Gambling is gay, pass it on. View quoted note →

I love Arch Linux. Or rather, I love Arch-based Linux as a whole (I don't use vanilla). A big part of that is the AUR, which enables access to far more software than you can possibly have on a standard software repo. The major downside to this is security, as shown by the recent malware issues.

BleepingComputer

Over 400 Arch Linux packages compromised to push rootkit, infostealer

More than 400 packages in the Arch User Repository (AUR) are distributing a Linux rootkit and infostealer malware targeting credentials and access ...

This is incredibly unfortunate because a big part of the appeal of Arch is the fact that you have virtually limitless access to software that is fully run by the community. However, if malware is actively propagating through the AUR and nobody seems to know how to stop it, what's the point of continuing to use the AUR? One of the major advantages of the Linux approach to software distribution is that the system repository is far more secure than doing a search and downloading a binary. Software is pre-built, the repos are usually community-run with oversight, cryptographic signatures ensure the validity of the binaries you're downloading and so forth. The devs behind Garuda Linux took a hybrid approach with their "Chaotic AUR" project. They check the PKGBUILD scripts, ensure they're not malicious, then bundle them into their repo. The downside is that this process does drastically reduce the reach that the standard AUR has, because it requires human work to verify and build those packages. This presents the fatal flaw of the whole situation: if one of the major reasons people love Arch is the virtually limitless selection of software thanks to the AUR, but that very method is objectively prone to malware, where do we go from here? Do we modify the AUR in ways to make such attacks significantly harder? If so, how would we go about that? Or do we start falling back to hybrids like Chaotic AUR and pour more resources into ensuring it gains much more coverage of common AUR packages? My vote would be the latter, personally. If we could get stats on the most commonly used AUR packages, then get the Chaotic AUR maintainers to focus on those packages first, that might be a good step forward. #Linux #cybersecurity #ArchLinux #Archbtw #malware #AUR #decentralization

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WORD5

"Take your stand, noble men. The gates of hell will not prevail! Lead your families against the darkness of this world, The gates of hell will not prevail!" #metal #music #Christianity #postmil

As much as I love the Matrix films and the philosophical depth to the world that the Wachowski brothers created, I really think the majority of the doomerism we see today is a result of the mentality that The Matrix cultivated. "You're in a simulation. Everything is futile, so you have to escape. But when you escape, the world is even more bleak than you thought it was: the very dystopia you feared in fiction is now the true reality. Only a handful of us are able to wake up and fight to free everybody else but until we do that, trust no one. Even your comrades-in-arms will betray you so they can go on enjoying their life of blissful ignorance. Oh, and even once we do save the world, we don't truly save it, we just make a deal with the bad guys (which we created, BTW) and they just give us a little bit more freedom than we had before. The world doesn't rebuild, the only hope is to go back into the simulation now that we have the freedom to choose whether we live in it or not." What a nihilistic way to view the world. That is, in so many terms, an analog for how so many people view the world today. Living in defeatism and apathy, so many have surrendered to despair. "Why bother? We're cooked either way. All our heroes have failed us, we're on our own." You will never achieve victory that way. The only victory that will come will be the victory of your enemies relishing in your own self-defeat. Then again, it's far easier to throw your hands up in surrender and say "that's just the way it is" than it is to stand up, brace yourself and run against the current. Doomerism boils down to weakness and laziness, nothing more. Draw your swords, men of honor. We already won, we're just fighting against the last death throes of the infernal world order. The sooner we get moving and build our dynasties, the sooner we take up our crowns. The world needs us to stand our ground, so let's stop conceding to apathy! ⚔️ ✝️ ☦️ #Christianity #postmil #inspiration #doomerism #blackpill #matrix

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WORD5

Spoiler: Linus isn't the one saying the video title, unsurprisingly. That said, at least we're finally getting somewhere with his Linux journey 🤪

Once you learn how to use Kvantum in combination with KDE Plasma's built-in theming, you really unlock a lot of potential to give your system a truly beautiful aesthetic. The only problem is that some themes don't seem to work well even with their companion Kvantum theming, which means some of the ones I really wanted to try (including one inspired by Apple's gorgeous Liquid Glass aesthetic) won't work the way they were meant to work. #Linux #theming #ui #KDEPlasma

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WORD5

As someone who uses an Arch-based distro, this news is alarming. Fortunately, I checked and I seem to be safe from this but it's a good example of how decentralization can have some level of danger to it, despite the freedom it offers.

BleepingComputer

Over 400 Arch Linux packages compromised to push rootkit, infostealer

More than 400 packages in the Arch User Repository (AUR) are distributing a Linux rootkit and infostealer malware targeting credentials and access ...

#cybersecurity #linux #arch #malware #supplychain

Samsung, as a corporate entity, is garbage. However, I do like their products for the most part. Their software is particularly solid: their launcher, OneUI, is incredible, for example. The level of theming you can do with it is out of this world. I set up a custom theme on my Samsung phone that combines the aesthetic of the canceled Windows Longhorn's "Plex" theme and MacOS Tahoe's Liquid Glass aesthetic and it looks so good. It combines a theme pack, custom icons, an animated lockscreen wallpaper, a static wallpaper I got from an app called Wallflow, and then I created a custom theme for FUTO Keyboard that brings the aesthetic together perfectly. I can't go to such extremes with other Android launchers I've tried.

How can anyone be anti-AI when gems like this exist? 😂

It's always annoying when sinus drainage starts up out of nowhere, with no particular reason driving it to do so. 😒

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WORD5

You know, the wife in the concept of Seventh Wonder's third album, Mercy Falls, is a complete and utter scumbag. She has an affair, gets pregnant by the guy she was having an affair with, doesn't tell anyone until confessing to her husband as he's driving home years later, causing a horrific car crash that puts him in the coma that the majority of the story takes place in. Then, later, her son tries to donate bone marrow and it's rejected by the man because it's not his child. All the while, she drinks herself into a stupor. In other words, she KNEW the treatment wouldn't work because her son wasn't HIS son, yet she let her son go through the process of trying to donate to save the life of the man that he thought was his dad ("Tears for a Father" takes an even more tragic note after that knowledge: https://open.spotify.com/track/0p2GvgD1B9DyqF0UlvHJAX). She let her son risk his life to selflessly try to save a man that he grew up believing was his dad. She didn't tell him that he was born from the affair, and then after the treatment is rejected, she just gives up and lets her husband fade away thus causing her son to lose his father (even if not by blood) while pretending that she actually loved her husband. I never made that realization until now... a very underrated concept album, to be sure!