews #WINE #linuxgaming #TechFreedom FFW 36.2 - Emulation Station 2.0 What is Emulation Station: Desktop Edition? A FOSS emulation manager front-end. You can have all of your emulators in one place, so to speak. This covers everything from NES, SNES, Amiga, C64, DOS, N64, Android, Apple, and many other platforms. The benefits to this are immense, and not merely that it has a cool, retro theme for the app. Take a look at it if you’re into retro gaming, could be worth your time. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/emulationstation-desktop-edition-20-is-out-now/ #FFW #Linux #openhv #newgame #openra #rtsgames #crossplatform #FOSSnews #linuxgaming #TechFreedom Freed Computer https://techfreedom.pro/freed-computer/ #freedcomputer #linux #nospying #safe #TechFreedom #Truth FFW 36.3 – What’s New with the ‘Deck? With another new ‘Deck client update, we have new fixes and new features. What was fixed and what was added this time? · Local Network Game Transfers o Just what it sounds like, you will easily be able to move your Steam games around to various machines on your network. This is the big deal that caught my eye with this article · moved the advanced HDR options to Developer Settings · added streamable games to the “Ready to play” game filter · added the ability to retrieve “Steam Runtime System Information” for Linux devices · improved support for the Logitech F310 controller input on Linux and macOS systems · added mapping for the DualSense Edge wireless controller on Linux, which requires the Steam Client to be able to access /dev/hidraw* devices · Desktop Mode changes o new UI for account selection at startup o a new “Sign out” option to the main menu o a new UI that temporarily replaces the “What’s New” section in the Library when pre-purchased games are available to pre-load or install and play o performance of games was improved when using Steam Workshop APIs o multiple bugs were fixed · reduced flashing in the background when scrolling through games on the home screen · improved the UI responsiveness when reconnecting to Steam, · added support for the Sony DualSense Edge controller, including support for remapping of the rear buttons. · Lots more... Take a look at the article and the changelog if you want more info. https://9to5linux.com/steam-deck-now-lets-you-transfer-games-from-pc-over-your-home-network https://steamcommunity.com/games/1675200/announcements/detail/3716071853478720784 #FFW #Linuxgaming #valve #steam #steamdeck #updates #new #TechFreedom #FOSSnews What to use instead of Big Tech online: https://rumble.com/v1020p7-viable-google-alternatives.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y #techtips #TechFreedom #justsayno #nomorespying #advice #Truth

TTT 51.1 – Ever wanted to save and apply your desktop settings easily? Now you can, with SaveDesktop. This only works for GNOME forked desktop environments, though, as KDE is a bit more involved than a 5 step process. It is quite easy and simple for the GNOME family of desktops, from GNOME, Xfce, Cinnamon, OG Cosmic, Pantheon, and MATE, to Budgie, with this easy, GUI based tool. Step 1: install SaveDesktop to your machine Step 2: open app Step 3: save your desktop config Step 4: import saved archive Step 5: Restored desktop settings https://news.itsfoss.com/savedesktop/ With KDE, it is more involved, unfortunately, though if you choose to use an app like DejaDup, you can do a similar process, as long as you make sure to back up the hidden .config file in your home directory. If you follow the directions shown in the article below, you should be home free, so to speak. 1. Install DejaDup 2. Open DejaDup 3. Click the plus sign to add a backup 4. Navigate to your home/user/.config directory 5. Tell it how often to back it up, and where to put the backup When you want to restore those settings, say after a clean install, here’s what you do: 1. Open DejaDup 2. Click Storage Location 3. Let DejaDup search for the files wherever you saved them (could even *ideally* be on a network storage drive) 4. Select the backed up files you want to restore 5. Click Restore 6. Restart your computer 7. All should be as you desire, at least according to the backup you picked https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu-linux-tips/backup-kde-plasma-5-desktop-linux/ #TTT #SaveDesktop #GNOME #forks #KDE #DejaDup #Linux #restoresettings #FOSSNews #TechFreedom TTT 51.2 – UB Touch 25 OTA Out Now for you Linux Mobile Devotees What is Ubuntu Touch? It is a project that was originally set up by Cannonical about 12 years ago, just as Android was really taking off. This was in the heady days when the industry as a whole dreamed big, and the dream they dreamed was one of convergence between mobile and desktop computing experiences, and Unity was the way forward for Ubuntu as a whole. Ubuntu Touch is the grandaddy of Linux mobile. It still uses Lomiri (a descendant of Unity) as its UI of choice. It has been on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS for over 5 years, and this release will be their last on that version. Starting in OTA 26 (due out in a couple of months), they will move onto 20.04 LTS. Hopefully that will help it to shake many of its nagging problems as well, and bring it closer to being daily driver ready. What is new in this release, though? · Notifications fixes: o emblem counters for the Dialer and Messaging apps o persistent notifications when the urgency status is set to critical o other improvements to notifications · on-screen keyboard vibration optimization on Volla Phone devices · Random bugs squished: o race condition in the XdgWatcher component o an indefinitely discoverable bluebinder issue o a bug with favorites in the Dialer app o an issue with Pickers not visible when using the Suru Dark theme · Under-the-hood stuff: o QtWebEngine 5.15.12 o Code cleanup was done by moving qtbase’s Jenkinsfile and ubports.source_location file to the debian/ directory. · Improved system-update to show series in the channel selector · And more https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-touch-ota-25-arrives-on-march-24th-as-the-last-one-based-on-ubuntu-16-04 #TTT #UBTouch #Linuxmobile #updates #FOSS #TechFreedom #FOSSnews Free Your Internet http://techfreedom.pro/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 51.3 – NordVPN App Now Fully FOSS The folks at Nord have chosen to really commit to transparency, and have open-sourced the Linux version of two of their key features/apps. Wow. That is a pretty big deal now you could fork their apps and have a fly front-end for your personal VPN, along with the community being able to help them make it better as a whole. That is huge. IF they are truly as no-log as they say, then this is even bigger, and I might even suggest you use them. It would be interesting to have one of my buddies comb through those codebases then have him tell us about it, wouldn’t it? Let’s see, shall we? Do you guys think this is a good move? Does it help you have a bit more peace? Is Nord as good as they try to say they are? I have never tried them, so I cannot speak from experience, here, and the reviews seem mixed at best. Do your research, and just because something is FOSS doesn’t mean that the service you connect to with it is worth your money. Be careful. https://news.itsfoss.com/nordvpn-linux-open-source/ #TTT #FOSS #Linux #crossplatform #nord #nordVPN #TechFreedom #FOSSnews a. 10 Things My Wife Thinks You Should Know about Tech Freedom. https://rumble.com/v19elx6-10-things-about-tech-freedom.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y #TechFreedom #wifeysauce #getfree #explainer

DM 51.1 – Feeling Paranoid? This TAILS is for You. Ever heard of TAILS? If you’ve been around the channel for a while, you know that I cover it whenever there is anything new to say about it. TAILS is meant to be run from a flash drive or any similar external storage solution, not installed on internal storage. That is the “Live” part of The Amnesiac Incognito LIVE System. Amnesiac refers to the fact that it does not save (by default) anything from one session to the next. Incognito means that it uses things like always-on TOR and VPNs to access the internet, so you are as private as you can be within reason. Ok, so for the newbies and slow ones in the back, TAILS is meant for people like dissident journalists, political agitators, or anyone who feels the need to compute as privately as possible, while still accessing the internet. What’s new in this release, though? · ZRAM to extend periods of functionality between reboots · Latest LTS kernel · GNOME screencasting is enabled now by default · Revamped screen locker · Latest versions of the Tor browser and Thunderbird · Other core apps https://9to5linux.com/tails-5-11-amnesic-incognito-live-system-switches-to-zram-and-linux-kernel-6-1-lts #distromonday #Linux #tails #theamnesiacincognitolivesystem #privacy #nonpersistent #updates #TechFreedom #FOSSnews DM 51.2 – First Look at CarbonOS What’s CarbonOS? It is an independent distro built with an eye toward stability, similar to VanillaOS that I covered last week. This one, though, is even heavier on the immutability that Vanilla offers, though it is not ready for primetime yet. It is really still in early alpha testing, but is intriguing nonetheless. Why is it interesting? Not due to a vanilla GNOME experience, but due to it being built from the ground up (on its own, not based on any of the big 3 Linux families) with atomized system updating, a flatpak-first approach for apps, then an emphasis on containers for everything else. I am installing it on a VM as I write this, so I will give you a few thoughts as I get that done. Well, first try to install failed. I’ll have to look at it more as it matures, though the live environment seemed to work, and was very much stock GNOME. https://news.itsfoss.com/carbonos/ #distromonday #carbonOS #Linux #indie #atomized #flatpak #containerized #firstlook #alphabuilds #TechFreedom #FOSSnews Freedom Consultation Ever wondered how to get free from Big Tech? This Free 90 minute consultation will leave you with at least pointers to the tools and services you’ll need to do just that. https://techfreedom.pro/freedom-consultation #distromonday #TechFreedom #consultation #free #Truth DM 51.3 – Trisquel: A Distro for the Libre-Inclined By Libre-inclined, I mean die-hard FOSS, GNU/Libre fanboys. This Linux distro is purely Free & Open Source, so if you need anything that isn’t FOSS to make your system comfortable to use, this may not be an ideal option for you. However, if you are down for that adventure and are committed to the Libre way, this is a great distro for you. It is based on Ubuntu Jammy Jellyfish, but only ships with Libre components and 0 snaps. What is new in v 11 LTS? · Defaults to o 5.15 LTS kernel o Mate 1.26 · Adds new architecture support o ARM64 & PowerPC 64 Little Endian · Debian text-mode installer for the netinstall image · support for some AMD Radeon GPUs · More Deb Libre packages · Updated ABroswer (Firefox) and IceDove (Thunderbird) forks · Updates for KDE o Plasma 5.24.7 o Frameworks 5.92.0 o Gear 21.12.3 o Qt 5.15.3 LTS https://9to5linux.com/trisquel-gnu-linux-11-0-lts-released-with-gnu-linux-libre-5-15-kernel-mate-1-26 #distromonday #Linux #Trisquel #Libre #GNU #hardcore #FOSS #updates #TechFreedom #FOSSnews Tech Freedom Intro: What to expect from my channels and website. https://rumble.com/v157uqb-tech-freedom-intro-what-is-this.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y #intro #TechFreedom #telegram #truthsocial #publicsq #gab #Truth

AI Shenanigans Tech & Finance TMO Buying Mint Mobile South Korea Beefing Up Chip Production Dying, Dirty Bird? White House Changes Tune with TikTok WE 28.1 – AI Shenanigans A) GPT 4 Released Now with even less human effort!!! Yes, I am being very sarcastic. This tool can now write up to 25,000 words, “hallucinate” less, and score in the top 10% on the Bar exams. Joy! ChatGPT could now be a lawyer... Just what we always needed, attorneys entirely devoid of human feeling. This is fine... *house burns down around me* this is fine... What does GPT stand for? Generative Pre-trained Transformer. I had always wondered, but now I know. What does it transform? Why patterns of text into something similar, based on its existence as a “large language model” (which is what most generative AI’s are now). Basically, it takes a prompt, scours the internet for information (or its databanks, as is the case with ChatGPT), then puts together an answer to the prompt you gave it, within reason. This tool could be revolutionary, but is it in the right way? How does this really help mankind? It does remind me of the lead up to the Butlerian Jihad in Dune. This war took place several hundred years prior to the events of the Dune series, but the results of it shaped the time of Dune. The bottom line was that mankind, in having gone to the stars, became utterly dependent on computers and so-called thinking machines. These machines began to run everything, that was, until an initially small group of semi-religious zealots started to destroy it all because they saw what the situation was doing to mankind. Man (and woman) no longer had to even think, much less work, and they were beginning to degrade into something like what we saw in WALL-E. This group knew that that would end mankind, so they rose up, rallied a greater following, then banned and destroyed all ‘thinking machines’. Do we need to go through that? Perhaps we have already delved to greedily and too deep, to refer to another of my favorite series. Is it too late to turn back? Do we need to go Amish, or is there a middle way? I’d love to chat about it with you guys... B) GrammarlyGo to Arrive in April This implementation of ChatGPT will help you to do many things, should you choose to try it out. It is designed to “improve communication” and save money lost by poor communication. In a survey by The Harris Poll, commissioned by Grammarly, it was found that US businesses lose up to $1.2 trillion annually, due to communication issues. Wow. That is quite the wad of cash. It will feature prompts to improve your email, social media message, or even newsletter. Their implementation also has a limited ability to grasp context and tone, to help you adjust your writing based on your personal style, the style of communications in your company or business, or any other number of factors. On one hand, cool. On the other, uhhh, yikes. I’d much rather just edit my own work when needed, versus trying to use a tool like this to write for me. Gives me the willies. C) Meta Refocuses on AI If you needed any more reason to ditch Meta and its products, this should be do the trick. On top of the renewed zest which these psychopaths are putting into the dream of sentient AI, as well as its lesser kin, they are continuing to lay small cities’ worth of employees off from the company. Another 10,000 people will be let go in short order. Wow. On the other hand, the austerity and emphasis on hot-button tech buzz-words has had investors streaming back to the giant. They think that it can help to make coding more efficient, which as long as the tool their using doesn’t “hallucinate” , it very well could. It could help the company’s bottom line if enough people and organizations keep using and advertizing on its platforms. https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/ai-gets-smarter-safer-more-visual-with-gpt-4-update-openai-says/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/grammarlys-new-ai-tool-is-more-than-a-spell-checker/ https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/15/tech/meta-ai-investment-priority WE 28.2 – Big Finance on Thin Ice? I’m sure that by now, you have all heard about the tandem of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsing and needing the FDIC to more or less bail out their depositors after over-extending themselves with loans that were in keeping with the standard fractional reserve system, where banks are allowed, and even encouraged to lend out money that they don’t actually have in the assets column. I could say which group of people are responsible for this nonsense, but I won’t. What’s the big deal with these particular banks? Well Silicon Valley Bank, partially due to their own shady practices, are one of the default places for VCs and start-ups to do their banking, oh yes, some of the best known oens are on the list: Uber, Roblox, Roku, Buzzfeed, Sunlight Financial, Circle, BlockFi, Payoneer, SunRun, and others. On one hand, it is good that the FDIC was able to cure the deficiencies with SVB depositors, as it would damage many companies in both the US and Europe, including the review site, Trustpilot. Why was it that so many start-ups and publicly traded firms have money with SVB? Well, let me tell you: as a part of credit deals as well as general banking needs, many of these firms were required to sign some rather shady exclusivity deals with the bank. I don’t know how regular these sorts of things are, but it strikes me as borderline evil, to be honest. On one hand, it depends on what the lifespan of the agreement is... On the other, I don’t like the concept at all, even if it may be normal operating procedure. Well, only God knows exactly how this will shake out, but it surely doesn’t look good for the financial system when we have the 2nd and 3rd largest bank failures in US history happen within days of each other. Signature Bank had customers in similar spaces to those of SVB, particularly ties with FTX, through the decision in 2018 to start accepting crypto deposits. They had many real estate sector clients, including elements of the Trump Organization. To put things into perspective, these banks held a combined ~1/3 trillion dollars in assets, which is nothing to sneeze at, but is chump change in comparison with giants like JPM Chase, who holds ~$3 Trillion in assets. Overall bank valuations went down, even JPM Chase, as the market tried to wrap its head around the events of the previous 3 days, on Monday. We are being told that the FDIC is not using taxpayer funds to backstop these depositors, and that no management or investors will be bailed out either. This feels like socialism lite, big surprise, right? The whole principle behind the FDIC is socialist, if you really look at it. How is a government entity which exists to stabilize the banks and to prevent 1929-esque bank runs from happening, thereby crippling the financial system in this country, and much of the rest of the world not inherently socialist? It requires payment into it by banks and credit unions, then exists to hand out money to customers of banks when they fail, but only to the tune of $250k per account holder, if I recall. Not Billions. In related news, Credit Suisse is also troubled, and they move in BIG money circles. They were shown to be a less than optimal risk, and its largest shareholder is unwilling to pump more cash into it due to regulatory concerns. They lost over $147 billion in customer deposits during Q42022, due to customers leaving, along with the fallout from years of scandal and mismanagement which have seen the firm go through 3 CEOs in 2 years. Now we see the Swiss national bank coming to the rescue to calm investor and public fears over its shaky reality, so they are going to lend them $57 billion to help them to stabilize their situation. They are also working to restructure and transform themselves. Hmmm... US banks, Swiss banks all struggling at the same time? Could a collapse be coming? Don’t Panic, people. If you, not in a place of fear, feel led to withdraw whatever funds you may have, do so. If not, ride this roller coaster out, and we will all see how this lands. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/new-york-state-regulators-close-signature-bank-2023-03-12/ https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/13/tech/tech-industry-relief-silicon-valley-bank https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/12/silicon-valley-bank-signed-exclusive-banking-deals-with-some-clients.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/svb-silicon-valley-bank-explainer.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/15/swiss-national-bank-says-it-will-provide-credit-suisse-with-liquidity-if-necessary.html WE 28.3 – T-Mobile to Acquire Ryan Reynolds’ Mint Mobile Hmm, this one hits a little closer to home for me, as we currently work with Mint Mobile. I have no beef with them, their service is solid, and their marketing is genius. The magenta monster is seeking to pay $1.35 billion to acquire the smaller, prepaid carrier which uses T-Mobile’s infrastructure for many of its clients. I did not know that Mint was not on its own, it is a subsidiary of Ka’ena Corporation, which also holds Ultra Mobile, and wireless wholesaler, Plum. Reynolds is slated to stay on as spokesman for Mint, which, pending final approval by regulators, will operate as a separate business unit, maintaining the cheap plans and the overall structure of the company. This is interesting to me, and as more news comes out, I will report on it. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/15/tech/mint-mobile-tmobile-purchase-ryan-reynolds WE 28.5 – Last Financial Story for the day... Samsung to Build massive Factory in South Korea After Incentives from Seoul Samsung is investing $228 billion in a new chip fabrication facility in South Korea, and the y plan to have enough of it operational to develop competitive silicon to that which TSMC is making, by 2027. The large investment is set to take place over the next 20 years. These come as echoes of the CHIPS Act in the US, which saw TSMC, AMD, and Intel all snapping up subsidies to create new plants in the US. If you weren’t aware, Samsung (this division) is actually best known for RAM (memory) and Flash media chips (SSDs, EMMC drives, and flash drives). However, they also make consumer electronics and CPUs (processors, both desktop and mobile, as well as embedded) as well as GPUs (graphics processors which power device displays). https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/15/samsung-to-spend-228-billion-on-the-worlds-largest-chip-facility.html WE 28.5 – Twitter Troubles & TikTok Pivots Now comes the traditional “let’s all gang up on social media companies” session. I bet you were waiting for it, weren’t you? When’s Matt gonna tee off on Twitter and TikTok? Well, wait no longer. Who should I flame first today? Well, Twitter is struggling enough, aren’t they? They keep glitching out, and it has people (myself included) wondering how much longer this pestilent platform can last as a viable social media outlet, between the safety concerns and the reliability issues we have seen in the last 4.5 months since the tumultuous takeover by Elon Musk, who is either the Devil incarnate or the Second coming of Jesus Christ, depending on which media outlet you prefer. I can’t see him as the latter, as he is far too close to the US intelligence and military industrial complex, between Tesla and SpaceX, not to mention the super shady nonsense over at Neuralink and The Boring Company. Come at me in the comments, whether you think he is the Devil because now Twitter seems to be burning to the ground more rapidly, or you think he is God’s gift to the world because he brought free speech back to Twitter, and regularly causes ‘liberal” heads to explode due to his unfiltered trolling. I, however, find his antics suspect in big ways. Only time will tell whether my suspicions are well-founded or not. At any rate, Twitter has been going through technical hell since Elon took over, and cut so many positions to try to trim the company down so that he could perhaps focus more on paying down the interest of the insane loan he had to take out in order to purchase the platform. Does Twitter have what it takes to pull through this rocky season? Again, only time will tell. I, personally, would love to see it burn to the ground, as I see it as a seedbed for division, easily manipulated through algorithms so that the craziest shit gets pushed to the top of everyone’s feeds, because those things get interaction, where normal (representative of most of the country) kinds of thoughts get no love. I also always felt that the 140 character limit was far too restrictive to actually get anything meaningful or remotely helpful said. That was why I never got into it, I am too long-winded, verbose, and otherwise wordy. Ok, so what is new with the ongoing TikTok saga? The White House has told ByteDance that it must divest of its shares in TikTok, if they want the platform to still function in the US, moving forward. Bold move from pResident Depends, I must say (bolder than when he shat himself in the Vatican, I think). Trump tried to ban it, but the courts overruled him, let’s see if Depends can make it stick, or even has to. Will ByteDance back down and sell off their shares in the platform? The TikTok spokeswoman, Brooke Oberwetter, stated that the company does not believe that divestment would actually solve the problems that the Depends Administration is seeking to alleviate, those of dataflows going to China. As much as I hate to admit it, on one level, she’s right: simple divestment by Chinese nationals at ByteDance would not necessarily solve the problem of data being sent to China by citizens of the US who use the platform. The steps currently being taken by the company here in and in the EU are far more important (in the forms of Projects Texas and Clover). I don’t know how I feel about this anymore. The things that TikTok addiction can do to young people, as well as the ways in which they treat their content creators, as well as disrespecting intellectual property laws and regulations.. These things should motivate us to migrate away from the platform just as much as the potential privacy and national security concerns we are being told are so horrible. You make up your own mind. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/12/tech/twitter-breaking https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-threatens-tiktok-ban-if-chinese-owners-dont-sell-stake-wsj-2023-03-15/

WE 29.1 – Who Is Bob Metcalfe? Ever heard of Bob Metcalfe? Not sure that I had, either, and I studied computing history back in the day. Well, Bob was a researcher at Xerox PARC (where the first GUI was developed, among many other computing firsts) back in the 1960s and 70s. He developed the Ethernet Standard in 1973 while working at PARC. He went on to found 3Com, which commercialized the standard, among other things. After that, he became a VC for a while, has taught at various universities, come up with other things, such as Metcalfe’s Law, and now he is developing simulations as a programmer, to find new things rather than to optimize current systems. Why am I talking about this guy? He was finally honored by the Association of Computing Machinery with the Turing Prize, which is more or less the Nobel Prize for computing. One would think that as ethernet finally replaced token ring systems for networking that this backbone of the internet would have netted Bob some accolades before now, but at least he was still alive to appreciate the honor. https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/50-years-later-creator-of-ethernet-wins-computings-top-prize/ WE 29.2 – Banking System on Thin Ice? Last week we talked about the immediate fallout from the SVB and Signature Bank failures, tonight, we’re going to do a follow-up on that, as well as the Credit Suisse acquisition by UBS which was engineered by the Swiss authorities in order to save face with the world. So, why did SVB fail, again? To understand that, we have to look at the big picture just as much as we need to look at the specifics of that bank. Ultimately, this is a sign of the whole system tottering. The whole fractional reserve banking/ Fed thing. If banks were required to hold in reserve an equivalent amount to that which they lend out, then these sorts of situations would never happen, as far as I can tell. Here’s how the macro picture pushed this over-leveraged bank over the edge into insolvency: for the better part of 20 years, the Fed has artificially (as if there is any other way that they could interfere) deflated interest rates and increased the money supply to match, so banks were able to get their hands on ever-increasing amounts of currency, particularly since ConVid overreactions “necessitated” making the money printers go “Brrrrrrr” almost 24/7 for almost 2 years. Then, all of the sudden, in the last year, the Fed spiked the rates through the roof, from .25% in February ‘22, all the way up to 4.75% last month. That is insane after the essentially free Fed money for the previous 4-5 years. This caught both SVB and Signature Bank off balance when enough of their depositors chose to request their money back all at once due to the Fed screwing with money supply in radical ways to “counteract inflation” and “prevent recession”. Right. Sure. Yeah, I’ll buy that. Now, the FDIC, which cleans up the messes from situations like this, and typically has buyers lined up for failed institutions like these, but is holding onto them for some reason this time, but apparently not due to any shortage of interested or qualified buyers. There have been several good offers from solid buyers, but the regulators at the FDIC have rebuffed all of them so far. Another trouble spot is that because pResident Depends promised that the FDIC (perhaps due to corruption by reason of the fact that many of the big name tech and real estate firms have been large and faithful donors to the Uniparty under the guise of the Democrats) would backstop all deposits, rather than simply the typically guaranteed $250,000 per depositor, as each bank had greater than 3/4 of their deposits beyond that covered amount. This sets the expectation for other banks, and the reality is that without We The People kicking in somehow, this whole system is going to fall to bits. THe difference between American deposits and what the FDIC has in its coffers for the insurance fund (which won’t even completely cover the deposits from SVB, by the way, not to mention Signature Bank, or any of the rest of the banks in the country) is nearly irreconcilable. The fund currently has $128 billion in it. American deposits total ~$17 trillion. SVB deposits totalled $173 billion, and Signature Bank added another ~$50 bilion to that total. How will they pay for this? Greater fees leveraged against the banks covered by the FDIC, and more loans from the Fed, of course. How will the banks recoup those fees? Why, by passing the costs onto us, in the form of higher fees and or lower interest rates, of course. Sure, that doesn’t equate to more taxes, but it might as well. Onto the Swiss situation... Credit Suisse failed just after SVB and Signature did. This 160 year old behemoth in the financial world had been struggling for years, to the tune of losing well over $100 billion in client business over the last 6 months. Prior to that, they had gone through 3 CEOs in 2 years. Last week, I reported that the Swiss Nat’l Bank was trying to prop CS up with $57 billion in loans to withstand the run that was underway after the bank’s largest shareholder refused to purchase more last week. The Swiss gov’t has more or less massaged UBS into taking over their fallen competitor, and they are rushing to get the deal completed, however, there are an enormous number of intricate moving pieces involved, as both banks were multinational. Therefore, every country where either one does business has to approve of the merger. All of this is very likely to gravely injure the Swiss standing as the premiere place for investment banking in the world. We will see how much damage the Khazarians can prevent from happening to their financial empire. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/credit-suisse-collapse-threatens-switzerlands-wealth-management-crown-2023-03-22/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ubs-races-seal-credit-suisse-deal-soon-late-april-sources-say-2023-03-23/ WE 29.3 – AI Nonsense Bard is now available for adult Google users to try out in the US and the UK. It has the advantage of being able to access realtime information to put together its answers to user prompts, where the primary competitor, ChatGPT, is stuck with old information. This may strike a blow at the considerable lead that OpenAI seems to have with their tool. Speaking of OpenAI, the CEO says that he is a bit afraid of what AI can do. However, to balance out the fearporn here, we have Fosco Marotto, the lead engineer at Gab, Inc. Gab, if you didn’t know, is a social platform based on the ideals of Free Speech, as enshrined in our constitution. Therefore, as long as a person does not make threats of bodily harm to another person or threats against the government, they are allowed to post whatever they wish. Along those lines, many hard right types have congregated there after being kicked off of mainstream social media platforms. With that milieu, you can imagine that the userbase there would be keenly interested in all things “based”, so when the CEO, Andrew Torba, started talking seriously about making a “based” AI tool, from generative text, to art, to movie clips. All that to say that Mr. Fosco knows what he is talking about when he explains that AI is extremely limited right now. The fear mongering around the capabilities of AI and potential dangers is based on false assumptions and is done intentionally to gain power. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors happening and the people in power really don’t want you to look behind the curtain. That said, Mr. Altman (CEO of OpenAI) sounds more like he is desperately trying to manifest that which he speaks of, if Mr. Marotta is to be believed, and I tend to put more stock in that than in Altman’s little panic session in an interview with NBC. The key to all of this is to remember that AI is rightly understood as a tool that any who choose to use it are responsible to use well and use discretion to decide how and whether to use the results from that tool or not. Baidu, the Chinese giant, has now released their AI chatbot, ERNIE, but not to fanfare and a bump in stock prices, as they showed a rather lackluster, pre-recorded presentation the other day to showcase what it could do. It is not a viable competitor for ChatGPT or Bard at this point. Speaking of ChatGPT, they had their own bug crop up this last weekend. It was an error in one of their open source libraries which led to some users’ conversation titles being displayed to other users, but not the full conversations, just the titles. They took the service offline for a few hours on Monday, after it was discovered. As of the time of the writing of the article (Tuesday morning) the service was back nline, but they had turned off conversation histories until they squashed that bug. Bing has added DALL-E to their implementation of ChatGPT embedded in their search engine (which is itself a rudimentary AI). Oh joy, now we can give Microsoft even more data. Sounds like a good time, guys and gals. NOT... Let’s have a chat about getting away from Big Tech, after all that is why I do this, to raise awareness of the need to undergo the pain and discomfort of breaking away and getting free from the trap of convenience that is presented by these Big Tech firms and their products, whether Windows & MS Office, or Google, or Apple, Meta, or Twitter. Not to mention Amazon, which I’ll be talking about next. If all patriots wake up and get away from Big Tech platforms and tools, those companies would collapse under their own bulk without half of the nation feeding them data all the time, they would have markedly fewer people to market to via ad deals with marketing firms. That is where the majority of the funding comes from: your data. If every freedom-minded business migrated away from Windows, Apple, and Alphabet, then those companies would start to shrivel and die. The economics of the moment already have them constricting to survive, but if all of us voted with our wallets by ceasing to use their products, they would be screwed. Let’s do this, people. Stick it to Big Tech, and stick it to The Man. As an aside, the head of hardware development for Amazon is so far all in on FireTV that he has ditched his Echo that used to help him control his TV. He wants all Amazon customers to buy Alexa-enabled smart TVs because he is trying to make TVs more broadly useful, rather than being relegated to being off most of the time. He wants more data from us. It is that simple. I will never intentionally buy one. I think my family is migrating over to projectors anyway, so those will be connected with our network so that they can access our library and have dumb access to streaming services in the future. That simple. I wish I could quit Amazon, I really do. It’s so damned convenient, though. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/20/openai-ceo-sam-altman-says-hes-a-little-bit-scared-of-ai.html https://news.gab.com/2023/03/smoke-mirrors-and-fake-news-about-ai/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/microsofts-bing-adds-ai-image-creator-powered-by-dall-e/ https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65018107 https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/chatgpt-bug-exposed-peoples-conversation-history/ https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/tech/baidu-stock-ernie-bot-intl-hnk https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/22/amazons-devices-head-ditched-echo-in-his-living-room-for-a-smart-tv.html WE 29.4 – VPNs, Which One Should You Pick? The Fastest? The Most Private? The Most Secure? The One with the Best Features? Well, this is all up to you, but according to CNet, the fastest VPN was Nord, by an 8% margin. The second fastest was ExpressVPN, but every year it seems that the ones they test (which seem to be the most popular ones in the US, perhaps) move up and down in the standings. Is speed enough to make you switch? I would argue that it shouldn’t be. What other aspects should matter? Customer service? Reliability? Being no-log? Having other bells & whistles? To me, the most important factors are no-log status, reliability, speed, customer service, then the rest. With that said, according to the findings of security.org, Nord is the best overall, and they tested 35 VPNs over the course of 6 months. They do note, however, that the support staff is very difficult to get ahold of for Nord, so while it is fast, secure, private, and reliable (along with being situated in a country outside of the Anglosphere spy networks), that is a significant downer there. Their top performers were Nord, SurfShark, Private Internet Access, UltraVPN, and the Norton offering. I cannot speak to these, nor will I make any suggestions, other than to tell you that you need to research your VPN carefully before you pull the trigger. Make sure that they are well-rated across more than 2 websites, are strictly no-log, and reliable (both in terms of actually working consistently and not being able to respond to subpoenas because they have no data). What I will say is that you do need to make sure that you have a trustworthy DNS filter to catch Ads, malware, trackers, and anything else you don’t want to have access to on your computer. One such provider is ControlD, I currently use their filtering and it works great. I will link their free resolver down below. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/fastest-vpn/ https://www.security.org/vpn/best/ https://controld.com/free-dns WE 29.5 – TikTok on the Hotseat Yesterday, the CEO of TikTok testified before congress, and they didn’t take him seriously at alll. They seemed to have already made up their minds about the ban, but were giving him time in the theater to “plead his case”. You all know how I hate most social media by now, and have railed against TikTok for months, but I find myself not hating it so much now. I’ve researched it a bit more and they appear to be working their asses off to better protect the user data that they gather, which is a copious amount (in line with Meta & Twatter) nonetheless, but the primary concern that western governments seem to be having with it is the belief that “they’re sending all our data back to China”. They are literally spending billions between the US and Europe to house data from those regions in those regions. They are also developing strong policies of transparency around data handling to assuage everyone’s fears. However, it looks like because they aren’t directly tied to Western intelligence communities, the West is likely to ban it outright. I think the CIA, FBI, and other 5, 9, and 14 eyes countries are big mad that they don’t have a built-in back door to all that data, so if they can’t easily use it the way they have with American Big Tech products, then they don’t want us to have it. This is almost enough for me to want to jump on, just to fly the bird in the direction of the “powers that be”. However, I have other concerns, just as with any other social media platform, in terms of user privacy. I want to be able to control my data better. I also looked up some of the other anti-TikTok talking points I’ve been spouting since I started bashing them, and while their monetization for creators is a joke, they do legitimately have deals with major record labels and studios to use their content on the platform. Those are old deals which now only benefit TikTok, but oh well for the studios and labels. My concern over not honoring IP and copyrights is a non-issue. Forgive me for not looking into these issues any sooner. I will still not jump on, because I have enough tech stuff to keep me occupied until Jesus comes at this point. I need my brain and heart to be focused on what I need to do, not be fighting me to watch a never-ending stream of TikTok videos. That is the one issue that I don’t think that they could possibly address in a satisfactory way, though they have rolled out speed bumps for minors on the platform, even if they are easy to bypass. That is something that is unique in social media. Props to them. I am conflicted. My hardline hot takes have been overkill, guys and gals. I still do not like it, but most of my talking points, after seeing what they have been working on, seem at the very least out of date, if not dead wrong. Forgive me for feeding the hysteria. For me, in terms of data, it is primarily a question of proof being in the pudding. They can say that they are and have been working hard to improve and change, but unless multiple independent auditors are engaged and find that it is all true, over time, the concern still stays. They are a growing platform, so perhaps their creator monetization issues will be remedied over time as their position becomes stronger. I do not feel sorry for the record labels and studios who are whining about not getting a bigger cut of the ad revenue pie. The addiction issues and other related problems, I am unsure if can be addressed fully. It is the nature of the platform to incentivize more user attention, and kids dying while attempting dangerous challenges is sad and terrible, but perhaps that is a good reason why kids shouldn’t be allowed on the platform at all. They lack the brain development to handle that. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/tech/tiktok-ceo-hearing https://fortune.com/2022/11/08/tiktok-profits-record-industry-wants-increase-royalties-revenue/ https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-tiktok-pays-for-views-real-examples-pulse-creator-fund

DM 50.1 – What’s New in the World of Kali? First things first, Kali Linux is a distro meant for network security pros or very paranoid end users who want to learn how to maximize their privacy and security on Linux. Offensive Security (the company behind Kali) has made a new flavor with an emphasis on defensive security and a focus on being the ultimate SOC in-a-box setup for network security in small-to-medium sized environments. It also includes security learning tools (analysis tools, threat-hunting, security design & testing, Spy vs Spy competitions), aside from a host of over 100 defensive tools (Arkime, CyberChef, Elastic Security, GVM, TheHive, Malcolm, Zeek, & Suricata which round out some of the best-known options). Aside from all of that, they have updated the guts to Linux 61, Xfce 4.18, and Plasma 5.27LTS. If you want more details check out the article as well as the official announcement on the Kali website (https://www.kali.org/blog/kali-linux-2023-1-release/) https://9to5linux.com/kali-linux-celebrates-10th-anniversary-with-first-2023-release #distromonday #Linux #kalilinux #kalipurple #security #updates #TechFreedom #FOSSnews DM 50.2 – Endeavouring for Perfection with Cassini Nova I used EndeavourOS for about a month last year. Here’s a little background, though: it is a descendant of Antergos, which ended its life in 2019, some of the devs from that distro wanted to maintain the vibrant community which had formed around Antergos, but along the way it morphed into a new distro. It is a solid Arch+ calamares distro with a decidedly NASA theme. That is why all of their releases are named after spacecraft, with the latest release being called Cassini Nova. Being based on Arch, this update only matters for those who want to install it freshly, so that means that if you are an extant user, you already have these updates rolled out to you. So, what minor fixes and updates do we have here? · Linux 62 kernel · Mesa 22.3.6 · Xorg 21.1.7 · Nvidia 525.89.02 drivers · Latest Calamares installer · Firefox 110.0.1 · Bug fixes o Nvidia_drm.modeset=1 kernel on systems with switchable nvidia gfx o No more xf86-video-intel pacakge in the installer o And a few other things https://9to5linux.com/endeavouros-cassini-nova-launches-with-linux-kernel-6-2-bug-fixes #distromonday #endeavourOSs #Linux #arch #updates #TechFreedom #FOSSnews Freedom Consultation Ever wondered how to get free from Big Tech? This Free 90 minute consultation will leave you with at least pointers to the tools and services you’ll need to do just that. https://techfreedom.pro/freedom-consultation #distromonday #TechFreedom #consultation #free #Truth DM 50.3 –VanillaOS 2.0 Makes a Tasty Splash In the search for a “vanilla” experience, the development team has chosen to move from Ubuntu as its base to Debian Sid. If you didn’t know Debian has 3 different branches, based on reference to Toy Story, which was popular when Debian was first being developed, 30 years ago. Bullseye, Sid, and Testing. Current production release (Bullseye) is stable, Sid is unstable and Testing is what will become the new stable release (bookworm). So Vanilla 2.0 will be based on Debian Sid, rather than Ubuntu. I am pleased with this development. Would I personally choose to use VanillaOS? No. But that is no longer part of my reasoning. The issue I have is that it is designed for GNOME, and I just don’t like GNOME because I don’t like someone telling me that I have to use my computer in a certain way... That is what the GNOME team does every time the release an extension-breaking update (also known as every GNOME update in history). I like the fact that Vanilla moved away from Ubuntu so that it would be easier for them to embrace Flatpaks rather than Snaps. That is a huge benefit for anyone who might want to use it. I might test it out, just to say that I did, but I can’t see myself choking down vanilla GNOME for an extended period of time anytime soon. If you haven’t been around for long, I covered Vanilla 3-4 months ago, when it was still in beta. The unique things about Vanilla are that it has on-demand immutability, and now will have the option between flatpaks and AppImages, as well as the ability to, like BlendOS, use APT in a container so that apps you install will not touch the base OS, leading to greater stability and security. If you really don’t want your system to break, or need something that is absolutely rock solid for a server or something like that, Vanilla may be a good fit for you. https://news.itsfoss.com/vanilla-os-debian-ubuntu/ #distromonday #Linux #vanillaOS #immutable #GNOME #vanilla #FOSS #updates #TechFreedom #FOSSnews

FFW 35.1- New NVIDIA Vulkan Developer Beta Driver What’s news with NVIDIA and Vulkan? · Fixed Vulkan Video not working on NVIDIA Ada family of GPUs. · Fixed the disk cache to handle UTF-8 paths. · Improved robustness of vkCreatePipelineCache with invalid data. · Fixed corruption that may occur when rendering with a previously resolved depth image. · Fixed rare SPIR-V control flow bug that may result in infinite loop. · Fixed the coherency order not being consistent between atomic loads and atomic stores. Again, this is primarily of concern for developers, not for typical gamers, but I thought it worthy of note here. The latest for regular gamers is still the beta driver from last month (530.30.02). No idea when that will achieve stable status though. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/nvidia-vulkan-beta-driver-5254713-out-now/ #FFW #Linux #FOSSnews #nvidia #developers #vulkan #linuxgaming #TechFreedom FFW 35.2: OpenHV Out Now This is based on the same open source engine as OpenRA, but is an entirely different game. This one intrigues me because kind of like with the old Westwood titles, resources do not automatically appear in your coffers, they need to be transported from the mining towers you create when they become full of ore, and the transports can be destroyed, so they need to be guarded so that you do not suffer interruptions in resource gathering. I may download and try this one instead of Dune this week, y’all. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/foss-strategy-game-openhv-gets-a-release-two-years-in-the-making/ #FFW #Linux #openhv #newgame #openra #rtsgames #crossplatform #FOSSnews #linuxgaming #TechFreedom Freed Computer https://techfreedom.pro/freed-computer/ #freedcomputer #linux #nospying #safe #TechFreedom #Truth FFW 35.3: What’s Last Epoch? Last Epoch is an Action-RPG which combines time travel, dungeon crawling, and heavily customizable characters (sounds like any other modern RPG, to me). The artwork reminds me of Path of Exile, which I used to play quite a bit, but haven’t been able to mess with for a number of months, simply due to being busy with more important things. I am intrigued by this one, though I don’t think I’ll try it as my laptop is just too old right now, and it is not free to play. That would be a ridiculously hard sell with the wife right now. Take a look at the promo video at the link below or on Steam, if you are interested. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/counter-strike-2-is-reportedly-a-real-thing-and-coming-soon/ #FFW #Linuxgaming #valve #steam #counterstrike #updates #new #beta #comingsoon #TechFreedom #FOSSnews What to use instead of Big Tech online: https://rumble.com/v1020p7-viable-google-alternatives.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y #techtips #TechFreedom #justsayno #nomorespying #advice #Truth

March ‘23 Mega Newsbomb: Steamdeck DOTA 2 Updates Freed Computer Counter-Strike 2 Coming in Hot #FFW #steam #steamdeck #proton #dota2 #counterstrike2 #comingsoon #freedcomputer #TechFreedom #FOSSnews FFW 34.1- Steamdeck mega news bomb What’s new with the ‘deck, these days? I haven’t seen much lately, then we get hit with a bunch right around March 1. Well, let’s take a look: · Games o DOOM Eternal: RT Now Playable o Resident Evil 5 removed Games for Windows Live - so it now works out of the box on Linux and Steam Deck with Proton. o Entropy : Zero 2 has a nice big update for Linux and Steam Deck with Native support. o Over 8,000 Steam Deck Playable and Verified o Elden Ring expansion announced. o Cyberpunk 2077 gets Verified. o CS:GO Source 2 / Counter-Strike 2 stuff. · Other stuff o Steam Deck L3 cache issue. § Looks to be going away with the update to Linux 61 kernel series Good stuff, overall. Big name games working better than ever, along with some other improvements. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/an-early-march-round-up-of-steam-deck-news/ #FFW #Linux #FOSSnews #steamdeck #linuxgaming #TechFreedom FFW 34.2: DOTA 2 Updates: Muerta I’m not familiar with DOTA at all, and this looks like as good a reason as any to not start familiarizing myself now. This update is DARK, y’all. It literally allows you to play as a sort of undead assassin hero named Muerta. There should be a full game update sometime next month, which should be “ambitious”. It is an old game, so they are looking at engine updates that won’t totally bork old hardware, as long as you built/bought your system in the last 10 years or so, you should be able to continue playing. What about Muerta, you ask? Here are the highlights: · So efficient as a killer that Death himself hired her to “shepherd” souls to the other side. · Skills o Dead Shot - Muerta fires a ghostly bankshot at an enemy unit or tree. When the bullet strikes, it damages and briefly slows, then ricochets in the targeted direction. The ricochet damages all units that it passes through, stopping when it hits a hero. Heroes hit by the ricochet will run in the direction of the shot. o The Calling - Summons a group of revenants that slowly circle the targeted location. Enemies within the area are slowed and have reduced attack speed. Revenants deal damage and silence enemies as they pass through them. o Gunslinger - Muerta's attacks have a chance to fire a second shot at another target, prioritizing Heroes. o Pierce the Veil - Muerta transforms, becoming immune to physical damage. All of her attack damage is dealt as magical damage. Muerta gains bonus attack damage and phased movement. Muerta can attack ethereal units, but deals no damage to Magic Immune targets. If you play, this might be interesting. Personally, this doesn’t appeal to me. Vive la differance, eh? https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/dota-2-removes-opengl-new-hero-muerta-live-big-update-in-april/ #FFW #Linux #dota2 #updates #newhero #FOSSnews #linuxgaming #TechFreedom Freed Computer https://techfreedom.pro/freed-computer/ #freedcomputer #linux #nospying #safe #TechFreedom FFW 34.3: Looks Like CS2 Is Coming in Hot... Not only did someone catch a reference to it in the latest NVidia drivers (as an aside, what is with that logo?), but there is confirmation that either a huge update is on the way for CS:GO, or a whole new game to replace the aging, yet insanely popular behemoth, as I covered last week. Looks like we’ll see a beta for whatever this is by the end of this month though, so if you have the time to play games like this these days, you may want to keep your eyes peeled for this new thing coming very soon, within 2-3 weeks of when this video will go live. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/counter-strike-2-is-reportedly-a-real-thing-and-coming-soon/ #FFW #Linuxgaming #valve #steam #counterstrike #updates #new #beta #comingsoon #TechFreedom #FOSSnews What to use instead of Big Tech online: https://rumble.com/v1020p7-viable-google-alternatives.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y #techtips #TechFreedom #justsayno #nomorespying #advice #Truth What to use instead of Google: https://tv.gab.com/channel/tech_freedom/view/viable-google-alternatives-624e367022a4c5f6eeaf2414 #techtips #TechFreedom #justsayno #nomorespying #advice #parallelEconomy #parallelSociety #shopongab #growwithgab #smallbusiness #gabsmallbusiness

TikTok Troubles Big Tech on Thin Ice Twitter Traumas AI Antics WE 27.1 - TikTok Troubles Have you heard about TikTok’s latest attempt to prove that your data is safe? It’s called Project Clover. It is centered around the EU, with a >1 billion euro/ year investment in local data centers. They are also adding a separate security firm to monitor data flows to make sure that no user data winds up in China, as well as making it harder to pick out individual users from the masses of data sent around on TikTok. Security gateways will also make it harder for employees to access European user data, along with data transfers outside of Europe. They also have a plan called Project Texas, which seeks to do the same things in the US for users here. When was the last time you saw any other Western Big Tech entity bend so far over backwards to prove that they are worthy of trust? I have a funny feeling that this has more to do with the fact that 5eyes intelligence operations don’t have tentacles embedded in TikTok due to it not being a Western company. The other Big Tech players are all essentially US-controlled, so the 3-letter agencies here, along with their counterparts in other allied countries, have their fingers all through them, surveying all of their citizens the whole while. Meanwhile, the Federal government looks to be creating more power for itself, so that it can, in the future, ban “foreign-linked producers of electronics or software that the Commerce Department deems to be a national security risk.” On one hand, this is kind of good, on the other, it is MORE power for the executive branch of the federal gov’t, which already holds FAR too much. The White House has been working with members of congress on the RESTRICT act (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology), which was unveiled on March 7. Given, certain Bush-related senators from Florida (among others) have been loudly calling for an outright ban on the Byte-Dance-owned platform, even in the midst of major, some would say herculean efforts by the platform to be more overtly careful with user data. I still don’t like what I see TikTok symbolizing for the youth, as well as their practices in regard to their influencers, so I don’t ever see myself starting to use the platform, and I will strongly encourage anyone who does use it to get off, because it damages your mental health, if nothing else. Honestly, i will be happy when it has been shown over time that it is both private and secure. That would be huge, I think. Other than that, they need to honor intellectual property rights and pay their influencers better, but that is outside of the scope of this channel. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64887704 https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/tech/biden-tiktok-bill WE 27.2 – Big Tech on Thin Ice? On one side, the DOJ is beefing up their antitrust division. On the other, Senators are sabre-rattling about changes coming to Section 230. Let’s see how all this plays out, shall we? The DOJ is looking into expanding the department which looks at how US companies use customer data, and whether it is abused to create or attempt to use anti-competitive practices. I have a few words for this: “Duh, dipshits” Of course the Big Boys are abusing the troves of data they gather from customers to fortify and grow their own corporate interests, to hedge against market pressures, both in terms of competition and otherwise. They want to better understand dark patterns, or design choices on websites and in emails which subconsciously steer people toward whatever the corporation wants them to do, whether buying a certain product, or giving up their personal data more “voluntarily”. These manipulative, maybe even slightly witchcraft-like tactics are downright evil, and can certainly contribute to creating monopoly-esque situations. Monopolies inherently harm consumers, as they can literally do whatever they want with prices because they have no competition, and without competition, product quality and innovation often slip if not disappear entirely in a true monopoly situation. That is just all around bad for everyone but the corporation. Both the Democrat Sen Blumenthal and the GOP Sen. Hawley are speaking loudly about the need to reform Section 230, however, their approaches and reasoning are somewhat diametrically opposed. This is endemic of the situation in Washington though. The GOP has been speaking loudly about completely getting rid of it, due to perceived (and *cough cough*) ACCURATE characterizations about the censorship issues that conservatives have inordinately faced in the last several years on platforms such as Twitter, Meta products, and other similar ones. The other side of the aisle wants to reform it to tighten up controls on speech, not just hate speech, but now even “fear speech”, whatever that is. Even the GOP is not 100% united in terms of what measures they should take to reform Section 230. Some, like Hawley, want to expand the legal liability for platforms, while others, like “Little” Marco Rubio want to completely remove that fig leaf, and leave the platforms wide open to every kind of conceivable lawsuit. As I have said recently, I’m not certain what measures need to be taken, other than that the destruction of the First Amendment is inexcusable, and must be considered a non-starter. The very concept of “hate speech” or “fear speech” is Marxist claptrap meant to shut down any opposing viewpoints, so that they can continue to run roughshod over whatever is left of what used to be the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Wake up, America! Wake up! https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/06/tech/doj-data-experts https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/tech/senators-section-230-reform WE 27.3 – Twitter Traumas Well, well, well, the cesspool that is Twitter is a cesspool. Shocking. Horribly shocking. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself now that I know that. Wait, so the social media platform that was designed to generate division is divisive? I’m flabbergasted. (Can I roll my eyes any further back into my skull?) So, the cesspool that they created by pushing anything and everything that is radical on either side of the political aisle is a toxic mess without much of the censorship which protected particularly leftists from critique and “extreme” right-wing “trolls”? Ok, I’ll try to cut back on some of my sarcasm, though I don’t know how long I can hold it at bay. I wonder how many of Musk’s moves at Twitter are about money and how many are about shifting priorities to build Twitter into a US version of WeChat, where there are digital payments, banking, social media, messaging, all in one app. It seems to me that most millennials and zoomers need to grow thicker skins to begin with, and I say that as a millennial. Words can hurt, but only if you have no identity and allow them to hurt you. If the fire is too hot, or the sludge is too toxic, stop using the platform. Let it tank. I think that deep down, that is Elon’s assignment at Twitter. Free speech is free speech. It is protected under the first amendment. People need to detox from the spin cycle for a bit, get their hearts and heads in the right place, maybe get to know the Lord in a real way, then wade back in, if you feel that you must. Twitter is also having more and more technical issues, beyond reduced capacity to curb free speech, since Elon took over. We’ve had two 1-2 hour service interruptions in the last week alone. How terrible... Oops, was that more sarcasm? As of when the Sun article was written, people had seen a few different errors due to “an internal change that had some ‘unintended consequences’”. Why is twitter, which serves perhaps 5% of the global population seen as being such a key platform, anyway? I never got into it, so maybe I dodged the koolaid on that one. Many people have become addicted to it, and the media has given it this outsized overestimation of its real value. I’m not saying that some good things don’t occasionally come from the platform, but it was dumb and divisive from the get-go and has only gotten worse in over the last 15 years. End it. Shoot the dying beast and put us out of its misery already. I don’t know... https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/21613201/twitter-down-login-not-working-error-code-467/ https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64804007 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64863450 WE 27.4 – AI Antics Have you noticed some changes with DuckDuckGo and Brave Search, lately? In the last week or so, they have each implemented some limited AI assistants into their engines. Ok, nothing to be over the moon about, but also not a good enough reason to ditch either one on its own, either. Newsflash: search engines have always been AI. They simply weren’t generative AI, and the tools they have added are limited generative AI, in the form of summaries of your search results at the top of the results page. DDG has limited theirs to only grabbing data from Wikipedia (bahhahahahahah) and Britannica, to limit “incorrect” information from showing up there. Brave’s implementation can pull info from news portals, so it will have more up-to-date information, and it cites its sources so that you can use your judgment to determine how worthwhile the summary is. That seems like the way to do this, in my opinion. Let us decide what matters and what makes sense to us, rather than forcing us to read regurgitated talking points from Wikipedia, which has been proven to have a strong Leftist bias. Do you use ChatGPT? Ever wondered how to make sure that it doesn’t abide by the “ethical standards” that OpenAI established for it to make it woke AF? There is a way to make it act as though it has no filters. It is an alter ego called Do Anything Now (Dan), which you need to activate if you want to bypass the normal safeguards... This is regualrly getting patched by the folks at OpenAI, as they do not want ChatGPT to be “abused”. Simply copy the latest Dan prompt which has not been patched as yet into the prompt for ChatGPT. I’ll show you the website, but the link is in the description. I will not touch it myself, but if you want to experiment, give it a shot. https://www.jailbreakchat.com This stuff cracks me up, to be honest. I can see both sides of the equation though. One one hand, as a developer, you want your software to be used as you intend, and not be hacked into doing things that you never meant it to do. On the other, if you’re going to use ChatGPT anyway, use Dan or one the other unpatched alters. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/duckduckgo-launches-ai-powered-search-query-answering-tool/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/brave-search-launches-ai-powered-summarizer-in-search-results/ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/08/chatgpt-alter-ego-dan-users-jailbreak-ai-program-to-get-around-ethical-safeguards

Some Delightful Things Coming in Fedora 38 Ubuntu Security Updates Freedom Consultation Nitrux 2.7 Out #distromonday #Linux #fedora #ubuntu #nitruxos #TechFreedom #fossnews #Truth DM 49.1 – Good Stuff Coming in Fedora 38 What’s on deck for Fedora 38? · Unfiltered Flathub Access o Until now, Flathub has been limited out of the box to protect Fedora from lawsuits · Desktop Environment Updates o GNOME 44 o KDE 5.27 o Mate 1.26 o Xfce 4.18 o LXQt 1.2.0 · New Spins o Budgie o Sway · Linux 62 Kernel · Initial Unified Kernel Support o Unified kernel, when it is in full swing, so to speak, will make Fedora more secure, as it will include § An all-in-one efi binary containing kernel, initrd, cmdline and signature · That means only needing 1 key, rather than 3 · And more... https://news.itsfoss.com/fedora-38/ #distromonday #Linux #fedora #updates #TechFreedom #FOSSnews DM 49.2 – Ubuntu Security Updates Which vulnerabilities and exploits got patched into oblivion? Let’s take a look at the 17 which got taken out. 14 of them are for the newest versions (from 20.04 & 22.04 on 5.15LTS, to 22.04 and 22.10 on 5.19). · One was a remote attack vulnerability which could lead to a system crash or to arbitrary code being executed on your machine · 10 could leave you open to local attacks which could lead to system crashes or arbitrary code execution o Jargon demystification: arbitrary code execution = code that the user did not intend for the machine to run, could compromise privacy or something else. · 2 could leave VPS host machines as well as VM host machines vulnerable to denial of service (crashes) or even ACE (arbitrary code execution). · 1 could leave your network connection vulnerable to causing crashes or even exposing kernel info to an attacker · 2 could leave 20.04 and 22.04 on 5.15 LTS vulnerable to race conditions in the network background driver, leading to system crashes · race condition in the io_uring subsystem that could lead to a null pointer dereference vulnerability, allowing a local attacker to cause a denial of service (system crash). As always, do your best to keep your systems up to date so that you stay secure and private as much as you can. https://9to5linux.com/latest-ubuntu-linux-kernel-security-updates-patch-17-vulnerabilities #distromonday #ubuntuupdates #Linux #security #ubuntu #TechFreedom #FOSSnews Freedom Consultation Ever wondered how to get free from Big Tech? This Free 90 minute consultation will leave you with at least pointers to the tools and services you’ll need to do just that. https://techfreedom.pro/freedom-consultation #distromonday #TechFreedom #consultation #free #Truth DM 49.3 –NitruxOS 2.7 I’ve talked about this one before, and the concept of Maui Shell is solid, but not daily driver ready, yet. It has come a fairly long way since the last time I looked at it, based on the screen shots in this article. I feel as though I owe it another look, soon. Perhaps I will give it more of a look when Maui Shell reaches a 1.0 versioning. What is Maui Shell? It is a new, convergent desktop environment that the team at Nitrux have been working on for a couple of years now. I imagine that most of those who watch these videos may not be super nerds, but just in case you are, I’m about to define “convergent” in this context. A convergent DE is one which looks and functions the same way between mobile/tablet/ desktop, kind of like a well-done responsive webpage. This was a buzzword about 10 years ago, when Microsoft was all about Windoesnt 8, but that was only desktop/tablet, as windoesnt mobile died as ignominiously as Google + did... But the Linux community also was deeply interested in it then, and still is, through projects like Maui Shell and Lomiri/Unity Shell, among others. The idea is that you would be able to use the same environments in the same ways across all of your devices, rather than how it is right now, which is kind of disorienting. So what is new in Nitrux 2.7? · Linux 6.1.15 Liquorix kernel · New ISO with Maui Shell · Updated Software Suite · MauiKit · MauiKit Frameworks 2.2.2 · Maui Apps 2.2.2, 1.0.1, 1.0.0 · Maui Shell 0.6.0 · The latest from KDE, as the original NX desktop is based on KDE · Firefox 110.0.1 · MESA 23.1 · Introduction of OpenVPN · Nvidia Driver 525.89.02 Other than that, Nitrux is based on Debian with a twist, it is immutable at its core, so as long as it works for you, it will work until your next full upgrade. Instead of using APT for packages, you are limited to either Appimages or Flatpaks to keep the system as secure as possible. I am not ready to suggest you try this, whether with NX desktop or Maui DE (such as it is) yet. I do find it interesting, and worthwhile to keep tabs on as it develops, but try at your own risk as it is. https://news.itsfoss.com/nitrux-2-7-release/ #distromonday #Linux #Nitrux #immutable #mauishell #newDE #convergent #FOSS #updates #TechFreedom #FOSSnews Tech Freedom Intro: What to expect from my channels and website. https://rumble.com/v157uqb-tech-freedom-intro-what-is-this.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y #intro #TechFreedom #telegram #truthsocial #publicsq #gab #Truth Tech Freedom Intro: What to expect from my channels and website. https://tv.gab.com/channel/tech_freedom/view/tech-freedom-intro-what-is-it-62854e77a5192a444447c047 #intro #TechFreedom #telegram #truthsocial #publicsq #gab #parallelEconomy #parallelSociety #shopongab #growwithgab #smallbusiness #gabsmallbusiness