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Friday Random Stuff…

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I lost internet and TV like many people this afternoon. No biggie, I just took a nap 😉 It isn’t like there is a ton of worthwhile tech news out there. Everyone is screwing off enjoying the summer weather, myself included.

Linux Mint 19 “Tara” Cinnamon released!
Busy doing other things right now so it will be a while before I fire this up.

Every Android Device Since 2012 Impacted by RAMpage Vulnerability
Above is a good breakdown. Below is the official page on this.
https://rampageattack.com/

Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database With 340 Million Records
“including phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses, and other highly personal characteristics for every name. The categories range from interests and habits to the number, age, and gender of the person’s children.”

Rafting
I decided to go back to West Virginia and raft the New River Gorge again. I had my sites set on the Youghiogheny River but my head about exploded trying to find a decent place to stay up there where you can actually do something at night. Someone needs to set up a resort up there like they have in West Virginia. I’ve stayed at ACE Adventure Resort once and I will be doing Adventures on the Gorge for the second time. Those folks have it down with rafting, ziplining, rock climbing, hiking, horseback riding, and more. They have a bar and a restaurant on site and often live music. They have a full range of camping and more importantly cabins with AC! I’ve done all the “camping” I wanted between Northern Germany in the winter and the Saudi desert in the summer.
I also hope to mountain bike a little up in the mountains. When I say “mountain bike” I mean basically trail riding. I had to give up the hard-core stuff. My ego was writing checks my body couldn’t cash anymore and my wife and friends let me know it.

Friday Random Stuff…

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Battle Royal
Who ya got? Poll up in the right sidebar. Polls not working correctly.
Intel wants PCs to be more than just ‘personal computers’
vs
Eric wants PCs to be just ‘personal computers’

Wise Disk Cleaner Updated
Version 9.7.5.692 brings “improvements” and “fixes”.
Download ( I use the portable version. )

openSUSE 15
Forgot to mention this. Leap 15 was released last week. It use kernel 4.12 released last July. Current LTS in 4.14+. Current Stable is 4.16+.
I don’t get it. Fail.

Off Topic

“We live for the One, we die for the One”
Wikipedia | IMDB
Babylon 5 is one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi series. It is finally available for streaming. (I’ve got the DVD set)
Babylon 5 on Amazon Prime
Babylon 5 DVD Babylon 5: The Complete Collection Series
This poster is on my wall.

Stuff I Bookmarked:

A newspaper columnist’s rant against cheeseburgers gives hamburger loyalists the hero they deserve
Heroes don’t always wear capes.

Facebook, Amazon, and hundreds of companies post targeted job ads that screen out older workers
IMHO this practice is widespread and along with being illegal is short-sighted and disgusting.

Countries With the Widest Gaps Between Rich and Poor
The U.S. is #9 and that is sad.

Scientists race to find who is pumping an incredibly dangerous gas into the atmosphere
China. There, I solved it for you.

AI better than dermatologists at detecting skin cancer, study finds
“At first look, dermatologists correctly detected an average of 87 percent of melanomas, and accurately identified an average of 73 percent of lesions that were not malignant. Conversely, the CNN correctly detected 95 percent of melanomas.”
Interesting but isn’t that why they send it out for a biopsy?

Question Club: Where should Star Wars go after Solo’s box office disappointment?
Disappointment to who? Its opening weekend was a holiday weekend and most sane people hate the movie theater. PPV and DVD by this fall at a fraction of the price to take your family to the theater.

Tuesday Random Stuff…

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Win10 Benchmark Continued
I’m no nearer figuring out why my benchmark scores are lower. I thought maybe my NVMe SSD had an even bigger performance hit but my AS SSD Benchmark and CrystalDiskMark scores are similar to the results I had before.

Features removed or planned for replacement starting with Windows 10, version 1803
Thanks JO!

7-Zip 18.05
Download | Release Announcment

Linux Releases
Kali Linux 2018.2
“This Kali release is the first to include the Linux 4.15 kernel, which includes the x86 and x64 fixes for the much-hyped Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. It also includes much better support for AMD GPUs”
Download | Release Announcment
Fedora 28
“For the first time, we’re making it easy for users to enable certain third-party software sources, including proprietary Nvidia drivers.”
Has kernel 4.16.
Download | Release Announcement
Meanwhile at openSUSE…
At the end of May they will release openSUSE Leap 15 which follows version 42.3. Yes you read that right. Oh, and it will use kernel 4.12 that was released last July.

Linux: Question about AMD GPU Drivers

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Linux guys,
Does anyone know of a non-rolling distro that will absolutely work with the AMDGPU-Pro Driver for Linux for my video card?
Video card: AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB
AFAIK openSuse Leap will not. Linux Mint is a no go (tried 3 times). Don’t know about Fedora but their KDE spin sucks. Ubuntu…LOL…NO.
I would prefer a KDE desktop but possibly could do another.
VMWare player also needs to work properly.

Oh openSUSE…

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Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve spent all my free time the last 2 days trying to get openSUSE Leap 42.2 installed on my main computer to no avail.
My AMD Radeon RX 480 is unsupported and simply will not work with openSUSE Leap 42.2. AMD only has drivers for Red Hat and Ubuntu. I’ve tried every hack, every tip, every suggestion I could find and some I made up on my own.
I tried Kubuntu 16.10. My graphics card worked out of the box. But, Kubuntu 16.10 is quite probably the worst KDE implementation I have ever seen.
Fedora 25 gets released in a few days so I may give that a shot. Linux Mint 18.1 is out soon too.
I’ll keep my ears open to see if someone gets my card working under openSUSE Leap 42.2 but I’m not all that hopeful. Doesn’t seem anyone really cares.

Testing Linux Mint 18

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I’ve been testing various versions of Linux Mint 18 (Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE) with an eye on possibly making it my main distro.
A few thoughts…
– It is wicked fast in a VM.
– I love everything about Cinnamon except the start menu. I don’t like that at all.
– The XFCE version is sluggish?
– The KDE version is good but openSUSE 42.2 comes out in 2 months. That has been my distro of choice for years.
– As of this writing the newest Firefox version Mint offers is 48. That is THREE versions and 1 month behind (48.0.1/48.0.2/49.0). Why?
– I love the fact they aren’t trying to ram BTRFS down my throat.

Any thoughts or tips?

Linux Stuff…

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linux1I know most of you don’t read the Linux stuff I put up but it interests me so I’m going to start posting more Linux related news.

Tails 2.0 Released
“Tails is a live operating system, that you can start on almost any computer from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card. It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity”
Announcement
Download

Cracks In The Linux Foundation?
Many in the Linux community are ticked off that the Linux Foundation has turned its back on the average user. They did this by allowing only those people with deep pockets to elect board members. While I find the news disheartening I do not find it surprising. Companies are involved in the Linux movement because they see a way to profit off of it. Altruism isn’t a factor. Why do you think so many distros got everyone to basically beta-test a server file system? (I’m talking BTRFS)
More: Controversy at the Linux Foundation

Cool Links
Hacking your Linux computer for a better listening experience