Having issues with Snap-based Firefox? Then read the mentioned steps to ditch the Snap version of Firefox for the classic/regular Firefox on your Ubuntu 22.04 system.

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#linux #firefox #ubuntu #snap #opensource

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In the past two weeks, United States lawmakers have increasingly restricted access to China-owned TikTok on government-managed devices. TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the world. Most recently, state agencies in Louisiana and West Virginia yesterday implemented new bans to prevent TikTok from tracking government employees or censoring their content. According to Reuters , that brings the total up to 19 out of 50 US states that have “at least partially blocked access on government computers to TikTok.”

It seems that states are taking what actions they can to protect US data, as, for months, President Joe Biden has seemingly dragged his feet after reportedly coming close to completing a deal with TikTok that would prevent a nationwide ban from wrenching the popular app out of the hands of 100 million Americans. Now news outlets report that it’s unlikely that Biden will seal that deal before the year ends. The New York Times reported that the deal’s terms are “unlikely to satisfy anyone.”

While Biden ponders his potential agreement, Congress seems just as ready as states to move more aggressively against TikTok. Just today, Congress introduced a new spending proposal that included a plan to restrict TikTok access for all federal employees on all government devices. Last week, the Senate voted to approve a similar ban restricting all federal employee access to the app. Reuters reported that this week, the US House of Representatives would have to approve that bill before passing it on to Biden. Even more aggressively, last week, Congress also introduced bipartisan legislation that went even further, seeking to ban TikTok for all users nationwide, citing national security concerns.

Enlarge (credit: Anadolu Agency / Contributor | Anadolu Agency )

After the US Department of Health and Human Services realized its promoted tweet about updated COVID vaccines was appearing on Twitter pages of white nationalist accounts, the agency told The Washington Post it promptly moved to remove the ads from Twitter. But their promoted tweets weren’t the only ones populating near extremist tweets.

A review by the Post found “roughly 40 brands” put in the same position due to Elon Musk’s recent decision to restore controversial accounts of Twitter users known to promote white nationalist views.

Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, was among the most famous accounts that Musk restored (and then quickly banned again), but around the same time, Musk also brought back other controversial right-wing influencers, like the editor of The Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin, and the former leader of a white nationalist group called the American Identity Movement, Patrick Casey. It was these recently reinstated influencers whose accounts raised red flags for some brands with promoted tweets that the Post reported began appearing in Anglin’s and Casey’s feeds, including Amazon, Uber, and Snap.

Značky: #DailyOps, #Ubuntu, #Linux, #snap

Značky: #Linux, #DailyOps, #Ubuntu, #snap

Enlarge / Steam, installed from the Snap Store, looks and feels a lot like Steam. You just see this interface a bit sooner, without a bunch of tabs open to find the right dependencies. (credit: Canonical / Valve)

Installing Steam on a Linux system just got a little easier, at least if you can install a Snap package. Ubuntu-maker Canonical announced today that its Steam Snap supports "bleeding edge" Mesa graphics APIs, with more improvements coming soon.

Snaps are self-contained packages that are easier for users to install without command lines and also contain the other programs and libraries they rely on, preventing conflicts between the versions of installed software applications (i.e. dependency hell ). They're theoretically easier to update through a store app and are sandboxed from the rest of the system. They're also not universally appreciated in the greater Linux community, as they're pushed primarily by Canonical through its Snap Store and can reduce the performance of some apps.

Canonical worked with Steam-creator Valve to create the Steam Snap in "Early Access" in March. It bakes in the Mesa drivers and Proton and Wine wrappers needed for some Windows-via-Linux games, resolves the 32-bit/64-bit discrepancies for certain libraries, and handles the other necessary items that users would typically be pulling in via command-line and private repositories.

Enlarge (credit: Michael Haegele | The Image Bank )

Several years after Facebook-owner Meta acquired WhatsApp and Instagram, the Federal Trade Commission launched an antitrust lawsuit that claimed that through these acquisitions, Meta had become a monopoly. A titan wielding enormous fortune over smaller companies, the FTC said Meta began buying or burying competitors in efforts that allegedly blocked rivals from offering better-quality products to consumers. In this outsize role, Meta stopped evolving consumer preferences for features like greater privacy options and stronger data protection from becoming the norm, the FTC claimed. The only solution the FTC could see? Ask a federal court to help them break up Meta and undo the damage the FTC did not foresee when it approved Meta’s acquisitions initially.

To investigate whether Meta truly possesses monopoly power, both Meta and the FTC have subpoenaed more than 100 Meta competitors each. Both hope to clearly define in court how much Meta dominates the market and just how negatively that impacts its competitors.

Through 132 subpoenas so far, Meta is on a mission to defend itself, claiming it needs to gather confidential trade secrets from its biggest competitors—not to leverage such knowledge and increase its market share, but to demonstrate in court that other companies are able to compete with Meta. According to court documents, Meta’s so hungry for this background on its competitors, it says it plans to subpoena more than 100 additional rivals, if needed, to overcome the FTC’s claims.