Message to Scientology: January 21, 2008

It was 10 years ago this week, Anonymous posted its mission on YouTube entitled "Message to Scientology", and a press release declaring its war on Scientology. On both the Church of Scientology (CoS) and the Religious Technology Center.

It was on January 27, 2008, Mark Bunker uploaded a 9-minute to Anonymous that changed everthing. It was the morning Anonymous grew legs. His basic message on his youtube video was, the best way to expose Scientology’s abuses was by spreading information forthrightly and honestly in the real world. This won Bunker a new nickname: Wise Beard Man

PiMP OS: Portable Instant Mining Platform

PiMP OS or Portable Instant Mining Platform is a dedicated Linux-based mining distribution intended for GPU and ASIC mining without the need to rely on Windows.

Home / Shop / PiMP OS / PiMP OS

According to the website, GetPimp has been downloaded over 155,394 times and has 4098 Miner.farm Users. Users will mainly interact the Miner.farm web application to monitor mining hardware and allow users to control them.  The Pimp OS costs $30 and requires users to have a hard drive or SSD in their computer, since USB drives are not supported. 

2 Weeks with Steam Link

I have heard a lot of things across the web about vales steam link. So I was very skeptical of the device, expecting it to bog down my host system, have bad video/audio quality, or at least be difficult to control the computer through. I can report that I haven't had many of the problems others have reported. Now I do game only on Linux PCs so my experience is probably going to be a little different than someone using this on a Win 7 or WIn 10 PC. This is not a Windows vs. Linux comparison, however, you'll find comparisons elsewhere on the web.


The Steam Link is not a gaming console...

Steam Link is basically a streaming box, that allows you to stream games from your PC to your TV. It is powered only by a SoC Marvell DE3005-A1 ARMv7 processor at 1.0 GHz. Instead of relying on powerful hardware to render your games, it relies on your gaming PC or laptop to do the heavy lifting. My host system is an AMD RYZEN 3 1200 paired with a Radeon™ RX 560. Steam Link is very tiny and gives off less heat than a digital cable box. The Steam Link software is running a custom Linux firmware based on kernel 3.8 and glibc 2.19.

Note: Steam Link devices will only boot with a kernel signed by Valve. If you attempt to replace the kernel with an unsigned binary you will void your warranty and render your Steam Link unbootable.

It supports most USB or Bluetooth controllers and has 3 USB 2.0 ports. The Steam link works with The Steam Controller along with a DS4, DS3, Xbox 360 with the wireless receiver, Logitech F310 without any special hacks or tricks to make it work. Most wireless keyboard/mouse units work just fine with the Link. Plus most Bluetooth 4.0 hardware works with the Link. The Link is capable of 802.11ac wireless or wired networking.


How to step your Steam Link

Step one.

Turn on your home PC, launch Steam, and log in.You will need to config or turn off your firewall for the steam link and your PC to talk to each other. Many Linux distros have the firewall turned on by default.A firewall can be the single most important tool to manage the security of your Linux machine and network. You can write iptables rules yourself, or download something like Gufw to take some of the pain out of controlling your firewall.

Step two.

Power your Steam Link with the power adapter, plug into a display device (HDMI), and connect to your home network. If your router is not is too far away the stem link being wireless worked for me. but for the best experience, they recommend using a wired connection. For the router, I used A NETGEAR -  Nighthawk AC2300 and a TP-Link TL-PA9020P powerline adapter kit.

Step three.

Plug a controller, mouse, or keyboard into any available USB port on your Link. I used a black web wireless touch keyboard. And a rock candy genric wired Xbox controller.

Step four.

Turn on steam link, choose your language, make sure its connected your network, You’ll see a list of computers on your network that is capable of streaming to the Steam Link after picking one enter a 4-digit code on that PC. There are three stream quality settings—fast, balanced, and beautiful—and I opt for beautiful.

With the press of a button, you will go into Big Picture mode. As you can see below it looks nice on a tv with a game controller. At times I run my computer desktop on my TV. When not using Steam, I simply "minimize big picture mode" then I can watch Youtube, Vimeo,  Netflix/etc on myTV.

Big Picture Mode.

Playing Dust: An Elysian Tail streamed from my computer to my TV via Wi-Fi felt as if I were playing it directly on my Xbox 360 controller hardwired to that TV.

Left for dead played really well. The picture quality was pretty great, and I rarely had any dropped frames. Trying this through a wired connection with a wired streaming PC was just utterly seamless as well.

Note: I haven't played any competitive games like CS:GO or Rocket League on it yet.


Things to remember

Video quality will depend on your home network. If you have a slower connection, expect to see compression and artifacting, as well as some input latency. Both Steam Link and your PC should be on the same home network (LAN). Remote access from an external LAN to your PC is not supported officially by Steam Link. I used NETGEAR - Nighthawk AC2300  Wi-Fi (R7000P) Router and a TP-Link TL-PA9020P powerline adapter kit.

It is best to stay away from 720p televisions. The Steam Link interface will be too big and can create overscan issues. Now Valve’s website states the Steam Link works with 720p televisions, but stay away to avoid the headaches.

Since the Steam Link simply mirrors what’s on your PC, there are times when Steam Big Picture may drop off sometime and you see your GNU-Linux desktop. So always keep a keyboard/mouse hooked up. I just used a black web wireless touch keyboard.

The steam link works with The Steam Controller along with a DS4, DS3, Xbox 360 with the wireless receiver, Logitech F310 without any special hacks or tricks to make it work.

It really does matters more on Linux desktop than on Windows desktop what type of video card you buy. Nvidia's proprietary driver is still better in the world of GNU+Linux. Some games like Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel are listed as NOT supported by AMD and Intel chipsets. So when they say cards or drivers aren't supported, it just means the configuration doesn't live up to American video game developer and publisher standards, NOT that they won't work. RECOMMENDED: Nvidia 1000 series graphics cards for Steam Linux gaming.

The Steam Link will not support 4K at 120fps on a TV. It supports neither 120fps nor 4k output. So to be clear even if you bought a 4K TV, there is no way for the Steam Link to output a 4K or 120fps signal to it. You only get 1080p resolution at 60 FPS.

The Steam Link is not a gaming console. It is no on/off switch on the unit itself.

Nvidia showing leadership

To Combat Shortage, Nvidia Asks Retailers to Limit Graphics Card Orders
Nvidia asks retailers to only let shoppers buy two graphics cards at once, rather than selling them everything they have (for mining cryptocurrency, of course).

By David Murphy
January 21, 2018, 3:19PM EST

more here...

Nighthawk R7000P AC2300

I've been using the Nighthawk ROUTER- AC2300 for the past few months and figured and figured I'd write down my thoughts.

Model: R7000P 

NIGHTHAWK SMART WIFI ROUTER

Hardware specs:

• CPU: Broadcom BCM4708C0 dual-core ARM Cortex A9 @ 1 GHz
• Ram:256 MB
• Flash:128 MB
• Radio:2.4GHz  BCM4360KMLG 3x3 11abgnac SoC  Skyworks SKY85319-11 2.4 GHz front end (x3)
• Radio:5GHz BCM4365E 3x3 11abgnac SoC w/ MU-MIMO- QPF4519 Quorvo 5 GHz front end (x3)
• Switch: In BCM4708C0

It is definitely not the fastest router on the market but it has most of the same features that routers that cost twice as much have. So I think that for this price it's an excellent value with plenty of features, speed and range. What caught my eye was the fact it was built with gaming, streaming,  mobile devices in mind and  works with Amazon Alexa & the Google Assistant. My favorite feature of this router has to be MU-MIMO technology. This new feature is not always available in more expensive routers which sets this router far ahead of it's competition.MU-MIMO allows multiple users and multiple devises connect to the router at the same time and each one is a priority and maintains full speed and range without sharing bandwidth with others.The Nighthawk AC2300 Smart WiFi Router has Beamforming+, built-in high-powered amplifiers, and external antennas. It’s fast and reliable for me at both short and long ranges. It does a great job of distributing a stronger signal into the back bed rooms, so the XBox 1 can get apps and I can watch YouTube and Netflix. There are 7 bright LED lights to show a good/normal signal and it works well right out of the box, with no hard tweaking required.

For parents it has "Circle with Disney" It is a way for parents to manage content and time online, on any connected device. There is  smart parental controls you can easily  set time limits on daily internet time for apps, and websites or even pause internet by device or by user with the press of a button. 

I connected my new Steam Link to the Nighthawk. I picked the 5 GHz WiFi band over the  2.4 GHz band. The 5 GHz band dose have a shorter range, but there is less interference from  neighbors and other wireless devices. I got really good resuilts. I will go into my steam link exprices at later date. I would say the only draw back to this router is that it is really big and the antennas require a lot of space. I would definitely recommend this router to anyone with a larger home. The Nighthawk has plenty of power to cover large spaces as far I can see.

Things to remember

All wireless routers have AC in their name, followed by a number. AC naming convention doesn’t tell you the real-life speed of the wireless network that you get when buying one WiFi router or another.

MU-MIMO works only in the 5GHz Wi-Fi band. There may not be many devices that can take advantage of MU-MIMO  today, plus if you live in a small apartment or do most of your browsing from the same room, MU-MIMO won’t provide any extra benefits over a non MU-MIMO router.

Wireless vs. Wired connection – a wired Ethernet connection may eliminate the possibility of wireless interference.

Differences in hardware phones and tablets have less sophisticated WiFi antennas than say a laptop or PC.

The strength of the Nighthawk R7000P wireless signal will be affected by distance, and walls, floors, metal, and electronic equipment. So make sure that the router is in open, in well-ventilated areas, as its performance will be reduced if it is overheating.

The 802.11a/n standard allows for further range, the 5.8Ghz frequency is quickly blocked by solid objects, severely cutting down your range. 

Gufw

A firewall can be the single most important thing one needs to manage the security of their GNU/Linux machine and network. GNU/Linux has a well known powerful firewall called iptables. iptables is a command-line firewall utility that uses policy chains to allow or block traffic. Setting up iptables firewall can be hard for someone coming from a pure Windows world where you can have a GUI to point and click to do what you need, it can feel almost heart pounding to move around the command line. Plus many distros like Ubuntu have the firewall turned off by default and there is no easy way to start it up. Getting the firewall controlled like any other services requires writing a few scripts, hardly an everyday task for a common user. There are GUI front-ends for iptables. Gufw is a simple one to look at.

Gufw is an open source application that provides users with a very easy graphical user interface (GUI) for iptables command-line interface, which lets anyone manage Linux kernel’s packet filtering system. To enable the firewall, all you have to do is check the Enabled button and the default will be set to Deny for incoming traffic and Allow for outgoing traffic.Gufw supports common tasks such as allowing or blocking pre-configured, like Plex, Dropbox, steam, common p2p, or individual port(s), and many others.

Gufw's graphical user interface is written using the GTK+ GUI toolkit and Glade. It is compatible with many desktop environments, including Budgie, Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXQt, MATE, Openbox, Xfce and Deepin.

Insecurity at the heart of modern CPU: Spectre and Meltdown

On 2 January 2018, news broke of about security flaws in ALL modern processors. Known inside the chip and software industry since the middle of 2017. But Linux developers are not happy about either problem. They were not kept in the loop, and they had to rush patches out to mitigate the security holes So the first fix left Ubuntu users with new problems. Some were finding their Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus unbootable after installing the Linux kernel update (linux-image-4.4.0-108-generic) containing the Meltdown fix.

I think Intel needs to really needs to admit that they have issues instead of trying to spin everything. Why didn't they make sure speculation doesn't happen across protection domains? I mean are Intel engineers knowingly selling flawed products to the public? And one of the most confusing parts for me is that there are two vulnerabilities that affect similar things. Meltdown patches are available for Linux systems but this Spectre?  It may be impossible to guard against it entirely without replacing hardware.

I'm not an expert on SoCs or CPUs so this post is more of a rant.

Intel Says Chip-Security Fixes Leave PCs No More Than 10% Slower

Intel Says Chip-Security Fixes Leave PCs No More Than 10% Slower

By Ian King

January 10, 2018, 9:21 PM CST

Intel Corp., trying to defuse concern that fixes to widespread chip security vulnerabilities will slow computers, released test results late Wednesday showing that personal computers won’t be affected much and promised more information on servers.

more here

Meltdown et Spectre

Meltdown et Spectre : 7 questions pour comprendre les failles critiques sur les processeurs

Julien Cadot Julien Cadot - hier à 09:12 - Tech


2018 commence fort pour la sécurité informatique. Meltdown et Spectre sont deux bugs critiques situés au niveau du processeur des appareils. Ordinateurs, serveurs et smartphones peuvent être touchés. On vous explique tout.

Le 3 janvier 2018, de premières informations commençaient à sortir sur des failles de sécurité touchant les processeurs Intel. Le 4 janvier, la situation commence à s’éclaircir et nous en savons un peu plus sur ce qu’il s’est passé du côté des microprocesseurs, soit l’unité de calcul au cœur de votre ordinateur.

continuer

Meltdown and Spectre

Meltdown and Spectre: Here’s what Intel, Apple, Microsoft, others are doing about it
Intel, Microsoft, ARM, and others have responded. We dig in.

BY PETER BRIGHT - 1/5/2018, 7:52 AM

more here

The return of Linspire? : Not Quite

Sometime ago PC/OpenSystems purchased the rights to the commercial Linspire distribution and its community branch, Freespire. For 2018 it seems that PC/OpenSystems is bringing back these two, Linux distributions with up to date apps such as such as ext4 and Linux kernel 4.10.0-42. The new releases, Linspire 7.0 and Freespire 3.0, are based on Ubuntu 16.04. Ten years ago Linspire 6.0 and Freespire 2.0, were based on Ubuntu 7.04.

I tried LinspireOS, like its predecessors, it is both an install disc and a live DVD. But to be clear, LinspireOS is NOT Linspire five-0. Linspire 5.0, was a turning point in the Linux world.When you logged into Linspire 5 you were presented with an attractive desktop and with its icons. Its user interface was a showstopper, as its eye candy impressed along with its applications. Linspire 5 in-house  applications included Lphoto (a digital camera/photo manager), Lsongs (a media player, Internet radio, media player) and Linspire Internet Suite (a slightly modified and rebranded Mozilla Suite.) Unlike  Linspire 7.0, Linspire Five-0 came with AMD (ATI) and Nvidia graphics drivers by default.

No KDE Plasma Desktop.

Why would PC/OpenSystems choose Xfce over KDE for default desktop? In many ways, KDE Plasma (K Desktop Environment) is very similar in appearance to Microsoft Windows, and Windows users will likely feel very much at home when using KDE Plasma Desktop. Yes, Xfce is less resource-hungry than KDE, Xfce is a great choice for 15-year-old computers. I have ran KDE neon distro on a  2nd generation Intel Mobile Celeron 847 which is an ultra-low voltage dual-core processor. The 17 Watt Thermal Design Power of that CPU runs just fine. How many people do you think are running that type of underpowered hardware in an enterprise setting.  We all know they are using at least an i3 something-whatever-generation CPU. Outside of the Deepin desktop, KDE is the most visually pleasing of all the Linux GUIs. It is much more polished in appearance and has more point-and-click options than Xfce.

No CNR, or One-Click N Run, to be found.

Linspire's CNR offered a large database of Linux programs (think of Android or Apple app store) that was designed to serve as a GUI-based, user-accessible means of downloading and installing various applications, both free and proprietary.The service relied on a client application to work in concert with Debian's APT and dpkg to resolve dependencies and install files.CNR also included a set of Click and Buy (CNB) software, which included many commercial applications like Crossover Linux and Star Office.There is nothing like CNR in ANY Linux distro today.

I'm not saying that LinspireOS (2017) is anything bad to use. Only just making sure that those who are longtime Linspire fans understand that this is NOT the Linspire or Freespire form the early 2000s. PC/OpenSystems merely purchased the rights to the commercial Linspire name. Linspire 5 helped bring much needed commercial attention to Linux when individuals and companies were looking for an alternative to Windows 2000 or even Windows XP. This LinspireOS (2017) will never come close to doing that.

My thoughts on Linspire Five-0 back in 2006 here