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Links 24/05/2022: Fedora 37 Test Days and Tor Browser 11.0.13



  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

      • Collision: Linux App to Verify Checksum of Files [Tutorial and Guide]

        A review and usage guide of the Linux App Collision which helps you to verify integrity of files (such as ISO, etc.) via hashes.

      • MedevelVirtue-Vice is an open-source web-based Habit Tracker

        Virtue-Vice is a web application that allows users to track their habits. Users can specify how many times each day, on which days, upload a personal image, and also indicate whether or not the app should send out push notifications at certain times for a habit.

      • Medeveldijo is an open-source Habit tracker for hackers

        dijo is an open-source lightweight habit tracker package written in the Rust programming language. It features a unique terminal-based interface (Curses).

        dijo is a habit tracker. It is curses-based, it runs in your terminal. dijo is scriptable, hook it up with external programs to track events without moving a finger. dijo is modal, much like a certain text editor.

      • MedevelXODA is a Web-based DMS file manager

        XODA is a free web-based self-hosted file manager that helps you store, organize and manage your files on your own server.

        The app is built using PHP, HTML5 and JavaScript. Although, it published since 2007, it has dozens of devoted users who are still using it.

        Unlike other solutions which make a use of extensive database, XODA uses a flat-file to store its data, so it does not require any external database like MySQL or PostgreSQL.

      • MedevelJarvis is your open-source personal assistant

        Jarvis is a free, open-source personal voice assistant that takes your commands and turn them into actions. It also allows you to create and train new skills.

        Jarvis package is written using Python, and it comes with developer-friendly API and documentation.

        Unlike its competitors, Jarvis does not have a complex setup or configuration. You can get it up and running in no time.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Deploying Node.js Apps to a Kubernetes Cluster - Container Journal

        Node.js is a popular, open source development platform that lets you run JavaScript code on the server side. Node is useful for developing applications that require a persistent connection from the browser to the server and is often used for real-time applications and single-page applications.

        Node.js runs on a dedicated HTTP server and is designed to use a single thread in one process at a time. Node.js applications are event-driven and calls are asynchronous by default. Node.js applications do not follow the traditional process of receiving a request, processing it and returning a response. Instead, Node uses an event stack to handle incoming requests, pooling requests and dispatching them one after the other without waiting for a response.

      • Red Hat OfficialHow to switch between the CLI and GUI on a Linux server | Enable Sysadmin

        What do you do if your server boots to a graphical user interface (GUI), but you need it to boot to the command-line interface (CLI) for security and performance reasons? In days past, you would have edited the /etc/fstab file so that, instead of booting to runlevel 5 (the GUI), it booted to runlevel 3 (the CLI). However, with the advent of the systemd system manager, you must do something a bit different.

      • H2S MediaHow to Install Ghost CMS on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy - Linux Shout

        Learn the commands to install Ghost CMS on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish using the command terminal for hosting your blog.

        Ghost is an open-source content management system that has evolved from a pure blog system to a professional publishing software with a built-in subscription and membership portal. Ghost’s technology stack was new and sensational at the time of its creation: With Node.js as the server-side language, Ember.js for the admin interface, and handlebars.js as a template language, Ghost relies entirely on JavaScript, while the storage of data with a MySQL database follows comparatively traditional patterns. Meanwhile, server-side JavaScript is widely used in the developer scene, but even today it is still true that most mainstream hosters do not offer node.js in their standard offers.

      • How to install GTKMM 4 on Ubuntu 22.04

        gtkmm-4.0 has several new improvements and features.

      • H2S MediaHow to Install Wordpress on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Server - Linux Shout

        Learn the steps to install WordPress CMS on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish using LAMP server- Apache, MariaDB, and PHP.

        If you want to run your blog, you will quickly come across WordPress software. What WordPress is and what possibilities it offers, we will tell you in this practical tip.

        WordPress is the world’s most popular software that allows you to create a website. The special thing about it is that you have an innovative interface at your disposal.

      • Red HatCreate AWS resources with Kubernetes and Operators | Red Hat Developer

        This second article in a series shows how to create AWS services and interact with them via Operators. See how it works.

      • How To Install Linux Kernel 5.18 On Rocky Linux 8 / AlmaLinux 8 / Fedora 36 | Tips On UNIX

        Linus Torvalds announced the Linux Kernel 5.18 after a few weeks of development and it is available for general usage. Linux Kernel 5.18 was released with new features and support.

        This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install Linux kernel 5.18 on Rocky Linux 8, AlmaLinux 8, and Fedora 36.

      • Linux Shell TipsHow to Split Large Text File into Multiple *.txt Files

        As we have mentioned numerous times in the earlier article covered; whether directly or indirectly, it remains a valid statement that the computing depth of a Linux operating system cannot be matched with the strides of other operating systems.

        Its open-source nature creates an unseen level of transparency for the end-users. While other operating systems provide the start button for baking a cake, Linux allows us to play with the cake ingredients as we move towards the final product.

        This article will seek to explore the visible Linux-oriented steps for splitting a large text file into multiple smaller text files. This tutorial falls under the Linux file management segment.

    • Games

      • Godot EngineGodot Engine - Release candidate: 3.5 RC 2

        The upcoming Godot 3.5 is now considered feature complete, and has received a lot of bugfixes and improvements over the past weeks thanks to all the testers and developers who reported and fixed issues. It's now time to move to the Release Candidate stage so that we can release 3.5-stable for all users.

        At this stage we need people to test this release (and potential follow-up RCs) on as many codebases as possible, to make sure that we catch non-obvious regressions that might have gone unnoticed until now. If you run into any issue, please make sure to report it on GitHub so that we can know about it and fix it!

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Fedora ProjectCall for F37 Test Days – Fedora Community Blog

        It’s time to start thinking about Test Days for Fedora Linux 37. A Test Day is an event aimed getting together interested users and developers to test a specific feature or area of the distribution. You can run a Test Day on just about anything for which it would be useful to do some fairly focused testing in ‘real time’ with a group of testers; it doesn’t have to be code. For instance, we often run Test Days for l10n/i18n topics. For more information on Test Days, see the wiki.

      • Enterprisers ProjectManaged cloud services: 4 things IT leaders should know

        The first thing to know about managed cloud services? It would certainly help to define the term as a starting point.

        “In today’s environment, cloud managed services is a broad topic,” says Kaushik De, VP, cloud center of excellence, Capgemini Americas.

        At some point in the not-so-distant past, a “cloud managed service” probably referred to something straightforward like paying a cloud provider to manage some VMs for you instead of running them yourself in your own datacenter. Buying compute or storage from a cloud provider is still a core use case, but it has been joined by a much broader set of tools and services.

        “Previously, cloud managed services were mostly centered around infrastructure services,” De says. “This has shifted to include new complexities, meaning that the enterprises must now consider first what they need out of their cloud services.”

        A managed cloud service today could be anything from a fully managed service for building and training machine-learning models to a fully managed container platform.

      • Enterprisers ProjectIT decision-makers are prioritizing digital transformation

        That was one of the topics we probed in interviews conducted by Frost and Sullivan with IT business executives from organizations with more than 1,000 employees globally. They represented companies in manufacturing, energy, and utilities split between North America, Germany, China, and India.

        The executives used a variety of words to describe their top priorities: automation, Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, and cloud infrastructure. They called out digital transformation by name as well. But all of these top initiatives are associated with technologies that companies often adopt when they say they’re digitally transforming (although it’s important to note that digital transformation isn’t just about implementing new technologies; process and even culture change matter too).

      • Red HatManaged Kafka services: Which is right for you? | Red Hat Developer

        This article is the second in a two-part series describing the many ways to run Apache Kafka and the benefits of each. The first article covered distributions for local development and self-managed Kafka. This article talks about Kafka as a Service and "serverless-like" Kafka. We'll conclude with guidance on when you should use each type of distribution.

      • OpenSource.comBuild a Quarkus reactive application using Kubernetes Secrets | Opensource.com

        Many organizations have security policies in place that dictate how to store sensitive information. When you're developing applications for the cloud, you're probably expected to follow those policies, and to do that you often have to externalize your data storage. Kubernetes has a built-in system to access external secrets, and learning to use that is key to a safe cloud-native app.

        In this article, I'm going to demonstrate how to build a Quarkus reactive application with externalized sensitive information—for instance, a password or token—using Kubernetes Secrets. A secret is a good example of how cloud platforms can secure applications by removing sensitive data from your static code. Note that you can find a solution to this tutorial in this GitHub repository.

    • Debian Family

      • [Older] Kali Linux 2022.2 Released With 10 New Tools and Other Enhancements

        Kali Linux is a Debian-derived Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is maintained and funded by Offensive Security. The developers of Kali Linux have released the latest version of the penetration-testing-and-security focused distribution, Kali Linux 2022.2.

        According to their official blog post, this release has various impressive updates.

      • Sven Luther, Lucy Wayland & Debian's toxic culture

        The key thing to note is that Sven Luther announced he was going to resign. For fifteen years now the fascists have been telling the world that Sven Luther was the first person expelled from Debian but the truth is he resigned.

        Debianism is a horrible smear on the reputation of Sven Luther.

        This is why independent sites like the Debian Community News are so vital. We stand with Sven Luther and Lucy Wayland, do you?

        In their legal dossier, Debian admits that Lucy Wayland had expressed suicidal thoughts. Imagine how Lucy would feel reading through the emails savaging Sven's reputation. Would it give Lucy confidence or would it give her more anxiety? Who wouldn't reach for a very stiff drink after reading through these lynchings?

    • Devices/Embedded

      • CNX SoftwareDongShanPi One - A SigmaStar SSD202D system-on-module with a mini PCIe edge connector for GPIO, Ethernet... - CNX Software

        DongShanPi One system-on-module features SigmaStar SSD202D Arm Cortex-A7 processor with 128MB on-chip RAM, a 128MB NAND SPI flash and a microSD card slot, an LCD interface, two USB Type-C ports, and a mini PCIe edge connector that exposes interfaces like Ethernet, USB, and GPIOs when connected to a baseboard.

        I noticed the module in Linux 5.18 changelog yesterday together with the Miyoo game console, with support being added by dgp (Daniel Palmer), a frequent commenter on CNX Software, who also happen to maintain the linux-chenxing community. The DongShanPi One is optionally offered with a baseboard equipped with an RJ45 port, four USB ports, an IR receiver, and plenty of GPIO headers for expansion.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • HackadayVintage Pro Audio Hack Chat

        Join us on Wednesday, May 25 at noon Pacific for the Vintage Audio Hack Chat with Frank Olson!

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers

      • Mozilla

        • TorNew Release: Tor Browser 11.0.13

          Tor Browser 11.0.13 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

          This version includes important security updates to Firefox.

    • Programming/Development

      • Trend OceansTop 5 Laptops for Programmers in 2022 [Ed: No, Apple MacBook is not for programmers but for fools who love wasting money on brands without substance]

        As a programmer, choosing a laptop is an important decision to make. With the rise of the gig economy, many programmers are now working on their laptops remotely. This means that your laptop should handle all of your needs as a programmer.

      • QtCompiling QML to C++: Making types visible

        This is the third installment in the series of blog posts on how to adjust your QML application to take the maximum advantage of qmlsc. In the first post we've set up the environment. You should read that post first in order to understand the others. In the second post I've shown how to add type annotations to JavaScript functions. Now we need to make sure that all types we want to use in QML are visible at compile time.

      • QtQt Creator 7.0.2 released

        We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 7.0.2!

      • I ProgrammerC++20 for Programmers 3rd Ed (Pearson)

        Subtitled "An Objects-Natural Approach", this book has been written for programmers with a background in another high-level language. Paul and Harvey Deitel look at modern C++ development hands on using C++20 and its "Big Four" features - Ranges, Concepts, Modules and Coroutines.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • HackadayEuropean Roads See First Zero-Occupancy Autonomous Journey

        We write a lot about self-driving vehicles here at Hackaday, but it’s fair to say that most of the limelight has fallen upon large and well-known technology companies on the west coast of the USA. It’s worth drawing attention to other parts of the world where just as much research has gone into autonomous transport, and on that note there’s an interesting milestone from Europe. The British company Oxbotica has successfully made the first zero-occupancy on-road journey in Europe, on a public road in Oxford, UK.

    • Hardware

      • HackadayFighting Back Against Dodgy Dyson Batteries

        If you’ve ever worked with multi-cell rechargeable battery packs, you know that the individual cells will eventually become imbalanced. To keep the pack working optimally, each cell needs to be analyzed and charged individually — which is why RC style battery packs have a dedicated balance connector. So if you know it, and we know it, why doesn’t Dyson know it?

      • HackadayHackaday Prize 2022: Glue-Hindered Smart Tweezer Repair Involves A Rebuild

        [Dan Julio] owns a pair of Miniware multimeter tweezers, a nifty helper tool for all things SMD exploration. One day, he found them broken – unable to recognize any component between the two probes. He thought it could be a broken connection problem, and decided to take them apart. Presence of some screws on their case fooled him – in the end, it turned out that the case was glued together, and could only be opened destructively. For an entry in the “Reuse, Recycle, Revamp” round of 2022 Hackaday Prize, he tells us how he brought these tweezers back from the dead.

      • The Register UKLeica and Huawei terminate trading agreement amid US sanctions

        Huawei's long established trading relationship with Leica to integrate the German camera maker's technology into its phones is over, the companies have confirmed.

        From February 2016, all Huawei flagships were slated [PDF] to have Leica-developed lenses and branding.

        The Reg was generally quite impressed by the combined products over the years.

        But alas, Huawei's smartphone sales started to tumble thanks to US sanctions on the company starting in 2019, and the relationship with Leica was itself brought to a halt on March 31, 2022, the pair confirmed.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Common DreamsWHO Chief Warns Humanity Lowers Guard Against Covid-19 'At Our Peril'

        The head of the World Health Organization said Sunday that the Covid-19 pandemic is "most certainly not over" as he urged continued vigilance against the virus blamed for as many as 15 million excess deaths worldwide.

        WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' remarks were delivered in Geneva where global delegates gathered for the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly—the health agency's decision-making body.

      • ShadowproofDespite Worsening Opioid Crisis, Many Jails And Prisons Remain Opposed To Treatment Medications

        When a 51-year-old man entered New York’s Jefferson County Jail in December 2021, he brought his medication with him. R.G., as he is referred to in court documents, knew that without his medicine, he would quickly enter into an excruciating withdrawal.€ 

        His doctor had prescribed him Suboxone, which is a medication for treating opioid use disorder that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But R.G. said jail staff refused to let him take it.

      • Common DreamsCampaign Launches 'Summer of Action' to Protect Medicare From Stealth Privatization

        Senior citizens, doctors, progressive lawmakers, and activists gathered virtually on Monday to launch a "summer of action" to prevent the back-door privatization of traditional Medicare.

        "If Wall Street firms are allowed to make decisions about your healthcare, their profits will always come first."

    • Proprietary

      • The Register UKBroadcom to buy VMware on Thursday for '$60 billion' ● The Register

        Broadcom is to acquire VMware for $60 billion in a deal that will be announced on Thursday.

        That's according to the Wall Street Journal. VMware is scheduled to report its Q1 2023 results on the same day, so the Thursday announcement theory is not entirely unrealistic.

      • Its FOSSWoah! Broadcom Could Acquire VMware for $60 Billion

        Broadcom, a semiconductor chip company, is infamous among desktop Linux users for the incompatibility issues with its wireless adapter/card and drivers.

        And, it is now planning to get into the cloud computing market by acquiring one of the biggest players in the industry, i.e., VMware.

      • The Register UKSafari is crippling the mobile market, and we never noticed ● The Register

        You'd be forgiven for remembering a much earlier monopoly browser decision, that of Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. The courts alleged that was (US v Microsoft Corp) that illegal and Microsoft finally settled in 2001, nine years after antitrust investigations had started into the company. Not that it made much difference, with only one update to Internet Explorer in the next four years due to lack of competition. As the web went wild, browser innovation stalled.

    • Security

      • The Register UK381,000-plus Kubernetes API servers exposed to the internet ● The Register

        Nonprofit security organization The Shadowserver Foundation recently scanned 454,729 systems hosting the popular open-source platform for managing and orchestrating containers, finding that more than 381,645 – or about 84 percent – are accessible via the internet to varying degrees thus providing a cracked door into a corporate network.

      • The Register UKIt's 2022 and there are still malware-laden PDFs in emails exploiting bugs from 2017 [Ed: "Microsoft" and "Windows" conspicuously absent from the headline]

        HP's cybersecurity folks have uncovered an email campaign that ticks all the boxes: messages with a PDF attached that embeds a Word document that upon opening infects the victim's Windows PC with malware by exploiting a four-year-old code-execution vulnerability in Microsoft Office.

        Booby-trapping a PDF with a malicious Word document goes against the norm of the past 10 years, according to the HP Wolf Security researchers. For a decade, miscreants have preferred Office file formats, such as Word and Excel, to deliver malicious code rather than PDFs, as users are more used to getting and opening .docx and .xlsx files. About 45 percent of malware stopped by HP's threat intelligence team in the first quarter of the year leveraged Office formats.

      • MedevelSelfPrivacy: Get your own private secure [server]

        Selfprivacy is a free, open-source user-hosted cloud that helps you manage all of your sensitive data in one platform.

        The project is initiated by Kirill Zholnay, a software engineer and a security expert, who manages to create a strong community to pack it and keep it maintained and secure.

        With the Selfprivacy you can manage your emails, chat messages, passwords, files, video conversations, git, and a built-in VPN.

        SelfPrivacy is developed on the "zero trust" principle, even in relation to SelfPrivacy developers. That means you're the sole owner of your data.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • EFFData Brokers and True the Vote are the Real Villains of "2000 Mules" Movie

          In its attempt to demonstrate widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, 2000 Mules presents the research of True the Vote (TTV). TTV reportedly purchased 10 trillion geolocation data points from an unnamed data broker with the goal of finding a pattern of so-called “mules” that stuffed ballot boxes. The researchers claim that of the hundreds of thousands of people described in the location data, they found thousands of people who were physically present near two kinds of places – ballot boxes and unnamed nonprofits – and that this shows they were “mules.”€ (The actual number of people whose data was purchased may be much larger—a report by TTV claims the organization collected data from over 500,000 phones near ballot boxes in Atlanta, which is just a fraction of the total data they acquired.)

          This business model of making extremely sensitive location data about the general public readily available for purchase must stop

          Putting aside the logical flaws of TTV’s voter fraud claims, the very fact that they were able to buy this much personal location data on hundreds of thousands of people’s lives, over a span of many months leading to election day, is appalling. But this is the data broker business model working as intended: by vacuuming up geolocation data from thousands of smartphone apps, data brokers package and sell huge quantities of highly revealing location data to anyone willing to buy it. And TTV is hardly the only customer: the U.S. military, federal agencies, and federal law enforcement are all customers to geolocation data brokers. Recently, one data broker was even found selling the location data of people seeking reproductive healthcare, which soon could provide states with draconian anti-abortion legislation new digital evidence to identify and prosecute people who seek or provide abortion.

        • PIAHow to Password Protect ZIP Files (Fast & Safe)

          Regardless of how you use ZIP files, you should be aware of the risks. The format is convenient, but it’s not immune to the issues any shared file faces (especially on communal computers or cloud accounts). Cybercriminals and general snoops can still manipulate archived files, so it’s a good idea to add an extra layer of security.€ 

        • The Register UKNow Amazon puts 'creepy' AI cameras in UK delivery vans

          Amazon is reportedly installing AI-powered cameras in delivery vans to keep tabs on its drivers in the UK.

          The technology was first deployed, with numerous errors that reportedly denied drivers' bonuses after malfunctions, in the US. Last year, the internet giant produced a corporate video detailing how the cameras monitor drivers' driving behavior for safety reasons. The same system is now apparently being rolled out to vehicles in the UK.

          Multiple camera lenses are placed under the front mirror. One is directed at the person behind the wheel, one is facing the road, and two are located on either side to provide a wider view. The cameras are monitored by software built by Netradyne, a computer-vision startup focused on driver safety. This code uses machine-learning algorithms to figure out what's going on in and around the vehicle.

        • The Register UKGoogle picks business chiefs for European Advisory Board ● The Register

          Google has established a European Advisory Board for Google Cloud made up of executives drawn from across industry in the region.

          The move comes just weeks after the internet giant announced data sovereignty controls for its Google Workspace service to address the concerns of EU organizations.

          According to Google, the European Advisory Board has been set up to help Google Cloud improve the value and experience it can deliver for customers in Europe. As the board is made up of "accomplished leaders" from across industry, it will serve as an important feedback channel for ensuring Google's cloud-based products and services meet European requirements.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • ScheerpostWomen of the World Call for Peace

        These women are all leading in a new way, showing us a pathway forward to peace and disarmament. They are calling on us to awaken and join together to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.

      • TruthOutThe Drug War Drives Exploitation. We Need Drug Regulation, Not Criminalization.
      • Common Dreams'Truly Dangerous': Biden Vows US Military Response If China Invades Taiwan

        Critics of U.S. imperialism sounded the alarm Monday after President Joe Biden said that he would use military force in response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

        "That's the commitment we made," Biden said at a press conference held jointly with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a visit to Tokyo, abandoning the "strategic ambiguity" that U.S. presidents have long maintained to obscure how far Washington would go to protect Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | George W. Bush Is Not Even a Little Bit Funny

        Everyone has by now heard about the latest gaffe by former United States president and unconvicted war criminal George W Bush, father of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and other fantastically bloody escapades.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | The Permanent War Economy

        The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion€ to fix the 43,586€ structurally deficient€ bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student€ debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the€ 17 million€ children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the€ 100,000€ Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of€ wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

      • Project CensoredSwedish "Neutrality," Issues With NATO, and Oil Politics Featuring Farida al-Abani and Charlotte Dennett - The Project Censored Show

        Notes: Born in Libya, Farida al-Abani was brought to Sweden at an early age, grew up there, and became a leader in the Feminist Initiative party. Charlotte Dennett is an attorney and author, and the daughter of a US intelligence official who died while on assignment in the Middle East just after WWII. Her previous books include The People vs. Bush and Thy Will be Done. The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil with Gerard Colby.

      • TruthOutNew Laws Make It Hard for Some Educators to Discuss Buffalo Shooting in Class
      • Death Wish

        Ever since Columbine, there have been copycats and school shooter wannabes. On the other hand, there are surely those who fantasize about springing into action in such a tragedy by making the ultimate sacrifice, covering the line of fire to others with their bodies and hopefully taking the killers with them.

        [...]

        You are not really American if you do not own a gun and the fundamental acknowledgement gun ownership implicitly entails. This is not even the higher bar of owning a gun and knowing how to work it much less being able to defend yourself with it. The police cannot be relied upon. Despite all the denial, a state of acceptance regarding the concept of gun violence is an American thing. It's just that people prefer to choose willful ignorance and naivete rather than confrontation of uncomfortable topics like the fact a gun is necessary for self-defense until the 2020 summer of love made for a rude awakening.

    • Environment

      • TruthOutClimate-Conscious Voters Have Toppled Australia's Right-Wing Prime Minister
      • Democracy NowGreenslide: Climate Crisis Spurs Green-Labor Win in Australian Election Over Pro-Coal, Right-Wing PM

        In what is being described as a “greenslide,” voters in Australia topple the prime minister, ending nearly a decade of conservative rule. The main issue? Climate change. Voters elected Anthony Albanese of the center-left Labor Party as their new prime minister on Saturday, ousting the right-wing, pro-coal Scott Morrison, who had served as Australia’s prime minister since 2018. The Labor Party won the most seats in Parliament, and voters overwhelmingly backed candidates pushing for stronger climate action. “We have lived through the most catastrophic climate in Australia since the last election,” says Australian climate scientist and activist Tim Flannery, who describes a wave of climate-fueled fires, floods and drought under the rule of right-wing, pro-coal Morrison. “Climate is the most important issue this last election,” in part “because of the catastrophic impacts we’ve seen in Australia since the previous election just three years ago,” says Flannery.

      • The NationAmerica’s Largest, Most Neglected Machine Could Be the Key to Radical Climate Activism

        The planet’s largest yet most overlooked machine, astounding, complex, and neglected as it is, doesn’t usually present as a particularly captivating subject, let alone as a site of revolutionary change.

      • Common DreamsGreenhouse Gases Trapped Nearly 50% More Heat Last Year Than in 1990: NOAA

        An annual assessment released Monday by a U.S. agency underscored the need to dramatically cut planet-warming pollution with a notable revelation about heat-trapping gases over the past three decades.

        "Eliminating CO2 pollution has to be front and center in any efforts to deal with climate change."

      • Energy

        • Common DreamsOil Giant Consultant Resigns, Citing Operations Beyond 'Limits of Our Planetary Systems'

          A long-time Shell consultant based in the United Kingdom quit with a bang on Monday, condemning the fossil fuel giant for its dangerous efforts to expand oil and gas production despite numerous scientific warnings about the need for swift decarbonization to avert climate disaster.

          "Shell's stated safety ambition is to 'do no harm,'" Caroline Dennett, who worked with the company for 11 years€ as a senior€ safety consultant, said in a video shared on LinkedIn, which echoed points made in a resignation letter she emailed to CEO€ Ben Van Beurden€ and 1,400 employees.

        • TruthOutElectric Cars and Lithium Extraction Threaten to Drive Even More Climate Harm
        • The NationWhat if the Wind and Sunshine Really Belonged to All of Us?

          There are old and new ways of promoting renewable energy. The difference does not center on the speed or scale of technological shifts. Certainly, we need—in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s felicitous phrase—“a solution at the scale of the crisis.” We also need solutions at the scale of the resources. That is the difference: Free-flowing wind and sunlight allow for a far more democratic energy system than fossil fuels ever have. Let’s not miss that opportunity.

    • Finance

      • ScheerpostHedges: No Way Out but War

        The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion.

      • Common DreamsTax Billionaire Wealth and Pandemic Profits, Says Oxfam, to End 'Inequality That Literally Kills'

        In the shadow of the Davos summit of global elites taking place this week, a new report from Oxfam International details how skyrocketing inequality during two years of the global Covid-19 pandemic surged to a point where a new billionaire was created in the world nearly every day while over one million people are now being pushed into poverty at almost the same daily rate.

        "The extremely rich and powerful are profiting from pain and suffering. This is unconscionable."

      • The NationVivek Chibber on the Future of Marxist Thought

        The fundamental aim of Vivek Chibber’s latest book, The Class Matrix: Social Theory After the Cultural Turn, is to restore the central role that economic and structural forces play in studying the hierarchies of power and privilege in modern capitalism. This class-based understanding of social relations—one principally influenced by Marx, and which dominated leftist thought until the 1970s—gives pride of place to the material conditions that impose real constraints on people’s economic choices. Marx, Chibber explains, believed that such economic constraints would produce a working-class consciousness in which people engage in collective action centered on their economic interests, leading ultimately to revolution.

      • TruthOutOne Billionaire Has Been Created Every 30 Hours During Pandemic, Oxfam Says
      • TruthOutChild Hunger Has Skyrocketed Since Manchin, GOP Killed Expanded Child Tax Credit
      • The Register UKChina to promote platforms listing in overseas markets ● The Register

        The Chinese government has announced that it will again allow "platform companies" – Beijing's term for tech giants – to list on overseas stock markets, marking a loosening of restrictions on the sector.

        "Platform companies will be encouraged to list on domestic and overseas markets in accordance with laws and regulations," announced premier Li Keqiang at an executive meeting of China's State Council – a body akin to cabinet in the USA or parliamentary democracies.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • The NationIs Every Sentence a Life Sentence?

        A legal system capable of delivering justice fairly and equally is a cornerstone of a functioning democracy. But in the United States, some racial groups are more likely to run afoul of that system than others. Approximately 1.3 million Americans are currently incarcerated, a higher per capita rate than any other country. And while one in every 17 white men in the United States will be jailed at some point in their life, one in three Black men will suffer the same fate. Black and Hispanic men are also sentenced to longer jail terms than their white counterparts. For these reasons, Black people comprise the majority of prisoners in the United States despite being a minority in the population at large. This racial disparity is reflected in data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a survey following almost 9,000 young Americans throughout their lives starting in 1997. Survey respondents are chosen so that the sample matches the demographic characteristics of the US population. Figure 1 shows NLSY respondents and their incarceration status as of the start of the year 2017; Black people are considerably overrepresented among those who had spent time in jail.1

      • Democracy Now“His Name Is George Floyd”: Two Years After Police Murder, His Life & the Struggle for Racial Justice

        This week marks the second anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd. We speak with Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, who have just published an in-depth new book, “His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” that tells the story of structural racism in the U.S. through Floyd’s own story. “This is an American story. It shows how American poverty works, how American wealth works, and George Floyd was on the wrong side of the line because of the color of his skin,” says Olorunnipa. “He was living in a world where he was trying to get better, but there weren’t a lot of supports to do it,” says Samuels. “It’s important for us not to leave behind the millions of other George Floyds that are operating in silence, not getting the same attention, and who are experiencing some of the same struggles and troubles that he did during his life.”

      • TechdirtJudge Sanctions MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell For Wasting The Court’s Time

        Mike Lindell just used to be a guy selling overpriced pillows to people who liked to buy overpriced pillows. But when Donald Trump was elected, he threw his entire company under the Trump campaign bus, making it clear Lindell was willing to ride The Donald’s coat tails into relevance. What used to be just a pillow manufacturer was now The Preferred Pillow of the Far RightTM, a social cause tied to sleep — the ultimate form of slacktivism.

      • TruthOutTrumpist Perdue Seems Poised to Lose Georgia to Brian Kemp
      • The NationInsurrectionist Doug Mastriano Should Be Barred From the Pennsylvania Ballot

        Donald Trump’s choice for governor of Pennsylvania, state Senator Doug Mastriano, was affirmed last week by Republican primary voters who followed the former president’s order to nominate a candidate who actively sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

      • Scheerpost‘Perverse’ Supreme Court Ruling ‘Effectively Ensures That Innocent People Will Remain Imprisoned’

        Legal experts responded with€ alarm Monday to a€ ruling€ from the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority that could lead to the indefinite imprisonment and even execution of people who argue their lawyers didn't provide adequate representation after convictions in state court.

      • Common Dreams'Perverse' Supreme Court Ruling 'Effectively Ensures That Innocent People Will Remain Imprisoned'

        Legal experts responded with alarm Monday to a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority that could lead to the indefinite imprisonment and even execution of people who argue their lawyers didn't provide adequate representation after convictions in state court.

        "The conservative majority is very much in the midst of a revolution. And it is a brutal one."

      • TruthOutGinni Thomas Told Arizona Republican Lawmakers to Overturn 2020 Election Outcome
      • Common DreamsArizona, West Virginia Residents Risk Arrest to Demand End to Filibuster

        Pro-democracy campaigners in West Virginia and Arizona on Monday risked arrest at sit-ins in downtown Charleston and Tucson, demanding that Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema end obstruction of their party's agenda and allow the Senate to pass reproductive rights, climate action, and voting rights measures.

        Campaigners representing a coalition of groups including West Virginia Rising, For All, Democracy Initiative, and Progress Arizona blocked traffic in central areas of the two cities, accusing the two senators of "laying waste to our future."

      • Common DreamsOpinion | How the FCC Can Protect Consumers From Unwanted Political Text Message Spam

        Have you been getting bombarded with unwanted political text messages on your personal cell phone? Have you noticed that opting out of these annoying messages leads to an endless game of whack-a-mole, such that replying "STOP" or "UNSUBSCRIBE" only causes you to receive similar messages from different phone numbers? It's frustrating and unnerving and these messages are clogging a once spam-free gateway. It's time for the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) new leadership to step in and put an end to the billions of unwanted political text message spam.€ 

      • Common DreamsOn Eve of Cisneros-Cuellar Showdown, Progressives Feel 'Sense of Hope'

        Supporters of Jessica Cisneros' bid to represent Texas' 28th District are making their final pitches for the progressive challenger on Monday as they hope to prevent anti-choice Democrat Henry Cuellar from holding a 10th term.

        Cisneros and Cuellar will face off Tuesday in a runoff since neither candidate crossed the 50% threshold in March. It's the second time Cisneros is up against Cuellar for the South Texas seat after her narrow loss in 2020.

      • EFFPodcast Episode: Securing the Vote

        Technology can provide answers - but that doesn’t mean moving elections online. As president and CEO of the nonpartisan nonprofit Verified Voting, Pamela Smith helps lead the national fight to balance ballot accessibility with ballot security by advocating for paper trails, audits, and transparency wherever and however Americans cast votes.

        On this episode of How to Fix the Internet, Pamela Smith joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien to discuss hope for the future of democracy and the technology and best practices that will get us there.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Constantly on the Verge of Collapse: How Palestinians Became a Factor in Israeli Politics

        Israel's coalition government of right-wing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is on the verge of collapse, which is unsurprising. Israeli politics, after all, is among the most fractious in the world, and this particular coalition was born out of the obsessive desire to dethrone Israel's former leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

      • Common DreamsIn 'Staggering Milestone,' Over 100 Million People Displaced Worldwide

        The number of people who have been forced to flee their homes has crossed 100 million for the first time in recorded history, the United Nations reported Monday, with the crisis driven largely by violent conflicts including the war in Ukraine.

        The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said the world has reached a "staggering milestone" and called on global policymakers to alleviate the crisis by stopping its root causes, including political, religious, gender, and racial persecution; hunger; the climate crisis; and war.

      • The VergeJustice Department pledges not to charge security researchers with hacking crimes - The Verge

        The US Department of Justice says it won’t subject “good-faith security research” to charges under anti-hacking laws, acknowledging long-standing concerns around the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Prosecutors must also avoid charging people for simply violating a website’s terms of service — including minor rule-breaking like embellishing a dating profile — or using a work-related computer for personal tasks.

      • Bruce SchneierThe Justice Department Will No Longer Charge Security Researchers with Criminal Hacking - Schneier on Security
      • The Register UKZuckerberg sued for alleged role in Cambridge Analytica data-slurp scandal

        Cambridge Analytica is back to haunt Mark Zuckerberg: Washington DC's Attorney General filed a lawsuit today directly accusing the Meta CEO of personal involvement in the abuses that led to the data-slurping scandal.

        DC AG Karl Racine filed [PDF] the civil suit on Monday morning, saying his office's investigations found ample evidence Zuck could be held responsible for that 2018 cluster-fsck. For those who've put it out of mind, UK-based Cambridge Analytica harvested tens of millions of people's info via a third-party Facebook app, revealing a – at best – somewhat slipshod handling of netizens' privacy by the US tech giant.

        That year, Racine sued Facebook, claiming the social network was well aware of the analytics firm's antics yet failed to do anything meaningful until the data harvesting was covered by mainstream media. Facebook repeatedly stymied document production attempts, Racine claimed, and the paperwork it eventually handed over painted a trail he said led directly to Zuck.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • HFNP: Details on the quasidomain system

        The previous post was rather a kind of an announcement, so while I mentioned the quasidomain system in the Hafnium Paging Protocol, I didn't really get descriptive. I was asked for a complete explanation, so I decided that I should hurry up and write one down today.

        I will simply copy the relevant part of the previous port here and then go into the details.

    • Monopolies

      • AccessNowCivil society to Amazon: Terminate your contract to host dangerous U.S. DHS biometric database

        Today, Access Now, Immigrant Defense Project, Just Futures Law, and over 35 human rights organizations sent a letter to Amazon Web Services calling on the company to end its agreement to host the United States Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) database. The letter was sent in coordination with a protest to be held today outside Amazon’s annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit against the corporation’s growing surveillance network, led by For Us Not Amazon, La ColectiVA, MediaJustice, and the Athena Coalition.

        According to a new report from Mijente, Just Futures Law, and the Immigrant Defense Project, HART Attack: How DHS’s Massive Biometric Database Will Supercharge Surveillance and Threaten Rights, DHS intends to use HART to collect vast amounts of biometric data within the U.S. and abroad, including facial recognition, DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and voice prints. Anyone who seeks entry into the U.S., applies for immigration benefits, or is stopped by U.S. immigration authorities could have their biometric data stored in HART once it comes online.

      • Software Patents

        • Patentability of computer simulations concerning clean energy and energy management solutions [Ed: The mobsters who run the EPO have created loopholes for pursuing fake, invalid, bogus software patents; the courts there are deliberately rigged]

          Rising energy prices and a global climate crisis have led to an ever-increasing demand for lower cost clean energy solutions (such as solar energy, wind energy, tidal energy or the like). As a consequence, home energy storage solutions have become more widespread as they enable consumers to capitalise on lower energy tariffs whilst addressing problems related to the inherent supply variability of some forms of clean energy (for example, solar energy). For example, home energy storage solutions enable a consumer to store excess energy when it is produced (such as by solar panels during the day) for use at a later time (for example, at night). Alternatively, a consumer can sell surplus energy back to the electricity transmission network at times of peak network demand.

      • Trademarks

        • TechdirtFlying Dog Brewery Wins Against North Carolina On ‘Vulgar’ Beer Label Art

          Back in September we wrote about a lawsuit between Flying Dog Brewery and the state of North Carolina over the latter’s Alcohol Beverage Control Board (ABC Board) denying a beer label for use within the state. The ABC Board refused to certify the label for use on the grounds that it was vulgar and offensive, especially to minors. With that, Flying Dog couldn’t use the label at all, anywhere in North Carolina. Notably, every other state had allowed the label to be used. So what was so offensive that North Carolina had to take this stand? See for yourself.

      • Copyrights



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
GNOME GUADEC 2022 & Debian Albanian women trafficked to Mexico?
Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship
Sainsbury's: It Takes Us Up to Two Days to Respond to Customers Upon Escalation (and Sometimes Even More Than Two Days)
It not only does groceries but also many other things, even banking
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day