Desktop/Laptop

• System76 Launch review: Linux-friendly keyboard with a USB hub [Ed: Review or marketing? Also, this is a keyboard. Nothing to do with Linux.]

  The Launch is System76′s first mechanical keyboard, but it could be the last keyboard you need. With hot-swappable mechanical switches, legends that won’t fade, a durable build, and a pair of detachable cables, this tenkeyless board can evolve with you.

  It’s also open source—from its chassis to its PCB and firmware—allowing for deeper tinkering. There are even some extra keycaps for when you want a new look. And in true System76 style, the board favors Linux users.

  At $285, though, the Launch is a big investment, and many won’t like how hard it is to press the keys. The clicky mechanical switches are so tactile that they’ll tire some fingers out.

• 6 Best Programmable and Mechanical Keyboards For Linux 2022

  With Windows all keyboards are compatible but most are with Mac as well. If we talk about Linux/Unix then there are few which are compatible with it in which some functions might not work at all or work partially. These are mostly for Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian and even Kali Linux. We have tested the 6 best Mechanical and Programmable Keyboards available for Linux that are suitable for gaming and programming, with typing in mind.

  [...]

  Linux is the second most popular OS after Windows. There is a very large community that prefers it and uses it as their primary operating system. This is why we have put together a list of the 6 best Linux mechanical and programmable keyboards that are both great for gaming, developers and programmers. We have written this with compatibility in mind so there are wired and wireless choices available.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Video ☛ Canonical Plans To Make “Cloud Smartphones”?!? – Invidious

  Cloud computing is here and it’s here to stay but that shouldn’t extend into the portable device space but canonical and vodafone think otherwise in a partnership to bring cloud smartphones

• Video ☛ Archman 2022.03 overview | Fast, visual, stable and easy. – Invidious

  In this video, I am going to show an overview of Archman 2022.03 and some of the applications pre-installed.

• Video ☛ Why I don’t recommend Ubuntu anymore – Invidious

• Video ☛ How to install Natron on Zorin OS 16 – Invidious

  In this video, we are looking at how to install Natron on Zorin OS 16.

Kernel Space

• LWN ☛ Linux 5.16.13

  I'm announcing the release of the 5.16.13 kernel.
  
  All users of the 5.16 kernel series must upgrade.
  
  The updated 5.16.y git tree can be found at:
  	git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.16.y
  and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:
  
  https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
  
  thanks,
  
  greg k-h
  

• LWN ☛ Linux 5.15.27

• LWN ☛ Linux 5.10.104

• LWN ☛ Linux 5.4.183

• LWN ☛ Linux 4.19.233

• LWN ☛ Linux 4.14.270

• LWN ☛ Linux 4.9.305

• Graphics Stack

  • PipeWire: A year in review & a look ahead

    The PipeWire project has made major strides over the past few years, bringing shiny new features, and paving the way for new possibilities in the Linux multimedia scene. With 2021 seeing significant progress made on all fronts, let’s take a moment to look back at what was accomplished, and what lies ahead for 2022.

    Last year began with busywork on the Bluetooth® front, with amazing volunteers testing and fixing things on PipeWire’s Bluetooth® plugin. Throughout the year, the plugin evolved to become perhaps one of the best – if not the best – open source Bluetooth® audio stack implementations that I am aware of. Based on an extensible plugin architecture, Pipewire already supports all current audio profiles and codecs. It is also future proof, enabling it to be integrated with other stacks like ofono. It’s a solid base for any Bluetooth® audio use case.

    Then, in April, Fedora 34 became the first Linux distribution to ship PipeWire as its default audio service. While PipeWire was there before as a video transport service to enable screen sharing on Wayland, the addition of the audio layer by default exposed all of PipeWire’s incredible capabilities to a broader audience. This led to a significant number of improvements that were made to fix issues and improve the experience of several users.

    In the meantime, at Collabora, we have been tirelessly working on getting WirePlumber ready to become the default session manager for PipeWire. With the 0.4.0 release that came out in June, WirePlumber introduced all those needed elements to achieve this goal. First and foremost, its Lua scripting engine made it possible to write most of the session management logic in a relatively simple scripting language. With the scripting engine available, it became so much easier for us to then sync all the policy logic with pipewire-media-session in order to replace PulseAudio. It also allowed us to maintain the embedded policy that Automotive Grade Linux uses with much more ease.

  • LWN ☛ PipeWire: A year in review & a look ahead (Collabora blog)

    The Collabora blog looks at recent developments in the PipeWire media system and looks forward to what is yet to come

  • New ray-tracing benchmark software Relic of Life released for free — see system requirements – Gamepur

    It’s called Relic of Life, and it’s totally free to download. Windows 10/11, Ubuntu, and Linux Flatpak versions are available on Basemark’s website. Relic of Life is meant for any device that utilizes ray-tracing and meets the system requirements (listed at the bottom of this article), including mobile devices to consoles, but if you’re grabbing the free version, you’ll most likely be doing so to test your PC gaming rig. Note that the free version requires you to be connected online and will automatically share your scores on Basemark’s Powerboard page — that’s the tradeoff for getting it at no cost.

Instructionals/Technical

• ID Root ☛ How To Install Scrot on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Scrot on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Scrot is an excellent command-line utility that allows users to take snapshots of the whole screen or a particular window. It supports multiple image formats (JPG, PNG, GIF, etc).

  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 Scrot screenshot tool 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.

• Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install SuperTux on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install SuperTux 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.

• How to use Kubernetes and OpenStack together | Opensource.com

  In OpenStack’s 2021 User Survey, the majority of respondents said they use Kubernetes as the container orchestration or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) tool to manage their OpenStack applications. Simply put, OpenStack and Kubernetes work together to benefit sysadmins, developers, and users alike.

  It’s one thing to say that users rely on these two technologies, but I wanted to know how. I’ve found several typical use cases.

• EGroupware administration tips to meet your collaboration needs | Opensource.com

  In my previous article, I explained how to install and set up EGroupware on your own server. It also introduced the modules and external applications of the open source groupware solution. This article shows you how to take care of an existing installation and manage backups.

• ID Root ☛ How To Install MySQL on CentOS 9 Stream – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MySQL on CentOS 9 Stream. For those of you who didn’t know, MySQL is an open-source free relational database management system (RDBMS) released under GNU (General Public License). MySQL is used for data warehousing, e-commerce, and logging applications, but its more commonly used feature is a web database storage and management.

  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 MySQL database on CentOS 9 Stream.

• TechRepublic ☛ How to install the OTRS community edition help desktop platform on Ubuntu Server 20.04 | TechRepublic

  Jack Wallen shows you how to use this open-source ticketing system that can be a challenge to install.

• Convert records in columns to csv Using awk

• Vitux ☛ Snort – A Network Intrusion Detection System for Ubuntu – VITUX

  Snort is a well-known open-source network intrusion detection and prevention system (IDS). Snort is very useful to monitor the package sent and received through a network interface. You can specify the network interface to monitor the traffic flow. Snort works on the basis of signature-based detection. Snort uses different types of rulesets to detect network intrusions such as community. Registered and subscription rules. Correctly installed and configured Snort can be very useful in detecting different kinds of attacks and threats like SMB probes, malware infections, compromised systems, etc. In this article, we will learn how to install and configure Snort on an Ubuntu 20.04 system.

• ID Root ☛ How To Install Neovim on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Neovim on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Neovim is a highly customizable, Vim-based text editor for Linux, as well as other platforms such as Microsoft Windows, and macOS. It is a hyperextensible text editor and seeks to maximize usability and extensibility, simplify maintenance and encourage contributions.

  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 Neovim open-source code editor 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.

• Video ☛ Recovering Files from your PC (using Linux) – Invidious

• OSNote ☛ Install and use Vagrant VM Automation Tool on Ubuntu 20.04 – OSNote

  Vagrant is one of the useful automation software. It is a command line tool that is used by developers to build and manage their preferred virtual machines. It grants the developers a developing environment that works on many operating systems.

  A hypervisor must be needed to provision virtual machines on top of it. In this article, we are going to install virtualbox to provide a hypervisor. We are going to install vagrant on Ubuntu 20.04 server.

• HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Puppet Server and Agent on Debian 11

  Puppet is a centralized configuration management and automation tool. DevOps creates configuration management to deploy servers and applications, and all configuration for automation is stored on the central “Puppet Server”. After that “Agent” nodes will pull a new configuration from the “Puppet Server” and apply the state as defined.

  All connections between “Puppet Server” and “Agent” nodes are encrypted by default using SSL/TLS certificate. Puppet uses Domain Specific Language (DSL) to describe system configuration, and it’s similar to Ruby syntax.

  In this guide, you will install and configure the Puppet server and agent on the Debian 11 Bullseye. You’ll install the Puppet server on the server hostname ‘puppet-server’ and the Puppet agent on the server with the hostname ‘agent’. In the end, you’ll be creating the first puppet manifests for installing the basic LEMP stack on the ‘agent’ node.

• HowTo Forge ☛ How to monitor Windows systems with Checkmk in a Docker container

  Using a monitoring tool gives you a great opportunity to increase the uptime and the reliability of your infrastructure. In fact, monitoring is essential for any organization. In my previous tutorial, I already mentioned the importance of monitoring and showed how to install Checkmk on a Linux server. Now, I am using a normal PC running on Windows 10 to run Checkmk in Docker and want to show you how you can run Checkmk on a normal computer. You do not need any monitoring or Linux experience. This tutorial is also suited for Windows users and gives you an easy introduction to the professional monitoring world.

• Ubuntu Handbook ☛ Install the Latest Sigil Ebook Editor in Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 via Flatpak | UbuntuHandbook

  This simple tutorial shows how to install the latest Sigil epub editor and keep it up-to-date in Ubuntu Linux via Flatpak package.

  Since Sigil package in Ubuntu repositories is always old and no PPA now maintains the most recent packages, the Flatpak now can be the only easy way to get the epub editor in Debian/Ubuntu based Linux.

Games

• GamingOnLinux ☛ An update on installing Epic Games on Steam Deck, plus accessing the SD Card | GamingOnLinux

  This is a short update to my previous guide on installing the Epic Games store on the Steam Deck using Proton, plus how to enable access to an SD Card.

  My original guide was included in this article in a video, which has gone on to see a lot of people happy with it. It’s now been used across PCGamer, Gamespot, CNET and no doubt others who decided to use it. CNET even ended up making their own video, which I had to poke them to actually credit me for — so that was fun (they now have).

• Video ☛ Steam Deck release notes now in the update menu! – Invidious

• Godot Engine ☛ Godot Engine – Release candidate: Godot 3.4.4 RC 1

  Godot 3.4.3 was released less than 2 weeks ago, but a few significant regressions were found in that release, so we’re fast-tracking the release of Godot 3.4.4 to solve those.

  This Release Candidate adds a handful of fixes, including several regression fixes. Please make sure to test it on your projects and to report any issue, so that we can release 3.4.4 stable in the coming days.

  Jump to the Downloads section.

  As usual, you can try it live with the online version of the Godot editor updated for this release.

• Godot Engine ☛ Godot Engine – Dev snapshot: Godot 4.0 alpha 4

  We’re continuing on our fortnightly release schedule for alpha snapshots of Godot 4.0 – this time with 4.0 alpha 4. See past alpha releases for details (alpha 1, alpha 2, alpha 3).

  Be aware that during the alpha stage the engine is still not feature-complete or stable. There will likely be breaking changes between this release and the first beta release. Only the beta will mark the so-called “feature freeze”.

  As such, we do not recommend porting existing projects to this and other upcoming alpha releases unless you are prepared to do it again to fix future incompatibilities. However, if you can port some existing projects and demos to the new version, that may provide a lot of useful information about critical issues still left to fix.

  Most importantly: Make backups before opening any existing project in Godot 4.0 alpha builds. There is no easy way back once a project has been (partially) converted.

• ScummVM has been accepted to the Google Summer of Code 2022

  This year our project once again was accepted to the Google Summer of Code program.

  In previous years, Google only allowed students to participate. This year, however, both students and non-students are welcome to join us and hack together. There are now two sets of tasks, for 175 hours and for 350 hours. Some of our tasks could be either of the two.

  ScummVM is looking for applicants! A list of suggested projects can be found on this page, but we’re open to your own ideas too. Please make sure you provide the required information in your application before submitting.

• Boiling Steam ☛ Already 1100 Games On The Steam Deck – Boiling Steam

  It’s been just a few days and we have (almost) reached 1100 games working on the Steam Deck – the real number if 1099 at the time of writing but give it a few hours and we will cross the 1100 mark for sure.

• Boiling Steam ☛ New Steam Games with Native Linux Clients – 2022-03-08 Edition – Boiling Steam

  Between 2022-03-01 and 2022-03-08 there were 29 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients. For reference, during the same time, there were 295 games released for Windows on Steam, so the Linux versions represent about 9.8 % of total released titles.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Budgie 10.6 is out now and looking fresh | GamingOnLinux

  The Linux desktop Budgie 10.6 is out now, as the first release under the new Buddies Of Budgie organization and it’s really looking good. This release brings a bunch of styling changes, as the team has been focusing a lot on the little things to make the experience smoother.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Fan game Sonic Robo Blast 2 gets a new tutorial, various improvements | GamingOnLinux

  Are you a Sonic fan and love checking out fan games? What about a 3D game made with the Doom Legacy port of Doom? Sonic Robo Blast 2 is a quality addition to the collection that’s quite unique. It’s not just another 2D platformer like the classics, instead attempts to be a full 3D recreation.

  You control movement with WASD and spacebar to jump, with camera being moved with either mouse or arrows. It’s genuinely good and available free. As someone who grew up with Sonic, I appreciate this. Hopefully you will enjoy it too.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Linux Magazine ☛ What’s Old Is News Again » Linux Magazine

  Tiling desktops are graphical environments in which windows open in a grid. They appeared early in Linux’s history and have always had a few followers, especially among developers. However, for the last two decades, tiling desktops were often ignored in the efforts to mimic Windows and macOS and to improve usability. However, in the last few years, tiling desktops have become more popular, most likely because modern computing power means that more users are working with more windows open. Today, users can choose from a variety of tiling desktops: Some have been around for years, and others are more recent.

  The idea behind tiling desktops is to reduce clutter on the desktop and make windows easier to find. By contrast, the standard or stacking desktop becomes less orderly with each open window. Most stacking desktops open windows in the upper left corner or some other default location. As users search through windows, the unwanted ones tend to be dragged aside, destroying what little order existed. In fact, the clutter is so great that many stacking desktops have a Show Desktop icon or widget. Others, like Ubuntu’s discarded Unity desktop, encourage users to open only one window at a time. Tiling desktops, on the other hand, arrange windows in a grid, making them easy to find. Should the windows become too numerous and too small for comfortable browsing, users can use virtual workspaces to add another grid. You can remove windows from the grid to increase their size and temporarily stack them on top of the grid. Another advantage of tiling desktops is that they can be easily navigated from the keyboard, although many also support a mouse.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • HowTo Geek ☛ What’s New in GNOME 42?

    GNOME 42, currently in beta, will be released on March 23, 2022. Fedora 36 and Ubuntu 22.04 will include this release of the popular Linux desktop environment. We spin it up and see what’s new.

    GNOME 40 brought a new workflow with horizontal theming and layouts. GNOME 41 built upon this new foundation by introducing the libadwaita shared library. This library provides the GNOME theming engine. It’s the software layer that gives GNOME the ability to use themes.

    The toolkit used to develop the GNOME desktop and native GNOME programs is called GTK. At one time it was an initialism that stood for GIMP ToolKit, but now the name is simply GTK. Well-behaved GTK applications that follow the GNOME human interface guidelines will reference libadwaita for stylesheets and other theme-centric information.

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ The Best New Features in GNOME 42

    GNOME 42 is released in a few weeks. I figured I’d whet your appetite by serving up a tasty sneak peek at the new features and key changes the update is set to bring.

    And boy is there plenty to talk about!

    GNOME 40 set a new direction for the course of free software’s most widely used desktop environment, a direction that GNOME 42 very much follows.

    With the horizontal desktop layout now in place developers turned their attention to upgrading other parts of the desktop stack. GNOME 42 features a plethora of GTK4/libawaita app ports, intros a retooled screenshot experience, and makes several notable performance upticks.

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ You Can Install GNOME’s New Terminal and Text Editor Apps on Ubuntu 22.04 – OMG! Ubuntu!

    GNOME 42‘s new Console and Text Editor apps are available to install in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

    Don’t get too excited by that sentence, mind. Neither Console nor Text Editor have bagged themselves a spot on Ubuntu’s (increasingly engorged) .iso. But both tools are, along with a bevvy of other GTK4/libadwaita ports, available in the Ubuntu 22.04 repo.

    All you have to do to try them out is run sudo apt install gnome-console gnome-text-editor (or take the scenic route by way of the Ubuntu Software app) and you’re away.

    But are they actually any good?

    Well, yes — but you have to keep in mind they aren’t designed to be power-user replacements.

Distributions

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Raleigh News And Observer ☛ Red Hat halting business operations in Russia, moves some employees out of Ukraine

    Red Hat, the Raleigh-based open-source software company, said Tuesday it is halting all sales and services to companies in Russia and Belarus — a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that has put Red Hat employees in harm’s way.

  • Update on our actions: War in Ukraine

    I’ve heard from many of you in response to last week’s announcement regarding the war in Ukraine, and I appreciate your feedback. First, let me be very clear — we have suspended all business in Russia. In addition, I want to give you an update on a few of the efforts underway to support our colleagues in the region.
    IBMers’ support for Ukrainian refugees in neighboring countries is truly inspiring. For example, a newly developed and deployed IBMer Resource Finder Map connects Ukrainian IBMers and IBM contractors fleeing their country with IBM colleagues in the immediate CEE region who can offer assistance, including lodging, transportation, food and supplies, for them and their families. It is heartening to see that hundreds of CEE employees have already signed on as volunteers in less than 24 hours.

  • Red Hat Is Discontinuing Sales and Services In Russia and Belarus

    Red Hat, the Raleigh-based open-source software company, said Tuesday it is halting all sales and services to companies in Russia and Belarus — a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that has put Red Hat employees in harm’s way.

  • Red Hat moves out of Russia | ZDNet

    The wave of companies cutting ties to the Russian government and companies now includes two top Linux and open-source powers: Red Hat and SUSE.

    SUSE moved first. SUSE CEO Melissa Di Donato watched with deep despair at Russia’s unwarranted invasion of Ukraine. On March 7th, Di Donato decided that SUSE would support humanitarian efforts to help refugees and victims of war. This is an especially challenging time for SUSE since many SUSE employees have Ukrainian family members.

    Now, SUSE is “evaluating all of our business relationships in Russia and has suspended all direct sales in Russia.” SUSE is also “observing all economic sanctions” and ready to comply with any additional sanctions.

    In the meantime, in the States, Paul Cormier, Red Hat’s president and CEO, went further. For Red Hat, with employees in both Ukraine and Russia, this wasn’t easy.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Bulk Convert2RHEL with Red Hat Satellite 6.10

    In Red Hat Satellite 6.10, we introduced a new feature that enables the bulk conversion of multiple hosts to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) using the Convert2RHEL utility. In this post, I will walk through the individual steps required to convert a CentOS Linux 7.9 host to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.9.

• Debian Family

  • Tails ☛ Tails – Tails 4.28 is out

    Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 4.19 or later to 4.28.

Devices/Embedded

• Linux Gizmos ☛ 96Boards CE SBC runs Linux on Renesas RZ/G2L or RZ/V2L

  Geniatech’s 96Boards CE Extended form-factor “Ahaura” and “Akitio” SBCs run Linux on Renesas’ 1.2GHz, dual -A55 RZ/G2L and NPU-equipped RZ/V2L variant, respectively, and offer up to 8GB RAM and 128GB eMMC, 2x GbE, 3x USB, HDMI, and 4G LTE.

  In Jan. 2021, Renesas announced a low-power RZ/G2L SoC for IoT, and later in the year introduced a pin-compatible and similarly Linux-driven, Cortex-A55 based RZ/V2L variant with a 1-TOPS NPU. Geniatech has now posted a product page for two almost identical 96Boards CE Extended SBCs that feature the SoCs: the Ahaura RS-G2L100 and Akitio RS-V2L100.

• CNX Software ☛ 96boards compliant Renesas RZ/G2L or RZ/V2L AI development board comes with built-in LTE Cat M1 modem – CNX Software

  Geniatech “AHAURA” RS-G2L100 / “AKITIO” RS-V2L100 is a 96boards CE Extended v2.0-compliant development board based on respectively Renesas RZ/G2L and RZ/V2L Cortex-A55/M33 AI processor and coupled with a Renesas LTE Cat M1 modem.

  Both RZ/G2L and RZ/V2L processors are basically the same, but the latter adds the “DRP-AI” (dynamically reconfigurable processor) AI accelerator for computer vision applications. The board also comes with up to 4GB RAM, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a wireless WiFi and Bluetooth module, as well as Full HD HDMI video output, plus some USB ports, and the usual low-speed and high-speed expansion connectors from the 96Boards standard.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino ☛ Meet the Nicla Vision: Love at first sight! | Arduino Blog

    We’re proud to announce a new addition to the Arduino ecosystem, the Nicla Vision.

    This is a brand new, ready-to-use, 2MP standalone camera that lets you analyze and process images on the edge for advanced machine vision and edge computing applications.

    Now you can add image detection, facial recognition, automated optical inspection, vehicle plate reading, gesture recognition and more to your projects. Nicla Vision has a powerful dual processor and is packed with features that make an infinite number of applications possible in building and industrial automation, safety and security, and prototyping. Everything from business-savvy predictive maintenance (by detecting and analyzing surface wear, for example) to user-friendly smart kiosks that anyone can explore via intuitive gestures. All true to Nicla’s mission to provide a new range of easy-to-use, cost-effective and accessible tools to advanced users and enthusiasts alike.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android Authority ☛ Google brings exclusive Android features to Samsung Galaxy S22, Tab S8

  • Android Headlines ☛ Samsung Rolls Out New Update To The US Galaxy A71 5G, Forgets Android 12

  • 9to5Google ☛ Android app ‘archive’ feature will let users free up storage – 9to5Google

  • Android Police ☛ Support Ukraine and get 28 Android games in latest Itch.io bundle

  • Express ☛ Google bans yet another Android app! Delete it now or pay a heavy price | Express.co.uk

  • Android Authority ☛ The best Wordle alternatives to play on your Android device

  • Android Central ☛ Samsung’s Galaxy A12 was the best-selling Android phone of 2021 | Android Central

  • XDA ☛ Material You’s Monet theme engine goes open source with Android 12L

  • 9to5Google ☛ Android 12L loses ‘show touches’ option for screen recorder – 9to5Google

  • Make Use Of ☛ Why Is Your Android Phone’s RAM Full, and Should You Clear It?

  • Android Police ☛ How to reset Adaptive Brightness settings on your Android phone

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• The Register UK ☛ DataStax updates K8ssandra to help Cassandra operate worldwide

  DataStax has released a new open-source Kubernetes operator for Cassandra, the wide-column store distributed database about to work across multiple clusters for the first time.

  K8ssandra is DataStax’s open-source distribution of Apache Cassandra which is designed specifically for Kubernetes and supports stateful workloads. Released today, the update also supports multiple clusters.

  The idea, DataStax says, is to allow users to deploy Cassandra-based applications that require high availability on Kubernetes, across multiple regions.

• CrowdSec: Why we support the OSI

  CrowdSec is a next-gen security tool. It’s open source and free. It locally blocks attacks based on both behavior and crowd-generated block lists, then calls on its community of sysadmins, devops & secops professionals to share back IPs detected as aggressive with other members of the CrowdSec community. It runs seamlessly on virtual machines, bare-metal servers, and containers, or it can be called directly from code via API. CrowdSec’s philosophy, culture and values mirror that of the Open Source Initiative, believing that if cybercriminals are collaborating to attack, then collaboration is also the best defense.

  [...]

  Having an open source approach brings us visibility, virality, new recruits, trust from our peers, and so much more. Scaling a network effect in cybersecurity with a tool like CrowdSec would just be impossible without open source. So for us, it’s natural to commit to giving back to the community, helping other projects, and supporting open source as broadly as we can.

  By sponsoring the OSI, we want to advance its mission to protect open source software, boost development, and build bridges among various open source communities so they can organize open source cooperation. There are so many projects that are created and maintained on goodwill and spare time by great professionals who often are not paid or even recognized for what they do. OSI is an organization that works to protect those projects and those collaborators. There are many companies out there benefitting from open source that don’t give back. At CrowdSec we know that because of our involvement with OSI, even if we fail as a company, our good work will live on.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • LWN ☛ Firefox 98 released [LWN.net]

      Version 98.0 of the Firefox browser is out. The big change this time is a new “optimized download flow” that is alleged to make the process of downloading files go much more smoothly. There are also some significant security fixes in this release.

    • Linuxiac ☛ Firefox 98 Arrives with a New Optimized Download Flow

      Mozilla releases Firefox 98, a new major version of the browser. The most notable change is the new optimized download flow.

      Firefox’s typical release period is four weeks (excluding urgent patch updates), which means a new version of Firefox is released every month. Following this release cycle, Firefox 98 is the third major browser update in 2022. Let’s cover some of the notable changes in this new version.

• FSF

  • FSF ☛ FSF job opportunity: program manager

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a Massachusetts 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect computer user freedom, seeks a motivated and talented Boston-based individual to be our full-time program manager.

    Reporting to the executive director, the program manager co-leads our campaigns team. This position develops and promotes longer-term resources and advocacy programs related to increasing the use of free software and expanding and advancing the free software movement. The program manager plays a key role in external communications, fundraising, member engagement, and special events.

  • GNU Projects

    • GNU ☛ GNU Health HMIS 4.0.1 patchset released!

      GNU Health 4.0.1 patchset has been released !

• Programming/Development

  • Update on GemView and Eva

    I’ve been working off and on mostly on squashing bugs and making these projects more robust. There were (and still are) a number of rough edges to smooth over. Things like making sure that the window and tab titles generally always match what is going on, giving the user more visual feedback about what is going on, and reporting errors. Ive added a spinner to the tab labels in Eva, which spins to indicate that a page is currently being loaded. No we set the title to “bookmarks” when viewing bookmark pages. And now when a page fails to load you get an error page instead, indicating the error.

  • Python

    • Program in Visual and Modular Blocks in Python

      PyFlow is an interactive Python development tool structured in open source graphs.

      With PyFlow you can create code blocks in which you can edit and run Python code, you can move and resize blocks in an infinite 2D plane. Just link the blocks to highlight dependencies, Pyflow will automatically run your blocks in the correct order.

  • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

    • Search for (exact) strings; report line, column and context

      GNU grep is a great utility but it can only report a search target’s line number. Suppose I search for the string “64″ in this tab-separated “demo” table with grep’s “-n” option…

  • Rust

    • The Rust Programming Language Blog: Security advisory for the regex crate (CVE-2022-24713)

      The Rust Security Response WG was notified that the regex crate did not properly limit the complexity of the regular expressions (regex) it parses. An attacker could use this security issue to perform a denial of service, by sending a specially crafted regex to a service accepting untrusted regexes. No known vulnerability is present when parsing untrusted input with trusted regexes.

      This issue has been assigned CVE-2022-24713. The severity of this vulnerability is “high” when the regex crate is used to parse untrusted regexes. Other uses of the regex crate are not affected by this vulnerability.

Standards/Consortia

• Linux Journal ☛ Simple Network Management Protocol – Not As Simple As You Would Suggest | Linux Journal

  The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) has been an integral part of monitoring network environments since its introduction in 1988. It has established itself as the de facto standard in network monitoring. Many manufacturers support the protocol and have implemented an SNMP agent on their network devices. These agents allow monitoring solutions to query various data, such as bandwidth, CPU load, network interfaces, etc., without installing an additional agent on network equipment.

  Especially with the increasing number of devices on a network, a simple and established method such as SNMP sounds like a great help to include components in monitoring quickly. Unfortunately, SNMP has a few flaws. The first part of this article will explain how SNMP works, while the second part will drill deeper into the issues with SNMP and how to deal with them.

  The protocol offers two methods to retrieve data from devices: polling and traps. With SNMP polling, a monitoring solution queries the data at user-specified time intervals from the SNMP agent. This active polling is used for status-based monitoring and is generally the recommended method. However, the disadvantage of SNMP polling is that the administrator does not notice if an event occurs between two queries, such as a brief change in the network interface status.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • USCERT ☛ SAP Releases March 2022 Security Updates | CISA

    SAP has released security updates to address vulnerabilities affecting multiple products. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

  • CISA ☛ Microsoft Releases March 2022 Security Updates | CISA

    Microsoft has released updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. A remote attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

  • CISA ☛ PTC Axeda agent and Axeda Desktop Server

    The affected product uses hard-coded credentials for its UltraVNC installation.

  • CISA ☛ CISA Releases Security Advisory on PTC Axeda Agent and Desktop Server | CISA

    CISA has released an Industrial Controls Systems Advisory (ICSA), detailing vulnerabilities in PTC Axeda agent and Axeda Desktop Server. Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities—collectively known as “Access:7”—could result in full system access, remote code execution, read/change configuration, file system read access, log information access, or a denial-of-service condition.

  • USCERT ☛ FBI Releases Indicators of Compromise for RagnarLocker Ransomware

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released a Flash report detailing indicators of compromise (IOCs) associated with ransomware attacks by RagnarLocker, a group of a ransomware actors targeting critical infrastructure sectors.

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • LWN ☛ DENT 2.0 released

        • PR Newswire ☛ DENT 2.0, Secure and Scalable Open Source Network Operating System Aimed at Small and Mid-Size Enterprises, Available Now

        • DENT 2.0, Secure and Scalable Open Source Network Operating System Aimed at Small and Mid-Size Enterprises, Released

        • Yahoo News ☛ DENT 2.0, Secure and Scalable Open Source Network Operating System Aimed at Small and Mid-Size Enterprises, Available Now

          The DENT Project, an open source network operating system utilizing the Linux Kernel, Switchdev, and other Linux based projects, today announced DENT 2.0 is available for immediate download. The “Beeblebrox” release adds key features utilized by distributed enterprises in retail and remote facilities, providing a secure and scalable Linux-based Network Operating System (NOS) for disaggregated switches adaptable to edge deployment. DENT provides a smaller, more lightweight NOS for use at the small, remote edges of enterprise networks.

        • FINOS: FINOS and The Linux Foundation Partner with Fintech Week London, Strengthening European Presence

        • Yahoo News ☛ FINOS and The Linux Foundation Partner with Fintech Week London, Strengthening European Presence

        • FINOS and The Linux Foundation Partner with Fintech Week London, Strengthening European Presence

          FINOS, the Fintech Open Source Foundation and financial sector arm of the Linux Foundation, and The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced its partnership with Fintech Week London. Their annual event, Open Source in Finance Forum (OSFF), will take place in London on 13 July, during Fintech Week London, which will run from 11 – 14 July.

  • Security

    • USCERT ☛ Mozilla Releases Security Updates for Firefox and Firefox ESR

      Mozilla has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in Firefox and Firefox ESR. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

  • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

    • Census II Report Details Critical Open Source Packages [Ed: Amber Ankerholz (conflict of interest) shilling Linux Foundation marketing garbage]

      Free and open source software (FOSS) is a foundation of the modern global economy, and ensuring the security of FOSS is vital the future of nearly all industries, according to the recent Census II report investigating the use of open source.

      Understanding the overall health, value, and security of FOSS is difficult “because it is produced in a decentralized and distributed manner. This distributed development approach makes it unclear how much FOSS, and precisely what FOSS projects, are most widely used,” the report states.

    • HowTo Geek ☛ New Dirty Pipe Linux Vulnerability Is the Worst in Years [Ed: False headline]

      Apparently, the vulnerability in the Linux kernel has been around since version 5.8, which was released in August 2020. It’s tracked as CVE-2022-0847. It allows overwriting data in arbitrary read-only files, which means attackers can escalate privileges, giving them access they shouldn’t have. Once privileges are escalated, they can do all sorts of things on a system.

      Creating an SSH key is just one of many actions an attacker can take when exploiting the vulnerability. One can hijack a SUID binary to create a root shell, and another can allow untrusted users to overwrite data in read-only files. These are severe attacks that could do all sorts of damage to a system.

      “It’s about as severe as it gets for a local kernel vulnerability,” Brad Spengler, president of Open Source Security, wrote in an email to Ars Technica. “Just like Dirty Cow, there’s essentially no way to mitigate it, and it involves core Linux kernel functionality.”

    • Linux Has Been Bitten By Its Most High-Severity Vulnerability in Years [Ed: Slashdot promotes the most misleading story]

    • Liliputing ☛ Lilbits: Archiving Android apps, postmarketOS for the F(x)tec Pro1, and the Dirty Pipe Linux vulnerability – Liliputing

      A serious vulnerability has been found in recent builds of the Linux kernel, allowing any local user to gain root access on an unpatched device… which could include a number of Android phones running Linux kernel 5.8 or later.

AccessNow ☛ Why internet shutdowns are even worse for women – Access Now

We all know internet shutdowns violate human rights and destroy people’s lives and livelihoods. For women around the world, they also take away crucial opportunities and exacerbate the inequality and injustice they already suffer. As we mark International Women’s Day today, it’s clear activists are making strides in bridging gender inequalities and securing women’s voting rights, freedom of movement, reproductive rights, and freedom from gender-based violence and workplace discrimination. But we need far more progress to attain a world where people are truly equal. The use of internet and communications technology can help bridge these gaps, or deepen them. We witness this every time a government shuts down the internet.

Desktop/Laptop

• Its FOSS ☛ 5 Things to Know When Someone Says Linux is Tough

  Linux is the least popular desktop operating system (OS) when considering Windows, macOS, and Linux as our only choices.

  Linux powers most of the servers, but that is not the case for consumer desktops/laptops.

  To make things worse, many assume that Linux is tough from other experiences, even without giving it a try.

Audiocasts/Shows

• LHS Episode #457: Linux Lads Deep Dive

  Hello and welcome to the 457th episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts invite co-host Conor Murphy of the Linux Lads podcast to talk about their show and a bunch of other topics related to Linux and Open Source. Also discussed is the Linux community in Ireland, specifically Dublin, and its global outreach. It’s an entertaining and informative talk and we hope you enjoy it. Thank you for listening and have a great week.

• Late Night Linux – Episode 167 – Late Night Linux

  A varied selection of Discoveries including suspending apps, easy VMs, and controlling pretty lights. Plus your feedback about Linux gaming, whether bug fixes should be more important than new features, and more.

Benchmarks

• Keep an eye on these versions — Comparing the performance of Oracle Linux 7 vs Oracle Linux 8 using the Phoronix Test Suite

  The Phoronix Test Suite (PTS)[1] is a comprehensive testing and benchmarking platform for assessing the performance of Linux systems. In this context, while comparing the performance of Oracle Linux 7 (OL7) and Oracle Linux 8 (OL8), where both are using the same kernel version, we noticed substantial performance deltas ranging up to 30% between the two. To investigate these deltas, we performed detailed analysis to identify the reasons. The resulting analysis has helped us to be cognizant of the importance of tool-chain versions and builds when making performance comparisions.

Applications

• Linux Links ☛ 10 Best Free and Open Source Host-Based Intrusion Detection Systems – LinuxLinks

  An intrusion detection system is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations.

  IDS types range in scope from single computers to large networks. The most common classifications are network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) and host-based intrusion detection systems (HIDS). A system that monitors important operating system files is an example of an HIDS, while a system that detects malicious traffic on a network is an example of an NIDS.

  Here’s our verdict on the finest HIDS. We only feature open source software here.

• Top 10 Ethical Hacking Tools in Kali Linux – TecAdmin

  There are 350 plus kali Linux tools that are used to automate our tasks during hacking and penetration testing. To increase time efficiency, Kali Linux tools are used that are already included in different versions of Kali Linux. They not only save time but also help us in getting the specific result by capturing accurate data. Here we describe the top 10 kali Linux tools that help us in hacking.

• Medevel ☛ Top 14 self-hosted web-based password managers for teams and businesses

  If you are an active internet user, then you have dozens of accounts with different passwords on many web services. Therefore, you will need to a password manager to keep your passwords and authentication private information in a secure place.

  The password manager apps are intended for this goal. They come in different shapes, characteristics, platform support, and different audiences.

  We covered some password managers here, but today we will cover web-based open-source password managers.

• Syslog-ng 3.36 news: better TLS 1.3, basic MacOS support, and many more

  Version 3.36 of syslog-ng brings us many interesting new features. There is now basic support for system() source on MacOS, TLS 1.3 ciphers can now be restricted, TLS keylog support was added, symlink creation to the latest file, and there are many new possibilities in syslog parsing.
  From this blog, you can learn about some of the new 3.36 features, and we will test symlink creation, which is a community-contributed feature.

Instructionals/Technical

• Servy – A Tiny Web Server to Run Basic Website

  Web servers can be generalized into two segments; the ones for running dynamic sites with configured complexities like databases software and the ones for running a simple static web front-end.

  Servy web server qualifies as an ideal candidate for running a simple/basic website with no backend/logic code attached to it.

  This article will walk us through understanding and configuring the Servy web server so that you can be able to comfortably run your simple websites before associating them with a backend code.

• ID Root ☛ How To Install Adoptium Temurin on AlmaLinux 8 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Adoptium Temurin on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Eclipse Temurin is a project that focuses on building codes and processes that support the building of runtime binaries and the associated technologies used across the Java ecosystem.

  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 Temurin on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and Rocky Linux distributions.

• Red Hat Official ☛ What the first five lines of Linux’s top command tell you [Ed: No, IBM Red Hat, top is not part of Linux. It's not a kernel module.]

  The top utility is a commonly used tool for displaying system-performance information. It dynamically shows administrators which processes are consuming processor and memory resources. Top is incredibly handy.

• How to allow GUI root login on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux

  By default, the root user is not able to log in to the GUI on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. This is a security feature and it is common convention to only start a desktop environment as an unprivileged user. However, on test systems and in edge scenarios, it can be useful to log in to the GUI as the root user.

  In this tutorial, you will learn how to log in to the GNOME desktop environment as the root user on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. Follow our step by step instructions below to implement this configuration.

• How to install RStudio on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux

  RStudio is a free integrated development environment for the R programming language. R is an open source programming language (software package) and environment used mainly for statistical data analysis. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

  As with most other programming languages, it is easier to work on your projects inside of an IDE such as RStudio. In this tutorial you will find the step by step instructions to install RStudio on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.

• Ubuntu 22.04 open HTTP port 80 and HTTPS port 443 with ufw

  If you plan to host a website on your Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux system, it will be necessary to allow HTTP port 80 and HTTPS port 443 through the firewall, or else incoming connections will not make it to the web server.

  Ubuntu 22.04 uses the ufw firewall by default, which stands for “uncomplicated firewall.” When the firewall is enabled, it will block all incoming connections by default. It will be necessary to configure the ufw firewall to allow incoming connections on certain ports if you expect to host any services, such as a web server.

  In this tutorial, we will explain how to open HTTP port 80 and HTTPS port 443 on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish with the ufw firewall. HTTP and HTTPS protocols are primarily used by web services such as, but not limited to, Apache or Nginx web servers.

• Enable SSH on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux

  SSH stands for secure shell and is the primary method of remote access and administration on Linux systems. SSH is a client-server service providing secure, encrypted connections over a network connection. After downloading Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish or upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04, it will probably be one of the first things you want to configure.

  In this tutorial, we will go over the step by step instructions to install and configure SSH on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Server or Desktop Linux. This will help you whether you just want to connect to remote systems via SSH or you want your own system to accept incoming connections as well.

• Bash script: Pause script before proceeding

  Normally, a Bash script will execute each line of code the moment it reaches it, then immediately move on to the next. But it is also possible to add pauses to a Bash script in order to delay it or allow the user time to respond to a prompt, etc.

  In this tutorial, you will learn how to add pauses to a Bash script on a Linux system. Check out our examples below to see how pauses can be facilitated by the read or sleep command, and how this functionality has practical use in some scripts.

• Trend Oceans ☛ How to auto-create a 1 GB or large file in Linux – TREND OCEANS

  What would you do if someone asked you to create a file size of 1 GB or more in Linux? Most likely, you will use compression utilities like tar or gzip to create a file size of around 1 GB or more, which is not optimal at all, because first, you will collect data and then compress, even though you will not be sure about the size of the file, right?

  Although you can use multiple utilities to achieve this task without any effort, just run a single command and your large file is automatically served to your system.

• How to Move a File in Linux – Linux Stans

  In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to move a file in Linux. Step-by-step, beginner-friendly instructions for the Linux terminal.

  If you’re using a GUI, you just need to drag and drop the file with your mouse. This tutorial will be for the command-line interface (CLI), or Terminal.

  These instructions also work for other Unix-based systems, like macOS and BSD.

  All of these examples are practical and useful for everyday tasks, with real-world use cases.

• Install Linux Kernel 5.16 on Rocky Linux 8 / Alma Linux 8

  The kernel is one of the fundamental parts of Linux distributions. It offers us, among other things, support for our hardware and many other things. Many define it as the heart of the system. Today, you will learn how to install Linux Kernel 5.16 on Rocky Linux 8 / Alma Linux 8.

• UNIX Cop ☛ I2P SETUP FOR SQUID OUTPROXY – Unix / Linux the admins Tutorials

  The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is a fully encrypted private network layer that has been developed with privacy and security by design in order to provide protection for your activity, location and your identity. The software ships with a router that connects you to the network and applications for sharing, communicating and building.

• Citizix ☛ How to install and configure docker In OpenSUSE Leap 15

  Docker is an open source containerization platform. It enables developers to package applications into containers—standardized executable components combining application source code with the operating system (OS) libraries and dependencies required to run that code in any environment.

  Docker is a set of platform as a service products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. Containers are isolated from one another and bundle their own software, libraries and configuration files; they can communicate with each other through well-defined channels.

  In this guide we are going to explore various options to install docker in OpenSUSE Leap15.

• UNIX Cop ☛ How to install Strapi API Platform on Ubuntu/Debian Servers -

  Strapi is an open-source content management system which is developed on NodeJS and MongoDB which helps in creating database-driven websites, APIs and applications etc. It provides many features like a great Admin Panel, Content Management, API Generator etc. The API Endpoints created through Strapi can be adapted to your own needs. It’s a self-hosted application.

• ID Root ☛ How To Install Showfoto on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Showfoto on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Showfoto is a fast and powerful image editing tool that comes with all the standard photo editing functionalists such as transformation, filtering, adding effects, metadata editing, and many more. It is a standalone photo editor of the DigiKam project. This application supports various image formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc.

  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 Showfoto image viewer 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.

• UNIX Cop ☛ How To Install Envoy Proxy on CentOS

  Envoy is a high-performance C++ distributed proxy designed for single services and applications.

  Envoy Proxy is a modern, high performance, small footprint edge and service proxy.Envoy is most comparable to software load balancers such as Nginx and HAProxy. Originally written and deployed at Lyft, Envoy now has a vibrant contributor base and is an official Cloud Native Computing Foundation project.

Games

• PS4/Switch/Linux Release: pEMU 5.1 (NES/SNES/Arcade emulator suite) – Wololo.net

  Developer CPasJuste has released pEMU 5.1 for the PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Linux. These are pretty stable emulators that can provide a very good alternative to Retroarch.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Heroic Games Launcher gets closer to a Flathub release | GamingOnLinux

  Heroic Games Launcher is a great multi-platform alternative client for Epic Games and GOG, which helps get your games working on Linux and Steam Deck and a new release is out with version 2.2.2.

  The new release brings some fixes to the newer GOG integration, and a number of settings and adjustments to help prepare for the upcoming Flatpak package to make it available on Flathub which they’ve been getting help from the Bottles app developer on.

• Ubuntu Pit ☛ Top 5 Best Strategy Games for Linux To Enjoy Tactical Gameplay

  When it is about the best gaming genres, strategy games come in the very first place. In most strategy games, you have to use your tactical skill with the battling experience. So, it is the all-time favorite genre of most players. Today, we will talk about the best strategy games for Linux users. Generally, Linux is considered the best alternative PC gaming platform to Windows. So, there are tons of features-rich strategy games available for Linux users.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Linux sticks above 1% still on the Steam Hardware Survey | GamingOnLinux

  After a few days delay, the Steam Hardware Survey has now been updated with the latest numbers and Linux is still just about holding above 1%.

  It has seen another small drop though of 0.04% so the Linux user share is now at 1.02%. As you can see on our dedicated Steam Tracker.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ itch.io has another huge charity bundle, this one supports Ukraine | GamingOnLinux

  Game store itch.io has put up another massive charity bundle, and it’s your chance to get a ton of games plus funds go on to support Ukraine.

  There’s close to 600 games included, with 991 total items in the bundle. It was arranged by Brandon Sheffield of Necrosoft Games and includes some really amazing titles. Funds go on directly to International Medical Corps and Voices of Children. No Steam keys are provided on this one, so you will need to use itch for all games included.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Steam Deck update brings an FPS-only mode for the overlay | GamingOnLinux

  Valve has release the latest client update for the Steam Deck and it brings a highly requested feature. Now, there’s another additional mode for the performance overlay that allows you to just see the FPS without overloading your screen with other information.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Heroes of Might and Magic II reimplementation ‘fheroes2′ gets some nice AI upgrades | GamingOnLinux

  If you want to play the classic Heroes of Might and Magic II on Steam Deck and Linux with a more up to date game engine, that includes plenty of enhancements you should look to fheroes2.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Kdenlive 21.12.3 released – Kdenlive

    The last maintenance release of the 21.12 cycle is out with lots of usability polishing of keyframes, subtitles and proxy clips. Audio thumbnails on high zoom levels got a major performance optimization. This version also fixes 5 crashes including Wayland layout switching, time remapping module among others.

    With this release we switched our AppImage building to KDE Craft that is already in use for our Windows and macOS builds. With this step our packages become more consistent in regard of bundled dependency versions across all platforms. Also the maintenance becomes less time consuming giving developers more time to focus on coding rather than packaging. We encourage users to reset their configurations to avoid any possible issues by going to menu Help -> Reset Configuration.

  • 9to5Linux ☛ KDE Plasma 5.24.3 LTS Improves the Plasma Wayland Session for Multi-GPU Systems

    KDE Plasma 5.24.3 is here two weeks after the Plasma 5.24.2 update and brings more improvements for the Plasma Wayland session, especially for multi-monitor and multi-GPU systems. For example, it fixes a major regression in Plasma 5.24.2 that broke multi-monitor and multi-GPU configurations when using Wayland.

    Also for the Plasma Wayland session, this update improves screen sharing, recording, or casting in full-screen applications, improves the virtual keyboard to no longer overlap half of the vertical panel setup, and improves colors to no longer appear dithered on some hardware.

  • KDE Plasma 5.24.3, Bugfix Release for March – KDE Community

    Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.24.3.

    Plasma 5.24 was released in February 2022 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

Distributions

• Its FOSS ☛ Linux Release Roundup #22.10: Escuelas Linux 7.4, LMDE 5 Beta, Budgie 10.6, and More Releases

  Escluelas Linux is an education-focused distribution with all essential tools for a classroom and teachers.

  The latest update is a fix to prevent LibreOffice Calc from crashing. You need to make sure that you use Escuelas Linux 7.4 (64-bit) or 6.18 (32-bit) if you want to get rid of any issues.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • openSUSE Selected as Mentor Organization

    Being selected as one of the 203 open-source projects for GSoC gives openSUSE mentors an opportunity to guide aspiring student developers looking to gain experience with open-source projects.

    openSUSE’s dedicated website 101.opensuse.org offers several projects for GSoC students. Projects available this year include quality assurance testing project openQA, input framework ibus, user-space implementation PRoot and configuration management project Uyuni.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Red Hat’s response to the war in Ukraine

    I’m confident that I speak for all of us when I say that the still unfolding war in Ukraine is heartbreaking. As a company, we stand in unity with everyone affected by the violence and condemn the Russian military’s invasion of Ukraine. We add our voices to those calling for peace and will continue to work to enable the safety of our impacted associates and their families in any way we can.

    The safety, security, and well-being of our associates remain our top priority. The cross-functional team we established several weeks ago has connected directly with every Red Hatter in Ukraine and Russia and will continue to ensure they have the support and resources they need. We have helped Red Hatters in Ukraine and their families (including spouses, children and family members) move safely to nearby countries and continue to help those who remain in the country in any way possible. In the last few days alone, Red Hat-organized buses have safely transported several dozen of our Ukrainian associates’ family members across the border to Poland. We are also supporting our associates in Russia. And for any Red Hatter that needs them, no matter where you are located, we have additional well-being resources available.

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ IT talent: 3 tips to kickstart employee career development

    According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, approximately 4.5 million employees resigned in November of 2021. Predictably, that has spurred plenty of talk about retention along with more investment in employee experience programs. But there has not been enough discussion about how to specifically retain IT staff given their essential role in today’s evolving organizations.

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ IT leadership: 5 ways to hire and retain women in your IT organization

    I recently spoke to an audience of students and graduates in the Women in IT Management WITM community of Ryerson University’s IT Management degree program about my experience as a woman in the business world.

    The students’ questions stayed in my mind after the event: “I’m a young mother of three – what do I put on my resume to show that I’m capable of doing a role [even if I] lack the formal work experience?” “How do I overcome the stigma of being a mother and entering the IT workforce for the first time?”

    These same questions could come from a broader audience – from women not enrolled in degree programs, for example, or women re-entering the workforce after a period of leave.

  • Inject custom JDK Flight Recorder events in containerized applications

    The JDK Mission Control (JMC) agent is a powerful tool that allows users to inject custom JDK Flight Recorder (JFR) events at runtime without needing to restart the Java virtual machine. Just as the JMC agent plugin simplifies the process of using the agent in a non-containerized environment, the Cryostat agent plugin does the same for containerized environments.

    JMC agent support is now merged into Cryostat, and Cryostat supports various API handlers for using the JMC agent in a containerized environment. This article introduces the Cryostat agent and its API handlers.

• Debian Family

  • Sparky 2022.03 – SparkyLinux

    Sparky 2022.03 of the (semi-)rolling line is out, which is based on Debian testing “Bookworm”.

    The new iso images provide:
    – all packages upgraded as of March 6, 2022
    – Linux kernel 5.16.11 (5.16.12 & 5.17-rc7 in sparky unstable repos)
    – Calamares 3.2.53
    – Firefox 96.0.3 (firefox-sparky 98.0 & firefox-esr-sparky 91.7.0esr (Mozilla builds) available in Sparky repos)
    – Thunderbird 91.6.1
    – LibreOffice 7.3.1 RC1
    – added a dock-like vala-panel with custom config which provides favorite apps launcher on the left side of your desktop (via ‘sparky-launcher’ package)
    – small improvements

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Its FOSS ☛ Change Linux System Language (Locale) on Ubuntu and Debian

    It’s been some time since I wrote something on It’s FOSS. The truth is that I’ve been writing for a Spanish version of It’s FOSS. If you’ve not visited it and/or you’re a Spanish speaker, please visit It’s FOSS en Español and check all the Linux content in Spanish.

    You may be wondering why I’m sharing this fact with you. It’s because this post includes this new page as an example.

    At the time of doing a clean installation of your favorite Linux distro, the system asks you to choose a main language. Even though it’s not frequent, some people consider changing that language to a new one later on, like me for example.

  • Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 725

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 725 for the week of February 27 – March 5, 2022. The full version of this issue is available here.

Devices/Embedded

• CubicleNate ☛ Commodore 64 Impostor | My Retro Computer mini-ITX Computer – CubicleNate’s Techpad

  The Commodore 64 is “famous” for being the most prolific computer of the past. For many people it in the 80s, it was their first computer and as it does hold that position for me. It has been and remains today the computer I get incredible joy out of using. When My Retro Computer made this available in recent time, I purchased it and conducted an analysis of the case design, and built it out into the computer of my childhood dreams.

• Linux Gizmos ☛ Compact Elkhart Lake system loads up on USB and serial ports

  Nexcom’s rugged, Linux-ready “NISE 109” embedded PC combines Intel’s Elkhart Lake with up to 16GB DDR4, 2x GbE, 6x USB, 4x COM, 2.5-inch SATA, DP, HDMI, M.2, and mini-PCIe.

  In December, Nexcom announced a compact NISE 53 embedded system powered by Intel’s Elkhart Lake. The company has now followed up with a larger, slightly more feature-rich NISE 109 system based on the same SoC. Although it lacks the third GbE port, additional M.2 B-key slot, and triple HDMI ports of the NISE 53, the NISE 109 doubles the serial ports, adds two more USB ports, and adds dual audio jacks and a 2.5-inch SATA bay.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • CNX Software ☛ ESP8285 WiFi DIP module replaces ATMega328P MCU on Arduino UNO board (Crowdfunding) – CNX Software

    Released over 10 years ago, Arduino UNO is still the best-selling Arduino board, but lacking WiFi in the IoT era is not ideal, so Gianluca Martino, Arduino co-founder and working with the company until 2015, decided to design the Jolly DIP module based on ESP8285 WiFi chip that can replace the ATmega328P 8-bit AVR DIP-40 microcontroller.

    Since ESP8285 cannot provide all I/Os, notably analog inputs offered by ATmega328P, Gianluca combined it with the ATMega328PB microcontroller in a compact SMD package to offer firmware compatibility plus WiFi connectivity in the same DIP form factor.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • 9to5Google ☛ Android 12.1 March security patch OTA for Pixel rolling out – 9to5Google

  • India Times ☛ Samsung Galaxy F23 5G with 50MP camera and Android 12 launched, price starts at Rs 17,499 – Times of India

  • India Times ☛ Explained: What are tiny green dots on Android smartphones and why are they important – Times of India

  • Android Headlines ☛ The Most Popular Android eSports Games Revealed

  • Android Central ☛ Nothing’s upcoming Android phone may have just leaked for the first time | Android Central

  • How to Connect an Android Phone to a Chromebook Using Phone Hub

  • 8 Best Ways to Fix Mobile Hotspot Not Working on Android – Gadgets To Use

  • Android Authority ☛ The best Wordle alternatives to play on your Android device

  • Forbes ☛ Three Manufacturers Will Unlock Android’s Powerful Future

  • Android Police ☛ Android’s ‘hamburger’ menus are making a comeback, but I hope it’s a short one

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla ☛ Disney and Pixar’s “Turning Red” movie Browser Wallpapers only available on Firefox for Android and iOS [Ed: Mozilla is pushing DRM again. And later it wonders why ardent supporters of Firefox abandon in droves and won't recommend this Web browser anymore..]

      Last month we created new Firefox desktop colorways celebrating Disney and Pixar’s “Turning Red” streaming only on Disney+ March 11 (subscription required. 18+ to subscribe). It’s a fun way to show your personality by changing the way your Firefox browser looks, with colors and moods inspired by some of the main characters in the film. Today, we’ve got mobile wallpapers inspired by the all-new movie, based on the coming-of-age story of Mei Lee, a teen who when she gets too excited, transforms into a giant red panda (fun fact: a red panda is also known as a fire fox!). We’ve also created a destination for all things 2002 nostalgia and will be having conversations with people about their journeys to embrace their true colors online.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Word-style border fixes in Writer: pages, tables and paragraphs

    Writer now has a set of improvements to better render Word-style borders around pages, tables and paragaphs. This required adjusting how we perform automatic mirroring and also to make sure that clipping is done the Word way.

  • Enabling Calc support for 16384 columns by default

    Last couple of weeks I have been working on the 16k columns support in Calc. There’s been a lot of work on this already by Noel and others, but so far this has been hidden behind the experimental option, and normally documents open only with the “normal” 1024 columns support. The goal of this work is to finish the 16k support stable enough for it to be the default, so that people who need this many columns can finally get them without any complications.

    As of now all Calc tests pass with the default switched to 16k, and I’ve also dealt with all the known problems from tdf#133764 (minus few rare corner cases that I can deal with later). But I’m pretty sure there are more hidden problems lurking, either crashes because of incorrect bounds checking, or performance problems when some code suddenly deals with 16x more columns. So the next step is to enable this by default in master and collect compl… feedback from guin… testers :).

  • Use Range Based For Loops – EasyHack

    Because for loops are a powerful tool in C/C++, they are one of the desirable tools when you want to do something repeatedly, or process elements of a data structures. But there many ways to write a for loop. Some forms of it are easier to use, read, write and understand, and some are not. Range based for loops are discussed in this article. They can be good if you know where to use them.

  • Document Foundation ☛ March 8th, International Women’s Day

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • GNU ☛ New community server for GNU Health HMIS and Thalamus in Germany

      This is a fresh installation with Debian GNU/Linux 11. The host name is the same (federation.gnuhealth.org). The box provides the demo GNU Health Hospital Management System, Thalamus (GH Federation message and authentication server) and the demo for the GH Federation Health and demographics Database.

    • Felipe Borges: GSoC 2022: GNOME Foundation has been accepted as a mentor organization!

      We are happy to announce that GNOME has been accepted as a mentor organization for Google Summer of Code 2022!

      New contributors will be reaching out in our communication channels for information about the program and to discuss project ideas, please point them to gsoc.gnome.org.

    • GIMP is a GSoC 2022 mentor organization

      Up till 2013, GIMP was a regular at the Summer of Code. Ever since then we haven’t applied. Nine years have passed, so we decided to give it a new try and 2 days ago, we received an email: GNU Image Manipulation program is officially a Google Summer of Code 2022 mentor organization!

      If anyone is interested, it could be a good opportunity to jump into the development of a huge desktop program used by millions of people. Here are some ideas of what you could possibly work on: wiki with list of possible project ideas.

      On our side, we are interested in realistic projects which can really be finished or at least broken down in usable parts. Our list of ideas is mostly informative and we very much welcome people coming with their own ideas. If you want to participate, come discuss with us on IRC.

• Programming/Development

  • Barry Kauler ☛ OpenEmbedded Dunfell revision-8 compile

    I have sync’ed my “quirky” layer of OpenEmbedded with the latest release of the Dunfell series, 3.1.14 released in February 2022, and backported some packages (xorg, mesa, llvm, libdrm) from “master-next” branch of OE (which I think is going to be the Kirkstone release due out in April 2022).

  • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

    • Show tcp connections sorted by Host / Most connections Using awk, cut, netstat, sort, uniq

Standards/Consortia

• Khronos Releases Vulkan SC 1.0 Open Standard for Safety-Critical Accelerated Graphics and Compute

  Today, The Khronos® Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced acceleration interoperability standards, announced the public release of the royalty-free Vulkan® Safety-Critical (SC) 1.0 API Specification to enable safety-critical industries to deploy state-of-the-art GPU graphics and compute acceleration while meeting the highest levels of functional safety requirements. The Vulkan SC Conformance Test Suite is also freely available in open source, and multiple vendors have officially-conformant Vulkan SC 1.0 implementations. Industry feedback on the specification is welcome at the Vulkan SC specification GitHub repository.

Hardware

• CNX Software ☛ COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns in Shenzhen and Hong Kong delay some projects – CNX Software

  This may read like January or February 2020 headlines with disruption to shipping and manufacturing in China due to a “new coronavirus”, but it’s happening again, particularly in Hong Kong and Shenzhen where COVID-19 case numbers have jumped and the governments have implemented strict measures to attempt to contain it.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Qt ☛ Embedded programmatic digital advertising explained

    Today, the FAANG and S&P 500 companies rely on more than just selling their products to satisfy their growth goals. They also establish themselves as media owners and rent out their digital contact points to media buyers who wish to advertise to end-users. Can this be applied to your business too? In this blog post, we dive into the actors and mechanics behind digital advertising. If you are curious about the different use cases of digital advertising in embedded devices, please visit the previous blog post in the series.

  • Google Play doesn’t work properly on T-Mobile lately, unless you’re using a VPN. – BaronHK’s Rants

    So something involving T-Mobile’s network is preventing Google Play from working. Apps either won’t download at all “Pending” or they’ll partially download and then stop, but connecting to a VPN allows it to work.

  • Security

    • LWN ☛ Security updates for Tuesday [LWN.net]

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (gif2apng and twisted), Mageia (golang, kernel, and webmin), openSUSE (chromium, cyrus-sasl, and opera), Red Hat (virt:rhel and virt-devel:rhel), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (cyrus-sasl), and Ubuntu (glibc and redis).

    • USCERT ☛ CISA’s Zero Trust Guidance for Enterprise Mobility Available for Public Comment [Ed: Mobile devices far too back doored to be considered trustworthy]

      CISA has released a draft version of Applying Zero Trust Principles to Enterprise Mobility for public comment. The paper guides federal agencies as they evolve and operationalize cybersecurity programs and capabilities, including cybersecurity for mobility. The public comment period will close April 18, 2022.

      Executive Order 14028: Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, issued May 12, 2021, requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch departments and agencies to adopt Zero Trust (ZT) architectures to protect the government’s information resources, of which federal mobility is an integral part. The guidance highlights the need for special consideration for mobile devices and associated enterprise security management capabilities due to their technological evolution and ubiquitous use.

    • Kushal Das: Solid Project, WebID and privacy [Ed: Solid cannot be taken seriously also because it's outsourced to Microsoft's proprietary software prison]

      In my last post I mentioned about Solid Project, and while digging more into it I got more questions on privacy issues. Let us break it down from beginning:

      [...]

      In my mind this is a privacy nightmare. The WebID spec has section about security considerations, but nothing about privacy implications.

    • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

      • SUSE statement on “Dirty Pipe” attack | SUSE Communities

        On Monday, March 7th, security researcher Max Kellermann published a new software vulnerability that affect users of the Linux Kernel.
        The vulnerability, called Dirty Pipe (CVE-2022-0847) , impacts Linux Kernels 5.8 and later, and allows local attackers to overwrite files even if they had only read permissions, allowing for easy privilege escalation.

        The issue is triggered by a combination of two bugs, one bug in Linux Kernels 4.9 and newer and made exploitable by the second bug introduced in Linux Kernel 5.8.

      • Silicon Angle ☛ ‘Dirty Pipe’ Linux vulnerability allows an attacker to overwrite data – SiliconANGLE

        A newly revealed vulnerability in the Linux kernel allows an attacker to overwrite data in arbitrary read-only files.

        Detailed today by security researchers Max Kellermann and dubbed “Dirty Pipe,” the vulnerability leads to privilege escalation, since unprivileged processes can inject code into root processes. The vulnerability, officially named CVE-2022-0847, affects Linux Kernel 5.8 and later versions, even on Android devices, but has been fixed in Linux versions 5.16.11, 5.15.25 and 5.10.102.

        Kellermann explains that he found the vulnerability after receiving a support ticket about corrupt files a year ago. The customer complained that the access logs downloaded could not be decompressed. Kellermann confirmed the issue, fixed the issue manually and then closed the ticket, but the issue then occurred again and again.

      • Duo ☛ Serious ‘Dirty Pipe’ Bug Patched in Linux Kernel | Decipher

        A newly disclosed vulnerability in the Linux kernel could allow an attacker to write any data into an arbitrary file and gain elevated privileges. The bug affects the major Linux distributions going back to version 5.8 and Android, but a fix was included in the latest Linux kernel and Android releases in late February.
        Many vulnerabilities are discovered by researchers who are digging into a particular app or code base, looking for potential issues. But this flaw (CVE-2022-0847) has an unusual origin story. It began in February 2021 when Max Kellermann received a support ticket from a customer of IONOS, the hosting provider where he works. The customer was having an issue decompressing nightly log files, and Kellermann discovered a corrupt file on the log server. He found a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) error in the file, which he fixed and then moved on. The same issue happened several more times in the next couple of months, and Kellermann found each time that the contents of the file looked correct, save for the CRC error.

      • Linux has been bitten by its most high-severity vulnerability in years | Ars Technica

        Linux has yet another high-severity vulnerability that makes it easy for untrusted users to execute code capable of carrying out a host of malicious actions including installing backdoors, creating unauthorized user accounts, and modifying scripts or binaries used by privileged services or apps.

      • The Register UK ☛ Linux distributions patch kernel privilege escalation flaw • The Register

        A Linux local privilege escalation flaw dubbed Dirty Pipe has been discovered and disclosed along with proof-of-concept exploit code.

        The flaw, CVE-2022-0847, was introduced in kernel version 5.8 and fixed in versions 5.16.11, 5.15.25 and 5.10.102.

        It can be exploited by a normal logged-in user or a rogue running program to gain root-level privileges; it can also be used by malicious apps to take over vulnerable Android devices. Max Kellermann said he found the programming blunder and reported it to the kernel security team in February, which issued patches within a few days. By now these should be filtering through to affected Linux distros.

        The bug can be abused to add or overwrite data in sensitive read-only files, such as removing the root password from /etc/passwd allowing anyone on the system to get superuser access, or temporarily altering a setuid binary to grant root privileges.

      • TechRadar ☛ This major Linux security vulnerability has been fixed, so patch now | TechRadar

        If you’re running a Linux distro on your computer or use an Android smartphone, you should install the latest updates immediately as a severe security vulnerability has been found and patched in the Linux kernel.

        The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-0847 and dubbed “Dirty Pipe”, was discovered by a software developer named Max Kellerman at the web hosting company IONOS earlier this year.

      • Hacker News ☛ Researchers Warn of Linux Kernel ‘Dirty Pipe’ Arbitrary File Overwrite Vulnerability

        Linux distributions are in the process of issuing patches to address a newly disclosed security vulnerability in the kernel that could allow an attacker to overwrite arbitrary data into any read-only files and allow for a complete takeover of affected systems.

        Dubbed “Dirty Pipe” (CVE-2022-0847, CVSS score: 7.8) by IONOS software developer Max Kellermann, the flaw “leads to privilege escalation because unprivileged processes can inject code into root processes.”

        Kellerman said the bug was discovered after digging into a support issue raised by one of the customers of the cloud and hosting provider that concerned a case of a “surprising kind of corruption” affecting web server access logs.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Wired ☛ Google’s New Tech Can Read Your Body Language—Without Cameras

        WHAT IF YOUR computer decided not to blare out a notification jingle because it noticed you weren’t sitting at your desk? What if your TV saw you leave the couch to answer the front door and paused Netflix automatically, then resumed playback when you sat back down? What if our computers took more social cues from our movements and learned to be more considerate companions?

        It sounds futuristic and perhaps more than a little invasive—a computer watching your every move? But it feels less creepy once you learn that these technologies don’t have to rely on a camera to see where you are and what you’re doing. Instead, they use radar. Google’s Advanced Technology and Products division—better known as ATAP, the department behind oddball projects such as a touch-sensitive denim jacket—has spent the past year exploring how computers can use radar to understand our needs or intentions and then react to us appropriately.

        This is not the first time we’ve seen Google use radar to provide its gadgets with spatial awareness. In 2015, Google unveiled Soli, a sensor that can use radar’s electromagnetic waves to pick up precise gestures and movements. It was first seen in the Google Pixel 4′s ability to detect simple hand gestures so the user could snooze alarms or pause music without having to physically touch the smartphone. More recently, radar sensors were embedded inside the second-generation Nest Hub smart display to detect the movement and breathing patterns of the person sleeping next to it. The device was then able to track the person’s sleep without requiring them to strap on a smartwatch.

      • Bruce Schneier ☛ Using Radar to Read Body Language – Schneier on Security

        “Privacy-friendly” is a relative term.

        These technologies are coming. They’re going to be an essential part of the Internet of Things.

Monopolies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Open Source Zone grinds away at patent trolls [Ed: SJVN (in ZDNet) as shameless Microsoft spinner, who also distracts from the underlying problem, which is software patents (he’s paid to do this); maybe the editor is sneaking in the Microsoft bits]

      Patent trolls, aka Patent Assertion Entities (PAE)s, have plagued open-source software for ages. Over the years though, other groups have risen up to keep them from stealing from the companies and organizations that actually use patents’ intellectual property (IP). One such group, Unified Patents, an international organization of over 200 businesses, has been winning for the last two years. This is their story to date.

      Unified Patents brings the fight to the trolls. It deters patent trolls from attacking its members by making it too expensive for the troll to win. The group does this by examining troll patents and their activities in various technology sectors (Zones). The United Patents Open Source Software Zone (OSS Zone) is the newest of these Zones.

Applications

• PC Linux ☛ MP3 Bitrate Batch Convertor

  Call me old fashioned if you must, but I usually listen to the radio when I’m driving in my pickup truck. I usually listen to news talk radio, country & western music, and classic rock & roll. The radio in my truck also has a MP3 CD player, as well as USB ports that I have no idea of what to do with (owner’s manual? Meh! tl;dr! … alright … alright … I finally read THAT section of the manual from a PDF of my truck’s owner’s manual that I downloaded online). Every once in a while, when the kids are in the truck and we’re all “headed down the highway,” I’ll put in the MP3 CD I made for my daughter (you can put hours and hours of music on a MP3 CD). It’s full of music from some of her favorite movies … Frozen, Frozen II, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Moana, Mary Poppins, and a smattering of some of her favorite pop/rock songs. Those usually are classic rock. Queen and The Beatles are her favorite bands. Hey … the young girl has GREAT taste!

  Well, today it seems like everyone has a podcast. To be perfectly honest, I had no idea how many podcasts are available. So, ok. I’m late to the podcast party. Despite being around for quite a while, I’ve never jumped on the whole podcast or streaming bandwagon. For a noob like me, the number of podcasts out there is mind numbing. So, especially when I’m listening to news talk radio, someone out there is advertising a podcast on some random topic.

  Lately, I’ve been hearing advertisements for a new (to me anyways) podcast. It sounded like something I might be interested in, full of espionage, intrigue, drama, etc. It’s called “The Agent.” It’s about a KGB agent during the height of the “Cold War,” who slipped into the U.S. unnoticed, and managed to blend into the everyday fabric of life while carrying out his KGB tasks. So, I went looking for it.

Instructionals/Technical

• PC Linux ☛ Skrooge, Revisited, Part 2: Importing Other File Formats

  In my previous article, I offered some tips for using Skrooge more efficiently. After getting started with the program by manually entering two months’ worth of my most recent transactions, I became more adventurous and tried importing all of my checkbook data — from June 2019 to the present — into Skrooge. (I do my bookkeeping redundantly with GnuCash, HomeBank as well as a LibreOffice Calc checkbook template).

  One of Skrooge’s strengths is its impressive import / export capabilities. A list of supported file formats is available at https://skrooge.org/imports.

  Since both .xhb and .gnc (.gnucash) formats are supported, I imported my HomeBank and GnuCash data files — approximately 1600 transactions. As another part of the evaluation, I imported two small test files created with Grisbi (.gsb) and Money Manager EX (.mmb). Each of those files contains approximately 75 transactions.

• Document Foundation ☛ Czech translation of LibreOffice Base Guide 6.4

• Cloudflare Tunnel Tutorial – Expose Web Services to the Internet

  Imagine working on a web service on your local computer, and you want somebody outside your network to access it on their PC. You have several options you can use to achieve that.

  You could decide to purchase a hosting service, such as a server and configure all DNS settings to make the service available on the public internet.

  If you decide to use containerization like Docker, Kubernetes, etc., you will need to set up even more configurations. That includes configuring ACLs, GRE tunnels, and rotating IP addresses.

  But why all that hustle when you can easily expose your locally hosted web service using Cloudflare Tunnel?

  Cloudflare Tunnel provides you with a secure way to connect your resources to Cloudflare without a publicly routable IP address. With Tunnel, you do not send traffic to an external IP — instead, a lightweight daemon in your infrastructure (cloudflared) creates outbound-only connections to Cloudflare’s edge.

  This tutorial will cover how to use Cloudflare Tunnel to create and manage tunnels to expose web services from a computer to the internet.

• PC Linux ☛ GIMP Tutorial: A Simple Floating Logo

  I saw a tutorial about a “floating” logo in GIMP.org/tutorials and thought I’d share it.

• Citizix ☛ How to install and configure docker In OpenSUSE Leap 15

  Docker is an open source containerization platform. It enables developers to package applications into containers—standardized executable components combining application source code with the operating system (OS) libraries and dependencies required to run that code in any environment.

  Docker is a set of platform as a service products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. Containers are isolated from one another and bundle their own software, libraries and configuration files; they can communicate with each other through well-defined channels.

  In this guide we are going to explore various options to install docker in OpenSUSE Leap 15.

• Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install Adobe Flash Player on a Chromebook – Updated Tutorial

  Today we are looking at how to install Adobe Flash Player 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.

• Video ☛ How to install Kdenlive on Zorin OS 16 – Invidious

• ID Root ☛ How To Install WonderCMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WonderCMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, WonderCMS is a free, open-source, and flat-file content management system written in PHP and jQuery. WonderCMS also doesn’t require a traditional/relational database like MariaDB. The flat file technology enables WonderCMS to save all data to a text file (flat file) called database.js which is structured in JSON format. It also offers a rich set of features including, custom login URL, SEO friendly, WYSIWYG, flexible CSS framework, native markdown, and more.

  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 WonderCMS on an Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa server. You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Top Nitrux Applications (Maui) Everyone Should Try

    This article showcases some of the excellent Maui native applications that come as default in Nitrux OS Linux distribution.

Distributions

• PC Linux ☛ 2021 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards

  The 2021 LinuxQuestions.org Member Choice Awards are in.

  Just in case you aren’t familiar with this “contest,” it’s an annual “poll” for users of the LinuxQuestions.org forum. It gives users a chance to pick their favorite Linux programs, operating systems, hardware vendor, and much more.

  The poll starts in early January (typically January 2) and concludes on February 15. This year’s poll consisted of 41 different categories. Respondents can selectively respond to the categories, and are not required to record a vote in every category.

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • PC Linux ☛ Screenshot Showcase

• Debian Family

  • Purism ☛ My First Year of Librem 5 Convergence – Purism

    In addition to my Librem 5, the most important piece of hardware is a laptop dock. A laptop dock doesn’t have computing resources of its own. It’s just a screen, keyboard, mouse, and battery put in a laptop form factor. When you connect a phone to it, it’s like plugging a phone or laptop into a docking station. The phone can use the keyboard, mouse, and extra display and gets charged from the dock itself. The applications you see on the screen are running off of the phone.

    The advantage of using a Librem 5 with a convergent OS like PureOS, is once you dock it, all the adaptive applications become the same full-sized Linux desktop applications you would see on a Librem 14 laptop. Also, all of the applications that haven’t yet been updated to fit on the phone screen well, work just fine on the larger screen.

    The advantage of using a laptop dock is that I’ve been able to experiment with a few different models that each give me different capabilities, while my Librem 5 itself remains the same. I started with a Nexdock 2 without touch features using a USB docking station:

  • Petter Reinholdtsen: Run your industrial metal working machine using Debian?

    After many months of hard work by the good people involved in LinuxCNC, the system was accepted Sunday into Debian. Once it was available from Debian, I was surprised to discover from its popularity-contest numbers that people have been reporting its use since 2012. Its project site might be a good place to check out, but sadly is not working when visiting via Tor.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Linux Mint Dropping Blueberry Blootooth Configuration Tool

    For the longest time, Linux Mint depended on Blueberry for its Bluetooth background service. With the release of Linux Mint 21, that all changes, as the developers have opted to migrate to Blueman.

    One of the primary reasons for this change is that the latest version of gnome-bluetooth (the bluetooth backend for Blueberry) introduced a few changes that broke compatibility with Blueberry. Unfortunately, the Blueberry developer has no desire to see his work used outside of GNOME. Because of this, Blueberry will have trouble with non-GNOME desktops going forward, which is one of the reasons why the Linux Mint team decided to go a different route.

Devices/Embedded

• CNX Software ☛ SECO PICTOR fanless embedded computer features RK3399-powered 3.5-inch SBC – CNX Software

  SECO has recently introduced the PICTOR fanless embedded computer equipped with the company’s SOLON (previously called SBC-C31) 3.5-inch single board computer powered by a Rockchip RK3399 processor.

  The rugged computer ships with up to 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash storage, offers dual Gigabit Ethernet, wireless connectivity, HDMI and DisplayPort (via USB-C) video outputs, USB 2.0/3.0 ports, as well as two RS-232 or RS-485 ports on DB9 connectors.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Kevin Norman ☛ Putting a high end DAC inside your ITX desktop computer

    Tl;Dr: In this blog post, I discuss the problem I have with having an external DAC (cable clutter), and the hacky solution I came up with (putting a USB DAC inside the chassis of my computer and hijacking the HD-Audio solution built into most PC cases).

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • CNX Software ☛ SECO PICTOR fanless embedded computer features RK3399-powered 3.5-inch SBC – CNX Software

  • TechRadar ☛ That Android antivirus could actually be malware | TechRadar

  • CNN ☛ Samsung Galaxy Tab S8+ review: A great tablet for everyday use, but Android isn’t ready for the big screen | CNN Underscored

  • Chrome Beats Safari and Gets Faster on Android with New Update – Review Geek

  • TechRepublic ☛ How to check Android 12 permissions with the Privacy Dashboard | TechRepublic

  • Phone Arena ☛ Sony continues its Android 12 update rollout with the Xperia 5 II – PhoneArena

  • Screen Rant ☛ What Is The Android 10 Easter Egg (And How To Find It)

  • 9to5Google ☛ Stadia 4.6 for Android prepares motion controls, more – 9to5Google

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Apache Blog ☛ The Apache Weekly News Round-up: week ending 4 March 2022

  We’re opening March with a cracking week. Here’s what the Apache community has been up to…

• Meet OSI’s 2022 candidates for Board of Directors

  We encourage members to check out the list of Individual and Affiliate Candidates below. Read about their backgrounds and interest in serving on the board. Each candidate page also features a comments section: use it to ask about their plans, hopes, and views for the OSI (don’t endorse candidates there please). Take advantage of the ability to ask questions as it’s the best way for you to learn about each candidate and what they hope to achieve as board members of the OSI.

• Programming/Development

  • PC Linux ☛ From The Chief Editor’s Desk…

    In my Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 days, I used to write shareware software. Much of what I wrote centered around Windows Help files. More specifically, the 16-bit version of Windows Help. I used to write my programs in C. Because of limited financial means and the costs of the programming environments, I wasn’t able to continue as Windows moved into 32-bit and then 64-bit territories.

    So, bash scripts it is for me, at least at this point. That early programming experience in C has been invaluable. If nothing else, it has taught me about functions, variables, and the general flow of computer programs. I apply that same mentality to my bash scripts.

    Many of my bash scripts use Zenity to add graphical user interface elements to what would otherwise be entirely a command line/terminal experience. The way I look at it, using Zenity dialogs gives the user a true GUI experience. It also alleviates requiring the end user to enter a long string of cryptic command line switches and parameters. You simply set those up from within the script (as much as possible), with individual prompts from the user as they go through the script. There are a lot of Linux users who avoid the command line like the plague.

    This month, I wrote an article about one such script I recently created to change the bitrate of MP3 files en masse. Otherwise, I could have done the same thing, one file at a time, in some very capable sound file editors. The latter way would have taken much, much more time, so my script makes the task much easier and much, much more efficient. With the new script, it’s a trivial task that is completed in less than a minute. In my way of thinking, this is way more efficient, and allows me to get on with other tasks.

    Because I’m a Xfce desktop user, I typically build my scripts so they can be used either directly from the command line, or more importantly, so they can be used as a Thunar custom action (Thunar is Xfce’s file manager, if you’re not familiar). They can also be used from other file managers of other desktop environments, like Caja in Mate or Dolphin in Plasma. It’s a trivial task to learn how to set them up in those environments, as there is a lot of documentation/tutorials on how to do it floating around on the internet.

  • Geeks For Geeks ☛ 5 Best Practices For Code Review

    Software Development Process refers to implementing the design and operations of software, this process takes place which ultimately delivers the best product. Do several questions arise after this process like whether the code is secure? Is it well-designed? Is the code free of error? As per the survey, on average programmers make a mistake once at every five lines of the code. To rectify these bugs Code Review comes into the picture. Reviewing a code typically means checking whether the code passes the test cases, has bugs, repeated lines, and various possible errors which could reduce the efficiency and quality of the software. Reviews can be good and bad as well. Good ones lead to more usage, growth, and popularity of the software whereas bad ones degrade the quality of software.

  • Rachel ☛ Editing stuff in prod

    Here’s a concept: “ssh to prod and edit directly on the machine” is generally bad news.

  • Matt Rickard ☛ Wire Protocols and APIs

    The majority of data that transfers over the network at companies like Google and Uber isn’t encoded as JSON and don’t use REST APIs. Instead, the messages are encoded as protocol buffers over RPC APIs. Why this is most likely the future and what are the implications?

  • uni Toronto ☛ What sort of server it takes to build Firefox in four and a bit minutes

    This is a (very) big server but in some respects not an unusual one; subject to component availability (and money), anyone could get their own version relatively trivially. It has two AMD Epyc 7453 28-core processors (hence the odd number of CPUs), 512 GB of RAM, and two NVMe drives in a software RAID mirror.

  • JCS ☛ Video: C Programming on System 6 – Talking to the Modem

    Starting work on adding a serial module to join the console and telnet inputs, to allow calls through a modem. I got stuck for a while trying to figure out why writes to the serial port would hang the machine.

  • Eric Bailey ☛ The case for adding validation state to your design tokens

    Naming things is hard.

    One way to go about naming things is via topology, the practice of classifying things by way of their characteristics. It is a subtle art.

    Topology is a good approach for the naming of design tokens. Unfortunately, in the context design token name creation we are burdened by the tyranny of category. It demands distilling everything down to a single word, and consequently, a linear order.

  • Java

    • PC Linux ☛ My Favorite Java Program Stopped Working. Now What?

      Today we are going to talk about how to make your favorite Java program work. Yes, with the Java updates, many programs have stopped working. Some don’t work at all with newer versions of Java.

      Let’s talk about the progress of the Java language. After all, it is thanks to this progress that many programs have stopped working. One of them is my favorite MORPG.

Counter Punch ☛ An Interview with Larry “Ratso” Sloman

What the fuck is a female voice doing on your cover of “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” off your new album, Stubborn Heart? (BTW, I liked your duet with Nick Cave, “Our Lady of Light.” Inspiration?)

Five female voices actually.  In order: Magali Charron, Eddy Front, the esteemed Arabic singer/songwriter Yasmine Hamdan, Leonard Cohen’s co-writer and backup singer Sharon Robinson, and the great Ruby Friedman, who I’ve dubbed “the Jewish Janis Joplin.”  Look, like Leonard Cohen, I know that I was born with the gift of a golden voice but I figured that hearing me for eleven minutes straight might get a bit tedious so, in the spirit of inclusivity of the 2020’s, I figured it was time for the Sad-Eyed Ladies to be given a voice. I think they kill it!

The Nation ☛ The Messy Humanity of Leo Bersani (April 16, 1931–February 20, 2022)

We were separately asked to write about Leo Bersani—the inimitable French literature scholar and astute, influential critic of queer identity, who died on February 20, 2022—but could not do so because it was all too close. But in talking together we found a way to enable each other, and the result is this fragment of a conversation between two people who loved and learned from Leo.

The Nation ☛ We Live in a World of Displacement

We live on a planet in motion, a world of collision and drift. This was once an Earth of super-continents—Gondwana, Rodinia, Pangea. The eastern seaboard of the United States sidled up against West Africa, while Antarctica cozied up to the opposite side of the African continent. But nothing in this world lasts and the tectonic plates covering the planet are always in motion. Suddenly—over the course of hundreds of millions of years—supercontinents cease to be super, breaking into smaller land masses that drift off to the far corners of the world.

Hardware

• Hackaday ☛ Hack Your Recipes

  If there is one thing Hackaday readers have in common, they like to make things. Of course, we don’t all make the same things and that’s great. But, unsurprisingly, a lot of people who like to create things include the kitchen as their workspaces. Why not? We all have to eat and there’s something very nice about cooking a meal for your loved ones or even just yourself. Cooklang is a markdown-style language from [Brian Sunte] specifically for capturing recipes. It not only formats the recipe, but it provides an easy way for software to parse the key elements while still being human-readable. This allows you to manipulate recipes just like software, including using Git for version control, for example.

• Hackaday ☛ The 3D Printed Car Tire Rim Finally Hits The Road, Sorta

  When you think of “car rim” you probably think stamped steel or machined alloy with a sturdy drum to withstand the arduous life of the road, not something 3D printed out of ABS. That would be crazy, right? Not to [Jón Schone] from Proper Printing, who’s recently released an update about his long-term quest to outfit his older sedan with extruded rims.

• Hackaday ☛ FlexyPins Might Help With Those Pesky Castellated Modules

  [SolderParty] just announced FlexyPins (Twitter, alternative view) – bent springy clips that let you connect modules with castellated pins. With such clips, you can quickly connect and disconnect any castellated module, swapping them without soldering as you’re prototyping, testing things out, or pre-flashing modules before assembly. They’re reportedly gold-plated, and a pack of ~100 will set you back 6EUR, shipping not included.

• Hackaday ☛ A Variable Capacitor For Not A Lot

  There’s one component which used to be ubiquitous in every experimenter’s junk box, but nowadays unless you happen to be a radio amateur the chances are you may not have seen one in a long time, if ever. We’re talking of course about the air-dielectric variable capacitor, the tuning element for millions of radio receivers back in the day but now long ago replaced by much flimsier polymer-dielectric parts. There’s still a need for variable capacitors though, in particular a high-voltage variant for use in magnetic loop antennas. It’s something that [Ben] had a need for, which he solved with a clever combination of PCB material and 3D printing.

• Hackaday ☛ A Chip To Bridge The USB 2 – USB 3 Divide

  On Twitter, [whitequark] has  found and highlighted an intriguing design – a breakout board for the VL670, accompanied by an extensive yet very easy to digest write-up about its usefulness and inner workings. The VL670 is a chip that addresses a surprising problem – converting USB 2.0 signals into USB 3.0.

• Hackaday ☛ Metal 3D Printing Hack Chat

  Join us on Wednesday, March 9 at noon Pacific for the Metal 3D Printing Hack Chat with Agustin Cruz!

• Hackaday ☛ USB Temperature Logger With Some Extra Tricks

  Many of us electronics hacker types tend to have at least the same common equipment on our benches, namely a multimeter, an oscilloscope, some sort of adjustable power supply, and maybe a logic analyzer. These are great tools covering many bases, but dealing with temperature measurements is often neglected. A sudden need for such often results in just buying a either dedicated measurement unit, or some cheap eBay thermocouple board and just rolling with a few hacks. [Jana Marie Hemsing] had a need for measuring the thermal side of things, and got fed up with hacking with piles of boards, and designed herself a proper instrument for the task.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Common Dreams ☛ Two Full Years and 6 Million Dead: Covid-19 Pandemic Latest Grim Milestone

  A full two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, a grim milestone was reached Monday as the global death toll surpassed 6 million people—a figure much higher, say many experts, than it would be otherwise if vaccinations had been made more widely available worldwide and not refused by so many who did have access.

  As of this writing on Monday, the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center estimates that 6,001,094 people have died from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, otherwise known as Covid-19.

• Common Dreams ☛ Study Shows Covid-19 Infection Linked to Brain Shrinkage, Cognitive Decline

  A new study published in the journal Nature on Monday shows an association between brain size and structure among those infected by the Covid-19 virus.

  The study,  led by the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging at the University of Oxford, found “strong evidence for brain-related abnormalities” in Covid-19 patients who had had their brains scanned prior to their infection and then after they were either hospitalized with the virus or diagnosed as positive.

• The Revelator ☛ Links From the Brink, Ukraine Edition

• Orac ☛ Return of the revenge of the COVID vaccine “spike” in your DNA

  As repetitive as I have been with respect to this, there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to antivaccine myths, misinformation, and disinformation, and that applies to COVID-19 vaccines. If public health officials and messengers had paid more attention to the tactics and tropes of the antivaccine movement, including its central conspiracy theory, maybe they would have been more prepared for the onslaught of antivaccine misinformation that was unleashed as the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were undergoing clinical trials and when they were finally initially approved under an emergency use authorization (EUA) near the end of 2020. They didn’t, and here we are, which is why, having seen it before multiple times last year, In addition to various claims of how “toxic” the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that vaccines induce cells to make as an antigen are, I’m faced with the return of the revenge of the antivaccine lie that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines “permanently alter your DNA” (they don’t, nor do they “hack the software of life“, nor are they really “gene therapy“) this time from Jessica Rose, who is affiliated with James Lyons-Weiler‘s antivaccine “institute” with the humble name of Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge (IPAK).

• CS Monitor ☛ Russia’s attack on Ukraine threatens global food supply

  From Nigeria to Indonesia, millions of people rely on bread made from Russian and Ukrainian wheat to survive. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is already spiking bread prices in some countries, and, if it continues to disrupt harvests, could cause major food shortages.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Techdirt ☛ Congress Is Weakening America’s Cybersecurity. It Couldn’t Have Picked A Worse Time.

    Last week the world watched in horror as Russia illegally launched a brutal war in Ukraine. Online videos and eyewitness accounts evoked a terrible throwback to WWII, with tanks rolling over borders, frightened refugees, and bomb blasts in a major European capital.

  • IT Wire ☛ Big hit to ICT demand expected due to Russia-Ukraine conflict [iophk: Windows TCO]

    The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is expected to lead to a double-digit contraction of ICT demand in both countries, the technology analyst firm IDC says.

  • IT Wire ☛ Samsung confirms theft of source code for Galaxy devices [iophk: Windows TCO]

    They claimed that the stolen data included source code for all trusted applets on Samsung devices’ TrustZone or TEE, with specific code for each TEE.

    “This includes DRM modules and Keymaster/Gatekeeper,” the group claimed.

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Conti Ransomware Group Diaries, Part IV: Cryptocrime [Ed: Windows TCO]

  • Security

    • PC Linux ☛ Short Topix: Polkit Vulnerability Discovered, Patched
      

      As reported in an article on BleepingComputer (and in many other media outlets), a 12-year-old vulnerability was discovered in Linux’s polkit pkexec. The exploit, identified as CVE-2021-4034 (PwnKit), allowed users to easily gain access to elevated privileges on ALL Linux distros. Never fear; pkexec has been patched on PCLinuxOS. As reported by Texstar in a post on the forum, the vulnerability required the attacker to have either physical access to your computer, or you granted access to that computer via SSH.

    • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

      • New Linux bug gives root on all major distros, exploit released [Ed: Microsoft booster Lawrence Abrams makes it sound a lot more severe than it actually is]

        A new Linux vulnerability known as ‘Dirty Pipe’ allows local users to gain root privileges through publicly available exploits.

      • ‘Dirty Pipe’ Linux vulnerability discovered | ZDNet

        On Monday, a cybersecurity researcher released the details of a Linux vulnerability that allows an attacker to overwrite data in arbitrary read-only files.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Site36 ☛ Utimaco from Aachen: German wiretapping technology could strengthen junta in Myanmar

        With the withdrawal of the Norwegian telephone service provider Telenor from Myanmar, German surveillance technology threatens to end up in the hands of the military regime. This could violate EU sanctions and the General Data Protection Regulation.

      • Vice ☛ Chinese Cybersecurity Company Doxes Apparent NSA [Cracking] Operation

        A Chinese cybersecurity company accused the NSA of being behind a [cracking] tool used for ten years in a report published on Wednesday.

      • Mexico News Daily ☛ Narcos had their own video surveillance system in Reynosa

        authorities and rival gangs in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, until security forces disconnected them on Sunday.

        The cameras were mounted on utility poles and other electrical and telephone facilities.

Defence/Aggression

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Is “Taiwan Next”? We Don’t Think So

  Ever since Russia began preparing for its brutal invasion of Ukraine, right-wing commentators in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere have been making wild and unfounded statements about Chinese support for Russia’s action, possible coordination between Beijing and Moscow, and Chinese plans for a corresponding invasion of Taiwan. But while China certainly needs to be more forthright in condemning the Russian invasion, there is no compelling evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin divulged his plans for a full-scale invasion when he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing on February 4 and none whatsoever that the two countries are coordinating their actions, let alone that Taiwan is the next target of such aggression.

• Counter Punch ☛ Beyond the Dead Zone: Processing the Ukraine Madness with Comrades Online

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | What Did William Barr Know and When Did He Know It?

  “We live in the age of narrative, not facts,” former Attorney General William Barr told NBC News in an interview that aired on March 6, 2022.

• TruthOut ☛ Trump’s Pick for AZ Secretary of State Participated in January 6 Capitol Breach

• Counter Punch ☛ How Will the U.S.A. be Remembered?

  I am walking down the mall from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington Monument.  It is 1999, a long time since I have been in the nation’s capital.  I have been flown back from Seattle to work on a report detailing the impact of climate change on ocean life, and have just completed a meeting with some of the world’s top marine biologists.  Now I’m taking a little time to hoof around DC and see some sights.

  As I approach the Smithsonian Castle, walking by the Air & Space Museum, a street saxophonist on the opposite side is playing “When the Saints Come Marching In.” I am in a mood to muse on this country in which I have lived my life, shaped by its stories and histories.  I ask myself, what will be the memory of the U.S. ?  How will people recall us, in hundreds or thousands of years, assuming there are people to recall us?

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | The West Is Right to Hold Moscow Responsible for Its War Crimes, But What About Israel?

  Amid the apocalyptic horror of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the outlook is grim—this war of aggression will result in untold casualties, massive displacement and long-term suffering, not just in Ukraine, but also in Russia, where civilians will pay for the Kremlin’s deadly folly.

• Common Dreams ☛ Moscow Says Attack Will End ‘In a Moment’ If Ukraine Agrees to Demands

  The Kremlin said Monday that Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine would end “in a moment” if the country’s leadership agrees to a series of demands, including a firm commitment to not join NATO and formal recognition of two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine as independent states.

  Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov outlined Russia’s demands in a phone interview with Reuters ahead of a third round of negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian diplomats on Monday as the civilian death toll from the invasion continues to mount and the refugee crisis worsens.

• Common Dreams ☛ Zelenksyy Says ‘We Have the Possible Resolution’ for Russian Demands

  Ukrainian President Voldomyr Zelenskyy said Monday that bringing an end to Moscow’s deadly assault on his country is within reach—but only if Russian President Vladimir Putin stops offering ultimatums and agrees to negotiate the terms of a peaceful settlement.

  During an exclusive interview set to air in full on Monday night, ABC World News Tonight host David Muir asked Zelenskyy if he has rejected the Kremlin’s “three conditions to end the war—that you must give up on joining NATO, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, and recognize the independence of those two separatist regions in the east.”

• Counter Punch ☛ The Ukraine War and the “Good” Refugee

  The Russian attack on Ukraine has already produced refugees in the hundreds of thousands.  By March 2, with the war one week old, 874,000 people were estimated to have left Ukraine.  The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that up to four million may leave, while the European Union adds a further three million to the figure.

  This is already producing a growing capital of hypocrisy on the part of receiving states who have shown deep reluctance in accepting refugees of other backgrounds from other conflicts.  Tellingly, some of these conflicts have also been the noxious fruit of campaigns or interventions waged by Western states.

• TruthOut ☛ Repression of Protesters Intensifies in Russia as More Than 13,000 Are Arrested

• TruthOut ☛ Supreme Court Says Torture at CIA Black Site Is a “State Secret”

• Counter Punch ☛ When History Begins: Russia, Ukraine and the US

  If you want the fine details, you can do no better than to watch my Libertarian Institute colleague Scott Horton’s excellent cataloging of the irresponsible misdeeds of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joseph Biden in this recent lecture. If, after absorbing this shocking record of indisputable facts, you are seething at what the U.S. government has done to squander a historic chance for good relations with Russia, you will be fully justified — and then some. (See also this 2015 lecture by John Mearsheimer, the respected “realist” foreign policy analyst at the University of Chicago.)

  To appreciate what bipartisan U.S. foreign policy has wrought, think about 1989 when the undreamt-of virtually bloodless dismantling of the Soviet empire began. At that point humanity was on the verge of a new chapter in which the world’s largest nuclear superpowers would no longer confront each other, holding everyone hostage. Think about that, and then learn how the U.S. government blew it deliberately, despite all the warnings that the consequences would be dire. (Over-optimism about what might have been is always a danger. In 1990, when President George H. W. Bush ordered Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to remove his army from Kuwait, Bush declared a “New World Order,” admonishing, “What we say goes.” The Russians no doubt noticed.)

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Why Biden Is Exactly Right to Reject a ‘No-Fly Zone’ for Ukraine

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | How the US Could Solve the Ukraine Crisis Tomorrow

  No war is a one-sided affair. There is no sound to one hand clapping.

• Common Dreams ☛ Urging ‘Calmness,’ China Offers to Mediate Russia-Ukraine Talks

  While offering to mediate peace negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv, China vowed Monday to provide swift humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and acknowledged that it maintains a positive relationship with Russia.

  “China may be the world’s best bet for brokering peace between Russia and the West.”

• Counter Punch ☛ Ukraine Is Not an Anti-Nazi Struggle. It’s an Oligarch War.

• Counter Punch ☛ Ukraine’s Grim Choice: Why Surrender May be the Honorable Option

  They expected a naval assault by the Japanese from the open sea but they got it wrong.  Japanese forces came down the Malayan peninsula through jungle terrain which the British thought was impassable.   Triumphantly the Japanese commander called on the startled British to surrender unconditionally.  Churchill ordered Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival to fight to the last man, but Percival defied his orders and on February 15 1942, barely a week since the Japanese established their first beachhead on the island, he capitulated.

  Some 80,000 British, Australian and Indian troops were taken prisoner.   It was then, and remains to this day, the biggest surrender in British military history. The table round which Percival and his colleagues sat as they discussed the hopelessness of their plight and agonized over what to do remains in the bunker today along with waxwork effigies of the grim-faced British team.

• Counter Punch ☛ Even if Russia Captures Kyiv, Putin has Already Been Defeated After Starting Unwinnable War

  President Vladimir Putin started a war he could never win against 44 million Ukrainians supported by the US and Europe in the crazed expectation that his military campaign would be a walkover. By doing so, he united the rest of Europe against Russia, forcing Germany, France and Italy to line up with the more hardline US and Britain to a degree not seen even at the height of the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

  But the nature and timing of the Russian defeat remains of crucial importance because Russia remains a nuclear weapons superpower, technically able to kill a large part of the planet’s population. If the war in Ukraine continues for a long time, it is all too easy to see how the Russian war in Ukraine could escalate into a conventional conflict against Nato and then tip into a nuclear exchange.

• Democracy Now ☛ Russian Crackdown on Dissent Intensifies as Over 13,000 Arrested for Opposing Ukraine Invasion

  We speak to Russian activist and historian Ilya Budraitskis after over 5,000 antiwar protesters were detained on Sunday as part of a sweeping crackdown on Russian civil society and the media. Activists in Russia are relying on alternative outlets such as social media for information, as the Russian government continues to censor major news outlets. Writers and independent news outlets such as Novaya Gazeta have faced the threat of criminal investigations for spreading so-called disinformation, which includes using the words “invasion” and “war” to describe Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, says Budraitskis.

• Democracy Now ☛ “He Promises & He Lies”: Ukrainians Say Putin’s Word Can’t Be Trusted as Ceasefire Breaks Down

  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has entered its 12th day as civilians across Ukraine are shelled while trying to flee for safety. More than 1.5 million refugees have now left Ukraine in what the United Nations is calling the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II. We speak to Kateryna Ivanova, who ran a dental clinic with her husband just outside of Kyiv, about the toll of war on daily life as medical professionals risk their lives by staying behind to meet the shortage. “We cannot work as a dental office at the moment, but I really want to be of use for my neighborhood and for my country, so I’m doing what I can,” says Ivanova.

• Democracy Now ☛ What Would a Ukraine-Russia Peace Deal Look Like? Anatol Lieven on Ways to End Putin’s War

  After multiple failed peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Russia has promised a ceasefire and several so-called humanitarian corridors to allow Ukrainians to flee to predetermined countries, though similar agreements have fallen apart amid continued Russian shelling of civilian areas. We speak to Anatol Lieven from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft about what a Ukraine-Russia peace deal could look like and what is at stake in a prolonged war. “The world community as a whole is very, very anxious for this war to end,” says Lieven.

• Common Dreams ☛ Ukrainians Reject ‘Completely Immoral’ Evacuation Corridors That Lead to Russia

  Ukraine’s government on Monday rejected what one official called a “completely immoral” Russian offer to allow civilians fleeing deadly bombardment to flee via “humanitarian corridors” leading not to safer Ukrainian destinations in the west and south but rather into Russia and Belarus to the east and north.

  “I don’t know many Ukrainians who want to take refuge in Russia.”

• Common Dreams ☛ War on Ukraine Sparks Fears of Global Food Crisis ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

  As Russia intensifies its war on Ukraine, agricultural output from one of the world’s most productive growing regions has ground to a halt, causing the price of key food staples and fertilizer to approach record levels and sparking fears of worsening global hunger.

  “The bullets and bombs in Ukraine could take the global hunger crisis to levels beyond anything we’ve seen before.”

• Counter Punch ☛ 40 Things We Can Do and Know for People in Ukraine and the World

  Send aid to organizations helping refugees leaving Ukraine.

  Send aid especially that will reach those being refused help for racist reasons.

• The Nation ☛ Geopolitics Is a Ruthless Business

  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been widely described as the beginning of a new cold war, much like the old one in both its cast of characters and ideological nature. “In the contest between democracy and autocracy, between sovereignty and subjugation, make no mistake—freedom will prevail,” President Biden asserted in a televised address to the nation the day Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. But while Russia and the West disagree on many issues of principle, this is not a replay of the Cold War. It’s an all-too-geopolitical 21st-century struggle for advantage on a highly contested global chessboard. If comparisons are in order, think of this moment as more akin to the situation Europe confronted prior to World War I than in the aftermath of World War II.

• The Nation ☛ American Targets

• Digital First Media ☛ What to know as Gov. Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy case heads to trial

  The most important federal criminal case in Grand Rapids in more than two decades unfolds Tuesday as jury selection starts in the trial of four men accused of domestic terrorism for allegedly plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and use bombs during the attack.

  The trial starts 17 months after FBI agents said they thwarted a kidnapping conspiracy involving self-described patriots and militia members angered by restrictions imposed during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Mint Press News ☛ Chris Hedges: Worthy and Unworthy Victims

  PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY (Scheerpost) —Rulers divide the world into worthy and unworthy victims, those we are allowed to pity, such as Ukrainians enduring the hell of modern warfare, and those whose suffering is minimized, dismissed, or ignored. The terror we and our allies carry out against Iraqi, Palestinian, Syrian, Libyan, Somali and Yemeni civilians is part of the regrettable cost of war. We, echoing the empty promises from Moscow, claim we do not target civilians. Rulers always paint their militaries as humane, there to serve and protect. Collateral damage happens, but it is regrettable.

• Mint Press News ☛ The Latest Target in the Israel Lobby’s War on Academia: Shahd Abusalama

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Techdirt ☛ FOIA Requester Gets 292 Fully-Redacted Pages In Response To Request About Federal Funding Of Virus Research In Wuhan

  The federal government would prefer information not want quite so badly to be free. It has obligations under the Freedom of Information Act to set information free, but it also has a handy stack of exemptions to ensure not too much information is freed.

Environment

• Michael West ☛ Why the listless reaction from governments, the hush on climate change?

  The Morrison government has gone missing again at a time of crisis and devastation, despite its disaster relief fund brimming with $4.8bn. NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet finally made it to the outskirts of Lismore on the weekend, vowing support, visibly shaken at the magnitude of the devastation. Why the failure of governments to respond in times of crisis, asks resident Robyn Fitzgerald. Why no mention of “climate change”?

• Energy

  • Common Dreams ☛ Omar Says Biden Visit to Saudi Arabia Over Oil Would Be ‘Wildly Immoral’

    U.S. President Joe Biden’s advisers are reportedly discussing a possible trip to Saudi Arabia this spring to urge the kingdom to ramp up oil production amid fears of a supply shortage as the United States mulls a ban on Russian crude imports.

    But progressive members of Congress and anti-war commentators were quick to pan the idea of further deepening U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia, pointing to the years-long, catastrophic assault the kingdom has been waging on Yemen since 2015—often with military and diplomatic support from the U.S. government.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Fossil Fuels Are Not the Answer to War. They Are Its Cause

    “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” is a quote often misattributed to Winston Churchill. It could also be the motto of the fossil fuel industry. The day before Russian tanks entered Ukraine, the American Petroleum Institute released a set of demands of President Biden, urging him to make it easier than ever to dig up and burn fossil fuels. Republican Members of Congress immediately took to social media and Fox News to echo the call.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Support Sanctions on Russian Oil? Don’t Complain About High Gas Prices

    Meanwhile, Americans are also complaining about high gas prices, which reached an average of more than $4 per gallon over the weekend following the poll’s release, in large part due to US and European sanctions on Russia.

    While Russian oil constitutes only a tiny portion of US petroleum imports, a complete ban certainly wouldn’t help hold US gas prices down.

  • Computer World ☛ Russia is likely using cryptocurrency to thwart sanctions

    US and European sanctions over the past week and a half have put the screws to the Russian government and its oligarchs who are likely using alternative methods to ferry their cash across borders.

  • Cryptocurrency: Blockchains, mining and environmental impact

    It’s been estimated that Bitcoin miners globally use electricity on the scale of entire countries like Ireland or Austria. “The environmental impact of Bitcoin in its current form is just totally unacceptable,” Angel said.

    Not only is the environmental impact concerning, but cryptocurrencies are also “very volatile, [and] there are a lot of scams out there,” Angel said. “No one knows what they’re really worth.”

  • The Verge ☛ Biden administration accelerates plans to slash truck pollution

    The moves reflect fast-moving technological advancements in zero-emissions heavy-duty vehicles, according to a White House fact sheet released today. It also follows an infusion of cash for cleaner-burning vehicles laid out in the bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year. The actions align with two priorities President Joe Biden has pushed since the campaign trail: tackling climate change and cleaning up the air in communities that have been disproportionately burdened with pollution.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Common Dreams ☛ Study Warns of ‘Profound’ Consequences as Amazon Nears ‘Tipping Point’

    The ability of the Amazon rainforest to recover from devastating droughts and wildfires has been declining over the past two decades, driving the crucial ecosystem to what authors of a study published Monday called a “critical transformation” with “profound” consequences.

    The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, revealed that the world’s largest rainforest “has been losing resilience since the early 2000s, risking dieback with profound implications for biodiversity, carbon storage, and climate change at a global scale” as rainforest irreversibly transforms to savanna.

• Overpopulation

  • The Hill ☛ After years of US population growth, it’s time for a pause

    In addition, America’s population is projected to continue growing over the coming decades. According to its main projection series, the Census Bureau expects the nation’s population to be close to 400 million around mid-century.

    Preceding the commission’s establishment by several years, former President Richard M. Nixon remarked that “One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of the population… Whether man’s response to that challenge will be a cause for pride or for despair in the year 2000 will depend very much on what we do today.”

Finance

• Counter Punch ☛ Jobs and Hours Jump in February as Unemployment Falls to 3.8 Percent

  The economy added 678,000 jobs in February, pushing the unemployment rate down to 3.8 percent. The jobs numbers for December and January were also revised up 92,000. This left the number of jobs in the economy 2,105,000 below the pre-pandemic level.

  Increase in Hours Likely Pushed Private Sector Hours Above Pre-Pandemic High

• Common Dreams ☛ Senate GOP Agenda Would Hike Taxes on Poorest 40% by Average of $1,000

  The policy agenda that Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida unveiled last month—and has continued to promote despite mounting backlash—would hike annual taxes on the poorest 40% of people in the United States by $1,000 on average while not raising taxes on the richest 1% by a single penny.

  So concluded a state-by-state analysis of Scott’s plan released Monday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which estimates that “the poorest fifth of Americans would pay 34% of the tax increase while the next fifth of Americans would pay 45% of the tax increase.”

• TruthOut ☛ Biden Is Considering Extending Student Loan Pause as Activists Ramp Up Pressure

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• TruthOut ☛ Greene Bought Oil, Defense Stocks While Complaining About War Profiteers

• FAIR ☛ Murdoch-Owned Outlets Ignore Their Own Role in Hate Crime Surge

  In crafting a landscape rife with danger and lawlessness, Rupert Murdoch–owned outlets drew upon a spike in hate crimes—specifically anti-Asian and antisemitic hate crimes—without taking responsibility for the xenophobia they’ve consistently peddled when it benefited their political agendas.

• TruthOut ☛ Trump Outraged That His Social Media Site Has Had Many Problems So Far

• The Atlantic ☛ Of Course Journalists Should Interview Autocrats

  As every chef knows, the ingredients make the meal, but the art is in what you do with them. From the interview the Saudis prepared a propaganda feast, snipping out the crown prince’s less controversial comments and adorning them with his smiling face and, on social media, the hashtag #meetingthecrownprince. Propaganda is tedious, and within minutes of the story’s debut, my social feeds were chloroformed by Saudi sources sharing the “BREAKING” news that the crown prince had spoken and said he intended to continue the kingdom’s economic development.

• Digital First Media ☛ GM is beefing up its Washington team. Here’s why

  General Motors Co. is making several top-level hires to its Washington team as it seeks to influence Democratic policymakers who share its vision for an electric transportation future.

  That might come with big taxpayer-funded incentives the auto industry is seeking to help build out electric-vehicle infrastructure. But the federal largesse also comes with a catch: a heavier regulatory hand that experts say is likely prompting the automaker to strengthen its ranks in the capital city.

• India Times ☛ Microsoft to set up fourth datacenter region in Hyderabad [Ed: While shutting down DCs in the West (Azure failed, has layoffs), it moved to cheaper labour]

  The Hyderabad datacenter region will be an addition to the existing network of three regions in India across Pune, Mumbai, and Chennai. It will offer the entire Microsoft portfolio across the cloud, data solutions, artificial intelligence (AI), productivity tools, and customer relationship management (CRM) with advanced data security, for enterprises, start-ups, developers, education, and government institutions.

• Hungary ☛ Leaked documents show how Orbán’s circle dictates the news at Hungary’s state news agency

  Translation by Direkt36.

Misinformation/Disinformation

• Pro Publica ☛ Billionaire-Backed Group Enlists Trump-Supporting Citizens to Hunt for Voter Fraud Using Discredited Techniques

  At a wedding hall in rural northwest Wisconsin, an evangelist hollered a question to an eager crowd of conferencegoers: “Who thinks Wisconsin can be saved?”

  He was answered with enthusiastic whistles and cheers. The truth, he said, would be revealed. “We need transparency!”

• TruthOut ☛ Russia’s Disinformation Machine Runs So Deep, Some Don’t Know War Is Happening

Censorship/Free Speech

• Techdirt ☛ TikTok Stops The TikToking In Russia As It Tries To Figure Out Its New ‘Fake News’ Law

  An astounding number of people seem to think that having a “fake news” law would be a good idea, even as we’ve shown over and over and over again how those kinds of laws are always abused by authoritarian goons to silence criticism. As part of its ongoing offensive on both Ukraine and the truth, Russia has passed its own new fake news law that would offer criminal penalties up to 15 years in jail for statements that “discredit” the Russian military.

• Counter Punch ☛ On the Predictable Demise of RT America: A Chance for Grassroots Global Media?

  Many will try to argue that the developments in the U.S. are completely different from the European Commission recently banned RT and Sputnik.

  But it more clearly highlights the congruence of government and major corporate agendas. And indeed, as with Big Tech censorship generally, sometimes the collusion is outright, see my interview last year with Nadine Strossen, former head of the ACLU. Contrary to the common mantra that Big Tech platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter get to decide what content they want, Strossen argues “Private sector actors are directly bound by constitutional norms, including the First Amendment” if they are being coerced by or colluding with the government.

• EFF ☛ EFF to European Court: “Right to be Forgotten” Shouldn’t Stop The Public From Reading The News

  In Hurbain v. Belgium, the applicant, the editor-in-chief of Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir, argued that his right to freedom of expression was violated when he was ordered to delete an article about a deadly 1994 car accident from his newspaper’s website, or at least remove the name of the driver. The ECtHR’s Chamber, a judicial body that hears most of its cases, found there was no violation of freedom of expression, thus extending the “right to be forgotten” to media archives. The applicant requested a referral to ECtHR’s Grand Chamber, which only hears its most serious cases.

  EFF and our partner organizations submitted an amicus brief before the Grand Chamber, asking for sharp limits on the “right to be forgotten.”  Most European countries exempt the media from all or most of the obligations on data erasure. Any court rulings that interfere with a media archive should be “subject to the strictest scrutiny,” we argued.

  We underlined that any further expansion of the “right to be forgotten” would create more uncertainty for the publishers and editors.  It would put a significant burden on media outlets and online archives, which would face an unmanageable number of requests to have content removed, altered, or anonymized. If this decision stands, media outlets may try to avoid this risk simply by restricting or deleting their content in advance.

• TruthOut ☛ Students in Texas Form Book Clubs to Counter Far Right Bans

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Project Censored ☛ Guests Danielle McLean on the State of US Journalism and Nolan Higdon on Solving Political Divisiveness – The Project Censored Show

  Notes: Danielle McLean is the first open trans person to sit on the board of directors of the Society of Professional Journalists. She has a background in local newspaper reporting, and currently writes for SmartCitiesDive.com, a trade publication that follows environmental and social-equity issues at the municipal level. She had the top censored story on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2021 and wrote the foreword for Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2022. Nolan Higdon is a lecturer in education at the University of California Santa Cruz campus. He’s also the author of “The Anatomy of Fake News,” and is a frequent guest on the Project Censored Show.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Why Ketanji Brown Jackson Shouldn’t Hide Behind Judicial Neutrality

  It’s tempting for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to hide her views, during her confirmation hearings, behind the image of judicial neutrality. That’s what multiple recent nominees did, retreating into legalisms about how they support stare decisis, so won’t overturn precedents, and are just, in Justice Roberts’s phrase, neutral umpires. “I will not comment on what any justice said in an opinion,” Amy Coney Barrett responded to a question on voter discrimination. “I should not and may not make a commitment about how I would handle a particular case,” said Brett Kavanaugh, to a question about recusing himself from cases relating to investigations of Trump. Neil Gorsuch declined to comment on multiple specific cases when asked, instead reaffirming the general importance of precedent. These same nominees then have overturned decision after past decision once they were confirmed on the court.

• TruthOut ☛ US Can’t Deport Families Under Title 42 If They Could Face Harm, Court Rules

• The Nation ☛ My Norman Mailer Problem—and Ours

  Norman Mailer was proud of his essay “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.” Published in Dissent in 1957, it was reprinted in Advertisements for Myself (1959), Mailer’s anthology of selections from his fiction and nonfiction. It’s easy today to forget the immediate context: Mailer’s protest against the threat of mass destruction during the early part of the Cold War. It was absurd, the argument went, to behave as though life were normal or society rational when human beings faced daily the possibility of total extinction. Americans had to cultivate values that went beyond the concerns of middle-class comfort. “What the liberal cannot bear to admit is the hatred beneath the skin of a society so unjust that the amount of collective violence buried in the people cannot be contained.” Powerful provocation: Mailer challenged sanitized postwar American life in his controversial 1957 essay.

• The Nation ☛ The Contours of Desire

  In March 2018, nearly four years after Elliot Rodger murdered six young people and wounded 14 others in Isla Vista, Calif., before killing himself, Amia Srinivasan published an essay on the horrible episode in the London Review of Books called “Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?” In it, the Oxford philosopher described how so-called incels—involuntary celibates—spoke about the event. Everyone, they insisted, has a right to sex, and the women who denied it to Rodger were ultimately responsible for his homicidal spree. Nearly everyone else pointed out that no one has a right to sex and that people should not be required to sleep with someone they don’t personally desire; Rodger’s actions were his responsibility alone. Srinivasan agreed with the second camp, but she was surprised by how few feminists acknowledged that sexual desires and their fulfillment are political questions that cannot be easily dismissed. The fact that Rodger desired conventionally attractive women—white, blond, “hot”—was, for Srinivasan, a “function of patriarchy,” as was the fact that these women often “don’t as a rule date men like Rodger”—nerdy, effeminate, biracial—“at least not until they’ve made their fortune in Silicon Valley.” The incels weren’t correct about the right to sex, but according to Srinivasan, they had intuited something about the way sexual appeal intersects with social hierarchies.1

  For Srinivasan, the question of how sexual hierarchies replicate other kinds of hierarchies—racial, class, and gender among them—is a question with which feminists must engage. In the rest of her essay, she examined how romantic coupling doesn’t simply reflect idiosyncratic personal desires. Rather, she argued, people desire the bodies that patriarchy tells them to and scorn those whom patriarchy deems unattractive (not coincidentally, usually people oppressed on other axes). She offered as an example the relative undesirability of Asian men on gay dating apps and argued that this phenomenon reflected an exclusionary, racialized concept of masculinity. At the same time, she added, Asian women are often sexualized or fetishized against their will. For this reason, Srinivasan suggested that today’s feminists should not take sexual desire for granted—that is, consider it “natural” or immovable—but instead should investigate the forms of oppression that shape it. If we don’t, we risk “covering not only for misogyny, but for racism, ableism, transphobia, and every other oppressive system that makes its way into the bedroom through the seemingly innocuous mechanisms of ‘personal preference.’”2

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Techdirt ☛ Nebraska Latest State Looking To Roll Back Dumb Restrictions On Community Broadband

  For years a growing number of US towns and cities have been forced into the broadband business thanks to US telecom market failure. Frustrated by high prices, lack of competition, spotty coverage, and terrible customer service, some 750 US towns and cities have explored some kind of community broadband option. While the telecom industry routinely insists these efforts always end in disaster, that’s never actually been true. While there certainly are bad business plans and bad leaders, studies routinely show that such services not only better customer satisfaction scores, but better, faster service at lower, more transparent pricing than many dominant broadband providers.

• AccessNow ☛ What is doxxing, and how does it endanger women?

  Have you heard of doxxing? If you’re a woman on the internet, you might have experienced it. Doxxing means publicly releasing someone’s personal information online, like their address or intimate photos, without their consent.

  [...]

  The burden shouldn’t be on women and other marginalized groups to fight against doxxing. But check out our Self-Doxxing Guide to learn more about how you can protect yourself.

• Techdirt ☛ Another Step Towards The Russian Splinternet

  Over the last few weeks, as Russia invaded Ukraine, you’ve probably heard some version of the story about how carefully Putin prepared for economic sanctions against the country. Whether or not those preparations actually have helped protect Russia is another story, but it wasn’t just the economics part of the equation that Russia was preparing for. We’ve written a few times over the past few years about how Russia was working to make sure it could disconnect its internet from the rest of the world’s internet — often referred to as the Russian “splinternet.” And now it’s happening.

• Techdirt ☛ Good News: Bill To Study The Impact Of FOSTA Reintroduced

  Back in 2019, Reps. Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee along with Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden introduced a bill to study the actual impact of FOSTA on sex workers. While that bill unfortunately went nowhere, the same group is now back and have reintroduced the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act (SSWSA). This is an important bill, especially at a time when many in Congress are looking to follow up FOSTA with a new bill, EARN IT, which takes the FOSTA playbook and goes even further with it. During the EARN IT markup, many Senators bragged about their support for FOSTA, even as the evidence has shown that it has made the problem they claimed they were solving much, much worse.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Techdirt ☛ McDonald’s Sued For Thwarting Third Party’s Solution To Its Broken Ice Cream Machine Problem

  The ice cream machines used by a majority of McDonald’s franchise owners are notoriously flaky. Produced by Taylor Restaurant Equipment, the machines are so unreliable even the McDonald’s corporate Twitter account has made jokes about them.

• Variety ☛ Disney Plus With Ads Is Not a ‘Hail Mary’ Strategy, CFO Says

  The company last week announced plans to launch an ad-supported subscription plan for Disney Plus, to launch first in the U.S. in late 2022. It hasn’t revealed the cost of Disney Plus with ads, only that it will be less than the regular no-ads version, which in the U.S. costs $7.99 per month.

• Variety ☛ Apple TV Plus Starts Rolling Out on Comcast Video Platforms, With Three-Month Free Promo Offer for New Customers

  The Apple TV Plus app will begin rolling out on Xfinity X1, Xfinity Flex and XClass TVs on March 7 and will be available across all eligible devices in the coming days, according to Comcast. Apple TV Plus launched on Comcast-owned provider Sky (Sky Q and Sky Glass) in the U.K. and Europe in December. The companies announced the distribution partnership in October.

Monopolies

• Counter Punch ☛ Cracking the Leviathan: Workers at Amazon

  The listed price for Amazon’s safety programs in 2021 was over $300 million, a hefty sum in much of the world but nary a drop in Amazon’s bucket. At the end of 2021, Amazon’s market cap was $1.7 trillion. A year into the pandemic the company reported its sales were up 44 percent; sales were up 67 percent higher in 2021 than they were in 2019. The first three months of 2021 saw $8.1 billion in profit, an increase of 220 percent from 2020. In the course of the pandemic Bezos’ personal wealth increased by 70 percent. Step back a decade and Amazon’s net income rose from $1.1 billion in 2010 to $21.3 billion in 2020.

  As for the scope and efficiency of its online sales operation, consider at any given moment over 600 million items are up for sale and Amazon receives about 115 orders, basically a full delivery truck worth, every second. That’s 10 million fulfilled orders for a day. The roots of this was the creation of Amazon Prime back in 2005. It was an economic masterstroke. As of late 2006, Amazon had a total of five Fulfillment Centers (what the company calls its main warehouses), four in Kentucky and the original in Middleton, Delaware. By 2011, the number of Fulfillment Centers reached 21, along with some smaller facilities. With Prime taking hold, the building expansion really accelerated around 2021. According to the latest data on Mapping Amazon webpage (run by Good Jobs First), Amazon now has at least 500 facilities in its U.S. distribution network including 208 Fulfillment Centers, 107 delivery station networks for distributing, and dozens of Prime Now hubs processing two-day and same-day deliveries (along with ten airport hubs). The company claims it opened hundreds of facilities in 2021.

• The Verge ☛ Amazon is reportedly using Chinese suppliers with ties to forced labor

  The TTP found that three Amazon suppliers — Luxshare Precision Industry, AcBel Polytech, and Lens Technology — have reportedly used forced labor themselves. Two other companies, GoerTek and Hefei BOE Optoelectronics, are indirectly involved, and allegedly utilize suppliers that have been accused of using forced labor. A number of previous reports have implicated these companies in the past — for example, Luxshare and Lens Technology were both linked to forced labor in bombshell reports from The Information and The Washington Post, although those reports pertained to Apple’s questionable history of suppliers.

• Copyrights

  • Creative Commons ☛ We asked our CC Global Summit 2021 ‘Women in Open’ panel who their role models are. Here’s who they shone a spotlight on.

    The theme for International Women’s Day 2022 (IWD) is #BreakTheBias, a global call to action that asks us all to take action and level the playing field. Whether intentional or unconscious, bias can make it difficult for women (trans, cis, femmes), nonbinary and gender-non-conforming folks to get ahead in life. Discrimination affects all industries, including the open movement. 

  • Creative Commons ☛ Claim your CC GLAM Certificate Scholarship ticket this week-there are a few left!

    The scholarship will help individuals seeking to deepen their knowledge about open licensing and open practices for GLAMs, and get CC Certified! The CC Certificate for GLAM is a rigorous, 10-week course, which requires 6-10 hours of work per week. Scholarships are non-refundable. Scholarship recipients must be willing to devote the required time to complete the course.