mintCast 322 – The Linux Defender (mp3)

First up, in our Wanderings, I picked up a hard drive docking station, Tony tests the new Gnome, Moss fights overscanning, and Joe volunteers for Full Circle.

Then, in the news, Microsoft is working overtime, Docker gets a second wind, new Debian updates, big .org changes, and more.

In security, Microsoft brings Defender ATP to Linux, and another speculative execution vulnerability.

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First up, in our Wanderings, Leo picks up a hard drive docking station, Tony tests the new Gnome, Moss fights overscanning, and Joe volunteers for Full Circle — And last minute guest Oliver Kelly

Then, in the news, Microsoft is working overtime, Docker gets a second wind, new Debian updates, big .org changes, and more.

In security, Microsoft brings Defender ATP to Linux, and another speculative execution vulnerability.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

Leo

Got a new hard drive docking station.
Working on news hunting and gathering up some reliable sources to pull from. Some staff changes at Full Circle means that I’ll be gathering up a lot, if not all, of my news myself.
So far, so good. Plenty of things to cover, which means that the show here will pull from the same pot!

Tony H 

Continuing to work with the Ubuntu 19.10 Gnome install on the test laptop for Distrohoppers Digest, I’m actually starting to get used to some of the differences in DE layout. After the install of the Arc menu things are a little easier to navigate, and I am finding myself resorting to the keyboard for some of the things I would normally use the mouse/trackpad for.
Buying more Matchbox diecast models from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and getting some real bargains off Ebay. I have bought a drill for drilling out the rivets and have started to dismantle a few of the poorer condition models apart with a view to starting a restoration. I’ll let you know how it goes.
It’s a good job we postponed the next DH recording as I’ve got another funeral to attend which would have made me unavailable to record. Otherwise life is starting to stabilize a little with my health back on the up and feeling a little more like normal (whatever that is)     

Moss

I’ve been working slowly on my next review for Distrohoppers’ Digest. Some interesting things going on in Zorin OS.
I can’t seem to keep my power supply plug plugged into my Galago Pro 2. If it just moves a tiny fraction of a millimeter it stops charging. I’m not sure what to do about that, other than to keep an eye on the battery icon on my desktop.
I received a Raspberry Pi 3B with a Pimoroni clear case from Tony Hughes via George Doscher of Tech + Coffee (Thanks, Tony and George!). Handing this little item off to George at OggCamp saved Tony quite a few quid in postage, and George, I am told, refused to accept money from Tony for US postage. 
So I plugged in and started up the Pi 3B while my Galago Pro was running. The Pi was on HDMI-1 and the Galago Pro was on HDMI-3 on my TV/monitor. The Pi worked great, but when I switched the monitor over to HDMI-3, my Linux Mint was badly overscanned (about 20%) so I could barely use it. I changed resolution to 1480×720 and it worked, but of course everything was so much larger. I later discovered that it had the same effect on my Bodhi 5.1 installation, which was doubly weird and not as easy to fix (ARndR is much harder to work with on an overscanned screen than Displays is), but there was no effect at all on my installs of Pearl Desktop 8 (based on Ubuntu 19.04), Ubuntu Budgie 19.10, or Q4OS (Debian 10 Buster). Apparently it triggered something in 18.04 code *only*. The fix ultimately was to change the Galago Pro to HDMI-2, and it’s a good thing the TV has 3 HDMI inputs. The guys in the mintCast Telegram group tried to talk me into plugging in the Pi again to prove the concept, but I decided I had my system working and wanted to keep it that way.
Dale Miracle sent a nice donation, including a new Logitech M570 trackball. Thank you, Dale.  I now have all the tech stuff I can use at the present time, and still have two laptops for sale as well as a few other miscellaneous bits of gear.
Just before the show, I got the proverbial wild hair up my patootie to set up a new partition on my 1 Tb drive in the Galago Pro 2. So I did. GPartEd performed like a champ. I shrunk sda1 to 250 Gb, and then shrunk sda3 the other way — forcing GPartEd to copy files to a new location on the partition. While that is scary, and while they say it CAN destroy files, once again GPartEd performed like a champ and did everything without a hitch. And I learned something — I thought you could only have 3 Primary partitions on a drive, but I now have 4. Sda4 is now formatted and waiting for a new distro to be put on it. I’m going to go out on a limb and try Sabayon first.
Reading-wise we are on Empire of Jade, the second Temeraire book by Naomi Novik, moving slowly as we’ve had quite a few crises keeping me busy until it was too sleepy out to read.

Joe

Demon Accords by John Conroe

Once again an OK series.
Some of the downside of the series is the main character is just way too OP
But my main issue with it has to do with the reader.  I will have to pick up a copy of the book because through the first half of the series the reader makes all the speakers sound like they are asking a question.  It is a bit distracting.  
I will say that the reader greatly improved later on and I did end up liking the story especially with the introduction of some of the other main characters.

Jack Campbell – The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier [1-5]

Good read.  Didn’t realize it was a sequel series until I had started it
Will read the first series later on
Well read.  The reader does an excellent job of using different voices for different people

Talked to the guys from Full Circle about the article I wrote and they got back to me saying it might be a few issues before we do anything and that I would need to add some graphics or screen shots.  Also found a mistake I had made in the article I sent for review where I mention ssl forwarding instead of ssh -l for local port forwarding. Got that cleaned up and now I am adding images.

Also discussed a portion of the article on TLLTS

Local Lug

Spent a lot of time talking about security and VPNs.
The guy I was talking to sells electronic insurance and wants to protect clients and client data.
Discussed when using a vpn was a good choice and how it was secure
Someone brought in the pinebook pro

Really cool device

Had to work on my toilet last weekend

One of those things where the more you fix the more that breaks
The original problem is that the float arm started breaking so if you did not shut it off from the wall it would slowly continue running and draining down the overflow.  
We were holding off on fixing it because I am not a plumber
But then the shut off valve quit shutting all the way off so I figured to just fix the toilet since I already had the parts and then I work on the shut off valve later
Had to shut off the mains from the meter which was a pain.  That replacement was not too difficult other then making a bit of a watery mess but after I got it in place there was still a constant running.  Turns out someone had previously done a glue repair on the overflow and it was not holding up any longer. So had to go to walmart and get more tools and a new overflow valve.
In order to replace that part you need to take the tank off.  Problem is that one of the copper bolts was completely rusted stuck.  Well this means that I have to dremel it. I have a dremel but I am all out of cutting bits so I ended up needing to go back to walmart for more bits.  Got it cut out
Walmart doesn’t sell the replacement bolts.  So I got everything put back together except for that one bolt and wedged the valve so that the family could use water,  had to wait for home depot to open up so that I could get the bolts.  
Did get it all put back together but on the bolt I didn’t replace there is a small leak only when the tank first starts filling. So I will need to replace that and still need to replace the wall valve.

Oliver Kelly

https://medium.com/@pentacent/nginx-and-lets-encrypt-with-docker-in-less-than-5-minutes-b4b8a60d3a71
https://www.humankode.com/ssl/how-to-set-up-free-ssl-certificates-from-lets-encrypt-using-docker-and-nginx
http://0lzi.tk/episode-009
https://junocomputers.com/

THE NEWS: 

A private equity fund acquired the .ORG registry in toto

Internet Society (ISOC) has sold the .org registry Public Interest Registry (PIR) to private equity company Ethos Capital.
This will quite likely result in an increase in domain registration cost over time, as these private equity companies tend to really, really like money.
Richard Kirkendall, CEO of Namecheap filed a reconsideration request to ICANN over the price cap removal.

Microsoft Edge Coming to Linux

The new version of Edge that’s based on Chromium will be available January 15, 2020, but I suspect the Linux version will be a little further out.

Mirantis Acquired Docker Enterprise

Docker has been struggling to become profitable, so Kubernetes-as-a-Service company Mirantis has bought them up. 

PinePhone Brave Heart Edition is now available for pre-order
Debian 10.2 Released
Brave Browser 1.0 Announced

Based on chromium with the Google bits stripped out.
Brave tries to fix the problem of users wanting to block ads, and sites wanting ad revenue.
Brave attempts to block ads on behalf of the users, display their own “safe” ads in your notifications area of your desktop, and then pay you for viewing those ads. Something like a penny per ad view.
With 1.0, iOS is added to the list of devices that can acquire the Basic Attention Token, which completes the spectrum of supported devices.

OnlyOffice Available on Flathub
ElementaryOS Now Supports Flatpak

SECURITY UPDATE: 

Microsoft Defender ATP is coming to Linux in 2020
New Intel Exploit

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Next Show: Nov 17, 2019 – 2PM central time

WRAP-UP:

Joe – www.Tllts.org www.linuxlugcast.com MeWe [email protected]
Bo – undercastnetwork.com
Moss – Triad Bardic College, Peaceful Hippo, MeWe, music on Bandcamp and all over YouTube (search for Moss Bliss, ignore the young black South African gospel singer), [email protected], [email protected]
Tony Hughes – HPR – http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338

Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/
Twitter @TonyH1212, [email protected] [email protected]

Tony Watts – [email protected], Echoes of Savages (band)
Josh – [email protected], [email protected], edublocks.org and @all_about_code on Twitter
Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, and Full Circle Weekly News
Oliver Kelly – olzi.tk, @0lzi

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
Archive.org for hosting our audio files
The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>