Table of Contents

1. Welcome From The Chief Editor

2. Happy 25th Birthday, KDE!

3. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Blackened Shrimp Avacado Cucumber Bites

4. Facial Recognition: The New Digital Menace

5. Switching To Network Manager On LXQt And MATE

6. Short Topix: Google Chrome Could Break Ad Blockers

7. Life's Better Together When You Avoid Windows 11

8. PCLinuxOS Bonus Recipe Corner: Mediterranean Roasted Fish Dinner

9. GIMP Tutorial: Common GIMP Mistakes

10. Softmaker FreeOffice 2021 On PCLinuxOS

11. PCLinuxOS Recipe Extra: Tomato Basil Filets

12. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

13. Screenshot Showcase

Welcome From The Chief Editor

Marketing departments and lawyers. Do we really need them?

Without them, things might actually be simpler. Without the marketing department getting involved, we might actually be able to buy just shampoo, for example. But with them, we can only buy "invigorating shampoo," "refreshing shampoo," "moisturizing shampoo," or "energizing shampoo." I don't know about you, but I don't buy shampoo based on whether it invigorates, refreshes or energizes me. I buy shampoo to clean my hair. As for moisturizing, nearly all shampoos have to be used with water, so I don't need it to be "moisturizing" either. In fact, I don't know of anything more moist than the water that I must use the shampoo with.

I doubt I'd be lining up to buy anything that makes any part of my body smell worse than it was before I washed with it, so having a refreshing scent should pretty much be a no-brainer. But the marketing "geniuses" have to convince us that the personal care product we are buying has a "refreshing scent." Hey, my wife's best friend LOVES the smell of skunk. We even got her a skunk candle for Christmas one year. I hate flowery, "foo-foo" types of scents (lavender is right at the top of those scents). So what one person thinks is a refreshing scent is an abominable scent to others.

I'm certain that lawyers are responsible for the wacky warning symbols we see on all sorts of our everyday products. I'm sure no company wants to be sued because someone misused a product. But can you really predict the stupidity of some people? Check out this confusing composite of warning symbols:

When did we return to the days of Egyptian hieroglyphics? The first three make sense, as do a FEW of the others making up the last three rows. But some of these are so "out there" that I'm bound to become injured just trying to figure out what they represent. At the very least, several thousand brain cells die just trying to figure these warnings out.

Take this one. It's meant to inform the user that there is an explosion risk. But, at first glance, it says to me that I may be subjected to a meteor bombardment if I use this product. That interpretation makes better sense to me than this product may explode. It actually took me quite a while to figure this one out when I first encountered it plastered on the side of my wife's shaving cream can. And yes, my first glance impression listed above is exactly my first take on the symbol.

As if all of those symbols weren't confusing enough, these confusing symbols have spread throughout various industries, like the laundry industry. I know you must have seen them and not been any more "enlightened" upon discovering them than you were before you first spotted them.

If these symbols are an attempt to make it easier to discern fabric care instructions, then the whole industry failed miserably. It fails because they are too hieroglyphic-like and there are too many of them. There are 10 more symbols here than there are letters in the entire English alphabet!

Between the warning symbols, the laundry symbols, and every other obscure and meaningless scribbled hieroglyphic (think the "idiot" lights on the dash of your car for another collection, right off the top of my head), and navigating this minefield is a lot like learning another new language that has the propensity to change whenever it wants and on the slightest of whims. It's insanity!

I hope you navigate the symbol minefield and the marketing poison unscathed. Until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity and prosperity.

Happy 25th Birthday, KDE!

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

On October 14, 1996, KDE was born.

The brainchild of Matthias Ettrich, KDE stands for Kool Desktop Environment, at least according to the "KDE Timeline" on the KDE website. The interview in the April 2003 edition of Linux Journal gives a slightly different accounting of where the KDE name came from, however. Whatever the history of the name is, KDE has found a niche in the Linux world, and given Linux users everywhere access to a modern, customizable, rich, and full featured desktop environment.

Today, KDE is a stable and popular Linux desktop environment. To say it's full featured would be an understatement. In fact, for some users, there's "too much" eye candy (a.k.a. flash, sparkle and glitz), and it distracts from performing necessary computing tasks. But many others find great solace in using KDE and all of its features. It is one of the most popular desktop environments out there for Linux. In fact, it is the "flagship" desktop environment for PCLinuxOS.

Matthias Ettrich

The German-born Ettrich was a computer science student at a university in southern Germany. He posted a "call for programmers" in the de.comp.os.linux.misc usenet user group. Here is his post:

-------------------------------------------

New Project: Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)

-------------------------------------------

Programmers wanted!

Motivation

----------

Unix popularity grows thanks to the free variants, mostly Linux. But still a consistent, nice looking free desktop-environment is missing. There are several nice either free or low-priced applications available, so that Linux/X11 would almost fit everybody's needs if we could offer a real GUI.

Of course there are GUI's. There is the Common Desktop Environment (much too expensive), Looking Glas (not too expensive but not really the solution), and several free X-Filemanagers that are almost GUI's. Moxfm for example is very well done, but unfortunately it is based on Motif. Anyway, the question is: What is a GUI? What should a GUI be?

First of all, since there are a lot of misunderstandings on this topic, what is NOT a GUI:

- the X-Window-System is NOT a GUI. It's what its name says: A Window system

- Motif is NOT a GUI. They tried to create a GUI when they made Motif, but unfortunately they couldn't really agree, so they released Motif as Widget-Library with a Window-Manager. Much later they completed Motif with the CDE, but too late, since Windows already runs on the majority of desktops.

- Window-managers are NOT GUI's. They are (better: should be) small programs that handle the windows. It's not really the idea to hack a lot of stuff into them.

IMHO a GUI should offer a complete, graphical environment. It should allow a user to do his everyday tasks with it, like starting applications, reading mail, configuring his desktop, editing some files, deleting some files, look at some pictures, etc. All parts must fit together and work together. A nice button with a nice "Editor"-icon isn't not at all a graphical user environment if it invokes "xterm -e vi". Maybe you have been disappointed long time ago too, when you installed X with a nice window manager, clicked on that beautiful "Help"-Icon ... chrk chrk (the hard disk)...an ugly, unusable, weird xman appeared on the desktop :-(

A GUI for end users

------------------

The idea is NOT to create a GUI for the complete UNIX-system or the System-Administrator. For that purpose the UNIX-CLI with thousands of tools and scripting languages is much better. The idea is to create a GUI for an END USER. Somebody who wants to browse the web with Linux, write some letters and play some nice games.

I really believed that was even yet possible with Linux until I configured my girlfriend's Box. Well, I didn't notice anymore that I work with lots of different kind of menus, scrollbars and text widgets. I already know that some widgets need to be under the mouse when they should get the keyevents, some sliders wants the middle mouse for dragging and some text widgets only want emacs-bindings and don't understand keys like "pos1" or "end". And selecting some text is different everywhere, too. Even the menus and buttons (for exampel Xaw, Fvwm, XForms, Motif) behave completely differently.

One word to the Athena-Widgets: Although there are a few nice applications available that use these "widgets" we should really get rid of them. Thinking that "Athena is a widget-library" is a similar misunderstanding like "X is a GUI". Athena is a very old example of how widget libraries could be implemented with Xlib and Xt. It's more or less a online-documentation for Widget-Set-Programmers, but not a tool for application-programmers. Unfortunately, the old Unix problem, so good online-documentation that people used it for applications.

So one of the major goals is to provide a modern and common look & feel for all the applications. And this is exactly the reason why this project is different from older attempts.

Since a few weeks a really great new widget library is available free in source and price for free software development. Check out http://www.troll.no.

The stuff is called "Qt" and is really a revolution in programming X. It's an almost complete, fully C++ Widget-library that implements a slightly improved Motif look and feel, or, switchable during startup, Windows 95.

The fact that it is done by a company (Troll Tech) is IMO a great advantage. We have the sources and a superb library, they have beta testers. But they also spend their WHOLE TIME in improving the library. They also give great support. That means, Qt is also interesting for commercial applications. A real alternative to the terrible Motif :) But the greatest pro for Qt is the way it is programmed. It's really a very easy-to-use powerful C++-library.

Qt is also portable, yet to Windows95/NT, but you do not have to worry about that. It's very easy to use UNIX/X specific things in programming, so porting to NT is hardly possible :-)

I really recommend looking at this library. It has IMO the power to become the leading library for free software development. And it's a way to escape the TCL/TK monsters that try to slow down all our processors and eat up our memory...

It's really time yet to standardize the desktop somewhat. It's nonsense to load 10 different widgets into memory for the same task. Imagine this desktop:

- fvwm (own widgets)

- rxvt (own widgets)

- tgif (own widgets)

- xv (own widgets)

- ghostview (athena widgets)

- lyx (xforms widgets)

- xftp (motif widgets)

- textedit (xview widgets)

- arena (own widgets)

One may argue that a usual UNIX-Box has enough memory to handle all these different kinds of widgets. Even if this might be correct, the really annoying thing is that all these widgets (menus, buttons, scrollbars, etc.) behave slightly differently. And this isn't only an academic example, I've really seen such desktops :-}

I know we couldn't get rid of this chaos at once, but my dream is a coexistence between Motif and Qt.

The Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)

----------------------------------

I don't have the time to do this all alone (also since LyX is my main project). But a thing like a Desktop Environment can easily be cut into lots of parts. There is probably a part for you, too! If you want to learn some X-programming, why not doing a small, neat project for the KDE? If you know others who like to programm something, please prevent them from writing the 1004th tetris games or the 768th minesweeper clone ;-) Think we also have enough XBiffs yet...

So here is my project list so far. Probably there are even more things to do that would fit great into the KDE. It's a very open project.

- Panel:

The basic application. Run as FvwmModule (at the beginning). Offers a combination between Windows95 and CDE. I think about a small taskbar at the bottom and a kind of CDE-panel on the top of the screen. The panel has graphical icon menus on the left (similar to GoodStuff) to launch applications, 4 buttons in the middle to switch to other virtual desktops and few icons for often needed applications on the right. There is for example a mail-icon that also indicates new mail, a wastebasket to open the delete-folder (that also indicates when it isn't empty and is capable of drag'n'drop). Maybe an analog clock with date at the very right. Also a nice special icon for exiting the environment or locking the screen. All the stuff is completely configurable via GUI. I'm also thinking about solutions, that only available applications can be installed on the desktop and that new applications appear on the desktop automatically.

I started to work on this panel, but would of course love some help. There are also a lot of smaller things to do, like a tool to choose a background pixmap (for each virtual desktop) etc.

Also nice icons are needed!

- Filemanager

Another major application inside the KDE. The idea is not to create a powerful high-end graphical bash-replacement (like tkdesk tries to be), but a nice looking easy-to-use filemanager for simple tasks. Simple tasks are mainly deleting some files, copying some files, copying some files on the disk, starting applications by clicking on a file (for example ghostview for postscript files or xli for gifs, etc).

I'm thinking about nice windows, one for each directory, that shows icons for every file. It should be possible to drag files around (either copy or move), even between different windows. Another important point is the support of the floppy-disk, so that mounting/unmounting is done user-transparent.

Dragging of icons should be done in a nice way, that means moving around a special window (see Qt's xshape example), NOT like xfm or xfilemanager by setting another monochrome bitmap for the cursor.

So it will also be possible to put files as icons on the desktop. This is IMO a very nice feature. Since applications are launched by the panel, it's even clear that icons are real data-objects. With fvwm-1 and the FvwmFileMgr it wasn't really clear whether an icon is yet a file or an iconified window.

Drag'n'drop inside a Qt application isn't really difficult. The filemanager is IMO a very nice and not too time consuming project.

Who wants it?

- mail client

A really comfortable mail client. IMO the most comfortable mail client for X is yet XF-Mail. And the author is willing to port it to Qt when the KDE-project starts! But he asks for some assistance (for example for coding the small popups, etc.)

- easy text editor

Very small but important project. An editor that fits the needs of those who have to edit a text file once in a month and didn't find the time yet to learn vi (and don't have the time to wait for x-emacs to start, and don't have the memory to use a motif-static-nedit, and don't have the cpu-power and memory to use a tk-monster like tkedit,...)

Unfortunately the Qt multiline-textwidget isn't available in Qt-1.0, but Troll-Tech already announced the beta-testing. So the text editor can be started in a few weeks, too.

- Terminal

Similar to the CDE terminal program. A kind of xterm with a nice menu bar to set the font, exit, etc. Nice project, get the xterm sources and add a GUI with Qt!

- Image viewer

The application that will be launched as default from the filemanager for gifs, jpegs and all this. Well, xv is shareware and really needs quite a long time for startup. But there is a plain Xlib program without any menues or buttons called "xli". Get the sources and make it user friendly with Qt!

- Lots of small other tools:

* xdvi with Qt-Gui

* ghostview with Qt-Gui

* xmag with Qt-Gui

* whatever you want

- Hypertext Help System

A complete desktop environment needs a nice hypertext online help. I think the best choice would be HTML (>= 2.0). So a free Qt-based html-viewer would be a great idea. It might be possible to use the Arena-sources, but the arena needs very long for startup. Maybe it would be best to start from scratch. Qt offers excellent functions for dealing with different fonts. For a help system HTML 2.0 is more than enough, some nice search function added and that's it. Since it is also possible to convert the obsolete troff man-pages to HTML, we can also integrate the original UNIX help system.

BTW: There is a Troll Tech Qt-competition (look at their webpages). The best application (not only functionality, but also design counts. Just porting an existing great application to Qt won't probably be enough :-( ) wins $2000 and a few Qt on NT licenses (worth another $2000). They also mentioned a browser-project as an example. So a nice HTML-browser in Qt, ready in January may be worth $4000 (This includes selling the unneeded NT licenses ;-) )

- Window Manager

At the beginning, the KDE panel will work as an Fvwm-Module. When this is done, a lot of stuff can be stripped from the bloated fvwm window manager. We don't need anymore fvwm-menus, icon handling and zillions of configurable things. We need a small, reliable windowmanager. So maybe stripping all unnecessary stuff from fvwm will make sense in a while. But this may come very last.

- System Tools

Whatever a user, or you, might need. A graphical password comes to my mind. But probably there are a lot more! Maybe this will lead to a little system administration tool someday.

- Games

We have yet a nice tetris game (an Qt example program). What is needed is a nice set of small games like solitaire (please with nice cards that can be really dragged!). There are several nice card games available for X, for example xpat2. So why not take the cards from them and write a real solitaire games, very similar to MS-Solitaire. I really had to install Wine sometimes just to play solitaire, what an overhead! But other games are needed, too. Take xmris, pacman, etc. add a nice GUI. Or write some from scratch. Whatever you want :)

- Icons

A set of nice icons. 3D-pixmaps are quite a good start (but why should the button be inside a pixmap, if we use a toolkit with buttons???)

- Documentation

A documentation project is always a good thing to have. But before we should clarify how the hypertext help system should look like. We can then start with documentation pages in the chosen HTML-subset and for example use arean as help browser. Anyway we need some application to document first.

- Web-Pages / Ftp Server / Administration

We need a server for the files and web pages that inform us about the state of the project. Especially what projects are currently worked on and what projects still wait for somebody to do them. I set up a preliminary homepage on http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/ettrich that just contains this posting and a few links. I may set up real webpages for the very beginning but I would be very happy if I could concentrate on discussion and coding. So if there is someone out there on the net who likes to design and maintain web pages, here is a job for him :)

- Discussion

The most important topic :-) If you are interested please join the mailing list k...@fiwi02.wiwi.uni-tuebingen.de Subscribing can be done by sending a mail with in *Body*: subscribe to kde-r...@fiwi02.wiwi.uni-tuebingen.de.

- Applications

When the KDE gets widely accepted, new (free) applications will hopefully be based on Qt, too, to fit with the comfortable and pleasant look and feel of the desktop. We may for example port LyX to Qt, so that a comfortable word processor is available. But that is still in discussion in the LyX Team.

A nice vector-orientated drawing tool would also be fine. Well, Xfig is a powerful but ugly monster. But there is "tgif", a very powerful, easy touse but ugly program. The author doesn't like the idea of adding a Qt GUI for the menus, icons and scrollbars, since Qt is C++ and he wants to keep tgif plain C, since on some sites no C++ compiler is available. Well, the KDE doesn't really aim at these old and weird UNIX boxes (also I think a g++ is almost everywhere available). But maybe the tgif-author agrees when somebody else adds a nice GUI to tgif (the sources are free, don't know whether this is GPL). Since tgif yet implements its own GUI this shouldn't be too difficult. It's really easy with Qt to access plain Xlib functionality and functions, so not very much will have to be rewritten. Also C++ makes it very easy to include plain C code.

What about an easy to use, nice newsreader similar to knews? Could also be integrated into the KDE. ... and ... and ... and.

So there is a lot of work (and fun) to do! If you are interested, please join the mailing list. If we get about 20-30 people we could start. And probably before 24th December the net-community will give itself another nice and longtime-needed gift.

The stuff will be distributed under the terms of the GPL.

I admit the whole thing sounds a bit like fantasy. But it is very serious from my side. Everybody I'm talking to in the net would LOVE a somewhat cleaner desktop. Qt is the chance to realize this. So let us join our rare sparetime and just do it!

Hopefully looking forward to lots of follow ups and replies!

Regards,

Matthias Ettrich

(ett...@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de)

BTW: Usually these postings get a lot of answers like "Use a Mac if you want a GUI, CLI rules!", "I like thousands of different widgets-libraries on my desktop, if you are too stupid to learn them, you should use windoze", "RAM prices are so low, I only use static motif programs", "You will never succeed, so better stop before the beginning", "Why Qt? I prefer schnurz-purz-widgets with xyz-lisp-shell. GPL! Check it out!", etc. Thanks for not sending these as follow up to this posting :-) I know I'm a dreamer...

BTW2: You might wonder why I'm so against Tk. Well, I don't like the philosophy: Tk's doesn't have a textwidget, for example, but a slow word processor. Same with other widgets. In combination with TCL the programs become slow and ugly (of course there are exceptions). I didn't yet see any application that uses Tk from C++ or C, although an API seems to exist. TCL/TK is very useful for prototyping. Ideal for example for kernel configuration. And since Tk looks little similar to Motif, the widgets are also quite easy to use. But I really don't like any TCL/Tk application to stay permanently on the desktop. And Qt is much easier (at least as easy) to program. Check it out!

BTW3: I don't have any connections to Troll Tech, I just like their product (look at the sources: really high quality!) and their kind of marketing: free source code for free software.

As you can tell by reading through his initial proposal, KDE was fairly well thought out and thought through. Ettrich paid attention to many details that most starting a project of this scope would be likely to overlook, such as the help system.

The KDE Timeline

So, let's look back at some of the more significant entries on the timeline of how KDE/Plasma came to be.

On October 14, 1996, Matthias Ettrich announced the creation of the Kool Desktop Environment (KDE), a graphical interface for Unix systems, built with Qt and C ++ and designed for the end user. The name "KDE" was a pun on the graphic environment CDE, which was proprietary at the time.

KDE One Conference. From August, 28th to September, 1st, 1997, 15 KDE developers met in Arnsberg, Germany, to discuss design issues, the future of the project, and - of course - to code a lot. Some areas in which a lot of progress has been made are KFM stability, internationalization and mime-type detection. In addition, work in progress has been presented and discussed.

October 14, 1997. The first beta version of KDE was released. The first stable version of KDE 1.0 was released on July 12, 1998.

April, 1999. The dragon, Konqi, debuts as the new animated assistant to the KDE Help Center.

October, 1999. The KDE Two Conference, consisting of the KDE developers, meets in Erlangen, Germany.

May 12, 2000. The first beta release of KDE 2.0 (formally known as KDE 1.90) is released.

July 2000. The KDE Three Beta Conference is held in Trysil, Norway for the KDE developers.

October 23, 2000. KDE 2.0 released. Konqueror, the combination file manager and web browser, makes its debut. KOffice also debuts.

April 30, 2001. The developers start referring to KDE as the "KDE Project."

March 2002. The KDE Three developer's meeting occurs in Nuremberg, Germany. The developers needed to migrate the KDE 2.x code to the new Qt 3 libraries.

April 3, 2002. KDE 3.0 released to the public, after porting the KDE 2.0 code over to use the new Qt 3 libraries.

January 28, 2003. KDE 3.1 released. Some of the enhancements included tabbed browsing in Konqueror, Exchange 2000 compatibility for KOrganizer, a new window style called Keramik, and a new icon style, called Crystal Icons.

November 29, 2005. KDE 3.5 released. The developers expected this version of KDE to last users a couple of years, while they started work on KDE 4.x.

July 2006. KDE Four Core Meeting. The developers met in Trysil, Norway to work on the development of KDE 4 and to stabilize some of the core libraries.

May 2007. The Alpha 1 version of KDE 4 was announced.

January 11, 2008. KDE 4.0 was released. Besides the many new capabilities introduced in KDE 4, this is the first time KDE users heard about Plasma, the new desktop shell. Dolphin becomes the official file manager, replacing Konqueror. Instead, Konqueror is relegated to a primary role of web browser, even though it can also be used as a file manager.

July 29, 2008. KDE 4.1 released. Now, instead of referring to KDE as the "KDE Project," the emphasis is shifted to referring to it as "KDE Community."

November 2009. The community announced changes to its brand. The name "K Desktop Environment" had become ambiguous and obsolete and is replaced by "KDE". The name "KDE" is no longer just referring to a desktop environment, but now represents both the community and the project umbrella supported by this community. Subsequently, from version 4.3.4 on, KDE announcements began to refer to the whole suite of products as ‘KDE Software Compilation' (KDE SC). Currently, this trend is abandoned.

August 10, 2010. KDE SC 4.5.0 released. This version came with a special desktop version, called "Plasma Netbook Workspaces 4.5.0," designed especially for the then-popular netbook variations of computers that were all the rage.

December 2010. KOffice Suite is replaced with Calligra Suite.

July 15, 2014. The new Plasma 5 desktop is released to the public. This features a desktop experience that is most familiar to today's KDE users.

December 8, 2015. Plasma 5.5 released. This includes system-wide updates and increased stability, as well as a reworked set of Breeze icons.

Of course, there are many other KDE sentinel events that fill in the gaps in the above timeline. I have tried to hit the highlights here. You can see the entire KDE Timeline here.

Summary

The KDE desktop environment has experienced tremendous growth over the past 25 years. Over that time, it has provided Linux users with a modern and stable desktop that has evolved as user interface design has evolved.

I remember when Windows 7 was announced. There were a LOT of people remarking how similar Windows 7 looked to KDE SC 4. After all, they do say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

So, here's to you, KDE! Let's hope that the next 25 years are as fruitful and enjoyable as your first 25 years.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner:

Blackened Shrimp Avocado Cucumber Bites

Serves about 5

Unit converter

INGREDIENTS:

For the shrimp and cucumber bites:

1 tablespoon oil

1 tablespoon creole seasoning

1 pound 16/20 shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 cucumber, sliced

1/4 cup Remoulade sauce (optional)

For the avocado sauce:

1 avocado, mashed   1 green onion, thinly sliced or chopped

2 tablespoons cilantro and/or parsley, chopped

1 tablespoon lemon juice

salt and cayenne to taste

For the Remoulade Sauce:

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon creole mustard

1 tablespoon ketchup

1 teaspoon horseradish

1 small clove garlic

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon capers

1 green onion (chopped)

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon paprika

hot sauce to taste

DIRECTIONS:

For the avocado sauce:

Mix everything and enjoy!

For the Remoulade Sauce:

Blend everything in a food processor until smooth.

For the shrimp and cucumber bites:

Toss the shrimp in the oil and the seasoning and cook in a preheated (medium-high heat) heavy bottomed pan/skillet until slightly blackened, about 2-3 minutes per side.

Assemble the bites with cucumber slices, topped with avocado sauce, shrimp and remoulade sauce.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 155         Carbs: 5.5 g         Fiber: 1.9 g         Sodium: 168 mg         Protein: 4 g

Facial Recognition: The New Digital Menace

Editor's Note: These three articles are all by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and appeared on their site during the month of October. They are reprinted here under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Face Recognition Isn't Just Face Identification and Verification: It's Also Photo Clustering, Race Analysis, Real-time Tracking, and More

By Bennett Cyphers, Adam Schwartz, and Nathan Sheard

Permalink

Governments and corporations are tracking how we go about our lives with a unique marker that most of us cannot hide or change: our own faces. Across the country, communities are pushing back with laws that restrain this dangerous technology. In response, some governments and corporations are claiming that these laws should only apply to some forms of face recognition, such as face identification, and not to others, such as face clustering.

We disagree. All forms of face recognition are a menace to privacy, free speech, and racial justice. This post explores many of the various kinds of face recognition, and explains why all must be addressed by laws.

What Is Face Recognition?

At the most basic level, face recognition technology takes images of human faces and tries to extract information about the people in them.

Here's how it usually works today:

First, the image is automatically processed to identify what is and is not a face. This is often called "face detection." This is a prerequisite for all of the more sophisticated forms of face recognition we discuss below. In itself, face detection is not necessarily harmful to user privacy. However, there is significant racial disparity in many face detection technologies.

Next, the system extracts features from each image of a face. The raw image data is processed into a smaller set of numbers that summarize the differentiating features of a face. This is often called a "faceprint."

Faceprints, rather than raw face images, can be used for all of the troubling tasks described below. A computer can compare the faceprint from two separate images to try and determine whether they're the same person. It can also try to guess other characteristics (like sex and emotion) about the individual from the faceprint.

Face Matching

The most widely deployed class of face recognition is often called "face matching." It tries to match two or more faceprints to determine if they are the same person.

Any face recognition system used for "tracking", "clustering", or "verification" of an unknown person can easily be used for "identification.".

Face matching can be used to link photographs of unknown people to their real identities. This is often done by taking a faceprint from a new image (e.g. taken by a security camera) and comparing it against a database of "known" faceprints (e.g. a government database of ID photos). If the unknown faceprint is similar enough to any of the known faceprints, the system returns a potential match. This is often known as "face identification."

Face matching can also be used to figure out whether two faceprints are from the same face, without necessarily knowing whom that face belongs to. For example, a phone may check a user's face to determine whether it should unlock, often called "face verification." Also, a social media site may scan through a user's photos to try to determine how many unique people are present in them, though it may not identify those people by name, often called "face clustering." This tech may be used for one-to-one matches (are two photographs of the same person?), one-to-many matches (does this reference photo match any one of a set of images?), or many-to-many matches (how many unique faces are present in a set of images?). Even without attaching faces to names, face matching can be used to track a person's movements in real-time, for example, around a store or around a city, often called "face tracking."

All forms of face matching raise serious digital rights concerns, including face identification, verification, tracking, and clustering. Lawmakers must address them all. Any face recognition system used for "tracking", "clustering", or "verification" of an unknown person can easily be used for "identification" as well. The underlying technology is often exactly the same. For example, all it takes is linking a set of "known" faceprints to a cluster of "unknown" faceprints to turn clustering into identification.

Even if face identification technology is never used, face clustering and tracking technologies can threaten privacy, free speech, and equity. For example, police might use face-tracking technology to follow an unidentified protester from a rally to their home or car, and then identify them with an address or license plate database. Or police might use face clustering technology to create a multi-photo array of a particular unidentified protester, and manually identify the protester by comparing that array to a mugshot database, where such manual identification would have been impossible based on a single photo of the protester.

Accuracy, Error, and Bias

In 2019, Nijeer Parks was wrongfully arrested after being misidentified by a facial recognition system. Despite being 30 miles away from the scene of the alleged crime, Parks spent 10 days in jail before police admitted their mistake.

Nijeer Parks is at least the third person to be falsely arrested due to faulty face recognition tech. It's no coincidence that all three people were Black men. Facial recognition is never perfect, but it is alarmingly more error-prone when applied to anyone who is not a white and cisgender man. In a pioneering study from 2018, Joy Buolamwini and Dr. Timnit Gebru showed that face identification systems misidentified women of color at more than 40 times the rate of white men. More recently, NIST testing of various state-of-the-art face recognition systems confirmed a broad, dramatic trend of disparate "false positive" rates across demographics, with higher error rates for faces that were not white and male.

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Despite being 30 miles away from the scene of the alleged crime, Parks spent 10 days in jail before police admitted their mistake.

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Furthermore, face identification systems that may perform better on laboratory benchmarks-- for example, attempting to identify well-lit headshots--are usually much less accurate in the real world. When that same technology is given a more realistic task, like identifying people walking through an airport boarding gate, it performs much less well.

For many reasons, widespread deployment of facial identification--even if it was accurate and unbiased--is incompatible with a free society. But the technology today is far from accurate, and it is deeply biased in ways that magnify the existing systematic racism in our criminal justice system.

We expect that researchers will find the same kinds of unacceptable errors and bias in face tracking and clustering, as has already been found in face identification. Which is one more reason why privacy laws must address all forms of face recognition.

Another Form of Face Recognition: Face Analysis

Face recognition has many applications beyond matching one faceprint to another. It is also used to try to guess a person's demographic traits, emotional state, and more, based on their facial features. A burgeoning industry purports to use what is often called "face analysis" or "face inference" to try to extract these kinds of auxiliary information from live or recorded images of faces. Face analysis may be used in combination with other technologies, like eye tracking, to examine the facial reaction to what you are looking at.

Demographic Analysis

Some vendors claim they can use face recognition technologies to assign demographic attributes to their targets, including gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age.

It's doubtful that such demographic face analysis can ever really "work." It relies on the assumption that differences in the structure of a face are perfect reflections of demographic traits, when in many cases that is not true. These demographics are often social constructs and many people do not fit neatly under societal labels.

When it does "work", at least according to whomever is deploying it, demographic face inference technology can be extremely dangerous to marginalized groups. For example, these systems allow marketers to discriminate against people on the basis of gender or race. Stores might attempt to use face analysis to steer unidentified patrons towards different goods and discounts based on their gender or emotional state--a misguided attempt whether it succeeds or fails. At the horrific extreme, automatic demographic inference can help automate genocide.

These technologies can also harm people by not working. For example, "gender recognition" will misidentify anyone who does not present traditional gender features, and can harm transgender, nonbinary, gender non-conforming, and intersex people. That's why some activists are campaigning to ban automated recognition of gender and sexual orientation.

Emotion Analysis

Face analysis also purportedly can identify a person's emotions or "affect," both in real-time and on historical images. Several companies sell services they claim can determine how a person is feeling based on their face.

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This technology is pseudoscience: at best, it might learn to identify some cultural norms. But people often express emotions differently, based on culture, temperament, and neurodivergence.

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This technology is pseudoscience: at best, it might learn to identify some cultural norms. But people often express emotions differently, based on culture, temperament, and neurodivergence. Trying to uncover a universal mapping of "facial expression" to "emotion" is a snipe hunt. The research institute AI Now cited this technology's lack of scientific basis and potential for discriminatory abuse in a scathing 2019 report, and called for regulators to ban its use for important decisions about human lives.

Despite the lack of scientific backing, emotion recognition is popular among many advertisers and market researchers. Having reached the limits of consumer surveys, these companies now seek to assess how people react to media and advertisements by video observation, with or without their consent.

Even more alarmingly, these systems can be deployed to police "pre-crime"--using computer-aided guesses about mental state to scrutinize people who have done nothing wrong. For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security spent millions on a project called "FAST", which would use facial inference, among other inputs, to detect "mal-intent" and "deception" in people at airports and borders. Face analysis can also be incorporated into so-called "aggression detectors," which supposedly can predict when someone is about to become violent. These systems are extremely biased and nowhere near reliable, yet likely will be used to justify excessive force or wrongful detention against whomever the system determines is "angry" or "deceptive." The use of algorithms to identify people for detention or disciplinary scrutiny is extremely fraught, and will do far more to reinforce existing bias than to make anyone safer.

Some researchers have even gone as far as to suggest that "criminality" can be predicted from one's face. This is plainly not true. Such technology would unacceptably exacerbate the larger problems with predictive policing.

Take Action

Mitigating the risks raised by the many forms of face recognition requires each of us to be empowered as the ultimate decision-maker in how our biometric data is collected, used, or shared. To protect yourself and your community from unconsented collection of biometric data by corporations, contact your representatives and tell them to join Senators Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders in advocating for a national biometric information privacy act.

Government use of face recognition technology is an even greater menace to our essential freedoms. This is why government agencies must end the practice, full stop. More than a dozen communities from San Francisco to Boston have already taken action by banning their local agencies from utilizing the technology. To find out how you can take steps today to end government use of face recognition technology in your area, visit EFF's About Face resource page.

For a proposed taxonomy of the various kinds of face recognition discussed in this post, check out this list of commonly used terms.

Face Recognition Technology: Commonly Used Terms

By Adam Schwartz, Nathan Sheard, and Bennett Cyphers

Permalink

As face recognition technology evolves at a dizzying speed, new uses and terminologies seem to develop daily. On this page, we attempt to define and disambiguate some of the most commonly used terms.

For more information on government use of face recognition and how to end it in your community, visit EFF's About Face resource page.

Face detection: Determines whether an image includes a human face. Some government agencies use face detection to aid in obscuring identifiable faces before releasing video footage in response to requests for public records. As a result, many bans on government use of face recognition technology specifically exclude face detection for this purpose, provided that no information about the faces is collected or stored. Generally, this use does not raise significant privacy concerns.

Face recognition: Any collection and processing of faceprints, including both face matching and face analysis (two terms defined below). Face recognition raises significant digital rights concerns.

Faceprinting: A fundamental step in the process of face recognition, faceprinting is the automated analysis and translation of visible characteristics of a face into a unique mathematical representation of that face. Both collection and storage of this information raise privacy and safety concerns.

Face matching: Any comparison of two or more faceprints. This includes face identification, face verification, face clustering, and face tracking (four terms defined below).

- Face identification: Compares (i) a single faceprint of an unknown person to (ii) a set of faceprints of known people. The goal is to identify the unknown person. Face identification may yield multiple results, sometimes with a "confidence" indicator showing how likely the system determines the returned image matches the unknown image.

- Face verification: Compares (i) a single faceprint of a person seeking verification of their authorization to (ii) one or more faceprints of authorized individuals. The verified person might or might not be identified as a specific person; a system may verify that two faceprints belong to the same person without knowing who that person is. Face verification may be used to unlock a phone or to authorize a purchase.

- Face clustering: Compares all the faceprints in a collection of images to one another, in order to group the images containing a particular person or group of people. The clustered people might or might not then be identified as known individuals. For example, each of the people in a library of digital photos (whether a personal album or a police array of everyone at a protest) could have their various pictures automatically clustered into a discrete set.

- Face tracking: Uses faceprints to follow the movements of a particular person through a physical space covered by one or more surveillance cameras, such as the interior of a store or the exterior sidewalks in a city's downtown. The tracked person might or might not be identified. The tracking might be real-time or based on historical footage.

Face analysis, also known as face inference: Any processing of a faceprint, without comparison to another individual's faceprint, to learn something about the person from whom the faceprint was extracted. Face analysis by itself will not identify or verify a person. Some face analysis purports to draw inferences about a person's demographics (such as race or gender), emotional or mental state (such as anger), behavioral characteristics, and even criminality.

For more information about the various kinds of face recognition, check out this more detailed post.

Resisting the Menace of Face Recognition

By Adam Schwartz Permalink

Face recognition technology is a special menace to privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security. Our faces are unique identifiers, and most of us expose them everywhere we go. And unlike our passwords and identification numbers, we can't get a new face. So, governments and businesses, often working in partnership, are increasingly using our faces to track our whereabouts, activities, and associations.

Fortunately, people around the world are fighting back. A growing number of communities have banned government use of face recognition. As to business use, many communities are looking to a watershed Illinois statute, which requires businesses to get opt-in consent before extracting a person's faceprint. EFF is proud to support laws like these.

Face Recognition Harms

Let's begin with the ways that face recognition harms us. Then we'll turn to solutions.

Privacy

Face recognition violates our human right to privacy. Surveillance camera networks have flooded our public spaces. Face recognition technologies are more powerful by the day. Taken together, these systems can quickly, cheaply, and easily ascertain where we've been, who we've been with, and what we've been doing. All based on a unique marker that we cannot change or hide: our own faces.

In the words of a federal appeals court ruling in 2019, in a case brought against Facebook for taking faceprints from its users without their consent:

Once a face template of an individual is created, Facebook can use it to identify that individual in any of the other hundreds of millions of photos uploaded to Facebook each day, as well as determine when the individual was present at a specific location. Facebook can also identify the individual's Facebook friends or acquaintances who are present in the photo. ... [I]t seems likely that a face-mapped individual could be identified from a surveillance photo taken on the streets or in an office building.

Government use of face recognition also raises Fourth Amendment concerns. In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly placed limits on invasive government uses of cutting-edge surveillance technologies. This includes police use of GPS devices and cell site location information to track our movements. Face surveillance can likewise track our movements.

Racial Justice

Face recognition also has an unfair disparate impact against people of color.

Its use has led to the wrongful arrests of at least three Black men. Their names are Michael Oliver, Nijeer Parks, and Robert Williams. Every arrest of a Black person carries the risk of excessive or even deadly police force. So, face recognition is a threat to Black lives. This technology also caused a public skating rink to erroneously expel a Black patron. Her name is Lamya Robinson. So, face recognition is also a threat to equal opportunity in places of public accommodation.

These cases of "mistaken identity" are not anomalies. Many studies have shown that face recognition technology is more likely to misidentify people of color than white people. A leader in this research is Joy Buolamwini.

Even if face recognition technology was always accurate, or at least equally inaccurate across racial groups, it would still have an unfair racially disparate impact. Surveillance cameras are over-deployed in minority neighborhoods, so people of color will be more likely than others to be subjected to faceprinting. Also, history shows that police often aim surveillance technologies at racial justice advocates.

Face recognition is just the latest chapter of what Alvaro Bedoya calls "the color of surveillance." This technology harkens back to "lantern laws," which required people of color to carry candle lanterns while walking the streets after dark, so police could better see their faces and monitor their movements.

Free Expression

In addition, face recognition chills and deters our freedom of expression.

The First Amendment protects the right to confidentiality when we engage in many kinds of expressive activity. These include anonymous speech, private conversations, confidential receipt of unpopular ideas, gathering news from undisclosed sources, and confidential membership in expressive associations. All of these expressive activities depend on freedom from surveillance because many participants fear retaliation from police, employers, and neighbors. Research confirms that surveillance deters speech.

Yet, in the past two years, law enforcement agencies across the country have used face recognition to identify protesters for Black lives. These include the U.S. Park Police, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and local police in Boca Raton, Broward County, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, New York City, and Pittsburgh. This shows, again, the color of surveillance.

Police might also use face recognition to identify the whistleblower who walked into a newspaper office, or the reader who walked into a dissident bookstore, or the employee who walked into a union headquarters, or the distributor of an anonymous leaflet. The proliferation of face surveillance can deter all of these First Amendment-protected activities.

Information Security

Finally, face recognition threatens our information security.

Data thieves regularly steal vast troves of personal data. These include faceprints. For example, the faceprints of 184,000 travellers were stolen from a vendor of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Criminals and foreign governments can use stolen faceprints to break into secured accounts that the owner's face can unlock. Indeed, a team of security researchers did this with 3D models based on Facebook photos.

Face Recognition Types

To sum up: face recognition is a threat to privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security. However, before moving on to solutions, let's pause to describe the various types of face recognition.

Two are most familiar. "Face identification" compares the faceprint of an unknown person to a set of faceprints of known people. For example, police may attempt to identify an unknown suspect by comparing their faceprint to those in a mugshot database.

"Face verification" compares the faceprint of a person seeking access, to the faceprints of people authorized for such access. This can be a minimally concerning use of the technology. For example, many people use face verification to unlock their phones.

There's much more to face recognition. For example, face clustering, tracking, and analysis do not necessarily involve face identification or verification.

"Face clustering" compares all faceprints in a collection of images to one another, to group the images containing a particular person. For example, police might create a multi-photo array of an unidentified protester, then manually identify them with a mugshot book.

"Face tracking" follows the movements of a particular person through a physical space covered by surveillance cameras. For example, police might follow an unidentified protester from a rally to their home or car, then identify them with an address or license plate database.

"Face analysis" purports to learn something about a person, like their race or emotional state, by scrutinizing their face. Such analysis will often be wrong, as the meaning of a facial characteristic is often a social construct. For example, it will misgender people who are transgender or nonbinary. If it "works," it may be used for racial profiling. For example, a Chinese company claims it works as a "Uighur alarm." Finally, automated screening to determine whether a person is supposedly angry or deceptive can cause police to escalate their use of force, or expand the duration and scope of a detention.

Legislators must address all forms of face recognition: not just identification and verification, but also clustering, tracking, and analysis.

Government Use of Face Recognition

EFF supports a ban on government use of face recognition. The technology is so destructive that government must not use it at all.

EFF has supported successful advocacy campaigns across the country. Many local communities have banned government use of face recognition, from Boston to San Francisco. The State of California placed a three-year moratorium on police use of face recognition with body cameras. Some businesses have stopped selling face recognition to police.

We also support a bill to end federal use of face recognition. If you want to help stop government use of face recognition in your community, check out EFF's "About Face" toolkit.

Corporate Use of Face Recognition

The Problem

Corporate use of face recognition also harms privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security.

Part of the problem is at brick-and-mortar stores. Some use face identification to detect potential shoplifters. This often relies on error-prone, racially biased criminal justice data. Other stores use it to identify banned patrons. But this can misidentify innocent patrons, especially if they are people of color, as happened to Lamya Robinson at a roller rink. Still, other stores use face identification, tracking, and analysis to serve customers targeted ads or track their behavior over time. This is part of the larger problem of surveillance-based advertising, which harms all of our privacy.

There are many other kinds of threatening corporate uses of face recognition. For example, some companies use it to scrutinize their employees. This is just one of many high-tech ways that bosses spy on workers. Other companies, like Clearview AI, use face recognition to help police identify people of interest, including BLM protesters. Such corporate-government surveillance partnerships are a growing threat.

The Solution

Of all the laws now on the books, one has done the most to protect us from corporate use of face recognition: the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, or BIPA.

At its core, BIPA does three things:

1. It bans businesses from collecting or disclosing a person's faceprint without their opt-in consent.

2. It requires businesses to delete the faceprints after a fixed time.

3. If a business violates a person's BIPA rights by unlawfully collecting, disclosing, or retaining their faceprint, that person has a "private right of action" to sue that business.

EFF has long worked to enact more BIPA-type laws, including in Congress and the states. We regularly advocate in Illinois to protect BIPA from legislative backsliding. We have also filed amicus briefs in a federal appellate court and the Illinois Supreme Court to ensure that everyone who has suffered a violation of their BIPA rights can have their day in court.

BIPA prevents one of the worst corporate uses of face recognition: dragnet faceprinting of the public at large. Some companies do this to all people entering a store, or all people appearing in photos on social media. This practice violates BIPA because some of these people have not previously consented to faceprinting.

People have filed many BIPA lawsuits against companies that took their faceprints without their consent. Facebook settled one case, arising from their "tag suggestions" feature, for $650 million.

First Amendment Challenges

Other BIPA lawsuits have been filed against Clearview AI. This is the company that extracted faceprints from ten billion photographs, and uses these faceprints to help police identify suspects. The company does not seek consent for its faceprinting. So Clearview now faces a BIPA lawsuit in Illinois state court, brought by the ACLU, and several similar suits in federal court.

In both venues, Clearview asserts a First Amendment defense. EFF disagrees and filed amicus briefs saying so. Our reasoning proceeds in three steps.

First, Clearview's faceprinting enjoys at least some First Amendment protection. It collects information about a face's measurements, and creates information in the form of a unique mathematical representation. The First Amendment protects the collection and creation of information because these often are necessary predicates to free expression. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects reading books, gathering news, creating video games, and even purchasing ink by the barrel. Likewise, appellate courts protect the right to record on-duty police.

First Amendment protection of faceprinting is not diminished by its use of computer code, because code is speech. To paraphrase one court: just as musicians can communicate among themselves with a musical score, computer programmers can communicate among themselves with computer code.

Second, Clearview's faceprinting does not enjoy the strongest forms of First Amendment protection, such as "strict scrutiny." Rather, it enjoys just "intermediate scrutiny." This is because it does not address a matter of public concern. The Supreme Court has emphasized this factor in many contexts, including wiretapping, defamation, and emotional distress.

Likewise, lower courts have held that common law claims of information privacy--namely, intrusion on seclusion and publication of private facts--do not violate the First Amendment if the information at issue was not a matter of public concern.

Intermediate review also applies to Clearview's faceprinting because its interests are solely economic. The Supreme Court has long held that "commercial speech," meaning "expression related solely to the economic interests of the speaker and its audience," receives "lesser protection." Thus, when laws that protect consumer data privacy face First Amendment challenge, lower courts apply intermediate judicial review under the commercial speech doctrine.

To pass this test, a law must advance a "substantial interest," and there must be a "close fit" between this interest and what the law requires.

Third, the application of BIPA to Clearview's faceprinting passes this intermediate test. As discussed earlier, the State of Illinois has strong interests in preventing the harms caused by faceprinting to privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security. Also, there is a close fit from these interests to the safeguard that Illinois requires: opt-in consent to collect a faceprint. In the words of the Supreme Court, data privacy requires "the individual's control of information concerning [their] person."

Some business groups have contested the close fit between BIPA's means and ends by suggesting Illinois could achieve its goals, with less burden on business, by requiring just an opportunity for people to opt-out. But defaults matter. Opt-out is not an adequate substitute for opt-in. Many people won't know a business collected their faceprint, let alone know how to opt-out. Other people will be deterred by the confusing and time-consuming opt-out process. This problem is worse than it needs to be because many companies deploy "dark patterns," meaning user experience designs that manipulate users into giving their so-called "agreement" to data processing.

Thus, numerous federal appellate and trial courts have upheld consumer data privacy laws that are similar to BIPA against First Amendment challenge. Just this past August, an Illinois judge rejected Clearview's First Amendment defense.

Next Steps

In the hands of government and business alike, face recognition technology is a growing menace to our digital rights. But the future is unwritten. EFF is proud of its contributions to the movement to resist abuse of these technologies. Please join us in demanding a ban on government use of face recognition, and laws like Illinois' BIPA to limit private use. Together, we can end this threat.

Switching To Network Manager On LXQt And MATE

by David Pardue (kalwisti)

Introduction

I tend to be a late adopter of technology, with an attitude of "don't fix what ain't broken." So even though I was aware of PCLinuxOS's shift to Network Manager, I continued using the time-tested combination of PCC (PCLinuxOS Control Center) and net_applet because they were working well on my local systems.

However, my primary desktop PC was one of the machines affected by an update involving the glitchy 1.33.2-1 version of networkmanager on Sept. 16, 2021, which wiped out all network connectivity (until Texstar and yodelu could provide a corrected package [1.33.2-3]). At that point, I realized that I needed to learn more about Network Manager. In addition to browsing forum posts, I read parnote's article, "Network Manager: The Low-Down On Getting Up To Speed" in the July 2021 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine.

Paul's article is an excellent starting point, with a discussion of Network Manager's history, why its implementation in PCLinuxOS will benefit us, and a detailed procedure for making the switch. I recommend that you read the article to gain a better understanding of Network Manager (NM).

Once you have an overview of NM, you can follow the steps in this tutorial. I have tried to distill parnote's article into a quick-and-dirty cheat sheet which is (hopefully) easy to follow.

Additional Guidance from Texstar

Tex recently posted information on NM in the PCLinuxOS forum, which we should keep in mind. First and foremost, you will not automatically be upgraded to NM; you must make this change manually.

It is important to follow this upgrade procedure step by step; otherwise you can break your network connection. If you just install NM without taking the other required steps, then your network connection will no longer work because the configuration for drakx-net-applet is not compatible with NM. This incompatibility is the reason why some Network Services components were removed from PCC (PCLinuxOS Control Center); they generated bad configuration files for NM.

Tex also advised PCLinuxOS users that now is an ideal time to switch to NM and the NM applet, if you haven't done so already. If you have been hesitant, I encourage you to take the plunge. I successfully changed three of our machines -- each running a different DE (LXQt, MATE and Xfce) -- to NM without incident. If you work slowly and methodically, I do not anticipate that you will have any trouble.

NM in LXQt

The LXQt Community Edition is running on our old Dell Latitude E4300 laptop [Broadcom BCM4322 wireless chipset, wl driver]. I was able to successfully install NM -- and its applets -- entirely via Wi-Fi, i.e., without being connected to an Ethernet cable. Although you will lose your Internet connection after Step 3 below, the outage will be brief. Please keep calm and follow the instructions; you'll soon be back online.

1. Run updates on your computer.

2. (Optional but recommended) Make a Timeshift backup snapshot of your system.

3. Install the following packages via the Synaptic Package Manager:

- networkmanager

- networkmanager-applet (Note: Installing this will remove the drakx-net-applet package)

- plasma-applet-nm (Note: Installing this will pull in some minimal KDE dependencies. That will not cause problems)

- plasma-applet-nm-openvpn

- netnuke

As it is finishing, Synaptic will generate an "Extra Output" message with information about flushing the cache. You may safely ignore this message; just press the window's Close button to continue.

4. Run the netnuke program as root user from LXQt's QTerminal. Netnuke is a command line program that will globally delete all of your saved network connections.

When netnuke finishes, you will see the message below:

[root@localhost ~]# netnuke

All network connections have been deleted.

Please reboot and use the NetworkManager applet to configure your network connections.

5. Reboot your computer.

6. After logging back into your account, you will see a brief pop-up notification stating that Wi-Fi networks are available, and that you should use NM to set up your connection.

The NM applet should appear in your system tray:

7. Use NM to configure your connection.

For some unknown reason, our Wi-Fi network ("Frumious_Bandersnatch", named in honor of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky") appeared under the More networks category, despite the fact that its signal was the strongest among all detected networks.

Select the Wi-Fi network you wish to connect to, enter the network password (if necessary) and click the Connect button. If you need to tweak your connection, parnote's article has more detailed information -- along with screenshots.

In my case, the options for Enable Networking, Enable Wi-Fi and Enable Mobile Broadband were already selected by default.

8. When the configuration was complete, I logged out of my account and rebooted to check if everything was in order.

It was fine; the system remembered the connection details for our Wi-Fi network and automatically connected to it.

9. I did not need to do any manual configuration / editing in the LXQt Configuration Center > Session Settings > Autostart Applications, nor in PCC (the PCLinuxOS Control Center [aka "Configure Your Computer"]). Everything was auto-configured. Hurray!

The NM applet is listed in the LXQt Configuration Center's Autostart Applications and NM appears under the startup services in PCC:

10. (Optional) As a precaution, I made another Timeshift snapshot the day after my NM setup was completed.

NM On MATE

Our home office has a Lenovo ThinkCentre M800 desktop PC [Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165, iwlwifi driver] which runs PCLinuxOS MATE. I successfully installed NM and its applets via an Ethernet connection (afterwards I set up the Wi-Fi connection). Although you will lose your Internet connection after Step 3 below, the outage will be brief. Stay calm and follow the instructions; you'll soon be back online.

1. Run updates on your computer.

2. (Optional but recommended) Make a Timeshift backup snapshot of your system.

3. Install the following packages via the Synaptic Package Manager:

- networkmanager

- networkmanager-applet (Note: Installing this will remove the drakx-net-applet package)

- networkmanager-openvpn

- netnuke

As it is finishing, Synaptic will generate an "Extra Output" message with information about flushing the cache. You may safely ignore this message; just press the window's Close button to continue.

4. Run the netnuke program as root user from the MATE Terminal. netnuke is a command line program that will globally delete all of your saved network connections.

When netnuke finishes, you will see the message below:

- [root@localhost ~]# netnuke

- All network connections have been deleted.

- Please reboot and use the NetworkManager applet

- to configure your network connections.

5. Reboot your computer.

6. After logging back in to your account, if your PC has an active Ethernet connection, you will see a brief pop-up notification stating that you are connected to Ethernet (eth0).

If your machine also has a wireless networking card, you will need to disconnect from the Ethernet network, and enable Wi-Fi via the NM applet:

7. Use NM to configure your Wi-Fi connection. Select the Wi-Fi network you wish to connect to, enter the network password (if necessary) and click the Connect button. If you need to tweak your connection, parnote's article has more detailed information -- along with screenshots.

8. When the configuration was complete, I logged out of my account and rebooted to check if everything was in order. It was fine; the system remembered the connection details for our Wi-Fi network and automatically connected to it.

For the Lenovo's daily use, I chose to have the Ethernet (eth0) be the sole active connection because it is significantly faster than our wireless network. So I disconnected from the Wi-Fi network and unchecked/disabled Enable Wi-Fi from the NM applet. Then I selected System eth0 to reconnect via Ethernet.

9. I did not need to do any manual configuration / editing in the MATE Control Center > Personal > Startup Applications, nor in PCC (the PCLinuxOS Control Center [aka "Configure Your Computer"]). Everything was auto-configured ... Hurray!

However, I cannot explain why NM is not listed in the MATE Control Center but does appear under the startup services in PCC.

10. (Optional) As a precaution, I made another Timeshift snapshot the day after my NM setup was completed.

A Comment about NM in Xfce

We have a ChimpBox Mini-PC [Ralink MT7601 wireless adapter, mt7601u driver] which runs Xfce; it is located in a back bedroom, without access to an Ethernet connection. Nevertheless I successfully installed NM entirely via Wi-Fi, i.e., without being connected to an Ethernet cable.

If you follow the instructions for MATE (given in the previous section), you should have identical results in Xfce.

Just as with LXQt and MATE, I did not have to do any manual configuration/editing in the Xfce Settings Manager's Application Autostart tab, nor in PCC (the PCLinuxOS Control Center). Everything was automatically configured.

NM is listed in Xfce's Application Autostart area, as well as in PCC's System Services. (That is not the case with MATE's autostart programs list. I cannot offer an explanation why MATE behaves differently ...)

These screenshots show NM in the Xfce Settings Manager and in PCC, respectively:

Short Topix: Google Chrome Could Break Ad Blockers

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

The War On Your Privacy: Monthly Update

THE FBI, IN CONJUNCTION WITH CYBER COMMAND, THE U.S. SECRET SERVICE, AND OTHER LIKE MINDED COUNTRIES, took down (or at least dealt a serious blow to) the REvil hacker/ransomware network, according to an exclusive article from Reuters (and subsequently picked up by other news outlets). It isn't very often we get to write up something positive that happens in the realm of privacy attacks. To refresh, REvil was the Russian hacker group that took the Colonial Pipeline down with ransomware in May 2021, causing widespread gasoline shortages all along the U.S. eastern seaboard. They are also responsible for attacks on the large meat packing company JBS in June 2021, as well as the enterprise IT firm Kaseya. The July 2021 attack on Kaseya affected all of Kaseya's customers simultaneously, many of them involved in the U.S. supply chain. Officials managed to compromise and take control of key servers in the REvil network, effectively cutting their activities off at the knees. Cyberinvestigators also got their hands on a universal decryption key that allowed Kaseya's customers to recover their files without paying a ransom. As a result, the REvil network has been effectively disbanded, and its leader, O_neday, has gone into hiding once he discovered that law enforcement officials were searching for him.

THE HACKER COLLECTIVE KNOWN AS ANONYMOUS HAS RELEASED "PART B" OF THE HACK OF THE CONSERVATIVE WEB HOSTING COMPANY KNOWN AS EPIK, according to an article on DailyDot (and subsequently reported on by others in the media). In early September, Anonymous released a 180GiB file full of domain name registrar data, exposing those behind many controversial right-wing websites. But apparently, that wasn't the end of it. In late September, Anonymous dumped another 70GiB of data from the Epik servers, which are actually disk images of each entity that used the Epik service. That's right. You can run each of them individually. The Anonymous press release says, ""[Y]ou didn't think we completely dominated Epik and merely ran off with some databases and a system folder or two, did you? We are Anonymous. Flexing as hard as we can is how we do a barrel roll (Press Z or R twice!)." The latest data leak from the Epik servers represents Epik's server infrastructure, and expands to approximately 300GiB of data.

THE PANDORA PAPERS ARE MILLIONS OF DOCUMENTS REVEALING THE OFFSHORE DEALS AND ASSETS of more than 100 billionaires, more than 30 world leaders, and more than 300 public officials. It is being called the biggest leak of the financial secrets of the rich and powerful, according to The Guardian. The documents expose the secret offshore affairs of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers and heads of state. The billionaire class includes celebrities, rock stars and business leaders. The public officials class includes government ministers, judges, mayors and military generals in more than 90 countries. Imagine the fallout besetting heads of states who have millions of dollars worth of offshore assets while their fellow countrymen live in abject poverty. According to the article on The Guardian, "the files were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington. It shared access to the leaked data with select media partners including the Guardian, BBC Panorama, Le Monde and the Washington Post. More than 600 journalists have sifted through the files as part of a massive global investigation."

In the "as if you needed another reason to avoid using Google" department, Forbes magazine reported that THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IS FORCING GOOGLE TO REVEAL USERS WHO ARE SEARCHING FOR SPECIFIC KEYWORDS OR VICTIM NAMES. Called "keyword warrants," they are on dubious legal grounds, and amount to a fishing expedition by law enforcement agencies to make a list of suspects in a criminal case. This is only the third keyword warrant that has been made public, and in this case, it was only because a court order was mistakenly ordered unsealed. According to the Forbes article, "As with all law enforcement requests, we have a rigorous process that is designed to protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement," a Google spokesperson said. Sure! I believe that about as much as I believe that I can buy Google (Alphabet) stock for $1 per share! The article is a good example of the volume of information Google collects and saves on each user, and is a good read.

A USER OF A "POPULAR" HACKING FORUM HAS POSTED DATA FROM 1.5 BILLION FACEBOOK USERS for sale, according to an article on Privacy Affairs. The seller claims to represent a group that spent four years gathering the data. That data includes name, email address, location, gender, phone number, and user ID. The group claims to have scraped the data from public-facing Facebook pages. While not particularly sensitive data (and no accounts have been compromised), it could expose users to unscrupulous internet marketers and cybercriminals. So what's the going price for such data? According to the article, the data was being offered up for $5,000 (U.S.) for 1 million records. The users could buy all or part of the data. That amounts to right at ½ of 1 cent per record. That's not very much, especially compared to how much havoc the sale of that information could have on your digital life.

It's easy to forget that, even with all of its convenience, AMAZON COLLECTS A TON OF DATA ON ITS USERS. Forgive me if you are not surprised. Well, one woman (a TikTok user) discovered just how much data Amazon collects, according to an article from the New York Post. She requested all of the data that Amazon had stored about her. She has two Amazon Dot smart speakers, one Amazon Echo smart device, and multiple "smart light bulbs." She downloaded the ZIP files and extracted them. There were many folders of data that were extracted. Some of those folders contained thousands of audio files. Those audio files were short voice clips that Amazon had collected from her smart speakers. She also was sent a "Contacts" file. The contents were a full list of contacts from her smartphone, and she doesn't remember syncing them with Amazon. They also had her location data stored. Another file knew the EXACT location of where every one of her Alexa smart speakers were located. Now who, just who, thinks that one of those "smart" devices doesn't listen in on EVERY. LITTLE. THING. YOU. SAY? Especially when you consider that "Alexa" won't even answer if "she" sends data to the CIA or NSA. It's not about whether you have anything to hide or not. It's about YOUR privacy, and companies RESPECTING your privacy by NOT collecting it in a wholesale manner!

FINALLY ... (sorry, but there's been a LOT of hacks and attacks in the past month), CHICAGO-BASED CANDY COMPANY FERRARA WAS HACKED, according to an article on the Gizmodo website. You are sure to have seen some of the multitude of brands Ferrara makes, including Brach's candy. Well, just in time for Halloween, the prolific manufacturer of the fall favorite candy corn (seven billion pieces per year!), experienced an attack that resulted in some of their systems becoming encrypted. Upon discovery, they immediately took steps to secure all of their systems. Is nothing so sacred as Halloween to escape the wrath of some moron sitting behind a keyboard miles and miles away in another country?

Password Security Revisited

With October being CyberSecurity Month, you might imagine that password security was on the minds of many cybersecurity experts all across the web. Among the many, many "celebrations" of CyberSecurity Month, I came across one article from WeLiveSecurity that put password security into perfect perspective. Do you reuse or recycle passwords among different sites? If so, you need to read this article. Are you divulging too much information on your social media pages? If so, you need to read this article. Are you using simplistic passwords, thinking no one would ever guess something so simple or obvious? If so, you need to read this article. Do you have any questions or doubts about password security? If so, you need to read this article. I think you get the idea ... you need to read this article.

We have covered passwords, password security, password methods, and password management more times in The PCLinuxOS Magazine than even I can count. But, you can search the magazine site from here, where we search for the phrase "password." Your data and your information deserve all the protection you can afford to give them, and a secure and unique password for each site you visit is the first -- and best -- step you can to securing your data and information.

Google Chrome Could Break Ad Blockers (And Other News)

Current extensions to the Google Chrome browser use the Manifest V2 framework. Starting January 17, 2022, no new extensions utilizing Manifest V2 will be accepted in the Chrome Web Store, according to an article on TechSpot. Then, one year later in January 2023, all Manifest V2 extensions will cease working. In the interim, Google will release Manifest V3, which has been "in the works" for years. While Manifest V2 could be exploited to create malware and retrieve sensitive data, Manifest V3 addresses security and performance concerns of V2.

One side effect of the switch to Manifest V3 is that most current ad blockers will cease to function, or at best, be seriously crippled. Most ad blockers rely on intercepting or blocking the webRequest API. Manifest V3 replaces access to the webRequest API with declarativeNetRequest (DNR, which in medical terms means Do Not Resuscitate). For comparison, Mozilla has stated that they will mostly adapt Manifest V3, but they will not replace webRequest API with Google's new declarative NetRequest.

Google is an advertising company. As such, they lose BILLIONS of dollars in advertising revenue from users utilizing ad blockers. Citing privacy and security concerns, Google thinks it can fool developers and users into supporting their move to Manifest V3 and blocking access to the webRequest API. But anyone who is potty trained will realize that it's all about money.

Last month, we told you about some security vulnerabilities in the Google Chrome browser. Well, this month, there were additional security vulnerabilities discovered. They are as follows:

[$20000][1245578] High CVE-2021-37974 : Use after free in Safe Browsing. Reported by Weipeng Jiang (@Krace) from Codesafe Team of Legendsec at Qi'anxin Group on 2021-09-01

[$TBD][1252918] High CVE-2021-37975 : Use after free in V8. Reported by Anonymous on 2021-09-24

[$NA][1251787] Medium CVE-2021-37976 : Information leak in core. Reported by Clément Lecigne from Google TAG, with technical assistance from Sergei Glazunov and Mark Brand from Google Project Zero on 2021-09-21

You can read more about the "latest" Google Chrome security issues on the Google blog page. Meanwhile, if you haven't updated to the latest Google Chrome browser, now may be a good time to do so.

Reddit User Has Perfect Comeback For Boss

No one can argue that the pandemic has been horrible. But one thing that has happened is that it has caused a shift in people's priorities and in workplace dynamics. No longer are workers willing to work in low paying, mind-numbing jobs for tyrannical bosses. Somewhere among it all, workers have figured out that there is more to life, and they deserve to be paid a living wage and deserve to be respected. It has switched the power paradigm from the employers to the employees and job seekers. One Reddit user, who goes by hestolemysmile, posted his perfect comeback and conversation with his overbearing boss.

From the conversation posted on Reddit (shown in the image above), it seems that the overbearing and tyrannical boss in this particular case monitors his workers with cameras.

Just in case you're having trouble reading it from the image, here's a transcript of the conversation:

[BOSS]: Good evening, [Reddit User]. I was reviewing the cameras from our shift today and noticed that you were sitting on a stool for the majority of your shift. This is completely unacceptable behavior and we will be discussing it tomorrow before shift.

[Reddit User]: I cleared it with [Lead]. I have 2 broken bones in my left foot (doctor documented).

Aside from that -- I packed 240+UPH for the entirety of my shift, 12 hours. I'm not sure if you're aware, but we do have a ranked list for packaging displayed directly above our stations. My efforts earned me first place today.

So, just to be clear -- my impressive performance was overshadowed by the fact that I wasn't uncomfortable enough while doing it?

[BOSS]: I'm really not appreciating your attitude. You could have just said the first part where it was cleared with another lead instead of being disrespectful. This type of behavior isn't going to get you anywhere here.

[Reddit User]: Hey, thanks for wasting my precious off time with some garbage you didn't bother to investigate beforehand.

Seriously -- 240+ UPH -- what you claim to be the pinnacle of performance there, I achieved it, and I get grief because I was sitting while doing it. You guys need to get your priorities straight. It is no wonder that you have such difficulties retaining staff.

I am not concerned with going "anywhere" there. It is a toxic environment with ignorant people at the helm. I won't be in tomorrow or ever again.

[BOSS]: We don't need to rush to you leaving. Let's talk about this in the morning and we can sort this out.

[Reddit User]: No thanks. Have a good life.

As you might imagine, the post received mostly positive feedback from other Redditors. The very next day, hestolemysmile posted a follow up:

I'm going to say it's impossible for me to answer all the comments, so I'm going to try and shed a little light here.

I was working for a healthy living fulfillment warehouse (I'm not going to be specific because I value mine and my families privacy). I packed orders, just as simple as that. Pay was ok for the area (16/hr), although the COL is fairly high here.

I'm done being bullied by anyone. I went through horrid abuse as a child and adult (plenty of that on my profile so I'm not getting into it here). People that want you to be a part of their organization or family will treat you accordingly. People like my former boss and family treat people like they own them, and it's our responsibility to show them that they absolutely do not.

My immediate family has had a hard couple years, but we are ok now. We live in a converted 5th wheel that we remodeled ourselves, and we trimmed our monthly expenses so that we didn't need to make tons of money to survive. We saved enough to go without working for a couple months just in case something happened. It's not a ton, but food will be on the table and our utilities will stay on.

I applied to several places yesterday. But I think I'm going to take a week off. The park near our house has a lot of garbage and I've wished that I had more time to clean it up a little as our kids love it there, so that's how ill spend my week before getting back to the grind. I just want to give something back.

I'm overwhelmed at the support from y'all. F***ing incredible. I opened up my app last night and wow o wow I've never seen so many awards on a post (guys, I'm incredibly thankful, but please save your money, this is just too much). The really big thing is so many people reaching out to me about finding a job. There are offers from everywhere and I'm hoping to find one close to us. Would be nice to work somewhere that really gets it.

There are opportunities out there. Don't settle for being treated as less than human. We are better than that. We are what makes the world go round. It doesn't matter what they are selling if there is no one to man the stores, answer the phones, or take out the garbage. Their dreams hinge on us more so than ours do on them.

Thank you, reddit. Thank you so much for the support. I will be replying to the DMs I was sent because they are just more manageable.

You guys are incredible. I reached out almost two years ago for support and 1000s of strangers grabbed my hands and told me it would be ok. Y'all were right. I'm ok enough to know my worth again. I am living as my best self, for my family. Thank you for being here for us, I can't express how much it means.

Truly,

J

J -- whoever you are -- you are an inspiration for every downtrodden, abused, underpaid worker who has ever worked for a boss or organization or company where the workers feel unappreciated and undervalued.

A Different Take On Harnessing Power From Wind

Decreasing dependence on fossil fuels seems to be all the rage right now, and rightfully so. Fossil fuels are a finite resource that require extensive man hours to extract and produce. The byproducts from their consumption are a troublesome problem we have to deal with. "Alternative" power sources, such as harnessing the sun and wind to generate power, are gaining in popularity. That increased popularity is related to the production of "clean energy" without the byproducts from their consumption polluting the planet. The manufacturing of devices to harness solar and wind power is labor intensive, but usually much less so than the extraction of fossil fuels. With "alternative" power sources still in their relative infancy compared to fossil fuels, there is the yet untold problem of disposing of the clean power generating devices once they reach the end of their productive life cycle.

Harnessing the wind to generate power has become one main way to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels. Wind farms have sprung up all across the landscape, usually in rural areas or in large off-shore installations. But not every location is suited for the massive windmills that make up power generating wind farms. For example, many large metropolitan areas simply don't have space to install the massive windmills. That is, until now.

One enterprising inventor, Joe Doucet, has invented a 8 foot by 25 foot wall, composed of many small wind turbines, according to an article on FastCompany. One panel can generate up to 10,000 KWh of electricity per year, which is about what one average home in the U.S. uses for electrical power in a year. The panel could be installed as part of a privacy fence, passively generating power throughout the year. Even more, the panels could be attached enmasse to the sides of tall buildings in downtown areas, or even placed sporadically along highways to generate additional electrical power. In the latter example, passing vehicles could help generate power by the wind generated from the vehicles slicing through the air.

The size of the panels can be scaled up or down, depending on the power need or depending on how much electrical energy is desired or needed. The panel exists only as a prototype at this point, and Doucet is in talks with multiple manufacturers to help him bring the panels to market.

Before long, you could find arrays of these wind turbine panels helping to provide the electricity to your home.

The PCLinuxOS Magazine Short Topix Roundup

ARE YOU PLANNING TO INSTALL THE NEW WINDOWS 11, BUT FEARFUL THAT YOUR COMPUTER ISN'T QUITE UP TO THE "REQUIREMENTS" TO RUN IT? Particularly, the TPM 2.0 requirement has a lot of users unsure if they meet that particular requirement. Well, never fear. Many have come forward with several ways to "defeat" the TPM 2.0 requirement to run Windows 11. Even Microsoft fessed up and told users how to upgrade while circumventing the TPM 2.0 requirement. That upgrade "hack" was revealed in an article on PCGamer. All it requires is a simple registry hack.

A NEW SIGNAL-BLOCKING SMARTPHONE POUCH now allows you to literally drop off the digital map, just by placing your phone inside it, according to an article on Wired. Placed inside the Faraday pouch, no one can track you or your movements via your smartphone. In fact, your smartphone won't even get a signal.

FIREFOX AND BRAVE WILL NOW INTERCEPT MICROSOFT "EDGE-ONLY" LINKS DESIGNED TO ONLY BE OPENED IN MICROSOFT EDGE. Everyone knows how "sneaky" Microsoft can be. To ensure that certain links were opened ONLY in Microsoft edge, they quietly made links that, instead of being prefaced by "https," are prefaced by "microsoft-edge," according to an article on the CTRL Blog. Simply changing the "microsoft-edge" preface to "https" will allow those links to open in ANY browser. The Brave browser developers have already encoded the automatic recognition of those "Microsoft Edge only" links into its browser, starting with version 1.30.86. Firefox users can install the "EdgeDeflector" extension, at least until Firefox does the same as the Brave developers. Don't worry. That piece of coding has already been written, and it's currently undergoing review at Mozilla.

Everyone who hasn't lived for the past month or two shipwrecked on a deserted island has certainly heard about the FACEBOOK WHISTLEBLOWER WHO TESTIFIED IN FRONT OF CONGRESS, and who is now giving testimony in Europe about how Facebook has gone about censoring certain segments of users, and how they peddle their influence. An article on The Verge illustrates how, in response to the whistleblowing and leaking of internal documents, Facebook has embarked on a campaign of publicly smearing the whistleblower, Frances Haugan, in an effort to discredit her. Instead of taking the high road, Facebook decided to steal a page from the official coward's play book. How classy is that!

Speaking of Facebook, THEY ARE REBRANDING UNDER THE NAME META. Widely reported across all media outlets, Facebook will still be Facebook, and you'll still launch Facebook from the Facebook app. But the corporate umbrella of Meta will arch over Facebook, Instagram, and the rest of their acquisitions. Zuckerberg asserts that Facebook is poised to become the hinge pin of a new "metaverse" where you can do multiple functions through one portal, hence the new name Meta. I tend to think it's more a reflection of all of the metadata Facebook collects on users and non-users across the web. When the news broke earlier in the month that Facebook was going to rebrand itself, the suggestions coming in via Twitter and Buzzfeed were awesome. The suggestions included Facebonk, BookFace, MySpace, Facey McBookface, Definitely NOT Facebook, Hellsite, Oops We Facilitated Genocide, The Good And Nice Company, Not At All Evil, Face, Finsta, Big Brother, and Phillip Morris.

In even MORE Facebook news, FACEBOOK EXPERIENCED IT'S LONGEST OUTAGE SINCE 2008, when on October 4, 2021, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger all went offline for about seven hours. The outage was due to some configuration changes to some routers that form part of the backbone of the Facebook servers. While many prayed for the outage to be permanent (yours truly included), Zuckerberg posted a little after 7 p.m. Eastern Time that "Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online now." He added, "Sorry for the disruption today -- I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about." Back in 2008, Facebook went offline for about a day, affecting approximately 80 million users. Today, the platform has over 3 billion users.

CANON USA IS BEING SUED FOR NOT ALLOWING OWNERS OF MULTIFUNCTION PRINTERS TO CONTINUE TO USE THE FAX AND SCANNING PORTIONS OF THE DEVICE when the printer portion of the device runs out of ink, according to an article at BleepingComputer. The class action lawsuit alleges deceptive marketing and unjust enrichment by the company. Canon claims that the device must have ink cartridges with ink in them installed in order to send a fax or to use the scanner. This is a first. I never knew you had to have an ink cartridge installed to scan an image or to send a fax.

JAPANESE SCIENTISTS ARE CLOSE TO DEVELOPING A SINGLE VACCINE AGAINST ALL CORONAVIRUSES, according to an article from The National News. Experts at Osaka University say they engineered antibodies that prevented Sars-CoV-2, Sars-CoV-1, and three coronaviruses found in pangolins and bats.

I know we've ALL done it. We go looking for information, but eventually find it locked behind a paywall. Well, Lifehacker has written an excellent article on how to BYPASS THE PAYWALLS. The article has a LOT of tips, including browser add-ons and extensions that help circumvent paywalled sites.

GOOGLE HAS ANNOUNCED THAT BY THE END OF THE YEAR (2021), it will force 150 million more users to use 2FA (two factor authentication ... Google calls it 2SV, or two step verification ... it's the same thing) to log into their Google accounts. Will you be one of the lucky ones chosen? Google plans to make 2FA required across the board for all accounts, in an effort to bolster account security. No timeline was offered, other than the word "soon," for all Google account users to use 2FA.

Life's Better Together When You Avoid Windows 11

by Greg Farough

Reprint from Free Software Foundation

Under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 license

October 5 marks the official release of Windows 11, a new version of the operating system that doesn't do anything at all to counteract Windows' long history of depriving users of freedom and digital autonomy. While we might have been encouraged by Microsoft's vague, aspirational slogans about community and togetherness, Windows 11 takes important steps in the wrong direction when it comes to user freedom.

Microsoft claims that "life's better together" in their advertising for this latest Windows version, but when it comes to technology, there is no surer way of keeping users divided and powerless than nonfree software. Developing non-free software is an inherently antisocial act, for it is intentionally choosing to create an unjust power structure, in which a developer knowingly keeps users powerless and dependent by withholding information. Increasingly, this involves not only withholding the source code itself, but even basic information on how the software works: what it's really doing, what it's collecting, and how often it's snitching on users. "Snitching" may sound dramatic, but Windows 11 will now require a Microsoft account to be connected to every user account, granting them the ability to correlate user behavior with one's personal identity. Even those who think they have nothing to hide should be wary of sharing potentially all of their computing activity with any company, much less one with a track record of abuse like Microsoft.

You may have heard that thousands of machines currently running Windows will not be allowed to upgrade to Windows 11 due to a hardware incompatibility. At first glance this seems like plain old forced obsolescence, but the reality is much more sinister. Windows 11 now requires the use of a small dedicated chip attached to a computer motherboard called a TPM, something which their advertising copy and the mainstream press call a "Trusted Platform Module." This is slightly misleading, as when it's deployed by a proprietary software company, its relationship to the user isn't one based on trust, but based on treachery. When fully controlled by the user, TPM can be a useful way to strengthen encryption and user privacy, but when it's in the hands of Microsoft, we're not optimistic.

We expect Microsoft to use its tighter control on cryptography that happens in Windows as a way to impose more severe Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) onto media and applications, and as a way to ensure that no application can run in Windows without Microsoft's approval. In cases like these, it's no longer appropriate to call a machine running Windows a "personal" computer, as it obeys Microsoft more than it does its user. Indeed, it's bitterly ironic that Microsoft is calling the program that verifies a system's compatibility with Windows 11 a "PC Health Check." We counter that a healthy PC is one that respects its user's wishes, runs free software, and doesn't purposefully restrict them through treacherous computing. It would also never send the user's encryption keys back to its corporate overlords. Intrepid users will likely find a way around this requirement, yet it doesn't change the fact that the majority of Windows users will be forced into a treacherous computing scheme.

Microsoft knows that its "Teams" videoconferencing program isn't the most beloved app in the world, as even users on Windows typically opt for a more popular (though deeply problematic) alternative like Zoom. Now it seems that no Windows user can avoid it any longer, as it's been given an irritatingly central place in the user interface, and is more closely integrated into how Windows manages one's personal contacts. Many video conferencing programs of this type have gained popularity due to the pandemic, yet we hope Teams' unpopularity and its newfound, unwanted place in Windows will encourage users to seek out conferencing programs that they themselves can control.

Sometimes, Microsoft realizes that it can't be quite so overtly antisocial. We've commented many times before on the hypocrisy involved in saying that Microsoft "loves open source" and "loves Linux," two ways of mentioning free software without reference to freedom. At the same time, Microsoft employees do make contributions to free software, contributions which benefit many others. Yet they do not extend this philosophy to their operating system, and in the last few years, they've made an attempt to impair the ways free software makes "life better together" further by making critical functions of Microsoft GitHub rely on nonfree JavaScript and directing users toward Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS) platforms. By attacking user freedom through Windows, and the free software community directly by means of nonfree JavaScript, Microsoft proves that it has no plans to loosen its grip on users.

No program that you're forbidden to copy, modify, or share can truly bring people "together" in the way that Microsoft claims. Thankfully, and right outside the window, there's a true community of users you and your loved ones can join:

What you can do

- Sign (or renew!) your pledge not to use Windows and help a friend install GNU/Linux, sending Microsoft the strong message that software that subjugates its users has no place in Windows.

- You can choose to replace Windows with an operating system made up of free software, such as Trisquel or other distributions of the GNU/Linux operating system.

- If you don't feel ready to take the plunge and switch entirely, you can use our resources like the Free Software Directory to find programs you can use as starting points for your free software journey.

- If you're having difficulties switching to free software, or have advice for how to help others do the same, we hope that you'll take the time to provide us with feedback on the public draft of our freedom ladder campaign.

We hope that you'll take the opportunity to make a major change yourself, by choosing to use and advocate for software that fosters community and cooperation rather than restriction. Let's stop falling for the trap of chasing short-term, superficial improvements in proprietary software that may seem to make life better, and instead opt for free software, the only software that can support the best versions of ourselves.

PCLinuxOS Bonus Recipe Corner:

Mediterranean Roasted Fish Dinner

Serves 4

Unit converter

INGREDIENTS:

1 tablespoons olive oil

1 can (14 oz) artichoke hearts, drained, or 14 oz frozen artichoke hearts

1 pint (2 cups) cherry tomatoes

1/2 cup halved pitted olives

1 green bell pepper, cut into strips

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon fennel seed

1 1/2 lb cod, cut into 4 to 6 portions

2 tablespoons drained capers

4 1/2 teaspoons grated orange peel (1 medium)

1/3 to 1/2 cup fresh orange juice (1 medium)

Salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat oven to 450F. Drizzle a 15x10-inch pan with sides or a large shallow roasting pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil.

2. Arrange artichoke hearts, tomatoes, olives, bell pepper, garlic and fennel seed in a pan. Arrange fish over vegetables. Top with capers, orange peel, orange juice, salt and pepper.

3. Bake for 30 minutes or until vegetables are tender and fish flakes easily with a fork.

4. If desired, serve with rice, pasta or potatoes, green salad and/or crusty bread.

TIPS:

Not a fan of cod? Try using halibut or salmon portions, or even raw shrimp or scallops.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 225       Carbs:17.1g       Fiber: 2.5g       Sodium: 227.5mg       Protein:22 g

GIMP Tutorial: Common GIMP Mistakes

by Meemaw

While I was visiting the YouTube channel Logos by Nick, I noticed that he outlined five common GIMP mistakes that beginners make. Let's look at these:

1. Editing the wrong layer - Sometimes you're editing and the outcome isn't what you expected. It could be because you have the wrong layer chosen. In one of my first GIMP tutorials, I was manipulating two different layers to remove parts of each and merge the rest. Having the wrong layer chosen would have messed up everything I was trying to do.

2. Not adding alpha channels - Any time you want transparency in your creation, you need to have an alpha channel, which is what does that. If you start with a jpg image, you will need to add an alpha channel. The jpg file format doesn't handle transparency at all. Right click on the image in the Layers dialog, then select Add alpha channel. If you're going to work with this for a while, be sure to save it as a GIMP .xcf file, as it will save all your layers. If you need the transparency, you can export it as another image format, such as .png.

3. Transforming images more than once - Davies likens this to making a copy of a copy. Transforming any image results in some loss of quality. If you want to rotate your object, just do it once. Rotating changes the pixels in the object so transforming it more than once takes the first change and changes it (copies the copy). If you haven't changed it enough the first time, press <CTRL> + Z to Undo your change (or Edit > Undo), and then try it again.

4. Forgetting to clear selections - I do this occasionally! If you have something selected that you have been working on, and you need to concentrate on another item, please go to Select > None to deselect your item and then choose the new item you want to work with.

5. Neglecting tool settings - The best idea here is to check your tool settings before you start working with a tool. Suppose I have a selection that I want to fill with white. In checking my Fill tool, I need to change something, because the tool setting says FG (foreground) fill, but my foreground color is black. I can change it to BG (background) fill, or switch the foreground and background colors. The point here is to pay attention.

Other things to check are brush size, mode or opacity as those affect the way the tool works.

Hopefully, being aware of these items will make it easier for you to work in GIMP.

Softmaker FreeOffice 2021 On PCLinuxOS

By Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

There's a new guy in town (not really, but...)

On 10/22/2021 Softmaker FreeOffice was released, another office suite option for Linux. Our beloved operating system is reasonably well served in this area, with several options: Softmaker FreeOffice, OnlyOffice, LibreOffice, Calligra suite, and OpenOffice is still maintained by the Apache Foundation.

Who makes Softmaker FreeOffice?

SoftMaker Software GmbH is a German software company based in Nuremberg that produces office software. SoftMaker was founded in 1989 by Martin Kotulla. In 1991, it also added digital fonts to its offerings. Best known in Germany and the EU, SoftMaker is slowly seeking the North American market.

Students, teachers, schools and universities can purchase SoftMaker Office for a lower price as part of SoftMaker's academic sales program. In addition there is the FreeOffice version, which we will review here.

What does FreeOffice come with?

From the FreeOffice site:

"FreeOffice 2021 is a full-featured Office suite with word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. It is seamlessly compatible with Microsoft Office and available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Composed of 3 programs, TextMaker, PlanMaker and Presentations, softmaker's free suite allows the user to create and edit texts, spreadsheets and presentations."

Features

TextMaker has the following features:

- Documents can be exchanged losslessly between any version of TextMaker on any operating system.

- Open and save Microsoft Word DOC and DOCX files in a format identical to the original files, including password-protected files.

- Open and save OpenDocument files in a format identical to the original files.

- Open and save documents in RTF, HTML, Pocket Word, ASCII and Unicode formats.

- Open WordPerfect (.wpd) documents (Windows only).

- Wizard for importing and exporting text files.

- Create PDF files directly in FreeOffice TextMaker.

- PDFs with labels and bullets.

- Preview documents directly in the file dialog.

PlanMaker has the following features:

- More than 430 calculation functions.

- Worksheets with 1 million rows and 16,384 columns.

- Supports complex number and vector functions.

- Numbers can be formatted as currencies, with fixed decimal places and thousands separators, as percentages or fractions, dates, times, etc.

- Perpetual time format (20:00 + 5:00 equals 25:00, instead of 1:00) that also allows negative times.

- AutoSum, AutoProduct, etc.

- AutoFill: smart filling of cell ranges with values and rows of values.

- External References (calculations that access data in other files).

- Compatible with the open ODS format and with Microsoft XLS and XLSX formats.

Presentations has the following features:

- Open and save Microsoft PowerPoint PPT and PPTX files in a format identical to the original files, including password-protected files.

- Compatible with the open ODP format.

- Print and create PDF files directly in FreeOffice Presentations with your choice of slides, topics, handouts and notes.

- PDFs with tags and bookmarks.

- Export entire presentations as images.

- Preview documents directly in the file dialog.

General features, from all applications in the suite

Interface: Ribbon or classic menus

Special interface for touch devices

Normal

Touch

How to install?

In the site https://www.freeoffice.com, click on the penguin icon, as in the picture below.

Then click on download .rpm package for RPM-based systems, as in the picture below.

You should download a file of about 90 MB. After the download, as root, install it with rpm -ivh softmaker-freeoffice-2021-1036.x86_64.rpm.

Note that you will be installing a program from outside the official PCLinuxOS repositories, so any problems that may occur, there is no support from the PCLinuxOS team for this situation.

Once installed, the program is in the Office section of the program menu.

On the first run, the program asks the user to choose the user interface.

Once you have chosen the interface, the program is ready to use.

What are my impressions?

The program does not have the save as ODT function enabled right away. It has to be enabled in the options menu. But once enabled, it is perfect, it saves and reads ODF perfectly.

As for the support for the OOXML format (proprietary from Microsoft), it is also very good. The built-in ODF support is much better than the Only Office support, which, some time ago, was not very consistent.

With a familiar ribbon interface, it can be used as an option to the pirated Microsoft in the workplace or study.

One of its advantages is that it is cross-platform, and, has support for Android devices, and, Softmaker was one of the first to offer its office suite for mobile devices.

Is it worth using (and buying)?

It depends on the user's needs, if he needs an office suite with the features of Softmaker FreeOffice. If you want the paid commercial version, it is not very expensive, and it performs very well. I have not tested the spreadsheets or presentations, but the program is consistent and its varied interface can help migrate users from MS Office.

How does it compare to LibreOffice?

I would have to do a more in-depth analysis, but LibreOffice, right off the bat, is a more complete suite than FreeOffice. However, FreeOffice is lighter to run, and in spreadsheets it has more capabilities to create very large spreadsheets.

Site: https://www.freeoffice.com/

Price: Free

PCLinuxOS Recipe Extra:

Tomato Basil Filets

A quick and easy tilapia dish that tastes as good as it looks. Served with lemon wedges and garden salad with vinegar and oil dressing.

Ingredients

2 - Tablespoons (30 ml) Fresh Lemon Juice

2 - Tablespoons (30 ml) Grated Lemon peel

2 - Teaspoons (10 ml) Olive Oil

4 - Tilapia Filets - about 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) thick - 1lb. (454 grams)

3 - Tablespoons (45 ml) Basil leaves (fresh, chopped)

1/2 - Teaspoon (2.5 ml) Salt

1/2 - Teaspoon Lemon Pepper Seasoning

1 - Can 14.5 oz. (411 g) Diced Tomatoes (drained)

6 - Tablespoons (90 ml) Parmesan Cheese (grated or shredded)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F (204C)

2. Lightly grease an 11X7 inch (28X18 cm) baking dish.

3. In a shallow dish combine lemon juice, lemon peel, lemon pepper seasoning and oil.

4. Dip filets in the lemon and oil mixture, turning to coat.

5. lace coated filets in a baking dish.

6. Sprinkle filets evenly with salt, pepper, basil, and spoon on tomatoes.

7. Cover filets evenly with grated/shredded cheese.

8. Cover with foil - bake 15 to 20 minutes or until filets flake easily with a fork.

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Sudoku

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Scrappler

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Crossword

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

WordFind

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Mixed Up meme Scrambler

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Screenshot Showcase

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Posted by MGBguy, October 15, 2021, running KDE

Posted by tbschommer, October 6, 2021, running KDE

Posted by tuxlink, October 8, 2021, running KDE

Posted by Yankee, October 7, 2021, running Xfce

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