Table of Contents

Welcome From The Chief Editor

1. ICYMI: Is There A BioTech Lab In YOUR Backyard?

2. Happy Birthday, Linux!

3. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Ham & Cheddar Biscuit Breakfast Sandwiches

4. A Broad Federal Publicity Right Is A Risky Answer To Generative AI Problems

5. Inkscape Tutorial: Vector Image Trace

6. Generative AI Policy Must Be Precise, Careful, Practical: How To Cut Through The Hype & Spot Potential Risks In New Legislation

7. How To Run VBA/Excel Macros On PCLinuxOS

8. Amended Cooper Davis Act Is A Direct Threat To Encryption

9. Good Words, Good Deeds, Good News

10. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: CrockPot Lasagna Soup

11. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

12. Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk...

I don't keep it a secret. I'm a big baseball fan. I'm not one of those "rabid" baseball fans, who'll watch just any ol' baseball game. I watch ‒ daily ‒ my hometown team, the Kansas City Royals. Yes, those hapless KC Royals. While they currently have one of the worst records in Major League Baseball, I'm a true fan, through thick and thin (and there's been a LOT of "thin" in those years). I've been a fan since their inception in 1969. In fact, I remember attending a Kansas City Athletics game in the late mid ‘60s with my parents and maternal grandparents, before they packed up and moved to Oakland to become the Oakland A's.

Depending on "who" you reference, Kansas City is the smallest (or next to smallest) "small market" team in the MLB. That references their payroll, the population of the area they draw from, the seating capacity of their stadium, and the market value of the baseball club. Other teams that are considered "small market teams" in the MLB include the Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay Rays, Oakland Athletics, Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Compare these to the typical "large market teams," like the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Angels, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs, Washington Nationals, and Philadelphia Phillies. The salaries of those teams make the payroll of the small market teams look like loose change you might find in the gutter of the street. The seating capacity of their stadiums is enormous, compared to the seating capacity of the small market teams. The market value of the large market teams compared to the small market teams is like the difference between night and day.

I'm sure you get the idea.

As a small market team, the Kansas City Royals get very little respect around baseball. Even when things are going "well," they really don't get the respect that the teams in larger markets get. ANYTHING that goes awry gets blamed on not having the vast resources that the large market teams have access to. Of course, the Royals haven't done much lately to garner much respect either, being in year seven of a five year "rebuild," with scarcely any light visible at the end of the tunnel. Some of the players from that 2015 World Series team have either retired, left baseball altogether, or have become "fringe" players on other teams. The economics of being a small market team pretty much precluded the Royals from being able to retain the core talent of that championship team. Oh, and let's not forget the hands of Father Time, who isn't particularly kind to youthful athletes.

In many ways, PCLinuxOS has a lot in common with the Kansas City Royals. We don't have any corporate sponsors. We don't have any "rich" benefactors "bankrolling" its development. Nope. We have people who are passionate about their craft, doing the best they can. And, in many cases, their best is simply the best in the Linux universe. We have a community of users who joyfully support the development and the infrastructure necessary to have a public face with individual donations to keep things afloat.

PCLinuxOS doesn't have the name recognition of the *buntus, Fedoras, and Arch Linux distros. PCLinuxOS doesn't have any rich corporations or benefactors to fund its existence. PCLinuxOS doesn't get the respect that many of the "big players" among Linux distros enjoy. As a PCLinuxOS user, I am grateful for all of those. Way back, about 10 years or so ago, PCLinuxOS was riding high as the #1 distro on Distrowatch. Being "on top" made PCLinuxOS a target. Everyone wants to "dethrone" whomever occupies that coveted "top spot." We had all kinds of riff raff coming in from the outside, just to cause problems or be demeaning.

I'm quite happy to be using a Linux distro that offers so much to its users, yet avoids that circus atmosphere that comes from being "on top." PCLinuxOS can't be beat when it comes to hardware recognition. PCLinuxOS can't be beat when it comes to stability. PCLinuxOS can't be beat when it comes to talking about the community of PCLinuxOS users. Let all the others deal with that BS. Not being in the "top spot" allows Texstar, his merry band of packagers, and its users to just calmly go about their business, without any of that hype and showboating. No circus around here, thank you very much!

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This month's cover image was created by parnote, using an image from pixelRaw on Pixabay and "sweetening" it up a bit with a PCLinuxOS logo. We thought it was fitting, since this month marks the 32nd "birthday" of Linux.

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

ICYMI: Is There A BioTech Lab In YOUR Backyard?

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Toyota is telling the world it has made a technological breakthrough that will allow it to cut the weight, size, and cost of batteries in half, according to an article on CleanTechnica. The new solid-state battery is reported to have a range of 745 miles (1,200 Km), half the size and weight of current LiON batteries, and be fully charged in 10 minutes. Forgive us if we don't hold our collective breath. Other new battery technology hasn't lived up to the hype, for multiple reasons.

Google updated its privacy policy, explicitly saying the company reserves the right to scrape just about everything you post online to build its AI tools, according to an article on Gizmodo. If Google can read your words, assume they belong to the company now, and expect that they're nesting somewhere in the bowels of a chatbot. "Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public," the new Google policy says. "For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google's AI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities." It sounds like Google's new motto should be "Be All The Evil," which is about as far as you can get from "Do No Evil." Never mind that the words "Google" and "privacy" should NEVER appear in the same sentence.

Jeff Geerling, author and software developer, has open sourced his Linux book, "Ansible for DevOps." It is available for FREE, by visiting the Leanpub website. You only need to enter your email address … so feel free to use a burner email address, if that's your wish. Also, check out the latest "shenanigans" from Red Hat that he reveals in his video on his LinkedIn post.

Image by Peter Lomas from Pixabay

Have you ever wondered if there is a BSL-4 or BSL-3+ (biosafety level) lab in YOUR own backyard? Given the recent pandemic we all went through, there's cause for concern. Well, in 2022, the Bulletin partnered with GlobalBiolabs, an initiative to provide details of high containment labs around the world and their policies and practices to ensure safe, secure and responsible pathogen research. The Bulletin collaborated with researchers from King's College London and George Mason University to re-launch their map of biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) and BSL-3+ labs around the world. For countries with BSL-4 labs, the map now includes scores that assess a country's approach to biorisk management and the country's national governance and stability. The map now presents the most recent research findings and will serve as a tool for developing policy recommendations to strengthen biorisk management in BSL-4 labs.

Research shows that disrupting the body's circadian rhythm raises cancer risk, and resetting it may bring that risk down, according to an article from Scientific American. For some time now epidemiological studies of night-shift workers have linked disruptions in circadian rhythms to cancer and other diseases. Much of the evidence concerned breast cancer and to a lesser extent prostate cancer. Duration of shift work made a difference — nurses who worked night shifts for up to 30 years were at moderately increased risk for breast cancer compared with those who did shorter stints, and those who worked such shifts for more than 30 years had the highest risk. Now there is even more evidence involving other types of malignancies, including liver, lung and colorectal cancers, from a spate of new studies.

Cisco Talos has observed threat actors taking advantage of a Windows policy loophole that allows the signing and loading of cross-signed kernel mode drivers with signature timestamp prior to July 29, 2015, according to a security notice posted to their blog. Threat actors are leveraging multiple open-source tools that alter the signing date of kernel mode drivers to load malicious and unverified drivers signed with expired certificates. They have observed over a dozen code signing certificates with keys and passwords contained in a PFX file hosted on GitHub used in conjunction with these open source tools. The majority of drivers identified contained a language code in their metadata that have the Simplified Chinese language code, suggesting the actors using these tools are frequently used by native Chinese speakers. Cisco Talos has further identified an instance of one of these open-source tools being used to re-sign cracked drivers to bypass digital rights management (DRM), and have released a second blog post alongside this one demonstrating real-world abuse of this loophole by an undocumented malicious driver named RedDriver.

Sooo … maybe you're tired of Twitter and want to find another platform to replace it. You MIGHT be tempted to try Threads, Meta's newly-launched competitor to Twitter. But, before you do, keep in mind that Threads has the same "privacy" policy as all of the other Meta offerings, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. If you're even a little worried or concerned about how much of your data is "vacuumed up" by these social media platforms (including Twitter), an article at ArsTechnica breaks it all down for you.

Hackers linked to China breached email accounts at more than two dozen organizations including some U.S. government agencies, officials and Microsoft researchers said, part of a suspected cyber-espionage campaign to access data in sensitive computer networks, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. The new penetration has prompted alarm among some officials and security researchers and is being viewed as part of an espionage campaign that potentially compromised valuable information belonging to the U.S. government, according to people familiar with the matter.

On July 10, Oracle's Edward Screven, chief corporate architect, and Wim Coekaerts, head of Oracle Linux development, declared: "IBM's actions are not in your best interest. By killing CentOS as a RHEL alternative and attacking AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, IBM is eliminating one way your customers save money and make a larger share of their wallet available to you," according to an article on ZDNet. In fact, Oracle now presents itself as an open-source Linux champion: "Oracle has always made Oracle Linux binaries and source freely available to all. We do not have subscription agreements that interfere with a subscriber's rights to redistribute Oracle Linux. On the other hand, IBM subscription agreements specify that you're in breach if you use those subscription services to exercise your GPLv2 rights."

IEEE 802.11bb, an amendment to the Wi-Fi specification that supports wireless networking using visible and infrared light instead of the radio spectrum, was approved last month by the electrical engineering body, according to an article on The Register. The IEEE 802.11bb Light Communication Global standard, referred to as LiFi, describes the necessary changes to physical layers (PHY) and the medium access control layer (MAC) to allow 802.11 wireless networking via light source modulation that, mercifully, people can't see. The LiFi spec calls for bidirectional transmission in the 800nm to 1,000nm band of the electromagnetic spectrum, with a minimum throughput of 10 Mb/s and a maximum of 9.6 Gb/s at the MAC data service access point. As a point of comparison, Wi-Fi operates over wavelengths of 120mm (2.4 GHz) and 60mm (5 GHz), with transmission speeds that depend on the version. Wi-Fi 6 (like LiFi) tops out at 9.6 Gb/s.

The European Union is set to introduce new regulations requiring every smartphone to offer easily replaceable batteries, in direct contravention to current smartphone design practices, according to an article on MakeUseOf. The European Council has agreed to implement the regulation by 2027, which will have significant implications for major smartphone manufacturers like Apple, Google, and Samsung.

The "mystery" of why ancient Roman concrete has lasted so long may have been uncovered, according to an article on Science Alert. An international team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that not only are the materials slightly different from what we may have thought, but the techniques used to mix them were also different.

Harvard researchers claim to have discovered a chemical cocktail that they say can reverse aging — a finding that may result in a "Fountain of Youth" pill, according to an article from the New York Post. They are preparing for human clinical trials of the therapy, and acknowledged that other researchers are also in the race "to show chemicals can rejuvenate cells like gene therapy can."

Posting a photo of your boarding pass for your upcoming trip on social media may seem harmless, but while you're enjoying your vacation, scammers might be using a few pieces of data from your ticket to wreak havoc on your life, according to an article on Lifehacker. As security experts interviewed by Travel + Leisure point out, a single code on your boarding pass opens the door to a wealth of sensitive information that you don't want other people to see.

Did you get COVID but never feel/felt sick? New study hints at why, according to an article from the LA Times. As the coronavirus emerged, so did a mystery: Why did some who got infected never develop symptoms? One likely explanation is that it may be a person's lucky genes. A new study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature suggests people with a specific version of a gene were far more likely to experience an asymptomatic infection than those without.

There's a way to get healthier without even going to a gym. It's called NEAT, according to an article from NPR (National Public Radio). This is essentially all the calories that a person burns through their daily activity excluding purposeful physical exercise. Think of the low-effort movements that you string together over the course of your day – things like household chores, strolling through the grocery aisle, climbing the stairs, bobbing your leg up and down at your desk, or cooking dinner.

According to an article on TechRepublic, some of the largest generative AI companies operating in the U.S. plan to watermark their content, a fact sheet from the White House revealed on Friday, July 21. Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI agreed to eight voluntary commitments around the use and oversight of generative AI, including watermarking. This follows a March statement about the White House's concerns about the misuse of AI. Also, the agreement comes at a time when regulators are nailing down procedures for managing the effect generative artificial intelligence has had on technology and the ways people interact with it since ChatGPT put AI content in the public eye in November 2022. Of course, this whole charade is predicated on hoping the threat actors also "follow the law" (which they don't).

Happy Birthday, Linux!

by Meemaw

Reprint from August 2017 PCLinuxOS Magazine

According to Wikipedia's, The History of Linux:

The history of Linux began in 1991 with the commencement of a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel. Since then, the resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 4.2.3 version in 2015 with more than 18 million lines of source code under the GNU General Public License, v2.

In 1991, while studying computer science at University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds began a project that later became the Linux kernel. He wrote the program specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an operating system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an 80386 processor. Development was done on MINIX using the GNU C compiler. The GNU C Compiler is still the main choice for compiling Linux today. The code however, can be built with other compilers, such as the Intel C Compiler.

On August 25, 1991, computer science major Linus Torvalds posted the following on the comp.os.minix Usenet newsgroup:

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

- Linus Torvalds

However, there were a few things that happened first, so that our wonderful Linus Torvalds could create his project. Let me list a few:

1969 - 1970: Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, working for AT&T Bell Labs, designed and implemented Unix.

1972: First release of the C programming language, also developed by Dennis Ritchie at AT&T Bell Labs. Unix is rewritten using C, which has become the preferred programming language used by Linus Torvalds.

1977: BSD, a Unix like operating system based on the 6th edition of Unix from AT&T, was developed at UC Berkeley. Since BSD contained some code owned by AT&T, a lawsuit was filed in the 1990s, hindering development and adoption of BSD.

1983: Richard Stallman started the GNU project, also writing the GNU General Public License (GPL).

1986: Maurice T. Bach, of AT&T Labs, published a book titled The Design of the Unix Operating System.

1987: Andrew S. Tanenbaum released MINIX, which was a Unix-like system intended for academic use.

With the advent of the 80386 processor developed by Intel, the stage was set for Torvalds to want to adapt Minix, a free Unix-like system for academic use, into a system he could use on his own personal computer. Linux, which was originally going to be called Freax (a play on the words Free, Freak and Unix), contained no code from Minix, and was written from the ground up by Torvalds, using a monolithic kernel (as opposed to Minix's modular style of kernel).

Torvalds did point out a few years ago on his Google+ stream that most people associate the "birth" of Linux with his initial announcement on August 25, 1991. However, he goes on to point out that the actual code dump for Linux 0.01 didn't actually occur until a couple of weeks later.

From there, of course, we know how Linux has spread, from the first distributions being written in 1992 (Slackware), to Mandriva in 1998, to our own Texstar branching out and establishing PCLinuxOS in 2003, to today, where there are over 60 million Linux users, by some estimates.

By Guillem, Wereon, Hotmocha (copied from old version's history) Christoph S. (redrew the image with Inkscape) - Original image: Image:Unix.png, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1667764

1996: Torvalds announced that the official mascot for Linux would be a penguin. As they were trying to decide on a mascot, he was bitten by a penguin while visiting the National Zoo & Aquarium in Australia. A fellow programmer named Larry Ewing, did the original drawing of a penguin, which is the Tux we all know today.

2001: Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary is an autobiography written by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond, describing his Linux journey.

2003: PCLinuxOS is born! Thanks, Texstar!

2013: Android claims 75% of the smartphone market share.

FACTS (also from Wikipedia):

Linux was originally developed for personal computers based on the Intel x86 architecture, but has since been ported to more platforms than any other operating system.

Linux is also the leading operating system on servers and other big iron systems such as mainframe computers, and is used on 99.6% of the TOP500 supercomputers.

It is used on about 2.3% of desktop computers. However, Linux also runs on embedded systems - devices whose operating system is typically built into the firmware and is highly tailored to the system. This includes TiVo and similar DVR devices, network routers, facility automation controls, televisions, video game consoles and smartwatches. Many smartphones and tablet computers run Android and other Linux derivatives. It is gaining ground in the Chromebook, which uses the Linux-based ChromeOS, in many schools because of the Chromebook's inexpensive price.

I've been using Linux since 2006, specifically, PCLinuxOS since 2006 (once I got here, I stayed!) I'm amazed at the many changes in Linux which have taken place in only 32 years!

Happy Birthday, Linux!

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Ham & Cheddar Biscuit Breakfast Sandwiches

Ham & Cheddar Biscuit Breakfast Sandwiches

Makes: 12

INGREDIENTS:

1 bag (25 oz) frozen Pillsbury™ Grands!™ Buttermilk Biscuits (12 Count)

12 eggs

1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

6 oz sliced deli ham, chopped (about 1 cup)

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (8 oz)

DIRECTIONS:

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Make biscuits as directed on the bag.

Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Spray a 13x9-inch (3-quart) baking dish with cooking spray.

In large bowl, beat eggs, cream, salt and pepper with a whisk. Stir in ham. Pour egg mixture into a baking dish. Bake 25 to 28 minutes, or until egg mixture is set and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Sprinkle cheese over top. Bake for 4 to 6 minutes, or until the cheese is melted.

Cut baked eggs into 4 rows by 3 rows to make 12 squares. Split biscuits, and fill each with 1 egg square.

TIPS:

Instead of Cheddar cheese, use Swiss Cheese, Monterey jack or pepper jack cheese or a combination of cheeses. All make a nice substitution for the Cheddar Cheese.

If desired, you can substitute bacon or sausage for the ham in this recipe, or use a combination.

Can be frozen , thawed and reheated.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 370         Carbs: 25g         Sodium: 1050mg.         Fiber: 0g         Protein: 17G.

A Broad Federal Publicity Right Is A Risky Answer To Generative AI Problems

by Corynne McSherry

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons License

As users continue to experiment with generative AI tools, artists are increasingly concerned that use of the tools to mimic their respective "styles" will put them out of business. In addition to the now-infamous AI-generated song that seemed to feature Drake and The Weeknd, digital artists, musicians, actors, writers, and others are seeing their names regularly invoked, without their permission, to generate new works.

Despite the flurry of lawsuits, those new works and the training of the tool itself probably do not infringe the copyright in any work used in the training set – even if the person who used the tool to generate it asked for something in a particular artist's "style." And that's probably a good thing on balance: given the scope and length of copyright, as well as the financial cost of violating those rights accidentally, it's important to clearly demarcate what is and is not protected, and "style" does not lend itself to clear markers.

But that doesn't mean the creator of the original work has no recourse. As the premise of at least one of those lawsuits shows, there's an alternative legal theory: publicity rights. But that legal approach comes with its own risks – especially if, as some are proposing, it is enshrined as an expansive federal right.

The right of publicity is an offshoot of state privacy law that gives a person the right to limit the public use of her name, likeness, or identity for commercial purposes. The original idea was to ensure that private individuals weren't drawn into the public sphere without their consent through such marketing efforts. A majority of states have some version of the right, and a limited version of it makes sense. For example, you should be able to prevent a company from running an advertisement that falsely claims that you endorse its products.

In the generative AI context, publicity rights might be a useful way to deter commercial exploitative "impersonation." If Frito-Lay uses AI to generate a voiceover for an advertisement that sounds like Nicki Minaj, and is clearly intended to do so, Nicki Minaj should have the ability to challenge that use. The same should be true for non-celebrities.

However, the right of publicity has expanded well beyond its original boundaries. For example, the right was once understood to be limited to a person's name and likeness, but now it can mean just about anything that "evokes" a person's identity, such as a phrase associated with a celebrity (like "Here's Johnny,") or even a cartoonish robot dressed like a celebrity. In some states, your heirs can invoke the right long after you are dead and, presumably, in no position to be embarrassed by any sordid commercial associations. In other words, it's become a money-making machine that can be targeted at all kinds of activities and expressive speech.

In the most egregious cases, it has also been used to shut down critical commentary. Public figures have brought right of publicity cases against songs, magazine features, and even computer games. As a result, the right of publicity reaches far beyond the realm of misleading advertisements and implicates important freedom of expression issues, and courts have struggled to develop a coherent test for how the First Amendment should apply in these cases. In fact, some courts have abandoned traditional tests that helped make sure that publicity rights claims couldn't be used to shut down protected speech that happened to refer to a celebrity or use her likeness in reasonable ways (in biopics, for example).

That's why we are skeptical of recent calls to help celebrities and artists police generative AI by making publicity rights a federal cause of action. Again, a limited right to prevent others from using your name or face to falsely endorse a product is one thing. But a federal right to prevent anyone from building or using a tool to generate something in a person's "style" would be far broader and more nebulous.

What is worse, the new right might not offer much protection for those who need it most, while punishing others who do not threaten anyone's livelihood. Savvy commercial players will build waivers into standard contracts, taking advantage of workers who lack bargaining power and leaving the right to linger as a trap only for unwary or small-time creators. A vague obligation not to "appropriate" anyone's "style" would also make it difficult to identify the universe of people whose rights are potentially implicated in order to negotiate with them. With respect to music, we can expect to see calls to expand fundamentally flawed systems like Content ID that regularly flag lawful content as potentially illegal and chill new creativity that depends on major platforms to reach audiences. Today, some new creators avoid using any music at all lest they trigger a flag, however improper, and music criticism is famously underrepresented on platforms using such tools because it is effectively impossible. Imagine a world where creators must also avoid invoking another artist's "style," or commenting on a public figure.

Artists are raising serious concerns. As policymakers look to address them, they must take care to be precise, careful, and practical. Unfortunately, a new federal right of publicity is unlikely to meet any of those criteria.

Inkscape Tutorial: Vector Image Trace

by Meemaw

I'm always on the lookout for new tricks to use in any of the graphics programs I use. I saw this one on YouTube in a video by Logos By Nick. While you may have already learned this little maneuver, it was a bit new to me. It takes a bit of practice, at least for me.

This method works well on a photo you want to trace. Maybe you are creating an advertisement and you have a photo of what you want, but you need clipart instead. You can always do a trace of the photo to use. We'll be using the Bezier tool.

Open your photo in Inkscape. In the video I saw, he recommends that you turn off your page border. Make sure you bring in a bigger copy of your photo if possible (because images can be scaled smaller without quality loss, but not bigger). After you have it imported, add a layer to your project. You'll do your work on the new layer. In celebration of Linux's birthday this month, I'll use a photo of a penguin.

After you have it imported, set the opacity down a bit. We'll work on sections, so zoom into your photo. With our Bezier tool, we'll outline the different colors in the photo. I'll start with the yellow areas. Choose a section of your area and click on the edge. Click at another point on the edge where you want to draw a line, but instead of letting your mouse button up, drag the mouse away from your second spot. You'll see the line curve, and using a little bit of experimentation with the mouse button held down, you can line it up along the edge. When you are satisfied with the curve, let go of the mouse button and press <Enter>. I've found that if you want the curve to resemble the left side of a circle, you drag up or down to the right (depending on how you are drawing your curve). Sometimes it takes a bit of experimentation, but you can figure it out pretty easily. You can see me dragging the mouse in the image below.

When you finish your first curve, leave it selected. Hover your mouse over the end in preparation for your next curve, and you'll see a handle on the end. Click there to start the next curve. When you do that the two curves will be combined and when you get all the way around, you will have one continuous curve, rather than several separate ones. This is the idea, since you probably want to fill this curve with a color. NOTE: You can always choose your Nodes tool and make any minor adjustments that you need.

Now it's just a matter of outlining every color (click, click, drag) until you get everything traced.

It's ok to overlap at places because when you put the color in, there won't be any gaps. After I got all the curves in, I made the photo layer invisible so I could see the drawing. Then I filled each curve with color.

Bear in mind that this will be much better with a little more detail added (and with a steadier hand than mine). You can export it as an image file.

Generative AI Policy Must Be Precise, Careful, Practical: How To Cut Through The Hype & Spot Potential Risks In New Legislation

by Corynne McSherry

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons License

Anxiety about generative AI is growing almost as fast as the use of the technology itself, fueled by dramatic rhetoric from prominent figures in tech, entertainment, and national security. Something, they suggest, must be done to stave off any number of catastrophes, from the death of the artist to the birth of new robot overlords.

Given the often hyperbolic tone, it might be tempting (and correct) to dismiss much of this as the usual moral panic new technologies provoke, or self-interested hype. But there are legitimate concerns in the mix, too, that may require some rules of the road. If so, policymakers should answer some important questions before crafting or passing on those rules. As always, the devil is in the details, and EFF is here to help you sort through them to identify solid strategies and potential collateral damage.

First, policymakers should be asking whether the legislation is both necessary and properly focused. Generative AI is a category of general-purpose tools with many valuable uses. For every image that displaces a potential low-dollar commission for a working artist, there are countless more that don't displace anyone's living—images created by people expressing themselves or adding art to projects that would simply not have been illustrated. Remember: the major impact of automated translation technology wasn't displacing translators—it was the creation of free and simple ways to read tweets and webpages in other languages when a person would otherwise not know what was being said.

But a lot of the rhetoric we are hearing ignores those benefits and focuses solely on potentially harmful uses, as if the tool itself were the problem (rather than how people use it). The ironic result: a missed opportunity to pass and enforce laws that can actually address those harms.

For example, if policymakers are worried about privacy violations stemming from the collection and use of images and personal information in generative AI, a focus on the use rather than the tool could lead to a broader law: real and comprehensive privacy legislation that covers all corporate surveillance and data use. Ideally, that law would both limit the privacy harms of AI (generative and other forms) and be flexible enough to stay abreast of new technological developments.

But sometimes we don't need a new law— we just need to do a better job with the ones we already have. If lawmakers are worried about misinformation, for example, they might start by reviewing (and, where necessary, strengthening) resources for enforcement of existing laws on fraud and defamation. It helps that courts have spent decades assessing those legal protections and balancing them against countervailing interests (such as free expression); it makes little sense to relitigate those issues for a specific technology. And where existing regulations are truly ineffective in other contexts, proponents must explain why they will be more effective against misuses of generative AI.

Second, are the harms the proposal is supposed to alleviate documented or still speculative? For example, for years lawmakers (and others) have raised alarms about the mental health effects of social media use. But there's little research to prove it, which makes it difficult to tailor a regulatory response. In other areas, such as the encryption debate, we're seen how law enforcement's hypothetical or unproven concerns, raised under the flag of "online safety," are used to justify undermining essential protections for online expression and privacy. To create evidence-based laws, policymakers must review the research, talk to experts and civil society (not just CEOs), and watch out for AI snake oil or magical thinking.

Third and relatedly, to what extent does a new proposal embrace speculative harms at the expense of addressing practical and well documented existing harms? Thoughtful researchers and civil society groups have been sounding the alarm for over a decade about the risks of predictive policing, government use of facial recognition systems, and biased decision-making in housing, hiring, and government benefits. We should not let hyperbole and headlines about the future of generative AI distract us from addressing the damage being done today. There is much that can and should be done to ensure transparency, empower communities to reject or select technologies, engage in impact assessment, and create accountability and remedies for those already suffering from those harms. People serious about ensuring that generative AI serves humanity already have a full agenda that shouldn't be swept aside because of rich-guy hype.

Fourth, will the regulation reinforce existing power dynamics and oligopolies? When Big Tech asks to be regulated, we must ask if those regulations might effectively cement Big Tech's own power. For example, we've seen multiple proposals that would allow regulators to review and license AI models, programs, and services. Government licensing is the kind of burden that big players can easily meet; smaller competitors and nonprofits, not so much. Indeed, it could be prohibitive for independent open-source developers. We should not assume that the people who built us this world can fix the problems they helped create; if we want AI models that don't replicate existing social and political biases, we need to make enough space for new players to build them.

Fifth, is the proposed regulation flexible enough to adapt to a rapidly evolving technology? Technology often changes much faster than the law, and those changes can be difficult to predict. As a result, today's sensible-seeming rule can easily become tomorrow's security weak point. What is worse, locking in specific technologies can prevent new and innovative technologies from flourishing and, again, give today's winners the ability to prevent future competitors from offering us a better tool or product.

Sixth, will the law actually alleviate the harm it targets? This question gets overlooked far too often. For example, there have been several proposals to require generative AI users and developers to "watermark" the works they produce. Assuming this is technically possible (it might be harder to do this for music, say, than images), history suggests it won't be very effective against the uses we might worry about the most. "Advisory" watermarking by default, such as DALL-E's automatic insertion of a few colored squares in the corner of an image, can help indicate it was AI-generated, so the person who shares it doesn't unintentionally deceive. But those watermarks can easily be cropped out by the more sophisticated fraudsters we might really want to deter. And "adversarial" watermarking, whereby the AI model generates a watermark that is so deeply embedded in the output that it cannot be removed, has almost always been defeated in practice. In short, watermarking can have some benefits but it's inevitably a cat and mouse game. If we're aiming at serious harms by motivated people, we need strategies that work.

Finally, how does it affect other public interests (beyond the competition issues raised above)? For example, there's a lot of rhetoric around the risks of allowing open-source AI development compared to closed systems where a central authority can control what can and cannot be done by users. We've seen this movie before— open systems are often attacked with this claim, especially by those who benefit from a closed world. Even taking the concern at face value, though, it's hard to see how the government can regulate use and development without restricting freedom of expression and the right to access new information and art. In the U.S., courts have long recognized that code is speech, and policing its development may run afoul of the First Amendment. More generally, just as we would not tolerate a law allowing the government to control access to and use of printing presses, we should worry about giving any central authority the power to control access to generative AI tools and, presumably, decide in advance what kinds of expression those tools can be allowed to generate. Moreover, placing controls on open-source development in some countries may just ensure that developers in other countries have better opportunities to learn and innovate.

Other proposals designed to ensure remuneration for creators whose works are included in training data, such as a new copyright licensing regime, could make socially valuable research based on machine learning and even data mining prohibitively complicated and expensive (assuming such a regime was even administratively possible given the billions of works that might be used and the difficulty of tracking those uses). We have great sympathy for creators who struggle to be properly compensated for their work. But we must look for ways to ensure fair pay that don't limit the potential for all of humanity to benefit from valuable secondary uses. The Writers Guild of America-West's contract negotiations with the movie studios offers one model: AI-generated material can't be used to replace a human writer. Specifically, AI-generated material cannot qualify as source material for adaptation in any way, and if a studio wants to use an AI-generated script, there can be no credited author and, therefore, no copyright. In a world where studios jealously guard the rights to their work, that's a major poison pill. Under this proposal, studios must choose between the upfront cost of paying a writer what they are worth, and the backend cost of not holding a copyright in the ultimate work.

These are questions we should ask of most legislation, as part of a thorough impact assessment. But they are particularly pressing here, where policymakers seem eager to legislate quickly, major players are inviting it, and many of those affected aren't at the table. Where there are real risks to the development of generative AI, and real reasons for people in various sectors to feel ill-used and ignored by the developers, it's even more important for lawmakers to get it right.

How To Run VBA/Excel Macros On PCLinuxOS

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

Guys, isn't it very annoying when others send Excel spreadsheets with macros in VBA (Visual Basic For Applications)?

Yes, everyone thinks that we use pirated copies of MS Office and, therefore, we will be able to work with these spreadsheets. All wrong, since we made the choice to be within the law and, by choice, not to use Microsoft products.

Unfortunately, due to the predominance of Microsoft products, we have to "talk", so to speak, with these programs, but never depend on them. And, we are left with this problem in our hands: How to work with these Excel spreadsheets with these VBA macros? We'll see right after.

VBA macros on Linux: Impossible

Visual Basic for Applications macros are a headache for us, Linux users, because, there is no way to run these macros normally, on Linux, since they depend on proprietary code written in C#.

How then to run these VBA macros on PCLinuxOS ?

Well, why did I get interested in this subject? Because I received a spreadsheet with these macros and had to fill it. But, I don't want to have to hack Windows or Office for that.

And how to do it then? Well, to do that, let's work on a two-step solution.

The two-step solution

To solve this problem, we will have to do it in two steps:

First, obtain a legal copy of Windows XP.

Second, obtain an Office suite that can run the VBA macros legally.

Obtaining Windows XP in 2023

Microsoft itself will help us out here, with Windows XP mode.

In the words of answers.microsoft.com, "Windows XP mode lets you run older Windows XP business software directly on the Windows 7 desktop. Designed primarily for small and medium-sized businesses, Windows XP Mode is provided as a separate download and works only with Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate. Windows XP mode also requires virtualization software, such as Windows Virtual PC. Both are available for free from the Microsoft website. For more information, see Install and use Windows XP mode in Windows 7."

Now, that download is no longer available, at least not from the Microsoft website. But, it is available on Archive.Org, at this link.

From the link above, you should download the Windows XP mode installation file: WindowsXPMode_en-us.zip.

It is a 469 megabyte file.

Now, in possession of this file, it is necessary to extract the file that interests us. With some compression manager (file-roller, Xarchiver), you must open this file WindowsXPMode_en-us.zip.

Inside this file, you must access the sources folder.

Then, you should access the xpm file.

Inside the xpm file, the following files exist.

The file we are interested in is VirtualXPVHD. This file must be extracted. It is in this file that is the Windows XP image that we will use. As for its legitimacy, it is an unactivated Windows XP installation that works for 30 days.

The VirtualXPVHD file must be renamed to the .vhd suffix, so that it can be imported by Virtual Box. Yes, we will use Virtual Box to run this image.

Importing the image into Virtual Box

In Virtual Box, you must create a virtual machine, and import the VirtualXPVHD.vhd image. And, once imported, it is in the list of virtual machines installed.

The second step: The free and legal office suite

Well, now that we have Windows XP installed and configured, it is time to install a free office suite inside this Windows XP virtual machine.

The suite we are going to use is WPS Office, from the Chinese company Kingsoft. WPS Office (an acronym for Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheets, formerly known as Kingsoft Office) is an office suite written in C++ that runs on Windows, Linux, Android and iOS platforms. Developed by the Chinese software developer in Zhuhai, Kingsoft. WPS Office is a software suite that is composed of three main components: WPS Writer, WPS Presentation and WPS Spreadsheet.

The personal basic version is free to use. A full-featured professional-level version is also available for a subscription fee. If you are worried about using software of Chinese origin, don't be, as it will be installed inside a virtual machine and will not affect your system in any way.

I looked for a version of WPS Office that would work with Windows XP, and found it on Old Version.com. That version is WPS Office 2014. To save work, I uploaded it to a mediafire account.

However, this software alone is not enough.

The Magic of VBA macros

Naturally, WPS Office does not run VBA macros. However, Kingsoft has created addons for WPS Office to run VBA macros. In posts on Reddit, I found the addon that works with this version of WPS Office, and also put it on a mediafire account.

Before

Well, I used WPS Spreadsheets, without the VBAxWPS.exe addon installed, and, the response from the program was:

So, I installed the addon.

After

After installing the addon, WPS Spreadsheets recognizes spreadsheets with VBA macros and shows a security warning:

And voila, WPS Spreadsheets running the VBA macros:

And so, you have a nice solution to an annoying problem, which is receiving spreadsheets with VBA macros.

I hope you enjoyed this tip, and that it may be useful to you. A big hug and until the next article.

Amended Cooper Davis Act Is A Direct Threat To Encryption

by India McKinney and Andrew Crocker

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons License

Last week, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary amended and passed S.1080, which would require private messaging services, social media companies, and even cloud providers to report their users to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) if they find out about certain illegal drug sales. EFF opposes this bill, both in its original and amended form.

The bill, also called the Cooper Davis Act, laudably seeks to address the proliferation of illegally-made fentanyl and resulting overdose deaths in the United States. Unfortunately, the amended bill is still likely to result in a host of inaccurate reports to law enforcement by prodding Internet companies to trawl through users' innocent conversations, including discussions about past drug use or treatment. This bill contains no warrant requirement, no required notice, and limited user protections, and deserves to be defeated on the Senate floor.

Although the bill does not explicitly require providers to seek out illegal activity by users, it walks up to that line by requiring reporting when providers obtain actual knowledge of this activity, and creating criminal penalties for failure to do so. S.1080 is modeled on existing law that requires providers to report actual knowledge of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to a group called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a quasi-governmental entity that later forwards on some reports to law enforcement.

Companies base some of their reporting on matches found by comparing digital signatures of images to an existing database of previously removed CSAM. Notably, this new bill requires reporting directly to the DEA, and the content at issue (drug sales) is markedly harder and more subjective to identify. While actual CSAM is unprotected by the First Amendment, mere discussion of drug use is protected speech. Due to the liability they would face for failing to report, some companies may overreport using content-scanning tools that we know have large error rates in other contexts.

Unfortunately, the Judiciary Committee's amendments increase the incentives on companies to search their users' private communications for discussions of drugs, even at the expense of undermining encryption and other important security measures.

The most concerning update to the bill is a new carveout which says that providers cannot be penalized for failing to conduct “additional verification or investigation” into users' communications unless they “deliberately blind” themselves. Just as in the EARN IT Act, this language squarely implicates the very security and privacy features that protect users' communications from prying eyes, especially those of the companies themselves. This language will encourage providers to undermine those features out of the fear that law enforcement will argue that, by taking themselves out of the loop and allowing all users to have truly secure conversation, providers are “blinding” themselves. Although the amendments improve on other areas of the bill—most notably by requiring some minimization of reports—the anti-encryption language is a step backward in an already extremely flawed bill. It deserves to be defeated on the Senate Floor.

Good Words, Good Deeds, Good News

compiled by Meemaw

Firefighter Adopts Baby

Florida's Ocala Fire and Rescue put up a Safe Haven Box, designed to give a mother somewhere to leave her child if she decided she couldn't handle motherhood. It was certainly safer for the baby than being abandoned somewhere dangerous. January 5th, a firefighter at the station opened the box and found Zoey inside, with a shoestring tied around her umbilical cord. He rushed her to the hospital to get checked out.

He and his wife had been trying to start a family, so they started adoption proceedings, and adopted Zoey in April.

"We really felt in our hearts that we wanted to let the birth mom know in some way, shape or form that she is safe, she is happy, and she is very loved," the adoptive mother added.

Teen Ballerina Inspires The World

Vitória Bueno Boche was born in Brazil, without arms, due to a congenital defect. When one of her doctors noticed that she seemed to dance everywhere instead of walking, she recommended that Vitória's mother take her to dance lessons. Even though her mother knew nothing about dance, she took her to Academia De Dança Andrea Falsarella to take part in a trial class. She was given a scholarship, and has continued to participate in classes ever since.

"Any exercise that I found difficult I insisted and did not give up," recalled Bueno, who uses her feet to do everything for herself including brushing her teeth.

She has appeared on a German show called Super Talent in 2021, and appeared on America's Got Talent All-Stars in 2023.

During an interview in 2021, Bueno said, "I am a role model for people, so I am always looking to improve. I never give up. This gives people a lot of strength."

Toddler Helps Save A Life

Three year old Maverick was outside with his grandfather Johnny when Johnny heard a crunch that sounded like a car accident. He ran down the street and discovered an elderly neighbor pinned between two cars. As Johnny ran to help her, Maverick was right behind him.

Johnny told Maverick to run home and get his father, Jonathan. Maverick ran home immediately and brought Jonathan back and the two men were able to get the lady out and into the hands of the first responders. "It's almost like God wanted us to be outside," the grandfather said, adding that Maverick had insisted they have some playtime. "Had we not, I think it would have been a very different outcome for Sylvia." She is recovering and is very grateful that they were outside that day.

In a social media post soon after, Jonathan shared the news report about his son and said it was a "Proud Dad Moment!" Maverick and his grandfather received awards from the city for their heroic actions.

Father & Son Participate In Triathlon

Jeff and Johnny have been told they are welcome to participate in the 2024 Ironman Competition in Kona, Hawaii, and they are both ecstatic, especially Johnny. His dream has been to compete in the triathlon, and they have competed many times. However, Johnny has Cerebral Palsy. According to the Mayo Clinic, Cerebral Palsy affects a person's movement, muscle tone, and posture.

Ironman consists of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike trip, plus a 26.2 mile run, all of which have to be completed in under 17 hours. Jeff swims, pulling a boat with Johnny in it, bikes with Johnny behind him, and runs pushing Johnny in a wheelchair.

"I'm not doing it because I love it. It wasn't like a dream of mine. This is Johnny's dream. I'm just giving him the legs and the power to do it," his father said during an interview in November. In 2022, the pair finished on their sixth try to complete a full Ironman triathlon in Maryland, and Johnny even walked across the finish line.

The hope is that they will complete the Ironman competition in Hawaii next year.

Golden Retrievers Find Homes

In Ohio, 17 golden retrievers were found after they had been dumped in a field. They have since all been adopted into loving homes, according to an official with the Animal Protection League of Mercer County. Two moms and 15 puppies were discovered, and may have come from three different litters.

The American Kennel Club (AKC) describes the golden retriever as "an exuberant Scottish gundog of great beauty" that is among the most popular breed of dogs in the nation. The breed is also considered to be loyal, intelligent, compassionate, and gentle, per Retriever Advice.

After the news story was on the air, the Animal Protection League received more than 200 applications to adopt a dog. The group stressed that all the dogs were very frightened, and each owner would have to "be on board with the work it'll take to socialize and train your new dog."

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: CrockPot Lasagna Soup

Blackberry Crisp

Serves: 6

INGREDIENTS:

Topping:

1 1/2 cup (150 g) old-fashioned or quick oats (I prefer the texture of quick oats here)

1 cup (142 g) all-purpose flour

1 cup (212 g) packed light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup (227 g) butter, cut into tablespoon-size pieces

Fruit:

8-10 cups (680-1020 g) fresh blackberries, washed and dried well

1/3 cup (71 g) granulated sugar

1/3 cup (47 g) all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (176.6 degrees C)

In a medium bowl, whisk together the oats, flour, brown sugar, and salt.

Add the butter and cut it into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender or a couple forks until the mixture is crumbly and the butter is evenly cut in. Your hands work the best! Set aside.

In another bowl, add the blackberries, sugar, flour and lemon juice. Stir until combined.

Lightly grease a 9X13-inch pan and spread the fruit mixture on the bottom.

Sprinkle the crisp topping evenly over the top.

Bake for 45 minutes until the fruit is bubbly and the crisp topping is golden (add time, if needed).

Remove from the oven and let the fruit crisp rest for 10-15 minutes before serving (the fruit layer will thicken as it cools).

Serve warm or at room temperature with ice cream (or lemon frozen yogurt!) or sweetened, whipped cream, if desired.

TIPS:

Can use fresh or frozen blackberries. If frozen, don't thaw the fruit before using and possibly increase the flour to 1/2 cup.

Use with a combination of berries, as long as the total amount of berries remains the same.

Dairy-Free Modification: Use any dairy-free butter sticks in place of regular butter. I don't recommend using a dairy-free tub spread, but the sticks (such as Earth Balance) work great.

Gluten-Free Modification: Be sure your oats are certified gluten-free and replace the all-purpose flour with a 1:1 gluten-free flour blend.

Storage: Store any leftover blackberry crisp in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 4-5 days. Reheat individual servings in the microwave in heat-safe bowls for 30 seconds to 1 minute before serving.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 357       Carbs: 50g.       Sodium: 151mg.       Fiber: 6g.       Protein: 4g.

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