Spyware maker NSO Group cannot use its government clients to shield itself from litigation, a US appeals court ruled on Monday, a decision that allows WhatsApp's lawsuit against the Israel-based firm to resume.

In 2019, Facebook and its WhatsApp subsidiary sued NSO claiming the firm's intrusion software, known as Pegasus, was used to unlawfully compromise the accounts of WhatsApp customers.

NSO denies any wrongdoing. While WhatsApp claimed members of civil society had their phones infiltrated by Pegasus, NSO insisted it only sold its software to "licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to help them fight terrorism and serious crime," and that using its software to surveil political opponents, advocacy groups, and journalists is contractually prohibited.

"Whatever NSO’s government customers do with its technology and services does not render NSO an 'agency or instrumentality of a foreign state,' as Congress has defined that term," the appeals panel said. "Thus, NSO is not entitled to the protection of foreign sovereign immunity."

Darling is a translation layer that allows us to run macOS applications on Linux. It emulates a complete Darwin environment, including Mach, dyld, launchd and everything you'd expect. It lets you to instantly switch to a Bash shell and start running the applications built for macOS in your Linux system.

Like Wine, it can be a lot quicker to run a single application this way, instead of booting a VM up. But it is early days for Darling still, and it is not as mature as Wine, so is mostly still running non-GUI apps. The developers of Darling are planning to build a nice and user-friendly GUI for interacting with Darling. But for now, we can interact with Darling via command line only.

See https://ostechnix.com/run-macos-software-on-linux-using-darling/

#technology #opensource #Linux #macOS #Darling

Depending on whom you ask, PC Building Simulator is either utterly ridiculous or incredibly satisfying. You can decide for yourself by downloading this niche simulator for free from the Epic Games Store before October 17th.

Like the majority of sim games, PCBS speaks to a very specific type of fantasy. If your idea of a good time is overclocking your computer while managing a small business, this is a game that does exactly that.

See https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/8/22715201/pc-building-simulator-free-epic-games-store

#technology #gaming #epicgames #PCBuildingSimulator #simulator

This application used to be called PulseEffects but it was renamed to EasyEffects after we started to use GTK4 and replaced GStreamer by native PipeWire filters.

This is really useful for cleaning up audio when doing recordings for videos. Yes OBS Studio has many of these built-in, but if you are using third party screen recorders like say SimpleScreenRecorder, they have no audio input processing, and this is where EasyEffects is really useful. There are a good 23 effects, but some like auto gain, compressor, equalizer, and noise reduction will be most useful.

I installed from AUR for Arch Linux, but there is also a Flatpak install that should install on most Linux distros.

See https://github.com/wwmm/easyeffects

#technology #Linux #EasyEffects #Audio #Recording

Inspired by another build, [Pierre] set out to build his dream desk that is maximum PC power in minimum space. It is chock full of easily-accessible cavities that hide everything you’d expect, plus a few things you don’t, like a flatbed scanner, a printer, a router, and a wireless charging pad. One cavity is dedicated to I/O, and another has three international power sockets. The only thing it doesn’t hide is the 22″ pen display that [Pierre] uses for sketching, signing documents, and occasionally as a second monitor.

Even one of the table legs has a channel inside to hide the only two cables that leave the desk. Wonder if we'd ever see something like this for purchase, but I suppose the size of items do differ so not so easy.

See https://hackaday.com/2021/04/20/you-wont-believe-how-much-tech-is-hiding-in-this-desk/

#technology #lessismore #clutter #hardware

Looking at screens for too long can cause eyestrain, but eyestrain existed long before screens. (Driving long distances is another cause, the Mayo Clinic notes.) Eyestrain may involve fatigue of the tiny muscles in and around our eyes, and people who get eyestrain may experience discomfort that includes headaches, blurry vision, watering of the eyes, and sensitivity to light.

There’s a rumor that the blue light from smartphones (or other screens) can ruin your vision, perhaps even leading to blindness, but it’s not backed up by evidence. “The amount of light coming from a computer has never been demonstrated to cause any eye disease,” the American Academy of Opththalmology states in an article on their website recommending against blue-light-blocking glasses. There is research that finds blue light can damage cells in certain lab conditions, but those conditions are very different from what happens in the actual cells of our retina.

Unfortunately, there are companies citing research like this to sell their blue-light-blocking glasses or screen overlays, but they aren’t selling a solution to a real problem. This happened to me recently after getting an eye test for glasses for all day looking at screens. The prescription is actually for vision correction (that's all) but guess what, the optometrist also sells glasses, and somehow I got hoodwinked into adding blue light lens coatings "to prevent eyestrain". This adds a considerable amount to the price. In future too I'll take my prescription and get quotes for glasses (including online) as the whole business seems to be a bit of a scam. I paid double the rate of a GP for the tests and got zero report back.

And regarding affecting sleep, the recommendation is to just have screens an inch or two further away - my screens are at 85 cm which is way further than the recommended 63 cm. In other words we should be better educated about how to use our eyes, and not necessarily just be sold blue light filter coatings on lenses.

See https://vitals.lifehacker.com/what-happens-to-your-eyes-when-you-stare-at-screens-all-1846593909

#technology #vision #myths #bluelight #optometrists

The author installed Improve YouTube after reading gHacks’ praise for the extension’s bevy of features — there are well over 80 at this point, and more are added regularly. It does everything from outfitting YouTube’s website (or web app) with better controls and layout options, to blocking ads, comments, and unwanted channel recommendations, and way more.

Improve YouTube is available for FireFox and Chrome derivatives.

See https://lifehacker.com/this-might-be-the-only-youtube-browser-extension-youll-1846575110

#technology #youtube #browsers

The program, which gives third-party repair providers access to genuine Apple parts, tools, repair manuals and diagnostics, was initially lunched in the U.S. in 2019, and expanded to Europe and Canada in 2020. This year, it will be available in more than 200 countries — "nearly" every country where Apple products are sold, Apple announced on Tuesday.

The repair providers that want to join the program can get free training from Apple, but they do have to commit to having an Apple-certified technician on duty (certification is also free). According to Apple, there are currently more than 1,500 Independent Repair Provider locations in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

I'll bet this is because of the heat around right-to-repair groups and accusations of monopolistic practices. But either ways it is a good thing for competition and boosting local economic development.

See https://mashable.com/article/apple-independent-repair-provider-program-global

#technology #apple #southafrica #righttorepair

Seriously any centralised social network hosted in the USA, Russia, China, Australia (to name but a few) is fully traceable, can easily be censored, and can be held legally accountable.

No so easy with peer-to-peer networks or decentralised networks hosted across numerous countries. It's not impossible, but seriously centralised network = no privacy.

See https://mashable.com/article/parler-first-amendment-fbi-users-outraged

#technology #privacy #parler #freespeech

Much like e-mail, calendaring has long established open protocols (like we DON'T have for social media) across services such as WebDAV, ics, etc. So it is usually quite easy to export/import a calendar elsewhere, or even to link to one or more remote calendars.

An app such as Thunderbird for example, can install on Windows, MacOS or Linux, and then connect to Google Calendar service online or many other external calendars. It's just one way of extracting what you have in Google Calendar (or even GMail), and then either copying that to a local calendar, or to a calendar elsewhere that Thunderbird can also connect to.

If you want a cloud server version of e-mail (vs just on your desktop) you can host a NextCloud instance at home or online in a cheap VPS. The article also mentions the possibility of AgenDAV. If you have a Hubzilla social media account, you already have a calendar service in there too with WebDAV capability which you can use to sync through. Other online options are Zoho Apps or Trello too.

See https://opensource.com/alternatives/google-calendar

#technology #opensource #alternativeto #calendar

It started (in recent times) with the USA accusing TikTok and Huawei of being capable of spying (nothing was ever proven), and now with China responding in the same way about Tesla vehicles (laden with cameras, sensors and network connectivity).

All valid concerns, and we do already know for a fact that allies are spying on allies, so they are not groundless concerns, but where does that leave electronic devices that are getting smarter and smarter? It's a concerning future because even if the manufacturer is not overtly assisting with spying, they could be infiltrated and have their information exposed (remember SolarWinds?). In fact, who knows if data from Tesla's in use at US military institutions, have not had their data exposed already in this way to any other foreign power?

Interesting times we live in, and to think our own military was banning all smartphones from their meetings years ago... now it will be smart watches, smart cars, and let's just hope we don't get smart clothing!

See https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-tesla-china-sharing-data/

#technology #security #spying #Tesla

Many other guides dive deep into 10 plus pages of how to set up such a service with Dovecot, Postfix and a web server all from the command line, but this one is a lot simpler because most of what you need is inside Citadel. Citadel also has calendar, Contacts, Notes, Tasks and chat rooms so can be a good alternative to Google or other providers. Your only cost really is the Raspberry Pi and a domain name if you don't already have one.

You could tweak this a bit further by using your own DNS provider (or alternative to Cloudflare) and considering an external hard drive connected to the Pi for reliability.

See https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-email-server/

#technology #email #privacy #raspberrypi #alternativeto #opensource