04.20.22
Posted in News Roundup at 6:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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While many proprietary OS vendors have stopped supporting older hardware, Linux continues to power such low-end devices to prevent e-waste disposal.
E-waste, or electronic waste, is a big problem. With old electronic equipment including used PCs getting thrown away, hazardous chemicals are regularly being introduced into the environment.
With Linux, it’s possible to resurrect old PCs or repair them so that you can use them longer, which in turn, reduces the amount of e-waste.
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Melody Meckfessel of Observable schools Doc Searls and Katherine Druckman about how early it is and how far we’ve come with open source and data visualization. A deep and exciting show, rich with insight and promise of a better-visualized future in analytics.
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Task manager is one of the few parts of Windows that I really like but on Linux you can get all the same sort of data it’s just in seperate tools, System Monitoring Center though brings all of that data into one place.
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Applications
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For notepad++ fans, there’s a free open-source project that reimplement the text editor with native Linux support!
It’s Notepad Next, a C++ application uses Qt5 toolkit for its user interface. Compare to Notepadqq (another Notepad++ like editor), this app looks almost same to Notepad++.
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If you are looking for means to pull a lot of data from various online sources, you’ve probably crossed paths with web crawling and proxies for web crawling. What is a web crawler? How does it work? What is the role of proxy servers in web crawling? The chances are that these are the questions you want to answer.
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Instructionals/Technical
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In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to install and configure QEMU 7 on Ubuntu 20.04.
QEMU is a free and open-source hypervisor, it emulates the machine’s processor through dynamic binary translation and provides a set of different hardware and device models for the machine, enabling it to run a variety of guest operating systems.
QEMU is capable of emulating a complete machine in software without the need for hardware virtualization support. It is also capable of providing userspace API virtualization for Linux and BSD kernel services. It is commonly invoked indirectly via libvirt library when using open source applications such as oVirt, OpenStack, and virt-manager.
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Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install Minecraft on Debian 11 [Ed: But is is proprietary and controlled by Microsoft]
Today we are going to look at how to install Minecraft on Debian 11.
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Today we are looking at how to install Inkscape and Ink Stitch 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.
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Virtualbox is an open-source application for running operating systems virtually in our base system and this application is available for multiple operating systems (ie) Windows, Linux, and macOS.
It has a large number of features, high-performing software used at the enterprise level, and is licensed under the General Public License (GPL). It is developed by a community based on a dedicated company.
This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install Oracle VirtualBox 6.1.34 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Linux Mint.
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Install Synaptic Package Manager On Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish
Steps by steps method to install Synaptic Package manager on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Synaptic Package Manager lets you manage the various packages and helps you to perform various tasks like installing, removing, updating, or upgrading the various packages. Synaptic Package Manager is the graphical front-end to apt or Advanced Package Tool on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
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How To Install Canon Printer Driver In Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Canon Printer is one of the most widely used printers right now. Due to its increasing usage, Canon started to provide support for Linux users too. Ubuntu is one of the most used Linux-based operating systems and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is the latest stable version of Ubuntu.
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Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is the latest stable version of Ubuntu. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish” was released on April 21, 2022. Ubuntu 22.04 (LTS) will receive support until 2027. In this post, we are going to show you the things that you should do after installing Ubuntu 22.04 LTS in your system.
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The virsh program, or command line utility, is an admin’s one-stop shop to manage virtual domains. The virsh commands let admins create, pause, restart and shut down guest VMs, as well as view networks, network information and autostart networks. Note that virsh is also, itself, a command.
Admins might wonder why they should know the virsh utility instead of the commands that ship with VirtualBox or Ansible. Most often, cloud-native VMs don’t use either of those technologies, so admins who know how to use a more universal tool, such as virsh, are prepared for just about any VM management or virtual network scenario.
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OwnCloud was one of the original on-premise cloud solutions and is still going strong today. This cloud/collaboration platform can be easily deployed to your in-house data center or a third-party cloud host and can serve several use cases. It can be used for cloud storage, team collaboration, file sharing, calendaring, and even a full-blown, cloud-based office suite.
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As a technical writer working on OpenShift documentation, I use a number of tools in the documentation workflow. I love cheat sheets, as they are handy references that make my life easier and workflow more efficient.
Cheat sheets help you work smarter. Here is my compilation of four cheat sheets that I find useful.
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Most current Linux distributions use NetworkManager for creating and managing network connections. That means I need to understand it as a system administrator. In a series of articles, I will share what I’ve learned to date and why I think NetworkManager is an improvement over past options.
Red Hat introduced NetworkManager in 2004 to simplify and automate network configuration and connections, especially wireless connections. The intent was to relieve users from the task of manually configuring each new wireless network before using it. NetworkManager can manage wired network connections without interface configuration files, although it uses network connection files for wireless connections.
In this article, I’ll review what NetworkManager is and how to use it to view network connections and devices for Linux hosts. I’ll even solve a couple of problems in the process.
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AnyDesk is a free alternative to TeamViewer for establishing a remote desktop connection. Here in this tutorial we will learn the commands to install AnyDesk on MX Linux.
If you don’t want to use TeamViewer and looking for some other similar kind of application then AnyDesk is here. It is a close source application developed by AnyDesk Software GmbH. It is a cross-platform remote desktop app, available for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and Linux systems. The app offers remote control, file transfer, and VPN functionality.
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MySQL is one of the most widely used database technologies for storing business- and organization-critical data. While MySQL is reliable, computers have the tendency to fail, and issues such as hardware failure and bugs can cause databases to corrupt.
Besides those issues, users also have to worry about protecting their MySQL server from crashing for any reason if they want to prevent corruption.
Unfortunately, guaranteeing that a database will never go corrupt isn’t possible. However, it is possible to repair and recover corrupt databases using a powerful MySQL database recovery software such as Stellar Repair for MySQL.
The tool is available for both Windows and Linux operating systems. You can use it with CentOS 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, and 19.10. It is also compatible with Windows Vista through 10, and Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2012.
We’ve reviewed the tool in this post to determine whether it delivers on its promise of recovering broken databases.
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On Linux, we have applications of all kinds. Some of them are focused on productivity and others on leisure. In any case, there are more and more every day. Today we will talk about one that interacts with the clipboard and is very useful when we use it frequently. Today, you will learn how to install Qlipper on Debian 11.
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Nextcloud is an open-source, flexible, and self-hosted cloud storage service. It provides an alternative solution for online offices through its integration with Collabora. Collabora Online is a powerful online office based on LibreOffice software. It is a great open-source solution for enterprises that are looking for a robust office suite in the cloud.
With Nextcloud installed on your own server, you will know where your data is stored, who accesses it, and when it was last updated. In this tutorial, we will show you how to integrate Collabora Online with Nextcloud on Ubuntu 20.04.
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Games
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Hidden Variable Studios and Autumn Games have given Skullgirls 2nd Encore a big update and new character, with Umbrella now officially available. Nice to see the game do well again after the issues with Lab Zero Games founder back in 2020.
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Run and gun like the classics in Mighty Goose, which just got a little bit bigger with a free update out now. See my previous thoughts about the game in this article. Seems it’s done quite well, with it now having a Very Positive rating on Steam although that’s from less than 500 users.
“Waddle back in action as Mighty Goose travels to the aquatic planet Ceto to deal with the Evil Baron. Fight enemies on a surfboard, commandeer a new aquatic assault vehicle, and reunite with companions like Regular Duck and Commander Vark. Square off with the malevolent tyrant in a devilish boss fight and save Planet Ceto.”
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Want to go exploring outer space this week? Humble have you covered with The X Universe Collection Bundle. Some of the most in-depth single-player space sims around, Egosoft have a lot of fans.
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Proteus, a relaxing casual exploration game from Ed Key and David Kanaga (with porting by Ethan Lee) was recently upgraded for Linux and the Steam Deck due to some graphical problems.
The Windows and macOS versions were untouched, as the Linux version had a “severe performance regression”. The cause was an issue with “OpenGL call lists” that affected AMD GPU drivers (NVIDIA was fine). Apart from that a few of the techy bits behind the scenes were updated like MonoKickstart and SDL2, with 32-bit also being dropped from the main game (although available as a “linux32″ Beta.
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IBM/Red Hat/Fedora
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If you use Ansible content within Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), you should know that important changes are coming to RHEL 8.6 and 9.0. If you’re currently using Ansible Engine in RHEL, additional steps will be required to upgrade from RHEL 8.5 to RHEL 8.6.
RHEL 7 and RHEL 8.0-8.5 customers have access to a separate Ansible Engine repository. In RHEL 8.6 and 9.0, customers will have access to Ansible Core, which will be included in the corresponding AppStream repository.
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Canonical/Ubuntu Family
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Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS Released [Ed: Well, "itsubuntu" is becoming a nasty, malicious, fake news site. NO, it's NOT released yet.]
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Ubuntu 20.04 was an impressive release with a list of exciting features.
Even with GNOME 3.36 on board, we had a fair share of visual upgrades. Now, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS comes packed with GNOME 42. So, naturally, there should be a variety of visual refinements.
Not just limited to the look and feel, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS has numerous interesting features to offer as well.
Here, I try to compare the feature offerings between the two to help you decide if you should upgrade.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Events
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All details can be found here. We will add more info and details as we get closer to the event.
curl up is the annual curl developers and users “conference” where we meet up over a day and talk curl, curl related topics and share ideas about curl, its present and and its future. It is also really the only time of the year where we actually get to meet fellow curl hackers in person. The only day of the year that is completely devoted to curl. The best kind of day!
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SaaS/Back End/Databases
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PGV is built to empower leaders to own their data and future. This free, virtual event on June 14-15 will bring together the world’s leading Postgres experts, users and community members. Presentations will explore user stories and new technologies harnessing the power of Postgres.
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Programming/Development
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I’ve been meaning to learn the language toki pona for more than a decade. It’s about time.
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Python Software Foundation: The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that holds the intellectual property rights behind the Python programming language. It manages the open-source licensing for Python version 2.1 and later and owns and protects the trademarks associated with Python. It also runs the North American PyCon conference annually, support other Python conferences around the world, and fund Python-related development with our grants program and by funding special projects.
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On his blog, Tom Tromey writes about speeding up the startup of the GDB debugger. He sees 7x improvements in startup time (e.g. 2.2 to 0.3 seconds) for C++ code.
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Chaos engineering “may sound like an oxymoron or the title of a bad science-fiction movie,” says Fredric Paul at New Relic, but “it’s actually an increasingly popular approach to improving the resiliency of complex, modern technology architectures.”
In this article, we’ll look at the practice of chaos engineering and explain the methodology and tools involved in this testing approach.
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Though we are now a month into spring in the northern hemisphere, local temperatures have tended to remain stubbornly cold. Daytime highs will slowly creep up to around 15 degrees Celsius over the range of about half a week, only to crash back down to near-freezing the next day. The weather in the central United States tends to be unpredictable during this time of year, but I had hoped we would have had more balmy days by now.
This part of the world is subject to large swings in temperature throughout the year. Summer highs can soar up to 40 C and beyond, while winter lows can dip below -20 C. It seems one of the effects of climate change has been that such temperature swings have become more pronounced, leading to more intensely-cold winters, more brutally-hot summers, and shorter periods of mild weather in between.
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Today I tuned up my slrn config, and I was browsing the Usenet again. Slrn is great tool, but user must has knowledge of the key concepts. One of them is score file. I had been wondering why the default view isn’t date ordered. After that I discovered, that you could change order by `ESC s`.
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Sitting in the train. I’m going to the office for the first time since the beginning of Corona. I don’t like it.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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The horrible virus has done my tastebuds in. This is *deeply* annoying and frustrating for me. If I try and eat meat or some forms of citrus then it tastes of cigarettes.
[...]
Honestly it is really getting me down. Given that my Partner and Kid aren’t exactly fish fans its forced a bit of a vegetarian lifestyle (okay… pescetarian). I eat *a lot* of cheese now. And beer. Beer is lovely. Most wine too. I’m not opposed to this particularly but it is annoying. I miss eating lasagna with the kiddo.
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Integrity/Availability
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Proprietary
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I have seen the light … or at least a dim ray of inspiration at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. That light comes by way of ONLYOFFICE. You see, I’m always looking for outstanding solutions for problems that shouldn’t exist. One such problem is creating an in-house, cloud-based document system that doesn’t require the deployment of a platform that tries to do too much. That’s one of the main reasons I was drawn to the ONLYOFFICE document server.
Now that ONLYOFFICE can be easily deployed with Docker (find out how in How to deploy the ONLYOFFICE Workspace Community Edition on Ubuntu Server 20.04), I decided to see how easy it would be to create an in-house system I can use to manage documents outside of my usual Google Docs. After all, the idea of keeping more sensitive documentation on a third-party host doesn’t exactly fit within the best-laid plans of mice and men.
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What if social media platforms like Twitter did not force-feed a perpetual stream of manipulated content specifically targeting you? What if they did not track you at all? Or sell to you or monetize your data? As the conversation intensifies over the ownership of Twitter and its future, we really have to think about whether we are really inching towards a brighter future?
Their founders may have envisioned these mainstream social media platforms as “inclusive town squares”, in their current form, they have turned into monstrous mavens that control, track and manipulate critical information in the internet age. These platforms have struggled to balance the tightrope between encouraging free speech and pinning down agents of misinformation. What started as tools to cater to small communities are now in the middle of intensifying global maelstrom of misinformation.
Reality check: these social media channels valued worth billion of dollars are now potent mediums of manipulating the masses, selling data and harming the digital freedom of millions of people.
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Vivaldi web browser, best know for its deep customization capabilities, released a new minor update – Vivaldi 5.2. Here’s what’s new.
Vivaldi is one of the lesser-known web browsers, but it’s a great choice if you value customization. It appears to be a slightly more colorful version of your average web browser at first glance – mirroring the colors of the webpage is a notable Vivaldi feature.
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Security
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USCERT ☛ Russian State-Sponsored and Criminal Cyber Threats to Critical Infrastructure [Ed: If they mostly target Microsoft Windows, than Microsoft can be just as culpable as Russia, but CISA/NSA are in bed with Microsoft, so they will never say that]
Joint CSA: Russian State-Sponsored and Criminal Cyber Threats to Critical Infrastructure, drafted with contributions from industry members of the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, provides an overview of Russian state-sponsored advanced persistent threat groups, Russian-aligned cyber threat groups, and Russian-aligned cybercrime groups to help the cybersecurity community protect against possible cyber threats.
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Defence/Aggression
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A cyber weapon jointly developed by the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and defense giant Northrop Grumman has recently been exposed by Chinese cybersecurity experts.
The cyber weapon shows that the specter of the US military-industrial complex has fully penetrated international networks and it continues to foster the US’ hegemony in cyberspace, experts said.
According to a report sent to the Global Times on Tuesday by the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, the platform, named “Beehive,” is a powerful cyber weapon of the CIA characterized by advanced design and operations. The weapon clearly shows the CIA’s capabilities in the field of cyber warfare.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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They say I offended the owner, Bhushan Chouhan, by calling him a nut for calling me at me house, cursing at me, and threatening to call the police over my credit card dispute with the bank.
Code of Conduct!
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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The current discourse in geminispace, at least that segment of it I have a window onto, is that a prominent Free Software author and blogger who is noted for promoting Gemini in the technical spaces of the WWW, has decided to stop adding to his gemlog. Geminispace doesn’t produce a lot of what he wants to read, while the WWW does. I am not going to link to his post, nor to any of the direct responses to it. I think they promote a “Gemini is dead” discourse that misses a lot of the point of the smol net (Gemini, Gopher, to a certain extent telnet BBSes and Usenet), which is that it’s a slower experience, and that it’s okay that it’s slower.
Personally, I’m happy with the kind of content I find. Not much of it is tech stuff, and that’s good. What tech stuff there is, is mostly retrocomputing, permacomputing, and small, weird devices. I do wish people would stop talking about the technical side of Gemini on Gemini; it’s finished, there’s no need to discuss it. But most of what I read is intensely personal. Honest to goodness diaries, logs of nature seen on daily walks, tales of what people are reading or learning or listening to, weird short fiction. I’m sure all that stuff exists on the web, but it’s buried among all the things that are optimized for your attention. And truth be told, on the web I might be bored by some of these things, or have no urge to seek them out.
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Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Ubuntu at 2:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 1b82e1e02b2b39ae07c3025e1b0513cf
When News About Ubuntu is Intentionally Fake
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: Combating disinformation or misinformation is very important; sadly, even in the GNU/Linux ‘blogosphere’ there’s no lack of false information, sometimes intentionally put there for ‘SEO’ purposes
THERE’S this site or blog called “It’s Ubuntu” which spreads false news about an impending release (links here, intentionally indirect; this one predates another three). It’s one of many candidates for removal from our RSS feeds (we already removed many “Linux” sites that turned into spam or part-time spam).
“Combating false information is a tough task because a lot of money is invested in deception (also known as marketing).”The video above shows a particular kind of problem that goes many years if not decades back. Opportunists with blogs love to prematurely announce releases of things, causing more confusion if not technical problems than actually helping anybody. They curtail preparation and coordination.
The Web has become an awful source of information because when you enter false things into a search engine you’re likely to find some “supportive” results; it’s even worse in social control media which is an echo chamber and noise amplifier. Disinformation thrives there because it can reach unsuspecting passers.
Combating false information is a tough task because a lot of money is invested in deception (also known as marketing). The Linux Foundation is one famous example of it. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 11:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Linux is a strong, stable and reliable operating system which, if enough resources are available, allows hundreds of users to run programs simultaneously on a single machine. Because of its ability to scale up, it is the operating system of choice for large-scale scientific calculations.
Linux has also become a topic of interest to students. They start to study it both for their general development, because of their multifaceted interests, and in order to tie their career to the IT industry.
If a student wants to do a deeper study of Linux sooner or later he has to write a case study. For this they will use any case study writing service they can find on the Internet. Such a service really helps to reduce the time it takes to write such important papers.
Linux is the operating system of choice for a wide range of devices, from smartphones to desktops to supercomputers. Linux is used in smart TVs and newer, smart washing machines in everyday life.
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Desktop/Laptop
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With Windows 11, Microsoft has made it difficult for users to run its latest OS on a large number and variety of hardware, especially if it is not recent and does not meet certain requirements. In such a situation, Windows 7 can be an option to look but it officially has been abandoned, hence no security updates. Hence, Linux distros are the flame of hope, but which one to go for? To makes things a little bit easy for you, here is a list of six Linux distributions that could bring an old laptop back to life.
Well, when we are saying Old computer, that doesn’t mean we are referring to some old piece of junk instead this article revolves around an old 32-bit or 64-bit PC or laptop with at least Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent process coupled with 2 GB of RAM because such hardware configuration computers exist in large numbers.
Hence, let’s see the Linux distros that are developed to provide speed and performance while consuming fewer system resources.
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No one can question the growth of mobile phones and their importance in today’s age. It is evident the second you step into a café, walk onto a bus, or just wander the streets. Smart phones definitely drive a lot of activities in our daily lives today. To give a perspective on this, research has been conducted on mobile vs. desktop usage based on website visits (1). In 2020, mobile made up 68% of all website visits compared with 29% on desktop globally. With over 6 billion smartphones in use as of the end of 2020 (this is 3 times the number of PCs), it is no wonder that mobile phones have become the primary computing device for many (2).
Portability, ease of app installation and download, internet connectivity, and cost are all driving factors as to why phones have become so popular as a computing tool. In addition, the evolution of mobile phone technology has definitely resulted in phones becoming more powerful than many PCs.
For us Linux users though, the options are far and few in terms of having a mobile device with an environment or applications we are familiar with (outside of PinePhone and Librem). The support for many of our favorite Linux applications are limited when you search the iOS or Play Store which can be quite frustrating. Even if there is support, some of the applications have limitations in functionality and control. So, if the world is going to keep moving towards mobile, how do we ensure that we don’t sacrifice our productivity and overall experience?
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Some people still insist that using Linux is hard. Sure, it was difficult — when I started with the Linux desktop back in the 1990s. But that was a long time ago. Today, the easiest desktop of all, Chrome OS, is simply Linux with the Chrome web browser on top of it. The more full-featured Linux desktop distributions are as easy to use in 2021 as Windows or macOS.
Yes, you can get a lot more from Linux if you know how to do shell programming and the like. But that’s also true of Windows and PowerShell. With both operating systems, you don’t need to know the deep ins and outs of either one to get your work done.
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Server
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The financial services industry has evolved at an astonishing rate in recent years, underpinned by rapid advances in technology. Financial institutions (FIs) are digitising their customer journeys and scaling-up transformation. Cloud is a catalyst for enterprise business transformation and is a focus for C-suite executives and board members of financial services organisations.
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The latest Kubernetes release, 1.24, is about to be made generally available. Today, the community announced the availability of the 1.24 release candidate. Developers, DevOps and other cloud and open source enthusiasts who want to experiment with the latest cutting edge K8s features can already do so easily with MicroK8s.
MicroK8s is a CNCF-certified Kubernetes that is perfect for kicking the tires on the latest Kubernetes release. Equally at home as a single node on a laptop or a cluster in the cloud, it delivers a no-nonsense, minimal-effort way to spin up any version, including the latest stable or release candidates. MicroK8s is delivered as a self-contained snap package, which uses channels to support different versions with the same simple deployment command.
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As we’ve said before, every IT organization is different – from the underlying architecture and public cloud usage to edge strategies and the applications actually running in production. There is, however, one constant that supersedes these differences for CIOs – the need for commonality across all of these heterogeneous workloads, environments and applications. In many organizations, this common platform stretching across the hybrid cloud, from the datacenter to the edge, is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
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Audiocasts/Shows
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In this video, I am going to show how to install Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS.
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Rocky Linux aims to be “100% bug-for-bug compatible” with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and is one of several potential distributions you can migrate to from CentOS as we used to know it. In this video, we’ll take a look at the installation process.
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AlmaLinux OS is a Linux distribution that aims to be a drop-in replacement for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and is one of several potential distributions you can migrate to from CentOS as we used to know it. In this video, we’ll take a look at the installation process.
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Kernel Space
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I’m announcing the release of the 5.17.4 kernel.
All users of the 5.17 kernel series must upgrade.
The updated 5.17.y git tree can be found at:
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.17.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
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Graphics Stack
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NVIDIA has just submitted a large patchset to mainline Linux for their NVDLA AI accelerator Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver, accompanied by an open-source user mode driver.
The NVDLA (NVIDIA Deep Learning Accelerator) can be found in recent Jetson modules such as Jetson AGX Xavier and Jetson AGX Orin, and since NVDLA was made open-source hardware in 2017, it can also be integrated into third-party SoCs such as StarFive JH7100 Vision SoC and Allwinner V831 processor.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Surely more than once we have worked with compressed files or folders on our computer. A compressed file is a “package” within which several files are stored, making it much easier to share it over the Internet, and also considerably reducing its overall size. All operating systems are compatible with this type of file, although we will need the appropriate tools to be able to operate with them. And so, today we are going to see how we can work with this type of file from any Linux .
In Linux there are several ways to work with compressed files. The first, and one of the most used, is to open them from a terminal console. But we can also work with them from the desktop interface if we prefer. Likewise, there are several programs to be able to operate with these files, each of which is specialized in a file format (ZIP, RAR, 7Z, etc) so that, depending on the format with which we want to work, we can use one or other.
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Java is an element that, surely, more than once we have needed to start up on our computer. In Windows, we only have to go to the website of this environment, download the installer and install it in the operating system as one more program. Also, many programs that depend on it (such as JDownloader) usually have it included so that we don’t have to do anything. But what about Linux? Java is also available for this OS, as expected. Although it is true that, to start it up, we may have to take a few laps. Let’s see how it’s done.
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We all know how important it is to use strong passwords for our systems, online accounts, and other sensitive applications. The real question is how you generate a password that you can rely on and that meets the criteria of a strong password. Ideally, a strong password must contain lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols. If it seems annoying to you to do this task manually, Ubuntu offers many options that allow you to generate such strong passwords automatically.
This article describes 6 such ways of automatic secure password generation.
We have run the commands and methods mentioned in this article on an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS system. Most of the methods mentioned here involve using the Ubuntu command line, Terminal, to install and use a password generation utility. You can open the Terminal application using either the System Dash or the Ctrl+Alt+T key combination.
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When you’re trying to find your way around the Linux file system and want some information on specific commands, the whereis, whatis, and which commands can help. Each provides a different view of the command you’re asking about. In this post, I’ll compare these commands and explain what they tell us and what they don’t tell us.
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When you’re trying to run a command (with or without sudo) and get an error message that reads “Command not found,” this means the script or file you’re trying to execute doesn’t exist in the location specified by your PATH variable. What is this variable, and how can you run commands that it can’t find?
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In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Persepolis on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Persepolis is a free and open-source download manager written in Python. It’s developed For GNU/Linux Distributions, BSDs, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.
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 Persepolis download manager 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.
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After creating a MySQL database and table, we can start inserting the data (i.e. records) in them. In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to insert data in MySQL database using PHP in XAMPP stack.
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Tar (Tape ARchiver) is one the most useful utilities in the toolbox of every Linux system administrator out there. With tar we can create archives which can be used for various purposes: to package applications source code, for example, or to create and store data backups.
In this tutorial we focus on the latter subject, and we see how to create full, incremental and differential backups with tar, and more specifically with the GNU version of tar.
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Git is probably the most used version control software in the world. Free and open source, it was created by Linus Torvalds, and it is the base of services provided by web platforms like Github and Gitlab. In a previous article we discussed the git workflow basics,
In this tutorial we see how to quickly export a git repository using the git-daemon.
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Apache Tomcat is an open source web server and a servlet container which is mainly used to server Java based applications.
In this guide you are going to learn how to install Apache Tomcat 10 on Ubuntu 20.04 and secure the setup with Nginx and Let’s Encrypt SSL.
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Anaconda is an open-source package manager and distribution of Python. It is designed for machine learning and data science and comprises several open-source packages. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the steps for the installation of Anaconda on a Rocky Linux 8 or CentOS 8 system.
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Depending on the needs of each case, normally we either buy a more powerful PC, or we prioritize its cost. We have countless configurations to choose from, including building our own Raspberry Pi .
Perhaps many of you already know firsthand that here we are talking about a small board to which we add devices and components to assemble our mini PC. In addition, thanks to its virtues and characteristics, a wide range of possibilities opens up to us in terms of its types of use. Here we have the possibility of installing a good number of operating systems depending on what we are going to use the Raspberry Pi for.
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In this vid we upgrade Ubuntu Server 20.04 to 22.04 on my netbook files server. WARNING! Do this at your own risk. This is a quick and dirty method and you need to backup up completely before attempting yourself.
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The Linux operating system domain offers numerous ideal and recommended solutions to image manipulation. One of the key attributes that favor this Linux-to-image-manipulation software relationship is the open-source nature of both the Linux OS being used and the application software installation taking place.
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Under the Linux operating system environment, a shell can be described as a program that takes user inputs from the computer keyboard in form of commands and interprets them with the aim of yielding immediate execution results or leading to another program execution instance.
As you familiarize yourself with Linux, you will get the opportunity to meet and interact with many Linux-oriented shell environments like bash, ksh, fish, sh, and zsh. Due to the popularity of Bash Shell, there is a high chance that you are using it now as the default shell on your Linux system.
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Under a Linux operating system distribution, anything goes. Such open-source operating system environments take you through a roller coaster on anything there is to know about operating systems.
One key aspect that strongly defines the need and continued need for an operating system is file management. No operating system handles file management better than Linux. Whether you want to restrict, create, or enhance the security of your system and user files, Linux provides the best user experience and performance.
The Linux terminal or command-line interface is a flexible environment for manipulating files through commands associated with creating, renaming, moving, and deleting files. What if you learned another file manipulation tweak?
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In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Cordova on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Apache Cordova is an open-source development framework for mobile devices that helps developers to use HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to build new mobile applications (iOS or Android). The platform includes a set of pre-built plugins to provide access to the camera, GPS, filesystem, and other components of the device.
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 Apache Cordova 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.
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Games
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Noob404 is at it again with another Linux release for the PS4, this time Nobara OS. In the video he provided with this release, you can see him demonstrate Fullscreen gameplay of Max Payne 3, GTA IV, and also a demo of OBS Studio running on the PS4.
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This won’t be some kind of very thorough review, because I have no idea how to finish a shoot’em up without cheating or training for hundred hours to get good enough, but take it as it is: my impression of Hyper-5, a new shoot’em up released a few weeks back.
It happens to work fine on Proton, which is why I could play it. I realize that some of the younger kids out there may not be too familiar with shoot’em ups: this was a genre that was HUGE back in the 80s: there was a whole market for it and everyone back then knew R-Type, ThunderForce, Axelay, Gradius, Parodius, Project-X, Apidya, the 194x series, and that’s just the small tip of the iceberg. This was a different era when people wanted hard core difficulty and enjoyed dozens of sprites on screen at the same time, and huge bosses to go with it.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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A desktop environment is a collection of disparate components that integrate together. They bundle these components to provide a common graphical user interface with elements such as icons, toolbars, wallpapers, and desktop widgets. Additionally, most desktop environments include a set of integrated applications and utilities.
Desktop environments provide their own window manager, system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system. They also provide a file manager which organizes, lists, and locates files and directories. Other aspects include a background provider, a panel to provide a menu and display information, as well as a setting/configuration manager to customize the environment.
daedalOS takes a different approach to the traditional desktop environment such as GNOME and KDE. The aim of the daedalOS project is to make a web-based desktop environment that’s suitable for everyday use. It’s written in JavaScript.
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Many times we have talked about light Linux distros, ideal to be able to install on old computers and give them a second chance. These systems sacrifice aesthetic aspects and programs to reduce the use of RAM and CPU so that these computers, which may have 10 or 20 years behind them, can handle them. However, there are always those who seek to take this to the extreme, reducing the system to the maximum to make it as minimalist as possible. And it seems that the limit is set by Tiny Core Linux , a fully functional distro that occupies only 10 megabytes.
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That is weird. LibreOffice is compiled in OpenEmbedded, and defaults to the “colibre” icons, that are located at /usr/lib/libreoffice/share/config/images_colibre.zip
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SUSE/OpenSUSE
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There are movements around SUSE and the most recent attends to the denomination of Adaptive Linux Platform (ALP)a kind of initiative with which to promote the open development of the next version of SUSE Linux Enterprise.
Because… when will the next version of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) be released? The current one, SLE 15, dates from June 2018, almost four years ago. Too long a priori for how the world of professional software goes, although it should be remembered that the last major update, SLE 15 SP3, arrived last year imminently preceded by openSUSE Leap 15.3 and with many new features in both cases, many of they shared.
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SUSE and Dell Technologies continue to deliver joint solutions that help you in your digital transformation journey. Here are six reference configurations for SUSE and SUSE Rancher on Dell Technologies PowerEdge servers.
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IBM/Red Hat/Fedora
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Enterprisers Project ☛ IT leadership: 3 best practices to strengthen today’s teams [Ed: IBM is promoting disinformation and fake news, blaming the victims of a failing economy, using nonsensical myths like "Great Resignation"]
The Great Resignation has hit the IT sector particularly hard.
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It’s an exciting and scary time to be a technology leader: Exciting for the endless opportunities offered by rapidly evolving digital technologies – and scary due to the associated feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out).
Consider Artificial Intelligence (AI). Driven by the desire to tap unprecedented volumes of data for a broad array of real-world applications, many organizations see AI as a magic wand that CIOs can swing to generate customer delight and executive exhilaration.
CIOs know better, of course. The challenges that come with any new technology hit technologists harder and faster than the optimism driving it. This is especially true with AI and related areas such as machine learning (ML), data science, deep learning, natural language processing (NLP), and cognitive intelligence. Not only is talent scarce in these fields, but their vocabulary and application development are also different.
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The speedup for ordinary C++ code is dramatic — I regularly see a 7x performance improvement. For example, on this machine, startup on gdb itself drops from 2.2 seconds to 0.3 seconds.
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In the early days of container-based development, each user had to ask an administrator to create a PV for that user’s containers. Usually the administrator created 100 PVs in advance when the cluster was installed. The administrator also had to clean up the used PVs when they were released. Obviously, this process was inefficient and really burdensome.
Dynamic provisioning using StorageClass was developed to solve this problem. With StorageClass, you no longer have to manually manage your PVs—a provisioner manages them for you. Sounds good, right?
But the next question is how to set up the StorageClass on the cluster without cost. If you can afford it, the easiest way is to use Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated, which provides the default gp2 StorageClass. But it is not free.
Let’s say you want to play around with an OpenShift cluster installed on your laptop using Red Hat CodeReady Containers. The environment is absolutely free and under your control. Wouldn’t it be great if this cluster had a StorageClass? With such an environment, you could test most scenarios without charge.
The NFS Provisioner Operator is open source and available on OperatorHub.io, which means that it can be easily installed via OpenShift’s OperatorHub menu. The Operator uses the Kubernetes NFS subdir external provisioner from kuberentes-sigs internally.
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This article is the fourth installment in our series on Ansible for middleware. In this article, you’ll use Ansible to simplify and automate the installation of Keycloak, a popular open source tool to implement single sign-on for Web applications.
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AlmaLinux, the popular enterprise Linux distro, has just announced its 9.0 Beta release to keep up with the upstream, i.e. RHEL 9.
Just to give you some context, AlmaLinux was introduced in the early 2021 to replace the then recently discontinued CentOS. One of its main goals was to be a drop-in replacement for RHEL, specifically needing to be 100% binary compatible.
Not to forget, AlmaLinux is free, making it one of the best RHEL alternatives.
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On Tuesday, AlmaLinux announced in a blog the beta release of AlmaLinux OS 9.0, based on the upcoming release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, which is expected to see its production ready official release in May. The official AlmaLinux 9.0 will be released shortly after the RHEL release.
The new AlmaLinux adds support for IBM Z systems alongside its existing support of x86 64, ARM 64, and POWER, which means it now supports all four of the architectures supported by RHEL. The project said that cloud images and containers are still in process, but that they anticipate the first batch to be ready in the next day or so.
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A list of new packages and features in AlmaLinux 9.0 beta is available for download and testing.
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Canonical/Ubuntu Family
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If you prefer the moving images to a series of heavily compressed .jpg files do check out the Ubuntu 22.04 video I uploaded to YouTube. I had a lot of fun making it (thanks in part to this release being a pretty jam-packed one).
On we go!
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Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is released on April 21, 2022. The Ubuntu 22.04 codename is “Jammy Jellyfish“. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is the 36th Ubuntu release since 2004. You can find tons of major improvements features on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS ” Jammy Jellyfish.
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In the last year, we have seen an unexpected revival of handheld computers (or PDAs) with hardware keyboard, all of which based on Linux: the PinePhone with its keyboard case, the GPD series of mini-laptops and several others which we covered here last month. For those wondering, the main difference between these trendy miniaturized computers and “standard” Linux phones can often be just the lack of a cellular modem. In general, the board designs appear to be quite similar between PDAs and phones, and for most applications, a Linux PDA can be cheaper and just as useful as a fully fledged smartphone.
Back in 2019, the MNT Reform project promised a new laptop concept: being entirely self-made, radical (and rather punk-sexy) in style and functions, this Linux laptop focused on repairability, modularity (even for input devices!) and total openness of the platform firmware. The device was designed by Lukas Hartmann in Berlin, all of which based on the ARMv8, i.MX8MQ processor. Furthermore, the Reform sported a tiny OLED display above the keyboard for status monitoring, an open-source trackball, and replaceable stylus-shaped 18650 LiFePo4 batteries, all with entirely replicable PCB and hardware design.
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After six years as a regional sales manager for the Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba territories, Tyrone Visser has moved on to become Wago Corp.’s North American business development manager for IIoT and Linux.
In his new position, Visser is responsible for demonstrating how Wago’s PFCs and edge devices “can do more than what is traditionally possible with a PLC”. This includes IIoT capabilities and cloud-based transmission, as well as utilizing open-source software for low-code programming environments, custom visualization, databases and more.
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Cooler Master Pi Case 40 V2 case for Raspberry Pi 4 is the successor of the fanless Pi Case 40 metal enclosure launched in 2020 on Kickstarter. The company also offers 3D files for the case and accessories to expand its functionality.
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Microchip’s SAME51 Touch Curiosity is a low cost evaluation kit equipped with ATSAME51J20A MCU, a touch-screen TFT display and an onboard debugger for quick product development. This kit is designed to aim applications requiring touch input and clear display such as smart appliances, vehicle climate control or industrial embedded devices that require CAN, Ethernet or USB support.
The evaluation kit adopts the 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F MCU which has a maximum frequency of 120MHz. Other relevant features include a Floating Point Unit (FPU), a Memory Protection Unit (MPU), 256KB SRAM and a 32-channel Direct Memory Access Controller (DMAC).
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Open Hardware/Modding
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It was only last December that we put out a call for members of the Arduino community to contribute to the open source development and translation of the IDE 2.0. The response from the Arduino community has been phenomenal, and we can already announce the availability of some new language packs. So it’s time to update your Arduino IDE 2.0 to version 2.0.0-rc6, where it’ll allow you to change the language.
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Our days are full of devices trying their best to grab our attention, from a computer dinging when a new email hits to a smartphones vibrating every time an app wants to sell something. If you’re like most people, the vast majority of those notifications are irritating. But they are still necessary in many cases. To provide more soothing signals, Google turned to Arduino to build these unique devices.
Little Signals is one of Google’s “Digital Wellbeing Experiments,” which are technological concepts and prototypes designed to enhance our lives instead of adding stress to them. Each Little Signals device has a unique way of notifying users about an arbitrary digital event through “calm technology.” For example, one Little Signals device gentle blows air on a plant’s leaves, which could indicate the presence of a new email. Another gently taps on a prescription bottle to alert the user that it is time to take their medication.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Volla Phone 22 is a 6.3-inch smartphone powered by a MediaTek Helio G85 processor that focuses on privacy and runs either Ubuntu Touch from UBPorts, Volla OS Android fork without Google Play services or apps (YouTube, Gmail, etc…), or others operating through a multi-boot.
Hardware-wise, the Volla Phone 22 is a mid-range smartphone with 4GB RAM, 128GB storage, and it also comes with features not found on most recent smartphones including a user-replaceable battery, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a microSD card socket.
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DuckDB is designed to support analytical query workloads, also known as Online analytical processing (OLAP). These workloads are characterized by complex, relatively long-running queries that process significant portions of the stored dataset, for example aggregations over entire tables or joins between several large tables. Changes to the data are expected to be rather large-scale as well, with several rows being appended, or large portions of tables being changed or added at the same time.
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Manuskript is a free, open-source feature-rich writing tools for carrier writers. It is customized for novel writers who write fiction.
The app is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is easy to install, and use as it does not require any steep learning curve like its competitors.
In this article, we will demonstrate its features, and what can you do with it.
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The Taguette app is a free and open source qualitative research tool. It is also a web-based self-hosted solution that anyone can install on his local machine or web server.
It works on a single user mode and multi-user mode without having to worry about a complex configuration or a different setup.
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Austria has introduced a reform law for the telecommunications sector which will affect the ability of consumers to choose and use their own routers and modems. Together with the Alliance of Telecommunication Terminal Equipment Manufacturers (VTKE) the FSFE is organising a session on “The Future of Router Freedom in Austria”.
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Alliance of Telecommunication Terminal Equipment Manufacturers (VTKE) are organising an online session about the future of Router Freedom in Austria. In this session, you will have the opportunity to learn more about why Router Freedom is fundamental not only for consumer rights but also for a functional and competitive router and modem market.
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The first thing to install was f-droid [2] as the app repository. F-droid has a repository of thousands of free software Android apps as well as some apps that are slightly less free which are tagged appropriately. You can install the F-Droid app from the web site. As an aside I had to go to settings and enable “force old index format” to get the list of packages, I don’t know why as other phones had worked without it.
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Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra
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LibreOffice is the go-to open-source office powerhouse. It has everything you realistically need — word processing, presentation creation, spreadsheet wrangling…you name it, LibreOffice has it — but the user interface is definitely a throwback to Windows XP days. LibreOffice does offer theming and custom layouts, but the default UI looks like something pulled straight out of Windows XP. Subjectively, the somewhat retro look and feel may appeal to some. Objectively speaking, the UI is unoptimised and somewhat messy — with options buried in sub-menus in odd places — which gives the software a bit of a steep learning curve.
User-created extensions expand the functionality of LibreOffice even further, while Collabora Office offers a paid, enterprise-ready, cloud-based collaboration solution based on LibreOffice.
LibreOffice offers support for just about every document format under the sun, including PDF and Microsoft’s proprietary formats. If you’re not afraid of spending some time setting up the software to your liking and getting used to some quirks, you should give LibreOffice a chance.
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Programming/Development
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Node.js 18 provides long-term support for the popular JavaScript framework and new features to improve developer productivity.
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Qt 6.2.4 Conan Technology Preview packages are now available via the Conan package manager from our Conan server. Desktop packages are available for Windows (MSVC2019 and MinGW), macOS, and Linux.
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The Illinois LLVM Research Group excited to announce the release of HPVM v2.0. HPVM is a retargetable compiler infrastructure for heterogeneous parallel systems that targets CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs, and has been used for other domain-specific accelerators. HPVM uses a target-independent compiler IR that extends the LLVM compiler IR with an explicit, hierarchical dataflow graph representation that captures task, data, and (streaming) pipelined parallelism.
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So I’ve been working on improving LO text layout performance, as specified by the TDF tender. As it says, text layout in LO can be rather slow, because of problems like repeated text layout calls for the same text.
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As the pass tracks origins of the pointer in question, it unfortunately does not take into account any uses between the allocation and the reference in the builtin that may alter the nature of the pointer. This means that if the pointer was reallocated between its first allocation and the builtin call, the pass won’t notice unless the pointer was explicitly updated. This is a benign limitation in the static case because for the above example, it would simply compute the maximum of new_size and old_size and return the result. In fact in most real world cases since the reallocation is bound to be dynamic, it would simply bail out, resulting in a missed fortification.
With dynamic sizes though, one will now get the new size for n != o but not for the n == o case. As a result, any fortified function call based on this information will see the old size and abort fearing a buffer overflow even though there technically wasn’t any. This was seen in autogen, which had this precise pattern and hence stumbled when it was built with _FORTIFY_SOURCE=3.
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Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh
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Sockets allow networked software to communicate. They were first implemented in the 4.2BSD Unix operating system, which was created at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1983.
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Ever think about how most of the debates we have on social media seem to fade in and die out after a day or so? It turns out, this is not always the way it was, and some debates linger on years after the fact, in essays on blogs or in books whose opinions target other academics. One of those debates came about in the early 1960s, when a respected historian who had spent time at Princeton, Stanford, and UCLA released a book that took a novel approach to thinking about how new technology benefited people during an earlier time. And it lingered for a little bit, carrying a legacy in part because it was a respected work, and in part because the argument was so novel and unusual that others couldn’t help but poke holes in it. Today’s Tedium talks about a debate in history circles that could be best described as stirrup-gate. Yes, stirrup-gate.
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Hardware
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I grew up on old DEC and HP keyboards. Probably with mechanical switches, but maybe not. The keyboards at the institute, where I spent the time writing my thesis were loud, tacky, with long strokes (several mm). They were heavy and sturdy.
With every new job keyboards became lighter, more fragile, and ultimately unpleasant to type. The worst offenders imho are chiclet keyboards on many notebooks. I abandonded more recent Thinkpads in favour of Dell Latitudes just for the keyboards. Keyboards are serious matter! So some day I had enough. I just blindly went ahead to purchase two DasKeyboard unlabeled black keyboards[a], one with brown switches, the other with blue. What a difference! I did not look back. While I argue that the staggered key layout is not needed any more, and I would like to have a straight layout (I had a stint with a Kinesis Advantage for a while), I still have these two keyboards in daily use, brown switches at work, blue switches at home.
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Integrity/Availability
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Proprietary
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Cybersecurity experts from ESET have found three security flaws in hundreds of different Lenovo laptop models which could put millions of users at risk.
ESET said exploiting these vulnerabilities would allow attackers to deploy and successfully execute UEFI malware either in the form of SPI flash implants like LoJax or ESP implants like ESPecter.
In total, three vulnerabilities have been discovered, which are now tracked as CVE-2021-3970, CVE-2021-3971 (also known as SecureBackDoor and SecureBackDoorPreim), and CVE-3972 (SMM memory corruption inside the SW SMI handler function).
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Security
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Given the computational cost and technical expertise required to train machine learning models, users may delegate the task of learning to a service provider. We show how a malicious learner can plant an undetectable backdoor into a classifier. On the surface, such a backdoored classifier behaves normally, but in reality, the learner maintains a mechanism for changing the classification of any input, with only a slight perturbation. Importantly, without the appropriate “backdoor key”, the mechanism is hidden and cannot be detected by any computationally-bounded observer. We demonstrate two frameworks for planting undetectable backdoors, with incomparable guarantees.
First, we show how to plant a backdoor in any model, using digital signature schemes. The construction guarantees that given black-box access to the original model and the backdoored version, it is computationally infeasible to find even a single input where they differ. This property implies that the backdoored model has generalization error comparable with the original model. Second, we demonstrate how to insert undetectable backdoors in models trained using the Random Fourier Features (RFF) learning paradigm or in Random ReLU networks. In this construction, undetectability holds against powerful white-box distinguishers: given a complete description of the network and the training data, no efficient distinguisher can guess whether the model is “clean” or contains a backdoor.
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In accordance with Executive Order 14028, which is aimed at improving security for federal government networks, CISA’s SCuBA project aims to develop consistent, effective, modern, and manageable security that will help secure agency information assets stored within cloud operations.
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Security updates have been issued by Debian (condor), Red Hat (389-ds:1.4, container-tools:2.0, kernel, kernel-rt, and kpatch-patch), SUSE (chrony, containerd, expat, git, icedtea-web, jsoup, jsr-305, kernel, libeconf, shadow and util-linux, protobuf, python-libxml2-python, python3, slirp4netns, sssd, vim, and wpa_supplicant), and Ubuntu (bash).
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Recently I wanted to upgrade the firmware of my thinkpad, and located the firmware download page from Lenovo (which annoyingly do not allow access via Tor, forcing me to hand them more personal information that I would like). The download from Lenovo is a bootable ISO image, which is a bit of a problem when all I got available is a USB memory stick. I tried booting the ISO as a USB stick, but this did not work. But genisoimage came to the rescue.
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Finance
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It is insane to me that cryptocurrencies are still a thing.
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Monopolies
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Copyrights
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In his foundational textbook Elements, the Alexandrian mathematician Euclid defined a line as “breadthless length” — a thing with only one dimension. That’s what lines can do to history when used to plot events: they condense its breadth into pure motion, featuring only those people and places that serve as forces thrusting it forwards along an infinite axis. Early in the nineteenth century, Friedrich Strass proposed a different way to visualize time’s flow. A Prussian historian and schoolteacher, he published his chronological chart in 1803, a massive diagram titled Der Strom der Zeiten oder bildliche Darstellung der Weltgeschichte von den altesten Zeiten bis zum Ende des achtzehnden Jahrhunderts (The stream of the times or an illustrated presentation of world history from the most ancient times until the eighteenth century). The linear timelines that Strass resisted, like those inspired by Joseph Priestley, “implied a uniformity in the processes of history that was simply misleading”, write Anthony Grafton and Daniel Rosenberg. Strass’ stream, by contrast, allowed historical events to “ebb and flow, fork and twist, run and roll and thunder”. It would spawn several imitations as the century drew on.
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Posted in News Roundup at 5:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Applications
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VirtualBox 6.1.34 is the seventeenth maintenance release in the VirtualBox 6.1 series and comes three months after VirtualBox 6.1.32 with a lot of changes for Linux systems. First and foremost, it introduces initial support for the latest and greatest Linux 5.17 kernel series for both Linux guests and hosts, which means that you’ll now be able to run GNU/Linux distributions powered by Linux kernel 5.17 inside virtual machines, as well as to install VirtualBox on Linux 5.17-powered distributions
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Almost a year in the works, QEMU 7.0 is here with major new features like support for logging guest events via the ACPI ERST interface, improved security label support for the virtiofs shared file system for virtual machines, improved flexibility for fleecing backups, including support for non-qcow2 images, as well as support for Intel AMX on the x86 platform.
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Instructionals/Technical
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I have been using serverless computing and storage for nearly five years and I’m finally tired of it. I do feel like it has become a cult. In a cult, brainwashing is done so gradually, people have no idea it is going on. I feel like this has happened across the board with so many developers; many don’t even realize they are clouded. In my case, I took the serverless marketing and hype hook, line, and sinker for the first half of my serverless journey. After working with several companies small and large, I have been continually disappointed as our projects grew. The fact is, serverless technology is amazingly simple to start, but becomes a bear as projects and teams accelerate. A serverless project typically includes a fully serverless stack which can include (using a non-exhaustive list of AWS services): [...]
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While I was enjoying the last sip of my tea, I thought about ways to take advantage of the arbitrary file upload vulnerability. Of course, I could overwrite configuration files or upload HTML documents to trigger XSS. Yet, I had a better idea.
From the error message as mentioned above, we know that the webserver is Java-based. Accordingly, I guessed it must be possible to execute JavaServer Pages (JSP) files. JSP allows web developers to write HTML code containing dynamic Java parts executed on the server-side. This implies, an attacker in control of a JSP file that is loaded by the server can also execute arbitrary code on the server-side.
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Tmux (TM) is an acronym that stands for Terminal Multiplexing. It is a free and open-source tool that allows you to open many terminals in a single desktop window by adding more than one terminal window. A “tabbed” interface (without actual tabs) is the result, allowing for tab flipping between windows without using the mouse.
Before diving into the cheat sheet, you must ensure that Tmux is installed on your Linux OS. We shall brush through this article, but if you need a detailed report on how to install and use Tmux on Linux, check this comprehensive article.
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Although it is not recommended to do so, it may be useful to know how to install the latest kernel on Debian 11 and derivatives. Let’s go for it, it’s easy.
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This post is about OpenCTI Installation with Portainer.
OpenCTI is an open source platform allowing organizations to manage their cyber threat intelligence knowledge and observables. It has been created in order to structure, store, organize and visualize technical and non-technical information about cyber threats.
The data is structured using a knowledge schema based on the STIX2 standards. It has been designed as a modern web application including a GraphQL API and an UX oriented frontend. Also, OpenCTI can be integrated with other tools and applications such as MISP, TheHive, MITRE ATT&CK etc.
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If you click on the “www” icon on the desktop, then Firefox will run, in a container.
I received an email from Mike, he would prefer to run SeaMonkey. Given the browsing limitations of SM these days, I don’t know why anyone would want to use SM for general web browsing. Unless you are only going to sites that SM can handle.
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The org-mode extension to emacs is popular in part because it lets you create and follow hyperlink between files. This is useful for keeping notes organized.
Depending on your needs, you may not need org-mode for simple linked notes. That’s because there is a standard emacs keybinding that lets you open the file path under your cursor.
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Much like Linux, modern versions of OpenBSD are theoretically able to talk to a suitable local IPMI using the standard ipmi(4) kernel driver. This is imprecise although widely understood terminology; in more precise terms, OpenBSD can talk to a machine’s BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) that implements the IPMI specification using one of a number of standard interfaces, as covered in the “System Interfaces” section of ipmi(4). However, OpenBSD throws us a curve ball in that the ipmi(4) driver is normally present in the default OpenBSD kernel but not enabled.
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I wanted to get in on the OpenBSD/riscv64 bandwagon, but I don’t have the money to spend on fancy new hardware. Fortunately, QEMU has RISC-V support. Unfortunately, I could not find any instructions to install OpenBSD on it. We’ll just have to figure it out ourselves.
Additionally, my laptop for $DAYJOB is running Windows 11. It’s also the fastest machine I have at the moment, so I’d prefer to use it for running my OpenBSD/riscv64 VM. It will also let me do some development work in my office.
Let’s figure out how to set this all up.
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Canonical/Ubuntu Family
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list of new features and enhancements of the Ubuntu Studio 22.04 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish”.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Global smartphone shipments fell by 11% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022 due to sluggish demand, the technology analyst company Canalys claims, but with no numbers to back it up.
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Due to its open-source nature, this isn’t the first app that lets you tap into its network, but it is the first official client released by the Mastodon team (via XDA Developers). Although this social network doesn’t have the 200-million-strong user base that Twitter has, the fact that it’s open-source means you won’t have to worry about a growing plague of ads, and your feed will always remain in chronological order. It comes at a strong time for Mastodon, too. After Elon Musk’s initial investment in Twitter, Mastodon saw a spike in new users that’s only likely to grow now that it’s officially available to the billions of Android users worldwide.
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Events
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Programming/Development
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Did you know it’s actually possible to build a rich UI that runs completely in the terminal? Programs like htop and tmux use a terminal user interface (TUI) because they are often run on servers that don’t have access to a GUI. Many developer tools also a TUI since developers spend so much time in the terminal anyway. There are even a number of games that run entirely in the terminal. In this article we’ll use the Go programing language to create our own TUI.
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Ansible and Jenkins offer features that support a DevOps approach to delivering quality software, but the products are geared toward different use cases. See how the DevOps tools’ features compare.
We may be compensated by vendors who appear on this page through methods such as affiliate links or sponsored partnerships. This may influence how and where their products appear on our site, but vendors cannot pay to influence the content of our reviews. For more info, visit our Terms of Use page.
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Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh
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What is a script? Imagine a movie theater where different actors are performing. How do they know their part of acting? It’s because they have a script which tells them how to act. Similarly, a computer performs what a script dictates, and a bash shell performs what a bash script dictates.
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On the shortlist of workshop luxuries, we’d bet a lot of hackers would include an overhead crane. Having the ability to lift heavy loads safely and easily opens up a world of new projects, and puts the shop into an entirely different class of capabilities.
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Among the many stories that Billy Wilder liked to tell late in his life was the one he recounted with great gusto the night he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the 1988 Academy Awards ceremony. Shortly after he arrived in Hollywood in 1934, Wilder had to cross the border into Mexico to renew his visa at the American consulate in Mexicali. He was particularly anxious about the procedure, since he had left behind nearly all supporting documents in his hasty departure from Nazi Germany and feared this might result in his automatic rejection. He explained his situation to the consular official, who seemed more concerned with enforcing US immigration policy than sympathizing with a foreigner’s plight. When asked what he did for a living, Wilder replied sheepishly, “I write movies.” After a tense moment of prolonged pacing, the official punched two stamps in his
passport: “Write some good ones,” he said.
For the next 50-odd years, Wilder would write, and eventually direct and produce, quite a few good ones—more than 30 in all. In collaboration with his long-time writing partner Charles Brackett, he began with a string of highly successful, innuendo-laden screwball comedy scripts, including Ninotchka for Ernst Lubitsch, Wilder’s lifelong role model, and Ball of Fire for Howard Hawks. But he quickly turned to graver matters, using his experiences in that Mexican border town for the semi-autobiographical screenplay for Hold Back the Dawn, written in 1941, about a Romanian dancer, Georges Iscovescu, languishing in a shabby hotel with other Middle European refugees in the hopes of securing an entrance visa. Like Wilder himself, Iscovescu is “a man perpetually in transit.”
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Viktor Tsoi: A Hero’s Path, the first major biographical exhibition about the co-founder and lead singer of the Soviet-era rock band Kino, opened at the Manege Central Exhibition Hall in St. Petersburg on January 15, 2022. It features Viktor Tsoi’s paintings and drawings, rare archival recordings, his favourite vinyl records and video cassettes, as well as personal items, many of which have been stored by the musician’s loved ones for thirty years. The exhibition was due to close on April 15, but has been extended until June 21, which would have been Tsoi’s sixtieth birthday. Meduza spoke to the exhibition’s curator, Dmitry Mishenin.
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Education
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Lengthy automatic salutations can be tiresome (“I’m using Inbox When Ready to protect my focus” is simply too much information). If you want to cut a thread short, consider “Thank you in advance”. Yes, it may strike some as presumptuous. But it has the virtue of saving you from a follow-up email.
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In the previous post, the intrepid Jesse Blum and I analyzed metadata from over 6,500 job descriptions for data roles in seven European countries. In this post, we’ll apply text analysis to those job postings to better understand the technologies and skills that employers are looking for in data scientists, data engineers, data analysts, and machine learning engineers.
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To shed light on and, in our view, provide a large part of the answer to these fundamental questions, we offer an in-depth analysis of Sweden’s experience. The Swedish school system has gone through extraordinary swings in education policies, regulatory frameworks, and national curricula. These include a radical marketization of primary and secondary schooling that is currently unparalleled in any wealthy Western country.
In this book, we draw heavily on many years of our own research published in peer-reviewed journals, Johan’s Ph.D. thesis, and Magnus’s interdisciplinary project involving a professor of neuroscience (Martin Ingvar), a humanities professor (Inger Enkvist), and a Ph.D. student in the history of ideas and sciences (Ingrid Dunér, formerly Wållgren) as well as numerous popular essays and books in Swedish.
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Hardware
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A line follower is a common project for anyone wishing to make a start in robotics, a small wheeled device usually with some kind of optical sensor which allows it to follow a line drawn on the surface over which it runs. In most cases they incorporate a small microcontroller or perhaps an analogue computer which supplies power and steering control, but as the Crayon Car from [Greg Zumwalt] demonstrates, it’s possible to make a line follower without any brains at all.
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Yet another Day of the Chocolate Bunnies has passed by, and what did you do to mark the occasion? You likely kicked back and relaxed, surrounded by whatever you gave up for Lent, but good for you if you mixed chocolate and electronics like [Repeated Failure] did. They created a completely edible chocolate Easter bunny that screams when bitten.
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Last time, I told you how to get started with the “Black Pill” STM32F411 board using the Mbed OS. The example program, admittedly, didn’t use many of the features of the OS, unless you count what the USB serial port driver uses behind the scenes. However, this time, we’ll make a practical toy that lets you adjust your PC’s volume level with a pot.
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Intel initially manufactured dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). It was an inflection point in computing – by implementing memory in an integrated circuit, DRAM was cheaper, smaller, and faster than magnetic-core memory units.
The company grew insanely fast for a decade, growing to over $400M in sales by 1978. But Intel wasn’t the only company manufacturing DRAM by then. Competitors like NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Mostek were growing just as fast.
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As far as input devices go, the potentiometer is pretty straightforward: turn it left, turn it right, and you’ve pretty much seen all there is to see. For many applications that’s all you need, but we can certainly improve on the experience with modern technology. Enter this promising project from [upir] that pairs a common potentiometer with a cheap OLED display to make for a considerably more engaging user experience.
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When it comes to sci-fi, it’s hard to go past Star Wars, and many submissions to our contest land in that exact universe. [Kevin Harrington]’s entry is one such example, with his animatronic Baby Yoda that’s exactly as cute as you’d hope it would be.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Legalizing recreational marijuana lowers demand for prescription drugs through state Medicaid programs, according to a new study by researchers in New York and Indiana.
“Our results suggest substitution away from prescription drugs and potential cost savings for state Medicaid programs.”
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Dr. István Körmendi turned 98 in the summer of 2021, but he is still working as a general practitioner – and did so throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. He started attending medical university in 1941 – but had to do so in secret because of being of Jewish descent. (At the time Hungary had a law which did not permit Jews to attend university.) The Second World War interrupted his studies, but he finished them after the war. Today, he has patients he has known for 70 years. Subtitles: Dominic Spadacene
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I will admit that the headline for this post is a question that I never thought I would ever ask for any reason at all at any time ever. Since the pandemic hit, Carlson has, of course, become one of the foremost purveyors of COVID-19 misinformation and antivaccine talking points in the US while promoting ivermectin and other COVID-19 “miracle cures” long after science had shown them to be quackery. He is also almost certainly the foremost propagandist for white supremacist and fascism in the US, at least in terms of his popularity, reach, and nightly opportunity to promote such ideas to a wide and devoted audience. Given the veritable panoply of conspiracy theories, quackery, COVID-19 disinformation, and antivaccine pseudoscience that Carlson has spewed over the last couple of years, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised about anything I’ve seen from him.
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Last Wednesday, the World Health Organization issued a statement warning that the COVID-19 pandemic remains a “public health emergency of international concern” as cases continue to rise worldwide. The day after, the cases globally reported were over the 500-million threshold.
The organization said that some countries have decided while facing such circumstances to lift their anti-COVID mandates due to gloomy economic outlooks, a deficient policy of implementation, and general fatigue to strike the virus. The WHO explained that the pandemic is far from its end as the COVID-19 remains to spread worldwide.
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Mizelle, 35, was only eight years out of law school at University of Florida when Trump appointed her to the lifetime position in 2020. The Daily Beast noted at the time that her only trial experience was as an intern, and that she held four clerkships, including one for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Mizelle was rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association prior to her appointment, citing her lack of experience.
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The Biden administration on Tuesday signaled a willingness to challenge a U.S. judge’s decision to strike down its mask mandate for public transportation if federal health officials determine the policy is still necessary at this stage of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a statement from spokesperson Anthony Coley after Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, appointed by former President Donald Trump to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, declared the mandate unlawful.
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Integrity/Availability
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Proprietary
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Yeah, I’ll admit it: I’m a Windows person. Two years ago this summer, I traded in an overworked Windows 7 laptop that was literally screaming in pain for a SFF Windows 10 box as my main machine. But 10 might mean the end for this scribe, who has used Windows since the late 1980s. Admittedly, it’s for a fairly petty reason — Microsoft have gotten rid of alternate-location taskbar support in Windows 11. As in, you can have the taskbar anywhere you want, as long as it’s the bottom of the screen.
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The company said it had issued updates for the stable branch of Chrome for the Windows, Mac and Linux ports. But, as usual, it did not provide details about CVE-2022-1364.
The frequent security issues are bound to have a negative effect on Google as it tries to paint Microsoft as a more of a problem in the security space than its own products.
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Android apps have, historically speaking, never been good on large displays. There’s a reason Google is dedicating so much of its time trying to make tablets good again. From basic UI elements to poor app support, Android software has never been much fun on large slates and Chromebooks.
Of course, Windows is an entirely different beast. When Microsoft announced Android apps support for Windows 11 last year, it was unclear exactly what purpose it would serve. What gap would Android software fill on such a robust platform with decades of support from developers? The answer, it turns out, remains pretty unclear.
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The analysis focused on ten major ransomware families and the goal was to encrypt nearly 100,000 files with a total size of approximately 54 Gb. The files were stored on four hosts — two running Windows 10 and two running Windows Server 2019. In addition to encryption speed and duration, the researchers also looked at how the ransomware used system resources.
They measured the encryption time for Avaddon, Babuk, BlackMatter, Conti, DarkSide, LockBit, Maze, Mespinoza (PYSA), REvil and Ryuk, with 10 samples analyzed for each malware family.
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But Meta’s plan immediately drew blowback from developers — who pointed out NFT marketplace OpenSea takes a 2.5% cut of each transaction while LooksRare charges 2% — and some pointed comments from antagonist Apple AAPL, -0.13%.
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Security
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The Google Project Zero blog is carrying a report on zero-day vulnerabilities found to be exploited during 2021.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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There is a growing recognition that forced arbitration agreements impede the defense of fundamental rights. The U.S. Supreme Court hears three cases on forced arbitration this session, and the President recently signed a bill preventing victims of sexual assault and harassment from being forced to settle their claims through forced arbitration. Such clauses trapped these victims by requiring them to waive their rights to a day in court before they could possibly know there would be any reason to sue. More lawmakers should follow suit in recognizing forced arbitration violates our rights. In fact, they should go beyond recognition: they should put it in their laws.
EFF already believes that for data privacy legislation to be effective, it must have a private right of action, which expressly allows people to sue companies that violate their rights. In line with that principle, we also support bills that bar forced arbitration agreements, also known sometimes as pre-dispute arbitration agreements.
Pre-dispute arbitration agreements provide that the parties to a contract must resolve any future legal disputes about that contract through arbitration and not court. The original intent was to create an efficient way for businesses with comparable bargaining power to negotiate and agree upon an alternate means of conflict resolution. In 1925 Congress enacted the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) to mandate enforcement of some of these agreements.
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DataSkop is a collaborative project involving AlgorithmWatch, scientists from University Viadrina Frankfurt, Paderborn University, the University of Potsdam, and mediale pfade, an association for media education. It was developed to help users having a better understanding of applications that are based on data. This includes YouTube’s collecting of their data and processing it for recommendations.
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Semenets has posted updates of the AirPods’ journey on his Instagram page, even if he is unlikely to retrieve them. The Find my app can trace devices if they connect to the internet, or if they come close enough to other devices to connect via Bluetooth.
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Clearview AI describes itself as ‘The world’s largest facial network’. However, a quick search online would reveal that the company has been involved in several scandals, covering the front page of many publications for all the wrong reasons. In fact, since New York Times broke the story about Clearview AI in 2020, the company has been constantly criticised by activists, politicians and data protection authorities around the world. Read below a summary of the many actions taken against the company that hoarded 10 billion images of our faces.
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In the midst of the atrocious war currently being waged by Russia on Ukraine, on 14 March 2022 Reuters reported that Clearview AI, the infamous online surveillance company, had offered its services to the Ukrainian defense ministry. A day later in an interview for TechCrunch, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister for Digital Transformation confirmed that the partnership with Clearview AI was “currently in very early development”.
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Defence/Aggression
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The American media’s approach to war coverage needs to be fundamentally reimagined. We need more reporting on forgotten conflicts—and more stories that spotlight how war ravages people and leads to atrocities.
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought immense suffering to the people of that land, while sparking calls for increased military spending in both the United States and Europe. Though that war may prove to be a tragedy for the world, one group is already benefiting from it: US arms contractors.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a televised address late Monday that his country will continue to fight back as Russia ramped up its assault on eastern Ukraine with the goal of fully capturing the Donbas region, a more limited military campaign that comes after Moscow’s forces failed to seize Kyiv and other major cities.
“It can now be stated that Russian troops have begun the battle for Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a long time,” Zelenskyy warned Monday night. “A very large part of the entire Russian army is now focused on this offensive.”
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The meeting was not only important due to its timing or the fact that it reaffirmed the growing ties between Moscow and Beijing, but because of the resolute political discourse articulated by the two top diplomats.
In Huangshan, there was no place for ambiguity. Lavrov spoke of a new ‘world order’, arguing that the world is now “living through a very serious stage in the history of international relations” in reference to the escalating Russia-Ukraine/NATO conflict.
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A federal judge ruled Monday that a lawsuit aiming to disqualify GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from congressional office over her role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection can proceed, a decision that allows Georgia voters to challenge the Republican’s reelection bid under the 14th Amendment.
Ratified in the wake of the Civil War, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution bars from public office any member of Congress who, after swearing to support the Constitution, engages in “insurrection or rebellion” or gives “aid or comfort” to insurrectionists.
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That conclusion emerges from the recent World Happiness Report-2022, published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Based on Gallup World Polls conducted from 2019 through 2021, this extensive study provides a revealing look at how roughly 150,000 respondents in 146 countries rated their own happiness. The study’s findings underscore the limited levels of happiness in the world’s major military-economic powers.
There is little doubt about which nations belong in this category. In 2020 (the latest year for which accurate figures are available), the world’s biggest military spenders were the United States (#1), China (#2), India (#3), and Russia (#4). Collectively, they accounted for nearly 59 percent of the world’s military spending and the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons.
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The inevitable worldwide impacts of the climate crisis make the idea of war—for instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressions in Ukraine—feel particularly irrational and anachronistic. At a time when scientists around the globe agree that the future of life for our species will require immediate worldwide actions to restore the planet, an aggressive invasion of a smaller nation by a large world power like Russia (and whispers of the unthinkable, like a third world war or nuclear violence) is recklessly out of context with the realistic priorities of our times. Large-scale war stands in stark contrast with the one thing the world should be giving critical consideration to presently: cooperation.
Research by peace and conflict studies professors at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, anthropologists Geneviève Souillac and Douglas P. Fry (who are married), has the potential to support the sort of large-scale cooperation and peace our world so desperately needs. The two coauthored a study published in the journal Nature in 2021 that theorizes how humanity can realistically stop war: develop peace systems. Peace systems, defined as existing clusters of neighboring societies that do not make war with each other, already exist around the world, on both small and large scales.
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And this week on the Project Censored show, we look at the reality behind Uncle Sam’s particular brand of saviorism – talking US economic warfare – also known as US sanctions – which as of 2021 affect a third of humanity with more than 8,000 measures impacting 39 countries. First, we sit down with Code Pink’s Latin America coordinator Leonardo Flores to discuss the sanctions against his home country of Venezuela and how recent US thirst for Venezuelan oil could translate into the much needed lifting of some of the most oppressive sanctions. Next, we sit down with Jacquie Luqman, organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace and radio host to discuss the economic warfare against Afghanistan – which analysts suggest could prove to be deadlier in one year than 20 years of active war on the ground – and also what our role is in combating these acts of violence, as children of the empire.
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Mass flight from this great zone of conflict, which stretches from Mali to Afghanistan and Turkey to Somalia, will go on as long as the conflicts that first set the exodus in motion continue. These are the true generators of the immigration crisis that has engulfed Europe over the past 10 years or more, and has done so much to toxify its politics. Boris Johnson’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is only the latest bid to gain political advantage from the anti-immigrant reaction.
Political choices made by the West
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As the war in Ukraine heads for its third month amid a rising toll of death and destruction, Washington and its European allies are scrambling, so far unsuccessfully, to end that devastating, globally disruptive conflict. Spurred by troubling images of executed Ukrainian civilians scattered in the streets of Bucha and ruined cities like Mariupol, they are already trying to use many tools in their diplomatic pouches to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to desist. These range from economic sanctions and trade embargoes to the confiscation of the assets of some of his oligarch cronies and the increasingly massive shipment of arms to Ukraine. Yet none of it seems to be working.
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World War II demonstrated this ugliness in the Holocaust and in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From Hiroshima and the Holocaust rose two mighty movements, one for peace and against the perils of further nuclear attacks, and the other for an end to the divisions of humanity and for a nonalignment from these divisions. The Stockholm Appeal of 1950, signed by 300 million people, called for an absolute ban on nuclear weapons. Five years later, 29 countries from Africa and Asia, representing 54 percent of the world’s population, gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, to sign a 10-point pledge against war and for the “promotion of mutual interests and cooperation.” The Bandung Spirit was for peace and for nonalignment, for the peoples of the world to put their efforts into building a process to eradicate history’s burdens (illiteracy, ill health, hunger) by using their social wealth. Why spend money on nuclear weapons when money should be spent on classrooms and hospitals?
Despite the major gains of many of the new nations that had emerged out of colonialism, the overwhelming force of the older colonial powers prevented the Bandung Spirit from defining human history. Instead, the civilization of war prevailed. This civilization of war is revealed in the massive waste of human wealth in the production of armed forces—sufficient to destroy hundreds of planets—and the use of these armed forces as the first instinct to settle disputes. Since the 1950s, the battlefield of these ambitions has not been in Europe or in North America, but rather it has been in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—areas of the world where old colonial sensibilities believe that human life is less important. This international division of humanity—which says that a war in Yemen is normal, whereas a war in Ukraine is horrific—defines our time. There are 40 wars taking place across the globe; there needs to be political will to fight to end each of these, not just those that are taking place within Europe. The Ukrainian flag is ubiquitous in the West; what are the colors of the Yemeni flag, of the Sahrawi flag, and of the Somali flag?
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On Monday, the Pentagon announced the US will soon begin training the Ukrainian military in using howitzer artillery in an unnamed country. Presumably this will be in a NATO member state. If Russian intelligence found out where, might it attack to stop the howitzers from being deployed against Russian forces in Ukraine? Almost assuredly not, as that would trigger a wider war, invoking NATO’s self-defense provision, which would be catastrophic for Russia.
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Some U.S. officials are considering whether to issue a formal apology to the Marshall Islands, a small island nation in the Pacific Ocean that the United States subjected to years of nuclear testing and human experimentation during the Cold War.
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As Russia ramped up its war on Ukraine with a focus on capturing the Donbas region, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday called for a four-day “humanitarian pause” later this week, leading up to when Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Christians will celebrate Easter.
“Hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance.”
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They call her “the conscience of St. Petersburg.” For twenty years now, 76-year-old Yelena Andreyevna Osipova has been protesting war and the Russian government. An artist and teacher by training, Osipova spent her career teaching children to draw. These days, she brings her anti-war posters out to St. Petersburg’s central streets. In March 2022, she was arrested several times and footage of Osipova surrounded by riot police went viral online. In an interview with Meduza, Yelena Osipova talked about political protest, art, the Putin regime, and Russia’s future. This is her story in her own words.
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On Tuesday, April 19, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment said that Russian bombardment had destroyed Mariupol’s Azovstal plant “almost completely.” The metalworks plant was serving as a Ukrainian stronghold, where the Azov Regiment and 36th Marine Brigade continued to defend the besieged city. What’s more, according to Ukrainian authorities, at least 1,000 civilians (including children) were hiding in underground shelters at the industrial complex at the time of the Russian assault. Here’s what we know so far.
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An analysis of the sad reality of Donbas, including: – How Donbas was made a pretext for Russia’s invasion – Economic analysis of the region – Actions by Moscow and Kyiv – Illustration of the rapid and severe de-industrialization – Human rights violations – DPR and LPR as mirrors of Russian political and economic system – Workers’ resistance – Donbas as a Russian neo-colony – Political opposition crushed by both sides – Population loss, collapse of political and econ systems
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The loss of form and balance was the central target of Mumford’s often blistering criticism of modern society. The city, the pinnacle of human creation, expressed what he saw as a general sickness of a civilization given to the pursuit of endless expansion.
Mumford tracked the philosophy of unlimited expansion to the interrelated rise of capitalism and the nation-state in Europe from the 1300s on, shattering what had been a more balanced development of localities and city states in the middle ages. The previous installment of this series covers that.
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Ukraine’s president says Russia has started a major offensive to seize the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine while launching missiles at targets across the country. We go outside of Kyiv to get an update from Peter Zalmayev, director of the Eurasia Democracy Initiative. Facing a stronger resistance from Ukrainian defenses than anticipated, Russian President Vladimir Putin is practicing “scorched-earth tactics” and “venting his anger on Ukraine,” says Zalmayev. “His goal remains controlling all of Ukraine, or at least making it a failed state.”
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Environment
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Divers who inspected the hull of a tanker loaded with 750 tonnes of fuel that sank off southeast Tunisia detected no leaks on Sunday, officials said.
The Equatorial Guinea-flagged Xelo, which sank Saturday in the Gulf of Gabes, has settled on its side at a depth of almost 20 metres (65 feet), the environment ministry said.
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The Secret Service has reportedly seized more than $100 million in cryptocurrency since 2015 in an effort to crack down on fraudulent digital currency transactions.
David Smith of the Secret Service told CNBC that his office has been tracking the flow of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the blockchain to prevent and combat fraudulent activities.
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The U.S. Secret Service is cracking down on illicit digital currency transactions, seizing more than $102 million in cryptocurrency from criminals in connection with fraud-related investigations.
David Smith, assistant director of investigations, said agents and analysts actively track the flow of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the blockchain, similar to an old-fashioned surveillance. Best known for protecting presidents, the Secret Service also conducts financial and cybercrime investigations.
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Netflix has 222 million “paying households,” but it estimates the service is shared with over 100 million “additional households,” 30 million of which are in the US and Canada. That indicates there is a massive swath of people who aren’t paying Netflix directly for the ability to stream their favorite shows.
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In January, Netflix announced its first monthly subscription increase in two years. Today’s earnings report contains the aftermath: Netflix says it lost 600,000 customers across the US and Canada and that this was “largely the result of our price change which is tracking in-line with our expectations.”
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Energy
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The Biden administration is issuing orders to expand the amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG) that it exports by over 50% as Europe seeks to reduce its reliance on Russian gas. However, by doing so we are decreasing our own energy security, while increasing climate-harming methane emissions and diverting capital expenditures away from green energy to yet more new fossil fuel infrastructure. There are better ways to aid our European allies in their time of energy need.
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A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that climate lawsuits filed by a half-dozen California municipalities seeking to hold fossil fuel corporations accountable for damages they knowingly caused should proceed in state court.
The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit marked the third time this year that a federal appeals court has rejected industry attempts to shift jurisdiction over climate liability lawsuits from state courts to federal court.
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In late March, the Alberta government ran a series of ads on Facebook promoting an oil sands pipeline expansion that could have a climate footprint surpassing that of the entire country of Panama.
“Once completed, the Trans Mountain Expansion will allow more responsibly-produced Canadian oil to reach key markets in Asia and beyond,” claimed one ad from the Canadian Energy Centre, which according to Facebook analytics reached an estimated audience size of over one million people. “And with global demand for oil soaring, the pipeline project is more important than ever.”
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Roughly 17 million people in the U.S. live within a mile of an oil or gas well — putting them at higher risk of health problems like heart disease, breathing issues, anxiety and depression, and complications during pregnancy, a growing body of research shows.
But all is not equal when it comes to who exactly lives near oil wells — and intentional racial discrimination in federal mortgage policies, reflected in a practice known as “redlining,” may have played a role, according to a new study published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology.
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Wildlife/Nature
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While welcoming the White House’s move Tuesday to repair some of the damage that the Trump administration did to a federal law known as “the Magna Carta of environmental legislation,” green groups also urged President Joe Biden to go even further.
“I’m glad this administration… is moving forward to restore the protections that have helped protect our environment while promoting sustainable development for decades.”
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In a 1970 poster for the first Earth Day and a cartoon the following year, Walt Kelly’s Pogo offered a hard truth about ecological crises: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
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Overpopulation
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The World Food Program warns an estimated 20 million people in drought-affected parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia could face catastrophic levels of hunger if the region is hit with a fourth consecutive year of drought.
The rains have failed to come to the Horn of Africa nearly a month into the current rainy season, which lasts through May. The past three years of drought have taken a heavy toll. The World Food Program reports crop failure in Ethiopia has plunged 7.2 million people into acute hunger and killed more than a million livestock.
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Federal officials say it may be necessary to reduce water deliveries to Colorado River users to prevent the shutdown of a huge dam on the Arizona-Utah border.
Glen Canyon Dam supplies hydropower to some 5 million customers across the U.S. West.
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Twenty years ago, 97% of the water in the world was seawater and 3% freshwater. Two-thirds of the freshwater was stored in glaciers. The remaining freshwater was split between surface water and groundwater, with groundwater constituting almost 99%. During the past 20 years, glaciers have melted at an average of 13% per decade. Also in the past 20 years, Utah’s neighboring states, including Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho and the coastal states of California, Washington and Oregon have been in severe to extreme drought.
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The Interior Department has proposed holding back water in the lake to maintain Glen Canyon Dam’s ability to generate electricity amid what it said were the driest conditions in the region in more than 1,200 years.
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Finance
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An analysis released Monday shows that the CEOs of some of the largest corporations in the United States made 254 times more than their median employees in 2021 as executive bonuses and stock awards grew significantly.
According to the latest edition of the Equilar 100, an annual report that spotlights executive pay at leading U.S. companies, median total CEO compensation at top firms soared to $20 million in 2021, a nearly 31% increase from 2020.
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Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, urged the House Democratic leadership on Tuesday to hold a vote on legislation that would expand Social Security benefits by making wealthy Americans contribute more to the beloved New Deal-era program.
“Republicans are against expanding Social Security, even as millions of seniors are struggling to survive.”
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No wonder everybody hates tax season: It’s easy to screw up, and nobody wants to get audited, especially while making low wages. It’s a shame (and not just for my mental health, ha ha, lol), because I’m generally pro-taxes. Wealth redistribution is good! We just have a terrible system in place. Proof positive: The average taxpayer — the median U.S. household income is about $67,500, per 2020 Census data — pays an average rate of 13% in federal income tax. Let’s contrast that with how we tax the rich (spoiler alert: not enough).
As ProPublica recently reported, using a trove of IRS documents on the uber-wealthy over the span of 15 years, “The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year,” in spite of our “progressive” tax system. The piece ticks off Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Elon Musk of Tesla, and other wealthy men such as failed presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg and philanthropist George Soros as among those who evaded federal income tax for whole years.
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The conditions of nearly 90% of the International Monetary Fund’s pandemic-related loans are forcing developing nations suffering some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises to implement austerity measures that fuel further impoverishment and inequality, an analysis published Tuesday by Oxfam International revealed.
“The IMF must suspend austerity conditions on existing loans and increase access to emergency financing.”
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Tom Cotton doesn’t seem to be aware That right to counsel’s needed to be fair. To teach him, Harvard wasn’t the solution. So maybe he should read the Constitution.
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The progressive caucus of North Carolina’s state Democratic Party is revoking its endorsement of state Sen. Valerie Foushee, citing her acceptance of thousands of dollars from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the anti-Palestinian rights group which has been influential in U.S. politics for decades
The caucus said Sunday it had unsuccessfully urged Foushee to reject $165,000 in funding from individuals associated with AIPAC due to its support for more than three dozen Republican politicians who objected to the certification of the 2020 presidential election results, which former President Donald Trump and his allies continue to baselessly claim were fraudulent.
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In reviewing the arguments for Section 230 repeal, Coy left out what I considered the most important, the downsizing of Facebook and Twitter. In their current mode of operation, these companies depend on not being held responsible for defamatory items in third party content. If they were subject to the same sort of liability as their competitors in print and broadcast media, they would have to spend far more money in viewing and moderating posts and ads.
It would be impractical for Facebook and Twitter to moderate the billions of daily posts as they went up, but they could face takedown rules, similar to what is required with copyrighted material under the Digital Millennial Copyright Act. This would mean that they could be subject to defamation suits, if they did not remove potentially defamatory material in a timely manner, after they were notified.
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With endearment, I address you Secretary Deb Haaland as an auntie, as my Indigenous relative. As you visit Alaska, I would like to offer a different opinion than many may give. I am an Iñupiaq community member, mother, and human. I am also the director of a small Iñupiaq led organization but I am not writing with that hat on. I am, as a constituent, requesting this administration keep its word. To protect our most vulnerable and transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.
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Smoke billowing over the U.S. Capitol. Rioters marching through the halls, carrying the Confederate battle flag. A gallows, with a noose hanging from it, erected just steps from the Capitol. Police officers beaten and tased.
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Immigration justice advocates on Tuesday demanded that federal lawmakers reject a legislative package they derided as the “Stephen Miller bill,” which would codify a rule that has expelled more than 1.7 million asylum-seekers since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Texas-based group RAICES dubbed the proposal—officially called the Public Health and Border Security Act—the “Stephen Miller bill” after a chief architect of former President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, including the use of Title 42 of the Public Health Safety Act to refuse entry to asylum-seekers, supposedly in the name of mitigating the spread of Covid-19.
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I jumped the gun: The “Tucker Carlson Original” mockumentary hilariously titled The End of Men did not air Monday night, as advertised. Tuckums was a bit sneaky: The show introduced a whole new season of his mockumentaries, which will stream on Fox Nation, and the episode featured little more than the long version of the trailer people made short work of on social media all weekend, with its many homoerotic montages of shirtless white men getting all manly by wrestling with one another. Oh, and with large tires. And maybe a cow? Also: swinging axes and drinking egg yolks? I couldn’t catch everything; it went by fast. But not fast enough.
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“Regardless of how brilliant he is, Emmanuel Macron just didn’t understand,” Sébastien Nadot said of his former boss. “He’s a talented manager, who’s gone from opportunistic move to opportunistic move—and I’m not saying that in a dismissive way. I became an MP for [Macron’s party] En Marche out of opportunism too!”
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Censorship/Free Speech
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The ruling class, made up of the traditional elites that run the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, is employing draconian forms of censorship on its right-wing and left-wing critics in a desperate effort to cling to power. The traditional elites were discredited for pushing through a series of corporate assaults on workers, from deindustrialization to trade deals. They were unable to stem rising inflation, the looming economic crisis and the ecological emergency. They were incapable of carrying out significant social and political reform to ameliorate widespread suffering and refused to accept responsibility for two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East. And now they have launched a new and sophisticated McCarthyism. Character assassination. Algorithms. Shadowbanning. De-platforming.
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In early 2020, Peter Brimelow, the founder of the incredibly sketchy site VDARE, sued the NY Times for calling him an “open white nationalist” among other similar things. Brimelow and VDARE have only spent two decades or so pushing for “ethno nationalism,” that “America is not a melting pot,” and that we need to “preserve and celebrate the distinctive culture of America.” Also “diversity per se is not a strength, but a vulnerability.” It also claims that it’s fighting to “keep America American.” Those all come from his website.
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Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press
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The Ministry of Interior filed a complaint against İbrahim Haskoloğlu, a journalist who shared ID cards allegedly belonging to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Chair Hakan Fidan on Twitter.
After the complaint, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation against the journalist for “illegally obtaining personal information.”
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The Russian authorities have begun using arrests, raids and fines to harass journalists accused of publishing “false information” about the Russian army’s actions in Ukraine. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns this witchhunt and the growing climate of impunity for attacks on journalists, and calls for the withdrawal of laws establishing censorship.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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The writer Lauren Rankin opens her book Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America with a story from her own experience as a clinic escort. One day several years ago, outside an abortion clinic in northern New Jersey, a cab pulled up. Protesters descended on the car, screaming, before Rankin, with the help of a security guard, could extract the patient inside. Shielding her from protesters who were screaming “Don’t murder your baby!,” Rankin guided the patient to the door. Only once inside did she discover that the patient was a terrified teenage girl. The girl collapsed onto Rankin, sobbing.
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After Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a draconian bill, SB 8, into law last year, empowering bounty hunters to sue abortion providers, those seeking care fled to the neighboring states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
But GOP leaders were ready for them. Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt on April 12 signed the nation’s strictest abortion ban into law, ending all abortions in his state except in cases of danger to the pregnant person’s life. Now, reports are emerging of Oklahomans turning to the neighboring state of Kansas for abortions.
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For more than a year, Abbott’s been burnishing his reputation as America’s top immigration authoritarian. In March of 2021, he launched “Operation Lone Star,” mobilizing his state’s National Guard for various border-related theatrics, and hosting units from states whose Republican governors want their reputational tickets similarly punched (and are willing to treat taxpayer money and the troops’ time as campaign contributions for the purpose).
For nearly a year, Abbott’s petty stunts — such as abducting immigrants in Texas and busing them to Washington, DC (“thanks for the ride, Greg!”) — mostly inconvenienced undocumented immigrants, National Guard troops, and Texas taxpayers. The rest of us, not so much.
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My attempts to engage concerned Bishops and others within the Catholic hierarchy within the Catholic Church in England and Wales on the topic of racism have thus far led to non-listening and a lack of interest in engaging in dialogue with me. It is either because they have not wanted to engage in dialogue with me since my Voice is unimportant to them or because the hierarchy is so disconnected from grassroots that it wishes to remain disconnected.
Regrettably, the Catholic hierarchy within the Catholic Church in England and Wales does not regard me as a dialogue partner on the subject of racism, nor does it believe God is at work in my life. They have produced sufficient documents on the subject of racism, but what they need to do is listen to individuals like me about the problems of racism and rethink and act to confront racism both within and beyond the church.
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Inquiring minds at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) want to know if officers or agents of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or other components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have tried to stop you from taking photographs, filming, or recording publicly-visible scenes and events at US land border crossing points.
As we’ve noted many times in this blog, and as as has been established in court cases in which we have participated, you have the right to photograph and record Transportation Security Administration staff and contractors at TSA checkpoints at airports.
We haven’t talked about land “ports of entry” as much as airports, but you also have the right to photograph and record at land border crossings, at least if you do so from places accessible to members of the public who aren’t crossing the border. (We don’t mean to suggest that you don’t also have the right to record or livestream what happens to you as you cross the border. We think you do, but that hasn’t yet been litigated as extensively.)
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Praise be to the various gods! (Shout out to Tiamat!) The DOJ is back in the busting up local PD business, something it largely abandoned while Donald “A Police State Is The Best State” Trump held office for a single term.
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A few weeks ago, Rene Ebersole drew the curtain back on law enforcement forensic training, showing the public that their tax dollars were being blown on forensic education handed out by Dr. Arpad Vass — someone who in the year of our lord two thousand twenty-two is teaching cops how to utilize witching to locate dead bodies.
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Calls are growing for the release of imprisoned Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who launched a hunger strike on April 2 to protest the harsh conditions he is held under at Cairo’s Tora prison. Abd El-Fattah, who became a leading voice of the Arab Spring revolution, has been in and out of prison for nearly a decade for his human rights activism. His family recently obtained U.K. citizenship for him in the hopes of pressuring Egyptian authorities to release him, and they warn that his condition is rapidly deteriorating behind bars. We speak to his sister, Sanaa Seif, who was also imprisoned on similar charges of disseminating “false news” before being released in December. “Now is a critical time where it finally might be possible for Alaa to be free,” says Seif. “What keeps us going is that we as a family want to survive and want to unite in peace.” We also speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who is joining Seif on a U.S. tour with Alaa’s new book, “You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.” As the pair advocate for Abd El-Fattah’s immediate release, they also discuss more recent government crackdowns on prominent Egyptian voices, such as TikTok influencer Haneen Hossam. “It seems that prison is the government’s answer to any problem with a citizen,” says Kouddous.
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The nationwide wave of labor organizing by Starbucks workers continued to bear fruit Tuesday as employees at five of the coffee chain’s Richmond, Virginia stores overwhelmingly voted to unionize.
“Within 48 hours we had 70% of the store signed up for union cards.”
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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President Joe Biden nominated media activist Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission in October, to fill a Democratic seat vacant since January 2021. He renominated Sohn this January. Why has she not been confirmed yet? Advocates suspect the corporate media lobby is trying to sink the nomination of the staunch consumer advocate.
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We just got done noting how the telecom industry has been pushing misleading editorials in Arizona to derail the nomination of popular and well-qualified telecom and telecom reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. The editorials are full of false claims that Sohn has a terrible track record on media diversity, shoveled by organizations with longstanding financial ties to AT&T.
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The long-running dispute in hiQ concerns LinkedIn’s attempts to stop hiQ from scraping public information from LinkedIn user profiles as part of hiQ’s data analytics services. LinkedIn tried to block hiQ’s access and threatened to sue for violation of the CFAA, on the theory that hiQ’s access violated the website’s terms of service and LinkedIn’s explicit wishes. But hiQ sued first and obtained a preliminary injunction to preserve its access.
The key question for the Ninth Circuit on appeal was whether access to a public website can ever be “without authorization” under the CFAA. According to an earlier Ninth Circuit precedent, Facebook v. Power, merely violating a website’s terms of service is not enough to be a violation of the CFAA, but individualized notice in the form of a cease-and-desist letter can revoke a user’s prior authorization. However, the court noted that the phrase “access without authorization” implies that there is a baseline requirement of authorization, and public websites like the LinkedIn profiles at issue do not require any permission to begin with. As a result, the court held that access to public information online likely cannot be a violation of the CFAA. (Because it was considering an appeal from a preliminary injunction, the holding was discussed in terms of the “likely” outcome of a final ruling.)
Then, in Van Buren, the Supreme Court answered a different question interpreting a different term in the CFAA, holding that an police officer did not “exceed authorized access” by using a law enforcement database for an unofficial purpose that violated the department’s written rules and procedures. The Court held that the CFAA does not encompass “violations of circumstance-based access restrictions on employers’ computers.” Rather, it adopted what it called a “gates-up-or-down approach,” writing that violations of the “exceeds authorized access” provision are limited to someone who “accesses a computer with authorization but then obtains information located in particular areas of the computer—such as files, folders, or databases—that are off limits to him.”
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ISPs, looking to undermine, FCC authority managed to frame the whole net neutrality debate as “partisan” as to sow dissent, prevent consensus, block reform, and justify the 2017 repeal. But the idea was never really partisan. Despite headlines and DC rhetoric, a massive bipartisan majority of Americans actually supported the rules.
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It can always get dumber. As you’ll recall, last year Florida man governor Ron DeSantis, as part of his big push to become the new populist leader of ignorant people, pushed for a law to force social media websites to host political content they didn’t want to host. He convinced the subservient Florida Legislature to pass that bill, but not before his staff personally teamed up with lawyers from Disney to insert a buffoonish theme park exemption, that said the law didn’t apply to you if you owned a theme park in Florida. The bill’s author admitted flat out on the floor of the Florida Legislature that this was done to protect Disney from having to worry about the law.
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So much of the debate about Section 230 is based on an incorrect understanding of its procedural benefits, and the completely false idea that it’s a special gift to “big tech”. A new paper (which we wrote about yesterday) by Elizabeth Banker from the Chamber of Progress dives deep into the real benefits and beneficiaries of Section 230, and this week she joins us on the podcast to discuss how the law protects small companies, individuals, and free speech.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in Q1 and expects to lose another 2 million in the current second quarter, the streamer said in its first-quarter 2022 earnings release Tuesday.
In January, Netflix reported it had 221.84 million subscribers at the end of 2021. During the three-month period that ended March 31, a time span that included the debuts of “Bridgerton” Season 2 and “The Adam Project,” Netflix says its total fell to 221.64 million subs.
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Netflix is preparing to crack down on password sharing around the world, with the company telling shareholders Tuesday that it is a “big opportunity” for the streaming giant to help turn around its fortunes.
The company reported a quarterly subscriber loss Tuesday, ending Q1 of 2022 with 221.64 million subscribers, down from 221.84 million in Q4 of 2021.
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The streaming giant reported a drop of 200,000 subscribers during the first quarter of 2022. The company last reported a loss in subscribers in October 2011, according to Reuters.
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Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Last week we noticed that several high-profile “pirate” sites were unfindable in DuckDuckGo’s search results. It wasn’t clear why these domains had been ‘removed’ but after some back and forth, Bing is now mentioned as the culprit. DuckDuckGo is working hard to mitigate the problem, which is more widespread than we initially reported.
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Over the years, software players have been developed to play various media types. VLC, for example, is a content-agnostic tool that can play most media, regardless of the source – legal or pirated. Interestingly, a report has been submitted to the European Commission naming 85 IPTV players as illegal piracy tools, despite most (if not all) carrying no pirated video content.
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Creative Commons’ Open Culture Remix Art Contest #CCSharesCulture is open until 30 April 2022. So there’s still plenty of time to remix existing art and turn it into something fresh and exciting under the theme “Love Culture? Share Culture!”
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