For quite a while now, I’ve been annoyed by the system notification
volume going to 100% on my Debian systems, regardless of my attempts to
set it to a lower level. For example, when I open the KDE System
Settings app, change something, then try to close the window, the sound
that accompanies the save/discard/cancel alert is always startlingly
loud.
I think I have finally found a fix: in your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf,
put in a line saying
flat-volumes = no
(You should find an existing comment “; flat-volumes = yes” that
indicates the default.)
You can make this new setting take effect in the current session
immediately without having to logout or reboot, by executing the
following as the currently-logged-in user:
pulseaudio -k
(This kills and restarts the PulseAudio daemon for your user session.)
There are several discussions of the pros and cons of this issue online,
going back some years. For example, here
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1265267>. Also a mention
about the “flat-volumes” setting in the ever-reliable Arch Linux Wiki
here <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio>.
A pretty sobering read
<https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/how-qualcomm-shook-down-the-cel…>:
Qualcomm's first weapon against competitors: patent licensing terms
requiring customers to pay a royalty on every phone sold—not just
phones that contained Qualcomm's wireless chips.
Sound familiar?
Judge Koh draws a direct parallel to licensing behavior that got
Microsoft in legal trouble in the 1990s. Microsoft would offer PC
makers a discount if they agreed to pay Microsoft a licensing fee
for every PC sold—whether or not the PC shipped with a copy of
MS-DOS. This effectively meant that a PC maker had to pay twice if
it shipped a PC running a non-Microsoft operating system.
There’s a lot more--the article reads like a catalogue of gangster-like
tactics. All of which is perfectly all right under the US
interpretation of “Free Enterprise”, of course ...
Also, reading the details of how Qualcomm managed to sabotage Intel’s
efforts to develop 5G chips, it seems to me that Qualcomm is directly
responsible for the situation today where US companies are lagging
behind Chinese ones like Huawei in 5G capability.
If there is anybody else besides me who wondered what happened to Edge
TV, as of the beginning of this month it is no longer on Freeview, it
can now only be viewed as an online stream
<https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/113928839/the-edge-tv-remove…>.
In the last few days of June, there was a promo announcing that it
was going HD, but I don’t recall it mentioning that it was leaving the
broadcast airwaves.
Quote:
MediaWorks chief executive Michael Anderson says the move is in
line with audience trends, which show people primarily consume
music videos online.
While that may be mostly true, personally I would go look for videos on
YouTube after seeing them first on Edge TV.
Apple’s TV+ streaming service is coming soon, followed by Disney’s one
<https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=122666…>.
Note:
Disney+ will break Sky's longtime near-monopoly on Disney content
in these parts. Disney says that, ultimately, Disney+ will be the
exclusive home of its content.
So to get a comparable range of TV content to that you currently have
free-to-air, you are going to have to subscribe to two or three or
maybe more different streaming services. The increasing multitude of
things to pay for isn’t about choice, but about no choice at all.
Hi everyone
Based on our discussions at the AGM on Monday night... Next year, I'll
be advertising our meetings also on GetTogether, a free/open-source
alternative to meetup.com.
If you've been using meetup.com, please consider helping me test-drive
GetTogether by creating an account and joining the WLUG team/group.
WLUG is accessible here on GetTogether:
https://gettogether.community/waikato-linux-users-group/
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
Part <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgNYQsdxlMw> of a series
reviewing an ARM-based device that is not a Chromebook. Seems to have
remarkable build quality for its price, offers versatility for those who
like to tinker, and the battery life and performance are also quite
reasonable. The main downside is some issues with multimedia in
browsers (e.g. YouTube).
This week’s “Listening Post” on Al Jazeera (viewable here
<https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2019/09/xinjiang-story-c…>)
talks, in the latter part, about this new phenomenon of “open source”
journalism. My understanding is, the meaning of “source” here is not
that of “source code” familiar to software developers, but “source of
information” as understood by journalists.
That means getting information from public sources available to all.
Even a tightly-controlled society like China makes a surprising amount
of information freely available online--more than it really wants to
make available, sometimes. And this information can be pieced together
like a puzzle by perceptive investigators, to point to conclusions
which can be directly at odds with public pronouncements from
Government officials.
'Yahoo announced on Wednesday that it is winding down its long-running
Yahoo Groups site. From a report:
As of October 21, users will no longer be able to post new content to
the site, and on December 14 Yahoo will permanently delete all
previously posted content. "You'll have until that date to save
anything you've uploaded," an announcement post reads. Yahoo Groups,
launched in 2001, is a cross between a platform for mailing lists and
internet forums. Groups can be interacted with on the Yahoo Groups
site itself, or via email. In the 18 years that it existed, numerous
niche communities made a home on the platform. Now, with the site's
planned obsolescence, users are looking for ways to save their Groups
history.'
-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/10/16/1928228
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
'A few days ago Devuan ASCII 2.1 was announced and one update has been
overlooked by most media outlets: our dbus patch to re-generate
machine-id at every boot.
This patch matters for everyone's privacy and I hope more
distributions will follow our example, let alone Debian. We are
dealing with important privacy implications: non-consensual user
tracking is illegal in many countries and is not even mentioned in the
machine-id documentation so far.
"In theory, the machine-id should be a persistent identifier of the
current host," explains the README documentation. "In practice, this
causes some privacy concerns...'
-- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/11/30/0538211
Cheers, Peter
--
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/http://www.data-mining.co.nz/