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>.
Been looking at various settings changes you can make in the
“about:config” page in Firefox. Here are a couple I have found useful:
* keyword.enabled -- set to false to stop Firefox trying to
do a search on the contents of the address box if it doesn’t match
a URL. This is why I have a search box separate from the address
box.
* browser.fixup.alternate.enabled -- set to false to stop it
helpfully tacking on “www.” and “.com” if the original URL you type
doesn’t work. I have occasionally been confused by it complaining
about not finding a URL, but showing a different one from the one I
typed.
By the way, when you first try to view this page, Firefox shows you a
warning to ensure you understand the consequences of messing
about with settings at this level. It remembers it has shown you this
warning by adding the following line to the prefs.js file in your
profile:
user_pref("browser.aboutConfig.showWarning", false);
Firefox seems to overwrite this file when it quits, and reloads it when
it is launched again.
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.
Some years ago, Windows Vista offered users who plugged in a USB flash
drive the option of using the device as extra ram. I never actually
tried this due to large amount of doubt about the functional ability of
the claim. However I now have a number of Linux machines with DDR2 that
I am unable to increase the physical memory of and wonder if this is a
feasible option for these machines.
Cheers John
Inkscape v1.0 is tentatively due to be released on May 1st. Here
<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/14/16_years_inkscape_v1/> is a
backgrounder on how development has been progressing. There seems to be
this assumption that Apple users are important:
Mac support is hugely important, thanks to the wide use of Macs in
the artistic and designer community.
while on the other hand,
They know that macOS usage has been very small.
The new version is using GTK+3, and the UI is more customizable than
before. The command shell has also been improved. Finally:
Is the open-source business model, or lack of it, holding back
Inkscape? "We would advance much faster with even one or two
full-time people," said Jeanmougin. "That has been some frustration
because we only rely on donations. We get much less than what we
would need to hire people."
I just took part in an Electronic Frontier Foundation campaign titled "Help
Stop the Sale of Public Interest Registry to a Private Equity Firm".
Will you join me? Take action here:
https://act.eff.org/action/help-stop-the-sale-of-public-interest-registry-t…
In case you haven't seen this. I expect a lot of FOSS people and
organisations are at risk.
Roderick
I have just checked microphone/camera on my Toshiba laptop running
Mint 19.3: they're both ok for a remote meeting. What I could do is
talk about the various Linuxes I have used, starting witn Tiny Linux,
then Arch-Linux, then OpenBSD, then FreeBSD and finally Mint as well
as Ubuntu14 as well as Sparky Linux. Maybe also a bit about my trials
with GhostBSD.
Why am I using more than 1? Mint 19.3 is the workhorse, Sparky does
movies using conventional openshot as well as avidemux and Ubuntu 14
supports USB-tethering out of the box.
USB-tethering is way faster than the alternatives and also very secure
(as long as no-one nicks your phone).
Tom Butz.
'Hackers have been using Google Play for years to distribute an
unusually advanced backdoor capable of stealing a wide range of
sensitive data, researchers said on Tuesday.
Researchers from security firm Kaspersky Lab have recovered at least
eight Google Play apps that date back to 2018, a Kaspersky Lab
representative said, but based on archive searches and other methods,
the researchers believe malicious apps from the same advanced group
seeded Google’s official market since at least 2016.
Google removed recent versions of the malware shortly after the
researchers from Kaspersky, and earlier fellow security firm Dr. Web,
reported them. Apps from earlier were already removed, and it’s not
clear what prompted the move. Third-party markets have also hosted the
backdoored apps, and many of them remain available.
Command-and-control domains were registered as early as 2015, raising
the possibility the operation goes back earlier than 2016. Code in the
malware and command servers it connects to contain several overlaps
with a known hacking group dubbed OceanLotus (aka APT32, APT-C-00, and
SeaLotus), leading researchers to believe the apps are the work of
that advanced group.'
-- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/sophisticated-androi…
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/
'Fairphone, the European manufacturer of mobile phones with a reduced
environmental impact, has announced a partnership to offer /e/OS, the
most "de-Googled" and pro-privacy Android OS, on their latest model
Fairphone 3. An interesting move that reminds me of the recent
introduction of the Google-free Huawei Mate 30.
A pithy explainer of its "privacy by design ecosystem" -- and the
point of "Android without Google" -- further notes: "We have removed
many pieces of code that send your personal data to remote servers
without your consent. We don't scan your data in your phone or in your
cloud space, and we don't track your location a hundred times a day or
collect what you're doing with your apps."
According to TechCrunch, the e/OS variant of the Firephone 3 ships
from May 6, priced at just under 480 euros -- "a 30 euro premium on
the Googley flavor of Android you get on the standard Fairphone 3."
The report adds that existing owners of the Fairphone 3 can manually
install /e/OS gratis via an installer on its website.'
-- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/20/04/29/2131230
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/
'The Raspberry Pi can be used for all sorts of maker projects, and the
foundation has offered camera modules for it since 2013, adding
vision-related functionality. The first module was a modest
5-megapixel affair that was eventually replaced by an 8-megapixel Sony
sensor four years ago. Today, sees the arrival of a new much higher
12.3 megapixel quality camera, and a range of interchangeable lenses.
From a report:
The new camera is compatible with all Raspberry Pi models -- from Pi 1
Model B onwards -- with the exception of early Pi Zero boards. The
camera is available to buy from today for $50.'
-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/04/30/1554232
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/