Category: Podcast

Friday Roundup: April 28, 2017

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

With the so called “government shutdown” delayed until next week, the roller coaster of 2017 is still building momentum, which brings us this week’s Friday Roundup.

Unix

 

FOSS Force announced the improvement of their news wire. In addition to headlines and authors, excerpts are now included. DistroWatch Weekly has a review of Ubuntu 17.04, the final series that will use Unity for the desktop environment before switching back to GNOME in the next LTS release. Jesse Smith noted an issue with Snap packages in conjunction with DEB packages.

I think it is worth mentioning that to install Snaps from Ubuntu Software, we need to have an Ubuntu One account. Sometimes, when trying to install Snaps, I would encounter authentication errors with my Ubuntu One account and I found closing Ubuntu Software and then re-opening the software manager and trying to install the Snap again would work around the issue.

I also feel it worth pointing out that Ubuntu’s three software managers (Ubuntu Software, Snap and APT) each work with a subset of the available packages. Snaps, for example, cannot be managed using the APT utilities. Likewise, we cannot use Snap to manage traditional Deb packages. The Ubuntu Software application tries to bridge this gap and works with desktop applications provided by both Snaps and Deb packages. However, Ubuntu Software does not work with non-desktop software or some games, requiring a trip to the command line to manage those items. This situation may get better in the future and we may get an all-in-one software manager, but for now we need three different utilities to manage software on Ubuntu and that makes for an awkward situation.

The CEO of Thinkpenguin Inc was arrested for filming the police at a police checkpoint and may face up to a year in jail. Christopher Waid had this to say:

I was essentially arrested for filming a police checkpoint in Manchester, New Hampshire (police invoked non-existent law to interfere with recording, made multiple contradicting and confusing requests, and were quick to obstruct and damage video recording equipment). Papers please. I don’t think I’ll be posting this to the ThinkPenguin blog as its irrelevant to free software / the company / etc. However I thought people here might be interested in following the case. The entire trial will be highly publicized, recorded, etc. One of the officers humorously threatens me with a motor vehicle violation. To be clear I was not drinking, not driving, had no car nearby (got there via another driver which had his car parks two or three blocks away), and in no way under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

The Debian Project is shutting down their public FTP service, though developers won’t be affected. According to SoftPedia:

This means that the upload queues for both the main (ftp://ftp.upload.debian.org) and security (ftp://security-master.debian.org) archives will be accessible to them. The rest of the world won’t be able to access ftp://ftp.debian.org, nor ftp://security.debian.org starting November 1, 2017.

Overlooked Pop Culture

 

Comic book fans may have a reason to rejoice with the upcoming Marvel Legacy one shot. It includes multiple characters telling a story of the glory days. The story will relate to future of the Marvel Universe going forward.

Podcast co-host Stephen Kelley has a review of the 2017 release of Ghost in the Shell. He does pose a warning to the Internet Outrage Machine before the review is underway:

Let’s get this first part out of the way:

If there is one thing I’m tired of in the realm of film and television, it’s pre-emptive complainers trying to de-rail everything before it even comes out. with any review of this live action American/Chinese Ghost in The Shell film, everyone has drawn battle lines in regards to the elephant in the room of “Hollywood whitewashing”; in fact, I would say you were almost expected to take a side, and if you took a side that many didn’t like you’d get lectured by the other. It’s annoying that folks are getting in fights and “unfriending” each-other because of opinions over a goofy sci-fi film, but that’s our modern society I guess. Some popular reviews from major sites didn’t even talk about the film, they just reviewed everything that was in some way perceived as racist to stoke the outrage fires, this honestly comes across like they never actually watched it.

I’m not going to dwell on this topic too much because I can see both sides and don’t think arguing over whether or not Scarlett Johanson should or should not be cast as The Major actually addresses the actual problem that Hollywood has with representation. The internet witch hunts and rage were nearly identical to what people attempted to do with both recent Star Wars films, and even last years re-boot of Ghostbusters, and I honestly don’t care anymore. I’d rather discuss a film based on an anime/manga property that I’ve loved for upwards of 20+ years, and how it turned out.

/end rant

On a lighter note, Causecon has started today and will run through Sunday. All proceeds will go towards the local Women’s Resource Center in Beckley, West Virginia.

Political underground radio talk show host Jack Blood has made his return after a lengthy hiatus. He has a Patreon page for those who have followed him over the years and want to support him. On said page, he indicated the following:

At this time, the show is 100% commercial free! It will be up to you if it stays that way.

That ends this week’s Friday Roundup. We’ll be back next week.

The Next Level

Become one of our patrons.
Visit our Patreon page and become a patron today.

One of the things that has become apparent in the last several months is that we live in interesting times. The things that we thought weren’t possible have become the inevitable.

It feels like we’re living in a real life Twilight Zone.

As we continue the new year, new challenges arise. In order to better cover the topics that fascinate us and hold our passion, we need to be able to step it up. That requires money.

The first goal is to make sure the web hosting can handle the files and traffic we throw at it. The reason why we host each episode ourselves is because we also want our site to get more traffic.

That won’t happen if the podcast is hosted off the site.

If we reach $100 a month, hosting will be upgraded. With better hosting, we’ll be able to have more traffic. From there, further goals will include upgrading our recording equipment and even investing in a dedicated studio.

The studio is a long term goal and won’t be reached for a while.

In the meantime, feel free to share our Patreon page, and become a patron today.

Podcast Pushed Back Until Tuesday

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

There will be a slight delay of the latest episode of the podcast. The original plan was to have it published on Friday. Due to a second part time job and the current work schedule, I will be pushing it back to Tuesday.

I will be having the podcast published on Tuesday from here on out.

At some point, Friday will have a video show that summarizes the week. Mondays will also have regular posts that are more Unix and tech related. For tgose who are in the midwest, please have a safe and wonderful weekend.

Icy weather is never fun.

Operational Security Update

SSL has now been enabled.
Privacy conscious users can now celebrate.

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

In the past few months, it’s become obvious how important the mission of the site has become. The unfortunate, inevitable truth is that major news and media networks are trying to figure out how they could have gotten the election year so wrong while not actually coming upon the correct answer.

In reality, they blame so called “fake news” outlets for their own failings.

In light of this, and revelations over the years, it’s still important to have operational security in mind no matter what any given website is about. For that reason, we have enabled SSL encryption.

In the coming days, the about page will be updated so that anybody who wants to e-mail any of us will not only have an available e-mail address but an encryption key as well. I will also remove my personal site and set up a new one to free up resources for this site.

My Libertarian Conscience will simply be set up in a new home, and the podcast will be converted to a YouTube show instead.

In light of media incompetence, civil liberties concerns, and the revelations from Edward Snowden, I knew that it was time to make things a bit more secure. What he did was not without controversy, and there were unintended consequences.

With that said, the cat is already out of the bag and everybody should be thinking about their privacy.

Even if one has nothing to fear from their own government, there are still identity thieves and others with less than honorable intentions. Protecting your identity and privacy is generally a good idea.

It’s like wearing a helmet when getting on a bike or safety goggles when you’re doing a job that requires eye protection.

That’s also why I don’t begrudge those who use ad blocking. I don’t blame any readers who have no desire to be tracked and traced.

I’ve only begun to keep things updated here. Stay tuned for more articles and more podcasts.

An Apology to Our Readers

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

For the past several months, I haven’t been as active on the website as I should have been. I was trying to avoid intermixing politics with this very venue, and I shouldn’t have done so.

After all, Overlooked Pop Culture does contain subject matter that is in fact political in nature.

I also wasn’t motivated enough to keep going. That held true until last week. Now I have a reason to get started again. I apologize for being away for so long.

Sometimes, current events are needed to wake me back up.

In the coming days, more activity will occur on the site, and the podcast will resume next week. Thank you for your patience and sorry for leaving everyone hanging.

In the meantime, here’s a video elaborating the situation:

Needless to say we live in interesting times.

Curtis Warren Joins the Team

Curtis Warren
His scientific background will help round out the podcast.

The podcast has had hosts come and go over the last several months.  With each new episode, it became clear that more perspectives were needed.

Fortunately, it seems the right people come along at the right time.  We’re proud to announce that Curtis Warren will be joining the team.

Science has been an important factor throughout his life, and this background will help the show tremendously.

He also likes video games and has recently resumed playing Magic the Gathering after a lengthy hiatus.  He’s excited about the opportunity to bring his unique perspective to the podcast and had this to say:

I would like to share my compassion and passion for Nature, for gaming, and for Education. I’m a huge advocate for making use of the natural world and caring for others and I think that Gaming, Science, and Art are ways we can accomplish that and make the world a better place.

He makes his debut on tonight’s live recording session.

Tech Tuesday: Fedora 20 Screenshot and a Video!

GNOME Shell on Fedora 20.
GNOME Shell in all its glory.

First off, for those who missed it, here’s the latest episode of our podcast.

I’ve set up Fedora 20 on the HP Elite 410y Desktop, and it works so far.  Seeing as how it contains LibreOffice, I should be able to work with some documents while running this OS for about a month.

One of the things I’ve been wanting to do for some time is get down to the nitty gritty in terms of installation and how well the system works.  I don’t have a system that’s portable with NVIDIA graphics, because the Toshiba Tecra M9’s GPU is problematic (it hangs on the latest binary drivers).

Due in part to Bruce Byfield’s observations about distro reviews not quite having enough details (i.e. how smooth the installation is, etc… etc…), I figured I’d take a bit more time in terms of installation.  I’ve taken a few notes and made a few observations about some of the quirks of installing Fedora 20 from a Live DVD.