Skip to content

Fix VirtualBox broken RDP remote desktop connection from Linux

Symptoms:
[ERROR][com.freerdp.core.nego] - Error: SSL_CERT_NOT_ON_SERVER
or
Protocol(warning): Protocol negotiation failed with reason: no valid authentication certificate on server
Retrying with plain RDP.
Core(error): rcp_recv(), connection closed by peer
or
ERRCONNECT_SECURITY_NEGO_CONNECT_FAILED [0x0002000C]

Solution:
VBoxManage modifyvm "myVM" --vrdeproperty "Security/Method=Negotiate"

The 2006 Dürrenast train disaster - "trolley problem" for real

The 2006 Dürrenast train disaster occurred on May 17 when a runaway BLS maintenance train with failed brakes sped downhill from Frutigen towards Thun, ultimately crashing and killing three people. As the train gained uncontrollable speed, dispatchers faced critical choices, similar to the theoretical "trolley problem": routing the train towards populated or obstructed lines would potentially cause greater casualties. Ultimately they opted for a crash against stationary work trains in Dürrenast to limit wider harm.

Max S wrote a detailed account of the events on Medium.

On SWI swissinfo.ch you will find an article about the events, as well as a link to an SRF film (in German with subtitles in several languages).




Ensuring the EFI partition is mirrored on an Ubuntu install with root on software RAID 1

I found a working procedure here:

- Make sure both EFI partitions are mounted from /etc/fstab, eg. using /boot/eficopy in addition to /boot/efi. (Both partitions need to have the proper partition type GUID, i.e. C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B or "EFI System".)

- Run dpkg-reconfigure grub-efi-amd64 and include both partitions when prompted.


libheif1 >= 1.18 on debian 12 bookworm (installing packages from backport in debian stable)

Add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main
Run:
# apt-get update
# apt install -t bookworm-backports libheif1

This solves the issues encountered when decoding HEIF (.heic) files produced by iPhone / iOS 18, causing for instance rendering in Nextcloud to fail.

This page has more details on using Backports.