Feed aggregator

The repository ‘http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports Release’ no longer has a Release file.

nixCraft - Mon, 03/02/2026 - 23:35
When you run the sudo apt update, you may see the following message or error on a Debian Linux: Err:5 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports Release 404 Not Found [IP: 146.75.34.132 80] Reading package lists... Done E: The repository 'http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports Release' no longer has a Release file. N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default. N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details. Here is how to fix this issue. Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit The post The repository ‘http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports Release’ no longer has a Release file. appeared first on nixCraft. 2024-04-14T20:42:01Z 2024-04-14T20:42:01Z Vivek Gite

How do I find out my timezone in Linux?

nixCraft - Mon, 03/02/2026 - 23:35
You can find the timezone in Linux using the command line. The easiest way to do this is to type the "timedatectl" command and look for the "timezone" line when using modern Linux distros with systemd. There are other commands and ways to temporarily switch to a new timezone for date calculations. Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit The post How do I find out my timezone in Linux? appeared first on nixCraft. 2024-04-06T01:06:44Z 2024-04-06T01:06:44Z Vivek Gite

Iowa County Rolls Out Extensive Zoning Rules For Data Centers

Slashdot.org - Mon, 03/02/2026 - 22:00
Linn County, Iowa has adopted what may be one of the nation's strictest local zoning ordinances for data centers, requiring detailed water studies, formal water-use agreements, 1,000-foot residential setbacks, noise and light limits, and infrastructure compensation. "But seated beneath a van-sized American flag hanging from the rafters of the drafty Palo Community Center gymnasium, residents asked for even stronger protections," reports Inside Climate News. "One by one, they approached the microphone at the front of the gym to voice concerns about water use, electricity rates, light pollution, the impacts of low-frequency noise on livestock, and the county's ability to enforce the terms of the ordinance. Some, including Dorothy Landt of Palo, called for a complete moratorium on new data center development." Landt asked: "Why has Linn County, Iowa, become a dumping ground for soon-to-be obsolete technology that spoils our landscape and robs us of our resources? While I admire the efforts of the Board of Supervisors to propose a data center ordinance, I would prefer to see all future data centers banned from Linn County." From the report: The county is already home to two major data center projects, operated by Google and QTS. Both are located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa's second-largest city, and are therefore subject to its laws. The new ordinance would apply only to unincorporated areas of the county, which make up more than two-thirds of its geographic footprint. [...] In drafting the ordinance, [Charlie Nichols, director of planning and development for Linn County] and his staff drew on the experiences of communities nationwide, meeting with local government officials in regions that have seen massive booms in data center development, including several counties in northern Virginia, the "data center capital of the world." As data center development balloons, many communities that initially zoned the operations as warehouses or standard commercial users are abandoning that practice, Nichols noted. The extreme energy and water demands of data centers simply cannot be accounted for by existing zoning frameworks, he said. "These are generational uses with generational infrastructure impacts, and treating them as a normal warehouse or normal commercial user is just not working." [...] The Linn County, Iowa, ordinance goes one step further than tightening existing zoning rules. Instead, it creates a new, exclusive-use zoning district for data centers, granting county officials the power to set specific application requirements and development standards for projects. No other counties in the state have introduced similar zoning requirements, said Nichols. In fact, few jurisdictions nationwide have. [...] From its first reading to final adoption, the ordinance has expanded to include language setting light pollution standards, requiring a waste management plan, including the Iowa DNR in the water-use agreement to address potential well interference issues and requiring an applicant-led public meeting before any zoning commission meetings. "I am very confident that no ordinance for data centers in Iowa is asking for more information or asking for more requirements to be met than our ordinance right now," said Nichols at the final reading. The Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance has said that it strongly supports current and future data center development in the area. The new ordinance is not an effective moratorium, Nichols said. He said he "strongly believes" that a data center can be built within the adopted framework.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

British Columbia To End Time Changes, Adopt Year-Round Daylight Time

Slashdot.org - Mon, 03/02/2026 - 20:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: The B.C. government says this Sunday will be the last time British Columbians have to change their clocks. The province will be permanently adopting daylight time and the March 8 "spring forward" will be the last time change, Premier David Eby announced Monday. "We are done waiting. British Columbia is going to change our clocks just one more time -- and then never again," Eby said. Residents will have eight months to prepare for Nov. 1, 2026, when the clocks would have been turned back one hour, but will now remain the same. B.C.'s new time zone will be called "Pacific Time," according to the province. Further reading: Permanent Standard Time Could Cut Strokes, Obesity Among Americans

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Might Use Google Servers To Store Data For Its Upgraded AI Siri

Slashdot.org - Mon, 03/02/2026 - 18:00
Apple has reportedly asked Google to look into "seting up servers" for a Gemini-powered upgrade to Siri that meets Apple's privacy standards. The Verge reports: Apple had already announced in January that Google's Gemini AI models would help power the upgraded version of Siri it delayed last year, but The Information's report indicates Apple might lean even more on Google so it can catch up in AI. The original partnership announcement said that "the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology," and that the models would "help power future Apple Intelligence features," including "a more personalized Siri." While the announcement noted that Apple Intelligence would "continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute," it didn't specify if the new Siri would run on Google's cloud. Apple's Private Cloud Compute is not only underpowered but it's also underutilized in its current state, notes 9to5Mac, "with the company only using about 10% of its capacity on average, leading to some already-manufactured Apple servers to be sitting dormant on warehouse shelves."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SSH Agent Forwarding – An Underutilized Essential Tool

BrandonChecketts.com - Mon, 03/02/2026 - 17:22
span.code { font-family:monospace; background-color: #F1F1F1; }

SSH Agent Forwarding is a magical feature of SSH that I see too many people don’t understand or know how it works.

Using an SSH Key for authentication is superior to a password for many reasons. But it gets more complicated when you SSH from one machine, and then want to SSH from that machine to another, including for something like cloning a GitHub repository. I very frequently have this situation where I SSH from my machine to a remote server, then want to perform a git pull on that remote machine.

If attempting to do this without agent forwarding, you would have to copy your private key to the remote machine. Then from that machine, you can authenticate to GitHub since your keys are in place there. That’s cumbersome and not a great idea to put your private key on a machine that could be exploited. You should always keep your private key private!

Agent Forwarding allows you to bypass putting your private key on the intermediate machine. It essentially opens a tunnel between the remote machine and your local machine, so that authentications requests can talk to an SSH agent running on your local machine to perform the cryptographic authentication.

You create an SSH key as you normally would using the ssh-keygen command. Your private key is stored in ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 by default. You then turn on your SSH Agent using the ssh-add command like:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

That will prompt for your passphrase if you have one. If successful, the agent stays in memory and keeps your private key unencrypted in memory. You can run ssh-add -l command (-l for “list”) to see the keys that it has loaded:

14:15 $ ssh-add -l 256 SHA256:3W+i4HXlwABCdefgHIJKLMNPQRSTtRjynjRcmbgO2Jk brandon+2023@mymachine (ED25519) 256 SHA256:abcDEFghiJKLmnoPQRstuVWX/cPz2mYZZZe+xU78Ins brandon+2025@mymachine (ED25519)

Then when you want to connect to a remote machine and forward your SSH-Agent, you use the -A command-line argument

ssh brandon@remote-machine -A

You can confirm that this is working on the remote machine with ssh-add -l again. If working properly, it will list the same SSH keys as when you ran it locally. When working, you can there ssh to other machines or use SSH to authenticate to GitHub to check out packages. You can even forward from a remote machine to another machine beyond it, tunneling the agent through multiple intermediaries

One Warning

Don’t use agent forwarding to remote machines that you don’t control or that may be compromised. Someone who can log in as you, or root, on a remote machine could potentially use your forwarded agent to authenticate as you to other machines

The post SSH Agent Forwarding – An Underutilized Essential Tool appeared first on Brandon Checketts.

Categories: Web

HBO Max and Paramount+ To Merge Into One Streaming Service

Slashdot.org - Mon, 03/02/2026 - 17:00
Paramount Skydance plans to combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single streaming platform following its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. "As we said, we do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers," said David Ellison, the company's CEO. "We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space." The deal still needs regulatory approval. The Washington Post reports: He added that Paramount didn't want to make changes to the HBO brand. "Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO," Ellison said, noting that his favorite HBO product is "Game of Thrones." If Justice Department regulators allow the deal to go through, it would place recent HBO Max hits, such as "The Pitt" and "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," alongside Paramount offerings including "South Park" and "Yellowstone." "They built a phenomenal brand," he said. "They are a leader in the space, and we just want them to continue doing more of it." The deal to buy Warner Bros., valued at about $110 billion, will almost surely attract regulatory scrutiny from the Justice Department because -- without divestments -- it places major swaths of the film, television and news industries under one roof: Warner Bros. and Paramount studios, HBO Max and Paramount+, and CBS and CNN would all have the same parent company. Ellison expressed confidence on the call that the deal wouldn't face hurdles with regulators.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Charter Gets FCC Permission To Buy Cox, Become Largest ISP In the US

Slashdot.org - Mon, 03/02/2026 - 16:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter Communications, operator of the Spectrum cable brand, has obtained Federal Communications Commission permission to buy Cox and surpass Comcast as the country's largest home Internet service provider. Charter has 29.7 million residential and business Internet customers compared to Comcast's 31.26 million. Buying Cox will give Charter another 5.9 million Internet customers. The FCC approved the deal on Friday, but the companies still need Justice Department approval and sign-offs from states including California and New York. Opponents of Charter's $34.5 billion acquisition told the FCC that eliminating Cox as an independent entity will make it easier for Charter and Comcast to raise prices. But the FCC dismissed those concerns on the grounds that Charter and Cox don't compete directly against each other in the vast majority of their territories. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's primary demand from companies seeking to merge has been to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies. In a press release (PDF), the Carr-led FCC said that "Charter has committed to new safeguards to protect against DEI discrimination," and that Charter's network-expansion plans will bring "faster broadband and lower prices" to rural areas. The merger was approved one day after Charter sent a letter to Carr outlining its actions to end DEI. Charter offers broadband and cable service in 41 states, while Cox does so in 18 states.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comment