Plus how the work to port Linux to the Apple M1 resulted in fixing a bug that impacted all Linux distros.

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• Log4j 2.15.0 and previously suggested mitigations may not be enough — It was discovered that version 2.15.0 would still be vulnerable when the configuration has a pattern layout containing a Context Lookup.
• Statement from CISA Director Easterly on “Log4j” Vulnerability
• PipeWire 0.3.41 Offers Improved Flatpak & JACK Compatibility, Apple AirPlay Streaming — PipeWire 0.3.41 also adds a new RAOP module (raop-sink and raop-discover) that can be used for streaming to Apple AirPlay devices.
• EXT4 Prepared To Switch To Linux’s New Mount API — Linux's new mount API is what came about in recent times as a set of system calls offering more flexibility than the long-standing mount syscall that is a one-shot effort while this new multi-step mounting procedure allows for more options.
• The End-Of-Year 2021 State Of Linux On Apple’s M1 SoC — The Asahi Linux project has published their October and November status update to provide an overview of where the Apple Silicon / Apple M1 open-source support is now at as we approach the end of 2021.
• Asahi Linux looks forward to exciting 2022 on Apple silicon
• Hector Martin on Twitter — Looks like Apple changed the requirements for Mach-O kernel files in 12.1, breaking our existing installation process... and they *also* added a raw image mode that will never break again and doesn't require Mach-Os. And people said they wouldn't help. This is intended for us.
• Podcastindex.org — The Podcast Index is here to preserve, protect and extend the open, independent podcasting ecosystem.
• Linux Action News on Podcastindex.org

Plus the imminent problem KDE solved this week, and more.

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Links:

• Initial Apple M1 SoC Support Aims For Linux 5.13 Kernel — This initial Apple M1 Linux port gets the UART, interrupts, SMP, and DeviceTree bits in place for offering basic functionality.
• “Challenge accepted”
• Ars: Apple M1 hardware support merged into Linux 5.13
• Official support for Linux on the M1 Macs could come as soon as June
• [GIT PULL] Apple M1 SoC platform bring-up for 5.13
• Asahi Linux on Twitter — Initial M1 support has been merged into the Linux SoC tree and will be coming to Linux 5.13!
• SiFive FU740 PCIe Support Queued Ahead Of Linux 5.13 — The HiFive Unmatched has a FU740 RISC-V SoC that features four U74-MC cores and one S7 embedded core, 16GB of RAM, USB 3.2 Gen 1, one PCI Express x16 slot (operating at x8 speeds), an NVMe slot, and Gigabit Ethernet.
• How to Secure phpMyAdmin
• Firefox Is Making WebRender The Default Rendering Engine On Linux This Month And There Is A Facelift Coming In May — The Firefox web browser is finally making the long-anticipated WebRender rendering engine the default on GNU/Linux when Firefox 88 is released later this month.
• uBlock Origin works best on Firefox — The Firefox version of uBO makes use of WebAssembly code for core filtering code paths. This is not the case with Chromium-based browsers because this would require an extra permission in the extension manifest which could cause friction when publishing the extension in the Chrome Web Store.
• Wayland Is Driving Fragmentation Around EDID Parsing - A Call To Fix That — Currently there is no de facto EDID parsing library for Linux but many different choices and most Wayland compositors rolling their own. Rather than exposing all of the parsed information from the kernel, there is now a call to have a more unified Linux EDID parsing library.
• vgpu_unlock — Unlock vGPU functionality for consumer-grade GPUs.
• Hacker figures how to unlock vGPU functionality intentionally hidden from certain NVIDIA cards for marketing purposes
• Announcing KDE’s Qt 5 Patch Collection — As Qt 5 support is drawing to a close, and we shift to Qt 6, we need to ensure that KDE products are as reliable as ever. To this end, KDE will be maintaining a set of patches with security and functional fixes so that we can enjoy good KDE Software still based on Qt5 until our software is reliably based on Qt 6.
• Mars Helicopter Flight Delayed to No Earlier than April 14 — During a high-speed spin test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence controlling the test ended early due to a “watchdog” timer expiration.
• LUP 400 Beer Stein