Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 10/04/2022: Open Robotics Turns 10



  • GNU/Linux

    • Kernel Space

      • HPC WireOmnibond Joins iRODS Consortium

        Wilson noted that the open-source model makes iRODS a particularly good fit for Omnibond’s portfolio, which is focused around building synergies between research and open-source technologies. “We currently are the maintainers of OrangeFS, an open-source parallel file system that has been incorporated into the Linux kernel by the Linux kernel team, so we understand the value of open-source software and are excited to partner with the iRODS Consortium,” said Wilson.

    • Applications

      • This One Still Works: The Lynx web browser at 30

        The Lynx web browser was first released in Spring 1992 (evidence here), is still in development with a new update sometime this year (v2.9.0). Lynx was originally made for Unix, DOS and other text-only operating systems, but has also been ported to Linus, MacOS, Windows, and nearly every commonly used operating system.

        [...]

        I don’t use Lynx much these days, but I have great fondness for it. Back in the 1990s when I was at my poorest (unemployed, on welfare, using a Frankenstein PC), I couldn’t afford paid internet. I could, however, use my 14.4K modem to dial into the local Freenet, for an hour per day (or more than one between 12am-6am) running Lynx to do it. This allowed me to browse websites, read Usenet groups, send emails, reserve or renew books at the local library on Telnet, but most importantly, read the job bank at the local unemployment office (hooray for early adopters!) and find the job that got me back on my feet. I might not be where I am today without the same opportunities.

      • Stellarium review

        Stellarium is an excellent free, open-source night sky exploration and mapping software application

        [...]

        Free to use across multiple platforms and as professionally built as any paid-for software, Stellarium feels premium despite the lack of cost. Take a wide view of the night sky to track subjects on any given night or zoom right in to see them in more detail. There’s a wealth of information and history for everything from the planets of the solar system to star constellations and nebulae.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Quick and dirty remote desktop on a headless server with NixOS

        Let’s say you have a server without a graphics card, and you want to use graphical programs directly on it. Here is a 3 step procedure to get a remote desktop supporting OpenGL applications: [...]

      • EarthlyVagrant vs. Docker: Are Virtual Machines Ever the Right Option Anymore?

        For a quick comparison, Vagrant allows developers to automate spinning up VMs in local workstations from a base image, ensuring all the application-specific libraries and components are always present in the VM no matter what physical machine it’s running on. Docker, on the other hand, further abstracts the hardware, operating system, and low-level libraries, creating small, lightweight containers with only the required applications and their necessary runtimes installed.

      • uni TorontoOn the ordering of password and MFA challenges during login

        SSH logins are a somewhat unusual environment because the server starts out knowing the login name. In environments such as web single sign on, you often don't start out knowing the login name, so it's natural to gather the login and the password together, then go to MFA. If your MFA is selective, it's possible that you need to authenticate the user before you have information available on whether MFA is even on; your MFA environment may not handle being sent a non-MFA user to check. So you may be forced to verify passwords first by the requirements of the software or system.

      • DedoimedoHow to install and use Kerkythea in Linux - Tutorial

        Welcome. This article is part of my ongoing series on moving away from Windows as my primary operating system. Several months ago, I've come to the conclusion that the days of the sane, classic desktop computing in Windows are numbered, and I must migrate away ere it's too late. Now, there's no panic. The real problems will most likely start around the EOL of Windows 10, which means 2025 at the earliest. Till then, I promised to do a long series of Windows-to-Linux migration guides around this topic, and create a functional, productive alternative setup for myself, with Linux and the Plasma desktop as my choice.

      • RlangSFTP in R on a Mac

        I am working on a project where I need to upload PDFs generated from Rmarkdown to a SFTP server. The sftp R package is a nice wrapper to the RCurl package for handling SFTP access. But to my surprise, SFTP support is not included on Macs by default through the curl command. After some research I found the curl-openssl formula that includes SFTP support. However, since curl is a build-in program for Mac OS brew install will not install it into the PATH environment, therefore not being directly available. This function will help configure RCurl on a Mac to use the curl-openssl version so we can have SFTP access.

      • Geeks For GeeksHTML Cheat Sheet – A Basic Guide to HTML

        HTML(HyperText Markup Language) is the most basic building block of all web pages. It provides structure to the content appearing on a website, such as images, text, or videos by creating a basic skeleton. HTML is still very useful today, the reason being no matter the framework, or language we use to develop the web page, the output would be rendered in HTML.

      • H2S MediaInstall Persepolis download manager on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - Linux Shout

        In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Persepolis download manager on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish or 20.04 Focal fossa for managing our downloads.

        Persepolis is another open-source download manager for Linux such as Ubuntu and Debian. It has been developed using Python language and a GUI For aria2. Apart from Linux and BSDs operating systems, it is also available for macOS and Windows running systems.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Pixelorama on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

        Pixelorama is a free and open-source pixel art editor available for Gnu/Linux, Windows, and Mac. It’s written using GDScript, which allows it to be easily portable between systems without having any conversion overhead, slowing down your workflow time! The best part? You can save all of those beautiful creations in their custom file format – .pxo if you want more control over how they look when viewed on another device later down the line (it’ll even sync automatically).

        In the following tutorial, you will learn to install the Pixelorama on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish using either the flatpak package manager or the snapcraft package manager, with some tips for maintaining or removing Pixelorama in the future.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Vivaldi Browser on Fedora 36 Linux

        Vivaldi is a freeware, cross-platform web browser developed by Vivaldi Technologies. It had grown from the downfall of Opera with many disgruntled when it changed from the Presto layout engine to a Chromium-based browser. This platform angered traditional Opera users. Since then, Vivaldi has become one of the most popular alternative Internet Browsers amongst the big three Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

        Vivaldi promotes itself as a leading browser with faster navigation, clever bookmarking, more intelligent browsing, extensive tab management, and a more visual approach.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Vivaldi Browser on Fedora 36 Linux using the command line terminal with tips about maintaining and removing the browser versions if required.

      • Make Use Of[Older] How to Log Out of Ubuntu From a Terminal Instantly

        There are two main ways to log out of Ubuntu. The first and the most common is via the graphical user interface, and the second is via the terminal.

        If you are running Ubuntu on a server, then you can only log out via the terminal. For the Ubuntu Desktop edition, you can use either the terminal or the GUI for logging out.

        This guide will show you how to quickly and easily log out from your Ubuntu session via the terminal.

      • [Old] Persistent SSH sessions with proper scrollback

        As many of us, I often find myself working on remote machines through SSH while on the go. Doing this is problematic if you’re on unreliable connections, or simply want to close your laptop and continue working later.

        The most common solution for this problem is to use a terminal multiplexer like screen or tmux to make sure that you won’t lose whatever you’re doing if the connection goes down. However, I really don’t like terminal multiplexers, chiefly because I cannot comfortably scroll and copy paste. I know that both screen and tmux and dvtm and probably many others incorporate various facilities to be able to achieve scrolling and copy-pasting, but I’ve always found them much less convenient than just using the cursor, the scrollwheel, and page up/down. Also note that mosh does not offer scrollback either.

        However, after much tribulation I think we have found the ideal setup after a nice session with Niklas Hambüchen. The idea is: connect to the remote server and immediately spawn a screen session, but instruct screen to display the entire scrollback rather than just a screenful. Moreover, use autossh to automatically reconnect and reattach to the session.

      • Trend OceansHow to fix VMware could not connect ‘Ethernet 0’ to virtual network ‘/dev/vmnet8’

         When you start your virtual machine, you will find an error pop up on the bottom right with the error message “could not connect ‘Ethernet 1’ to the virtual network ‘/dev/vmnet8′” and ask you to read the log for more information.

        And the chances are quite high that you will not get the message until you click on the red cross ethernet Ethernet error symbol mark to connect to the internet, like in the below image.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Distributions

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • UndeadlyOpenSSH 9.0 released

        OpenBSD 7.1 will include the new release.

      • PowerDNSFALCON-512 in PowerDNS

        We are proud to introduce the first guest post on our blog! A team of researchers (listed below) has chosen PowerDNS as the basis for an implementation of post-quantum DNSSEC signing with the FALCON-512 algorithm. Below, you will find their experiences, including links to runnable code.

      • Ali Reza HayatiMy favorite social network

        It’s federated with ActivityPub protocol, has no likes, no faves, no polls, no stars, no claps, no counts. There’s no attention mining in it and it just works to connect people’s postings and thoughts and create a community.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • PostgreSQL vs. MySQL: Which Is Best? | Database Journal

          The choice between PostgreSQL and MySQL depends on the needed scalability and reliability of data management functions. PostgreSQL offers relational and non-relational solutions with high scalability when there are multiple operators. In addition, the optimization options are plenty to complete enterprise tasks and administrative commands.

          Businesses in cloud data storage rely on MySQL for its fast capability that makes transactions smoother. This data management system is preferential among corporate organizations that deal with extensive consumer information.

          Moreover, MySQL is popular among commercial businesses because it functions on old engines like InnoDB and MyISAM. The relational management application can cut times when analyzing heavy data if instructions are customized.

          In addition, efficiency in writing speeds is what differentiates the performance between PostgreSQL and MySQL. The decision for the proper enterprise application depends on the benefits and disadvantages of their features.

          Since most applications can run on either PostgreSQL or MySQL, the choice of relational data management will come down to the function standards acceptable to the business.

        • RlangPython and R have matrix and simple loops. What can you use in T-SQL?

          One of these data types is a matrix. Commonly used in a programming language, yet fairly unknown in T-SQL. You can say, that matrix is a list of lists or an array of arrays. Or simply a table

      • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

        • Open Access/Content

          • Self-host your own audio library with Audiobookshelf

            Reading is one of life’s great pleasures - along with cooking, fiddling with Raspberry Pis and exploring deep, dark forests, the birds of the Crow’s nest can often be found with their noses (beaks) deep in works of literary fiction.

            From the ages of three to 20, the Crow would spend his weekends in libraries, second-hand bookshops and market stalls.

      • Programming/Development

        • Of0xIn the land of PHP you will always be (use-after-)free

          Dear Fellowlship, today’s homily is about the quest of a poor human trying to escape the velvet jail of disable_functions and open_basedir in order to achieve the holy power of executing arbitrary commands. Please, take a seat and listen to the story of how our hero defeated PHP with the help of UAF The Magician.

        • RlangWhy I like XPath, XML and HTML

          One of my favorite tool is XPath, the query language for exploring XML and HTML trees. In this post, I will highlight a few use cases of this “angle-bracket crunching tool” and hope to convince you that it’s an awesome thing to know about and play with.

        • Kevin CoxSubmitting Changes

          It would be possible to do a simple version manually, manually deploy to a slice of production after approval. However, merge conflicts would cause a lot of pain and forgotten versions that were never cleaned up would cause bugs and outages.

        • [Old] Kevin CoxMulti-Version Rollouts

          There are also upsides to the more complex monitoring. Incident response times can be significantly improved because it is easier to identify the last good version. Especially if you have a holdback you can just see which of the holdback versions have the issue. This makes it quickly identify if a rollback will help and which version need to be rolled back to. This also makes it quicker to identify the actual commit that caused the issues as you only need to look at the changes in a small release instead of a large release.

        • Lars WirzeniusOn Linus's Law

          I think this interpretation is wrong, and have always instead understood it to mean this:

          Once a bug is known to exist, the more people are looking for what causes it, the faster it is likely to be found, and then fixed.

        • Geeks For GeeksIs AI Really a Threat to Cybersecurity?

          For the best analysis of this question, it’s best to just look around ourselves. We all can notice a drastic change and progress in our surroundings, who is responsible for this? It’s today’s technology, due to this Artificial Intelligence or AI-based machinery only now the productivity of every task has increased by multiple times, the goods are now available much quicker and reasonable rates anywhere over the world. From manufacturing to transportation to development and security every field has been flourished with the introduction of AI-themed products and appliances. But is also true that we humans have not even scratched the surface of AI till now, It still has a lot to discover. We have understood its importance, its use, and its demand, but we still can’t predict how much potential an AI model has. For now, large factories, machinery, robotic arms, and many more are controlled via AI. Today the whole world’s house is being automated using AI-based Siri and Alexa.

        • arXivThe State of Fortran

          A community of developers has formed to modernize the Fortran ecosystem. In this article, we describe the high-level features of Fortran that continue to make it a good choice for scientists and engineers in the 21st century. Ongoing efforts include the development of a Fortran standard library and package manager, the fostering of a friendly and welcoming online community, improved compiler support, and language feature development. The lessons learned are common across contemporary programming languages and help reduce the learning curve and increase adoption of Fortran.

  • Leftovers

    • The ConversationHow shops use psychology to influence your buying decisions

      Why do shops like to move everything around? Well, it’s actually a simple answer. Changing the location of items in a store means that we, the customers, are exposed to different items as we wander around searching for the things we need or want. This ploy can often significantly increase unplanned spending, as we add additional items to our baskets – often on impulse – while spending more time in the shop.

    • Why investors are snapping up virtual land in a metaverse ghost town [Ed: Webspam promoting a scam]
    • The Register UKThe metaverse of fantasy worlds is itself still a fantasy [Ed: The media is so defunct that Facebook, looking to distract from its abuse, called itself "Meta" and then flooded the media with "metaverse" nonsense for months]
    • Time intervals

      I must confess something. I'm really struggling with maintaining relationships with people, especially since the pandemic. Most of my acquaintances from before are now dispersed, occupied with their own lives, social circles and — increasingly — families.

    • This Antarctica Job Will Let You Run the Post Office and Count Penguins - Nerdist

      If you have to work, then you might as well do something fun, right? We enjoy life here at Nerdist; however, we admit that this isn’t the only cool job on Earth. For example, there is a British island that will let you be king (or whatever royal title fits) and the official bartender. Who wouldn’t want to be royalty and whip up incredible drinks? But there’s another job in a completely different locale that includes an interesting location, a post office, and penguins. There’s a British charity paying a few people to head to Antarctica for a unique job either working at a post office, managing a gift shop, and/or counting penguins. Yes, you read that last part right.

    • Breaking DefenseKey space monitoring sensors still rely on outdated CAVENet computer system - Breaking Defense

      It’s just a local network for UNIX computers running a bunch of mostly custom-built software,” said Secure World Foundation’s Brian Weeden, who has followed the SDA issue in depth for a decade.

    • Science

      • I ProgrammerGary Kildall - CP/M, Digital Research and GEM [Ed: Revisionism to distract from famous criminal Bill Gates? There are lies about Gates there.]

        Gary Kildall is someone who had most influence during the early days of the microcomputer revolution. Because of the way history unfolded not much of his legacy is visible today - but he was an important pioneer and one of the first people to take microprocessors seriously.

        It is tempting to compare him with Bill Gates - they both produced computer language implementations, operating systems and large companies - but the similarity is only superficial.

        Bill Gates was an enthusiast, a garage entrepreneur, a stylish programmer; very much the product of the computer revolution of the 70s. Kildall on the other hand was less of an enthusiast, more of an outsider and an onlooker as the revolution progressed.

      • AAASInnovative therapy that “tricks” and destroys cancer cells advances to clinical trial

        A novel therapy studied at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) Cancer Center has led to a clinical trial for the treatment of glioblastoma, a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer, yet the most common primary brain tumor in adults.

    • Education

      • GeorgeTakeaways From 3 Years Working In Machine Learning

        Please don’t take this as an “expert summary”, there are dozens of thousands of people more suited than myself for doing that. Instead, think of it as a piece of outsider art, takeaways from someone that took an unusually deep dive into the zeitgeist without becoming part of “the community”.

      • RIPEThe RIPE Labs Article Competition Results

        The first RIPE Labs Article Competition was a bit of an experiment. The idea was to give experts who have interesting things to say about the state of the Internet, but who might not have thought to publish on RIPE Labs in the past, a good reason to send us their articles. As a reward, we decided to offer the author of our favourite article a free trip to join us at RIPE 84 in Berlin.

        The competition launched on 15 February and, by end of day on 25 March, ten articles had been submitted by a mix of new and veteran RIPE Labs authors on a range of interesting topics. You can see all those entries on the RIPE Labs Article Competition page.

      • arXivUnderstanding the role of single-board computers in engineering and computer science education: A systematic literature review

        In the last decade, Single-Board Computers (SBCs) have been employed more frequently in engineering and computer science both to technical and educational levels. Several factors such as the versatility, the low-cost, and the possibility to enhance the learning process through technology have contributed to the educators and students usually employ these devices. However, the implications, possibilities, and constraints of these devices in engineering and Computer Science (CS) education have not been explored in detail. In this systematic literature review, we explore how the SBCs are employed in engineering and computer science and what educational results are derived from their usage in the period 2010-2020 at tertiary education. For that, 154 studies were selected out of n=605 collected from the academic databases Ei Compendex, ERIC, and Inspec. The analysis was carried-out in two phases, identifying, e.g., areas of application, learning outcomes, and students and researchers' perceptions. The results mainly indicate the following aspects: (1) The areas of laboratories and e-learning, computing education, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), and persons with disabilities gather the studies in the review. (2) Researchers highlight the importance of the SBCs to transform the curricula in engineering and CS for the students to learn complex topics through experimentation in hands-on activities. (3) The typical cognitive learning outcomes reported by the authors are the improvement of the students' grades and the technical skills regarding the topics in the courses. Concerning the affective learning outcomes, the increase of interest, motivation, and engagement are commonly reported by the authors.

      • Michael UrspringerLong time no see …

        But now, after more than 35 years I am QRV again And during that time, my old class “C” license has been converted to class “A” and I am now allowed to work also on the shortwave bands.

        So I surfed a lot in the Internet, read many articles and blogs about ham radio, looked many, many YouTube videos about ham radio operations to get a feeling how things have changed during that 35 years And really a lot has changed. especially all the new digital modes were not existing at the time I got my license.

      • Times Higher EducationPakistani researchers need more help to spot cloned journals

        The rise of so-called cloned journals has succeeded standard predatory journals as the latest moral peril facing researchers desperate to have their research published.

        Cloned – or “hijacked” – journals mimic the details of legitimate journals, such as their International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), title and – as closely as possible – their domain names. They charge authors fees of up to US$1,000 (€£728) to publish, but do not carry out any peer review or editing.

    • Hardware

      • HackadayLoRa-Powered Birdhouses Enable Wireless Networking When The Internet’s Down

        One of the design requirements for the networks that evolved into the Internet was the ability to keep functioning, even if some nodes or links were disabled or destroyed in war. The packet-switched architecture that still powers today’s Internet is a direct result of that: if one link stops functioning, information is automatically re-routed towards its intended destination. However, with tech giants occupying increasingly large parts of the global internet, an outage at one of them might still cause major disruption. In addition, a large-scale power interruption can disable large parts of the network if multiple nodes are connected to the same grid.

      • HackadaySDR Listens In To Your Tires

        [Ross] has a 2008 Toyota Tacoma. Like many late model cars, each tire contains a direct tire pressure monitoring sensor or TPMS that wirelessly sends data about the tire status to the car. However, unlike some cars, the system has exactly one notification to the driver: one of your tires is low. It doesn’t tell you which one. Sure, you can check each tire, but [Ross] had a different problem. One sensor was bad and he had no way to know which one it was. He didn’t have any equipment to test the sensor, but he did have an RTL-SDR dongle and some know-how to figure out how to listen in on the sensors.

      • HackadayCAT Is Not Your Average Meow-cropad

        Are you completely over the idea of the keyboard in any flattish form and looking for something completely different for inputting your data? Or do you want a mega macropad for 3D design, GIMP or Inkscape work, or to use while relaxing with a nice first-person shooter? Then this ergonomic, double-fistable keyboard/controller mashup named CAT may be what you’re looking for.

      • HackadayAmazing “Connect Fore!” Robot Challenges Your Putting Practice

        We’ve just come across [Bithead]’s amazing, robotically-automated mashup of miniature golf and Connect Four, which also includes an AI opponent who pulls no punches in its drive to win. Connect Fore! celebrates Scotland — the birthplace of golf, after all — and looks absolutely fantastic.

      • HackadayBest Ways To Make PCB Breakaway Tabs, Revealed

        Most of us are familiar with the concept of producing PCBs in a panel, and snapping them apart afterwards. V-grooves that go most of the way through a PCB are one way to go about this, but a line of perforations along which to snap a tab is another. But what’s the best size and spacing of holes to use? Sparkfun’s [Nick Poole] spent some $400 on PCBs to get some solid answers by snapping each of them apart, and judging the results.

      • ROS IndustrialDemystifying Robots Interoperability

        The proliferation of these new types of robots would unleash new possibilities to automate tasks where robots were not traditionally seen as capable. The trends towards such utilization have been seen especially in production and warehouses and in transportation and outdoor facility. These trends are primarily motivated by improved production flexibility, task optimization, reduced reliance on a limited skilled workforce, and the ability to respond more effectively to dynamic supply and demand fluctuations. For example, deployment of robots for flexible manufacturing where robots can be used to modularly navigate and conduct part of the processes that once were static operations requiring heavy CAPEX investment for fixed equipment construction.

      • Ted UnangstThe Zephyrus G14 is not a MacBook Pro 14, and Sundry Observations and Insights, Keen and Mundane, Arising from an Inquiry into Power and Performance

        Two years ago, all the cool tech influences got an Asus Zephyrus G14 laptop, and all I could think about was getting one, but then I didn't. The ports were closed, the boat got stuck, whatever, but mostly the promised QHD screen model never seemed to materialize. Now finally it has, and it's 16:10 even, so finally I got one.

        One other thing that's changed is the arrival of the Apple M1. The G14 now has a competitor in the form of the MacBook Pro 14 that didn't exist at the time of launch.

      • NetApp grabs Instaclustr data-layer-as-a-service€ startup – Blocks and Files

        NetApp has bought Instaclustr for an undisclosed sum and plans to fold the business into its CloudOps portfolio.

        Instaclustr operates open-source databases in the cloud and says it has curated the most scalable and popular open-source technologies, delivered via SaaS.

        NetApp CEO George Kurian said: “The acquisition of Instaclustr will combine NetApp’s established leadership in continuous storage and compute optimization with Instaclustr’s fully-managed database and data pipeline services to give customers a Cloud Operations platform that provides the best and most optimized foundation for their applications in the public clouds and on premises.”

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • The ConversationPet therapy: how dogs, cats and horses help improve human wellbeing

        A recent study based at the hospital set out to investigate whether canine therapy had any impact on the wellbeing of patients – the majority (around 70%) of which had been admitted and were waiting for a hospital bed, and all of whom were experiencing pain.

        They each received a ten minute visit from a St John Ambulance therapy dog in addition to the usual hospital care. Using a detailed psychometric survey, the researchers assessed patients immediately before the visit, immediately afterwards and 20 minutes afterwards. They were encouraged to find that the patients reported a significant reduction in pain, anxiety and depression following the visit by the therapy dog – and an increase in general wellbeing.

      • Port SwiggerWake-up call: Is the infosec skills gap causing a mental health crisis? [iophk: Windows TCO]

        Mounting pressure on information security professionals is creating a mental health crisis across the industry, a new report claims.

        The survey from Vectra AI, released today (April 7), found that more than half of respondents (51%) have suffered depression, anger, or anxiety due to feeling overwhelmed by work.

        A further 56% have had sleepless nights worrying about work and 42% have called in sick because they couldn’t face work.

        The report polled 200 respondents working in roles across the infosec industry.

      • Pitt Assistant Professor Receives $3 Million Grant to Improve Aphasia Treatment - UPMC & Pitt Health Sciences News Blog

        The announcement of actor Bruce Willis’ aphasia diagnosis is raising awareness of a common condition that few people recognize. More than two million Americans are living with aphasia.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • The VergeYouTubers are sick of comment spam, so YouTube is testing a stricter moderation system

          YouTube comment spam can take many forms. Major creators are often concerned about spam that impersonates them, promises viewers something good for messaging them, and then directs individuals off YouTube in some way to eventually scam them.

        • Silicon AngleSecurity experts surprised by Russia’s ineffective cyberattacks in Ukraine but warn against complacency [iophk: Windows TCO]

          The absence of significant cyberattacks against Ukraine by Russia during the current war is the dog that didn’t bark or bite. Cybersecurity experts around the globe are puzzling over why Russia, with highly sophisticated cyberattack capabilities as demonstrated by NotPetya, election meddling and the SolarWinds software supply chain breach, has not done more to disrupt digital operations in Ukraine.

          Aside from a few isolated and largely ineffective attacks and a surprisingly mild disinformation campaign, Russia has either refrained from or been incapable of flexing its sizable cyberwarfare muscles in the conflict. The burning question is: Why?

        • Port SwiggerVMware patches critical flaws in Workspace ONE Access identity management software

          The vulnerability – tracked as CVE-2022-22954 and with a CVSS rating of 9.8 – arises as the result of a server-side template injection issue.

          “A malicious actor with network access can trigger a server-side template injection that may result in remote code execution,” VMware warns in a security bulletin.

          Also on the critical list are two authentication bypass vulnerabilities in the OAuth2 ACS framework, which is tied to VMware Workspace ONE Access.

          These flaws – tracked as CVE-2022-22955 and CVE-2022-22956 and both with a CVSS rating of 9.8 – each bypass an authentication mechanism and “execute any operation due to exposed endpoints in the authentication framework”, VMware warns.

        • Pegasus used against activists and journalists in Jordan. Lazarus Group distributes Trojanized DeFi wallet. Deep Panda exploits Log4Shell.

          The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab says phones belonging to "four Jordanian human rights defenders, lawyers, and journalists were hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware between August 2019 and December 2021." The researchers don't attribute this activity to any particular government, but they note that two Pegasus customers appear to be primarily focused on targets in Jordan:

          "One of the customers, which we name MANSAF, appears to be spying primarily in Jordan, with limited additional operations in Iraq, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. We believe that MANSAF has been operating since December 2018.

        • The Register UKRivals aren't convinced by Microsoft's one-click default browser change
        • Crime

          • [Old] Microsoft Whistleblower Alleges Company Covered Up $200 Million In Bribes

            A Microsoft insider has come forward with an explosive story about how employees at the tech giant were engaging in a multimillion dollar bribery scheme. What’s more, blowing the whistle cost him his job.

            On Friday, Yasser Elabd published an article on the whistleblower platform Lioness where he detailed what he said was widespread bribery through Microsoft's foreign contract business, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. Elabd, who said he has shared his findings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said that the entire scheme could be worth more than $200 million in bribes and kickbacks.

          • [Old] Microsoft Fire Employees After Allegations of Bribery in Middle East and Africa

            Former Microsoft senior director, Mr. Yasser Elabd has revealed that Microsoft has turned a blind eye and even enabled briberies in relation to their operations in Africa and the Middle East.

            In a blog post he published on Friday he goes into detail about his work with Microsoft, how he discovered illicit activities happening right under his nose and how he tried his level best to stop it but eventually got fired.

          • [Old] Microsoft Spent $200 Million In Bribes Every Year In Middle East, Claims Ex-Employee

            Elabd continued to say that his concerns over this seemingly strange submission were not investigated thoroughly and through escalating this through the ranks of legal, human resources and eventually to CEO Satya Nadella, he had "booked a one-way ticket out of Microsoft." He was fired in 2018.

          • Openwashing

        • Security

          • Make Use OfWordPress Plugins and Themes Could Have Vulnerabilities: How to Secure Your Site

            As by far the most popular content management system, WordPress powers millions of different websites. It's open source software, which means its source code is publicly accessible and can be modified by pretty much anyone with sufficient know-how.

            Though WordPress plugins and themes can be purchased, tens of thousands of them are available for free. As one might expect, this does not come without its downsides. So how vulnerable are WordPress sites? What about its themes and plugins? And how can you protect your sites?

          • The Register UKMailchimp: Cryptocurrency clients' mailing-list info stolen ● The Register

            Mailchimp has confirmed a miscreant gained access to one of its internal tools and used it to steal data belonging to 100-plus high-value customers.

            The clients were all in cryptocurrency and finance-related industries, according to Mailchimp. "Our findings show that this was a targeted incident," the mailing-list giant's CISO Siobhan Smyth said in a statement to The Register on Monday.

            Rumors of the intrusion surfaced on Twitter over the weekend: on Sunday, hardware cryptocurrency wallet maker Trezor, whose website is trezor.io, warned someone was sending out emails from noreply[at]trezor[dot]us containing a link to malware designed to harvest wallet owners' information.

            Less than an hour later, Trezor said it managed to get the domain names associated with the scam disabled, and that MailChimp said its service had been "compromised by an insider targeting crypto companies."

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Buzz FeedSam Altman’s Worldcoin Promised Them Free Crypto For An Eyeball Scan. Now They Feel Robbed.

              As Kudzanayi strolled through the mall with friends, a small crowd caught his attention. At its center, three men held up an otherworldly silver sphere that spoke in a brisk, business-like voice.

              The men worked for a cryptocurrency company called Worldcoin, which had come to countries across Africa with a proposition for locals. The men were offering all comers a T-shirt and a voucher for $20 worth of Worldcoin, which one of the men boasted would appreciate 500%. All anyone had to do to claim this prize was to get their eyes scanned by the futuristic device, which they called “the Orb.”

            • PR NewswireMandatly Inc. Announces the Launch of Forever Free Edition of its Privacy Management Software Solution [Ed: Does this proprietary software itself respect privacy?]

              Mandatly Inc. announces the launch of Forever Free Edition of its Privacy Management Software Solution to help companies meet and demonstrate privacy compliance for GDPR, CCPA, LGPD and other global privacy laws.

            • New York TimesFacial Recognition Goes to War

              According to one email, Ukraine’s national police obtained two photos of dead Russian soldiers, which have been viewed by The New York Times, on March 21. One dead man had identifying patches on his uniform, but the other did not, so the ministry ran his face through Clearview’s app.

              The app surfaced photos of a similar-looking man, a 33-year-old from Ulyanovsk who wore a paratrooper uniform and held a gun in his profile photos on Odnoklassniki, a Russian social media site. According to an official from the national police, attempts were made to contact the man’s relatives in Russia to inform them of his death, but there was no response.

              Identifying dead soldiers and notifying their families is part of a campaign, according to a Telegram post by the Ukrainian vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov, to break through to the Russian public the cost of the conflict and to “dispel the myth of a ‘special operation’ in which there are ‘no conscripts’ and ‘no one dies,’” he wrote.

            • Bruce Schneier[Repeated] AirTags Are Used for Stalking Far More than Previously Reported

              Eight police departments over eight months yielded fifty cases. And that’s only where the victim (1) realized they were being tracked by someone else’s AirTag, and (2) contacted the police. That’s going to multiply out to a lot of AirTag stalking in the country, and the world.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Rolling StoneNo Convictions in Trial of Men Accused of Plotting to Kidnap Michigan Governor

        The alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer in the fall of 2020 is one of the most remarkable domestic terror cases in recent American history. It appeared to underscore that the danger right-wing extremism poses to the functioning of American democracy extends well beyond the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

        But the failure to secure convictions from a jury points to the difficulty in prosecuting such conduct in a country rife with political divisions and anti-government sentiment. The outcome is a stinging defeat for the Justice Department that Whitmer’s office warns could “embolden” extremists.

      • Houston ChronicleEXPLAINER: Charges in Michigan Gov. Whitmer kidnap plot case

        The defendants never achieved their purported goal of kidnapping Whitmer. Unbeknownst to them, the FBI had infiltrated their group and was closely monitoring them. They were arrested in October 2020.

        Defense attorneys portrayed their clients as weekend warriors prone to big, wild talk, who were often stoned. To prove it was deadly serious, prosecutors entered evidence showing the defendants took specific steps, referred to as “overt acts," toward implementing their plans.

        Jury instructions explained that convictions on the kidnapping and weapons conspiracy charges required evidence that each defendant committed at least one of the long list of overt acts in the indictment.

      • ReutersJury acquits two men in Michigan governor kidnapping case, deadlocks on two others

        The four on trial are among 13 men who were arrested in October 2020 and charged with state or federal crimes in the alleged kidnapping conspiracy. Seven of them are facing charges in state court.

        The FBI said it had begun tracking the group's movements after seeing online discussions that included posts about the violent overthrow of some state governments.

      • ABC2 acquitted, 2 mistrials in Michigan governor kidnap plot

        Federal prosecutors alleged the group had meticulously planned to kidnap the governor and hold her hostage along with others at the state Capitol in Lansing. Investigators said the men allegedly acquired weapons, ammunition and materials for explosives and conducted surveillance of the governor's home.

      • New York TimesTwo Men Acquitted of Plotting to Kidnap Michigan Governor in High-Profile Trial

        The result was a major blow to the Justice Department, which during the Biden administration has made domestic terrorism one of its top priorities in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, [insurrection] at the U.S. Capitol.

        The defendants in the Michigan trial were arrested weeks before the 2020 election, and the case was seen by some as revealing increasingly combative discourse among certain right-wing groups. But a series of missteps during the investigation, and the eventual failure to win any convictions against the men who went to trial, raises questions about the ability of federal law enforcement, when it infiltrates right-wing groups, to develop convincing cases without infringing on the rights to speak freely and own weapons.

      • NPR2 men are acquitted in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Whitmer; hung jury on 2 more

        Two of four men were acquitted Friday in a conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, motivated by fury at the Democrat's tough COVID-19 restrictions early in the pandemic.

        The jury's verdicts against Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were read in the federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the case presided over by U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker. Jurors said they couldn't agree on verdicts again Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. Prosecutors described Fox as a ringleader of an anti-government group.

      • VOA NewsIran's President Vows to Continue Nuclear Activities

        Raisi's comments came as talks between Iran and world powers in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal have stalled. There is concern that Iran could be closer to being able to construct an atomic weapon if it chose to pursue one.

        The nuclear deal collapsed four years ago when former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States and imposed crushing sanctions on Iran. In the meantime, Iran has vastly expanded its nuclear work.

      • DNA IndiaWho is Ahmad Murtaza Abbasi, the IIT grad accused in Gorakhnath Temple attack

        Ahmad Murtaza Abbasi made headlines after attacking Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhnath temple on April 3. Minutes after the incident took place, the internet was filled with videos showing him chasing security guards with a sickle.

        As claimed by the police, Abbasi was trying to charge into the temple after raising the slogan of ‘Allahu Akbar’. When he was scanned at the temple’s entrance gate by police officers, he even tried to snatch the weapons of the PAC staff deployed there. Authorities have termed Abbasi’s moves to be an “act of terror” and have ordered a special team of the UP STF to probe the matter further.

      • MEMRIJordanian Islamic Scholar Said Radwan: Al-Andalus (Spain), Crimea, East Turkestan, Other Places Are Islamic Lands, Just Like Palestine; They Should Be Under Islamic Rule

        Jordanian Islamic scholar Said Radwan said in a March 17, 2022 interview on the Hizb ut-Tahrir-affiliated Al-Waqiya TV (Lebanon) that any country that was ruled by Islamic law in the past is in fact Islamic land and that it should be returned to Islamic rule and the enemy that attacked these countries must be driven out. He said that this pertains to places such as Al-Andalus (Spain), Crimea, East Turkestan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere just as it pertains to Palestine.

      • The Register UKChina accused of cyberattacks on Indian power grid [Ed: Sounds like another incident or example of Windows in core infrastructure (where it never belonged)]

        China has been accused of conducting a long-term cyber attack on India's power grid, and has been implicated in cyber attacks against targets in Ukraine.

        Cybersecurity firm Insikt Group found network intrusions at seven Indian State Load Dispatch Centers (SLDCs) that conduct real-time operations for grid control and electricity dispatch, according to a report released Wednesday. All seven SLDCs were located near the disputed India-China border in Ladakh.

        Although one of the SLDCs had been previously targeted – in a 2020 incident that Insikt Group named RedEcho and credited to Beijing – the newly identified intrusions target an almost entirely different set of victims.

      • Deep Dive Analysis – Borat RAT [Ed: Microsoft Windows TCO strikes again]
      • The Register UKBorat RAT: Multiple threat of ransomware, DDoS and spyware

        To further rattle victims, Borat can run such tasks as playing audio, showing and hiding the desktop or taskbar, enabling or disabling the webcam light, turning off the monitor or showing a blank screen.

      • The Register UKFIN7 crime-gang pen tester headed to US prison for five years

        Since at least 2015, FIN7 gang members have used phishing emails with malicious files attached to break into hundreds of companies' networks. Once they gained access, they injected malware to steal customers' credit- and debit-card numbers, which they then sold on the dark web or used to fund their own shopping sprees.

        Gd

      • The Register UKMicrosoft dogs Strontium domains to stop attacks on Ukraine [Ed: Microsoft is a key reason Ukraine's system are vulnerable to Russian attacks; this is a misleading inversion of narratives, reinforced by gullible or complicit publishers]
    • Environment

      • CU Boulder artist wins national award for art about climate change | CU Boulder Today | University of Colorado Boulder

        CU Boulder artist Amy Hoagland has received national recognition for her artwork, which addresses climate change, sustainability and humans’ relationship with the natural world.

        Hoagland, a candidate for a Master of Fine Art in Sculpture, was selected for the top $10,000 award in a fellowship and award program created by nonprofit Honoring the Future and supported by the Windgate Foundation. The new program recognizes emerging craft artists who advance sustainability through their art.

      • TruthOutIPCC Report's Analysis of Fossil Fuel Industry Excluded From Policymakers' Brief
      • Energy

        • Common DreamsWest Virginians Lead Blockade of Coal Plant That's Made Manchin Rich

          Organizers of the "Coal Baron Blockade" protest which targeted right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's coal empire Saturday afternoon reported that state police almost immediately began arresting campaigners who assembled in Grant Town, West Virginia.

          "Sen. Joe Manchin's policies hurt poor people and hurt our environment so deeply that activists are ready to put themselves on the line," tweeted the Poor People's Campaign, which joined grassroots group West Virginia Rising and other organizations in the blockade.

        • CBCHow a break at the pumps is a reverse carbon tax — and could make climate change worse

          In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the long-standing dispute over how governments should be spending our tax dollars in the oil and gas sector has become more complicated and, if possible, more heated.

          As Canadians wait to hear Ottawa's spending plans in today's budget, there are conflicting views worldwide over whether countries should be producing more oil and gas to help Europe — or saving the world from climate change and leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • The ConversationHere’s how we proved that tropical birds are more colourful – and why colour helps them survive

          A cutting-edge computer technology called “Deep Learning” – which is able to learn to how to process and classify large amounts of complex data from images – helped us to extract information from the thousands of pixels in each photograph.

          We were then able to measure the shade and intensity of plumage colours in each photo in terms of red, green and blue light, as well as ultraviolet – this was important as birds have a broader range of vision than humans and can perceive colours in the ultraviolet light spectrum.

          Using this information we generated an accurate estimate of colourfulness of each species, based on the number of distinct colours (or “colour loci”) in the plumage of each individual bird.

    • Finance

      • The Register UKDatacenter operator Cyxtera considering sale ● The Register

        Cyxtera last year completed a merger with Starboard Value Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in order to grow and support further strategic go-to-market efforts, the firm stated at the time. The company received approximately $493 million from the transaction before fees, expenses, and debt amortization.

      • The Register UKToshiba puts going private on the table

        Toshiba has decided it will consider proposals to take the company private, and devise yet another strategy to improve its performance, suggesting alternative proposals for the company's future will be revealed – and perhaps decided - in late June.

        The beleaguered Japanese giant yesterday announced [PDF] it has created a special committee to consider any offers for the company.

        Membership of the committee is only open to Toshiba's independent directors – an important decision because investors have already rejected two plans cooked up by the company's management, and expressed displeasure at many management decisions.

      • The Register UKIntel CEO made $178m in first 10 months, AMD CEO got a $2m pay rise

        In a sign of how badly Intel's board wanted Pat Gelsinger to turn around the storied chipmaker, the company paid the new CEO a whopping $178 million in total compensation last year for his first ten or so months on the job. That is nearly eight times what former CEO Bob Swan made in 2020.

        The semiconductor giant released the 2021 compensation details of Gelsinger and its other top executives in a proxy statement filed March 30 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

        Rival AMD released 2021 compensation details for its top executives in a proxy statement a day later, showing that CEO Lisa Su increased her total compensation by a couple million dollars last year – from $27.14 million to $29.5 million.

      • The Register UKVolvo car sales tumble amid ongoing chip shortages [Ed: Excuses are abundant]
    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • TruthOutTexas Woman Charged With Murder for Self-Induced Abortion
      • TruthOutSenate Cafeteria Workers Successfully Defend Jobs and Push Dems to Back Them
      • TruthOutTrump Jr. Pushed Father's Chief of State to Overturn Election, Texts Show
      • Common DreamsZelenskyy Accuses Russia of 'Another War Crime' After Train Station Bombing

        Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday called the Russian rocket attack on a train station in eastern Ukraine a "war crime" amid reports that mass graves were discovered in a town west of Kyiv.

        "This is another war crime of Russia," Zelenskyy said of the train station attack in Kramatorsk, in which the death toll has risen to at least 50 including five children. "For which everyone involved will be held accountable."

      • NBCPakistan’s embattled prime minister ousted in no-confidence vote

        Khan earlier had tried to sidestep the vote by dissolving Parliament and calling early elections but a Supreme Court ruling ordered the vote to go ahead.

        The vote comes amid cooling relations between Khan and a powerful military who many of his political opponents allege helped him come to power in general elections in 2018. The military has directly ruled Pakistan for more than half of its 75 years and wields considerable power over civilian governments, who worry that a disgruntled army could unseat them.

      • Matt RickardBackwardation and Contango

        What's the difference in the price of a barrel of oil delivered to your doorstep today vs. a contract that locks in a price and guarantees you a barrel of oil in 6 months?

        You'd need to think about what it costs to store a barrel of oil. You'll need a warehouse and safety gear to store it (the fumes a single barrel of oil can easily kill you). Then there's insurance, financing, and other hidden costs to owning the physical commodity.

      • [Old] America’s 233-Year-Old Shock at Jihad

        It should be noted that centuries before setting their sights on American vessels, the Barbary States of Muslim North Africa—specifically Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis—had been thriving on the slave trade of Christians abducted from virtually every corner of coastal Europe—going as far as Britain, Ireland, Denmark, and Iceland. These raids were so successful that, “between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast,” to quote American historian, Robert Davis.

        The treatment of these European slaves was exacerbated by the fact that they were Christian “infidels.” As Robert Playfair (b.1828), who served for years as a consul in Barbary, explained, “In almost every case they [European slaves] were hated on account of their religion.” Three centuries earlier, John Foxe (b.1516) had written in his Book of Martyrs that, “In no part of the globe are Christians so hated, or treated with such severity, as at Algiers.”

      • Frontpage MagazineThe UN Suppresses Reality by Calling it a ‘Phobia’

        According to Muslim history, in 628 AD, Muhammad summoned the Roman (or “Byzantine”) emperor, Heraclius—the symbolic head of “the West,” then known as “Christendom”—to submit to Islam; when the emperor refused, a virulent jihad was unleashed against the Western world. Less than 100 years later, Islam had conquered more than two-thirds of Christendom, and was raiding deep into France. While these far-reaching conquests are often allotted a sanitized sentence, if that, in today’s textbooks, the chroniclers of the time make clear that these were cataclysmic events that had a traumatic impact on, and played no small part in forming, Europe proper, that is, the unconquered portion and final bastion of Christendom.

      • India Times'Tip of the iceberg': Taiwan's spy catchers hunt Chinese poachers of chip talent

        Taiwan's spy catchers have launched probes into around 100 Chinese companies suspected of illegally poaching semiconductor engineers and other tech talent, a senior official at the island's Investigation Bureau told Reuters.

        That comes on top of seven prosecuted since the start of last year and includes 27 which have either been raided or whose owners have been summoned for questioning by the bureau, the official said.

      • LawfareTrouble Is Brewing in Germany [Ed: The old tactics of conflating Pfizer sceptics with far right]

        On March 20, Germany dropped the last of its “extensive protection measures” against the coronavirus and returned to a wary form of normality. But while Germany may have decided that it is done with the pandemic for now, the pandemic—or rather the societal damage it wrought—is certainly not done with Germany. Trouble is brewing on German streets.

        Over the past two years, the heterogeneous protest group against Germany’s coronavirus restrictions known as the Querdenker movement—“Querdenker” roughly means one who thinks laterally or outside the box—has radicalized sharply. Violence has followed. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV)—the German equivalent to MI5 in the United Kingdom—placed elements of the group under observation as a potential threat to Germany’s free democratic constitutional order in April 2021. An analysis by the state branch of the BfV from North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in May 2021 warned of the movement’s “missionary” drive to win converts and desire to take back control of the country from a conspiratorial elite. By that time, the NRW Verfassungsschutz wrote, the movement’s original aim of protesting the state interventions against the pandemic had faded into the background as the protests were used increasingly to make politicians, the federal and state governments, and the media into “the object of protest and hatred.”

      • The Other Americans: Authoritarianism Deepens Across Central America

        El Salvador’s state of emergency declaration highlights an alarming trend throughout the region.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

      • ViceRussian TikTok Influencers Are Being Paid to Spread Kremlin Propaganda

        An investigation by VICE News has uncovered a coordinated campaign to pay Russian TikTok influencers to post videos pushing pro-Kremlin narratives about the war in Ukraine.

        Numerous campaigns have been coordinated in a secret Telegram channel that directs these influencers on what to say, where to capture videos, what hashtags to use, and when exactly to post the video.

        These campaigns were launched at the beginning of the invasion and have involved a number of the highest-profile influencers on TikTok, some of whom have over a million followers.

      • Newsweek'I Was At The White House TikTok Briefing'

        I personally tried to make sure all of my content about the event was curated in a very specific, sensitive way where I had fact checked everything and approached it critically. But I think over time, it got to the "wrong side" of TikTok, the space your haters are in, and then a few conspiracies surrounding my White House attendance emerged. The most common conspiracy has been that we were being brainwashed into warmongering on behalf of the Biden administration and their political interests. Whenever I tried to respond that we weren't being controlled and had agency over how we reported on the event, these skeptics would respond, "That's exactly what someone brainwashed would say."

      • Modern DiplomacyFive fact-checking tips from disinformation experts - Modern Diplomacy

        Ahead of the International Fact Checking Day on 2 April, we met with the European Digital Media Observatory which is an EU-wide platform to combat disinformation while protecting the core value of freedom of expression

        The modern era of disinformation can be said to have begun in the 1980s. Operatives from the then Soviet Union concocted the lie that the AIDS epidemic sweeping the world at that time was created in a government laboratory in the US.

        In a vast, worldwide operation involving field offices, agents and huge investments in newspapers, radio and even publishing a book, for years the KGB pushed the fake narrative to undermine the US and its allies. Known as Operation Infektion, the disinformation campaign was used to sow doubt and create social and political tensions all around the world.

        Eventually, the story was repeated in 80 countries and translated into 30 languages until the Soviets admitted to making the whole thing up in 1987. Despite detailed admissions by senior Soviets, the rumour persists to this day, nearly 40 years later.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Banned, Buried & Burnt: Book Censorship on the Rise

        On Dec 16 2021, Republican state Sen. Rob Standridge put into motion 2 bills. The first of which allows parents of children in Oklahoma public schools to be able ban books. In addition, Standridge enacted a $10,000/pre day bounty that could be collected by parents, when challenged books are not removed by libraries. “Our education system is not the place to teach moral lessons that should instead be left up to parents and families. Unfortunately, however, more and more schools are trying to indoctrinate students by exposing them to gender, sexual and racial identity curriculums and courses.” Standridge said in a statement reported by The Hill.

        The second bill is aimed at higher education in Oklahoma. Universities would be prohibited from allowing students to take courses “addressing any form of gender, sexual, or racial diversity, equality, or inclusion curriculum,” that are not part of the requirements for their studies.

        Standridge is part of an increasing number of US lawmakers working to make book banning in public schools more accessible for parents and legislators.

      • [Old] PBSNationwide effort to ban books challenges freedom of speech
      • The New Iron Curtain Part 4: Russia’s Sovereign Internet Takes Root

        In May 2019, Vladimir Putin signed new legislation to shut Russians off from information contradicting the Kremlin’s approved narrative. Western technology helped build the censorship apparatus. As Russia sends tanks and soldiers to take over Ukraine, it is also dispatching censors and regulators to strangle the Internet. In this special series by the Center for European Policy Analysis, The New Iron Curtain, Senior Fellows Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan argue that both invasions are linked and represent the culmination of more than a decade-long trend to throttle the free and open flow of information in Russia.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • New York TimesAmazon says landmark Staten Island union vote should be thrown out.

        Amazon objected on Friday to a landmark union election at its Staten Island fulfillment center, saying an upstart union’s unorthodox tactics there crossed legal lines, according to a copy of its filing to the National Labor Relations Board obtained by The New York Times.

        The company argued that the result should be thrown out because the labor board had conducted the election in a way that favored the union and members of the union had coerced workers into supporting their cause.

        In the final tally last Friday, workers cast 2,654 votes to be represented by the Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 voted against it, giving the union a win by 11 percentage points.

        The result of another Amazon election, at a warehouse in Alabama, is also being challenged by both the company and a union seeking to represent workers there, according to filings submitted late Thursday. That union argued that the problems “both separately and cumulatively constitute grounds to set the election aside,” but Amazon stopped short of calling for the result to be tossed. The union trails in the initial tally.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Repairability

      • The VergeThe era of fixing your own phone has nearly arrived

        “The thing that’s changing the game more than anything else is the French repairability scorecard,” says Wiens, referring to a 2021 law that requires tech companies to reveal how repairable their phones are — on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0 — right next to their pricetag. Even Apple was forced to add repairability scores — but Wiens points me to this press release by Samsung instead. When Samsung commissioned a study to check whether the French repairability scores were meaningful, it didn’t just find the scorecards were handy — it found a staggering 80 percent of respondents would be willing to give up their favorite brand for a product that scored higher.

      • The Register UKEU Right to Repair resolution heads to plenary vote ● The Register

        European lawmakers are voting in plenary on a Right to Repair resolution today amid calls for the initiative to go even further.

        The draft motion for resolution [PDF] cited a survey that found 79 percent of EU citizens thought that manufacturers should make repairs easier, with 77 percent saying a repair would be preferable to replacement, and called for access to parts, repair information, and standardization among devices.

        To that end, the motion emphasizes labels to indicate repairability and expected lifetime for products, access to parts and repair facilities, an extension to liability for defective goods beyond two years, and calls on the European Commission to "always take into account the highest possible level of consumer protection and consumer welfare."

      • The Register UKGoogle to sell replacement Pixel phone parts via iFixit ● The Register

        In a nod to right-to-repair efforts, Google is partnering with iFixit to offer spare parts for its Pixel smartphones dating all the way back to 2017.

        Genuine Pixel parts will be in stock for iFixit customers in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and EU countries that sell Pixels "later this year." Parts will be available for devices as old as the Pixel 2 through 2021's Pixel 6 Pro, "as well as future Pixel models," Google said today.

        Available parts include "everything you need for the most common Google Pixel Repairs – batteries, displays, cameras and more," iFixit said. The repair howto site will be selling parts individually, and as part of its Fix Kits that include necessary pieces and tools needed to perform specific repair processes.

    • Monopolies

      • The Register UKMandiant shareholder sues to block $5.4b Google deal

        A Mandiant shareholder has launched a legal challenge to block Google's $5.4 billion takeover of the threat intelligence firm.

        According to a lawsuit filed in a New York federal district court by shareholder Shiva Stein, Mandiant made "materially incomplete and misleading" statements to investors in financial documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about the planned acquisition.

      • Copyrights

        • CoryDoctorowThe Ed Sheeran problem, or, how the record industry got what it asked for

          Sheeran's statement makes two critical points: first, that there are only so many ways of arranging English words and musical phrases, and 60,000 new songs being released to Spotify every day, there will inevitably be some coincidental duplications of words and melodies.

          That's an idea that's been in the air for a hell of a long time. Spider Robinson won a Hugo in 1983 for a short story called "Melancholy Elephants" where the widow of a legendary musician tries to talk a US senator out of extending copyright terms on the grounds that it will result in every copyrightable element of every art-form being under copyright forever: [...]

        • Digital Music NewsJustin Bieber Faces Copyright Infringement Lawsuit For Uploading a Picture of Himself and His Wife to Instagram

          But this latest image-focused copyright infringement lawsuit involving Bieber – which isn’t the first such action against the 28-year-old – centers on a shot that New York-based Josiah Kamau “authored” on February 8th, 2020.

        • Intel, Media Cos. Tell DC Circ. DMCA Doesn't Hurt Free Speech [Ed: They are intentionally lying for their own selfish interests]

          Intel, along with major industry groups in entertainment and media, has urged the D.C. Circuit to uphold a lower court ruling that digital copyright law blocking the circumvention of technical locks on copyrighted works doesn't violate free speech.



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Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries