John Evdemon

The Hypocritical Ban on TikTok

•  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 Job  

•  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 forcing the company into unprofitable strategies.

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.

The Is Nothing New Under The Sun

• I remember writing about the potential vulnerabilities and threats being discussed in this article back in 1999. 

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

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:
  • 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.