John Evdemon

FDA Finally Bans Red Dye No. 3 From Food

• The FDA banned Red Dye No. 3 from cosmetics in 1990 due to concerns over its potential link to cancer.  The FDA was concerned about letting something that causes cancer touch our skin but were just fine with people eating it.
• Interesting timing. The governement never has your best interests in mind.

When Editorial Cartoonists Come Too Close To The Truth

• The Washington Post's editorial cartoonist resigned after her latest contribution was rejected. See if you can figure out why they refused to run her cartoon...is 
  
• I'm not surprised to see the Post block a cartoon mocking the many billionaires  ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶i̶l̶l̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶T̶r̶u̶m̶p̶’̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶a̶u̶g̶u̶r̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶e̶m̶p̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶r̶y̶ ̶f̶a̶v̶o̶r openly bribing Trump. This is one of many reasons the public no longer trusts the media.

New Year, New Phone

• Yes, I'm serious - this is my new phone, an Alcatel Go Flip 3 running KaiOS. 
• Hardest adjustments:
  • Unable to quickly look things up.
  • GPS is not real time - it reminds me of reviewing a map before I start driving.
  • The camera is only 2 MP and the texting app can't seem to send pictures.
  •  The texting app doesn't support group texts, making group discussions a bit challenging.
• Unexpected benefits:
  • More enagaged with my wife and others.
  • Doing much more reading (I already finished two books this week) 
  • Feeling less distracted.
  • Strangers striking up a conversation when they see me using it in public
  • Realizing I didn't really need all those apps. For the apps I really need I run them on my laptop. 

Things That Make You Go Hmm

• Since 2023 Microsoft announced job cuts of 10,000, 3,000 (2024) and is targeting another 1,000 or more in 2025.
• Meanwhile in India, zero job cuts are expected.

Most Open Source is Only Useful If Your Time Has No Value

• Interesting to see an article on inefficiency and open source. Many of the open source tools and applications I've tried to use took far longer to set up and use (if they worked at all) due to out of date or the total absence of documentation combined with the developer's assumption that everyone's stack is either configured like theirs ("it worked on my machine") or everyone is a Linux sysadmin.
• I'm convinced the IndieWeb movement would be far more successful if the guys hacking together tools and platforms would just slow down and document their stuff for the average user (or as Dave Winer would say, "document it for poets").

The Hypocritical Ban on TikTok

• If congress is truly worried about China gaining access to US information why are we still manufacturing all of our PCs, Macs, and networking equipment in China?
• The "Protecting Americans from Foreign Controlled Applications Act" was passed by Congress in 2024 as part of a package to provide aid to Ukraine and Israel. This law identifies China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran as “foreign adversaries” of the United States and bars the use of apps controlled by those countries. The law also defines applications controlled by foreign adversaries to include any app run by TikTok or ByteDance (the owners of TikTok). The law requires TikTok to be shut down in the United States unless ByteDance can sell it to a non-Chinese owner by January 19 (how convenient - right before the inauguration). TikTok and its users came to the Supreme Court last month, asking the justices to rule on the constitutionality of this law.
• Congress' argument is that Chinese government’s control of TikTok “poses a grave threat to national security” and must be shut down or transferred to a non-Chinese owner to avoid such threats. 
• I find this point to be extremely hypocritical. Apparently Congress hasn't noticed who manufactures all of the PCs, Macs, and network devices they use on a daily basis. What are the odds that this "foreign adversary manufacturer" could embed malicious hardware or software in these devices?
• What are the odds that the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Controlled Applications Act" was actually funded and lobbied for by competitors to TikTok (namely Facebook/Meta)?  TikTok has dominated social media platforms - others have been unsuccessful in competing with it. 
• Note: I am not a fan of China or TikTok. I don't even use TikTok. I think it's one of many things in life designed to destroy our attention spans and dumb us all down.

Facebook to Cut Almost 3,700 Jobs 

•  Meta (Facebook) is planning to cut about 5% of its staff through performance-based terminations.
• This is a huge cut. I have difficulty understanding how excecutives charged with setting Meta's strategic goals can't be held accountable for such huge cuts.
• Perhaps performance-based terminations should start at the top with the people responsible for pushing the company into unprofitable strategies.
• Another reason Facebook's performance-based terminations should start at the top.

Stop Trying To Reduce Plant Food 

•  Plants the world over are absorbing about 31% more carbon dioxide than previously thought, according to a new assessment developed by scientists..

Interesting Timing

• Drones will no longer be restricted from flying over the White House.
• The inauguration is happening next week. I'm sure this is just a coincidence.

There Is Nothing New Under The Sun

• I remember writing about the potential vulnerabilities and threats being discussed in this article back in 1999. 
• The Last Pass hack was just a matter of time. Using an Internet-accessible password vault is not a great idea.

Installation (assuming you are already running Windows)

• Download Ubuntu ISO file - get it here
• Download and run Rufus to create the bootable USB image on your thumbdrive (your thumbdrive must be 4 GB or larger)
• Turn off BitLocker
• Turn off FastStart
  • Open the Control Panel and select Power Options.
  • Click on “Choose what the power buttons do.”
  • Click on “Change settings that are currently unavailable.”
  • Scroll down to the “Shutdown settings” section and uncheck the “Turn on fast startup” opt
  • ion.
  • Click “Save changes.”
• Turn off Secure Boot
  
  • Note: If you are using a Surface device you need to hold down Volume Up while the machine is booting up. For all other devices you can press and hold the Shift key while the machine is booting up. 
• Install Ubuntu
• PROs:
  • Ubuntu is incredibly user friendly and supports well-known Windows hotkeys. It also comes with Libre Office - an open source suite of tools compatible with Microsoft Office.
  • My laptop (an old Surface) feels much faster. 
•  CONs:
  • I still haven't figIured out how to get the Surface's built-in cameras to work.
  • The keyboard drivers are a bit wonky - sometimes the cursor jumps to another part of the screen if I type too quickly. This is annoying and I am looking for a fix.
• Overall:
  • I  like it a lot and am staying with it.

A fix for the jumping cursor when typing issue 

• As stated above, after installing Ubuntu I noticed the cursor sometmes jumps to another part of the screen if I type too quickly. 
• This issue can be fixed by blacklisting the psmouse module:
  • Go into Terminal by hitting Ctrl+T and enter the following command:
  • echo "blacklist psmouse" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
• This issue mght also be caused by inadvertantly brushing the touchpad while I was typing. I installed the Touchpad Switcher extension to enable quickly disabling and re-enabling the touchpad. This extension adds a small toggle to the system settings dropdown available in the upper right corner of the screen. No more jumping cursor issues when typing!

Accessing Your Windows Partition from Ubuntu

• By default you'll see it but you can't access it (mount it). 
• Go into the Ubuntu Disks Utility (lower left corner/Show Apps/Utilities/Disks)
• Click your disk in the left column
• Click on your Windows partition and click the gear
• Click Edit Mount options
• Turn off User Session Mounts, add ,remove_hiberfile and save it.  It should look like this:  
• You can now access your Windows partition from Ubuntu. 

Desktop Icons

• Current version of Ubuntu doesn't support Desktop icons. You can re-enable this by installing Gnome Extensions.
• First, install Extension Manager: sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
• Next, remove the outdated desktop extension that this installed: sudo apt remove gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons-ng
• Logout and log back in (via upper right corner) to enable Extension Manager.
• Extension Manager is accessible in your Applications (click the Ubuntu icon in lower left corner).
• Open Extension Manager, click Browse tab and type ding
• Multiple extensions may show up. Pick the one with GTK4 and click the Install button.
  
• Desktop icons should now show up. 
• Notes:
  • Drag and drop creation of shortcut URLs from a browser are not yet supported. You can install an alternate desktop manager like nemo which supports this. I found that nemo seems to break WayDroid (see below) so I uninstalled it. 

Run Android Apps on Ubuntu

•   Install Waydroid 
  • sudo apt install curl ca-certificates -y
  • curl -s https://repo.waydro.id | sudo bash
  • sudo apt install waydroid -y

• Initialize Waydroid with the GAPPS branch in Terminal (or run the GUI and choose GAPPS from the dropdown):
  • sudo waydroid init -s GAPPS

• Note: if you have previously initialized a non-GAPPS branch of Waydroid, you must remove it first with:
  • sudo rm -r /var/lib/waydroid
  • sudo rm -r /home/.waydroid
  • sudo rm -r ~/waydroid
  • sudo rm -r ~/.share/waydroid
  • sudo rm -r ~/.local/share/waydroid

• Waydroid is accessible in your Applications (click the Ubuntu icon in lower left corner).
• Register Waydroid with Google Services. This enables Google Play, enabling you to install and run Android apps.
  • Go to https://www.google.com/android/uncertified/ and sign in with the Google account you wish to register this device with.
  • In your host's terminal, enter the following command to retrieve & print the Google Services Framework Android ID: echo 'ANDROID_RUNTIME_ROOT=/apex/com.android.runtime sqlite3 /data/data/com.google.android.gsf/databases/gservices.db "select * from main where name = \"android_id\";"' | sudo waydroid shell
  • This ID will only exist if the Google Play Store has been successfully opened at least once on the device.
  • Copy the retrieved number into the URL above & click Register.
• You can pin Android apps to the Ubuntu sidebar after installing them in Waydroid. 

In case you need to remove Waydroid and start over, follow the steps below:

• Stop the session and containers:
  • waydroid session stop 
  • sudo waydroid container stop
  •  
• Remove Waydroid:

  sudo apt remove waydroid

• Reboot, log back in and do a little cleanup:

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/waydroid /home/.waydroid ~/waydroid ~/.share/waydroid ~/.local/share/applications/*aydroid* ~/.local/share/waydroid

• Now you can follow the install instructions again.