We're back, again! The duo returns for another casual and frank chat about Linux and Linux Gaming topics across many different areas in the industry. The podcast features myself and contributor Samsai, having a very chilled-out (and totally unprofessional) chat about various Linux and Linux Gaming topics across different fields.
This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to discuss open source licensing and help everyone navigate this critical part of open source ecosystem. Then we’re going to discuss some disturbing surveillance laws that are currently impacting our friends in Australia. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.
While Linus Torvalds isn't much of a fan of FUSE / user-space file-systems, the FUSE code within the kernel does continue making improvements.
The FUSE changes for Linux 5.15 have been submitted and mostly consist of a few fixes, including around data flushing in syncfs, data flushing in copy_file_range(), a possible deadlock fix, and other fixes.
For more than a year there has been work on FGKASLR for finer grained kernel address space layout randomization. While KASLR is widely-used these days, with enough guessing or unintentional kernel leakage, the base address of the kernel can be figured out. Finer grained KASLR allows for randomization at the per-functional level to dramatically boost defenses. The latest take on FG-KASLR has now been published.
FG-KASLR continues to be designed around rearranging the kernel code at boot/load-time on a per-function level with minimal impact to the boot time.
To help out memory pressure / out-of-memory killing solutions like systemd-oomd or Android's LMKD, Linux 5.15 is introducing the "process_mrelease" system call to more quickly free the memory of dying processes.
Earlier this summer I wrote about a proposed "process_reap" system call for more quickly reclaiming memory when under pressure. It's that work that evolved into "process_mrelease" and this new system call is now ready to go for Linux 5.15.
Recently with my Linux benchmarks of the Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 7 5700G Zen 3 APUs with Radeon Vega graphics I touched on the GPU graphics/compute performance in some of the basic benchmarks while in this article are a number of Steam Play and native Linux gaming benchmarks for looking at the potential for these latest-generation desktop APUs for Linux gaming.
This round of benchmarking is looking at the gaming potential out of the Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 7 5700G which as shown in the prior articles offer much greater integrated graphics potential than what is current provided by Intel desktop processors. For providing a fresh look at the 5600G/5700G Linux gaming performance, Linux 5.14 and Mesa 21.3-devel were providing the latest open-source graphics stack.
The developers and package maintainers may not always create packages for all Linux distributions. Some packages are only available for a specific Linux platform. In such cases, you can use package conversion tools like Alien to easily convert Linux packages to different formats. In this guide, we will see what is Alien, how to install Alien in various Linux operating systems and then how to convert a Linux package from one format to another using Alien package converter.
Complexity is our collective enemy in the computing industry. Complex systems are admired, yet they are hard to reason about, hard to secure, and let’s not forget — often unpleasant to use. Below, I will try offering a simple framework for how to think about secure infrastructure access, about its complexity, and a possible solution.
The markup above is something I see a lot on websites I audit professionally or when I just look under the hood of a website because I’m curious to see how it’s structured. The div is by far the most popular element, which is absolutely fine, but it's often being used in favor of other elements that would fit better. This overuse is nothing new, but the rise of JavaScript (JS) frameworks has amplified it.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Ansible on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Ansible is a free and open-source automation tool that allows system administrators to configure and control hundreds of nodes from a central server without the need of installing any agents on the nodes. Unlike Puppet and Chef, Ansible is agent-less. Ansible uses declarative language to define system configurations and uses SSH service and Python scripts to apply configurations on the managed nodes.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Ansible on AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.
Today we are looking at how to install Standard Notes on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nexus Repository on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Nexus Repository is an open-source repository that supports many artifact formats, including Docker, Java, Docker, Conan components, and more. It allows you to collect, and manage your dependencies and makes it easier to distribute your software. It is a single source of all components, binaries, and build artifacts.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Nexus Repository on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Node.js on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, NodeJS is a technology that allows running Javascript on the server-side using Google’s V8 engine. It is used on both the back-end and front-end as a full-stack making development more consistent.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Node.js on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
MongoDB is a database and in comparison to other databases, it is easy to handle because there is no need to work in a table-based conventional relational database structure. We can save a large amount of data because of its feature of horizontal partitioning. A lot of companies are using MongoDB like CISCO, Facebook, Nokia, etc.
MongoDB offers data aggregation as it allows us to store data according to our preferences. Otherwise, we have to manage data according to the data management of a conventional database.
This article will help us to understand how to install MongoDB in Ubuntu 20.04.
One undisputed advantage of using phpMyAdmin as a database management and administration frontend is how easy it is to configure and implement user-privileged actions. One such action is resetting your admin password from its Graphical User Interface. Changing user passwords involves several easy steps. We will go through all of them together.
So, you have started learning Java programming? That’s good.
And you want to run the java programs on your Linux system? Even better.
Let me show how to run Java in terminal in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.
Awesome Screenshot is very easy to use the extension. The learning curve is less. You can use it efficiently within an hour of learning. In general, just click to open the toolbar and select the menu to perform respective actions.
There are several graphical tools available for creating live USB. Etcher on Linux is probably the most popular. Ubuntu has its own Startup Disk Creator tool for this purpose.
However, advanced Linux users swear by the comfort and swiftness of creating live USBs in Linux terminal using the dd command.
The dd command is a CLI tool that gives you powerful features for copying and converting files.
A common use case that people use dd for is to write ISO files to an external storage device such as a USB drive, which can be used to do things like install a new Linux distribution onto a computer or laptop.
That’s what I am going to show in this tutorial. I’ll go over the commands you will need to run, finding our USB drive from the terminal, and then finally doing the actual flashing of the ISO file.
Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop Version is one of the most popular operating systems out there and it’s partly thanks to the number of applications available. Well, today we are going to tell you about a task manager for Ubuntu 20.04 called Gaucho. So, in this post, you will learn how to install it on Ubuntu 20.04.
It's easy to take Linux commands for granted. They come bundled with the system when you install Linux, and we often don't question why they're there. Some of the basic commands, such as cd, kill, and echo aren't always independent applications but are actually built into your shell. Others, such as ls, mv, and cat are part of a core utility package (often GNU coreutils specifically). But there are always alternatives in the world of open source, and one of the most interesting is BusyBox.
Learn the commands to install Python 3.x and Python 2.7 on Debian 11 Bullseye or 10 Buster using terminal and also set the default version.
Python is a free, open-source programming language for a wide range of software projects. This programming language comes with clear syntax and good readability. It is considered easy to learn and can be interpreted in common operating systems.
Also, Python offers good scalability and can be used for complex software projects. Due to the expressive, minimalist syntax, applications can be implemented with just a few lines of code and less susceptibility to programming errors. To ensure simplicity and clarity, Python gets along with very few keywords and uses indentations as structuring elements.
Building upon a bunch of big new features in the first Lutris 0.9.2 Beta, a second Beta is out now with a focus on polishing up the experience that needs more testing.
What is Lutris? It's a free and open source application to help you manage games from various sources. This includes GOG, Humble Store, Epic Games, Steam, Emulators, Compatibility Layers (Wine) and much more. It's a simple way of keeping all your games together in one place. One launcher to rule them all.
Surviving Mars: Below and Beyond is the brand new expansion with Paradox Interactive reviving the game under a new developer with Abstraction and there's a free update too.
WHAT THE GOLF? is still getting free upgrades and the latest A HOLE NEW WORLD Update is live with another bunch of levels to play not-Golf through.
Mixing together a farming sim, a life sim and a business sim all in one - Harvest Days is coming from Family Devs, an indie game studio formed by a father and son duo. Yet another take on the casual gaming market joining the likes of Stardew Valley, Farm Together, Littlewood and many more. Linux support is fully planned too.
"Take things easy in Harvest Days, and leave the chaos of the city behind. In this pastoral sandbox world, you can let go of your day-to-day worries and unwind. Tend to your crops, ride horses through the wilds, kick back with the friendly townsfolk and fish for your dinner down at the river. Take it easy and watch your farmstead slowly evolve, or proactively invest in tools, vehicles and upgrades to carve out your own little slice of paradise."
Not long now until the big Hearth & Home update for Valheim arrives on September 16 and Iron Gate have given us a final quick-look at some more changes. This time, it's weapons.
For those of you wanting a simple way to get your games from the Epic Store running on Linux with the Wine compatibility layer, the Heroic Games Launcher continues to roll out upgrades. Totally unofficial though of course, since the Epic Store doesn't support Linux.
HGL version 1.9.3 rolled out recently and it's considered an essential upgrade. It pulls in a big new version of Legendary, the command-line interface for interacting with Epic, which has some needed fixes due to changes to Epic's API. This includes fixes for logins not working.
The OpenWrt community announced the first stable update of their series, OpenWrt 21.02.
In case you did not know, OpenWrt is a project that helps create custom operating systems for embedded devices.
It enables users to openly customize their devices according to their networking needs, something that the stock router firmware doesn’t. Other than routers, OpenWrt can run on a variety of devices such as smartphones, residential gateways, and even 32 bit PCs!
For years now, RetroArch has been the gold standard in emulation, thanks to its ease of use and simplicity. Similarly, Lakka has gotten a name by using RetroArch to create an incredibly smooth and straightforward experience for its users.
Hence, we have recommended it in the past to turn your old PC into a retrogaming console.
Tails 4.22 makes the new Tor Connection assistant introduced in the Tails 4.20 release more performant and capable by changing the custom bridge interface to only allow entering one bridge, add support for saving one custom bridge in the Persistent Storage, and make Tor connections using bridges more robust by allowing users to manually fix the clock.
In addition, this release also reduces the timeout that determines if Tor connections can be established from 30 to 10 seconds, increases the timeout to start Tor entirely from 120 to 600 seconds, thus making the Tor Connection assistant more robust on slow Internet connections, and it now lets users try again to connect to Tor from the error screen.
So, you decided to use Ubuntu. Set upon to install Ubuntu and find that there are several active Ubuntu releases.
That makes you bother about the latest Ubuntu release. Let me help you with that.
The newest Ubuntu release is Ubuntu 21.04. It is a short term release which was out in April 2021 and it will be supported till January 2022. After that, you’ll have to upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10 (will be releases in October 2021).
Today, Canonical announces the availability of the Anbox Cloud Appliance in AWS Marketplace, allowing for a fast and easy “prototype to production” process for Android apps in the cloud.
The Anbox Cloud Appliance is a small-scale version of Canonical’s Anbox Cloud, which developers can utilize for rapid prototyping of Android-in-the-Cloud solutions. Additionally, AWS Marketplace makes Anbox Cloud readily available with access to a more extensive set of instance types, including support for Arm CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs.
“Canonical’s Anbox Cloud provides our customers with an easy and powerful way to run large numbers of Android instances in parallel on a single AWS instance, and with support for both x86 and Arm instances, customers can choose the best option for their use case,” said Mona Chadha, Director of AWS Marketplace Category Management, AWS.
The Anbox Cloud Appliance makes it easy to be productive by providing a developer-friendly CLI and a simple web UI to manage and operate Android applications in the cloud. Developers can upload their Android apps, configure and virtualise Android devices, and stream graphical output in real-time to any web or mobile client. This allows them to unleash their creativity to invent new user experiences.
Ubuntu developer Canonical Ltd. is pushing harder into Android application development with today’s launch of its Anbox Cloud Appliance on Amazon Web Services Inc.’s Marketplace.
The Anbox Cloud appliance is said to be a “small-scale” version of the company’s Anbox Cloud platform and provides a fast and easy “prototype to production” process for cloud-based Android applications, the company said.
Anbox Cloud is a service that runs Android as a guest operating system to containerize workloads so they can easily be distributed from the cloud, where they run, to any kind of mobile device. It’s used to run high-powered applications on any kind of Android device, regardless of hardware’s compute capabilities.
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 699 for the week of August 29 – September 4, 2021.
Vecow’s rugged “EIC-1000” industrial mini-PC runs Android or Linux on an RK3399 with 2GB DDR3L, 32GB eMMC, 2x USB, 2x COM, HDMI, GbE, and mini-PCIe.
Vecow announced a fanless, compact computer equipped with Rockchip’s hexa-core -A72 and -A53 RK3399 SoC. The EIC-1000 offers industrial features including a 9-55 DC terminal plug input, an extended 0 to 70€°C operating range, IEC 60068-2-27 rated shock resistance, IEC 60068-2-64 vibration resistance, and humidity and EMC tolerance.
While my current work is aimed at ARM-64 hardware, many of the boards are not Server Ready Hardware and thus do not have things like UEFI to boot, ACPI to query the hardware stack, or various other things which are added later as firmware updates. They also end up having ‘developer kit boards’ of US$6000.00+ systems which having one at home is hard to justify. {Sorry kid, no college this semester… Dad bought himself a board that the customer may dump next week.}
In looking for proxy systems, my team has been focusing first on the classic ARM for small projects: The Raspberry Pi. The raspberry pi4 with 4 GB of ram works out as a proxy for all kinds of ‘low-end’ systems where you may need to play with a small GPU and try to make it work with a Server Ready operating system like CentOS Stream.
Now the other half of the once almighty “Wintel” arrangement, whereby PCs would run on Windows software and chips made by Intel, wants to throw the windows open. The American semiconductor giant has long guarded its core chipmaking business as jealously as Microsoft did its OS. After years of product delays, misplaced technology bets and changing management, it is ready for some fresh air. “Our processes, our manufacturing, our intellectual property through our foundry services [producing processors for other chipmakers]: all will now be available to the world,” professes Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s newish boss.
This article is for you who want to know about free software phones. They are mobile devices with GNU/Linux or Android family operating systems inside with more libre software, less proprietary ones and made safer from surveillance. Today, talking about these also involves talking about the software systems inside. This article lists out several the top of them namely Librem 5, Ubuntu Phones, /e/ Fairphone, PinePhone, NitroPhone and mentions also several related software projects like microG. I write this in twenty twenty one so in the future we would certainly see changes going in and out in the world and this article might become obsolete quick. Nevertheless, I hope you would enjoy thi
Here we go again. Firefox’s (probably) most delayed feature, the enablement of support for the AVIF image format by default, is now planned for the next major release of the popular, open-source, free, and cross-platform web browser used by millions of users worldwide on both desktop and mobile platforms.
Yes, I’m talking about Firefox 93, which just entered public beta testing today and the biggest new feature appears to be support for the new AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) next-generation image format based on the modern and royalty free AV1 video codec, which promises major bandwidth savings.
Mozilla Firefox 92.0 was released today with new features and various security fixes.
The release will use HTTPS resource record (HTTPS RR) as Alt-Svc headers to make connections more secure.
The full-range color (0-255) levels are now supported for video playback. Though the limited color range (16-235) is ideal for movies and TV, the source can be switched to full-range color to match PC monitor.
The latest release of the popular open-source web browser is a modest one, containing only minor changes. Among the improvements the resurgent web browser gains are more secure HTTPS connections and full-range color levels for video playback on ‘many systems’.
Bookmark toolbar menus (i.e. bookmark folders and overflow menu) now adhere to Firefox’s ‘Proton’ visual style; certificate error pages have a cleaner, less-gaudy look; and macOS users can now access their OS’s native sharing options from the Firefox File menu.
We have highlighted some of the best alternatives to Microsoft Office in Linux, both open-source and proprietary options. Notably, you get more features with premium versions of these tools such as Cloud storage, PDF conversion, and support for numerous file extensions. Still, that pales in comparison with the high licensing fee that comes with installing and using the Microsoft Office suite. At the end of the day, you can easily create, edit and share your documents cost-effectively.
Personally, I'd rather be remembered as that person who left behind "really boring utilitarian code that just sat there doing its job" than someone who created "a breathtaking gleaming spectacle that's also totally opaque and unmaintainable".
In this notebook, we will look at how to take Integer input from command line in Python 3 and Python 2. For taking string input from command line in Python, check out How To Take String Input From Command Line In Python
fzf is a simple utility for searching data among a file (the history file in that case) in fuzzy mode, meaning in not a strict matching, on OpenBSD I use the following configuration file in ~/.config/fish/config.fish to make fzf active.
When pressing ctrl+r with some history available, you can type any words you can think about an old command like "ssh bar" and it should return "ssh foobar" if it exists.
The Annual Report is a weighty 200 pages. You start reading. “This past fiscal year has been a year of remarkable performance and resilience for Microchip” …. “Microchip was able to achieve records for net sales…. It was heartening to see the ‘One World, One Microchip’ spirit of our employees.”
But what does Microchip produce, make, manufacture, innovate, distribute, impact, and for whom in particular? You still can’t find out but there are plenty of pages to go. After telling me briefly about their diversity and sustainability goals, the company zeroes in on the management’s proposals that it wishes shareholders to approve. It is all pretty routine stuff: they include the election of directors, a two-for-one stock split, restatement of its Equity Incentive Plan, ratification of their public accounting firm, Ernst & Young, then on to the “Approval of Executive Compensation.”
I remember feeling hopelessly defeated when I first realized how quickly the world was changing due to climate change. I was eight years old, listening to my third grade teacher explain that fossil fuels, the United States main source of energy, would be all used up by the time we were her age. I was sitting next to the people I would spend the next few years with, all of us unprepared for our uncertain futures ahead. We were all shocked when my teacher’s next words were, “And it’s up to your generation to figure out what to do! Good luck!”
Hungry for action, my classmates and I banded together to form an “earth club,” buying beans and paper cups, planting seeds in wet paper towels. We nourished and cared for our little bean seedlings in the weeks that followed, as if we were nourishing our future. And though I can look back fondly at that time, the truth is, I knew even then that well-meaning efforts failed to address the root of the problem.
Like the toxoplasmosis parasite that infects mice brains, causing them to lose their fear of cats, the unvaccinated mice strut around before the cat. But when they become infected with the Delta variant, toxoplasmosis leaves their brain, and they act rationally. Then, the unvaccinated Covid patient sprints back to the medical science that they had shunned and opt for any treatment available, often experimental in nature.
The post-truth/alternative facts zeitgeist has long infected America.
In April 2021 we went through the anatomy of a Cobalt Strike stager and how some of its signature evasion techniques ended up being ineffective against detection technologies. In this blog post we will go one level deeper and focus on Metasploit, an often-used framework interoperable with Cobalt Strike.
In May 2015, KrebsOnSecurity briefly profiled “The Manipulaters,” the name chosen by a prolific cybercrime group based in Pakistan that was very publicly selling spam tools and a range of services for crafting, hosting and deploying malicious email. Six years later, a review of the social media postings from this group shows they are prospering, while rather poorly hiding their activities behind a software development firm in Lahore that has secretly enabled an entire generation of spammers and scammers.
Security updates have been issued by openSUSE (apache2, java-11-openjdk, libesmtp, nodejs10, ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs, openssl-1_1, xen, and xerces-c), Red Hat (kernel-rt and kpatch-patch), and SUSE (ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs and openssl-1_1).
ClamAV 0.104 has been released a few days ago with major changes and new LTS (Long Term Support) program.
ClamAV is an open source cross-platform antivirus software which is used in a variety of situations including email scanning, web scanning, and endpoint security. It includes a multi-threaded scanner daemon, command line utilities for on demand file scanning and automatic signature updates.
The move comes after a fierce backlash from outside researchers, academics, and the information security community, some of whom argued that one of the features, which would scan photos stored on user's iPhones and uploaded to iCloud for violating content, could create its own privacy and security risks.
noyb will monitor the next steps closely. It is to be expected that this case will be before the Irish Courts for years and it will be interesting if the DPC will actively defend this decision before the Courts, as it was forced to make such a decision by its EU colleagues at the EDPB: [...]
Once rare, partial or total internet shutdowns engineered by governments have become a near-daily occurrence somewhere in the world.
Perhaps predictably, Apple declined to say how many people are using the Health Records feature through its Health app. Neither did the company offer an executive or representative to speak on the record for this article. (Representatives did, however, explain the health records feature on background). As a result, MedCity News interviewed others to understand the technology, how many people are using it and in what manner.
Because ProtonMail is based in Switzerland, it is not subject to French or EU requests. But the company is still subject to requests from Swiss courts, where French police where able to lodge their request with the help of Europol. After Swiss courts approved the order, ProtonMail began logging IP information on the account, which was subsequently handed over to French police, leading to the activist’s identification and arrest.
For the twentieth anniversary and commemoration of the September 11th attacks, Mickey and his expert guests examine some still-unanswered questions about the attacks and the events that preceded them, notably why several already-identified terror suspects were not taken into custody by US authorities and why some countries with obvious connections to them were not held to account. They also address the many consequences of the 9/11 attacks both domestically and in terms of foreign policy and international law as well as the significance of a declared state of emergency and continuity of government operations.
As supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro prepare to take to the streets for orchestrated demonstrations Tuesday, warnings within the country and across the world are growing that the embattled right-wing leader is seeking to foment an insurrection or possibly a military coup with similar undertones to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol incited by former President Donald Trump.
"We are gravely concerned about the imminent threat to Brazil's democratic institutions—and we stand vigilant to defend them ahead of 7 September and after."—Open Letter
We look at the crisis in Afghanistan with Bilal Sarwary, an Afghan journalist who was based in Kabul and reported on Afghanistan for 20 years before he fled with his family after the Taliban seized power. We first spoke to Bilal on August 18, three days after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan after the U.S.-backed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. At the time, Bilal was hoping to stay in Afghanistan, but just days later he and his family boarded a flight to Doha. He posted a message on Twitter reading, “The day I leave my country, my city, my Kabul. A massacre of my dreams and aspirations. A tragic day in my life.” On August 25, a week after our first interview, Bilal joined us again, this time from Doha. He spoke about his decision to leave Afghanistan.
While Republicans routinely call Democrats “Marxists,” it’s been taboo for Democrats and the American mainstream media to brand Trump and his followers “fascists.”
I read this short story by the Turkish satirist Aziz Nesin as a teenager in my native Tehran in the mid-1960s. It was before the fall of Saigon, before the Carter administration would cut and run with the advance of Islamic revolutionaries in Iran, and indeed before this day of the Biden administration leaving Afghanistan in a lurch. All the same, the story rang true to me.
Raised under the shah’s authoritarian rule in the thick of the Cold War, when Iran was a key American ally against the Soviet Union, I understood power and politics from an early age. I knew that there would come a day when mighty America, with its strong diplomatic, foreign aid and military presence in Iran, would exercise its prerogative to leave. Many among the post-9/11 Afghan generation, recipients of American taxpayer aid once their country’s corrupt elite took most of it, were lulled into complacency, counting on a continued U.S. presence. That leaving was so sudden and irresponsible, as it was also in Iran, came to them as a shock that I well understand.
“The youngest victims of Sunday’s airstrike were two 2-year-old girls, according to family members.
“Relatives found the remains of one of the girls, Malika, in the rubble near their home on Monday.”
We speak to the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Spencer Ackerman about how the U.S. could have ended the War in Afghanistan two decades ago, when the Taliban offered to surrender and hand over Osama bin Laden. “It was the Bush administration, the United States, that said such a deal was unacceptable — not to the Afghans, but unacceptable to the United States, that now took it on itself, as it has so often throughout its history in so many parts of the world, to tell Afghans the way their country was about to be,” Ackerman says.
In an extended conversation with Spencer Ackerman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter, he examines the connection he sees between the rise of right-wing extremism in the United States and the so-called war on terror, which he writes about in his new book, “Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump.” He begins his book with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh visiting the far-right paramilitary compound in Elohim City, Oklahoma, before what was then called the worst terror attack in U.S. history.
The New Lynn mall terrorist forged medical records and statements from his family to bolster his claim for refugee status, which was revoked later when the bogus documents were discovered by police investigating his support for Islamic State.
And a former workmate of the 32-year-old, who stabbed and wounded several shoppers at a New Lynn supermarket on Friday, says he would boast about duping immigration officials.
The woman, named in local media as Banu Negar, was killed at the family home in front of relatives in Firozkoh, the capital of central Ghor province.
The killing comes amid increasing reports of escalating repression of women in Afghanistan.
What followed was in many ways a replay of the first imperial invasion over 150 years earlier. The same tribal rivalries and the same battles were fought out in the same places 170 years later under the guise of new flags, new ideologies and new political puppeteers. The same cities were garrisoned by troops speaking the same languages, and they were attacked again from the same high passes. In both cases, the invaders thought they could walk in, perform regime change, and be out in a couple of years. In both cases, they were sucked into a much wider conflict.
In recent months, thousands of migrants have crossed the Belarusian border into Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
The Baltic states, Poland and several other countries believe that this is a hybrid attack by which the Belarusian regime puts pressure on its neighbors with illegal migration.
Nigerian troops backed by gunships and fighter jets are carrying out an offensive against kidnap gangs in a northwestern state, where the authorities have shut down telecom services, security sources and locals told AFP Monday.
The military operation and communications blackout in Zamfara state came after gunmen kidnapped more than 73 school students in the latest mass abduction by heavily-armed criminals known locally as bandits.
Smuggling gangs take advantage of warm weather and calm seas to launch a flotilla of small boats crammed with men, women and children
The total failure to respond in any meaningful way to the environmental emergency rests firmly within the boundaries of such complacency. It can be found in all areas, from politicians and corporate board rooms to small businesses, NGO’s and community groups, education institutions, homes, and, apparently, some teenagers.
Complacency and the refusal to change individual behavior and collective ways of living are stoking the underlying cause of the crisis – Consumerism. Irresponsible Compulsive Consumption, as habitually practiced by populations in the rich nations, principally and excessively by the wealthy, but to a lesser degree throughout all sections of society.
While hurricanes, even a powerful Cat 4 storm like Ida with 150 mph sustained winds as it reached the coast of Louisiana, weaken quickly once they leave a warm body of water, and become no more than heavy rain storms, Ida did something unusual:€ it maintained its cyclonic structure as a tropical storm as it moved northeasteward after its destructive hit on the Louisiana coast, spreading flooding and spawning tornados along the way. When it reached our area near Philadelphia€ three days later, it spawned seven of those tornados. One of the largest, an EF 3 with 150 mph winds went straight across the center of Upper Dublin, wreaking havoc on suburban homes not designed for such winds, and went on for a total of over 20 minutes cutting a quarter-mile swath through forests, commercial districts and tracts of homes into the next township of Horsham before€ finally petering out.€
The damage has been mind-boggling to contemplate for people who haven’t lived in the southeastern or midwestern US, where tornados are common enough that homes for hundreds of years have been built with storm shelters. We like many€ in our community were forced to huddle for safety in the center of our house away from glass windows as the twister roared past our house missing it by less than a quarter of a mile. As the tornado passed at around 5:30 pm on Wednesday, the power went out, and remained out for us until Saturday afternoon. During that time we got by using flashlights, flushing toilets with buckets of water carried from a flooded stream a few hundred yards form the house, and drinking bottled water (we have a 120-foot-deep drilled well so without power to the pump there was no water available).€ Eventually, with the prospect of no electricity for a week according to reports from the power company, Entergy, we bought a low-end gas generator which produced enough power to keep our refrigerator running and power a few lights, so that was a slight improvement.€
President Donald Trump, in reigniting the issue with a businessman’s bumbling delight, noted in 2019 that Denmark “essentially” owned it. “We’re very good allies with Denmark, we protect Denmark like we protect large portions of the world.€ So the concept came up and I said, ‘Certainly I’d be [interested in purchasing Greenland].’€ Strategically it’s interesting and we’d be interested but we’ll talk to them a little bit.”€ The Danish response to his appraisal – that Greenland was potentially part of “a large real estate deal”, was dismissive. Trump harrumphed.
So what has happened to Trump’s ideas regarding this icy territory?€ The press conference began cordially enough. Blinken was welcomed by the autonomous territory’s premier Mute Egede who reminded him that celebrations would be held commemorating Kangerlussuaq’s 80-years anniversary, built by the US Air Force in 1941. “What began as a military base is now an important civilian airport for Greenland.” From a world at war, the relationship with the US had “evolved to a cooperation in science and mutual interest and understanding the health of our planet.”
The world’s major health journals say the climate and nature crisis is an emergency demanding we transform our societies.
Photos I shot on a flight on September 4, 2021 illustrate what United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres meant last month when he described the latest€ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change€ (IPCC) report as a “code red” for human-driven global heating.
On a flight provided by€ Southwings, a non-profit that connects volunteer pilots with€ media, educational institutions and conservation groups,€ I flew over many of the hardest hit areas in southern Louisiana, including Lafitte, Grand Isle, Terrebonne Parish, where Isle de Jean Charles is located.€
The evening of September 1, three days after Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana, the remnants of the storm passed over New York City and dumped more than five inches of water on the metropolitan area in the span of a few hours. The resulting flood event stranded thousands of cars on the roadways, spewed water into countless basement apartments, and shut down almost the entire subway system. At least 13 people died in the city alone.
Asserting that humanity "cannot wait for the pandemic to pass" before acting to rapidly reduce carbon emissions fueling the climate emergency, more than 220 health journals around the world on Sunday published an unprecedented joint editorial calling for "urgent action to keep average global temperature increases below 1.5€°C, halt the destruction of nature, and protect health."
"As with the Covid-19 pandemic, we are globally as strong as our weakest member."—220+ Medical Journals
El Salvador is due to legalize bitcoin on Sept. 7, a move that the popular Bukele said will save Salvadorans living abroad millions of dollars in commissions on money they send home.
He started the ball rolling Monday evening by announcing El Salvador had bought its first 400 bitcoins, in two tranches of 200, and promised more were coming.
The 400 bitcoins were trading at around $21 million, according to the cryptocurrency exchange app Gemini.
Other protesters said the law could exacerbate money laundering in a country where corruption is endemic. The protests appear to be speaking for a broader public sentiment, too. A poll taken in July found that 75% of Salvadorans have reservations about the law. About half said they knew nothing about it.
The government has still yet to finish creating rules for how the move to bitcoin will work. The original bill - revealed to the world via president Nayib Bukele's prolific Twitter account - will require businesses to accept bitcoin, but contains a possibly massive carve-out for businesses that don't have the technological know-how.
But the rollout of cryptocurrency has been upstaged by a more urgent concern: a series of withering attacks by Bukele and his ruling party on El Salvador’s three-decade-old democracy. In recent days, Bukele loyalists on the Supreme Court systematically cleared the way for him to seek reelection in 2024, despite a constitutional ban on consecutive presidential terms.
Meanwhile, his supporters in the Assembly passed a law to remove one-third of the nation’s judges and prosecutors — an apparent response to Bukele’s public calls for a “purge” of the judicial branch.
“When we took the majority in the Senate earlier this year, the American people entrusted us with a great responsibility: to make their lives better,” declared Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, when he launched the Democratic caucus’s $3.5 trillion budget plan. Republicans were aghast at the prospect. “This is one of the most radical proposals in our nation’s history,” griped Florida Senator Marco Rubio, even as the details of the plan were being developed. Senate Budget Committee chair Bernie Sanders says it will be “the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s.” The activists who have been working on the critical issues that Democrats say the legislation will address are excited, nervous, and determined to influence the budget-writing process and the debates that will extend from it this fall. Here’s some of what they have to say about initiatives that are expected to be included in the plan.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is likely to be the deciding vote on the $3.5 trillion Senate reconciliation bill to expand spending on social and infrastructure programs. Because of his concerns over rising debt and inflation, Manchin wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he will not support the bill until he gets answers to a basic question: "What should we fund, and what can we simply not afford?"
Then came COVID, which has disproportionately harmed and killed lower-wage and Black workers. Hopefully, the current wave will subside and pass soon, as more people are vaccinated. But the struggle for equality and decent living standards in the world’s richest country continues even through the pandemic.
Fortunately, there have been some recent changes in national economic policy that could vastly change how the next 40 years look. But only if we can keep them.
State and Local Government Lost 11,000 Jobs in August
The state and local sectors, which are still down 815,000 jobs from their pre-pandemic level, lost 11,000 jobs after adding 246,000 in July. This is likely a question of timing, with some jobs that would be added back in the fall showing up in July and some still to appear in September. It may be some time before state and local governments gain back all the jobs lost in the pandemic, but with most schools back to in-person instruction and most of these governments’ budgets in reasonably good shape, it seems likely most jobs will be coming back soon.
Progressives and economic experts fumed Monday as boosted unemployment aid—which has kept millions of workers, their families, and the overall economy afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic—came to an unceremonious end despite the persistence of the virus and a stalled economic recovery.
"Welcome to America, where lawmakers chose to kick 9 million jobless Americans off unemployment benefits on Labor Day, during a global pandemic." —economist Robert Reich
Multiple Interrelated Crises Rooted in Bourgeois Evil
Millions of acres on the onetime US Western frontier are on fire, the natural and predictable outcome of the over-heating of the arid and now drought-plagued West by the reckless capitalist extraction and burning of fossil fuels. The evacuation of Lake Tahoe in the face of the Caldor Fire is just the latest shocking yet increasingly normalized symptom.
Backpage, Pornhub, and OnlyFans have simply been the testing ground for an ultra-conservative backlash that seeks to roll back the sexual revolution and to challenge the First Amendment. Since the 1990s, platforms have been protected from liability for user-generated content by Section 230 (a part of the US Communications Decency Act). This key piece of legislation has protected free speech online, and allowed the internet to become what it is today. For years, authoritarians of various stripes have tried to weaken Section 230, and they won in 2018 when the FOSTA/SESTA acts were passed, which made platforms liable for sex trafficking.
At the head of this assault is Laila Mickelwait of religious-right group Exodus Cry, and NCOSE, another group with roots in the religious Right (although it tries to distance itself from religion). These are supported by anti-porn feminist campaigners, and others on the Left. Perhaps the most influential of these is the New York Times journalist Nick Kristof, who has helped spread anti-trafficking propaganda, including false claims. This coalition is now flexing its muscles and using FOSTA/SESTA to mount full-scale attacks. Now, activists’ ambitions are rising beyond porn sites, and their sights are on Twitter, the least-censored of the large social media platforms, which stands accused of sex trafficking. This movement to hold platforms accountable for their users' activities is possibly the biggest single assault on free expression in American history, and it would be naive to assume it will remain limited to attacking pornography and prostitution.
Forged in response to the Palmer Raids of 1919, the American Civil Liberties Union has learned the hard way that civil liberties and human rights are the first to go when war fever strikes. We fought against Japanese American internment, lived through McCarthyism and House Un-American Activities investigations, and challenged FBI’s COINTELPRO abuses.
As Big Tech’s market power grew, so did its political clout. Now, as the EU tries to rein in the most problematic aspects of Big Tech – from disinformation, targeted advertising to unfair competition practices – the digital giants are lobbying hard to shape new regulations.
The Ad Library also shows a number of sponsored posts promoting politically-motivated conspiracy theories around ivermectin and COVID, including one from a GOP group in Oklahoma reading, "Why wouldn't we consider and study every possible treatment for an illness? Because it's not about the virus, it's about your freedom."
In private Groups, meanwhile, users freely dispense misguided medical advice to one another, giving extremely specific instructions on which forms of injectable ivermectin to buy from which veterinary supply stores, and what dosages to take. As journalist Ben Collins pointed out on Twitter, discussion in public Groups is only slightly more restrained, if at all: [...]
But they also did something less common in the group's history of conflict in the country - they launched a comprehensive social media campaign to go with it.
A network of social media accounts highlighted the alleged failures of the Kabul government while lauding the Taliban's achievements.
NCOSE, formerly known as Morality in Media, brought a lawsuit against Twitter earlier this year, accusing the platform of allowing and benefiting from human trafficking. The complaint, on behalf of two men, alleges that Twitter "knowingly hosted sexual exploitation material, including child sex abuse material [...] and allowed human trafficking and the dissemination of child sexual abuse material to continue on its platform, therefore profiting and receiving value from the harmful and exploitive material and the traffic it draws."
With a court decision in mid-August, the case was allowed to move forward.
Chow and other standing committee members of the Alliance received letters from the police national security unit on August 25, requiring them to provide information under the national security legislation, as the Commissioner of Police had “sufficient reasons” to believe that the group was an agent acting on behalf of foreign entities.
“When you look at that letter, there is no single reason or [any] evidence saying why they can accuse us of being a foreign agent,” said Chow. “There is no single explanation saying what kind of so-called national security offence are they investigating that require[s] all this information that they demand of us.”
“We observe that the events affecting the Company and its people following the invocation of the National Security Law occurred despite there having been no trials and no convictions,” the directors’ statement read.
“Under this new law, a company can be forced into liquidation without the involvement of the courts. We have concluded that the best interests of shareholders, creditors, employees and other stakeholders will be served by an orderly liquidation.”
Is what’s good for the goose is good for the gander?
One of the much-repeated details of the state attorney general’s report on Andrew Cuomo’s sexual harassment probe is a message sent by one of Cuomo’s longtime apparatchiks, Josh Vlasto. Watching the coverage of his former boss unfold, he observed to an unidentified friend, “It’s not even close to what it was really like to work there day to day.”1
Political theorists often argue that a prerequisite for a democratic society is the existence of a demos: a constituency with a sense of shared identity and interests in common. The construction of such a consciousness, they argue, typically occurs through participation in civic organizations such as churches, community groups, and unions. It is through these forms of civic engagement that a genuine "will of the people" is constructed. In fact, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his famed "Democracy in America," the perseverance of democracy in the United States was due in part to the unprecedented degree of civic engagement by ordinary citizens. "Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations," he stated in an often-quoted passage. Unfortunately, Robert D. Putnam documented in the bestselling "Bowling Alone," participation in civic organizations has been declining steadily in the U.S. for decades.
But neither description goes very far to explain the realities of immigration and immigration policy in America. To get closer to the reality, you need a more sharply focused statement – something like the following: “we are a nation in a long-standing struggle over immigration, a struggle that reaches back to the founding of this republic.”
This statement points to fundamental conflicts that have riven the nation for many decades. These conflicts concern issues of value and national identity, questions as to how inclusive and protective of human rights a society can be – or how oppressive it can become by virtue of policies and political choices that keep millions of people disenfranchised and economically vulnerable.
Tibetans living in Nepal observed Tibet’s Democracy Day under close watch by local police who kept Tibetan gatherings out of the public eye for fear of offending Nepal’s powerful northern neighbor China, an important source of foreign investment in the Himalayan country.
The initial decision by OnlyFans to forbid porn on the site illustrates how ostensibly legal online sex work is, in reality, criminalized. This is a problem that sex workers have repeatedly pointed out and been organizing against for years—but too much of society won’t listen. That refusal to actually hear what sex workers need to keep themselves safe is at the core of “political whorephobia,” a concept developed by Fordham legal scholar Chi Adanna Mgbako to explain how state violence against sex workers is enacted and justified by the government.
This year, California State Senator Dave Cortese of San Jose, in Silicon Valley, introduced a workable and effective bill that adapts the best features of copyright, libel and trafficking law to solve this problem. If passed, it would create a civil legal claim for victims of online sex trafficking — naked or sexual visuals of minors or of adults who were coerced or tricked or victims of theft. Once notice is given, the trafficker would have to take the materials down or pay $100,000 for every two hours they remained accessible.
Along with damages awarded to a victim, an offender must pay $100,000 for every 2 hours of online exposure of illegal content after given notice to take said content down. This amount is doubled to $200,000 for every 2 hours if the victim of online sexual exploitation is under 18 years of age.
If you ask most people how they feel about corporate corruption and workplace abuse, they’ll tell you they’re against it. As a society, we tend to believe that everyone is entitled to the same opportunities and rights; food, shelter, water, comfort—these are intrinsic to our survival and mental wellbeing. We know we all deserve access to them, but we don’t always act like it.
By this point, you are likely aware of the multiple labor rights violations Amazon (the largest employer in the country) is responsible for.
While Netflix serves their content using FreeBSD servers the Netflix streaming service itself is not available on the FreeBSD platform because Widevine DRM does not support browsers on FreeBSD system.
We will use one of the more known FreeBSD features – the Linux Compatibility Layer. When FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE was introduced the LINUX_COMPAT support was greatly improved. To the point where you can swap the default CentOS 7 based layer into the newer and more suited for desktop – the Ubuntu based layer.
More than a decade ago a student in Kazakhstan working on a research paper found that she needed access to scientific articles that were hidden behind a paywall. By 2011, that need had developed into the project we now know as Sci-Hub - 'The Pirate Bay of Science'. To celebrate ten years online, operator Alexandra Elbakyan has now added another 2.3m articles to the site's archives.
DNS-resolver Quad9 has officially appealed a pirate site blocking order handed down by the Hamburg District Court a few weeks ago. The non-profit Quad9 Foundation argues that blocking injunctions against DNS resolvers are a step too far, fearing that other third-party tools such as web browsers and VPN providers could be next.
