Table of Contents

Welcome From The Chief Editor

1. PDF Part Two: Editing The Universal Document

2. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Cheeseburger Soup

3. Snowflake Makes It Easy For Anyone to Fight Censorship

4. Short Topix: Linux Kernel 5.19.12 Code Could Permanently Damage Some Laptop Screens

5. GIMP Tutorial: An Uncommon Fishbowl

6. Repo Review: FeatherNotes

7. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: Chili Casserole With Cornbread

8. Hollywood's Insistence on New Draconian Copyright Rules Is Not About Protecting Artists

9. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

10. Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk...

In the U.S., for most people, the "earliest" you can retire is age 62. I turned 62 years old this past August. The only other people who can "retire" earlier are those who are very wealthy, or those who lived their lives in utter austerity (think eating a 50 cent box of macaroni and cheese every night for dinner and reusing tea bags four or five times), amassing their income into a sizable nestegg that most of us would be envious of.

I am in neither of those groups. But, I am planning on retiring at the end of the year.

I've spent the past 35 years working in the hospitals as a respiratory therapist. I treat respiratory patients, like asthmatics and COPD patients, and pneumonia patients. I'm the one who runs the mechanical ventilator for critically ill patients. And, of course, we've all had to deal with COVID. It is my second career. Prior to that, I was a professional newspaper photographer for 10 years.

If you had told me even five years ago that I'd finish up my career in respiratory therapy consumed by a global pandemic of a NASTY respiratory virus, I'd have to ask what you're smoking. There's no way I thought my career would finish up like it has over the past three years. This is definitely one "wrinkle" that NO ONE saw coming.

I started off as an on-the-job trainee, something that is virtually unheard of in today's healthcare environment. I received a "crash course" over six weeks, and then went to work on night shift. The first hospital I worked at paid for me to obtain my formal education (for which I'm eternally grateful). Today's license requirements and other government oversight now pretty much preclude "on-the-job trainee" positions from ever happening again.

I've always been a "quick study," and particularly in this case, it paid off. I had always had an interest in science and medical "things," so this was something that held my attention. When I worked as a newspaper photographer, I would always volunteer for the "medical assignments," because those things usually made my coworkers queasy. I, on the other hand, was fascinated with them. I would study through the night in between rounds when things weren't busy, and I made good use of the reference books and materials that were made available to me.

Over the years, I've worked in just about every aspect of respiratory therapy, except management and home care. I spent a LOT of time working in adult ICUs, neonatal intensive cares, the emergency department, and performing therapy and testing on inpatients across all age ranges. I even taught respiratory therapy for six years, right after the new millennium.

So many of my coworkers keep saying "you're gonna get bored." After 35 years, believe it or not, I don't think I'll be bored at all. I plan to refocus all my attention on raising my kids. I had my kids late. I was almost 53 when my son was born, and almost 56 when my daughter was born. Now, I just want to spend as much time as I can with them, and (hopefully) help set them down a good path in life.

My wife is also a respiratory therapist. When I was working full time, we were lucky if we got one day off together to do "family things." The 12 hour shifts are long, and don't allow for many other activities after one of us would get off work. We worked our schedules around each other, so that one of us was always there with the kids. We could have just paid a babysitter and not worry about it, but we didn't have kids so that someone else (who may or may not have my same values) could raise them. Some weeks, because of having to take "call" shifts, we wouldn't really get any time off together.

The older my kids get, the more they cherish and clamor for the days when, in their words, "they have both parents" home with them. Plus, the older they get, the more extracurricular activities they are involved in. Right now, both of them are in Cub Scouts. So yeah, I don't think I'll be getting bored.

I do think, though, that there will be some things I miss about working. Probably number one on that list is the interactions I have with my patients. Second on that list will be the interactions and relationships I've built with my coworkers.

I also know that I'm NOT going to miss getting up before the sun ever comes up so I can be at work for a 6 a.m. shift. Of course, as with just about any job, there are other aspects of my job that I'm not going to miss. Some of those "things" are just endemic to respiratory therapy as a profession, while others are fairly universal across most any field of work. Bad bosses and bad management are two things that seem to be especially prevalent in respiratory therapy. I'm definitely not going to be missing those aspects of the job, either.

Regrets? Definitely. B.T.K.C. (Before The Kids Came), I **really** wanted to get into management. Overall, I had probably applied for a dozen different supervisory roles over the years. And always, there was someone sitting on the sidelines, saying "oh, that's not for you" or "you're not cut out for that." Yet time and time again, I'd see them hire the most inept, awful person for the job. So, I'd double down my efforts, work extra hard with the belief that working even harder would show the world how much I should be in a supervisory role. In the end, what I think happened is that I made myself too valuable in my bedside role, and worked myself out of consideration for those supervisory positions.

I regret not having a chance to succeed or fail on my own in that supervisory role. If I failed, so be it. If I succeeded, even better. But never having that chance still stings.

Now that the kids are here, I consider that desire to be a ship that's "done sailed." I'm no longer interested. I'm only interested in spending as much time as I can with my kids. It would take a LOT of money (probably more money than any hospital is willing to pay) for me to take a supervisory role now. If anything has "soured" me on my profession, it's never having that chance to succeed or fail on my own in that supervisory role, and seeing all of those "promoted" ahead of me that were horrible supervisors. The list of the bad ones is at least twice as long as the list of good ones. I don't worry if any of them read this, because they wouldn't recognize themselves in it anyway. Unfortunately, that problem is still a HUGE problem today in respiratory therapy. The exact same environment exists and thrives.

I'm just looking forward to being able to be there for my kids more, spending more time with them, and never having to worry about missing yet another event the kids are involved in. I'm also looking forward to FINALLY being able to have some real family time. We'll only have my wife's schedule to work around, instead of juggling mine and hers.

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This month's cover was designed by Meemaw, and celebrates the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.

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Until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity, prosperity ... and continued good health!

PDF Part Two: Editing The Universal Document

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Last month we focused on the various ways that you can create a PDF document with ease. This month, we'll take a look at how you can edit a PDF file.

Rewind: Two More Ways To Create PDF Files

Before we get too into talking about how to edit PDF files, I need to talk about two more ways to create PDF files. A post by PCLinuxOS forum member dm+ showed me a "new" (to me, anyway) way to create a PDF file, which then reminded me of yet another way to create a PDF file that I had tried several years ago, but couldn't satisfactorily nor reliably get it to create a PDF file.

Granted, when I first tried the "second" way alluded to above (and couldn't get it to work), I was a pretty green Linux noob. So, I abandoned it and pretty much forgot about it until I read dm+'s forum post. This time, with considerably more Linux "experience" under my belt, the "second" method worked, and works easily and reliably. So, it's quite likely (as in, highly probable) that I didn't have the command line parameters set appropriately when I made my first attempt.

Both of these "new" methods of creating a PDF file are linked to using LibreOffice. If you have LibreOffice installed, then both of these methods are available for you to use.

In the first method, dm+ points out that you can create a PDF file by running the following LibreOffice command at a command prompt to convert any file "understood" by LO to a PDF file.

First, however, you will need to know which version of LO you have installed. To do that, open a terminal window, type "libre" (without the quotes) at a command line prompt, and hit the "Tab" key. Note the version of "libreoffice" that shows up. In his example, he uses "libreoffice7.3" as his version of LO. On my home laptop, I'm still using LO 6.0, as indicated by the "libreoffice6.0" that shows up on the command line. On my "travel" laptop, I have "libreoffice6.1" installed. Don't judge ... I just don't have a need to "update" LO very often. I feel safe (enough) in the "if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it" approach. So, just replace "libreofficeX.X" in the command below with the version of LO that is installed on your computer. Also, keep in mind that whenever you DO update LO, you will have to slightly alter the command to reflect the newer version of LO that you have installed.

So here's the command from dm+:

libreofficeX.X --headless --invisible --convert-to pdf

This entire conversion can happen from the command line, without ever opening up LO to perform the conversion ... at least visibly on your computer's screen. The "--headless" parameter tells LO to run without a GUI, and the "--invisible" parameter tells LO to run without displaying the LO logo or application "startup" page. The "--convert-to pdf" parameter directs LO to convert the input file(s) to a PDF document. Yes, you can list multiple input documents. The command will process through the list of input files in the order presented, converting each file listed to a PDF file.

BUT, because the command has the version of LO that you have installed in it, the command wouldn't necessarily be the best command to put into a bash script. Every time you updated LO, you would also have to update the command in the bash scripts. Actually, I'm sure there is a workaround to this issue, but I'm not aware of it. Just because I'm not aware of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Of course, it was dm+'s use of the libreofficeX.X command that prompted me to make another attempt at using another utility that comes with LO, called unoconv. Like I mentioned earlier, I tried the command years ago as a very green Linux noob, but couldn't figure out back then how to get it to work properly, consistently or reliably. So I revisited the command, and yes, it does work properly.

Here's the command:

unoconv -f pdf -o <output-file.pdf> <input-files(s)>

The "-f pdf" parameter sets the output file format to PDF, while the "-o <output-file.pdf>" parameter sets the filename of the output file. Just like with the "libreofficeX.X" command, you can list multiple input files, and each input file will be converted into its own PDF file.

Now, here's the advantage to using the unoconv command, versus the libreofficeX.X command: you don't have to ever change the command when you update/upgrade your version of LO. The unoconv command stays the same, regardless of which version of LO you have installed. Thus, the unoconv command IS a great candidate for inclusion in a bash file. Other than that, it works exactly like the libreofficeX.X command from dm+, converting from any file format that LO "understands."

The PDF files created by these LO "tools" are quite a bit smaller than the same PDF file created with pandoc. In some cases, the PDF files created with these LO tools are less than half of the size of the PDF files created with pandoc.

Now ... On With Editing PDF Files

One of the main attractions to the PDF file format is that it is not easily edited. Compare that with a word document or even the lowly plain text file, which are easily edited by virtually anyone, anywhere, at any time.

As a result, many people don't even know that a PDF file CAN be edited. The average computer user is even less aware of where to find the special tools for editing a PDF file. They may have some of these tools already installed on their computer, and not be aware of possessing the ability to edit PDF files.

While some of the command line tools for manipulating PDF files (part three of this short article series) can also be used to help edit PDF files, to keep things "simple," we'll just talk about actual editing tools for PDF files.

Obviously, the absolute best way to edit a PDF file is to make the edits in the program that was used to create the PDF file. That could be in a bona-fide word processor (LO Writer, MS Word, etc.), a desktop publishing program (like Scribus), or even a simple plain text file that gets converted by pandoc.

But sometimes, you don't have access to the "original" files that would allow you to make edits in the resulting PDF. THAT is when you will need a "special" software program to edit PDF files.

Caveats Of A Legal Nature

Please, be sure to respect the copyrights of copyright owners. Not only is it respectful, but it could also save you a literal TON of legal hassles that you might wish to avoid, should the copyright holder decide to pursue legal action against you for using their intellectual property without permission or compensation.

Copyright laws vary widely between jurisdictions, so be sure to maintain compliance with the copyright laws of your jurisdiction (even if you disagree with them). This goes for ALL intellectual property, not just photos. Asking for permission is not only the RIGHT WAY, but it is also legally mandated in most cases where the copyright holder has not explicitly granted the right to republish or reuse their intellectual property.

Here at The PCLinuxOS Magazine, for example, all of the articles are copyrighted, but we explicitly grant republication/reuse without prior consent, following first publication by The PCLinuxOS Magazine, provided that there is a link back to the original article, and the original author is given credit in the byline.

LibreOffice Tools

When you mention LibreOffice, most people immediately think of LO Writer, the word processor program in the FOSS office suite. But, in fact, all of the programs that make up the LibreOffice office suite are capable of producing PDF files.

However, when it comes to editing PDF files, that is performed with a pair of programs of that office suite, including one that you might not have considered: LibreOffice Draw. The other program is LibreOffice Writer. Both programs have similar functionality for editing PDF files, but we'll focus mostly on LibreOffice Draw.

LO Draw window before loading a document

LO Draw window with recipe PDF file loaded

Make sure your "Select" pointer (the arrow on the toolbar at the left of the image, near the word "Pages") is selected. Then, click the mouse over the element you want to change or edit. The page element will appear with brackets around it. Click your mouse a second time within the brackets of the selected item to edit it. Make your changes, and then either select "Export as PDF" from the top toolbar (has a PDF symbol on the button), or select "Export as PDF" from the File menu. DO NOT resave the file with a PDF file extension. It will still be "assigned" a *.odg file extension, to indicate a LO Draw file. You MUST export the file as a PDF to maintain the PDF's integrity and identity as a PDF file.

Recipe loaded into LO Draw, with document element selected

After clicking on document element, preparing for edit

Pay particular attention to the properties of the document element you selected. The "Properties" window should appear on the right side of the LO Draw window. Notice in our image below that the document element is recognized as text, and the selected font is Liberation Sans. You will want to be sure that the selected font matches the font of the text you are attempting to edit. Otherwise, your edit will stand out like a sore thumb. In our case (and probably in most cases, since fonts are most likely embedded within the PDF), the selected font is the correct one for this document. Still, it's a good idea ... just to be sure!

Properties for selected document element

When we compile the magazine PDF every month with Scribus, we typically select the option to embed the fonts within the PDF. That helps ensure that the magazine appears as we intended it to appear, and font substitutions don't change that appearance or mess up the layout design. So, with that in mind, exercise great care should you decide to change the font or font properties. It could have unforeseen consequences that will/could totally mess with the layout design.

Of course, you can use LO Draw to "extract" or save images from a PDF file. Just load in the PDF file into LO Draw, then select the image. Right click on the selected image, and then select "Save" from the menu that appears. From there, it's just a matter of directing LO Draw where you want to save the file, just as you would if you were attempting to save data from any other file.

Save images from the PDF file.

This is an excellent way to recover images where the original image has "disappeared" and can no longer be accessed (failed hard drive, reformatted hard drive, data misplaced, etc.). Still, it bears repeating ... be respectful/aware of copyrights!

Master PDF Editor

Another tool in the PCLinuxOS repository is Master PDF Editor. The version in the repository is the free version, so there are a few limitations on what you can do with it. For example, the free version is not able to save "optimized" PDF files. Optimized PDF files typically display certain document elements at a lower resolution, saving space and creating a smaller PDF file. But, for basic PDF editing, it probably doesn't get much easier than with Master PDF Editor.

The "paid" version is downloadable from the Master PDF Editor website for $69.95 per each license for one to nine licenses. I've not attempted to download it for three reasons. First, I don't want to spend $70 on the program. Most of my needs are covered by the "free" version. Second, for no more than I use it, it's difficult to justify spending the money. I might consider spending the money if I used it more often. Third, I'm not sure one of the Linux "versions" is installable on PCLinuxOS (although my "guess" would be to install the OpenSUSE RPM package or to install from the tar.gz file). I didn't try them, mostly because I didn't want to risk borking my installation by installing something from outside the repository. Plus, it makes me nervous of running into "dependency hell" during the installation process.

First view upon starting Master PDF Editor

Master PDF Editor with PDF loaded

Just as you did in LO Draw, click your mouse cursor on the document element you want to edit. Then, click your mouse cursor a second time in the document element that you selected to edit that element.

Click on the document element you want to edit to highlight it

Click a second time on the selected document element to begin editing

However, once you're done with your editing of the PDF file, you don't have to re-export the document as a PDF, as you do with the LibreOffice tools. Instead, with Master PDF Editor, all you have to do is select "Save" or "Save As..." from the "File" menu. Personally, I wouldn't use "Save," opting instead for going the "Save As..." route. That way, you don't risk overwriting the original file. I prefer keeping my originals just that ... original. I usually append a lowercase "a" or "b" to the name of the file I'm editing, which allows me to save my edits, but to also keep the "original" intact and unaltered.

Properties of selected document element

Much like with LO Draw, the right side of the Master PDF Editor window shows the "Properties" of the selected document item. As the image above shows, the correct font for the document element is shown. The difference (at least in this particular case) is where LO Draw shows you the font point size down to 10ths of a point, Master PDF Editor uses an odd size designation. In the above case, it's "Size 1," while under LO Draw the font size was labeled as "9.8 points." While the LO Draw way is easier to understand (after all, most people are used to sizing fonts in points), I did discover that the number in the "Size" field does NOT have to be a whole number. You could, for example, put in 1.25 if you wanted the element 25% larger, or 0.75 if you wanted the element 25% smaller. It's not the most intuitive way to express font size, but it works, as long as you can put the work in on figuring out what number goes in the "Size" box (or you could get lucky by taking a W.A.G. at it).

So ... Which Editing Tool Should You Use?

You might think that you can just choose one of these tools and you'd have everything covered. Unfortunately, things just aren't that simple.

LO Draw "feels" a bit clunkier to use for editing PDF files. Now, I realize that's a bit subjective, but that's how it feels to me.

Both LO Draw and Master PDF Editor work in similar ways, and both have their pluses and minuses. Master PDF Editor may or may not allow you to extract images from the PDF. I've found that ability to be rather hit-or-miss. I cannot find a pattern to discern when it will let you save/extract images and when it won't. Sometimes it will allow you to save images found in the PDF, and other times the option to save images is MIA. With LO Draw, the option seems to be available for EVERY image in a PDF file (and I checked multiple PDF files when I was writing this article).

With Master PDF Editor, you don't have to re-export the edited file to a PDF file. Instead, you simply select "Save As..." from the "File" menu. With LO Draw, you have to be sure to re-export the document as a PDF.

LO Draw has the advantage when dealing with text size. Everyone on the planet is used to expressing the size of fonts as points, and have been doing so ever since Windows 3.1 introduced True Type fonts. Master PDF Editor abandons using points to size text, replacing it with a much more awkward and foreign sizing method that seems to be based more on percentages of the existing text size. Once you get used to it, it may get easier, but it is more complicated. Say you want to change the font size from 12 points to 10 points in a document. So now you have to go through these confusing and complicated mathematical aerobics to figure out that 10 points is 5/6 the size of 12 points. Thus, 1/6 is about 17%, so you would have to enter the percentage as 0.83, or 83%.

Both programs work perfectly fine to edit PDF files. But overall, I have to give a slight edge to Master PDF Editor for its "feel" and ease of use. If I know that I will want to be extracting images from a PDF file, LO Draw will be my go-to tool.

Having both tools in your PDF editing arsenal is probably a good idea. You will find uses for them both.

Do you need to join, combine, split, merge or otherwise work magic on PDF files? Well, stay tuned. Next month we'll cover how to manipulate PDF files in the third and final article in the PDF series, performing all of these tasks ... and probably more.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner:

Cheeseburger Soup

Serves: 8

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 pound ground beef

4 tablespoons butter, divided

3/4 cup chopped onion

3/4 cup shredded carrots

3/4 cup diced celery

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes

1-3/4 pounds (about 4 cups) cubed peeled potatoes

3 cups chicken broth

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 to 4 cups shredded Velveeta

1-1/2 cups whole milk

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 cup sour cream

Optional: Crumbled bacon bits, Onion rings, and thinly sliced green onions

DIRECTIONS:

In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook and crumble beef until no longer pink, 6-8 minutes; drain and set aside. In the same saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat. Saute onion, carrots, celery, basil and parsley until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Add potatoes, ground beef and broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, covered, until potatoes are tender, 10-12 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small skillet, melt remaining butter. Add flour; cook and stir until bubbly, 3-5 minutes. Add to soup; bring to a boil. Cook and stir for 2 minutes. Reduce heat to low. Stir in cheese, milk, salt and pepper; cook until cheese melts. Remove from heat; blend in sour cream. If desired, serve with onion rings and green onions.

TIPS:

Replace the ground beef with ground turkey or ground chicken.

NOTE: Let cool completely and store in the refrigerator in a tightly covered container for up to 4 days. DO NOT freeze. Soups with starches and dairy products (like cheeseburger soup) are not ideal for freezing.

NUTRITION:

per cup serving.

Calories: 450           Carbs: 33g           Fiber: 3g           Sodium: 1421mg           Protein: 19g

Snowflake Makes It Easy For Anyone to Fight Censorship

by Cooper Quintin

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons License

Tor, the onion router, remains one of the most effective censorship circumvention technologies. Millions of people use the Tor network every day to access the internet without fear of surveillance and censorship.

Most people get on the Tor network by downloading the Tor Browser and connecting to a relay. But some countries, such as Iran and Russia, block direct access to the Tor network. In those countries people have to use what are known as "Tor Bridges" to circumvent national firewalls. Tens of thousands of people use bridges regularly to circumvent censorship and national or regional restrictions.

The number of bridge users in Iran grew exponentially in the last week of September 2022.

Of course, ISPs in countries where Tor is banned are constantly trying to find the IP addresses of bridges and block them to prevent people from accessing Tor. Bridge connections can also be identified (or "fingerprinted") as connections to the Tor network by an ISP using deep packet inspection. To deal with this, Tor has a clever solution called "pluggable transports." Pluggable transports disguise your Tor connection as ordinary traffic to a well-known web service such as Google or Skype, and smuggles your Tor connection inside of the seemingly innocuous traffic.

In the past, running a pluggable transport was difficult to set up, requiring a server and a good deal of time and technical knowledge. Now, thanks to a new pluggable transport called "Snowflake," anyone can run a pluggable transport in their browser with just a couple of clicks and help people all over the world access the unrestricted internet.

If you are ready to get started you can install the Snowflake browser add on, or if you run a server you can run the standalone version written in Go.

The user interface for the Snowflake browser extension

Logs from a standalone snowflake instance running on a server

How Snowflake Works

Snowflake is composed of three components: volunteers running Snowflake proxies, Tor users (or clients) that want to connect to the internet, and a broker that delivers Snowflake proxies to clients. Volunteers willing to help users on censored networks can help by spinning up short-lived proxies on their regular browsers. When you enable Snowflake, your browser will contact the broker and let it know that you are ready to accept peer-to-peer connections from people seeking to access Tor. Then clients who are on a restricted network can contact the broker and ask for a proxy, the broker will eventually hand them your IP address, and then the client will make a direct connection to your computer using WebRTC (the same technology which is used by Zoom, Skype, and any other peer-to-peer web connection.) Your computer will then forward traffic from the client to the Tor network.

A visual diagram of Snowflake

The obvious weak point here is the broker server. Why couldn't a country just block the broker IP since it is well-known? The answer is a technique called "domain fronting." The details of domain fronting can be found elsewhere, but in brief, domain fronting lets the client make a request that looks like an ordinary web request for google.com, and thanks to HTTPS the request is able to hide its "Host" header which is actually for an arbitrary web service hosted on Google's cloud. In this case, that service is the Snowflake broker.

To block Snowflake, a network or country would have to block all of Google or every IP address outside of the network, essentially a complete internet shutdown. Of course, countries have repeatedly shown their willingness to do exactly that, but it's a much higher price to pay than simply blocking Tor.

The security concerns for the Snowflake proxy operator are minimal. The Snowflake client will not be able to interact with your computer in any way or observe your network traffic, and you will not be able to see their traffic. From the perspective of your ISP it will look like you are connecting to a Tor bridge, which if you are running a Snowflake proxy should be legal and unrestricted in your country. There is no more risk running a Snowflake proxy than running Tor browser.

Snowflake means that everyone can help people exercise their freedom of expression anywhere in the world, and it takes no technical knowledge to run, so if you are in an unrestricted country (such as in North America or most of Europe) go run one now! And if you are in a restricted network consider using Snowflake to circumvent censorship and access the internet.

More technical readers are encouraged to read the Snowflake Technical Overview and the project page for more technical details. For other discussions about Snowflake, please visit the Tor Forum and follow up the Snowflake tag.

Short Topix: Linux Kernel 5.19.12 Code Could Permanently Damage Some Laptop Screens

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Monthly Update: Assault On Your Privacy

Chaos, a new malware written in the Go language, is causing havoc. Chaos is a cryptocurrency miner and DDoS piece of malware with backdoor capabilities, according to an article at TechRepublic. It is written for both Windows and Linux. Malware authors are using Go to write the code for the malware, since it is more difficult for security researchers to analyze.

Facebook is warning one million users that their account credentials may have been compromised by apps downloaded from the Apple and Alphabet software stores, according to an article from the Seattle Times. Meta (the parent company of Facebook) identified more than 400 malicious apps that target users to steal their login information. Apple has removed 45 of the problem apps, while Google removed all of the apps in question. The apps disguise themselves as photo editors, mobile games, or health trackers.

Security researchers at Cisco Talos have discovered a Go language C2 (command and control) standalone server called Alchemist, according to an article on TechRepublic. The malware's web interface is written in both English and simplified Chinese, leading researchers to believe that the malware's origin is from China. The malware targets Windows, MacOS and Linux computers.

ByteDance, the parent company behind TikTok, planned to use the social media app to monitor the personal location of certain American citizens, according to an article on Forbes. ByteDance has denied the claims, according to an article from the BBC.

Security researchers from McAfee have discovered a malicious clicker embedded into 16 apps on the Google Play Store. All affected apps have been removed by Google from the store. The apps masquerade as "useful" utilities, such as flashlight apps, QR code readers, unit converters, and task managers, and have been installed 20 million times by unsuspecting users.

According to an article from TechRepublic, hacker group BlackByte is using Exbyte, a new custom exfiltration tool, to steal data. The threat was discovered by Symantec's Threat Hunter team. This ransomware tool is difficult to discover, because if it sees that it is in a sandboxed environment, it will unload itself. Like many other hacker tools, this one is written in the Go programming language.

Another Google Service Dies ... Stadia Shutting Down

Stadia, the cloud-based consumer gaming service started by Google "a few years ago" (November, 2019) will be shuttering come January 18, 2023. Google will refund all Stadia hardware purchased through its Google Store, along with all games and add-on content purchased from its Stadia store.

Said Google in its blog post announcing the closure of Stadia:

A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we've made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.

We're grateful to the dedicated Stadia players that have been with us from the start. We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023.

Stadia was publicly launched on November 19, 2019, in select countries.

By now, you would think that users would have learned better than to embrace Google "services" or products. Just as things get rolling, Google has a propensity for just pulling the rug out from under its supporters feet. The list of discontinued Google services is a very, very long one, and the list just keeps getting longer and longer.

Linux kernel 5.19.12 Code Could Permanently Damage Some Laptop Screens

According to a recent article on Ars Technica, Linux kernel 5.19.12 has the potential to damage certain laptop screens. Users of laptops that used Intel GPUs started complaining that their laptop screens would rapidly flicker after updating to the 5.19.12 kernel.

Intel engineers took a look at log files and discovered some bogus panel power sequencing delays, which were found to be responsible for the rapid flashing of the displays. They recommended immediately reverting the changes that caused the issue, and that people using laptops with Intel GPUs avoid using the 5.19.12 kernel, even if they didn't experience the display flashing.

One day later, kernel 5.19.13 was released without the screen flashing issue.

Even though kernel 5.19.12 is behind most of us now (the most recent Linux kernel in the PCLinuxOS repository at the time of the writing of this article is 6.0.6), it's reassuring that such issues as these get addressed so, so quickly, and in such a public manner. You would NEVER see this swift of a response from the "commercial" operating system vendors! And, because the "commercial" operating system vendors are close-sourced, much of the discussion and "fixes" would occur behind closed doors, away from the watchful eyes of the end users.

It makes you proud to be a Linux user!

Bookworms & Book Collectors: For Your Reading Pleasure...

If you're a bookworm, book collector, or just a reading aficionado, prepare to be delighted. There are two collections of historical books available for your reading pleasure, albeit in digital formats.

The first collection is from the University of Florida Digital Collections. It has over 8,700 historical children's literature books available for reading online or for download to your computer. The books range from the 18th Century to the 20th Century. I've found books with as recent as a 1983 publication date, and books as old as having a 1741 publication date. And that was in just a casual perusal of the collection. I did notice a 1903 version of Jack and the Beanstalk in the collection while "thumbing through" the collection, as well as old versions of Robinson Crusoe.

The second collection is from our friends at Internet Archive. It has over 20,000 cookbooks in its collection. There appeared to be LOTS of cookbooks from the 17th Century, through the 20th Century. The oldest one I found in a casual perusal of the available titles was "Salt and Fishery," published in 1682. I also found more recent titles, such as Betty Crocker's and Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks in the list of titles. But this is a great way to see how the dishes that were popular with our grandparents and great-grandparents were made. Who knows ... you might even find an old new favorite dish for yourself or your family!

In these overactive "social" times where people are overly "sensitive" to what they perceive to be the latest and greatest transgressions, please keep in mind the titles of some of the books in both collections may be "offensive" to some. While the titles were socially acceptable for the times when they were published, they may not be so under today's standards of what's socially acceptable. View them in the context of what was socially acceptable when they were released. If these social sensibilities upset you, then you might want to avoid these collections altogether.

New Supercomputer Simulations: Moon Could Have Formed In Matter Of Hours

The current theory of how our Moon was formed since the mid-1970s is that a Mars-sized protoplanet named Theia slammed into the Earth during our planet's ancient primordial history, and the remnants of Theia and the ejected material from Earth coalesced into the Moon over the next several millennia.

Or so we thought.

On October 4, 2022, a group of scientists published their findings of a new simulation using a supercomputer in The Astrophysical Letters publication (you can read a bit less of a technical summary of the study at the LiveScience website). The supercomputer allowed them to create a simulation that expanded the number of particles from between 100,000 and 1,000,000 particles of debris, to 100 million particles. That allowed them to "see" the results of the collision between Theia and Earth in higher resolution than ever before.

The interesting part of the simulation at such a novel high resolution is that it showed that our Moon may have formed in a matter of hours, versus the thousands of years previously thought. The supercomputer simulations allowed them to also explore multiple speeds of impact and multiple angles of impact between Theia and Earth.

Ancient Mars **Could Have** Supported Life

Ancient Mars may have been teeming with life, until climate change caused its demise, according to an article on SciTechDaily. Early in its history, the red planet would have likely been habitable to methanogens -- microbes that make a living in extreme habitats on Earth.

Most Mars experts agree that the planet started out with an atmosphere that was much denser than it is today. Rich in carbon dioxide and hydrogen, it would have likely created a temperate climate that allowed water to flow and, possibly, microbial life to thrive, according to Regis Ferrière, a professor in the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and one of two senior authors on the paper.

"We think Mars may have been a little cooler than Earth at the time, but not nearly as cold as it is now, with average temperatures hovering most likely above the freezing point of water," he said. "While current Mars has been described as an ice cube covered in dust, we imagine early Mars as a rocky planet with a porous crust, soaked in liquid water that likely formed lakes and rivers, perhaps even seas or oceans."

PCLinuxOS Short Topix Roundup

Ye, a.k.a. Kanye West, has announced his plans to buy the conservative social media site Parler.

Amazon says over half a dozen hardware vendors have indicated that they cannot enter into a TV manufacturing relationship with the e-commerce group over fear of retaliation from Google, escalating tension with the search giant with whom it competes on several businesses, according to an article on TechCrunch.

Partly as a result of Amazon's complaint in the ongoing three and a half year investigation in India over Google's anti-competitive practices related to Google's Android devices, India's competition regulator fined Google $161.9 million on Thursday for anti-competitive practices related to Android mobile devices in "multiple markets" in a major setback for the search giant in the key overseas nation where it has poured billions of dollars over the past decade, according to another article on TechCrunch.

The Scottish islands of Shetland took a digital hit on October 19, 2022, as a deep-sea internet cable has reportedly been compromised. The islands, located northeast of Scotland, are seeing landline and mobile phone outages, according to an article on Gizmodo.

A major Internet cable in the South of France was severed on October 19, 2022 at 20:30 UTC, impacting subsea cable connectivity to Europe, Asia, and the United States and causing data packet losses and increased website response latency, according to an article on BleepingComputer.

A single computer chip has transmitted a record 1.84 petabits of data per second via a fiber-optic cable -- enough bandwidth to download 230 million photographs in that time, and more traffic than travels through the entire internet's backbone network per second, according to an article on the NewScientist website.

Some researchers believe that Wikipedia could be an overlooked venue for information warfare, and they have been developing technologies and methods similar to the ones used on Facebook and Twitter to uncover it, according to an article on Wired.

The James Webb Space Telescope has returned an image of the famous "Pillars of Creation" in infrared light that's the sharpest, most detailed portrait of the spectacular star-forming region ever seen, according to multiple reports across the news spectrum. You can view NASA's JWST image here.

Nikon has announced the winners of its 2022 Photomicrography Contest, showcasing some of the gnarliest micro-photography pictures yet.

Remember a few months ago we talked about how RedHat Linux upset the apple cart that was CentOS? Well, it seems that Rakuten Mobile was one of those CentOS users. When faced with paying "subscription fees" to RedHat, the CEO directed the company to do the necessary work to dump RedHat and replace it with Rocky Linux. You might recall that it was Rocky Linux that filled the void left by CentOS. You can read more about the switch on the TelecomTV website.

GIMP Tutorial: An Uncommon Fishbowl

by Meemaw

On the YouTube channel, Logos By Nick, he uses a light bulb image to make a fish bowl. It looked really fun, so let's do something like it.

I'll use another container, and we'll also need a picture of our fish and some water. I generally search on Wikimedia Commons or any of several free graphics sites, like Pixabay and Free SVG, to find free graphics images. You can also go to deviantart, which is where he found the water splash.

Open your GIMP and the container you want to use, along with the water splash and the fish you're using. In the image above, I used a clipart image of the bottle, but you can use anything you want. I'm going to try it again with a flask (like in Chemistry). It has some transparency, but I'm going to put a light blue background behind it, adding a layer and bucket filled with the blue I want.

Now I'll bring in the water as a new layer. Mine is bigger than I want it, so I will choose the Scale tool and make it smaller.

I'm going to scale it down to the width of the flask by grabbing the corner handles and moving them inward. When you have yours the way you want it, click the Scale button in the window at upper right. Then change your layer mode to Multiply. This lets you kind of see the edges of the container so you can make some additional changes to the water. When I went in closer, I found that my water wasn't positioned correctly. I'll use the Unified Transform tool to move and stretch the water. Just as a reminder, the Scale tool's default is to preserve the aspect ratio of the image but you can change that by clicking the chain link to the right of the dimensions. The Unified Transform's handles let you stretch and scale regardless of the aspect ratio.

Now there's some water outside the flask, so I'm going to edit that out with the Eraser. Use a softer brush to fade the edges a bit. As you can see, my erasing is kind of messy, but since my flask has transparency, I'm going to move the water layer under the flask layer so it won't show (just as soon as I'm finished erasing).

You can use another method to edit the water, adding a Layer Mask to the water layer. Make it a white mask (Full Opacity), and paint over it with a black brush. You'll get the same results as erasing. Your choice.

Now let's bring in our fish. You can open it and then copy & paste into the project, or just drag the file from your file manager into GIMP.

My fish is WAY too big, too, so I already have the Scale tool open, and will scale it down to the size I want. Remember that the cross in the middle of the Scale tool is the Move tool, so you can place it after you scale it. I'm going to flip mine horizontally as well, because I want it facing the other direction.

You can change the layer mode to Multiply on the fish too, in order to make it look like it's in the water and not just pasted in. I'm going to skip this in favor of putting the fish behind the flask, because my flask has a gradient in it to look like a bit of a reflection. If I change the layer mode to Multiply as well, it looks too dark to me.

Another thing we can do is add a reflection. For this you have to have the container, water and fish merged into a single layer. Duplicate the layer and flip it vertically, then move it down to where it's just under the original (it may extend off your page, but that's ok). Set the opacity of that layer to 30 or 35. Then with your eraser and a really soft brush, just lightly go over the bottom of the reflection until it looks like it's fading out.

So here we are. You can merge everything down, or right click on one of the layers and choose Flatten Image. Or you can export it as it is.

Repo Review: FeatherNotes

by CgBoy

FeatherNotes is a lightweight and powerful hierarchical note manager with plenty of features. It has support for many text formatting options, embedding images and tables into notes, printing notes, password protection, searching, and more. FeatherNotes uses a node system, where essentially all hierarchical items in a note document are called nodes. You can create an assortment of parent and child sub-nodes, allowing for a great degree of organizational flexibility within note documents.

FeatherNotes is quite well laid out and easy to use. Most of the formatting options are easily available from the toolbar at the top. To the left of the text field is the node tree, where you can arrange and organize the nodes and sub-nodes that you create. A system tray icon can also be enabled from the preferences, allowing you to easily access the FeatherNotes window when you need it.

Once you create a new note document, you can begin adding nodes to it. By default, there is always one node already present in the document. You can add more nodes by right clicking on an already existing node and then selecting to either create a sibling or a child node. You can rename, assign tags, and even add icons to nodes. These nodes can then easily be rearranged by dragging them around in the node tree.

FeatherNotes gives you plenty of common text formatting options, such as bold, italic, underline, strike through, as well as text alignment, and text font and size. Images can easily be embedded by dragging and dropping them into the text field, and they can then be resized and placed to your liking. Tables can also be added and inserted into notes, as well as hyperlinks to internet addresses or local files. You can also change the text and background colors if you so wish. FeatherNotes has spell checking functionality, but one has to first configure the Hunspell dictionary path in the preferences.

FeatherNotes documents are saved in their own custom format, but you can also export them to HTML and PDF files. Printing is also available, and FeatherNotes gives you the option of printing out the whole document, or just one node at a time.

FeatherNotes also provides support for password protection to keep your notes private and secure. It appears to use a simple built-in encryption method, and the manual implies that you should not rely solely upon it for protecting highly sensitive information. Password protection can be enabled from the menu at the top.

Summary

All in all, I was quite impressed with the ease of use and features of FeatherNotes. I ran into no stability issues during my use of it, and in general found it to work really well. If you need a lightweight and feature-rich hierarchical note manager, then FeatherNotes is certainly a great option.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus:

Chili Casserole with Cornbread

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb lean (at least 80%) ground beef

1jar (16 oz)Thick and Chunky salsa

2 cups dark red kidney beans (from 19-oz can), drained

1 can (14.5 oz) diced peeled tomatoes, undrained

1 1/2 cups frozen corn

3 teaspoons chili powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 pkg (6.5 oz) cornbread & muffin mix

1/3 cup milk

1/3 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

1 tablespoon sliced green onion (1 medium)

DIRECTIONS:

Heat oven to 400F. In a 12-inch skillet, cook ground beef over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until thoroughly cooked; drain. Stir in salsa, kidney beans, tomatoes, corn, chili powder and cumin. Cook 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thoroughly heated.

Meanwhile, make cornbread as directed on the pouch, using milk. Spoon cornbread batter around the outside edge of an ungreased 12x8-inch (2-quart) glass baking dish. Spoon hot beef mixture into the center. (Casserole will be full.)

Bake for 18 minutes. Sprinkle with cheese; bake 4 to 5 minutes longer or until the cheese is melted and cornbread is deep golden brown. Sprinkle it with green onion just before serving.

TIP:

Fresh fruit and a mixed-green salad are good ideas for serving with chili and cornbread.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 608           Carbs: 59g           Fiber: 10g           Sodium: 632mg           Protein: 28g

Hollywood's Insistence on New Draconian Copyright Rules Is Not About Protecting Artists

by Katharine Trendacosta

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons License

Stop us if you've heard these: piracy is driving artists out of business. The reason they are starving is because no one pays for things, just illegally downloads them. You wouldn't steal a car. These arguments are old and being dragged back out to get support for rules that would strangle online expression. And they are, as ever, about Hollywood wanting to control creativity and not protecting artists.

When it comes to box office numbers, they've remained pretty consistent except when a global pandemic curtailed theater visits. The problem facing Hollywood is the same one that it's faced since its inception: greed.

From the fever-pitch moral panic of the early 2000s, discussions about "piracy" disappeared from pop culture for about a decade. It's come back, both from the side explaining why and the side that wants everyone punished.

Illegal downloading and streaming are not the cause of Hollywood's woes. They're a symptom of a system that is broken for everyone except the few megacorporations and the billionaires at the top of them. Infringement went down when the industry adapted and gave people what they wanted: convenient, affordable, and legal alternatives. But recently, corporations have given up on affordability and convenience.

The Streaming Hellscape

It's not news to anyone that the video streaming landscape has, in the last few years, become unnavigable. Finding the shows and movies you want has become a treasure hunt where, when you find the prize, you have to fork over your credit card information for it. And then the prize could disappear at any moment.

Rather than having a huge catalog of diverse studio material, which is what made Netflix popular to begin with, convenience has been replaced with exclusivity. But people don't want everything a single studio offers. They want certain things. But just like the cable bundles that streaming replaced, a subscription fee isn't for just what you want, it's for everything the company offers. And it feels like a bargain to pay for all of it when a physical copy for one thing costs the same as a month's subscription.

Except that paying for every service isn't affordable. There are too many and they all have one or two things people want. So you can rotate which ones you pay for every so often, which is inconvenient, or just swallow the cost, which is not affordable. And none of that guarantees that what you want is going to be available. Content appears and disappears from streaming services all the time.

Disney removed Avatar from Disney+ because it is re-releasing it in theaters ahead of the sequel. Avatar is a 13-year-old movie, and rereleasing it in theaters should be a draw because of the theater-going experience. Avatar shouldn't have to be removed from streaming since its major appeal is what it looks like on a big screen in 3D. But Disney isn't taking the chance that the moviegoing experience of Avatar alone will get people to pay. It's making sure people have to pay extra--either by going to the theater or paying for a copy.

And that's when the content even has a physical form.

After the Warner Bros. merger with Discovery, the new owners wasted almost no time removing things from the streaming service HBO Max, including a number of things that were exclusive to the streaming service. That means there is no place to find copies of the now-removed shows. People used to joke that the internet was forever--once something was online it could not be removed. But that's not the case anymore. Services that go under take all of their exclusive media with them. Corporate decisions like this remove things from the public record.

It's a whole new kind of lost media, and like lost media of the past, it's only going to be preserved by those individuals who did the work to make and save copies of it, often risking draconian legal liability, regardless of how the studio feels about that work.

When things are shuffled around, disappeared, or flat out not available for purchase, people will make their own copies in order to preserve it. That is not a failure of adequate punishment for copyright infringement. It's a failure of the market to provide what consumers want.

It's disingenuous for Hollywood's lobbyists to claim that they need harsher copyright laws to protect artists when it's the studios that are busy disappearing the creations of these artists. Most artists want their work to find an audience and the fractured, confusing, and expensive market prevents that, not the oft-alleged onslaught of copyright infringement.

Hollywood Cares About Money, Not Artists

There's a saying that, in various forms, prevails within the creative industry. It goes something like "Art isn't made in Hollywood. Occasionally, if you get very lucky, it escapes."

Going back to Warner Bros. and HBO Max: another decision made by the new management was to cancel projects that were largely finished. This included a Batgirl movie, which had a budget of $90 million. The decision was made so that the studio could take a tax write-off, against the wishes of its star and directors, who said, "As directors, it is critical that our work be shown to audiences, and while the film was far from finished, we wish that fans all over the world would have the opportunity to see and embrace the final film themselves. Maybe one day they will insha'Allah."

The point is that Hollywood isn't in the art business. It's in the business business. It is never trying to pay artists, it's always trying to find a way to keep money out of artists' hands and in the corporate coffers. There's a reason "Hollywood accounting" has a Wikipedia entry. It's an industry infamous for arguing that a movie that made a billion dollars at the box office actually made no money, all to keep from paying the artists involved.

Traditional movie making is a unionized endeavor. Basically everyone involved save the studio has a guild or union. That means that there are minimum standards for the employment contracts that studios have to meet. New technology is attractive to studios because it isn't covered by those union agreements. They can ignore the demands of labor and then, if the unions threaten to refuse to work with them, they get to negotiate new terms. That's why the Writers Guild went on strike in 2007.

The new streaming landscape also allowed studios to mistreat their below-the-line workers; everyone who is not an actor, producer, writer, or director. So, most people. IATSE, the union that represented most of those workers, overwhelmingly authorized a strike over working conditions. They particularly called out how streaming projects paid them less, even if they had budgets larger than that of traditional media.

Streaming has ruined the ability of writers to make a livable wage off of a job, and has all but eliminated mentoring and on-set experience, contrary to the desires of the actual people who make the shows. Instead of investing in writers, studios push for more "efficient" models that make writing jobs harder to get and producing experience nearly impossible.

So when Hollywood lobbyists argue for draconian copyright laws "for artists," it should ring especially hollow.

What they want is exclusive control. That includes the ability to constantly charge for access, which means preventing people from having their own copies. Hollywood has fought against audiences having their own copies for as long as the technology has existed. They sued to eliminate VCRs and when they lost, then they started selling tapes. They sued the makers of DVRs, and when they lost again they opened up to video-on-demand. And now, streaming has given them what they've always wanted: complete control over copies of their work. No one owns a copy of the material they watch on a streaming service, they get only a license to watch it for a temporary period.

This way, the studios can make you pay for something every month instead of once. They can take it down so you can't watch it at all. They can edit things post-release, losing some of the history of the creation. And without copies available to own, they prevent creative newcomers from exercising their right to make fair use of it. All of this is anti-artist.

Studios want to point to an outside reason for their actions. Copyright infringement is convenient that way. And when they endorse draconian legislation like the filter mandates of the Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies Copyright Act, that is why. But when infringement happens, it's a symptom of a market not meeting demand, not the cause of the problem.

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