1:39 Linux Innards 28:54 Vibrations from the Ether 35:16 Check This Out 41:57 Announcements & Outro
In our Innards section, we discuss the applications that we use most often
And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Is the true path to mastering Linux fully embracing the command line? Why it's time to change our mindset about the terminal.
Microsoft’s stance for decades was that community creation and sharing of communal code (later to be known as free and open source software) represented a direct attack on their business. Their battle with Linux stretches back many years. Back in 2001, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously tarnished Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches”. Microsoft also initiated its “Get the Facts” marketing campaign from mid-2003, which specifically criticized Linux server usage, total cost of ownership, security, indemnification and reliability. The campaign was widely criticized for spreading misinformation.
There is a set of new Samba releases out there. They fix a long and intimidating list of security issues and seem worth upgrading to for any but the most protected of Samba servers.
There's sadly a regression that "allow trusted domains = no" prevents winbindd from starting, we'll try to provide a follow up fix as soon as possible.
Knative is an open source project based on the Kubernetes platform for building, deploying, and managing serverless workloads that run in the cloud, on-premises, or in a third-party data center. Google originally started it with contributions from more than 50 companies.
Are you looking for a way to quickly copy files from your iPhone or Android mobile device to your Linux computer or from your Linux computer to your devices? I recently discovered an open source application that's easy to install and makes transferring files as simple as a QR code.
The qrcp project provides a command that generates a QR code in your terminal that allows you to send or receive files to your computer over the network.
Plus — as you’re about to discover — they can be a lot more fun to use too.
Whether you want to search the web, stream music, or subtweet your secret crush: you can do it all from the comfort of the command line and the frame of your fave terminal emulator.
In this post I run-through 10 of my favourite terminal apps. These command line tools aren’t the only ones available for each respective task, but they are are all a) easy to use, and b) easy to install.
So scroll on to soak in a stellar assortment of the very best Linux terminal apps out there — and don’t forget to drop your own favourite down in the comments!
Technically, the LAMP stack consists of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP modules. A LAMP stack environment is ideal for web software developers that want to experience how their web application(s) is likely to behave on a server-hosted/production environment.
It is the perfect testing/debugging platform for your web app until you are confident enough to decouple it and host it on a dedicated server.
Install Cockpit Console on Debian 11 Bullseye or 10 Buster server, a Web graphical interface to control Linux server and run docker Image containers using Podman remotely using the browser.
The cockpit is an open-source application light in weight and easy to install. In most popular Linux, the packages to install this application is available via the default repository of the operating system. It provides the real-time stats of RAM, processor, and disk directly on its web interface. Apart from this, we can manage services, accounts, users, storage, software, and also there is a Terminal app that lets the users issue all commands with root rights on the remote server.
There are longer tutorials on how to connect a USB printer to a Raspberry Pi and make it accessible via AirPrint but here's the minimal one that's just a list of commands and simple instructions.
In this video, we are looking at how to install the Olive Video Editor on Elementary OS 6.0.
By default, the Linux firewall is IPTables. Although it is a very efficient and flexible application, the truth is that it is not easy to manage. Therefore, the community has created equally effective but easier to use alternatives such as UFW.
In short, UFW stands for Uncomplicated Firewall and is a kind of Front-end for IPTables but dedicated to Ubuntu / Debian. With it, you can set up rules and open ports quickly and easily on the system.
When you turn UFW on, it uses a default set of rules (profile) that should be fine for the average home user. In short, all ‘incoming’ is being denied, with some exceptions to make things easier for home users. However, all these settings can be changed and adapted to your needs.
One of the basic and necessary operations we can do with UFW is to open ports. This is necessary when we want an application or service to be able to use our network, either for incoming or outgoing connections.
So, let’s show you how to open ports in Ubuntu / Debian using UFW.
In case after installing Podman Container service in Cockpit you are not able to search container images from Docker or other libraries, then here is the solution to resolve this problem.
We faced this issue after installing Podman Container on Debian 11 Bullseye, well even if you are using any other Linux operating system to run Cockpit and facing the same problem, still the solution given here will be the same.
Podman Container service is similar to Docker even the command line but daemon less. It is easy to find, run, build, share and deploy applications using the Open Containers Initiative on it.
WordPress is undoubtedly the most used and trusted content management system across the world. It’s famous due to its easy integration and user-friendly interface. Using a content management system for your website allows you to edit and publish the content with zero coding knowledge. You don’t need to enter those heading tags for formatting the content, just click on the button, and you are done. You also get access to several free plugins that can help you in formatting your content more efficiently.
Lynis is an open-source and trusted security auditing tool designed for Linux, macOS, and UNIX derivatives such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD. It is used for a number of purposes including security auditing, vulnerability detection, and compliance testing. The aim of leveraging an auditing tool such as Lynis is to probe and resolve any underlying security vulnerabilities, and configuration errors such as weak user account passwords or inappropriate file permissions that might compromise the system in face of an attack.
PostgreSQL allows you to perform many functions including the built-in data types. You can use any function or operator according to what you need. The most basic used PostgreSQL functions are COUNT, MAX, MIN, AVG, SUM, ARRAY, NUMERIC and, STRING. You can use these functions suitably for retrieving the data from a created table. In this article, we will be discussing finding the maximum value of a column from a table. MAX function is a built-in function in PostgreSQL which returns the maximum value from a given set of values.
rch Linux provides a compact platform to use a low-end operating system easily. On the other side, Windows offers impressive features in a great graphical interface. So if you are a fan of both operating systems and want to use both of them, then read this article completely.
This article explains how to dual boot to install Arch Linux and Windows 10 simultaneously on the same system, enabling both to run on the same machine.
It is a question of why you should install Arch Linux with Windows. Arch Linux is one of the most straightforward operating systems of Linux. Also, you can customize it according to your needs, and it is very easy to do. Therefore, it is very convenient to have Arch and Windows as operating systems since Windows can be used for gaming and Linux for coding.
Installing any system requires users to know how to use it and what functions should be performed within it to work smoothly. The same holds true for Arch Linux. Many Linux users are familiar with Arch Linux, as it is a variant of Linux that is very popular. This article will cover how to install Arch Linux as well as how to use it.
After system installation in Arch Linux, a very good feature is seen that it works on the principle of (DIY) under which Arch Linux is installed with only a few things. All the other things have to be done according to the user. Which is the right quality with which the user can modify his system according to his own.
What to do after installing Arch Linux? It just gives a black screen that has to proceed on its own. Although Arch Linux has many things to change or use according to your own, only a few of them are important, or because of this change, it becomes easier to use. Also, due to these changes, we can use it smoothly.
Arch Linux emphasizes the specific modifications to the minimum distribution, known as the “keep it simple” principle. As a result, Arch Linux is very popular among Linux users, as it prevents the installation of new versions and only installs them when a new update is available. So if you want to install Arch Linux, then don’t worry because it is a very simple process. This article will give you a brief on the method to install Arch Linux from USB.
Arch Linux’s special feature is that it requires a minimum system, which is why it is so popular. Judd Wynette introduced Arch Linux in 2002 with an update to the 64 bit x86 (2006) that is still in use today.
Pacman is a tool used to remove software packages, update any software, and update Arch Linux. Before installing Arch Linux, the main thing to understand is that to install x86_64. First, you need 512 MB RAM, 10 GB free disk space, internet, and a blank DVD or flash drive for installation burn, which is the first step towards installation.
This tutorial explains how to duplicate or clone WordPress pages and posts, both manually and with the help of plugins.
WordPress supports different ways to duplicate or clone pages. The manual method to duplicate a page or post in WordPress consists of page/post code copy paste. The alternative method consists of a plugin installation. Like always, WordPress offers different plugin alternatives for this task.
This tutorial shows you different simple ways any WordPress level administrator can learn.
Whenever we talk about database management systems, PostgreSQL always comes to mind. Data in PostgreSQL can be stored in many ways in the form of tables. To iterate through the stored data, we need a specific methodology that is looping. We use many looping statements and conditional statements to access data and apply different operations to it. This guide will help you in understanding the looping process in a PostgreSQL management system.
If you are a web developer then you must have already heard about Bootstrap and React.js. However, if you are new to this world and want to become a front-end developer whose job is to design the visual features of a web page or web application, then Bootstrap and React.js will be very handy web technologies to learn.
Front-end frameworks are very difficult to choose and I myself have been confused about which to choose. So in this post, we will discuss both Bootstrap and ReactJS, their noteworthy features, benefits, and drawbacks.
The MySql workbench for Linux includes data modeling, development, SQL settings administration tools, user administration, backup/restore, and other functions. The ease of use and all these features make it a great choice for managing MySql databases. On Linux, you can install MySql Workbench in a variety of methods, including through official packages. Installing Oracle’s official repositories, utilizing the operating system’s default repositories, or compiling the packages from the source are all options. So let’s have a brief look at the method to install MySQL workbench on Arch Linux.
GCC translates to GNU Compiler Collections, and it is primarily used to compile the C and C++ programming languages. In addition, it also compiles Objective C and Objective C++ programs. The GCC is a set of open-source compilers and libraries.
On Linux, open the terminal to install GCC. The terminal receives user input in the form of commands and shows the results on the screen. As a result, we’ll need to run a few instructions to install GCC.
In general, a web server hosts web content and answers requests for it from web browsers like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Firefox. The apache web server, IIS web server, Nginx web server, and LiteSpeed web server are all examples of web servers. Apache is an open-source and free platform that is used by more than half of the world’s web servers.
Using AWS CLI, or Amazon Web Services Command-Line Interface, you can manage your AWS services. This tool allows users to control different AWS services via the command line. It’s a great tool for managing everything in AWS.
The utility only requires Python to execute, so that’s the only requirement. In this tutorial, you will learn about how to install AWS CLI on Arch Linux step by step. You may quickly create shell scripts to control your resources on the AWS cloud using AWS CLI.
The Bundled Installer approach is compatible with any Linux distribution; the only prerequisite is Python 2 version 2.6.5 or Python 3 version 3.3.
Flask-Migrate is a Flask addon that manages SQLAlchemy database migrations for Alembic-based Flask apps. The Flask-Script extension or flask command-line interface is used to access the database operations.
Database abstraction layers, form validation, and other components that utilize third-party libraries are not available.
Debian is a Unix-like operating system that comes in handy in devices that handle heavy tasks. An example can be servers responding to millions of requests. Installing an Operating System is similar to accessing a virtual machine over the cloud, except that this operating system will take space in your physical disk. We will first go through the introduction and features of Debian 11 and then see the steps to install this Operating System in VirtualBox completely. Let’s get started!
Compared to Gnome 2, KDE 3 has fared poorly since it was superseded. Gnome 2 was ported to Linux Mint and became MATE, which has always balanced tradition and modernization. In 2020, the LinuxQuestions poll listed MATE as the choice of 8.5 percent of users, and I suspect that a much higher percentage would list it as their second choice (the desktop used when your main one fails). By contrast, Trinity claimed only a 1.3 percent share.
So why bother with such a minority choice? To start with, Trinity scored the same as Ubuntu’s defunct Unity, while elementary OS’s Pantheon desktop, which receives frequent coverage, received no votes at all. The point is not user share, but freedom of choice, a key value of free software. Trinity’s success lies in having fought the odds to provide a small group of users what it wants and in extending the choices for everyone.
The KDE Plasma Desktop packages have been updated to 5.23.3. This is a service release update.
I love using Fedora Linux on desktops and servers. Fedora Linux is also a great platform for cloud applications. Starting today, you can deploy Fedora Linux 35 at Vexxhost!
Vexxhost offers an open-source cloud with OpenStack under the hood. You can deploy Fedora Linux on cloud infrastructure in Canada, the United States, and the Netherlands. They also deliver many other OpenStack-based services to provide load balancers, block storage, and object storage.
Red Hat promised that it would continue to support each CentOS release for about a decade. However, the company changed its mind and suddenly cut support for the latest CentOS release.
he CIO role has been around for more than 40 years, and in that time, it has undergone various shifts to become what it is today. The growth of the internet, the switch to digital, the move to cloud, and the shift to remote and hybrid workforces have all challenged corporate leadership, and especially CIOs, to redefine how they align their technology and teams with emerging tech trends and changes in corporate priorities.
During the pandemic, we’ve seen countless businesses, many of which had been relying on outdated technology with underfunded IT departments, invest in technology at breakneck speed in order to meet the challenges posed by the new work environment. Too often, however, these investments were made directly by departments, with a lack of oversight and control from central IT. It is now common to find staff members managing technology that the IT team may not even be aware of.
IT leaders are all too familiar with the challenges of change resistance. The most skilled CIOs know what steps to take to understand and address fear, uncertainty, and doubt concerning IT-enabled change.
As we settle into an era in which continual – and often, transformational – change is the rule rather than the exception, IT leaders are naturally eager to shift their focus to change readiness. “Change always makes people feel uncomfortable, but the employees that seem to thrive with frequent change tend to be open minded,” says Dennis Theodorou, managing director with executive search firm JMJ Phillip. “[They are] also constantly thinking about how to make the business better. These employees also tend to pivot quickly without much delay or dwelling.”
This is especially true when it comes to the IT organization itself. As the technology function not only leads ongoing technology-enabled change but experiences ongoing transformation itself, the value of having change-ready folks on the team is clear. “Being principled, practiced, and prepared for change and innovation can accelerate one’s ability to consistently and reliably contribute in fast-paced and cutting-edge industries,” says Rick Simmons, co-author of Unleashed: Harnessing the Power of Liminal Space and CEO of the Telos Institute, which helps leaders optimize their business strategy.
The latest Raspberry Pi OS has today been announced, and it sees a number of changes under-the-hood, and a few that will be noticeable by end users. Chiefly, a new window manager, "mutter" which requires Raspberry Pi models with 2GB of RAM of greater. In a hidden bonus, YouTuber Jeff Geerling has confirmed that some Raspberry Pi 4 owners may see a speed boost built-in to the latest release and a possible new 64-bit release.
For its "Bullseye" release we mainly get a number of behind the scenes updates, including a speed boost for those of us lucky to have new BCM2711 SoC with a C0T model number. these chips appear on newer Raspberry Pi 4, Compute Module 4 and Pi 400 boards and it appears that for the Pi 4 and CM4 you get an extra 300 MHz performance boost, 1.8 GHz, vs the stock 1.5 GHz. Owners of older Raspberry Pi 4 with B0T model numbers can still manually overclock their Pi.
The new Raspberry Pi OS is still based upon a 32-bit release, but it appears that there is also a 64-bit release, lurking in the shadows and spotted by Geerling. Whether this is still a beta or ready for release remains uncertain.
To remedy that, he replaced the foresworn GPS with algorithms powering Google Maps. Those interact with data picked up from the drone’s onboard internal measurement unit, cameras, altitude gauge, position and movement detectors. All of that, orchestrated by a Raspberry Pi 4 using a Robot Operating System, allow the craft to find the way around obstacles it encounters as it advances.
Last year, we held our first 100% virtual State of the Onion, a compilation of updates from the Tor Project's different teams discussing highlights of their work during the year and what we are excited about in the upcoming year. Our 2020 State of the Onion was our first time doing livestream iteration, and it was not only a great success because it allowed us to reach thousands of people all around the world, but also because it allowed for more projects from our community to participate, giving an opportunity for them to also share their updates.
We are happy to announce that we will be hosting our 2021 State of the Onion livestream on November 17 from 17:00 - 19:00 UTC.
According to Mozilla, the change came as a result of Microsoft changing its policies on allowing third-party browser support. “Until recently, Microsoft’s store policies required that all web browsers use the engine that Microsoft had built into their platform, which meant we were unable to ship the Firefox you know and love in the Windows Store,” Mozilla said in a blog post.
Over a total of 20 weeks from spring to late summer 2021, readers of the individual insider portals were asked to vote for their favorite in each category. IT Awards got votes from over 60 000 readers this year and Nextcloud came out on top , chosen by the largest community of IT professionals. We’re very proud of this and we’d like to thank everyone who made this possible, that is, all of you! Especially all of you who voted, but also everyone else who helps spread the word or improve Nextcloud directly with code, documentation or helping other users on our forums. Every bit makes a difference!
If any science fiction author, famous or obscure, had submitted a story where the plot was "modern IT is a bunch of crap that organized crime exploits for extortion," it would have gotten nowhere, because (A) that is just not credible, and (B) yawn!
And yet, here we are.
The good news is that the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in May 2021 probably marks the beginning of the end. Comforting as that might sound, it tells us very little about how that ending will turn out.
The first to react were the insurance companies. Some of them dropped the product, leaving their customers to their own devices; others were busy trying to come up with requirements and standards that would apply to their customers' claims for coverage.
Some say the only two products not covered by product liability today are religion and software. For software that has to end; otherwise, we will never get a handle on the security madness unfolding before our eyes almost daily in increasingly dramatic headlines. The question is how to introduce product liability, because just imposing it would instantly shut down any and all software houses with just a hint of a risk management function on their organizational charts.
They had to revise the firmware in mine as part of a lawsuit settlement.
The one where it spied on your TV watching, including sending them which networks you watched with a TV antenna.
Whether they violate the GPL or not, and whether the GPL is a contract are very important issues that should be pressed in court, because we have nothing to lose and everything to gain vs. developers who won’t enforce their own licenses (mostly “Linux” kernel people).
But like other devices that want to connect to the internet and call themselves “Smart”, it’s usually a bad idea to give the device what it wants.
Marcus Rediker: The oldest influence on my decision to write “history from below” was my grandfather, Fred Robertson, a Kentucky coal miner, and master storyteller. Unlike Harvey, who went to an archive of books, I had an archive of stories. My grandfather told me extraordinary stories, many of them just about working-class people – their triumphs, victories, defeats, their pain, and their glories. He was a brilliant storyteller; he made things come alive.
It took years but I realized, finally, that a lot of the ways in which I write history goes directly back to what he taught me about how to tell a story. One of his ideas was that a good storyteller always tells a big story inside a little story. So, for me, in studying sailors, pirates and enslaved people, I tell the stories of their lives and struggles within the big story of the rise of capitalism. A storyteller has to create understandings on several different levels simultaneously.
Until recently, the Yankees’ management strategy has been self-defeating. For years they traded their minor league talent for over-the-hill, injury-prone MLB stars. Some trades worked out, but most loaded the Yankees’ treasury with huge financial obligations for very little return on the field. The result is that they strip-mined their farm teams and rejected the historic winning formula of growing their own talent that brought them 27 World Series championships until 2009. Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Derek Jeter, and scores of others made their way to the fabled stadium directly from Yankee Triple A teams.
Although recently, the Yankees are respecting the importance of their farm team players – Aaron Judge is an example – their trading acumen is almost non-existent. Just this year, two players on the Boston Red Sox’s – Eovaldi and Whitlock – gave the Yankees fits. These former Yankees were traded to Boston for no talent in return.
Has the Progressive Caucus lost its bargaining power by giving in to President Biden’s promise of “Trust Me.” Suppose that he is indeed able to get the Blue Dog/New Democrat Thatcherite “centrist” House members (mercenary lobbyists for corporate America and the One Percent) on board. But what about the Senate? What in the negotiated agreement will prevent Manchin and Sinema from killing the bill there?
If they really wanted to, the Democratic leadership could simply get the Senate to remove Manchin and Sinema from their committee positions. Schumer could bring matters to a head with a motion saying that taking money from lobbyists to introduce policies that result in bribes (campaign contributions) is a corrupt conflict of interest. It wouldn’t succeed, but would draw attention to how corrupt the campaign financing process really is in determining what candidates will be on the ballot and what issues they will support.
While Microchip normally lets customers cancel a chip order within 90 days of delivery, it began offering shipment priority to clients that signed contracts for 12 months of orders that couldn’t be revoked or rescheduled. These commitments reduced the chances that orders would evaporate when the scarcity ended, giving Microchip more confidence to safely hire workers and buy costly equipment to increase production.
“It gives us the ability to not hold back,” said Ganesh Moorthy, president and CEO of Microchip, which Thursday reported that profit in the latest quarter tripled and that sales rose 26% to $1.65 billion.
The celebration took place at the General’s Residence at Fort Mason in San Francisco, which is federal property. That meant that there were no signs for the event. Marijuana, whether medical or recreational, is still illegal with the feds, and so advertising for anything related to marijuana is also illegal. No signs of any kind were outside the building. Inside, I did not see anyone smoking marijuana and didn’t smell it either, though marijuana passed from hand to hand, quietly, surreptitiously. A woman I had never seen or met before, and who said she lived and grew weed in Humboldt gave me several ounces which I took home. I haven’t tried it yet. I will. It’s part of my research.
The program for the event, which was sponsored by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), listed the names of 76 deceased opponents of the Drug War: activist Dennis Peron; lawyer€ € and SF D.A. Terence Hallinan; and Mary Rathbun famous for her pot-laced brownies.
Since the creation of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index in 1979, tens of thousands of students have filled out this questionnaire while participating in studies examining everything from neural responses to others’ pain to levels of social conservatism. Konrath and her colleagues took advantage of this wealth of data by collating self-reported empathy scores of nearly 14,000 students. She then used a technique known as cross-temporal meta-analysis to measure whether scores have changed over the years. The results were startling: almost 75 percent of students today rate themselves as less empathic than the average student 30 years ago.
Last month in the United States, the per-capita rate at which people died of Covid-19 was more than three times higher in counties where former President Donald Trump won at least 60% of the vote compared with counties that President Joe Biden won by a similar margin—evidence, one public health expert said Monday, of the "deadly consequences" of "anti-science aggression on the right."
"Irrational fears about vaccine side effects have overwhelmed rational fears about a deadly virus."
95.1 percent (€53.8 million) of all the funds spent on coronavirus treatment has gone toward treating unvaccinated people. Vaccinations were made available in Estonia in the start of the ongoing year. The €56.6 million for coronavirus treatments is supplemented by another €50 million on personal protective equipment (PPE), hospital beds, vaccination preparation and additional costs.
"Organisations that run Exchange Server on-premises should apply security updates in a timely manner to prevent future exploitation once proof-of-concept code becomes publicly available."
Fifteen of the bugs fixed could be used for remote code execution, the company's list of vulnerabilities shows.
The other actively exploited zero-day was a security feature bypass flaw in Microsoft Excel.
Microsoft Corp. today released updates to quash at least 55 security bugs in its Windows operating systems and other software. Two of the patches address vulnerabilities that are already being used in active attacks online, and four of the flaws were disclosed publicly before today — potentially giving adversaries a head start in figuring out how to exploit them.
Microsoft has released updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. An attacker can exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.
Microsoft has released updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. An attacker can exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system. CISA encourages users and administrators to review Microsoft’s November 2021 Security Update Summary€ and Deployment Information€ and apply the necessary updates.
Citrix has released security updates to address vulnerabilities affecting multiple versions of Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC), Gateway, and SD-WAN WANOP. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to cause a denial-of-service condition.
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered 14 critical vulnerabilities in BusyBox, marketed as the Swiss Army Knife of embedded Linux.
BusyBox is one of the most widely used Linux software suites, and many of the world’s leading operational technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices run BusyBox.
Researchers at Claroty and JFrog have published a security audit of BusyBox, a widely used embedded device that offers a set of standard UNIX utilities in a single executable file. During the check, 14 vulnerabilities were identified, which have already been eliminated in the August release of BusyBox 1.34 . Almost all problems are harmless and questionable from the point of view of their application in real attacks, since they require running utilities with arguments received from outside.
The revised text of Brazil’s so-called Fake News bill (draft bill 2630), aimed at countering disinformation online, contains both good and bad news for user privacy compared to previous versions. In a report released by Congressman Orlando Silva in late October, following a series of public hearings in the Chamber of Deputies, the most recent text seeks to address civil society’s claims against provisions harmful to privacy.
Regarding serious flaws EFF previously pointed out, the bill no longer sets a general regime for users' legal identification. Second, it does not require social media and messaging companies to provide their staff in Brazil remote access to user logs and databases, a provision that would bypass international cooperation safeguards and create privacy and security risks. Most importantly, it drops the traceability mandate for instant messaging applications, under which forwarding information would be tracked. We hope all these positive and critical changes are preserved by Members of Congress in the upcoming debates.€
However, the text of the bill also has significant downsides for privacy. Among them, Article 18 of the draft legislation will expose some users’ IDs, requiring providers to make publicly available, by default, the national ID number of natural persons paying for content that mentions political parties or candidates, as well as the name of the person who authorized the ad message. Besides the potential for harassment and retaliation based on users' political leanings, the provision creates a trove of personal data for potential political profiling using a national and unique ID number.
Following a series of public hearings in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies after the Senate's approval of the so-called Fake News bill (draft bill 2630), Congressman Orlando Silva released a revised text of the proposal. As we said in our first post, the new text contains both good and bad news for user privacy compared to previous versions. One piece of bad news is the expansion of existing data retention mandates.
Brazil’s Civil Rights Framework for the Internet (known as “Marco Civil”, approved in 2014) already stipulates the retention of “connection logs” and “access to application logs” for the internet service providers (ISPs) and applications set by the law. Internet applications broadly refer to websites and online platforms. According to Marco Civil, application providers constituted as legal entities, with commercial purposes, must collect and retain the date and time the application is used, from a certain IP address, for a period of six months. Article 37 of the bill seeks to indirectly expand the definition of “access to application logs” to compel application providers to retain “logs that unequivocally individualize the user of an IP address.”
Since the debates on the approval and further regulation of Marco Civil, law enforcement has pushed for including the information about users' networking ports in the law’s data retention obligation. They have sought to influence legislation and courts' understanding about the existing retention mandate, since Marco Civil doesn't mention the storage of users' ports. Such a push takes into account the current use of technical solutions (particularly those based on Network Address Translation (NAT)) that enable multiple users to simultaneously share a single public IP address. There is a shortage of public IPv4 addresses, and to help mitigate this issue, NAT allows us to use several private IPs for one public IP. NAT can do this by allocating a range of ports per private IP on the public IP. However, servers on the internet still need to correlate this information with the internet service provider logs.
China will continue to advance the development of its central bank digital currency and improve its design, the People's Bank of China governor Yi Gang said on Tuesday.
China is a front-runner in the global race to launch central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and is testing a digital yuan, or eCNY, in major cities including Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai but has not set a timetable for its official rollout.
Google’s second-gen Nest Hub already comes with the ability to help you track your sleep pattern, thanks to its Soli-powered Sleep Sensing feature, but now Google is rolling out an update that should help you get a more detailed look at the quality of your slumber. According an announcement post on the company’s Keyword blog, the Nest Hub will now display a Sleep Staging chart that shows your various stages of sleep, including how long you were awake or experiencing REM, light, or deep sleep.
On July 18, 2021, The Wire, as part of an international collaborative investigation titled “Pegasus Project”, revealed that the Israeli spyware firm NSO targeted “over 300 verified Indian mobile telephone numbers, including those used by ministers, opposition leaders, journalists, the legal community, businessmen, government officials, scientists, rights activists and others” through their spyware, Pegasus. Subsequent reporting by the Wire and the Washington Post revealed that forensic analysis conducted by Amnesty International's Security Lab definitively showed that the Pegasus spyware had been used to target 37 phones, of which 10 belonged to Indians.
Mr. Rupesh Kumar Singh and Ms. Ipsa Shatakshi are independent activists of repute, with over seven years of standing. Both of their phone numbers are in the leaked database. However, as of the date, it has not been verified whether their phones were attacked with the Pegasus Spyware. Mr. Singh and Ms. Shatakshi have approached the Supreme Court asking it to declare that the use of spyware such as Pegasus, is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has pronounced a judgment regarding the use of Pegasus, constituting a committee of technical experts to examine the allegations of unauthorised surveillance using the Pegasus spyware. This is not the first time that the Supreme Court has taken such a measure, since earlier this year the Court had also constituted a four member expert committee on the controversial farm laws.
I waited almost three months for some acknowledgement, but it never came. Not a bottle of champagne. Not a congratulatory note. Not an e-mail of acknowledgement. Not one media request.
Undeterred by any rival capability, Trump claimed in May 2020 that the US military had come up with a “super duper”weapon that could travel at 17 times the speed of sound. “We are building, right now, incredible military equipment at a level that nobody has ever seen before.”€ Ever adolescent in poking fun at his rivals, Trump also claimed that the missile dwarfed Russian and Chinese equivalents.€ Russia, he claimed, had one travelling at five times the speed of sound; China was working on a device that could move at the same speed, if not at six times.€ Pentagon officials were not exactly forthcoming about the details, leaving the fantasists to speculate.
In 2019, Russia deployed its own intercontinental hypersonic missile, the Avangard strategic system, featuring a hypersonic glide vehicle astride an intercontinental ballistic missile. “It’s a weapon of the future, capable of penetrating both existing and prospective missile defence systems,” claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin at the time.€ The President claimed to have reason to crow.€ “Today, we have a unique situation in our new and recent history.€ They (other countries) are trying to catch up with us. Not a single country possesses hypersonic weapons, let alone continental-range hypersonic weapons.”
Even as Congress moves to increase the Pentagon budget well beyond the astronomical levels proposed by the Biden administration, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has outlined three different ways to cut $1 trillion in Department of Defense spending over the next decade. A rational defense policy could yield far more in the way of reductions, but resistance from the Pentagon, weapons contractors, and their many allies in Congress would be fierce.
On the 8th of October, Choguel Maïga, the prime minister of Mali, boldly informed the world that its former colonial power, France, was sponsoring terrorists in the country’s northern region. Standing before dozens of cameras and microphones, he provided details on how the French army had established an enclave in the northern town of Tidal and handed it over to well-known terrorist groups. The revelation was shocking not simply for the serious nature of the accusation but because in past times West African leaders have rarely sparred so openly with the French government. A chain of events simmering in the background for weeks triggered the latest spat.
Here’s a rundown of everyone who was slapped with a subpoena on Tuesday: [...]
A policeman survived a knife attack in the French Riviera city of Cannes on Monday, with media quoting a police source as saying the assailant had said he was acting “in the name of the Prophet”.
The policeman emerged from the attack unscathed, saved from serious injury or worse by his bulletproof vest, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
The attack in Cannes comes just one week after a knifeman was shot at a railway station in Paris after threatening security officers.
Poland and the European Union accuse Minsk of weaponizing migrants by inviting them to enter Belarus and shepherding them to the border, sometimes by force. Visiting the border area Tuesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki praised the work of the 12,000 troops the government has deployed to defend the border.
“We know that this is a fully planned operation, which aims to disrupt the sovereignty of our country. That’s absolutely clear to us. We know for sure that there is a search for weak spots happening (on the border),” Morawiecki said.
“(Belarusian President Aleksander) Lukashenko’s regime uses civilians as weapons of a hybrid war. What we can see today are new methods, and you are a key bastion there to defend against these new methods,” the prime minister added.
Poland closed the main border crossing with Belarus Tuesday, the primary route for road traffic between northern Europe and Russia.
This summer Belarus began experimenting with a novel geopolitical tactic: importing would-be migrants from the Middle East, dumping them at the EU’s borders and urging them to cross. In August Iraqi Airways announced several direct flights from Iraqi cities to Minsk, the Belarusian capital. Migrants, promised a new life in the EU on social media, sought Belarusian visas from local consulates. Upon arrival in Minsk armed guards herded them to the border, first with Lithuania and then with Latvia and Poland. All three of these countries have annoyed Mr Lukashenko by sheltering Belarusian dissidents who have fled from the regime. The EU tried to stem the flow of migrants, persuading Iraqi Airways to cancel flights to Belarus. States sharing a border with Belarus each deployed patrols, put up makeshift fences and announced construction of sturdier, permanent ones.
Speaking on Tuesday at an emergency parliamentary session after visiting troops on the border, Mr Morawiecki said: "This attack which Lukashenko is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin."
He accused the Russian and Belarusian leaders of trying to destabilise the European Union - which the two countries are not part of - by allowing migrants to travel through Belarus and enter the bloc.
Mr Morawiecki described the situation as "a new type of war in which people are used as human shields", and said Poland was dealing with a "stage play" which is designed to create chaos in the EU.
Ads placed on social media are designed to make the trip look legitimate and promise smooth travel, highlighting that travellers are issued seven day tourist visas for Belarus.
In one recent Facebook post, a travel agent said that it was bringing people to Europe via "conventional ways".
"European airlines only, need 1.2 million refugees. Seize the opportunity. Pay us after arrival," read the post, which was subsequently deleted after attracting media attention.
"I warned him his platform was allowing a coup to be staged," Prince Harry said at the RE:WIRED tech forum in the US.
Since 1880, average global sea levels have risen by more than 8 inches (23 centimeters), and the rate has been accelerating with climate change.
Depending on how well countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years, scientists estimate that global sea levels could rise by an additional 2 feet by the end of this century. The higher seas means when storms and high tides arrive, they add to an already higher water level. In some areas – including Charleston, South Carolina, where a storm and high tide on Nov. 5, 2021, sent water levels about 8 feet above normal– sinking land is making the impact even worse.
I’ve been involved in the climate negotiations for several years as a former senior U.N. official and I am in Glasgow now. At the start of the second week, here’s what I’m seeing and hearing, both inside the negotiations and outside.
A shift from 2050 to 2030 goals
Climate activists protested outside the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow Monday spotlighting the role of the U.S. military in fueling the climate crisis. The Costs of War project estimates the military produced around 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon emissions between 2001 and 2017, with nearly a third coming from U.S. wars overseas. But military carbon emissions have largely been exempted from international climate treaties dating back to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol after lobbying from the United States. We go to Glasgow to speak with Ramón Mejía, anti-militarism national organizer of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and Iraq War veteran; Erik Edstrom, Afghanistan War veteran turned climate activist; and Neta Crawford, director of the Costs of War project. “The United States military has been a mechanism of environmental destruction,” says Crawford.
Waters around Tuvalu, whose highest point is about 15 feet above sea level, are rising about 0.2 inches per year — faster than the global average. Like many of its neighbors, Tuvalu is warning that without global action, its land will almost certainly be submerged entirely.
We are now in the post-speech era of climate crisis, where words don’t matter to the people who matter. Young activists have figured out that the older generation is fucked up, that they don’t care about their future. The climate fight is no longer about levels of CO2 in the atmosphere: It is now about the rich, greedy older generation killing off their young.
George Kennan’s famous “long telegram” outlined the strategy of containment at the start of the Cold War with Russia. The establishment Atlantic Council think tank has issued a new version — a “longer telegram” — to outline a confrontation with China. What’s needed, however, is a long telegram to lay out the strategy for engaging China and Russia in facing the real and growing climate threat. If we don’t find a way to join in addressing it, the basic duty of the state — to defend the security of its citizens — will have been forfeited.
It has revealed that - if global temperatures increase to levels predicted - the ocean will not be able to provide what is currently Earth's largest long-term carbon store.
One third of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere dissolves in the ocean.
It therefore acts as an important buffer against rising temperatures.
This past week's flurry of announcements over "ambitious action" by governments during the COP26 in Glasgow has been justly received with scepticism by climate justice activists and the general public (and enthusiastic support by the media in general). During this same period important revelations of the massive gap in terms of necessary emission cuts and country's plans emerged, as the broader rejection of greenwashing became pervasive. The narrative of false solutions and green capitalism doesn't work. Yesterday, the revelation that over 800 oil & gas wells are being planned for drilling still this year and in 2022, in the report "Drill, Baby, Drill", makes it clear that the proceedings of COP26 are mostly propaganda, as the only real, mandatory and contractualized plan global capitalism has for the climate crisis is collapse.
Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama castigated rich nations on Monday for reneging on their vow to provide developing countries with $100 billion in annual climate funding by 2020, a failure that's been in the spotlight throughout the ongoing COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
"No nation can claim inaction out of ignorance. We have known about this threat for decades."
President Biden has repeatedly and rightly called climate change an “existential threat.” The White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence community have all issued reports detailing climate change’s “threat multiplier,” which will worsen food and water scarcity, spread diseases, destabilize countries, and exacerbate mass migration. Most Americans increasingly understand that the threat is critical—and getting worse.
China's relationship with Africa is multifaceted. The People's Republic of China (PRC) shares ideological bonds with many African countries because of early ties to anti-colonial struggles and through the Non-Aligned Movement. Every African country recognizes the PRC with the exception of eSwatini (Swaziland), which has diplomatic relations with Taiwan). Many African countries preserved trade relations with Beijing after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, and those commercial links have only grown stronger. China has been Africa's leading trading partner since surpassing the United States in 2009.
With just four days left of the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, climate groups are demanding world leaders urgently change course by rejecting false solutions and committing to stop greenhouse gas emissions at the source to have any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5€°C.
"This conference has not been the climate game-changer promised by politicians and promoted by the media."
As the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) is swiftly moving to its conclusion on Friday, climate justice could not be more urgent or timely.
"It's all very well for leaders to claim they have a net-zero target, but if they have no plans as to how to get there, and their 2030 targets are as low as so many of them are, then frankly, these net-zero targets are just lip service to real climate action."
"Today's leaders need to be held to account for this massive 2030 gap."
Humanity is on a catastrophic global heating trajectory that will pass what scientists call the "net fucked by 2050" point and is risking "irreversible chain reactions beyond our control" just so billionaires can grow even richer.
"Being honest isn't an option for us. Which is why we've come up with the next best alternative: net-zero by 2050."
This past week witnessed two supposedly historic events. Globally, leaders from around the world met at Cop 26 in Scotland to agree on landmark commitments to address climate change. In the US, Congress passed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that President Biden hailed as a "monumental step forward" that was a "blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and it's long overdue."
As activists at the COP26 summit continue to denounce the "massive" gap between wealthy governments' lofty rhetoric and their woefully inadequate plans for addressing the climate emergency, a new analysis of projected extraction in the Permian Basin in the U.S. Southwest exposes the extent to which oil and gas executives' refusal to keep fossil fuels in the ground puts humanity's future in jeopardy.
"While climate science tells us that we must consume 40% less oil in 2030, Permian producers plan to grow production more than 50%."
The people of Nebraska "deserve a livable future with less water and air pollution, more sustainable jobs, and democratic control over their energy sources."
So declares a report released Tuesday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) that urges the landlocked U.S. state to take full advantage of its vast wind energy potential and ditch its climate-wrecking reliance on coal.
Addressing global warming requires cutting carbon emissions by almost half by 2030! For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, emissions must fall by 45% below 2010 levels by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5€°C, instead of the 2.7€°C now expected.
Scotland’s second city has rolled out the green carpet to world leaders and thousands of delegates arriving for climate talks.
The city and its leaders have been eager to present a green image of Glasgow over COP26, with advertisements and billboards across town promoting its climate-friendly projects and initiatives.€
A U.S car giant with a history of funding climate denial and inaction is sponsoring a COP26 events space that showcases a “transition to a cleaner world”.
General Motors, one of the world’s largest industrial corporations, is backing the “Pathways to 1.5” pavilion at the Glasgow summit, which explores how businesses can reach the Paris Agreement target of restricting global heating to 1.5€°C by the end of the century.
"Time and time again we see banks launch voluntary climate initiatives which seem to be aimed purely at reaping PR benefits now, while postponing all concrete action as far into the future as possible."
As campaigners on the ground in the Scottish city of Glasgow continued to call out world leaders for delivering empty promises at COP26, hundreds of groups on Tuesday urged attendees of the United Nations climate summit to reject attempts by the hydropower industry to secure support for new projects and instead focus on real solutions to the planetary crisis.
"Instead of damming the rivers that help sustain us, climate funds should be used to restore rivers and promote protecting river ecosystems and communities."
Inflows into bitcoin products and funds have hit a record $6.4 billion so far this year, data from digital asset manager CoinShares showed, as investors bought the cryptocurrency on more widespread government acceptance and positive momentum.
They fear a wave of resurrected fossil-fuel plants pumping out greenhouse gasses more for private profit than public good. Seeing Greenidge as a test case, they are asking the state to deny renewal of the plant's air quality permit and put the brakes on similar projects.
“The current state of our climate demands action on cryptocurrency mining,” said Liz Moran of Earthjustice. “We are jeopardizing the state’s abilities to meet our climate goals, and we set the stage for the rest of the country as a result.”
It uses as much electricity each year as the Netherlands, an uncomfortable fact as world leaders meet at COP26.
Presented by the Climate Action Network (CAN), a global network of more than 1,500 civil society organizations in over 130 countries, “Fossil of the Day” awards are given to the countries that are “doing the most to achieve the least” in terms of the progress on climate change.
Mexico was awarded second place “for pumping more, not less, money into the fossil fuel industry, building oil refineries, and delaying policies aimed at carbon emissions reductions.”
But why? What explains the sinking incomes of so many American workers today? Globalization plays a role. So do the fading value of the minimum wage and the ever smaller share of workers with collectively bargained contracts. But another factor, says MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, may be the most potent driver of these shrinking wages: automation.
Automation happens when machines or algorithms — essentially, instructions for computers — do the work real people used to perform. We’ve been seeing plenty of this substituting over recent decades, Acemoglu this past Tuesday told the House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth. The result: Americans who’ve been performing “routine tasks” in industries rapidly automating “have almost uniformly experienced large declines in their real wages.”
There has been a major national debate about raising the national minimum wage from its current level of $7.25 an hour in recent years. The last increase took effect in 2009. If we adjust for inflation over the last 12 years, the minimum wage has lost almost 30 percent of its purchasing power. If we wanted to restore the minimum wage just to its 2009 level of purchasing power, we would have to raise it to almost $9.50 an hour.
Even a $9.50 minimum wage would leave it far below its 1968 peak level in terms of purchasing power. If the minimum wage today had the same purchasing power as it did in 1968, it would be roughly $12 an hour. Just in case people don’t remember, the unemployment rate averaged less than 4.0 percent in 1968.
For months, the nation has witnessed a debate taking place in Congress over how much to invest in this plan. What hasn’t been discussed, however, is the cost of notinvesting (or not investing sufficiently) in health-care expansion, early childhood education, the care economy, paid sick leave, living-wage jobs, and the like. Similarly missing have been the voices of those affected, especially the 140 million poor and low-income people who have the most to lose if a bold bill is not passed. By now, the originally proposed 10-year, $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, which a majority of Americans support, has been slowly chiseled down to half that size. For that you can largely thank two Democratic senators, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, unanimously backed by Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which would, of course, cut everything.
Because of them, the “reconciliation” process to pass such a bill has become so crucial and politically charged, given that the same obstructionist Democrats have continued to uphold the Senate filibuster. All year, Manchin, Sinema, and the Republicans have blocked action on urgent issues ranging from climate change and immigration reform to living wages and voting rights. For example, after months of resistance to the For the People Act, a bill that protects and expands voting rights, Manchin forced the Democrats to put forward a watered-down Freedom To Vote Act with the promise that he would get it passed. In late October, though, he failed to win a single Republican vote for the bill and so the largest assault on voting rights since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era continues, state by state, unabated.
Democrats have an electability problem in America's industrial heartland that could flip the Senate red for a€ decade to€ come.
The governor’s race in Virginia provided a preview of coming attractions for the GOP’s 2022 strategy on race. That preview looks much like Nixon’s “Southern strategy” in 1968, with its primary theme of racial division.
On the same day Chris Bryant, chairman of the Commons’ standards committee, said that what the Boris Johnson government was trying to do in overturning Paterson’s suspension was “a perversion of justice” and is “not what we do in this country – it’s what they do in Russia when a friend or a foe is suddenly under the cosh in the courts”.
But perhaps the government’s botched attempt to save Paterson’s skin – despite detailed evidence of him lobbying hard for the two commercial companies paying him €£9,000 a month – is, on the contrary, exactly the way we now do things in the UK. Bryant’s analogy with Russia – he might have mentioned Iraq or Turkey or a score of other countries – may not be too far off the mark. Lord Evans is demonstrably correct about the slippage into corruption and wrong only about how far this process has gone.
If anything, it was an empty right-wing culture war meme and a lie about exposing schoolchildren to make-believe horrors of history if they learn about racism and slavery and possibly encountering a kid of a different gender when going to a restroom. It’s right out of racist Donald Trump’s playbook.
There are stalls in restrooms.
Democratic US Representative Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia centrist who swept into office on an anti–Donald Trump wave in 2018 and who now fears she might be swept out on an anti–Joe Biden wave in 2022, says Democrats are in trouble because President Biden has been too ambitious.
Karl wrote a bit about how the new antitrust bill from Amy Klobuchar and Tom Cotton pretends that the only industry that has competition issues is the internet industry -- despite evidence suggesting other industries are much worse off -- and briefly mentioned the fact that their bill conveniently excludes Walmart and Target. But the setup of the bill and those particular exclusions are so nefariously done, and so obviously corrupt, that they deserve a second post to call it out.
As federal investigators announced Tuesday that at least 13 senior Trump administration officials violated the Hatch Act—a key law restricting campaign activities by government employees—a leading ethics advocacy group responded by calling on Congress to pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
"There are significant enforcement challenges to enforcing the Hatch Act. Legislation like the Protecting Our Democracy Act would fix that."
A more responsible news outlet might have noted these huge accomplishments, and puzzled over why folks such as Mr. Macey consider this “a standstill.” It would also have identified the obvious source of Washington’s division: the modern GOP, whose animating principal as a minority party is militant obstructionism.
Ah, but why confront the ignorance of your audience when you can amplify it instead?
Facebook’s parent company said in a report released Tuesday that it had taken action on 13.6 million pieces of content that depicted or incited violence on the platform during the third quarter of the year.
Meta, the newly rebranded company that includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus, took similar actions against more than 3 million instances of content on Instagram, the company said in its Community Standards Enforcement Report.
On TikTok, where some videos have gained millions of views, typing “Astroworld” into the search bar generates “astroworld festival demonic” as one of the top suggestions. People have said the stage was shaped like an inverted cross leading to a portal to Hell, which they believe was represented by the arch-shaped set onstage. They also point to a shirt Scott wore at the show that depicts human figures walking through a door and emerging with what look like horns as further evidence that Scott was leading fans to hell and sacrificing people’s lives intentionally. A representative from TikTok said this content violates community guidelines and the company is working on taking action against it, “including within search suggestions.”
Location, location, location. For good or evil, history often is made in the confines of a hotel room or suite: whether the first meeting of the post-revolution Soviet government at Moscow's Hotel National in 1918, or the drafting in 1922 of Ireland's constitution at the lovely Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin.€
The subpoenas reflect an effort to go beyond the events of the Capitol [insurrection] and delve deeper into what committee investigators believe gave rise to it: a concerted campaign by Mr. Trump and his network of advisers to promote false claims of voter fraud as a way to keep him in power. One of the people summoned on Monday was John Eastman, a lawyer who drafted a memo laying out how Mr. Trump could use the vice president and Congress to try to invalidate the election results.
In demanding records and testimony from the six Trump allies, the House panel is widening its scrutiny of the mob attack to encompass the former president’s attempt to enlist his own government, state legislators around the country and Congress in his push to overturn the election.
Mr. Flynn discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers after the election. Mr. Eastman wrote a memo to Mr. Trump suggesting that Vice President Mike Pence could reject electors from certain states during Congress’s count of Electoral College votes to deny Joseph R. Biden Jr. a majority. And Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who was also subpoenaed, participated in a planning meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington on Jan. 5 after backing baseless litigation and “Stop the Steal” efforts around the country to push the lie of a stolen election.
Facebook is under a lot of scrutiny lately, and for very good reasons! But the anger surrounding Facebook has also resulted in plenty of criticism that is misleading or downright inaccurate in its description of how the company operates and what it does — though Facebook itself carries some of the blame for that happening, too. The goal of fixing the problems with social media isn't helped by misrepresenting what those problems are, so this week we're joined by Gizmodo's Shoshana Wodinsky to discuss all the things people get wrong about Facebook.
The Chinese-run Hong Kong government is still finding more ways to suppress criticism. A new, very broad national security law pretty much criminalized protests or criticism of the Chinese government's long list of intrusions and impositions into Hong Kong's self-governance. The law allowed the regular police to become the internet police and the police state to become official with the appointment of law enforcement officials to prominent national security oversight positions.
The U.S. House select committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol issued more subpoenas Tuesday, targeting 10 top officials in former President Donald Trump's administration.
Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement that the panel "wants to learn every detail of what went on in the White House on January 6th and in the days beforehand."
Far-right Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona is drawing widespread condemnation for sharing an edited animated video depicting him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, conduct that lawmakers and others said warrants his immediate removal from office.
"This puts lives in danger. Enough with the violent bigotry."
As U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday urged investigations into Rep. Paul Gosar's tweeting of an animated video that depicts him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading gender justice group issued a call for the Arizona Republican's ouster from Congress, and from Twitter.€
"We're calling on Speaker Pelosi to begin removal proceedings against Gosar from Congress without delay."
The survey found majorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents saying it unfairly punished people, with Republicans being the most likely of the three groups to answer "yes."
The bell continues to toll for American tech companies willing to do business with China. Increasing censorship demands have made even the most obliging of platforms reconsider their obligations to the authoritarian regime, resulting in the most difficult tradeoff: a company's reputation versus access to a market containing more than a billion users.
Fortunately, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Inspector General, Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl, a former whistleblower herself who filed a sworn affidavit thirty years ago against the confirmation of Robert Gates as CIA director, wrote a letter to the€ Post€ defending whistleblowing.€ Ekedahl, who is my wife, noted that institutions, even religious ones, become loyal to themselves rather than to the missions they proclaim.€ Ekedahl asked,€ “Are victims of abuse by priests ‘betraying’ the Catholic Church when they become whistleblowers? Are civil servants who disclose corruption in their departments guilty of ‘lack of loyalty’?”
Investigative reporters of the€ Washington Post€ often have their exposes because of whistleblowers.€ Watergate and Deep Throat is the enduring example.€ In his excellent new book, “Midnight in Washington,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) documents the necessity of whistleblowers to the Congress, particularly the congressional intelligence committees.€ As Schiff states, without whistleblowers the congress “would be almost completely reliant on the intelligence agencies to self report any problems.”
On Dec. 10, 1981, an American-trained unit of the Salvadoran army stormed into a remote village near the country’s border with Honduras. In the days that followed, the soldiers killed nearly 1,000 civilians, most of them women and children. Raymond Bonner, a ProPublica and Retro Report contributor who was then working for The New York Times, traveled with photographer Susan Meiselas through rebel-held territory to report on the massacre. Their story about the atrocities and a similar account by The Washington Post’s Alma Guillermoprieto were fiercely attacked by the Reagan administration, which viewed El Salvador’s military as an essential ally in the fight against the country’s leftist rebels. Administration officials insisted El Mozote had been the site of a firefight between the army and rebels. After the war finally ended in January 1992, investigators began to dig up the bodies. Of the more than 140 remains first exhumed, more than 95% were children; the average age was 6 years old. Many had been rounded up and locked in a convent, then killed in a fusillade of fire before the building was burned. The reporters had been right all along.
Four decades after he filed his first story on El Mozote, Bonner returned to El Salvador and teamed up with Nelson Rauda, a reporter with the independent news outlet El Faro, to track the country’s faltering efforts to hold the perpetrators accountable. The key to that inquiry was a Salvadoran judge who heard testimony from victims, families and some of the military officers involved. Taken together, the evidence indicated that the El Mozote attack was part of a pattern set by El Salvador's military and political leadership. Bonner and Rauda’s reporting is traced in a documentary that airs on Wednesday and was produced by the nonprofit news organization Retro Report and the PBS program FRONTLINE. (Check your local schedules for airtimes.) The following story, by Rauda, details the personal costs of doing this work in a country whose populist president has handcuffed the judiciary and publicly attacked journalists who challenge the official line.
Stella Moris, partner of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, says British authorities have so far blocked attempts for her and Assange to marry while he is being held in Belmarsh prison. Supporters have also raised concerns Assange has become suicidal. “They are killing him. If he dies, it is because they are killing him,” Moris says. “They are torturing him to death.”
Britain’s High Court is expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison under espionage charges for publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes. We get an update from Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, who is in Glasgow as part of her campaign to free Julian and to highlight how WikiLeaks has also revealed evidence of how corporations and states have undermined the goals of prior climate summits. Moris says WikiLeaks is an “extraordinary tool … to understand the relationships between the states and the fossil fuel companies, [and] how these interests are intertwined.”
The old doe wanted to be witnessed in pain for eternity. Cut and bandaged and then cut up again. Fine, they said. We’ll see how you fare. They took her into the sterile room and covered her in dirt. They smothered her in praise. They pulled out her teeth and replaced them with all gold caps over steel rod implants. They propped her up on an ancestor’s grave and told her to be still as a stone.
The stone wanted to be witnessed for eternity. Carved as it was. Like a great mysterious henge. But it was clear who placed her there. And that wasn’t enough. No one wants to see that which they already see every day in the mirror. Tricked out and suffering. Cut up for no one. Those teeth shone in the night for no one. When she bore them at the moon.
Support independent cartooning: join€ Sparky’s List—and don’t forget to visit TT’s€ Emporium of Fun, featuring the new book and plush Sparky!
The conservatives are always aiming to go to the past, rather than the future. One would think this would make them support children but it’s actually the opposite. They want to go back to their own childhoods and they can only do this by controlling children.
Another factor for the political Right, at least in America where fascism is heavily merged with distorted Christianity, is an ideology of white supremacy, as children lack sin. This ideology plays nicely into notions of racial superiority as even a drop of a certain ethnicity can be viewed as impure.
Dave Chappelle often describes stand-up comedy in liberatory terms. In his 2018 appearance on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld’s talk show on the craft of comedy, Chappelle cast stand-up as a vehicle for unbridled self-expression: “The guy on the stage, that’s the real guy. The guy that’s off the stage, he’s the one that lies to people, or doesn’t say what he actually thinks, and all this other shit, just so that guy can exist uninterrupted.” The stage, in this parable, authorizes a freedom that the world restricts.
As courts seemingly have to remind school administrators (and their partners in unconstitutional crime, school police officers), students -- even minors -- still have constitutional rights. The First and Fourth Amendments are the most frequently violated, despite there being no lack of precedent upholding students' rights.
Until now, only asylum seekers and visa applicants had to hand over their biometric data before entering the EU. With an Entry/Exit System, this will be extended to all other travellers from third countries. Border controls will be significantly delayed from 2022. Entry apps and automatic ââ¬Å¾eGates“ should save this time again.
As the firms have discovered, their businesses are less perpetual motion machines than real-world flywheels that inevitably lose energy to friction, says Jonathan Knee of Columbia Business School and author of a book entitled “The Platform Delusion”. The network effect in fact has proved much weaker than expected. Many users switch between Uber and Lyft. Drivers also flit between them, or to delivery apps, depending on which model offers the best pay. This bargaining power from both sides means the system does not become self-reinforcing after all.
Technology, too, has turned out to be less beneficial than anticipated. Data collected by the firms help optimise their operations, but are not the decisive factor some had hoped for. Regulators keep pushing back. In London they have forced Uber to pay drivers minimum wages and pensions. In San Francisco they capped the fees DoorDash can charge restaurants for delivering their meals.
The sub features a library of antiwork texts, such as Bullshit Jobs by the late anarchist academic David Graeber, and even a soundtrack (including, of course, the labor movement anthem “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton). Their Frequently Asked Questions seem prepared for backlash: Why do you want to end work? Why "antiwork"? But without work society can't function! In their cheeky response to “You guys are just lazy, right?” they replied, “Some of us are lazy, sure. What's wrong with that?” Perhaps most urgent is the question: I hate my job, what should I do?
Originating in Canada in the early ’90s, National Buy Nothing Day occurs on the day after Thanksgiving each year in the U.S, on November 26 this year. In an effort to combat the unethical and sometimes even dangerous mob shopping behaviors of Black Friday, artist Ted Dave established this anti-consumerism holiday in 1992. The idea is to counteract the madness of holiday shopping by encouraging a mindful and environmentally friendly attitude toward post-feast purchasing. We’ve been looking for an excuse not to hit the mall so early on Thanksgiving weekend, and here it is!
Celebrate Buy Nothing Day on November 26th!
Overconsumption leads us to using up too many resources. As a result, there are less available for those who need it.
There's also the environmental cost of businesses continuously producing these items to satisfy our overconsumption. More greenhouse gas emissions being produced by having to manufacture and ship new items.
The less we consume, the less resources get used up, and the less greenhouse gas emissions damaging the Earth. Take a stand this year for the sake of our planet, and the sake of your own personal happiness.
Consumption is doing havoc on the environment. As the demand for products grows, so does the necessity to produce those goods. More pollutant emissions, higher land use and deforestation, and hastened climate change occur as a result of this. Buy Nothing Day is a 24-hour protest in which participants commit not to purchase anything in order to raise awareness of the harmful environmental, social, and political repercussions of excessive consumption. Every year on Buy Nothing Day, a message is sent out in support of less consumerism and increased environmental awareness. People that cut back on their consumption not only help the environment, but they also get to enjoy things more fully.
Whatever day you pick to commemorate Buy Nothing Day, the goal is to raise awareness about the issue of excessive consumption. Whether or not this is a subject that you are passionate about, you can certainly look into it and contribute to a better understanding of it. You can express your support for the day in a variety of ways like: [...]
So we've noted a few times that the recent Congressional fixation on "big tech monopolies" is weirdly myopic. As in, the United States is absolutely jam-packed with heavily monopolized sectors including banking, telecom, energy, and air travel that simply aren't seeing anywhere near the same level of hyperventilation. While it's true that giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon are engaged in dodgy behavior at unprecedented scale, most of the "solutions" bandied about so far are oddly selective, sometimes harmful, and routinely performative.
Moderna came under fire Tuesday in response to New York Times reporting about an ongoing dispute with a federal agency over whether government scientists should be credited as co-inventors of a key component of the U.S. company's Covid-19 vaccine.
Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious diseases specialist at the New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital Center, tweeted that it is "amazing" Moderna "has the gall to claim it's the sole inventor" given contributions from scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
A legal opinion published Monday by the International Commission of Jurists argues that the rich countries currently stonewalling a proposed patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines are violating their "obligations to realize the rights to health, equality, life, and science."
"International law requires that States stop impeding the TRIPS waiver."
Media giant ABS-CBN has won a lawsuit against 21 pirate site operators. A district court in Florida granted a default judgment that orders the operators to each pay $1 million in damages. The domains in question, one of which used to be linked to a British MP, are mostly smaller streaming portals that offer access to 'Pinoy' content in the US and abroad.
Manga indexing site Mangabank and several linked storage platforms were recently targeted in a US court by Japanese publisher Shueisha. With around 80 million visits per month, Mangabank was a huge player in the piracy ecosystem but has now disappeared. While it's likely the legal action played a part, the site has also been dealing with a huge DDoS attack.
This #GivingTuesday€ — Tuesday, November 30th, Creative Commons invites you to join our 20th Anniversary celebration. In the weeks leading up to€ #GivingTuesday, we’ll be spotlighting leaders in the Open Movement and encouraging you to support our€ Better Sharing, Brighter Future€ campaign.
