Twice in the space of three months, researchers from BlackBerry have put out studies pushing claims about malware and ransomware that is alleged to attack Linux, giving the impression that this operating system is also under as much threat as Windows.
But both studies contained little to justify these conclusions; the second, issued in the first week of June, contained the word Linux thrice, in two sentences. One of these was the line: "Tycoon is a multi-platform Java ransomware targeting Windows and Linux that has been observed in-the-wild since at least December 2019."
And the other was: "The malicious JRE build contains both Windows and Linux versions of this script, suggesting that the threat actors are also targeting Linux servers."
The rest of the study, that runs to about 1500 words (not counting text in illustrations and tables), was solely about the Windows version of what the researchers claimed was a new form of ransomware known as Tycoon.
The earlier study, issued in April, claims that groups connected to China were targeting Linux servers with malware, with the claim resting on the reported discovery of a previously unidentified Linux malware toolset which included two kernel-level rootkits that made it difficult to identify executables.
But the study contained no information as to how this malware gained a foothold on these servers, surely an important step in the attack process. On asking, this response was elicited: "The rootkits were installed by way of an interactive bash script, which in some cases reached out to an online build server to determine particulars about the target system (distro, kernel version, etc) before delivering a bespoke rootkit and backdoor." The vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel that were remotely exploited in this manner were not specified; it must be noted that such a class of flaws are very rare for Linux.
The reply added: "There are several ways in which the installation script could have landed on the server, including brute force SSH attack (a technique reportedly used by the botnet to spread itself), physical access to the server (espionage operations are not always exclusively digital), or any other of the myriad ways in which admin credentials for servers are compromised and then used to log in."
Depending on your definition you might argue against it – Linux only desktops are still a minority for example – but here are my arguments for why it is: [...]
  Growing up in Silicon Valley, Nuritzi Sanchez saw the powerful impact software can make on the world. Yet, unlike many others who were also steeped in the tech industry, her journey has taken her into the world of open source, where she is contributing to that impact.
After graduating from Stanford University with a degree in International Relations, she became a founding team member of open source computing company Endless OS, served three terms as president and chair of GNOME's board of directors, and in February 2020 was hired as the senior open source program manager (OSPM) at GitLab.
  It's been almost two years since I switched from Mac to Linux. I used Apple for about 15 years before my move and was a complete Linux newbie when I installed my first distribution in summer 2018.
These days, I run Linux exclusively. I can do anything I want on it. Regular internet browsing and watching Netflix, writing and editing content for my WordPress blog, and even running my open source web analytics startup.
And I'm not even a developer! Long gone are the days when Linux was considered not ready for everyday usage nor friendly enough for non-technical people.
Dell also used the system to support Project Sputnik, an effort that saw the company significantly extend its engagement with developers by delivering XPS 13 models configured at the factory with Ubuntu Linux.
All going well, the stable release should appear sometime in August.
Introducing the release candidate, Torvalds said it was "right up there with v4.9, which has long been our biggest release by quite a bit in number of commits." That said, the 4.9 kernel was "artificially big" because of a couple of special factors, whereas 5.8 is a "more comprehensive release."
Torvalds said: "The development is really all over the place: there's tons of fairly fundamental core work and cleanups, but there is also lots of filesystem work and obviously all the usual driver updates too. Plus documentation and architecture work." He added: "We have modified about 20 per cent of all the files in the kernel source repository. That's really a fairly big percentage, and while some of it _is_ scripted, on the whole it's really just the same pattern: 5.8 has simply seen a lot of development."
While the code for the kernel is large, only a small part of it ends up in any individual system, since the kernel source contains code for every chip architecture and hardware it supports. In early 2018, maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman said that "an average laptop uses around 2 million lines of kernel from 5,000 files to function properly." At the time, there were 25 million lines of code in the kernel, whereas now there are over 28 million.
What's in the upcoming release? Michael Larabel of Phoronix has done a summary of changes here. Highlights include new and updated drivers, initial boot support for the forthcoming IBM/OpenPOWER POWER10 processors, KVM (Kernel-based virtual machine) improvements including support for nested AMD live migration, updates to the Samsung-backed file system driver for Microsoft's exFAT, and accelerator support for the Habana Labs Gaudi AI Training Processor – this last one mentioned by Torvalds as accounting for a large chunk of new code. There is also support for Thunderbolt in Intel's Tiger Lake processors.
Torvalds claimed that "5.8 is up there with the best, despite not really having any single thing that stands out."
Linux kernel head Linus Torvalds seems delighted with the first release candidate (rc1) of the Linux kernel version 5.8, which contains 800,000 new lines of code and over 14,000 changed files, representing about a 20% overhaul of the kernel's files.
"So I didn't really expect this, but 5.8 looks to be one of our biggest releases of all time," writes Torvalds on the Linux kernel mailing list.
Earlier this month Torvalds' fired off a stern email rejecting a security patch developed by Amazon Web Services engineers for Linux 5.8, which could have caused a performance hit on some applications.
Following the recent Linux kernel and Mesa patches for AMD "Sienna Cichlid" enablement for this "Navi 2" graphics processor, the AMDGPU LLVM compiler back-end support has been merged into LLVM 11.
Sienna Cichlid from the earlier RadeonSI patches confirm using "GFX1030" as the target and that support was merged last night into the LLVM 11 compiler development code-base. AMDGPU LLVM serves as the default shader compiler back-end for the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver, currently for RADV albeit transitioning to ACO, the AMDVLK Vulkan driver, and other components like ROCm.
A merge request opened at the end of last week would now have the Mesa Radeon Vulkan "RADV" driver default to using the Valve-backed ACO shader compiler in place of the default LLVM AMDGPU back-end.
ACO is the back-end that Valve has been funding for faster shader compile times and more performance optimized at least for games. The AMDGPU LLVM back-end meanwhile is what RADV has used by default up until now and is currently used exclusively by the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver as well as other official AMD driver components.
The Zink Mesa driver for implementing OpenGL over the Vulkan API is now quite close to hitting OpenGL 3.0.
Zink has been striving for OpenGL 3.0 compatibility for some time and is getting close to crossing that prominent threshold. Merged over night was exposing GLSL 1.30. GLSL 1.30 is the shading language version for OpenGL 3.0.
  Surprisingly dubbed “4:3”, the FFmpeg 4.3 release comes with Vulkan support, Intel QSV-accelerated MJPEG and VP9 decoding, support for the AMD AMF encoder on Linux via the Vulkan API, VDPAU VP9 hardware acceleration, TrueHD and MPEG-H 3D audio support for in MP4, and support for Sipro ACELP.KELVIN decoding.
This release also features AV1 encoding support via librav1e, support for the ZeroMQ Message Transport Protocol (ZMTP), support for muxing PCM and PGS in M2TS, expanded styling support for 3GPP Timed Text Subtitle (movtext), and switches from AvxSynth to AviSynth+ on Linux.
Tixati is generally excellent on the user experience front, but there is one notable initial hiccup. The slight concern for users who are not very tech-savvy is that when you download the Tixati client, the website does not detect your operating system automatically. So be sure to manually select the correct OS to get the right client for you. Fortunately, the rest of Tixati's setup is simple and easy to follow.
The user interface itself may appear to be a little outdated when it comes to the design. However, Tixati offers tooltips and pop-ups, making the setup process a breeze.
If you’re switching from any other torrent client, Tixati may feel slightly different initially because its layout is rather distinct. While most torrent clients come with a left-aligned menu, Tixati has all the tabs aligned along the top. Further note that Tixati offers an option to tweak the interface slightly based on your preferences.
The sheer number of customization options that Tixati offers makes it one of the favored clients among pro users. It provides access to a complete set of low-level details regarding swarms, and that is one of the reasons that makes it stand apart from the competition.
The Tixati client provides access to a comprehensive help and support section. This helps users in addressing any issues they may face with the torrent client. There are plenty of troubleshooting tips, help guides, and additional useful hints that can aid in minimizing any downtime.
Additionally, the highly active community forum can help address almost any issue the users may be facing. The community is quite lively and provides real-time support and quick solutions.
Chaosmonger Studio who are also working on the sci-fi adventure ENCODYA have managed to succeed on Kickstarter again with their platformer metroidvania Clunky Hero.
Mixing together a story-driven platformer metroidvania and a slice of RPG elements with some comedy, Clunky Hero is slightly absurd. You are running around with a bucket on your head and a broom, while fighting off drunken bees so expect the bizarre
You might not have heard of Nebuchadnezzar, an in-development isometric city-builder in the style of classics like Pharaoh and Zeus but it's coming. Set in the mysterious history and culture of ancient Mesopotamia, it's looking really good.
Covered here back in 2019, it's easy to forget with the constant flow of news coming in but Nebuchadnezzar might actually be one of my most anticipated titles for this year. I was a massive fan of Pharaoh and this really does look like a great upgrade to the classics. Today, it has been confirmed that it will be launching on GOG as well as Steam so it's a good reminder of it.
Paradox Interactive announced today that Prison Architect - Island Bound will now be launching on June 23 after they recently delayed the launch.
Originally due to release on June 11, they mentioned before the delay was due to the themes present in the game and with everything going on they delayed the release 'out of respect for the important voices that need to be heard'.
Now the new date set with June 23 they announced that a free update for everyone, The Rock, will become available at the same time. The Rock update will bring in dynamic Reputations for your prisoners, quality of life improvements, and implement multiple bug fixes.
Besiege is a fantastic build and destroy game all about making medieval siege engines and with the latest update it gained a very useful new tool.
They already provide a ton of blocks and tools, allowing players to create anything from a simple rolling vehicle that just bumps into everything up to massive robots capable of immense destruction. However, it was somewhat limited by what it gave you, even though you could be incredibly creative in your creations. With the latest update though, there's a new very powerful Build Surface feature.
Faraway Lands: Rise of Yokai from MythEgg Studios has pulled my interest in recently, mixing in a number of different genres set in Feudal Japan.
You build up a town, gather resources and build a ship to explore new lands, trade with others and there's plenty of real-time combat sprinkled into it across land and sea too. Genuinely does look like quite a nice blending together of gameplay elements.
CorsixTH is the wonderful free and open source game engine for Theme Hospital, featuring plenty of improvements and modern system support.
After a relatively short testing period for the Release Candidates and a year since the last full update, CorsixTH 0.64 has been released. This release comes with the ability to use ISO images of the original discs as a data source, since CorsixTH requires the original data files. With this release the UI was updated to be sized properly in all languages, Level 6 map issues were solved, rooms becoming stuck should no longer be an issue, potential memory leaks solved and a lot more done over the last year.
Aeolis Tournament, the first title from Canadian developer Beyond Fun Studio now has a confirmed release date of July 16 and this will feature Linux support.
Inspired by Nintendo-style party games, Aeolis Tournament will have up to 8 players compete in various game modes based on a simple one-button mechanic. Characters use an air cannon to control the power of the wind and affect their surroundings. It's a high-tempo game in the vein of Fuzion Frenzy with a cartoony and colourful art direction. Aeolis Tournament features physics-based gameplay, a tournament mode and local & online multiplayer play.
This post is an annex of Phil’s Introducing the WebKit Flatpak SDK. Please make sure to read it, if you haven’t already.
Recapitulating, nowadays WebKitGtk/WPE developers —and their CI infrastructure— are moving towards to Flatpak-based environment for their workflow. This Flatpak-based environment, or Flatpak SDK for short, can be visualized as a software sandboxed-container, which bundles all the dependencies required to compile, run and debug WebKitGtk/WPE.
Now that HardenedBSD's infrastructure has found its new home, it's time to ramp up development again. We're working out kinks with regards to bandwidth and hope to increase bandwidth to our infrastructure on the inside of two months.
A change proposal for Fedora 33 would introduce the concept of "fedora-retired-packages" for removing retired packages when upgrading Fedora.
Retired packages are those packages that are not required by any other packages and are no longer maintained upstream and then no longer packaged by Fedora maintainers. Currently, when upgrading Fedora Linux, these retired Fedora packages remain installed albeit with the older installed RPM.
Fedora has the concept of fedora-obsoletes-package for retiring packages that would otherwise cause issues on upgrades, but nothing for the common packages that are retired / no longer being maintained.
In this article, we show you how to install Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) XP 1.0.0.GA and enable Eclipse MicroProfile support on JBoss EAP. Once you have MicroProfile support enabled, you can start using the quickstart examples or start developing your own application.
Kubernetes conversations rarely center the developer’s perspective. As a result, doing our job in a k8s cluster often requires building complicated YAML resource files, writing custom shell scripts, and understanding the countless options that are available in kubectl and docker commands. On top of all of that, we have the learning curve of understanding Kubernetes terminology and using it the way that operations teams do.
To address these challenges, the Red Hat Developer Tools team created odo (OpenShift Do), a command-line interface (CLI) tool built for developers and designed to prioritize the things that developers care about. In this article, I will use a hands-on example to introduce you to the benefits of using odo in conjunction with Kubernetes.
The Linux Mint team have announced the big push towards release with a Beta version of Linux Mint 20 available now across three different desktop environments.
Being based on the latest Ubuntu release, this makes Linux Mint 20 a long-term support release so they plan to keep it in tip-top shape until 2025. As expected of a big new release, there's plenty new and improved. Including the somewhat controversial decision to block Snap packages and snapd being installed unless you do it manually.
Is Ubuntu an enterprise Linux distribution? If you are asking, you are probably wondering if you can use Ubuntu anywhere else other than your workstation or development environment. Perhaps you are wondering whether you can implement Ubuntu in your enterprise, including production environments? If that is the case, I have good news for you. Yes. Ubuntu is an enterprise Linux distribution with full commercial support provided by Canonical, the publisher and maintainer of Ubuntu.
But hold on for a second. What actually is an enterprise Linux distribution? And what does that mean for your business?
  Thanks to my student, I am now aware that Inkscape can use different icon theme and that user can switch its icon theme just by renaming files. I use 0.92.5 and I can easily switch between icon themes available built-in. I noted here how I do that on Ubuntu Focal Fossa. Enjoy!
I use Ubuntu 20.04 GNU/Linux operating system, and Inkscape version number 0.92.5, DEB package from official repository. No command lines needed to do this theme switching.
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 635 for the week of June 7 – 13, 2020.
We are delighted to share a new initiative – the Ubuntu Appliance portfolio. Together with NextCloud, Mosquitto Plex, OpenHAB and AdGuard, we have created a new class of Ubuntu derivatives: specialised appliance images that do one thing beautifully. Ubuntu Appliances transform a Raspberry Pi or PC into a secure, self-updating solution, free of charge.
The Ubuntu Appliance mission is to enable secure, self-healing, single-purpose devices. Join our Discourse to tell us what you want to see next or turn your project into an appliance.
  Today 6/16/2020, Ubuntu, the popular Linux distribution, launch their latest project, the Ubuntu Appliance. Ubuntu Appliance is an Ubuntu Core IoT based project with a single goal in mind, to create secure and smart appliances using “Specialised appliance images that do one thing - beautifully. Transform a Raspberry Pi or PC into a production-grade IoT device, for free.” - Ubuntu Appliance Press Release.
Appliance images are compatible with PCs and Raspberry Pi 2 upwards, but for the best experience it is advisable to stick with Raspberry Pi 3B+ and 4. Installing an appliance onto a Raspberry Pi is made possible using pre-built images which can be flashed to micro SD cards using tools such as Etcher or the Raspberry Pi Imager.
Axiomtek AIE100-903-FL is a fanless edge AI System powered by NVIDIA Jetson Nano system-on-module and designed to connect a single 15W PoE camera for AI computing, edge computing, smart retail, smart city, and more.
The solution can operate in a wide range of temperatures from -30€°C to +60€°C and comes with an optional IP42-rated waterproof cover kit that makes it suitable for use in moist places and “semi-outdoor environments” including freezers and under eaves (edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall) and other outdoor locations with some protection against rain.
  CrowPi portable learning kit for Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and Pi Zero boards was launched in 2018. It comes with a 7ââ¬Â³ display, several sensors, buttons, a breadboard, and more all packed in a small suitcase.
Elecrow has now started a new crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to fund the second generation portable electronics learning kit: CrowPi2 which looks much more like a laptop than a suitcase found in the first model thanks to a large display, and a detachable keyboard placed on top of the electronic prototyping/learning area. It’s also more powerful thanks to the latest Raspberry Pi 4 SBC.
The FUNcube Team has announced the availability of FUNcube CubeSat satellite telemetry decoder software for the popular Raspberry Pi computer board.
The original FUNcube telemetry decoder and Dashboard was designed to run on Windows devices and the FUNcube team did publish the telemetry format in accordance with the Amateur Satellite Service traditions and requirements. The Team had planned to opensource the Telemetry Decoder and provide an implementation on Linux, but several new missions after the original FUNcube-1 delayed their plans somewhat.
All this time, I have been using the Raspberry Pi for my HTPC needs. The first RPi I acquired was in 2014 and I have been very very happy with the amount of support in the community and quality of the HTPC offering it has. I also appreciate the RPi’s form factor and the power consumption limits. And then, to add more sugar to it, it uses a derivative of Debian, Raspbian, which was very familiar and feel good to me.
[...]
Since I had my old Lenovo Yoga 2 13 lying on all the time, it made sense to make some more use of it, using as the HTPC. This machine comes with a Micro-HDMI Out port, so it felt ideal for my High Definition video rendering needs.
It comes stock with just Intel HD Video with good driver support in Linux, so it was quite quick and easy getting Kodi charged up and running on it. And as I mentioned above, the sound issues are not seen on this setup.
Some added benefits are that I get to run stock Debian on this machine. And I must say a big THANK YOU to the Debian Multimedia Maintainers, who’ve done a pretty good job maintaining Kodi under Debian.
As the shipment of PinePhone ‘Community Edition’ with Ubuntu Touch started weeks ago, PINE64 is now getting ready to take pre-order for their next Community Edition. In the latest June update blog, PINE64 announced that the next Community Edition (CE) of PinePhone will feature a full-fledged postmarketOS.
The pre-order window of postmarketOS Community Edition will open in early July for at least a month and a half. If you want postmarketOS on your PinePhone instead of Ubuntu Touch, this edition will let you skip the hassle of installing postmarketOS. So, until the postmarketOS CE arrives, let’s get to know everything about it.
The project, licensed under Apache 2.0 and created by Aqua Security, among others, uses custom resource definitions (CRDs) to integrate security tools and make the results accessible via the Kubernetes API.
Some time ago, I learned an important Kubernetes lesson the hard way. The story begins with Kubernetes Operators, which is a method of packaging, deploying, and managing a Kubernetes application. The thing I tripped up on was garbage collection in the cluster, which cleans up objects that no longer have an owner object (but more on that later).
Just changing the words does not solve the problems in the real-world, IMHO (of course, it's my opinion, may it be different from yours).
As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on, social distancing remains imperative, which means companies must continue to adapt to new ways of working. For Google’s annual summer internship program, that means going virtual.
In a recent blog post, Eric Brewer, Google Fellow, VP Infrastructure, Google Cloud, said, “Although many aspects of the program remain the same with interns working from home, we had to make some adjustments. Interns won’t have the benefit of working next to experienced Googlers in a traditional office environment, which in turn impacts the kinds of projects they can work on.” As a solution, Google turned to open source.
Icon is a high-level, general-purpose language that contains a wide variety of features for processing and presenting symbolic data — strings of characters and structures — both as text and as graphic images.
Icon has a large repertoire of operations for manipulating structures — records, lists, sets, and tables — and extensive capabilities for processing strings of characters. At the heart of Icon is a goal — directed expression-evaluation mechanism that simplifies many programming tasks. Storage is allocated automatically — you never have to worry about allocating space — and garbage collection reclaims unused space as necessary.
I remain rather disappointed and disillusioned about what happened after 1.0.4 was released. Two PRs in that release were soon seen to have side effects on more ‘marginal’ test systems, precisely what added testing could have revealed. An additional issue arose from changes in R’s make system, which is harder to anticipate or test. Each and every infelicity was fixed within a day or so, and we always make candidate releases available—the current Rcpp as of this writing is 1.0.4.12 meaning twelve microreleases were made since 1.0.4. And those microreleases are always available for normal download and install.packages use via the Rcpp drat repository accessible to all. So it was truly troubling to see some, especially those with experience in setting up or running testing / ci platforms, pretend to be unable to access, install, and provide these for their own tests, or the tests of their users. It just doesn’t pass a basic logic test: it takes a single call to install.packages(), or, even more easily, a single assignment of an auxiliary repo. All told this was a rather sad experience.
I’m one of the Grant for the Web Ambassadors and if you poke around the stuff I do, you’ll find that I pretty much do standard web developer things.
Since I’m reasonably competent at that, I figured I would document the whole process of implementing the Web Monetization API, explain how the ecosystem works and basically build out a comprehensive guide to web monetization.
In 10 days the Conference in the Cloud will start! If you want to experience that interactively, you can still sign up, tickets are only 10 US$! You can even join the Hallway Track! These are the presentations with Raku content:
If you, a non-programmer need to start a web scraping project for your business purpose, research purpose or some others, this is the right video for you. In this video, we’re going to display the whole process of building a web crawler from scratch, helping you understand the differences between using a computer language, like python and a web scraping tool, Octoparse.
Am still stuck at where I was yesterday. But made a tiny bit of progress.
Yesterday, it would not even submit the form. And now I got it to do that. How? I had forgotten to close the form tag.
When Tommaso Babucci, a recent Duke University graduate from Italy, sat down to take his first-ever college exam—an economics class—he could barely understand a single word. He had been educated in his native Italian all his life. “I did my best,” he said, “and got 10 percent.”
Race After Technology opens with a brief personal history set in the Crenshaw neighborhood of Los Angeles, where sociologist Ruha Benjamin spent a portion of her childhood. Recalling the time she set up shop on her grandmother’s porch with a chalkboard and invited other kids to do math problems, she writes, “For the few who would come, I would hand out little slips of paper…until someone would insist that we go play tag or hide-and-seek instead. Needless to say, I didn’t have that many friends!” But beyond the porch, things weren’t so cozy. As she gazed out the back window during car rides, she saw “boys lined up for police pat-downs,” and inside the house she heard “the nonstop rumble of police helicopters overhead, so close that the roof would shake.” The omnipresent surveillance continued when she visited her grandmother years later as a mother, her homecomings blighted by “the frustration of trying to keep the kids asleep with the sound and light from the helicopter piercing the window’s thin pane.”
Techdirt has written a lot about corporate sovereignty -- also known as "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) -- which allows companies to haul countries before special tribunals for alleged loss of profits caused by new laws or regulations. One industry's use of ISDS that Techdirt has been following particularly closely is tobacco. As a typically brilliant John Oliver segment explained back in 2015, Big Tobacco companies have used corporate sovereignty clauses in international trade and investment deals to sue countries for daring to try to regulate cigarettes, advertising or packaging. Thankfully, that didn't turn out so well. Philip Morris tried to use ISDS to roll back plain-pack laws, but cases against Australia and Uruguay were both thrown out. The tide against the use of corporate sovereignty by tobacco companies to undo health protection laws has turned so much that special carve-outs have been added to trade deals to prevent this kind of corporate bullying.
Nearly a billion pounds of beef move through the JBS processing plant in Grand Island, Neb., every year. Except this year: Over the last two months, the company has had to slow production as meatpacking plants around the country have been roiled by coronavirus outbreaks.
Economists have warned that in addition to "causing avoidable human misery," ending the enhanced unemployment insurance "would severely hamper spending—and, by extension, the overall economic recovery."
"America: Do not listen to President Trump on any medical advice."
"Arati decided to take on the incumbent Democrat in her district because she knows that this moment requires bold, progressive leadership."
Officials in Florida expressed concern about public safety as coronavirus infections hit a record number for the third straight day following the Republican National Committee’s decision to relocate part of its annual convention to Jacksonville.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is rescinding its recommendations on use of a drug once touted by President Donald Trump to be a “game-changer” in the fight against coronavirus.
Trump campaign officials are spending $400,000 on aggressive pro-Trump ads that ran in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. As I noted last week, these are three places Trump has little chance of winning in 2020 — he lost D.C. in 2016 by a margin of 86.8 points. So why run them? Answer: So Trump will see them during his voracious daily consumption of television and think his campaign is doing well, and then he will stop screaming at people for a few minutes.
The prediction from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was grim.
In late March, as the number of COVID-19 cases was growing exponentially in the state, Cuomo said New York hospitals might need twice as many beds as they normally have. Otherwise there could be no space to treat patients seriously ill with the new coronavirus.
As Cyclone Amphan barrelled down on Nagendrapur village in the Indian state of West Bengal in late May, Manasi Halder faced a dilemma: run for shelter, or risk waiting out the storm.
In normal times, Halder would have gathered her neighbours and headed straight for the nearest official cyclone shelter about eight kilometres away. But with the coronavirus pandemic surging across the country, “people were not willing to leave the village,” said Halder, who volunteers for a local NGO named Mukti. “They were afraid, because of the coronavirus outbreak.”
Amphan could not have come at a worse time in the Sundarbans, a low-lying, disaster-prone region straddling parts of coastal India and Bangladesh. Both countries were weeks into lockdowns meant to contain coronavirus outbreaks that have now infected more than 343,000 people in India and 90,000 in Bangladesh. Evacuees were forced to choose between being caught in the storm’s path, or the risk of catching the virus in crowded cyclone shelters.
In their efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic, governments around the world are rolling out body-worn devices (“wearables”) to assist in fighting the virus. Some governments want a technological silver bullet to solve the public health crisis. But many of the tools aimed at solving problems come with a host of other€ problems that will undermine the public health goals for which they are adopted, and create new unintended consequences for privacy, association, and freedom of expression.
These electronic devices are usually worn on the wrist or ankle. Their use can be mandated by the government or voluntary (although users don’t always understand exactly what it is they’re being asked to wear). We might tend to associate the idea of a “wearable” with either a smartwatch or an ankle monitor, but governments are also using wrist-worn “bracelets” for a broad range of different purposes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.€ €
It’s safe to assume that most people recognize patent trolling as a problem, one that arises from our uniquely inefficient legal system. If we were given the opportunity to redesign patent litigation rules from scratch, why would anyone intentionally create a system so costly and uncertain that bad faith actors have a financial incentive to file weak lawsuits against cash-strapped startups that are better off paying extortive settlements than actually winning the case? And yet, some privacy advocates are openly calling for policymakers to replicate this disastrous state of affairs through a new regime of private enforcement for proposed state and federal comprehensive consumer privacy laws.
The series of debilitating military setbacks that Libya’s renegade general Khalifa Haftar suffered in recent months have spurred diplomatic activities over the conflict in the country. But the war is far from over.
Two police officers and one civilian were injured during a shooting on Moscow’s Leninsky Avenue, RIA Novosti reports, referencing the emergency services.
In early February of this year, 18-year-old Nurto Kusow Omar Abukar was blown to smithereens by American air strikes as she sat down for dinner with her family in Jilib, Somalia. Hurled indiscriminately by the US Africa Command (Africom) in its hunt for al-Shabaab militants, the bombs also injured Abukar’s younger sisters Fatuma, age 12, and Adey, age 7, as well as their 70-year-old grandmother, Khadija Mohamed Gedow. A few weeks later, on February 24, Africom lobbed a Hellfire missile that killed 53-year-old banana farmer Mohamud Salad Mohamud in the nearby village of Kumbareere.
As Vijay Prashad explains in his book, Red Star Over The Third World, domestic fascism in the West has reflected the West’s pre-existing colonial practices abroad. Citing Martinique communist Aimé Césaire, Prashad explains: “What had come to define fascism inside Europe through the experience of the Nazis – the jackboots and the gas chambers – were familiar already in the colonies. . . . [F]ascism was a political form of bourgeois rule in times when democracy threatened capitalism; colonialism, on the other hand, was naked power justified by racism to seize resources from people who were not willing to hand them over. Their form was different but their manners were identical.”
The 10-year conflict in northeast Nigeria has killed at least 36,000 people and forced two million from their homes.
Fox News removed on Saturday digitally altered and misleading photos from its website that were used to illustrate Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle after the Seattle Times reported on the publication of the images.
The tacit assumption of political leaders and the chattering class is that the economy will come back together in time, if not seamlessly, then at least without major political turmoil. The anodyne meme of “reopening the economy” suggests that, although we may have a rough road ahead, the end result will be a functional equivalent of the economy that we remember from last year.
Far from the sunlight and even at the lowest temperatures, ocean warming is making marine life uncomfortable.
Chinese mining operations in Tibetan areas “have caused great harm to the environment,” however, said Zamlha Tenpa Gyaltsen—a Tibetan environmental researcher at the Tibet Policy Institute in Dharamsala, India—speaking to RFA’s Tibetan Service in a recent interview.
“Tibet as the Roof of the World used to have a pristine environment, with hardly any problems with air and water. [But] the Chinese have excessively exploited Tibetan natural resources, and this has created issues with air and water pollution, and many animal species are now extinct,” Gyaltsen said.
Net metering must continue, the groups tell the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
However, CGEP, which has a history of strongly supporting the interests of the fossil fuel industry, concludes in this report that the government should implement new publicly financed policies€ in order to ensure€ investors are willing to take the risk of investing in carbon capture — and use the public to backstop that risk so those investors make€ money.€
A DeSmog€ investigation found that Falcon’s construction has struggled with drilling problems and has continued even€ while one key water-crossing for the pipeline lacked state or federal permits. During that same time, vast numbers of other businesses in both states — including the Shell plastics plant€ itself — were forced to slow or stop activities in efforts to combat the spread of the deadly€ coronavirus.
"Big Oil is finally admitting what we've been saying for the last ten years: their reserves of oil and gas are increasingly worthless because there's no way to safely, or profitably, produce them."
"We cannot continue to have our land desecrated by oil spills."
Last summer, in a remote corner of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, in the one spot with just a little cell reception, I sat in my car listening by phone to attorneys argue before the U.S. District Court of Oregon more than a thousand miles away. The attorneys for conservation groups (Western Watersheds Project, Center for Biological Diversity, and WildEarth Guardians) faced off against the Bureau of Land Management, and both sides presented their strongest science-based cases (transcripts: Day 1 and Day 2) over whether or not a preliminary injunction was warranted to block Dwight and Steven Hammonds’ livestock from grazing on federal public lands. The preliminary injunction (PI) hearing turned on whether allowing the Hammonds’ cattle back onto public lands that had been rested for five years would result in “irreparable harm” while the case was wending its way towards a ruling on the merits. To make that determination, the judge would weigh the longstanding scientific controversy over whether livestock grazing is more likely to benefit or damage public lands.
Measured by global dispersal alone, the common house mouse (Mus musculus ssp.) is the most successful invasive mammalian species. Perhaps surprisingly, the origin and history of this dispersal in the Western world has not be fully elucidated, but it is clear that mice have dispersed throughout the world in concert with human migration (posing a dual threat to native species diversity).
That situation has changed, in a report by an international cadre of researchers reported in Nature last month entitled "Tracking the Near Eastern origins and European dispersal of the western house mouse." These researchers assessed 829 specimens from 43 archeological sites from Southwestern Asia and Southeastern Europe representing from 40,000 to 3,000 years before the present day, performing mitochondrial genetic analyses on 85 samples and combining these results with radiocarbon dating and geometric morphometrics numerical taxonomy.
Lifting student debt burdens would particularly benefit people of color, while giving the economy a major boost.
"In 2020 women are still in need to go to the streets and stage 'mass scream' over domestic violence and the gender pay gap... Why on earth?"€ €
The state of Ohio has put General Motors on notice that it may be forced to repay more than $60 million in public subsidies as a result of the automaker closing its massive assembly plant last year in Lordstown.
The state’s collection effort, initially outlined in a letter to GM in March, has not been previously reported, and the automaker itself has not disclosed the potential liability to shareholders in its corporate filings.
Refusing to bolster the United States Postal Service in its time of need is nothing short of a betrayal of American€ seniors,€ who€ are€ more reliant upon the US Postal Service than any other age group.
Two weeks after the polls closed in this year’s Ohio primary, two U.S. Postal Service employees showed up in the office of Diane Noonan, the director of elections in Butler County. The workers carried a tray of 317 unopened ballots that had been sitting in a Postal Service warehouse since the day before the election.
The ballots would have counted if they had been delivered on time. Now, there was no way to legally count them. The next day, another ballot that had been postmarked in time to be counted arrived with no explanation. In Geauga County, officials found 26 such ballots; Lucas County saw 13. Many election administrators in Ohio had already lost patience with the Postal Service. During Ohio’s April 28 primary, mail delivery had been so slow that the secretary of state publicly warned voters and called for the Postal Service to add staff. As they counted votes, Noonan and her team checked in with the service every day until the deadline. “We said, ‘Listen this is the last day,’” she recalled. “‘If we get ballots after this, they’re not going to be counted.’ They assured us.”
With the U.S. jobless rate still at levels not seen since the Great Depression and coronavirus-induced mass layoffs continuing across the nation, millionaire White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow complained Sunday that the $600-per-week increase in unemployment insurance authorized by the CARES Act is too generous and said the benefits should expire at the end of July.
"Tulsa is still dealing with the challenges created by a pandemic. The city and state have authorized reopening, but that doesn't make a mass indoor gathering of people pressed closely together and cheering a good idea."
Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has declared two staff members from the Czech embassy in Moscow persona non grata, and demanded that they and their family members leave Russia before June 17.€
A Moscow court has sentenced American national Paul Whelan to 16 years in a maximum security prison for espionage. Prosecutors requested an 18-year sentence. Whelan maintains his innocence and says his case was politicized.
In an interview on the television channel Rossiya-1, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on the Communist Party’s call to vote against the proposed changes to the constitution during the July 1 plebiscite. Members of the Communist Party had called the amendments — which would give Putin the opportunity to remain in power until 2036 — “a strengthening of the presidential dictatorship.” Putin, on the other hand, said “it’s the opposite.”
President Kennedy is just one of many famous historical figures who loved to smoke cigars. Sigmund Freud was a big addict, smoking up to 20 cigars a day, which probably caused the mouth cancer that led to his death. In a conversation with Carl Gustav Jung, where they were probably discussing the allegoric meaning of cigars, Freud is supposed to have said, “You know, Carl, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
Malcolm X campaigned for Black Nationalism. The assassination of Malcolm by the devil white class should have proved to everyone that his strategy was the only way. He outlined that nationalism was the tool that countries used to free themselves from imperialism. Ho Chi Minh for example understood that in order to eventually achieve communism he had to unify the national community under a common umbrella.
As the spark that lit a fire, the murder of George Floyd was horrifyingly, sickeningly ordinary. According to the scant data on police killing of citizens that is available, about three people are killed by the police in the U.S. every day. And despite the protest movements Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, this number has remained about constant in recent years through Democratic and Republican administrations. This persistence stands in contrast to the political ‘branding’ of the mainstream political parties where difference is claimed, but little is evident.
They were relegated to the protest equivalent of a ghetto. Their assigned route shunted them to the far fringes of the city. Their demonstration was destined for an ignominious demise far from any main thoroughfare, out of sight of most apartment buildings, out of earshot of most homes, best viewed from a dinghy bobbing in the Hudson River.
The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has ignited protests across the United States and calls to demilitarize and defund the police.
Russia has opened another treason investigation, once again charging an elderly scientist. In St. Petersburg, federal agents say 78-year-old Arctic specialist Valery Mitko sold classified information about Russian submarines to Chinese intelligence. Mitko says he merely gave a lecture at a local university. Meduza examines the case against Mitko, who now faces up to 20 years in prison.
During a video call plagued by technical difficulties, opposition leader Alexey Navalny and former Yabloko party member Maxim Katz debated the benefit of participating in Russia’s July 1 plebiscite on constitutional amendments. To be honest, the debate was rather boring, so you’re better off reading our short and sweet summary.
"If the book gets out, he's broken the law and I would think that he would have criminal problems—I hope so."
"The climate emergency is here. Democrats need to take the lead on confronting it."
Shakespeare’s heirs at the BBC produced this deathless and entirely convincing line as the climax of the first episode of “The Salisbury Poisonings”, a three part piece of state propaganda on the Skripal saga, of which I watched Part 1 as it was broadcast last night. The other two parts are to be broadcast today and tomorrow, which unusual scheduling reflects the importance our masters place on this stirring tale of the resilience of the great British nation under attack by devilish foreigners. You can watch all three episodes now on BBC iPlayer, but personally I suffer from overactive antibodies to bullshit and need a break.
Just as generals are sometimes guilty of fighting the last war, pundits frequently fight the last culture war. The world is on fire with global protests over police violence, the continued spread of Covid-19, and the ripple effects of the most severe economic crisis in nearly a century. But to judge by some of America’s best-known political columnists, the true danger is still political correctness destroying free speech, especially in the media.
Along The Line is a non-profit, education-based podcast that provides listeners with context and analysis about various critical and contemporary issues and topics. Hosted by Dr. Nolan Higdon, Dr. Dreadlocks (Nicholas Baham III), and Janice Domingo. ATL’s Creative Director is Dylan Lazaga. Mickey Huff is ATL’s producer. ATL’s engineer is Janice Domingo. Adam Armstrong is ATL’s webmaster. Along the Line is brought to you by The Media Freedom Foundation. Listen to our previous content at https://www.projectcensored.org/atl/ Along the Line is a proud member of the Demcast Network. https://demcastusa.com/ Listen to Along the Line on these platforms: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3E5JGKCDVVePzxQxFY7jJg?si=jd65roYdQwWYA00TC9K6tg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/along-the-line/id1447780425?mt=2 Follow us on Twitter: ATL Official Twitter – https://twitter.com/alongtheline2 Dr. Nolan Higdon – https://twitter.com/Nolan_higdon Dr. Nicholas Baham III – https://twitter.com/doctordredlocks Janice Domingo – https://twitter.com/j_nice44 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alongthelineshow/ RSS feed: https://www.projectcensored.org/feed/podcast/along-the-line Send us an email: [email€ protected] Check out these books: The Anatomy of Fake News by Nolan Higdon – https://www.projectcensored.org/product/the-anatomy-of-fake-news-a-critical-news-literacy-education-pre-order-singed-copy/ United States of Distraction by Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff – https://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100388060 Support Along the Line and Project Censored: https://www.projectcensored.org/support/
Twitter and Steven Biss (Devin Nunes' rather busy, but still terrible, lawyer) were in court on Friday to continue Nunes' frivolous SLAPP suit against a satirical internet cow who makes fun of Nunes. The current issue remains Twitter's unwillingness to reveal who is behind the @DevinCow account. Twitter, correctly, continues to point out that it doesn't need to give up the account info, that it's protected from doing so under Section 230, that the Cow has engaged in 1st Amendment protected speech, and more. And Biss's response appears to be... "but Twitter's mean to us, so it's not fair, it's not, it's not, it's not."
More than a dozen U.S. lawmakers took Zoom to task and demanded detailed explanation Friday after the California-based teleconferencing company admitted to suspending the accounts of three Chinese activists at Beijing's request.
Zoom said Thursday that it had deactivated the accounts of U.S-based, pro-democracy activists Zhou Fengsuo and Wang Dan, and Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-Yan at the request of the Chinese government after they held meetings using the online media platform in conjunction with the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
In a post published on her Telegram channel, Salahshouri said in January 2020 that the IRGC and "certain other entities" had lodged complaints with the court against her. She maintained that the charges against her violated Articles 84 and 86 of the Islamic Republic Constitution, which allow legislators "to speak about all affairs of the country".
Earlier, Salahshouri had made some fiery speeches lambasting the regime. In one of her speeches in a public session of parliament, she strongly criticized the "objectionable governance of the country and grim despotism and the ever-increasing powers of parallel, unelected centers of power." Furthermore, she had called the Islamic Republic's system as a "rogue tyranny".
This is a real travesty. Reporter Maria Ressa (and research Rey Santos Jr.) have been convicted of criminal "cyber libel" in the Philippines, and now face fines and possibly years in jail for their reporting -- a direct attack on free speech and a free press in the Philippines.
Other media outlets who have been critical of the government have faced similar forms of intimidation meant to stop them from reporting. Last month, the nation's largest broadcaster, ABS-CBN, was shut down because it was not allowed to renew its legislative franchise. Months earlier, the country's largest broadsheet, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, was threatened with closure when its owners were charged with tax evasion.
At a press conference after the announcement of Monday's verdict, Ressa was defiant and resolved to continue her work as a journalist. "Investigative journalism is more important today than ever. So much is happening in an opaque, grey area," she said.
What to watch: This is also a test case for the cyber libel law, which could ultimately be applied to anything posted online — not just from media outlets.
Five deputy chief editors resigned from Vedomosti on Monday, after the newspaper’s parent company made Andrey Shmarov’s appointment as editor-in-chief permanent.€
Whatever corner of the world one happens to live in, the most pressing issues of the day affect everyone. Pandemics/epidemics and the environmental emergency; war and terrorism; poverty and food insecurity; overpopulation and the displacement of persons. Such crises cannot be limited by borders or controlled by nation states; no government or corporate power can manage them. They are interconnected global issues and they require a coordinated global response.
"The protests the world is witnessing are a rejection of the fundamental racial inequality and discrimination that characterise life in the United States for black people."
"Recent events demonstrate the urgent need for Congress to stand up for the rule of law and abolish qualified immunity."
I did not expect to be returning to this issue so soon but I was surprised, to put it mildly, to discover that my last post on anti-racists toppling a statue of the notorious slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol proved to be the most polarising article I have ever written. Given the many controversial topics I have addressed over the years, that seems noteworthy in itself.
The Russian authorities have launched nearly 200 prosecutions for the illegal distribution of “fake news” since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, says a new report from the human rights organization “Agora.”
As long as those stone or bronze testaments to a "heritage" or a "way of life" remain fixed in their places, they will continue to permeate our sense of what is just and acceptable in human relations.
Putting cops in schools has proven to be a disaster. Treating discipline problems like criminal acts has turned students into criminals and placed vulnerable kids in the hands of sadists who feel force deployment and power flexing are the best responses to common in-school issues.
Against the backdrop of a months-long pandemic and weeks-long uprising against police violence, Tuesday’s Georgia election debacle felt comparably apocalyptic. ‘complete meltdown’ screamed a banner headline in the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Social media was littered with photos of long lines, tales of broken voting machines, and complaints of citizens prevented from exercising their legal right.
Passing a law allowing the designation of domestic groups as terrorist would allow the government to silence opposition.
A man forced to die with his face pressed to the ground may yet shift the earth under your feet.
On Sunday, May 31, 2020, over 700 people joined me and my friends in solidarity to fight against white supremacy and the institutions that uphold them in the United States. The sun was shining, the wind was there to keep us cool, and love was reigning for all of us. This day all came about through a simple tweet, a rhetorical question that asked “Can we please do a protest in Monroe, please”. This shot in the wind caught the attention of Suhi Saran and was followed by her question of “How do we get a protest to happen in Monroe?” This was the spark to a fire in which ignited the #BlackLivesMatter protest in the 845, and it was through mere word of mouth and the help of Sky Arroyo, Chris Omar, Tabatha Castro, Tyjai Lewis and social media that made the demonstration prominent in the Hudson Valley.
Americans may or may not know there’s more than one Independence Day in the United States. In addition to the Fourth of July holiday all Americans recognize, black Americans commemorate our ancestors’ freedom from slavery on Juneteenth.
I didn’t do nothing serious man please please please I can’t breathe please man please somebody please man I can’t breathe I can’t breathe please man can’t breathe, my face just get up I can’t breathe please I can’t breathe shit I will I can’t move mama mama I can’t my knee my nuts I’m through I’m through I’m claustrophobic my stomach hurt my neck hurts everything hurts some water or something please please I can’t breathe officer don’t kill me they gon’ kill me man come on man I cannot breathe I cannot breathe they gon’ kill me they gon’ kill me I can’t breathe I can’t breathe please sir please please please I can’t breathe
The nationwide street protests following the gruesome murder of George Floyd, who was pinned to the ground and choked by a Minneapolis police officer and three accomplices, were spontaneous and diverse. No leaders, charismatic or otherwise put out the call for people to turn out in the face of militarized police legions. It was a wondrous display of civic self-respect.
The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has triggered a shock wave across the country. The nation has seen the full horror of law enforcement's indifference to the lives of black people, this time personified by Officer Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck. In full view of several citizens' cameras, the officer choked Floyd to death, leaving his knee on his neck for nearly three minutes after another officer failed to detect a pulse.
As protests against racism and police violence continue across the United States, we speak with Derrick Sanderlin, a San Jose community organizer who has spent years training police on avoiding implicit bias toward people of color, but an officer from the same police department shot him in the groin with a rubber bullet during a May 29 protest against racism and police violence, rupturing Sanderlin’s testicle and possibly affecting his ability to have children.
Protests have erupted in Atlanta, where the police killing of unarmed African American man Rayshard Brooks in a Wendy’s parking lot has outraged residents. The autopsy revealed that Brooks was shot in the back as he was running away, and the death has been ruled a homicide by the county medical examiner. Brooks’s killing comes as protests against racism and police violence continue across the country. The Atlanta police chief has already resigned, and the officer who shot Brooks has been fired. “What we saw happen to Mr. Brooks is unfortunately something that we continue to see repeated in our communities all across this country,” says Mary Hooks, co-director of Southerners on New Ground, which is part of the National Bail Out collective and the Movement for Black Lives. “What we continue to see is police being called in as first responders to things that they should not be showing up for.”
The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on a visual chronicle of untold stories as the coronavirus continues to spread across the United States and the rest of the world—read more from The Invisible Front Line.—The Editors
Like all black parents, I believe that talking to my children about the protests surrounding the death of George Floyd also involves contextualizing the current struggle against police brutality within the generations-long struggle for equal rights. I need my sons to know that the fight they see on television is part of a larger struggle that started long before they were born and that they must take up after I am gone.
The acknowledgment that Black Lives Matter demands bold and visionary leadership at the national level.
In a rare development, a New York police officer has been charged with assault, criminal mischief, harassment and menacing, after a viral video showed him violently shoving a peaceful protester to the ground as he shouted an expletive and a misogynistic slur. We speak with Dounya Zayer about the attack she faced during a protest against police brutality in Brooklyn on May 29 and how she suffered a seizure and was hospitalized with a concussion. We’re also joined by one of her attorneys, Tahanie Aboushi.
Janine Jackson interviewed the Drug Policy Alliance’s Maritza Perez about the war on drugs and overpolicing for the June 12, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Soccoro Diaz is a domestic worker and worker leader at the Women’s Action and Solidarity Alliance (ALMAS). After fires devastated Santa Rosa in northern California, Diaz says she was forced to work “cleaning homes in the evacuation zone.”
“I got very sick and got very strong physical reactions being exposed to smoke and toxic ash. It got me sick for several days,” Diaz told Shadowproof.
On June 1, a 12-year-old girl was found murdered in the Siberian town of Nizhnyaya Koya, Krasnoyarsk Krai. She had gone missing two days earlier, after leaving home to go to the playground. Her body, which was found in an abandoned water tank, showed signs of violence.
Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division released a damning report on the Ferguson, Missouri police department.
By now, everyone should be familiar with the incident in Central Park, when a white woman named Amy Cooper confronted a Black man named Christian Cooper (no relation) and called the police on him, claiming that he was threatening her. The incident was captured on a video that went viral, and the retribution to Amy Cooper was swift. She was excoriated on social media, fired from her job, temporarily had her dog taken from her (the same dog she refused to put on a leash), and now, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing for the enactment of a bill popularly known as the “Amy Cooper” bill, first introduced in 2018 by Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, which could deem a false 911 call based on race a hate crime.
Local officials and media in Tulsa, Oklahoma, are asking President Donald Trump to reconsider plans to hold his first re-election campaign rally there since the coronavirus pandemic forced him to suspend traveling.
Protests have erupted in Atlanta, where the police killing of unarmed African American man Rayshard Brooks in a Wendy’s parking lot has outraged residents. The autopsy revealed that Brooks was shot in the back as he was running away, and the death has been ruled a homicide by the county medical examiner. Brooks’s killing comes as protests against racism and police violence continue across the country. The Atlanta police chief has already resigned, and the officer who shot Brooks has been fired. “What we saw happen to Mr. Brooks is unfortunately something that we continue to see repeated in our communities all across this country,” says Mary Hooks, co-director of Southerners on New Ground, which is part of the National Bail Out collective and the Movement for Black Lives. “What we continue to see is police being called in as first responders to things that they should not be showing up for.”
For all of the talk about being #1, America's broadband networks are routinely mediocre. The U.S. consistently ranks among the middle of the pack in speeds and overall availability, while Americans continue to pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for both fixed and mobile broadband. The reasons aren't mysterious: we've let a bunch of telecom monopolies not only dominate the sector, we've allowed their corrupt influence over state and federal lawmakers and regulators to become so pronounced, they dictate most US telecom policy and literally write the law. Both with a relentless focus on hamstringing competition.
Last week, the Internet Archive announced that it was going to close the National Emergency Library two weeks earlier than it had originally planned to do so, because of the disappointing lawsuit against the organization by most of the major publishing houses. As we said when that lawsuit was filed, while the publishers may win (and may force the entire Internet Archive to close), it's still a blatant attack on culture. And, of course, the lawsuit isn't just over the National Emergency Library, but the entire concept of Controlled Digital Lending, the underpinning of the Internet Archive's OpenLibrary, which lets you check out scans of books in a one-to-one relationship with physical books the library holds.
How often do you debate whether to share an openly licensed work on social media? If you do share a work, how often do you fret over whether you’ve provided proper attribution? I’ll answer first: All the time!
Last week several movies and TV-shows were pulled from online streaming platforms for depicting racist and prejudicial content. Suddenly, the 1939 film classic Gone With the Wind was taken offline, while the TV-show Little Britain and an episode from Fawlty Towers were purged too. This ignited a widespread debate as well as a surge in downloads for these titles on pirate sites.
An IP address allegedly used by The Pirate Bay and claimed to be owned by a Swedish ISP does not belong to the provider, it's being claimed. According to Obenetwork, the IP address is actually operated by local VPN service OVPN. As a result, the ISP has asked a court to withdraw an information injunction obtained by a pair of Scandinavian movie companies.
