What’s The Deal With Chromium On Linux? Google At Odds With Package Maintainers

January 26, 2021 by Tom Nardi 152 Comments

Linux users are more likely than most to be familiar with Chromium, Google’s the free and open source web project that serves as the basis for their wildly popular Chrome. Since the project’s inception over a decade ago, users have been able to compile the BSD licensed code into a browser that’s almost the same as the closed-source Chrome. As such, most distributions offer their own package for the browser and some even include it in the base install. Unfortunately, that may be changing soon.

A post made earlier this month to the official Chromium Blog explained that an audit had determined “third-party Chromium based browsers” were using APIs that were intended only for Google’s internal use. In response, any browser attempting to access features such as Chrome Sync with an unofficial API key would be prevented from doing so after March 15th.

To the average Chromium user, this doesn’t sound like much of a problem. In fact, you might even assume it doesn’t apply to you. The language used in the post makes it sound like Google is referring to browsers which are spun off of the Chromium codebase, and at least in part, they are. But the search giant is also using this opportunity to codify their belief that the only official Chromium builds are the ones that they provide themselves. With that simple change, anyone using a distribution-specific build of Chromium just became persona non grata.

Unhappy with the idea of giving users a semi-functional browser, the Chromium maintainers for several distributions such as Arch Linux and Fedora have said they’re considering pulling the package from their respective repositories altogether. With a Google representative confirming the change is coming regardless of community feedback, it seems likely more distributions will follow suit.

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3D Printed Box Gets Bigger

January 26, 2021 by Al Williams 10 Comments

If you ever watched Dr. Who, you probably know that the TARDIS looked like a police call box on the outside, but was very large on the inside. When asked, the Doctor had some explanation of how something can look small when it is far away and large when it is close up, which never made much sense. However, [iQLess] has been 3D printing boxes in a small area, that fold out to be much larger boxes. (Video, embedded below.) The design comes from someone called [Cisco] who has a lot of interesting print in place designs.

You can find the design on the Prusa site or Thingiverse. The boxes do take a while to print, according to the video below. What was interesting to us, though, is that you should be able to print a design like this to create a box larger than your printer.

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Custom Bite Sensor Replaces Keyboard Expression Pedal

January 26, 2021 by Lewin Day 2 Comments

Sometimes, standard hardware won’t do when it comes to the differently abled. [Ben Krasnow] found himself recently working on a project for a musician who doesn’t have the use of his legs, and thus needed to create a new interface to replace a standard expression pedal.

[Ben] is a big fan of the build first method of working, and demonstrates why it works well. In this case, the first attempt involved a pneumatic design, where the user would bite down on an air bladder that actuated a remotely-located potentiometer via a tube and bellows. However, while this design worked, the tactile feedback was poor. This led to experimentation with mechanical designs, with an initial attempt involving a 3D printed mechanism and a rotary pot. This was better, but still had problems with damage from teeth and poor feel .The final design is essentially an analog button, built with fabric-impregnated silicone for wear resistance and using a linear pot for smooth feedback.

The final design is impressively tidy, and [Ben] notes that while it looks simple, it was only arrived at by trying plenty of worse solutions first. We’ve seen other work done in the gaming world too; recently, modular controllers have come into vogue to serve a wide variety of needs. Video after the break.

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