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Discord screen-sharing with audio on Linux Wayland is officially here  GamingOnLinux

Linux 6.14 To Bring An Important Improvement For AMD Preferred Core  Phoronix

Xen Hypervisor Support Being Worked On For RISC-V  Phoronix

libvirt 11.0 Released For Open-Source Virtualization API  Phoronix

Flatpak 1.16 Released With Better Wayland Experience and USB Device Support  It's FOSS News

Linux Rsync File Transfer Tool Vulnerability Let Attackers Execute Arbitrary Code  CybersecurityNews

Linux Rsync File Transfer Tool Vulnerability Let Attackers Execute Arbitrary Code  CybersecurityNews

Jan 14th Steam Beta fixes Linux issues, a Steam Deck WiFi crash, View In Library added to Downloads page  GamingOnLinux

Jan 14th Steam Beta fixes Linux issues, a Steam Deck WiFi crash, View In Library added to Downloads page  GamingOnLinux

Linux Mint 22.1 ISOs approved, here's how to download them now  Neowin

Linux Mint 22.1 ISOs approved, here's how to download them now  Neowin

hackingbear shares a report from the Associated Press: As the threat of a TikTok ban looms, U.S. TikTok users are flocking to the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu -- making it the top downloaded app in the U.S. Xiaohongshu, which in English means "Little Red Book" is a Chinese social media app that combines e-commerce, short video and posting functions, enticing mostly Chinese young women from mainland China and regions with with a Chinese diaspora such as Malaysia and Taiwan who use it as a de-facto search engine for product, travel and restaurant recommendations, as well as makeup and skincare tutorials. After the justices seemed inclined to let the law stand, masses of TikTok users began creating accounts on Xiaohongshu, including hashtags such as #tiktokrefugee or #tiktok to their posts. " I like your makeup," a Xiaohongshu user from Beijing comments one of the posts by Alexis Garman, a 21-year-old TikTok user in Oklahoma with nearly 20,000 followers, and Garman thanks them in a reply. A user from the southwestern province of Sichuan commented "I am your Chinese spy please surrender your personal information or the photographs of your cat (or dog)." "TikTok possibly getting banned doesn't just take away an app, it takes away jobs, friends and community," Garman said. "Personally, the friends and bond I have with my followers will now be gone." Xiaohongshu doesn't even have an English user interface. Reuters reports: In only two days, more than 700,000 new users joined Xiaohongshu, a person close to the company told Reuters. Xiaohongshu [which was founded in 2013 and is backed by investors such as Alibaba, Tencent and Sequoia], did not immediately respond to a request for comment. U.S. downloads of RedNote were up more than 200% year-over-year this week, and 194% from the week prior, according to estimates from app data research firm Sensor Tower. The second most-popular free app on Apple's App Store list on Tuesday, Lemon8, another social media app owned by ByteDance, experienced a similar surge last month, with downloads jumping by 190% in December to about 3.4 million.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LACT Linux GPU Control Panel Adds Support For Intel Graphics  Phoronix

Although I continue to monitor the best interest rates out there, in 2024 I made the conscious decision to tone down my rate-chasing and look for a lower maintenance setup that still gets a solid interest rate on my cash. Warning: This is going to be an informal, rambling post with a lot of personal opinions. Let me know what you think in the comments. I’ll list them by most activity to least activity.

Fidelity Cash Management Account (Direct Deposit and Internal Push)
I consider the Fidelity Cash Management Account my primary cashflow account. The vast majority of my household cash flows are direct deposit into my CMA, and then bill payment out via their BillPay service. In other words, I have to manually schedule any money going out. I like that I can transfer money quickly to and from my other Fidelity brokerage accounts, if necessary.

The Fidelity CMA is not a bank account. It is a full brokerage account with bank features bolted-on like a debit card, check-writing, and Bill Pay. The core position is the Fidelity Government Money Market Fund (SPAXX), which has a 4.01% 7-day yield as of 1/12/25. However, at ~40% US Government Obligations in 2023, it did not meet the requirements of having interest exempt from state taxes for California, Connecticut, and New York.

However, I use automatic recurring purchase system to keep it mostly in Fidelity Treasury Only Money Market Fund (FDLXX), which has a 4.03% 7-day yield as of 1/12/25. At ~90% US Government Obligations in 2023, it did meet the requirements of having interest exempt from state taxes for California, Connecticut, and New York. If you assume a 10% state income tax rate, this works out to a tax-effective yield of ~4.4%.

Money market funds are not FDIC-insured, but they are highly-regulated after the 2008 financial crisis and I am comfortable with their safety as they hold 90% Treasury bonds and as long as I am buying from a reputable name like Fidelity.

Fidelity uses various third parties to provide their banking features. The Fidelity debit card is issued by Leader Bank, and the debit card program is administered by BNY Mellon Investment Servicing Trust Company. Fidelity works with UMB, NA to process checks and ACH transfers. The ACH routing number for Fidelity accounts is 101205681 and belongs to UMB, NA. If you experience fraud from using the debit card, then you will have to deal with BNY Mellon. These third-party providers do not have the same level of customer service reputation as Fidelity, and Fidelity seems to punt to them, and I wish to avoid dealing with any of that.

Accordingly, I never use the Fidelity Debit Card (it is locked), and I never give out the ACH routing number and account number linked to my Fidelity CMA account (besides direct deposit). Therefore, no outside entity should have the ability to “pull” money out of my CMA account. My Fidelity CMA account is also on “Fidelity Lockdown” which prevents an unauthorized ACAT transfer of my entire account. (Lockdown does not interfere with ACH transfers.)

A reader asked if Fidelity should be treated as a “Fintech” to avoid since they use a third-party to provide some of their banking services. As you can see, I do treat them with extra care because whenever there are extra parties involved, there is room for confusion and blaming each other. However, the problem with many fintechs is that they open up what is called a “FBO” (For Benefit Of) account at their partner banks, which is a big pooled account of all their customers’ money mixed together, and then the fintech or middleman keeps a ledger of individual account balances. Even though there are routing numbers and account numbers, the bank does not open an individual account for everyone. What happens when the ledger from the fintech isn’t kept accurately? How do they split up the big pool of money? Ask the Yotta app users who completely lost access to their funds for several months, and many are still waiting to this day. Apparently, if the middleman or fintech company fails, it’s a poo show. If the bank itself failed, then the depositors would supposedly have been covered.

In my case, most funds are invested in a SEC-regulated money market fund from Fidelity inside an SIPC-insured brokerage fund.

Ally Checking and Savings (ATM card, checks, Venmo, etc)
For a long time, Ally was my primary checking and savings account. Even though they are an online bank with no physical branches and thus lower overhead costs, it still offered solid customer service and well, it simply knows to be a traditional bank. I have deposited large paper checks remotely, made large wire transfers, made large ACH transfers regularly, and used their ATM card around the world. My limited interactions found a knowledgeable human on the other side of the phone. Live chat is also available.

Their website interface is also clear and reliable, with the ability to link many external accounts (many of which won’t otherwise initiate transfers themselves) and make reasonably fast transfers between all of them. For each transfer, Ally will clearly tell me ahead of time the date that the funds will be pulled from the source account, and also the date that the funds will arrive at the destination account. I’ve moved over a million dollars in aggregate around, chasing various bonuses and bringing it back. Ally never bothered me.

The interest rate is 3.80% APY as of 1/13/25, and while that isn’t horrible, Ally used to keep themselves closer to the top rates. Given the differential is now up to a full 1% APY higher at my other options when taking into account the state tax exemption, that was enough to move some funds out. I still keep enough money at Ally to cover other cash needs (ATM card, checks, Venmo, etc).

I can keep minimal amount in Ally Checking as they offer free automatic overdraft protection from a chosen Ally Savings account. If you overdraw your checking, they just pull from Ally Savings in $100 increments on demand at no cost.

The Ally ATM card has domestic ATM rebates (up to $10 per statement cycle) and does not charge a fee on their side on international withdrawals. If I am facing a lot of international ATM fees, I can unlock my Fidelity ATM card temporarily for the rebates. However, in reality, I’d rather deal with Ally rather than Fidelity/BNY Mellon if I have a problem with a foreign ATM skimmer or something, so I just use my reliable Ally ATM card, pay the $5 or whatever, and take all the cash out I need in one transaction per trip.

Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund
One of the main draws of keeping a Vanguard account remains that they don’t play any funny games with cash sweep. Fidelity charges what I would say is a reasonable amount for its services, while Schwab straight-up hopes you aren’t paying attention while they pay you nearly nothing. Your cash sweep is the Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX), which has a 4.27% 7-day yield as of 1/12/25. However, based on history it also may not qualify for state tax exemptions in any given tax year.

(Keep in mind that 7-day yields quoted on money market funds do not include compounding, so a constant 4.27% 7-day yield is the equivalent of 4.35% APY.)

For larger cash balances, I use the Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund VUSXX which has a 4.34% 7-day yield as of 1/10/25. At ~80% US Government Obligations in 2023, it did meet the requirements of having interest exempt from state taxes for California, Connecticut, and New York. If you assume a 10% state income tax rate, this works out to a tax-effective yield of ~4.8%. This is as good as the top 1% of savings rates out there.

I don’t use VUSXX for any bank features, so there is little need to contact customer service. It just earns a reliably high interest rate due to its low expense ratio (0.09%) and mostly holding short-term US Treasury bonds directly.

Note: An honorable mention goes out to iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF (SGOV), which has the same low expense ratio (0.09%). Trading it will expose you to a small bid/ask spread of about 0.01% for each trade, though. But if I’m holding at some new brokerage for a while, then SGOV is my go-to cash equivalent holding.

The rest
I maintain minimal balances in a local megabank bank account and a local credit union account, in case a physical bank branch is useful for whatever reason – unlimited ATM access, cash deposits/withdrawals, safety deposit box, notary, medallion guarantee, etc.

I also have some existing certificates of deposit from credit unions that I am waiting to mature, like the 5-year 5.00% APY CD I bought in 2023. I just don’t like the idea of my wife having to track down four different credit unions one day to piece together my crazy CD ladder.

Recap. My simplified cash setup utilizes existing brokerage account relationships and the fact that US Treasury interest is exempt from state income taxes to maximize my tax-effective yield earned on cash while minimizing the work required to chase rates across several smaller banks, fintechs, and credit unions. It also minimizes exposure to poor customer service. I maintain liquid access to cash, and my top option pays roughly an effective 4.80% APY, and overall is quite competitive with what I could achieve if I did constantly chase rates.

Parallels Desktop now supports running 64-bit x86 operating systems on Apple Silicon Macs through its proprietary emulation engine, enabling users to run traditional Windows and Linux distributions. However, performance is said to be "really slow." How-To Geek reports: The latest Parallels Desktop 20.2 update adds early support for x86 emulation on Apple Silicon, allowing traditional x86 PC operating systems to work on newer Mac computers. There were already apps like UTM that could do it (most of them are based on QEMU), but this feature uses Parallels' "proprietary emulation engine" paired with Apple's built-in hypervisor. [...] Parallels on Apple Silicon can now "run existing x86_64 Windows 10, Windows 11*, Windows Server 2019/2022, and some Linux distributives with UEFI BIOS via Parallels Emulator." You can also create new Windows 10 21H2 and Windows Server 2022 virtual machines if needed. There are some big limitations. You can only run 64-bit x86 operating systems -- sorry, FreeDOS fans -- but those 64-bit operating systems can run 32-bit applications. There's also no support for USB devices, nested virtualization (so WSL2 won't work), or the Parallels hypervisor. Performance will also be "really slow," since x86 instructions have to be translated to ARM. The company said, "Windows boot time is about 2-7 minutes, depending on your hardware. Windows operating system responsiveness is also low."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Parallels Desktop now supports running 64-bit x86 operating systems on Apple Silicon Macs through its proprietary emulation engine, enabling users to run traditional Windows and Linux distributions. However, performance is said to be "really slow." How-To Geek reports: The latest Parallels Desktop 20.2 update adds early support for x86 emulation on Apple Silicon, allowing traditional x86 PC operating systems to work on newer Mac computers. There were already apps like UTM that could do it (most of them are based on QEMU), but this feature uses Parallels' "proprietary emulation engine" paired with Apple's built-in hypervisor. [...] Parallels on Apple Silicon can now "run existing x86_64 Windows 10, Windows 11*, Windows Server 2019/2022, and some Linux distributives with UEFI BIOS via Parallels Emulator." You can also create new Windows 10 21H2 and Windows Server 2022 virtual machines if needed. There are some big limitations. You can only run 64-bit x86 operating systems -- sorry, FreeDOS fans -- but those 64-bit operating systems can run 32-bit applications. There's also no support for USB devices, nested virtualization (so WSL2 won't work), or the Parallels hypervisor. Performance will also be "really slow," since x86 instructions have to be translated to ARM. The company said, "Windows boot time is about 2-7 minutes, depending on your hardware. Windows operating system responsiveness is also low."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

6 Exciting Features in Linux Mint 22.1 'Xia' Release  It's FOSS News

Intel "Performance Tips" Published For Optimal Linux Graphics  Phoronix

We're excited to announce that Search Central Live is returning to São Paulo in 2025. Following our successful events in 2023 and 2024, we're continuing our mission to help Brazilian businesses enhance their site's performance in Google Search. And this year we're visiting Recife for the first time.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The number of deaths in the U.S. is expected to exceed the number of births by 2033, according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) annual 30-year projection of the U.S. population released on Monday. That estimation comes seven years earlier than what the CBO estimated in its 30-year population outlook released last year. At that time, in January 2024, the CBO projected deaths to outpace births by 2040. The CBO's 2025 report projected lower population growth over the next three decades than it did in its 2024 demographic outlook. The CBO's population estimate for 2025 is 350 million, a slight increase from the 346 million it predicted for 2025 last year. But its projection for 2054 -- 372 million people -- has decreased since last year, when the CBO projected the population would be 383 million in 2054. The rate of growth projected over the next three decades -- 0.2 percent -- is significantly slower than the rate seen in the prior five decades, from 1975 to 2024, when the population grew at 0.9 percent. The growth rate over the next three decades is also expected to slow. From 2025 to 2035, the population is expected to grow an average of 0.4 percent a year. From 2036 to 2055, however, the growth rate is projected to be 0.1 percent. The CBO attributes this projected slow rate of growth to a variety of factors, including lower fertility, an aging population and lower immigration.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.