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KDE

Parrot OS Switches to KDE Plasma Desktop (linux-magazine.com) 41

Posted by EditorDavid from the starting-to-click dept.
"Yet another distro is making the move to the KDE Plasma desktop," writes Linux magazine.

"Parrot OS, a security-focused Linux distribution, is migrating from MATE to KDE Plasma, starting with version 7.0, now available in beta." Based on Debian 13, Parrot OS's goal is a shift toward "modernization, focusing on clearing technical debt and future-proofing the system." One big under-the-hood change is that the/tmpdirectory is now automatically mounted astmpfs(in RAM), as opposed to the physical drive. By making this change, Parrot OS enjoys improved performance and reduces wear on SSDs. This shift also means that all data in/tmpis lost during a reboot.
ParrotOS senior systems engineer Dario Camonita explains the change in a blog post, calling it "not only aesthetic, but also in terms of usability and greater consistency with our future goals..."

"While MATE will continue to be supported by us as long as upstream development continues, We have noticed and observed the continuous improvements made by the KDE team..."

And elsewhere Linux Magazine notes two other distros are embracing the desktop Enlightenment: For years, Bodhi Linux was one of the very few distributions that used anything based on Enlightenment. That period of loneliness is officially over, withMX Mokshaand AV Linux 25. MX Moksha doesn't replace the original MX Linux. Instead, it will serve as an "official spin" of the distribution...

The Enlightenment desktop (and subsequently Moksha) was developed with systemd in mind, so MX Moksha uses systemd. If you're not a fan of systemd, MX Moksha is not for you. MX Moksha is lighter than MX Linux, so it will perform better on older machines. It also uses the Liquorix kernel for lower latency. AV Linux has been released with the Xfce and LXDE desktops at different times and has only recently opted to make the switch to Enlightenment.

Submission + - Can you picture things in your mind? (theguardian.com)

Submitted by whoever57
whoever57 writes: The Guardian has an interesting article on aphantasia, which is the inability to picture objects in your mind. People with this condition tend to go into STEM fields and remember different aspects of objects and people. Personally, I never realized before reading this article that people could create mental images.

Try the red apple test.

Submission + - Court decision is a win for public-access to posts of technical standards online (abajournal.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A nonprofit group isn’t liable for copyright infringement when it posts technical standards online that have been developed by private groups and then incorporated into government regulations, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a Sept. 12 opinion posting the standards for free online viewing constitutes fair use of the material.

Submission + - New acoustic attack steals data from keystrokes with 95% accuracy (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: A team of researchers from British universities has trained a deep learning model that can steal data from keyboard keystrokes recorded using a microphone with an accuracy of 95%.

When Zoom was used for training the sound classification algorithm, the prediction accuracy dropped to 93%, which is still dangerously high, and a record for that medium.

Such an attack severely affects the target's data security, as it could leak people's passwords, discussions, messages, or other sensitive information to malicious third parties.

Moreover, contrary to other side-channel attacks that require special conditions and are subject to data rate and distance limitations, acoustic attacks have become much simpler due to the abundance of microphone-bearing devices that can achieve high-quality audio captures.

This, combined with the rapid advancements in machine learning, makes sound-based side-channel attacks feasible and a lot more dangerous than previously anticipated.

Submission + - LiON fires on aircraft (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by khb
khb writes: CBS contends that these are happening nearly weekly. There's a nice video, and they correctly observe the difficulties in putting out such fires. Unclear why aircraft aren't being upgraded with a "disposal chute". It seems that dumping small battery items (assuming not over a forest, chaparral, or an urban area) would be a better bet than trying to manage it onboard. Or perhaps a small amount of liquid nitrogen could manage such small item fires.

Submission + - AI machines arenâ(TM)t âhallucinatingâ(TM). But their makers are (theguardian.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: There is a world in which generative AI, as a powerful predictive research tool and a performer of tedious tasks, could indeed be marshalled to benefit humanity, other species and our shared home. But for that to happen, these technologies would need to be deployed inside a vastly different economic and social order than our own, one that had as its purpose the meeting of human needs and the protection of the planetary systems that support all life.

Here is one hypothesis: they are the powerful and enticing cover stories for what may turn out to be the largest and most consequential theft in human history. Because what we are witnessing is the wealthiest companies in history (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon â¦) unilaterally seizing the sum total of human knowledge that exists in digital, scrapable form and walling it off inside propriety products, many of which will take direct aim at the humans whose lifetime of labor trained the machines without giving permission or consent.

This should not be legal. In the case of copyrighted material that we now know trained the models (including this newspaper), various lawsuits have been filed that will argue this was clearly illegal. Why, for instance, should a for-profit company be permitted to feed the paintings, drawings and photographs of living artists into a program like Stable Diffusion or Dall-E 2 so it can then be used to generate doppelganger versions of those very artistsâ(TM) work, with the benefits flowing to everyone but the artists themselves?

Submission + - Cats Migrated with Humans All Over the World (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by guest reader
guest reader writes: Nearly 10,000 years ago, humans settling in the Fertile Crescent, the areas of the Middle East surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, made the first switch from hunter-gatherers to farmers. They developed close bonds with the rodent-eating cats that conveniently served as ancient pest-control in society’s first civilizations.

A new study at the University of Missouri found this lifestyle transition for humans was the catalyst that sparked the world’s first domestication of cats, and as humans began to travel the world, they brought their new feline friends along with them.

While horses and cattle have seen various domestication events caused by humans in different parts of the world at various times, her analysis of feline genetics in the study strongly supports the theory that cats were likely first domesticated only in the Fertile Crescent before migrating with humans all over the world. After feline genes are passed down to kittens throughout generations, the genetic makeup of cats in western Europe, for example, is now far different from cats in southeast Asia, a process known as 'isolation by distance.'

Lyons, who has researched feline genetics for more than 30 years, said studies like this also support her broader research goal of using cats as a biomedical model to study genetic diseases that impact both cats and people, such as polycystic kidney disease, blindness and dwarfism.

In a 2021 study, Lyons and colleagues found that the cat's genomic structure is more similar to humans than nearly any other non-primate mammal.

Submission + - Snowden receives Russian passport, takes citizenship oath (apnews.com)

Submitted by Beerismydad
Beerismydad writes: From the Associated Press: Former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who fled prosecution after revealing highly classified surveillance programs, has received a Russian passport and taken the citizenship oath, Russian news agencies quoted his lawyer as saying Friday.

Lawyer Anatoly Kucherena was reported as saying that Snowden got the passport and took the oath on Thursday, about three months after Russian President Vladimir Putin granted him citizenship.

The reports did not specify whether Snowden has renounced his U.S. citizenship. The United States revoked his passport in 2013, leading to Snowden being stranded in a Moscow airport for weeks after arriving from Hong Kong, aiming to reach Ecuador.

Submission + - Computer Program for Particle Physics at Risk of Obsolescence (quantamagazine.org)

Submitted by g01d4
g01d4 writes: (FTFA) Developed by the Dutch particle physicist Jos Vermaseren, FORM is a key part of the infrastructure of particle physics, necessary for the hardest calculations. However, as with surprisingly many essential pieces of digital infrastructure, FORM’s maintenance rests largely on one person: Vermaseren himself. And at 73, Vermaseren has begun to step back from FORM development. Due to the incentive structure of academia, which prizes published papers, not software tools, no successor has emerged. If the situation does not change, particle physics may be forced to slow down dramatically.

Submission + - China Erupting in Revolt 9

Submitted by LionKimbro
LionKimbro writes: When I first heard about the "wage dispute" story at FoxConn, I thought that was all there was to it. Nope.

Dramatic footage has come out from the China Show, and completely changed the picture for me. Now I believe that a massive revolt is underway in China — directed against Zero-Covid, and even in places against the CCP and Xi specifically.

Two days ago, the China Show reported: "This is not an uprising that's saying oh let's overthrow the central government. This is not an uprising that says oh everyone rise up let's stop the communist party of China. No one's doing that right. The problem is that the Chinese government knows how things can morph. So things can take shape."

That has changed. "This is why you don't see massive revolts in China that spread at the same time. Because it's impossible. The Chinese government shuts it down and disappears the people that organize everything so everyone's too scared to do it. Again, since 1989, this is the first time I've seen... ...this is unprecedented. You do not see people riseup against a central government — they're going to local government offices but their messaging is the central government. I've never heard that. CCP step down. Step down Xi Jingping. I've never heard that before. Ever."

CNN too is reporting the story. On the front page, "Protests erupt across China."

Comparisons are being drawn with Tiananmen square. Lei's Real Talk has outlined the response from Xi: Crackdown. On the ground, people are responding with: "Help people."

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