Table of Contents

Welcome From The Chief Editor

Remembering tuxlink: A Tribute

Testimonial: All Roads Lead To PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Sloppy Joe Casserole

A Lightweight Countdown Timer For All Occasions, Desktops

PCLinuxOS Forum & Friends Spotlight: The Chief

mynvidia-installer: Simplifying Nvidia Driver Management

ICYMI: 3 Million "Smart Toothbrushes" Hacked With Malware, Used For DDoS Attack

GIMP Tutorial: Playing With G'MIC

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: Chili Mac Soup

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk...

As we go through life, we “adopt” sayings and quotes that, in some respects, help define our view on the world. And, as we age, those sayings take on new meanings as the world around us changes and evolves.

We all have those “adopted” sayings and quotes that we're fond of. So, here are some of my personal favorites.

First up is “A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” To be perfectly honest, that has been one of my favorites ever since I was a child. Just because you didn't plan ahead doesn't mean that I should have to hurry up or even alter my course to adapt to your lack of planning. In essence, at least to me, it means that we all have our roles to play in life, and it takes everyone doing their part for the end goal to be realized. When someone doesn't “pull their weight,” then it puts an extra burden on everyone else.

Portrait of Dad, by Lexi (age 7)

Another of my favorite sayings isn't necessarily an original. I “borrowed” it from comedian Ron White, of Blue Collar Comedy Tour fame. It's “You can't fix stupid.” Look around, and you'll find examples of this all around you. It's things that, as you look around, you just go “what were they thinking?” Examples of this are endless. One of the more annoying versions of this happens where I live. They'll repave a road that has needed repaving for some time. Two weeks later, they come along to replace a water line or a gas line or some other line running under the road. Or maybe they're just digging up the newly repaved road because they can. Who knows. But, when they're finished digging up the newly paved road, performing the repairs or upgrades, and then patching their hole, that road is in barely better condition than it was before they repaved it. Repeatedly, the same thought goes through my mind every time they do this around here. You really couldn't have done those repairs or upgrades BEFORE you (finally) repaved the road? Now, we're all stuck with this shoddy repair and patch job for the next 10-20 years, before you come back around to repave it again. Of course, each time, the cycle repeats itself.

That one leads into another of my favorite sayings. “Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.” Just because you CAN do something doesn't necessarily mean that you SHOULD do something. Some things are better left alone. Some things just can't be improved upon. Other things should just be left alone, because they're already as good as they can be. CAN you go 100 MPH down the interstate during rush hour? Maybe. Probably. But SHOULD you? Probably not. Bad things are going to happen. Software developers are especially prone to not understanding this. Just because you CAN change things around, even though they are working fine, does it mean you SHOULD? If you think about it, I'm sure you'd have no trouble finding other examples of this idiom in the world around you.

The last one of my favorite sayings I'm going to divulge is S.O.S. Did you know, at least in my vocabulary, S.O.S. has four different meanings? Of course, most of us are fully aware of its original meaning: Save Our Ship. But, in my vocabulary, it has taken on three additional “definitions.” One is “stuck on stupid.” No matter how hard you try, you just can't budge a person from the path they are on. Another is “same ol' shiitake mushrooms.” Just remove “mushrooms” and shorten the type of mushroom referenced, and you get the full rendering. That doesn't really need an explanation, now does it? The last one is “shiny object syndrome.” My wife has this. She's VERY EASILY distracted by anything glittery, sparkly, or shiny. Thankfully, she's really down to earth, and doesn't clamor for the expensive shiny things. Her S.O.S. is easily triggered by less expensive glittery/sparkly/shiny things, and that's satisfying enough for her.

Of course, since I spent the bulk of my employment working in acute care hospitals, I have to admit that most healthcare workers have their own little idioms and phrases that help them cope with the frequent intense situations they are faced with. But those are specific to the job, and not easily understood by those not having to deal with those types of situations. Some of them sound crass and insensitive, but they exist to help insulate and protect the mental welfare of the healthcare worker from the constant bombardment of their normal sensitivities by often surreal and traumatic situations faced on almost a daily basis.

Don't be judgmental. I'm sure everyone reading this right now has their own collection of sayings and quotes that ring true for them. Life is like that. We all have unique experiences going through what we collectively call life. Some are good, others not so good, and yet others that are just downright awful, terrible, and/or painful. It's just part of what makes us each a unique individual. We are NOT the Borg, in the sense that we don't all have the same experiences, and we all don't have the same goals. We ARE the Borg, however, when it comes to striving to attain the best outcome for the collective good of all. Or, at least, we should be. Isn't that what Plato called “utopia?” Yes, a lofty goal, but ultimately unattainable. Thus, all we can do is strive to get as close to “utopia” as we possibly can.

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This month's cover image is created by AI, specifically Google Bard Gemini. Since Google Bard Gemini (Google changed the name from Bard to Gemini early in February, after I had created the March cover image) was “opened up” to the general public recently for image creation, I just had to give it a try. I used the criteria of “bull running through the town square of Spring, Texas with the PCLinuxOS logo hanging off of the right horn” to create the image. Google Bard Gemini came up with everything, except the PCLinuxOS logo. I had to “replace” the unrecognizable logo Bard had hanging from the bull's horn with a PCLinuxOS logo in Gimp.

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

Remembering tuxlink: A Tribute

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Sadly, we lost a much beloved member of our PCLinuxOS family on February 20, 2024. Michael A. Duffy, who sometimes went by Mick and more commonly known as tuxlink, passed away after a brief hospitalization. He leaves behind a wife, Therese, a daughter, Shannon, and a son, Michael. tuxlink was 65 years old, and lived in La Verne, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.

2016

2019

tuxlink joined the PCLinuxOS forum on May 14, 2015. Over the years, he made almost 1,700 posts in the forum. He also wrote several articles for The PCLinuxOS Magazine, as well as being featured in this magazine's PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight article series. His screenshots were frequently featured in the magazine's Screenshot Showcase most months, due to the high quality of those desktop screenshots.

He was a frequent visitor to the pclinuxos-magazine and #chimpbox chat rooms on PCLOS-Talk. There were many conversations covering a very wide range of topics. He probably spent most of his time in the #chimpbox chat room, where he and YouCanToo (a.k.a. The_CrankyZombie) spent many hours building and nurturing their friendship. He and YouCanToo became great friends, and they would also talk either via text messages or phone calls, as well as in the chat room. One of the things that brought tuxlink and YouCanToo together was their mutual interest in photography.

tuxlink was born in Dublin, Ireland, and in his own words, “In the late 1980's, I literally won the opportunity to go live and work in the United States of America. In 2005, I became a Naturalized Citizen of the United States.”

He worked for 22 years as a postal carrier for the United States Postal Service in Southern California, until issues with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) forced him into early medical retirement.

tuxlink was a frequent visitor to the PCLinuxOS forum, and he doled out assistance frequently to users having issues. He also took a great deal of pride in creating many PCLinuxOS themed wallpapers, and then sharing them with his forum family. But, he is also well known for his humor, injecting humor into many situations and conversations at exactly the right time. He timed his humor injections no less skillfully than the world's best standup comic.

2020

2020

Any time anyone interacted with tuxlink, they were left with feeling like they had a friend for life. His laid back demeanor and constant sharp wit, coupled with his impeccable and unpredictable sense of humor, meant that you NEVER knew what turn the conversation(s) would take next.

As the editor of this magazine, I read a LOT of posts in the PCLinuxOS forum. I never saw tuxlink make hurtful, angry or malicious comments. Instead, I was always thinking that if I had lived closer, I would have *loved* to hang out with him for a while. I was certain, in my mind, that every moment had the possibility of being an epic and uncharted adventure that would be remembered for a very long time. One of my last interactions with tuxlink was asking him for a picture of Texstar he had “embellished,” for Texstar's birthday salute in the February 2024 issue of the magazine (the one with Texstar's birthday cake on his “portable” table). As always, the conversation with tuxlink was cheerful, friendly and humorous.

tuxlink's charisma touched everyone, all the way to the “top dog” of PCLinuxOS. Upon learning of tuxlink's passing, Texstar said, “Tuxlink was such a positive force on the forum. I will never forget him. I loved his humor. His artwork was outstanding. He was just a beautiful soul with a kind heart.”

Meemaw's favorite part of the Family Spotlight interview was the “How Old Are You” section, which illustrated his sense of humor. In typical tuxlink fashion, you never get a straight answer until the very end of his answer to the question. In a nutshell, tuxlink tried to find or create fun in everything he did.

Being close friends with tuxlink, YouCanToo wrote out his sentiments to his recently departed friend:

To my Friend

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat
Go raibh an ghaoth go brách ag do chúl
Go lonraí an ghrian go te ar daghaidh
Go dtite an bháisteach go mín ar do pháirceanna
Agus go mbuailimid le chéile arís,
Go gcoinní Dia i mbos A láimhe thú.

May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and, until we meet again,
may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

Thank you for always being there and being my friend. I will forever miss you, more than any words can say.

People like tuxlink don't come around very often in our lives. And, when they do, you must sit up and take notice. Without you ever realizing it, they touch your life in ways that you just can't comprehend or appreciate at the time. Rest in peace, our dear friend. You will be missed … a lot!

Testimonial: All Roads Lead To PCLinuxOS

by hunter0one

I'm a lot younger than most of the community here, so my first experience with Linux was when my uncle suggested that I try it in 2016. Soon I would flash my first distro onto a USB and put it on an old Toshiba Satellite. That distro was Linux Mint. I immediately fell in love, especially with that skeuomorphic Mint-X theme at the time! However, there were so many things I wanted to use that weren't on LM at the time, so I would soon install Manjaro on a newer laptop that my uncle had given me. I would hop around between Manjaro, Kubuntu, and even Lubuntu (when it was still LXDE), but I eventually came back to Manjaro because it was cutting edge. That all changed when an update to systemd broke Manjaro and Arch Linux for a bunch of people, including myself. At the time, I didn't know how to recover from that, so I lost everything that was on there.

It turned me sour against Arch and systemd because this supposedly user-friendly init turned out to be not so user-friendly, and not even mentioning how long it took to start up and shut down. From then on for me, it was systemd-free, more stable distros, such as Void Linux, Devuan, and Slackware.

It was around this time that a transition happened where they started to drop ConsoleKit in favor of elogind, an extracted version of systemd-logind. I started running into all sorts of weirdness when I used to be able to use a desktop application with no problems, for instance Network Manager and file managers would quit working because somewhere down the line they were wanting elogind. Even DBus would rely on elogind, and this meant you could no longer use what was working fine forever because the developers decided to bend the knee and adopt another part of systemd. I ended up getting sick of Linux, and switched to FreeBSD for a while. This gave me that feeling I used to have with Linux before systemd took over. The problem was that FreeBSD doesn't have the kind of hardware support as Linux, nor does it seem like it will for a long time.

I would hop back and forth to Linux, but even on the supposedly "systemd-free" distros like Devuan, removing elogind meant compromising the entire desktop. You couldn't use Network Manager or have a thumb drive automatically show up in the file manager, and trying to package my own stuff for Devuan and Slackware to mitigate this made me tear my hair out. I would start to gain a passion for packaging at this point, though, and I've almost evolved into full Linux wizardry.

Then I discovered PCLinuxOS when looking for distros that are truly systemd-free, and one that is just cutting edge enough to not break down similar to Void. I was blown away with it and can't believe I never heard of something that's been around for longer than most of the distros I used. I can't even think of any chat room or forum outside where I've heard people talk about it, and it's a shame because I would love to see the future success of this distro. Also, I really enjoyed making RPM packages, especially compared to debs or Xbps. For the past year or so I would still distro hop a little just out of habit because I've done it for so long (mainly out of curiosity of how everything works under the hood), but I think I've settled on PCLOS until I either make a distro of my own or FreeBSD gets better hardware/networking support. PCLOS is the joy I had when I first installed Linux, sane packaging and none of that systemd bullcrap. I really feel like anything is possible here. That's my testimony.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Sloppy Joe Casserole

Cornbread Topped Sloppy Joe Casserole

Serves: 6

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb lean (at least 80%) ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce*
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar*
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce*
1 teaspoon yellow mustard*
1 box (8.5 oz) Jiffy™ Corn Muffin Mix
1/3 cup milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 egg
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (4 oz)

DIRECTIONS:

Heat oven to 350° F. In a 10-inch nonstick skillet, cook beef and onion over medium-high heat 5 to 7 minutes, stirring frequently, until brown; drain. Stir in tomato sauce, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce and mustard. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring frequently, until boiling; keep warm.

In a small bowl, stir corn bread mix, milk, oil and egg just until moistened (batter will be lumpy).

Spoon hot beef mixture into an 8-inch square (2-quart) glass baking dish. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup of the cheese. Spoon corn bread batter evenly over top.

Bake 25 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the topping comes out clean. Sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup cheese over the hot casserole.

TIPS:

Make sure the Sloppy Joe mixture is piping hot when you spoon the batter on top, so that the corn bread bakes all the way through.

Serve with a tossed green salad.

* Substitute the tomato sauce, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce and yellow mustard with a 15oz can of Manwich Sloppy Joe sauce.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 430, Carbs: 38g, Sodium: 1070mg, Fiber: 4g, Protein: 23g

A Lightweight Countdown Timer For All Occasions, Desktops

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

When I was putting the finishing touches on my standalone graphic file resizing utility/script that appeared in the February 2024 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine, I stumbled across an intriguing “sample” script in the replies on the StackExchange website, by StackExchange user ilkkachu. To be honest, when I'm writing scripts, I pretty much wear out the StackExchange and StackOverflow websites. Not only have they gotten me out of jams with my fledgling bash knowledge, but I also sometimes run across things that give me ideas.

ilkkachu had posted a sample script showing how to execute another command after a command reaches a predefined “timeout” period. It got me thinking that I could turn his example into an excellent and lightweight countdown timer.

I don't know about you, but having a simple countdown timer on my computer is something that I can use frequently. Let's say you put some beer battered fish filets in the oven, and you have to turn them in eight minutes, and then cook them another seven minutes on the other side. Hey, I'm dealing with “real life” here. My kids love the beer battered fish filets we buy in a box from the grocery store.

So after putting the beer battered fish filets in the oven, I set the timer on the oven, which isn't nearly loud enough. I then come to check my email on my computer, two rooms away in the living room. There's a good chance I *won't* hear the feeble timer alert on the stove. So, I could just set a timer on my computer that goes off shortly before the one on the oven (I just subtract a minute). When the timer on the computer goes off, I know it's time to head into the kitchen, where the stove timer will be going off very soon.

Or, let's say I need to leave the house to be somewhere else in four hours and 45 minutes. I can set a timer to remind me, so I don't arrive late. Or, you can set a timer to remind yourself to take a break after a certain amount of time has elapsed.

I think you get the idea. The possibilities are endless.

Sure, I know there are “other” timers available on PCLinuxOS, but what's the fun in that? Plus, I set out to create a countdown timer that works reliably, with a minimum of fuss, and that has a very small footprint. It's probably NOT the smallest in the world, but at only 1.5KiB in size, it is feature packed, easy to use, not a resource/memory hog, and is quite small. I also can't grow my bash skills by running other people's programs, either.

When I saw ilkkachu's script sample, I just knew I could “enhance” it WAY beyond his intended use. To be honest, it was fairly easy to add Zenity dialog boxes to it to expand its capabilities, and I got to learn how to convert from seconds to hours, minutes and seconds … and even days. Yes! More chances to work with “if then else” loops. Yes! More chances to expand my bash scripting skills!

Countdown Timer Script

Unlike many of my other scripts that I've written about in the pages of The PCLinuxOS Magazine over the years, this one is NOT intended to be run from a Thunar Custom Action on Xfce. Instead, this script is meant to be run from a launcher on your desktop, from a launcher on one of your panels, or launched from the command line. And, since it's a bash script that uses Zenity dialog boxes, it should have no problems running on any desktop environment. Save the script where you normally save your bash scripts. As usual, strip the “.txt” file extension off of the file, and mark the script file as being executable.

I've called the script “countdown-timer.sh,” and as usual, you can download it from the magazine's website. Or, you can type it in, if that's what you choose. Before we get into how to run it, below is the script. I'm showing it here as an image, so you can also see the line numbers in my text editor.

So, let's talk about the script.

In Lines 4 through 8, the user is given the opportunity to enter the number of hours they want to set for the countdown timer. You can put whatever number you want here, but keep in mind it makes no sense to (nor can you) go backwards in time … at least yet. The number you enter is converted to seconds.

Lines 10 through 18 allows the user to enter the number of minutes they want to set for the countdown timer. You can put whatever number you want here, as long as it's between 0 and 59. If you try to put in a number outside that range, you will be presented with a warning dialog box, and the script will exit without setting up the countdown timer. Again, the number you enter is converted to seconds.

Then, Lines 20 through 23 allow the user to enter the number of seconds they want to set for the countdown timer. You literally can put whatever number you want in here, since everything else is getting converted to seconds, anyway. Entering 75 as the number of seconds would be the same as entering 1 minute and 15 seconds.

In Line 25, the value of the number of seconds from the hours, minutes and seconds dialog entry boxes is added together, and stored in the variable named “timeout.”

Next, starting in Line 27, I set up a “for” loop. That loop uses the variable “i,” and is initialized to start counting at zero. Each time through the loop, the “i” variable is incremented by one, and continues as long as “i” is less than or equal to “timeout.”

With Line 28, I use the “printf” command to store the formatting for the text that shows how much time is remaining in the variable named “timeleft,” and convert the number of seconds back into hours, minutes and seconds. The “printf” command has far more options for formatting text than a plain “echo” command has. Plus, it's just easier to relate to the remaining amount of time in that format (hh:mm:ss), without having to do mental acrobatics to convert, for example, 347 seconds back into minutes (which is five minutes and 47 seconds). Line 29 uses the “echo” command to update the text displayed in the progress dialog box, while Line 30 sets up the incremental display of the progress dialog box, which serves as a visual indicator for the timer. Finally, Line 31 tells the bash script to sleep for one second, and then loops back through the “for” loop again, until the conditions are met to exit the “for” loop.

Lines 32 and 33 display the progress dialog box. Lines 35 through 43 set up an “if then else” loop, with another “if then else” loop nested within it. If the timer reaches zero, the progress dialog box is automatically closed, and then an “alarm” is sounded, via the “play” command. The “play” command, as used here, has the volume set to 50% volume (the –v 0.50 parameter) for the user's chosen sound file. If you want it louder or quieter, change the value after the “–v.” Think of the volume level as a percentage, so 50% volume is 0.5, 70% volume is 0.7, and 100% volume is 1.0. For my use, 50% volume is perfect to get my attention, and avoids the distortion and clipping of the sound file by playing it at grotesque volumes that will blast you out of your chair.

What good is a timer of any sort that doesn't alert you when the time has elapsed? If the user either forgets to supply a sound file as a command line argument, or if the user has mistyped the path and file name in the command line argument, the script defaults to a sound file that all users should already have installed on their system. This is what the nested “if then else” statement from Lines 36 through 40 does. The “inside” (or nested) “if then else” statement checks to see if the specified file exists. If the file exists, the user's chosen sound file is played. If not, the “fall back” sound file is played. So, instead of just quietly going away, a fall back/backup sound file is played at a volume of 90% (the -v 0.9 parameter). I did this “change” to the volume for the fall back sound file, since, in my opinion, it is a rather “quiet” sound file, and I want to be sure to get the user's attention.

For what it's worth, the “fall back” sound file is located at /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/alarm-clock-elapsed.oga.

However, if the user presses the “Cancel” button, a message box is displayed (Lines 41 through 43), telling the user “Timer Canceled.” That dialog box will automatically disappear after a 10–second delay. Of course, the user can dismiss it earlier just by pressing the “OK” button.

Running The Script

Actually, running the script is pretty straightforward. The script only takes ONE command line argument, and that is the full path and filename of the sound file you want to use as your alarm sound. You will only have to do this once if you're setting up the script to run from a launcher, unless you decide to change the sound file that is used for your alarm. And, your chosen sound file can be stored anywhere on your computer. You just have to provide a full path and filename to that sound file.

So, let's say you store your collection of sound files in a directory in your /home directory called “sounds.” So, that means your command line argument will be something like “/home/this-user/sounds/some-sound-file.mp3.” You can use WAV, OGG, FLAC, MP3, AIFF files, or any other sound file playable on your system. It doesn't have to be MP3 files. I just chose MP3 files because of all of the options available to keep the file sizes smaller.

IF you specify an improper path and filename to the sound file you want to use as your alarm sound (or if you “forget” to specify a full path and filename to a sound file altogether), the script will still work, but at the end, the “fall back” sound file will be played. And, I guess you CAN just use that “fall back” sound file, if you want. But you'll be giving up the ability to customize the sound file that is played when the timer reaches zero. If you're hearing the “fall back” sound, then you either didn't provide a qualified full path and file name to the sound file, or you mistyped that path and/or filename.

I suspect that many of you will choose to run this from a launcher, either on your desktop or on your panel. You may notice from the command line shown above that I don't have a path statement preceding the command to launch the script. That is because I save my scripts in my ~/bin directory, which is in my PATH statement for my computer. The image above shows the properties for the launcher that resides on my top panel in my Xfce desktop.

Do you need some files to use for your alarm? Never fear, because I've collected 14 sound files to use for the alarm. I've tried to keep them very small and short. Most of these sound files are six seconds or less in length, and all of them each weigh in at under 50KiB. I've shortened many of them myself, and reduced the sample rate to 22,500 KHz, at 48kbps. It's adequate in sound fidelity to serve as an alarm sound file that you're going to listen to for less than six seconds. You can download the collection, “Alarms.tar.gz,” from the magazine website. The sound files are compressed into a single tar.gz file, and the download is 366KiB in file size. For most users with a broadband connection to the internet, the download will/should take less than 10 seconds.

Sound files specified as the command line parameter that have spaces in the file name are just fine, even though you really shouldn't be using spaces in filenames, anyway. I've “fixed” the script to accommodate those who insist on using spaces in filenames. Personally, I avoid spaces in filenames like the bubonic plague, and routinely run a Thunar Custom Action to convert spaces to either dashes or periods (for what it's worth, I really hate replacing spaces with an underscore … but that's just me and my personal preferences).

Summary

I hope you enjoy using this countdown timer as much as I had fun creating it. Sometimes, it's the “simple” things that make life easier and sweeter. Now, excuse me while I go flip those beer battered fish filets.

PCLinuxOS Forum & Friends Spotlight: The Chief

by TheChief

Me at an airshow in 2022

How old are you?
I'm 83, as of June 2023.

What is your marital status?
Widowed, as of November 2019.

Do you have any children or grandchildren? If so, how many of each?
2 daughters (ages 54, 62), 5 grandchildren (by youngest daughter: 16yo girl, 23yo boy, 27yo girl, 2 grandchildren (by oldest daughter: 30yo boy and 32yo girl), and 2 great grandchildren, by oldest granddaughter (5yo boy, and 8 month old girl)

Do you have pets, what is your favorite?
Sorry - no. It's hard enough taking care of me without having to worry about someone else.

Me, in 2023

Are you retired or working, and for how long and at what?
Retired (3 times, actually) 23 years Aviation Fire Control Technician, U. S. Navy, 19 years Software Engineer, Loral/Lockheed-Martin/L3 Communications (all at same desk), then again at 26 years, same job, same company.

In bootcamp in 1958

Where do you call home? What is it like? IE: weather, scenery
I was born and raised in Georgia, various places around Atlanta. I'm currently living in Villa Rica, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb, on the west side — actually closer to Alabama than downtown Atlanta. Check it out here

Where did you go to school and what is your education level?
I attended many elementary schools, but only two high schools: Joe E. Brown High School in the West End section of Atlanta, and Jonesboro High School in Jonesboro, Georgia. I spent two years at Auburn University, majoring in Aerospace Engineering, and one year at Georgia State University in Software Engineering. I never had the patience to actually graduate from any of them. I just wanted to get on with life.

I was born in Atlanta, at the Georgia Baptist Hospital. During the early years of my life, we lived in and around Atlanta, many places I cannot remember, but I do remember an old farm house in Red Oak, Georgia, where we have been told by both our parents that my wife and I first met and played together at age 3 or 4. Neither of us remember it. For a while we lived in Kenwood, Georgia in an old house that sat on top of a high bank above the highway. My mother was always terrified that I would roll down the bank onto the highway.

I also remember living somewhere in East Atlanta when I first started school. This is where I broke my leg one afternoon, wrestling after school. Not knowing any better, I just got on my bike and rode the 7 or 8 blocks home. I ended up in a cast from my toes to my hip, and the older boys had to carry me up and down the stairs at school for a month or two. I also remember a house on Cascade Road and an apartment on Lucille Avenue, both in the West End suburb of Atlanta. There was a small grocery store across the street (Lucille Avenue), and they had the absolute best chocolate chip cookies I ever ate!

My formative years, from about age 8 to age 16, we lived in a one room house my dad built in Riverdale, Georgia. It was more of a shack than a house, as it had no insulation, no coverings on the interior wall (just bare studs), no indoor plumbing or running water, and only after a couple of years did we have electricity. Riverdale was nothing like what it is today. There was only one paved road, Georgia Highway 85, a two lane blacktop, and only one traffic light. Everything else was dirt.

But about age 9, I managed to acquire a little .22 rifle (paid some kid $2 as I remember it). We were so isolated I could sit on the back steps and shoot squirrels, and no one cared. A box of 50 cartridges was a quarter. And there were hundreds of acres of woods behind the house for me and my buddies to play in. There was a creek with a wide swimming hole almost directly underneath the Georgia Power cable crossing, where we would dive off to swim. Sometimes we would have to scramble out of the water as a water moccasin asserted his right of passage down the creek.

When I was 14 (1954), I got my first car — a 1946 Chevy sedan. It cost my dad $50. It lasted two days before I wrapped it around a big oak tree. They tell me I was unconscious for nearly a half hour. The next summer, I found an old beat up 1940 Ford sedan for $25. I had to pay for this one myself, and drove that until it just died beyond repair. Then I found a 1935 Ford rumble seat coupe for $30, and drove that for a couple of years. It had mechanical brakes — a steel rod going out to each wheel to operate the brake shoes. Might as well just drag a foot. But I would dearly love to still own it. All this time, I had no drivers license, no insurance and only whatever tags came on the car. No one seemed to care back in those days.

When I failed the 10th grade even though I had shown up for all the tests and aced them (they were ticked about “participation” and homework), I dropped out of school. I worked various jobs for a year — farm work, harvesting, making hay, etc., then well digging, auto body shop, sheet metal assembly. Finally realized I was going nowhere, and that was when I joined the U.S. Navy, in November of 1957.

Shortly after I finished boot camp (March 1958), my future wife ran into my mother at Church, and my mother asked her to write to me. She did, we met, we dated, and on Thanksgiving Day, 1959, we eloped — sort of. We went to the Preachers house in College Park, Georgia and were married in his living room. A couple of days later, we placed all our earthly possessions in a single suitcase and boarded a train for Virginia Beach, where I was stationed.

We had no place to live, and very little money. We managed a hotel room that first night — thank goodness tourist season was over! The next day we found a little furnished three room garage apartment for $50 a month and the landlord let us move in with no cash changing hands. It even included some dishes, silverware, pots and pans, gas and water. We scrimped and ate beans and rice, collected empty coke bottles to buy bread and bologna, and generally had a wonderful time.

Things were really not as bad as that sounds. In those days, electricity was so cheap they billed you quarterly — and our typical bill was around $7. I mean, a few light bulbs, a small refrigerator and a clock radio — how much electricity could we use? I would hitchhike to work every morning and back home each evening. In those days it was easy — we were in a Navy town, so all I had to do was step outside in uniform and the next car would stop.

Me with my first born, Rebecca

After my first tour of active duty, I left the Navy and went to work for IBM, here in Atlanta, as what they called a “Customer Engineer.” It really was just a glorified machinery repairman. During this time, our first daughter, Rebecca, was born, again at Georgia Baptist Hospital, which cost me a whopping $25 (IBM had some pretty good benefits).

Eventually, I became disenchanted with IBM, as they were worse about being in “uniform” than the Navy was. You had to wear a suit (non-matching jackets and trousers are not allowed) and they didn't mind a bit telling you when you needed a haircut or a shoeshine. Even though you were up to your elbows in greasy machines all day long, you had to wear a long sleeved shirt and it had to be white. They even had to approve the automobile you drove and the part of town you lived in.

I finally said enough, and went back to the Navy, who took me right back at the same pay grade and specialty as I left. There I stayed until October 1980, when I retired as a Senior Chief Petty officer (next to highest enlisted rank). They treated me well, especially after I became a Chief.

While I was in the Navy, our second daughter, Brendalyn, was born at the Villa Rica, Georgia hospital in 1969. My wife came home to have her, as I was deployed overseas at the time. Villa Rica is in Carroll County, and we have always kidded Brenda about being a "Carroll County Accident!"

In Rome, in the 1970s

In 1977, my wife flew over to Italy and I took some leave from the ship. We had a glorious vacation. I met her in Naples, and we spent a few days on the Isle of Capri (in the bay of Naples), also visiting the famous Blue Grotto. We then took a train to Rome, touring the Vatican and the Colosseum, seeing the Trevi Fountain (of Three Coins in the Fountain fame) and the Spanish Steps and many, many, other landmarks. We then went to Florence for a few days and toured cathedrals, tombs and museums. Then back to Naples so she could catch her flight home and I could get back on the ship when it returned to Naples a couple of days later.

Upon retiring, we moved to Douglasville, Georgia because that's where my wife's parents were (mine were both buried). I found a job which I didn't care all that much for, but stuck it out until they really made me mad one day. So, I picked up the paper and found an ad. It said, “Electronic Technician” and gave a phone number. I called it, and it turned out to be a division of Loral Corporation, the company that made a lot of the equipment I had worked on in the Navy. Anyway, they hired me with a 25% pay increase and much better benefits. Within the first year, I was promoted from Electronic Technician to Software Engineer, and a good thing that was, as they pretty much dropped the technician category the next year. I worked there until I retired again in 1999, after working for Loral Corporation, Lockheed-Martin and then L3 Communications — all while sitting at the same desk, due to mergers and buyouts.

After 3 months or so, they began calling me and pleading for me to come back to work, and then kept offering more and more money, until I finally agreed. So I went back as an independent contractor, and worked in that capacity for about 3 and a half years. At excellent pay, I might add. Then corporate found out and raised a stink, as they had some rules about how long a contractor could work (a 6 month maximum).

So, as the Software Lead on a big project (an update to C-17 transport aircraft cockpit displays), they begged and pleaded until I reluctantly agreed to go back on the payroll to finish out the project (a little over a year), at which time I retired again (for good this time) in 2005. This turned out to be one of the smartest things I ever did (although accidentally), as they had revamped the way pensions were calculated while I was retired. The new system essentially doubled the pension for almost the same number of years of service. And to think, I almost didn't go back on the payroll.

Me shortly after final retirement

In 2001 we bought a new home in Villa Rica, mainly to be closer to the grandchildren, and there we had planned to stay. I most likely will, as it is still close to my children and grandchildren. My wife passed away in 2019, after nearly 60 years of happy marriage. The pain is almost bearable now, as long as no unexpected reminders pop up.

What kind of things do you like doing? hobbies, travel, fishing, camping?
I used to love hunting and camping, but age has severely curtailed that activity. Now, I do a little photography, some target shooting, and piddling with the web site I maintain.

What caused you to try Linux and join this forum?
I got tired of Windows always interfering with whatever I needed to do. I had fooled around a bit with Linux on the job, stumbled onto PCLinuxOS, and I was hooked. I figured I would get better help from a PCLinuxOS specific place so I joined the forum.

What specific equipment do you currently use with PCLinuxOS?
Laptop: Dell M6800 laptop, Core I7-4810, Nvidia GK104 Desktop: homebrew Ryzen 5 3600, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti

Do you feel that your use of Linux influences the reactions you receive from your computer peers or family? If so, how?
They get upset when I answer their Windows questions by saying "Can't help you, it's been more than 16 years since I touched Windows." Other than that, they are very accepting, as I have always been a bit of an oddball.

What would you like to see happen within PCLinuxOS that would make it a better place. What are your feelings?
I would love for us all to occasionally get together for lunch or dinner somewhere. I know, not realistic, but still.

If you want send some pictures of you and area of interest.

Georgia and me dating in 1959 and Re-taking our vows in the early 1970s

Me in the cockpit - 1960

mynvidia-installer: Simplifying Nvidia Driver Management

by David Pardue (kalwisti)

mynvidia-installer is a PCLinuxOS-specific, GUI-based utility to install proprietary Nvidia drivers. Before using it, you should determine specific information about your graphics card, such as:

(a) Is it actually an Nvidia GPU?

(b) Which model is it?

(c) Which Nvidia driver supports the card?

Do I Have an Nvidia Graphics Card?

If you are unsure what graphics card you have, you can find out by using any of the methods below.

Use the CLI (Command Line Interface) to identify your card

Note: (The vertical line is the 'pipe' character)

# lshw -numeric -C display

You may first need to install the lshw package ['list hardware'] via Synaptic.

The '-C' option is for class and the '-numeric' option forces lshw to provide the numeric IDs of the devices, as well as their names.

Although this command also works with a regular user account, the information provided may be less complete/accurate. Therefore, the command should be run with superuser (root) privileges.

The list is not intended to be exhaustive. Vivek Gite discusses additional methods in his article 'Linux Find Out Graphics Card Installed in My System,' nixCraft 8 Apr. 2023.

Use a GUI to Identify Your Card

If you prefer GUI tools, you can also use daniel's homegrown utility, Simple Current Systeminfo, to view information about your graphics card. After installing the utility (package name 'sicusys') via Synaptic, look for the Audio/Video tab and click on it.

Another nice feature is the button labeled 'X INXI' which runs inxi by simply clicking on it.

Which Driver Does My Card Need?

After confirming the model number of your Nvidia card, you should next determine the necessary driver version for your card by checking Nvidia's Driver Downloads website. Use the drop-down lists to search for the required driver.

As an example, the search above indicates that the appropriate Production Branch driver for my card is ver. 535.154.05.

Please be aware that some Nvidia cards can work with more than one driver. My GeForce GTX 1650 card is supported in PCLinuxOS by either the 525.x driver or the 470.x driver.

An alternative method uses the process of elimination to identify the driver. Search through Nvidia's legacy card list. If your card is not there, you can use the latest driver.

Warning: Do not install the Nvidia driver through the package provided by the Nvidia website. Install the Nvidia driver from the PCLinuxOS software repository.

Nvidia Driver Sections in the PCLinuxOS Repository

Beginning in July 2023, Texstar placed the proprietary Nvidia drivers in separate sections in the PCLinuxOS software repository. Currently, the three 'classes'/sections of drivers are:

• nvidia525
• nvidia470
• nvidia340

After identifying which driver your graphics card needs, you must add the appropriate Nvidia section at the end of the “Section(s)” box in your Synaptic sources. For example, if your card requires the Nvidia 525.x driver, it would look like the image below.

Remember to press the Reload button in Synaptic's toolbar after making such a change.

Note: The mynvidia-installer will automatically take care of this step; I mention it here for background purposes only. You do not need to modify your Synaptic sources at this time.

Make a System Snapshot with Timeshift

I highly recommend that you make a system snapshot with Timeshift before a major modification like changing or updating your Nvidia driver. While researching this article, I experimented with different options of mynvidia-installer and accidentally rendered my system unbootable. (It was my fault, not the installer's.)

Thanks to having a new Timeshift snapshot, I was able to easily restore my PCLinuxOS LXQt system back to normal. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw the familiar splash screen and SDDM login screen.

If you have been meaning to learn about Timeshift but are unsure where to begin, PCLinuxOS forum member Ramchu wrote an excellent introduction for the December 2020 issue of our magazine. The article is titled &39;Using Timeshift to Backup & Restore Your PCLinuxOS System&39;.

How to Use the mynvidia-installer

The mynvidia-installer script requires a clean sources.list before it can be run. In other words, you should not have any "nvidiaXXX" section added to your source repository. The sources.list file is located at /etc/apt/sources.list.

Check whether you have an "nvidiaXXX" section [in Synaptic Package Manager, look under the Settings menu > Repositories > Section(s)]. If one is present, delete the entry.

Reload Synaptic prior to installing the mynvidia-installer package.

Now, you may proceed with installing the mynvidia-installer package.

The utility will appear as a menu item. (In KDE Plasma, it is located under the Configuration section).

Click on the menu entry to start the program. The utility will request that you supply superuser (root) privileges in order to run.

The utility will check whether any Nvidia-related packages are currently installed on your system. If any are present, it will identify them and instruct you to remove them.

Important: This screen of the utility can be a bit confusing. Please pay close attention to the package-version number, e.g., the " -3 " suffix preceding the package date (“pclos2023”).

You might have a driver version installed which is out of date and unpatched. It will therefore not work with newer kernels. Installing a new kernel will likely fail, and the system will report an error message regarding "Bad return status for module build on kernel XXX."

At the time this article was written (February 2024), here are the Nvidia driver versions available in the PCLinuxOS repository:

Click the Remove button. This will invoke an uninstall script.

The script will remove/uninstall the Nvidia packages.

When the script is finished, click the OK button to exit the mynvidia-installer.

Relaunch the mynvidia-installer utility.

The utility will detect your Nvidia graphics card and recommend an appropriate driver.

Select your desired driver from the drop-down menu.

(You are not obligated to accept the utility's recommendation. If you have evidence from Nvidia's website that your graphics card can use a newer driver, you may install it.

My GeForce GTX 1650 is supported by both the 525.x driver and the 470.x driver. I separately installed each driver and tested them. Each one worked well. I did not detect significant differences in performance between them. I chose to keep the 525.x driver since it is more recent.)

If you would like Help information before committing to a driver choice, you can click on the NvidiaXXX button (with the small life preserver icon). Clicking the button will display a popup dialog of supported Nvidia GPU products. This might take a little time, so be patient.

Next, click on the Install button.

The utility will launch a script to install the driver and its dependencies.

When the installation is finished, the utility will prompt you to reboot in order to use the Nvidia driver.

Reboot your PC. The newly installed Nvidia driver should be active.

If you inspect what mynvidia-installer did under the hood, you will notice that it automatically added a second line to the sources.list in Synaptic. It added the NLUUG mirror [Amsterdam, The Netherlands], but activated only the "nvidia525" section of that repository.

(My primary mirror [Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)] remains unchanged).

Although this appears to contradict PCLinuxOS' long-standing policy of having only one repository mirror enabled, this is a special-case scenario. It works correctly and is safe. I tested it through a couple of update cycles and experienced no problems. You should also refer to jaydot's sticky post in the Tips and Tricks section of the PCLinuxOS Forums, "How to Keep Your System in Good Order," 23 Mar. 2008.

After doing some investigation of system files, I discovered that my sources.list file had not been altered (i.e., only one repository mirror [Princeton] is enabled):

However, there is a (new) file named “nvidia.list” stored in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d subdirectory.

The nvidia.list file contains the link to the nvidia525 section of the NLUUG mirror.

This wizardry is way beyond my knowledge level but based on the explanations here, I will make an educated guess that sources.list.d is a 'placeholder' directory which holds a configuration fragment (i.e., the "nvidia.list" file) that is merged together into another configuration file (i.e., the "sources.list" file).

If you prefer to adopt an alternative approach, you can deselect/deactivate the NLUUG "nvidiaXXX" section and modify your primary mirror's Section(s) to include the nvidia525 section (as shown below).

I have experimented with this configuration on my LXQt system, and it also works fine. There have been no glitches with my updates thus far.

In conclusion, we have seen that mynvidia-installer is a convenient utility that simplifies the installation -- and removal -- of proprietary Nvidia drivers. I hope this article has clearly explained how the program works, and that it will help you get your Nvidia GPU running on PCLinuxOS.

ICYMI: 3 Million “Smart Toothbrushes” Hacked With Malware, Used For DDoS Attack

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

The Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU) has recently unearthed four significant vulnerabilities in the GNU C Library, a cornerstone for countless applications in the Linux environment, the Qualys team announced on their blog. The vulnerabilities identified in glibc's syslog and qsort functions highlight a critical aspect of software security: even the most foundational and trusted components are not immune to flaws. The ramifications of these vulnerabilities extend far beyond individual systems, affecting many applications and potentially millions of users worldwide. For what it's worth, Texstar has patched and updated glibc on PCLinuxOS.

On Jan. 29, 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden announced actions based on an October 2023 executive order on the use and regulation of artificial intelligence. These actions fulfill the 90-day goals of the AI Executive order, according to an article from TechRepublic. The executive order featured wide-ranging guidance on maintaining safety, civil rights and privacy within government agencies while promoting AI innovation and competition throughout the U.S. Although the executive order didn't specify generative artificial intelligence, it was likely issued in reaction to the proliferation of generative AI, which has become a hot topic since the public release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022.

Arc Search combines a browser, search engine, and AI into something genuinely interesting and useful, and may represent the future of the internet, according to an article from Lifehacker. Arc Search is built on the belief that a browser, a search engine, and an AI chatbot can work together to build a pleasurable internet experience for you, instead of fighting for ad space or creating silos (Microsoft Edge versus Bing, Google Chrome versus Bard).

Image by Clickschool from Pixabay

According to a recent report published by the Aargauer Zeitung (h/t Golem.de), around three million smart toothbrushes have been infected by hackers and enslaved into botnets, says an article from Tom's Hardware. The source report says this sizable army of connected dental cleansing tools was used in a DDoS attack on a Swiss company's website. The firm's site collapsed under the strain of the attack, reportedly resulting in the loss of millions of Euros of business. [Ahmm!] I don't think I need a toothbrush that connects to the internet to be able to properly brush my teeth. Isn't that something every parent teaches their children?

AnyDesk Software, the Germany-based developer of the popular remote access software, informed customers on February 2, 2024, about a significant security breach, according to an article from SecurityWeek. According to the company, a security audit triggered by suspicious activity led to the discovery that AnyDesk production systems were compromised. Little information has been shared on the attack itself, but AnyDesk has clarified that the incident “is not related to ransomware”. “We have revoked all security-related certificates and systems have been remediated or replaced where necessary. We will be revoking the previous code signing certificate for our binaries shortly and have already started replacing it with a new one,” AnyDesk said. It added, “Our systems are designed not to store private keys, security tokens or passwords that could be exploited to connect to end user devices. As a precaution, we are revoking all passwords to our web portal, my.anydesk.com, and we recommend that users change their passwords if the same credentials are used elsewhere.”

Smoking cessation was associated with a reduced cancer risk in the long run, particularly when quitting was sustained and occurred prior to middle age, a large population-based study from Korea found, according to an article from MedPage Today. Over a mean 13 years follow-up, smokers who completely quit had a 17% lower risk of any cancer compared with people who continuously smoked, according to findings from Jin-Kyoung Oh, PhD, of the National Cancer Center in Gyeonggi, Korea, and colleagues. The authors reported that regardless of when a person quit smoking within their lifetime, their cancer risk was still significantly reduced. However, when smokers quit before the age of 50, their risk was reduced to a greater degree than if they quit after reaching age 50.

Image by ImagesBG from Pixabay

California is set to adopt regulations that will allow for sewage to be extensively treated, transformed into pure drinking water and delivered directly to people's taps, according to an article from the LA Times. The regulations are expected to be approved by the State Water Resources Control Board, enabling water suppliers to begin building advanced treatment plants that will turn wastewater into a source of clean drinking water. The new rules represent a major milestone in California's efforts to stretch supplies by recycling more of the water that flows down drains. It's expected to cost about half of what it costs to desalinate sea water into potable water.

Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission's loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA's longest-lived spacecraft, according to an article from ArsTechnica. The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1's ability to send back telemetry data, such as measurements from the spacecraft's science instruments or basic engineering information about how the probe was doing. So, there's no insight into key parameters regarding the craft's propulsion, power, or control systems. "It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven't given up," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars. "There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious since I've been project manager."

According to an article from the New York Times, David L. Mills, an internet pioneer who developed and, for decades, implemented the timekeeping protocol used by financial markets, power grids, satellites and billions of computers to make sure they run simultaneously, earning him a reputation as the internet's “Father Time,” died on Jan. 17 at his home in Newark, Del. He was 85. Dr. Mills was among the inner circle of computer scientists who from the 1960s through the '90s developed Arpanet, a relatively small network of linked computers located at academic and research institutions, and then its globe-spanning successor, the internet.

Image by Mustafa shehadeh from Pixabay

Do you find videos from your favorite streaming site getting longer and longer? Do you find yourself having to wade through a novella of trite details and “feelings” just to get to the recipe you're interested in? Don't worry … you're not alone. This is the very topic explored by an article from The Atlantic.

A little over a year after the public launch of ChatGPT, we're starting to see one prediction come true of how it could affect the internet: AI spam is flooding the web, according to an article from Business Insider. In just one week in late January and early February, there were three examples of how this played out. First, 404 Media, a new tech blog, wrote that it had to modify its website because of artificial-intelligence spam. Recently, it has noticed that AI-written versions of its scoops have shown up on spam sites that are friendly to search-engine optimization — sometimes even showing up above the real 404 Media articles on Google search results. The scammers, of course, are making money by running ads on the AI-generated pages.

A set of ancient texts burned by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. have been deciphered thanks to a team of researchers using AI, according to an article from Fox News (and widely reported on by other media outlets). The nearly 2,000-year-old texts were unreadable after being charred in a villa in Herculaneum, a Roman town near Pompeii. Believed to have been owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, the texts were carbonized by the heat of the volcanic debris. The ancient texts remained undiscovered for centuries until an Italian farmer discovered the villa in the mid-eighteenth century.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

An engineering researcher at Rochester Institute of Technology has discovered the means to process data using DNA, according to an article from Rochester Institute of Technology. Amlan Ganguly, computer engineering department head in RIT's Kate Gleason College of Engineering, and researchers at the University of Minnesota, designed a microfluidic integrated circuit to perform complex operations through artificial neural network computations on data stored in DNA. Their biocomputing design is a breakthrough that builds on innovative DNA engineering and computing system advances. “We are in the age of big data that needs to be stored somewhere. We don't think that more data centers are the answer, or even the best answer. Each data center requires the equivalent of a city block of power. Building, maintaining, and operating more traditional data centers is not sustainable,” said Ganguly, who added data stored on DNA is a largely unexplored area of research. “DNA is excellent at storing information, in fact, it is much better than the electronic modes of memory because it is about 3-to-6 orders of magnitude more compact than most memory hardware that we have; it is also much more reliable and durable.”

A new cooling technique that utilizes a single species of trapped ion for both computing and cooling could simplify the use of quantum charge-coupled devices (QCCDs), potentially moving quantum computing closer to practical applications, according to an article from phys.org. Using a technique called rapid ion exchange cooling, scientists at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have shown that they could cool a calcium ion—which gains vibrational energy while doing quantum computations—by moving a cold ion of the same species into close proximity. After transferring energy from the hot ion to the cold one, the refrigerant ion is returned to a nearby reservoir to be cooled for further use.

Chrome's Incognito mode is a bit of a joke that even Google employees weren't so hyped about it, according to an article from Gizmodo. It's now going to be less useful for “privacy” reasons, as explained in a new disclaimer change. An updated warning page for Incognito mode went live on Canary, a version of Chrome primarily used by developers, as first spotted by MSPowerUser on Tuesday. The new text confirms your data will be collected by websites and Google while browsing in this mode. This change has yet to hit the latest version of Chrome, but it's likely to come soon. Here's the updated disclaimer's new text: “Others who use this device won't see your activity, so you can browse more privately. This won't change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google. Downloads, bookmarks and reading list items will be saved.” Google's update to the disclaimer stems from a 2020 lawsuit the company was hit with over the not-so-private Incognito mode. That $5 billion class-action suit alleged Google's privacy options didn't work as described, meaning users were continually tracked while using Chrome. Google settled the lawsuit in late December according to Reuters, but #no details of the settlement were made public, and it will still need to be approved by a judge in February.

NASA/JPL-CalTech

A “super-Earth” ripe for further investigation orbits a small, reddish star that is, by astronomical standards, fairly close to us – only 137 light-years away, reports NASA. The same system also might harbor a second, Earth-sized planet. The bigger planet, dubbed TOI-715 b, is about one and a half times as wide as Earth, and orbits within the “conservative” habitable zone around its parent star. That's the distance from the star that could give the planet the right temperature for liquid water to form on its surface. Several other factors would have to line up, of course, for surface water to be present, especially having a suitable atmosphere. But the conservative habitable zone – a narrower and potentially more robust definition than the broader “optimistic” habitable zone – puts it in prime position, at least by the rough measurements made so far. The smaller planet could be only slightly larger than Earth, and also might dwell just inside the conservative habitable zone.

According to an article from Lifehacker, there was a time that whenever you looked at search results on Google, you could click the "Cached" button to view an archived version of the page. Unfortunately, Google has decided to remove the feature. The company's stated reason is that the feature was created to allow users a way to see the content at a time when sites would go offline frequently, and that the basic functionality of the internet has improved to the extent that it's no longer necessary. Whatever the reason, it means yet another useful feature has found itself in Google's graveyard.

Artificial intelligence is taking over countless industries around the U.S., raising concerns among Americans who fear they will be replaced by the tech. Now, new research has revealed the most and least AI-proof cities across the U.S., based on five key metrics including job availability, the state's population growth rate, and job diversity, according to an article from the Daily Mail. Workers based in major tech hubs should look to large, coastal metropolitan areas if they want to avoid losing out to artificial intelligence, with Phoenix, Arizona coming in first as the most AI-proof city in the country. The report warned that Providence, Rhode Island is the top city most susceptible to AI-related job loss.

Image by Faisal Mehmood from Pixabay

OpenAI is finally making it easier to tell if an image was made with the DALL-E 3, according to an article from Lifehacker. The company shared the news this week, noting that it will soon start adding two types of watermarks to all images generated by DALL-E 3, adhering to standards set forth by the C2PA (The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity). The change is already rolling out to images generated through the website and via the API, but mobile users will start getting the watermarks starting Feb. 12. The first of two watermarks exists strictly within the image's metadata (which we've shown in this magazine is EASILY deleted). You'll be able to check the creation data of an image using the Content Credentials Verify website, as well as other websites like it. The second watermark will be a visible CR symbol in the top left corner of the image (which even a Gimp novice can remove easily). In my opinion, both “watermarks” are 100% dependent on the honesty of the user. Those using AI-generated images for more nefarious purposes can't be counted on to uphold their end of that “bargain.” Thus, nothing has changed with regard to whether you can discern what images are real and what images have been created with AI.

From the Google blog … Since we launched Bard last year, people all over the world have used it to collaborate with AI in a completely new way — to prepare for job interviews, debug code, brainstorm new business ideas or, as we announced last week, create captivating images. Our mission with Bard has always been to give you direct access to our AI models, and Gemini represents our most capable family of models. To reflect this, Bard will now simply be known as Gemini. You can already chat with Gemini with our Pro 1.0 model in over 40 languages and more than 230 countries and territories. And now, we're bringing you two new experiences — Gemini Advanced and a mobile app — to help you easily collaborate with the best of Google AI.

From the same Google blog … Gemini Advanced is available as part of our brand-new Google One AI Premium Plan for $19.99/month, starting with a two-month trial at no cost. This plan gives you the best of Google AI and our latest advancements, along with all the benefits of the existing Google One Premium plan, such as 2TB of storage. In addition, AI Premium subscribers will soon be able to use Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets and more (formerly known as Duet AI). Personally, I'd be reluctant to put much stock into yet another Google “service,” given the EXTREMELY LONG list of casualties that fill the Google Graveyard.

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Google may be saying a “slow farewell” to Google Assistant, according to an article from Lifehacker. Google has been working its way up the AI chain via improvements to Bard, which have resulted in the launch of Gemini. In news that may not be so surprising, Google allows you to replace Google Assistant with Gemini on Android. This follows the recent news of major layoffs in the Google Assistant team and the subsequent deletion of a long list of Assistant features. Once the Gemini app is installed, you'll be able to launch it the same way that you launch Google Assistant on your Android phone. Google says you'll be able to use Gemini by hitting the power button, using the corner swipe gesture on some phones, or just using the "Hey Google" voice command. You can send queries by typing them into the Gemini app, voice commands, or by sending images to the AI assistant.

Hey! Am I the only one thinking software bloat has gotten out of hand, and is becoming the Achilles heel of the software world? Well, apparently not. IEEE Spectrum reran an article that originally appeared in the 1995 issue of IEEE's Computer magazine. The thing is that this article rings even truer today than it did when it first ran nearly 30 years ago! Sure, today's computers have many, MANY times more RAM and infinitely larger storage devices than were even DREAMED of 30 years ago. But, just because you have tons more RAM and exorbitantly large storage devices, doesn't mean you have to USE all of that RAM or storage space. In short, just because you can, doesn't mean you should. After all these years, this article STILL hits the nail squarely on the head.

A revolutionary telescope will come online in 2025. And mounted to it will be a giant camera built to capture extraordinary views of space, according to an article from Mashable. The United States' SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is finishing the over 5.5-foot-tall, 6,200-pound (1.65-meter and 2,800-kilogram) LSST Camera, which will snap cosmic images at the much-anticipated Vera C. Rubin Observatory located in the lofty Chilean mountains. The lab posted new images online showing the over 12-foot-long (3.7 m) camera, with its imposing lens, in a clean room. "About the size of a small SUV, the LSST [Legacy Survey of Space and Time] Camera is the largest camera ever constructed for astronomy," the lab said. Engineers will mount the big camera on the observatory's 27.5-foot-wide (8.4-meter) Simonyi Survey Telescope, itself a revolutionary instrument: It will be the fastest large telescope on Earth, with the ability to swivel 180 degrees in just 20 seconds.

JET tokamak interior - United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

Scientists and engineers near the English city of Oxford have set a nuclear fusion energy record, they announced on February 8, 2024, bringing the clean, futuristic power source another step closer to reality, according to an article from CNN. Using the Joint European Torus (JET) — a huge, donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak — the scientists sustained a record 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel. That's enough to power roughly 12,000 households for the same amount of time. Nuclear fusion is the same process that powers the sun and other stars, and is widely seen as the holy grail of clean energy. Experts have worked for decades to master the highly complex process on Earth, and if they do, fusion could generate enormous amounts of energy with tiny inputs of fuel and emit zero planet-warming carbon in the process. The scientists fed the tokamak deuterium and tritium, which are hydrogen isotopes that future commercial fusion plants are most likely to use.

Researchers from New York University (NYU) have discovered that classical computers can, in some circumstances, keep up with, or even surpass, quantum computers, according to an article from Interesting Engineering. They found that by adopting a new innovative algorithmic method, classical computers can get a much-needed boost in speed and accuracy, which could mean that they still have a future should quantum computers ever take off. Many experts believe that quantum computing represents a paradigm shift from classical computing. This is primarily because classical computers, as you are aware, process information using digital bits (0s and 1s), while quantum computers use quantum bits (qubits) to store information in values between 0 and 1.

From the scary-use-of-AI-without-regulation-or-guardrails department, depending on where you work, there's a significant chance that artificial intelligence is analyzing your messages on Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other popular apps, according to an article from CNBC. Huge U.S. employers such as Walmart, Delta Air Lines, T-Mobile, Chevron and Starbucks, as well as European brands including Nestle and AstraZeneca, have turned to a seven-year-old startup, Aware, to monitor chatter among their rank and file, according to the company. Jeff Schumann, co-founder and CEO of the Columbus, Ohio-based startup, says the AI helps companies “understand the risk within their communications,” getting a read on employee sentiment in real time, rather than depending on an annual or twice-per-year survey. Using the anonymized data in Aware's analytics product, clients can see how employees of a certain age group or in a particular geography are responding to a new corporate policy or marketing campaign, according to Schumann. Aware's dozens of AI models, built to read text and process images, can also identify bullying, harassment, discrimination, noncompliance, pornography, nudity and other behaviors, he said. Aware's analytics tool — the one that monitors employee sentiment and toxicity — doesn't have the ability to flag individual employee names, according to Schumann. But its separate eDiscovery tool can, in the event of extreme threats or other risk behaviors that are predetermined by the client, he added. Aware said Walmart, T-Mobile, Chevron and Starbucks use its technology for governance risk and compliance, and that type of work accounts for about 80% of the company's business.

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Artists have secured a small but meaningful win in their lawsuit against generative artificial intelligence art generators in what's considered the leading case over the uncompensated and unauthorized use of billions of images downloaded from the internet to train AI systems, according to an article from The Hollywood Reporter. A federal judge refused to acknowledge that the companies can avail themselves of free speech protections and stated that the case is in the public interest. U.S. District Judge William Orrick, in an order issued on Thursday night, rebuffed arguments from StabilityAI and Midjourney that they are entitled to a First Amendment defense arising under a California statute allowing for the early dismissal of claims intended to chill free speech. They had argued that the suit targets their “speech”, because the creation of art reflecting new ideas and concepts — like those conveyed in text prompts to elicit hyperrealistic graphics — is constitutionally protected activity.

Every piece of fiction carries a kernel of truth, and now is about the time to get a step ahead of sci-fi dystopias and determine what the risk in machine sentience can be for humans, according to an article from SciTechDaily. Although people have long pondered the future of intelligent machinery, such questions have become all the more pressing with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These machines resemble human interactions: they can help problem solve, create content, and even carry on conversations. For fans of science fiction and dystopian novels, a looming issue could be on the horizon: what if these machines develop a sense of consciousness? Researchers published their results in the Journal of Social Computing. While there is no quantifiable data presented in this discussion on artificial sentience (AS) in machines, there are many parallels drawn between human language development and the factors needed for machines to develop language in a meaningful way.

A report published in JAMA Internal Medicine several years ago highlighted a link between long-term use of anticholinergic medications like Benadryl and dementia, according to an article from Harvard Health Publishing. While this study and other observational studies have also found this association, it doesn't prove that these drugs cause dementia. But we do know that anticholinergic drugs can cause confusion and increase fall risk in older people.

Image by Manfred Steger from Pixabay

When it's after hours, and the boss is on the line, Australian workers — already among the world's best-rested and most personally fulfilled employees — can soon press “decline” in favor of the seductive call of the beach, according to an article from The Seattle Times. In yet another buttress against the scourge of overwork, Australia's Senate on Thursday passed a bill giving workers the right to ignore calls and messages outside of working hours without fear of repercussions. It will now return to the House of Representatives for final approval. The bill, expected to pass in the House with ease, will let Australian workers refuse “unreasonable” professional communication outside the workday. Workplaces that punish employees for not responding to such demands could be fined.

Do you want to install and run Kodi on an Amazon Fire TV stick? If so, this article from Lifehacker is for you! The article runs, step-by-step, through the process of installing the Kodi Android app on an Amazon Fire TV stick, even though Kodi doesn't have an official app in the Amazon app store.

Paul McCartney's original bass guitar, which the legendary musician used in The Beatles' early years, has been found and returned after it was stolen more than five decades ago, according to an article from Fox News. The 81-year-old singer-songwriter was reunited with the left-handed Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass after its manufacturer and a husband-and-wife team of journalists embarked on a search for the missing instrument in 2018 that later became a crowdsourcing campaign called The Lost Bass Project. A statement shared on McCartney's website confirmed that the guitar had been discovered and returned to its original owner. "Following the launch of last year's Lost Bass project, Paul's 1961 Höfner 500/1 bass guitar, which was stolen in 1972, has been returned. The guitar has been authenticated by Höfner and Paul is incredibly grateful to all those involved," the statement read.

TriStar Pictures, Johnny Mnemonic

Do you roll with laughter over Hollywood's depiction of the internet? Well, you're not alone. An article from ScreenCrush takes a look at the most ridiculous depictions of the internet in movies.

University of Pennsylvania engineers have developed a new chip that uses light waves, rather than electricity, to perform the complex math essential to training AI, according to an article from phys.org. The chip has the potential to radically accelerate the processing speed of computers while also reducing their energy consumption. The silicon-photonic (SiPh) chip's design is the first to bring together Benjamin Franklin Medal Laureate and H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor Nader Engheta's pioneering research in manipulating materials at the nanoscale to perform mathematical computations using light — the fastest possible means of communication — with the SiPh platform, which uses silicon, the cheap, abundant element used to mass-produce computer chips. In addition to faster speed and less energy consumption, Engheta and Aflatouni's chip has privacy advantages: Because many computations can happen simultaneously, there will be no need to store sensitive information in a computer's working memory, rendering a future computer powered by such technology virtually unhackable. "No one can hack into a non-existing memory to access your information," says Aflatouni.

House clearance company Just Clear has gone public with one of its findings, a Q1 microchip computer, identified as the earliest example of a desktop PC, according to an article from PCGamesN. Better still, it found not one, but two of these historic examples of technology, and they're believed to be the first ever desktop PC made available to the public. And, of course, they were powered by Intel.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights, according to an article from Ars Technica (and widely reported in many other media outlets). The international court's decision could potentially disrupt the European Commission's proposed plans to require email and messaging service providers to create backdoors that would allow law enforcement to easily decrypt users' messages.

We now know exactly how much material OSIRIS-REx captured from its target asteroid Bennu — and, it's a lot, according to an article from Space.com. In addition to the 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams) of sample already collected from the outside of the canister, NASA has finally managed to fully open OSIRIS-REx's sample container to find another 1.81 ounces (51.2 grams) of asteroid Bennu within. In all, the probe collected more than twice what scientists had hoped for. The scientists trained the Webb telescope, which orbits 1 million miles from Earth, on the two largest-known Kuiper Belt objects — Eris and Makemake. This instrument is fitted with specialized cameras that can detect different types of elements or molecules (like water or carbon dioxide) on distant worlds.

There's welcome news in the battle against the Ebola virus, an infectious disease that for years had almost no treatments or remedies, according to an article from NPR. Outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus flare up in parts of Africa almost every year, and they're vicious. The virus kills about half the people it infects. But a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases shows that a promising vaccine (with the complicated name rVSVΔG-ZEBOV-GP) can cut those mortality numbers in half. The results reveal that vaccination doesn't just help to reduce infections — it also reduces deaths from the virus.

A recent study conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers has utilized sophisticated brain recording methods to reveal the collaborative function of neurons in the human brain, enabling individuals to formulate their thoughts into words and subsequently articulate them verbally, according to an article from SciTechDaily. Together, these findings provide a detailed map of how speech sounds such as consonants and vowels are represented in the brain well before they are even spoken, and how they are strung together during language production. The work, which is published in Nature, reveals insights into the brain's neurons that enable language production, and which could lead to improvements in the understanding and treatment of speech and language disorders.

A five-dollar circuit board could hold the key to near-instantaneous breast cancer screenings, according to an article from Study Finds. Scientists say a new handheld device is capable of testing for breast cancer in less than five seconds using just a small sample of saliva. This portable device is not only remarkably quick and user-friendly but also highly cost-effective. The $5 device, along with its test strips that cost just a few cents each, uses common components. These include glucose testing strips readily available on the market and Arduino, an open-source hardware-software platform.

An innovative treatment significantly increases the survival of people with malignant mesothelioma, according to an article from Medical Xpress. Malignant pleural mesothelioma is a rare but rapidly fatal type of cancer with few effective treatment options, according to results from a clinical trial led by Queen Mary University of London. The findings have been published in JAMA Oncology. MPM is a rare, aggressive cancer that affects the lining of the lungs and is associated with exposure to asbestos. It's usually treated with potent chemotherapy drugs, but these are seldom able to halt the progression of the disease.

GIMP Tutorial: Playing With G'MIC

by Meemaw

We've done a few things with G'MIC over the years, but not much. If you haven't heard of G'MIC, it's an add-on program for GIMP that has LOADS of different effects. Some are weird things that I probably wouldn't use, but everyone is different, so you might use something I don't think is very useful. Let's spend some time just looking at what G'MIC does. It might take a bit since there are twenty categories and the first TWO have 86 different effects. I'm going to pick out a few that I found. Hopefully the ones I show you are useful for something you are creating. I originally did this article during my lunch break at work, where I have to use Windows (sorry). I came home to find that some of the effects that are in Windows, AREN'T in our version of G'MIC.

The first category is Arrays & Tiles, so I'm sure all the effects are going to reflect that. I started with this photo:

In Arrays & Tiles, we see 28 effects listed. The first one I tried was Tiled Rotation. The nice thing about G'MIC is that a separate window opens when you click Filters > G'MIC-Qt near the bottom of that menu. You can resize it so it shows the effects list, the settings for whatever effect you have chosen, and a preview of the results. I noticed that the layout is different from Windows to Linux, with the Preview being on the right in Windows and on the left in Linux. So, when I choose Tiled Rotation, without adjusting any settings, my G'MIC window looks like this:

You can change the number of tiles in each direction (X-Tiles and Y-Tiles), amount of rotation, and also the shadow depth. I just used the default. That's a fun effect, and I think I've seen an ad or something that used that.

Another cool one is Loose Photos. However, it isn't in our version of G'MIC.

Adjusting the first setting sets the density of the photos. A lower number leaves space between them, and a larger number makes them overlap more, so the background isn't as visible. There are also settings for frame size, frame color, rotation angle, etc.

Tiled Normalization is another effect you could try. It's a tiled effect but preserves the subject of the photo. Other tiled effects seem to mask it.

Another one is called Ministeck. It overlays the photo (following its color curves) with many tiny boxes, shaped like rectangles and squares, starting out, but one setting is “complexity” which changes them so they might resemble a set of stairs.

I started wondering what a color photo would look like with some of these effects, so I changed photos, since the one I'm using is nearly monotone with just different shades of brown. The next image I found was a random clipart image I've had for years.

There's a bit more color in this. Let's see what we can do to this little guy. I also went to the second category, called Artistic. One of the effects is called Brushify, which makes it look like it was painted rather than like a photo. ImageSquirrelBrushify

In this one, you will find several different brush shapes, from elliptical to star-shaped, each making a little change to the image's appearance. The default is elliptical, but I changed it to star.

Another effect is called Comicbook, which is probably pretty self-explanatory, making your image look like it was drawn for a comic book (shown below). Unfortunately, it isn't in our version of G'MIC. However, there is a similar filter in GIMP. You find it by choosing Filters > Artistic > Cartoon.

The next one I chose to look at is called Doodle. When I chose it, I was met with this screen (on the left side of the window). No preview available?

Choosing OK, I saw a separate window pop up, and lines being drawn as I watched! When it was finished, that window closed, and the finished effect opened in the GIMP window I had opened.

This one's kinda sporadic. I did it three times before it showed up in the GIMP window. Hopefully it's my computer rather than the program. If you decide you don't want that effect, it's very easy to undo it, simply by pressing <CTRL> + Z, the same way you always undo a step in GIMP.

We looked at Brushify above, but if you don't want to see so much texture, you might try Paint With Brush. It also gives the impression of being painted, but it's a bit smoother. Unfortunately, it isn't in our version of G'MIC.

Another one that might work is Sharp Abstract.

The last two effects are a bit crazier. I think I've shown Rodilius before, but it's always fun to do. Depending on your settings, it can be sorta crazy or really crazy. Rodilius makes your image look like there are reflections or sparks at each curvature in the object. The higher the settings, the further out the “sparks” extend. The default amplitude is 10. In the second image, the amplitude is 15.

I'm sure with a little experimentation, you can make this look really awesome.

In the Artistic sub-category, I see Warhol. Now, I'm old enough to remember Andy Warhol's art, but maybe you aren't. Some of his paintings were several tiles of the same subject (like a face or flowers) using different color schemes. Applying that effect to our squirrel, we get this.

We'll look at G'MIC again at least once. There are many categories that we haven't seen yet. If you have used some of the effects in G'MIC, I'm sure you had fun.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: Chili Mac Soup

Chili-Mac Soup

Serves: 6

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb ground beef (at least 80% lean)
1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
3 1/2 - 4 cups hot water
1 box Hamburger Helper™ chili macaroni
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
2 cups diced tomatoes (from 28-oz can)
1 can (11 oz) whole kernel corn with red and green peppers, undrained
2 tablespoons sliced pitted ripe olives

DIRECTIONS:

In a 4-quart Dutch oven, cook beef, onion and bell pepper over medium-high heat 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until beef is thoroughly cooked; drain.

Stir in hot water, sauce mix (from Hamburger Helper box), chili powder, garlic salt and tomatoes. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally.

Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in uncooked pasta (from Hamburger Helper box), corn and olives. Cover; cook 10 minutes longer.

TIPS:

Ladle this Chili-Mac Soup over a mound of corn chips and shredded taco cheese, or sprinkle each serving with corn chips or coarsely crushed tortilla chips and add a dollop of Sour Cream on top.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 330, Carbs: 40g, Sodium: 990mg, Fiber: 3g, Protein: 18g

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