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Links 09/07/2022: Wayland-protocols 1.26, Astra Linux IPO



  • GNU/Linux

    • ReutersRussian OS producer Astra Linux plans Moscow IPO, Vedomosti reports | Reuters

      Russian technology company Astra Linux is planning to hold an initial public offering (IPO) on the Moscow Exchange, the Vedomosti daily reported late on Thursday, quoting CEO Ilya Sivtsev, who declined to disclose a time frame, sums or terms.

      IPO activity gained pace in Russia in 2021 and at least 10 firms had been planning listings in 2022 before Feb. 24 when Moscow sent troops into Ukraine, triggering Western sanctions that have hurt Russia's financial sector. read more

      Vedomosti quoted Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn as saying that Astra's preliminary valuation could be around 17 billion roubles ($274 million).

    • Desktop/Laptop

    • Server

      • NetcraftMost Reliable Hosting Company Sites in June 2022

        In June 2022, the most reliable hosting company site was that of Aruba, who jumped up the leaderboard by nine places compared to last month. Aruba provides a range of services including hosting and domains, cloud computing, and dedicated servers, with data centres in Italy and the Czech Republic.

        Coming in second was Rackspace, who provide security, cloud, and data services. Third place was occupied by New York Internet(NYI), who offer hybrid IT solutions, for the second month running.

        In June, the top five companies, which included Bigstep and Pair Networks, responded to all of Netcraft’s requests. In addition, Linux proved to be the most popular operating system, being used by seven out of the top ten hosting companies, whilst Aruba and Swishmail used an unidentified OS. NYI was the only company in the top ten using FreeBSD.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Free Desktopwayland-protocols 1.26
        wayland-protocols 1.26 is now available.
        
        

        This release introduces the new staging protocol single pixel buffer, which together with the viewporter extension enables clients to easily create arbitrarily sized single color surfaces.

        Xdg-shell now also supports compositors announcing to surfaces some window management capabilities it supports.

        The text input protocol saw a clarification to an easily misinterpreted paragraph, which if interpreted in a different way than the new clarification makes clear hindered correct behavior from being implemented.

        This is also the first release which mandates new protocol extensions to follow RFC 2119 wording.

        Apart from has so far been mentioned, this release also comes with the usual clarifications, improved annotations, and other minor fixes.
    • Applications

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Michael KohlSelf-hosting a static site with OpenBSD, httpd, and relayd

        Overall this was a fairly quick and painless migration, and I’m very happy with the outcome. Not only am I now fully in charge of my own site again, it still scores an A+ on SSL Labs, an A on Security Headers, and an A+ on the Mozilla Observatory. It’s also still eligible for HSTS preload and generally scores well on PageSpeed Insights. Not too shabby for a little VM without a CDN. :-)

      • uni TorontoLarger backup systems often operate in multiple stages

        At the small scale, backups are usually straightforward (although not always simple). As you get into larger and more complicated environments, like ours, things can get more tangled. One of the ways that backup systems can do this is that they often operate in stages, or if you prefer phases, where different sorts of things happen in different stages.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install LXQt on Fedora 36 Linux - LinuxCapable

        LXQt is a free desktop environment known for being lightweight, fast, and energy-efficient, which can replace the standard default GNOME Desktop on your Fedora system,

      • Trend OceansHow to Find the Total Size of a Directory in Linux

        At some point, you will be intrigued to know the total size of a current directory, or of any XYZ directory taking space on your disk, and it will be very crucial when you are running out of space, and want to delete a file that is consuming more space.

        You may be trying to find the total size of a directory using the ls -shw command, but it won’t work here. So how do I determine the size of a directory in Linux using the command line?

      • TechTargetUse MicroK8s with Raspberry Pi in this tutorial

        Kubernetes is important to tackle, but its resource requirements can balloon dramatically. MicroK8s lets individuals experiment with the platform -- try it on Raspberry Pi 4.

        MicroK8s is Kubernetes' baby brother. It is designed for small-scale Kubernetes experimentation on local VMs or machines with scant resources. Raspberry Pi computers can run MicroK8s with a much smaller memory footprint and constrained resources due to its size.

        Both MicroK8s and Raspberry Pi are small options, but together they enable IT ops admins to distribute Kubernetes quickly and stand up VMs.

      • dwaves.deGNU Linux bash – notebook laptop test battery runtime script

        how long (many hours) will this notebook-laptop battery last?

      • Change Desktop and Login Screen Background on Ubuntu 22.04 - kifarunix.com

        In this tutorial, you will learn how to change desktop and login screen background on Ubuntu 22.04. Some of the things that you might to do when customization the feel and look of your Ubuntu desktop system is to change desktop background and or login screen background. This guide will show show easy steps you can take to change your desktop background/wallpaper on Ubuntu 22.04, as well the login screen background on Ubuntu 22.04.

      • Looking at ACPI PPTT from Userspace | Adam Young's Web Log

        The sys file system is used to expose Linux constructs to user space. One place we can see ACPI based information is in /sys/firmware/acpi

      • FreeAptitude - The media couldn't be loaded error

        After an upgrade or an installation from scratch, we might notice a weird behavior while navigating among the streaming websites: some videos play well, others raise an error like...

      • UNIX CopHow to install Bower in Ubuntu 22.04

        Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to install Bower in Ubuntu 22.04 This special dependency manager for web development is a marvel that many developers use.

      • HowTo ForgeHow to Install Flask with Nginx and Gunicorn on Ubuntu 22.04

        Flask is a microframework written in Python for developing modern web applications and API (Application Programming Interface). In this post, we will show you how to install and configure the Python Flask Web Framework with Gunicorn and Nginx on the Ubuntu 22.04 system.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Zim Desktop Wiki on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - LinuxCapable

        Zim is a desktop application that brings the power of a wiki to your desktop. It provides a neat, structured way to take notes and record your thoughts. Each page in Zim is automatically saved as a text file with wiki markup. This includes the ability to link pages and add other files as attachments. Pages in Zim are also displayed in the sidebar in a hierarchical tree-style layout to help organize your notes better.

        Overall, Zim has many features that make it an excellent tool for taking notes and managing information. However, one of its best features is its ease of use. Anyone can start using Zim without learning any new concepts or syntax. This makes it an ideal tool for beginners who want to get started with using a wiki.

        The following tutorial will teach you how to install Zim Desktop Wiki on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish using a PPA that will include both the stable and development branches to select from.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Wike Wikipedia Reader on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - LinuxCapable

        Wike is a lightweight and open-source Wikipedia reader app for Linux-based GNOME desktop. It is written and developed in Python by Hugo Olabera. Wike makes use of the MediaWiki API to fetch content from Wikipedia. The app has a minimalist interface, with just a search bar and a sidebar for navigation, and articles are displayed in a simple, easy-to-read format. Wike also supports dark mode, so you can easily read articles at night or in low-light conditions.

        One of the best things about Wike is that it is highly customizable. You can change the font size, line height, and margins to suit your reading preferences. You can also choose to display articles in offline mode, so you can access them even when you’re not connected to the internet. Overall, Wike is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a simple and effective way to read Wikipedia articles on their Linux desktop.

        The following tutorial will teach you how to install Wike on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish using a PPA that will include both the stable and development branches to select from.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Curtail on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - LinuxCapable

        Curtail is a free, open-source image compressor that supports multiple file types, including PNG and JPEG. It offers both lossless and lossy compression modes, as well as the option to keep or not keep metadata. Curtail was inspired by Trimage and Image-Optimizer.

        The user-friendly tool can be used to compress images for a variety of purposes. Lossless mode is recommended for images that need to retain quality, such as professional photos or images for printing. Lossy mode is best for images that will be displayed on the web or in email attachments, as it significantly reduces file size while still maintaining satisfactory quality. Metadata can be kept or removed depending on user preference; generally, removing metadata will result in smaller file size.

        The following tutorial will teach you how to install Curtail on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish using a PPA that will include both the stable and development branches to select from.

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Community metrics – Sri Ramkrishna

          Some may know that I’m involved, as part of building an app ecosystem, in figuring out how to measure Free Software communities. We formed a working group within the CHAOSS project.

          One of the things that we want to do is figure out community metrics for both KDE and GNOME. This post is related to GNOME but should be universally applicable.

          Going forward, the importance of making decisions through data is going to be more important. We know that we are under-resourced, and we vaguely know where we are under-resourced but we have no data to conclusively show anything about our community.

          If we have successes, we should be able to demonstrate that. If people want to donate or be part of an advisory board – then they have something to assess. And yes, the data could also prove or disprove aspects of our community if we are honest with ourselves. Metrics should be thoughtful and tell the right and accurate story.

        • Update DOAP description in GNOME Software for Gingerblue 6.0.1 – Ole Aamot

          I have released Gingerblue 6.0.1, new generation Mic / USB sound recording app on GNOME 43.

        • GNOME Developer and User Conference 2022 – Ole Aamot

          The annual GNOME Developer and User Conference 2022 will be held in Mexico, where it was scheduled to take place last summer. Here are the first details to participate, as it starts July 20, 2022.

          This year is special for the GNOME community in several ways.

          On the one hand, GUADEC falls within the context of GNOME’s 25th anniversary. On the other, the 2022 conference marks the return to personal events. Finally, it is the first GUADEC on the American continent.

          What is GUADEC?

        • PurismVoice over IP in GNOME Calls Part 1: SIP Protocol and Libraries – Purism

          GNOME Calls has supported Voice over IP (VoIP) calls for some time. And while we already mentioned it in our development review of 2021 and design review of 2021 we wanted to take this opportunity to dive a bit more into the technical aspects of how all the gears interlock to make it work in Calls.

          This blog post will take you through our journey of implementing encrypted VoIP Calls and shed some light on the inner workings of it all.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • Tumbleweed Gets Vim, Plasma, PipeWire Updates - openSUSE News

        The most recent snapshot arrive in the last 24 hours was 20220706. The release updated the Linux Kernel to 5.18.9. It had several additions for the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture to include fixing a couple missing beep setups and adding a mute LED quirk for HP Omen laptops. The kernel also enabled configuration for the MLX90614 remote temperature sensor. There were some minor changes in the update of xfce4-settings 4.16.3, which fixed a recursive lock in libX11. Both yast2-network and yast2-schema-default updated to version 4.5.4, which the packages added a missing route element to the networking section.

        A major version updated package arriving in the 20220705 snapshot was 7zip 22; the new version has switches for Linux TAR archives and can now can store additional file timestamps with high precision at one nanosecond or a billionth of a second. That’s fast. Another major version to land this week was vim. The text editor received its second update this week to version 9.0.0032, which fixed a couple Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures; one of those was a moderate Integer Overflow reflected in CVE-2022-2285. Mesa 22.1.3 had some X11 performance fixes and a lot of Zink driver fixes. GNOME’s personal information manager evolution updated translations and fixed a crash when printing task lists to pdf in version 3.44.3. An update of firewalld 1.2.0 added a secure version of Kubernetes controller-plane components and added distributed web IPFS services. The audio and video package PipeWire updated to 0.3.53 and the ALSA plugin should now be able to deal with unsupported sample rates and fall back to the nearest supported one. The audio-convert plugin was rewritten, which should make it more maintainable. Other packages to update in the snapshot were pango 1.50.8, harfbuzz 4.4.1, kernel-firmware 20220622, sssd 2.7.3 and more.

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2022/27 – Dominique a.k.a. DimStar (Dim*)

        Full steam ahead – with 7 snapshots published in one week. of course, most of those snapshots were not drastically changing the world. Vacation season on one hand and lots and lots of discussions around ALP and prototyping take some resources away. Nevertheless, Tumbleweed is supposedly staying the base for it all, and it is thus just natural to let it roll.

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Fedora ProjectFriday's Fedora Facts: 2022-27 – Fedora Community Blog

        Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

        I have weekly office hours on Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time) in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • UbuntuFirefox snap performance Part 3: significant startup improvements | Ubuntu

        Welcome to the latest update in our Firefox snap performance series. This week, we cover two significant performance improvements that have just landed for all users.

        First, let’s recap our mission:

        The Firefox snap offers a number of benefits to daily users of Ubuntu, as well as a range of other Linux distributions. It improves security, delivers cross-release compatibility and shortens the time for improvements from Mozilla to get into the hands of end-users.

        Currently, this approach has trade-offs when it comes to performance, most notably in Firefox’s first launch after a system reboot. This series tracks our progress in improving startup times to ensure we are delivering the best user experience possible.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Ken ShirriffReverse-engineering the Apollo spacecraft's FM radio

        Many systems worked together for communication, but I'm focusing on a single module: the voice detector inside the premodulation processor that performed the FM demodulation. The block diagram below shows the operation of the voice detector; I've grayed out the data detector.6 The input contains the voice signal and the data signal at different frequencies; a band-pass filter (green) separates out the voice signal at 30 kilohertz. Next, the blue triangle7 demodulates the FM signal using a "clipper discriminator" circuit. The cyan triangle is an amplifier, producing the "up voice" output signal (red), so-called because it had been transmitted "up" from a ground station. I'll explain this circuitry in detail below.

      • Jeff GeerlingPTP and IEEE-1588 hardware timestamping on the Raspberry Pi CM4

        PTP is more prevalent in HFT (High Frequency Trading) in finance, scientific research, and distributed databases that need highly accurate timings.

        But with a tiny Compute Module 4 able to control hardware timestamps—plus the plethora of available high-quality GPS HATs for the Pi—maybe highly-accurate time could be more democratized!

      • HackadayHackaday Podcast 176: Freezing Warm Water, Hacking Lenses, Hearing Data, And Watching YouTube On A PET

        It’s podcast time again, and this week Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams sat down with Staff Writer Dan Maloney to review the best hacks on the planet, and a few from off. We’ll find out how best to capture lightning, debate the merits of freezing water — or ice cream — when it’s warm, and see if we can find out what R2D2 was really talking about with all those bleeps and bloops. Once we decode that, it’ll be time to find out what Tom Nardi was up to while the boss was away with his hidden message in episode 174, and how analog-encoded digital data survives the podcast production and publication chain. But surely you can’t watch a YouTube video on a Commodore PET, can you? As it turns out, that’s not a problem, and neither apparently is 3D printing a new ear.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers

      • Mozilla

        • MozillaThe Mozilla Blog: The journey to Roe and after – a Pocket Collection unveils the stories behind Slate’s 7th season of Slow Burn

          With the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade, many of us can’t help but wonder: How did we get here? It didn’t happen overnight — no, it was more of a slow burn.

          Just in time for the seventh season of Slate’s Slow Burn, host and executive editor Susan Matthews explores the path to Roe — a time when more Republicans than Democrats supported abortion rights. Her exploration leads her to the forgotten story of the first woman to be convicted of manslaughter for having an abortion, the stories of the unlikely Catholic power couple who helped ignite the pro-life movement and a rookie Supreme Court justice who got assigned the opinion of a lifetime

    • Licensing / Legal

      • ZDNetSure, GitHub's AI-assisted Copilot writes code for you, but is it legal or ethical? [Ed: SJVN lies by saying "GitHub's AI-assisted Copilot writes code for you". It grafts other people's code. It writes nothing for you. SJVN repeats many false claims from Microsoft in ZDNet.]
      • ADTmagFOSS Advocate Group Says Open Source Devs Should 'Give Up' GitHub

        In a blog post , the SFC lists its reasons for making this recommendation, all of which stem from the inherent conflict between open-source and proprietary software. The Microsoft-owned code-hosting and collaboration service has "warped" the open-source Git distributed code management and version control software on which it's based with proprietary features, the SFC says.

      • The Register UKMicrosoft delays controversial ban on paid-for open source, WebKit in app store

        But the revised rules limits what developers can do with open source software. For example, they contain a prohibition on Microsoft Store apps using Apple's WebKit browser engine. In fact, any web browser engine that isn't Chromium, Gecko, or EdgeHTML would be banned, so it's not just WebKit verboten.

      • FSFSupport the FSF licensing team in its continued mission to serve and educate

        Searching for and finding a reason to support free software can begin with a simple idea. An idea that you value your privacy. An idea that devices shouldn't be designed with planned obsolescence. An idea that once you buy a computer, it is entirely yours, not something owned or controlled by others. Once someone has a reason to support free software, their next inevitable step is a call to action, and the Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) licensing and compliance team works hard to provide freedom-seekers the support they need to guide themselves to freedom.

      • The VergeRight to repair: FTC forces Weber to tell grillmasters it’s OK to use third-party parts

        That’s not cool. In fact, it’s been illegal since 1975 — and soon, Weber won’t be doing it anymore. According to a new settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Weber Stephen Products will not only have to strike phrases like that from its warranty terms within 90 days, but it’ll have to proactively, clearly, and conspicuously tell customers via mail, email, websites, and apps that the exact opposite is true.

        Seriously, Weber will need to use this exact phrase: “Using third-party parts will not void this warranty.”

      • Jonathan FaberLouisiana passes Right of Publicity statute, effective Aug. 1, 2022

        Louisiana has passed a Right of Publicity statute providing, among other things, 50 years of postmortem recognition.

    • Programming/Development

      • Simon Hørup EskildsenScaling Causal's Spreadsheet Engine from Thousands to Billions of Cells: From Maps to Arrays

        In summary: by moving from maps to arrays. That may seem like an awfully pedestrian observation, but it certainly wasn’t obvious to us at the outset that this was the crux of the problem!

        We want to take you along our little journey of what to do once you’ve reached a dead-end with the profiler. Instead, we’ll be approaching the problem from first principles with back-of-the envelope calculations and writing simple programs to get a feel for the performance of various data structures. Causal isn’t quite at billions of cells yet, but we’re rapidly making our way there!

      • DEV CommunityIs it time to look past Git?

        I clearly remember the rough days of CVS and how liberating the switch to Subversion felt all those years ago. At the time I was pretty sure that nothing would ever get as good as Subversion. As it turns out, I was wrong, and Git showed it to me! So, having learned distributed version control concepts and embraced Git, I was pretty zealous about my newfound super powers. Again, I felt sure that nothing would ever surpass it. Again, it turned out I was wrong.

        At the time of this writing, Git's been with us for over a decade and a half. During that time the ecosystem has absolutely exploded. From the rise of GitHub and GitLab to the myriad of new subcommands (just look at all this cool stuff), clearly Git has seen widespread adoption and success.

      • Updated Buildroot support for STM32MP1 platforms - Bootlin's blog

        Back in December 2021, we had announced the buildroot-external-st project, which is an extension of the Buildroot build system with ready-to-use configurations for the STMicroelectronics STM32MP1 platforms.

        More specifically, this project is a BR2_EXTERNAL repository for Buildroot, with a number of defconfigs that allows to quickly build embedded Linux systems for the STM32MP1 Discovery Kit platforms. It’s a great way to get started with Buildroot on those platforms.

        Today, we are happy to announce an updated version of this project, published under the branch st/2022.02 at https://github.com/bootlin/buildroot-external-st. This new version brings the following changes:

      • Ubuntu PitCoding vs Programming: An In-depth Comparison

        Coding vs. Programming, the debate regarding the two terms being the same or not, has been going on for decades. It is a question that every tech beginner always considers and confuses. Sometimes, even the experts use the terms interchangeably because they do not believe that the differences matter much.

        But in reality, coding and programming are different. There are many factors where they differ, and it takes people years of experience to truly understand them. However, the IT industry uses both these fields to develop softwares that impact our daily lives – so they’re equally important.

      • An Introduction to Go Scheduler | Developer.com

        In Go and Golang programming, a scheduler is responsible for distributing jobs in a multiprocessing environment. When the available resources are limited, it is the task of the scheduler to manage the work that needs to be done in the most efficient way. In Go, the scheduler is responsible for scheduling goroutines, which is particularly useful in concurrency. Goroutines are like OS threads, but they are much lighter weight. However, goroutines always take the help of the underlying OS thread model and the scheduler it works on is at a much higher level than the OS scheduler. This Go programming tutorial provides a quick look at the concepts behind the Go scheduler.

      • Python

        • Mapping Event Codes to Keys in Python | Developer.com

          Welcome back to the third and final part in our series showing developers how to work with non-blocking input in Python. In the first part of this series we learned how to collect input and event data with C/C++ and where the necessary files were located in Linux. In the second part of our tutorial series, we used Python to read keyboard events. In this final part, we will finally map event codes to keys and complete our example Python program.

  • Leftovers

    • Mexico News DailyTikToker closes Guadalajara highway because he can

      Márquez’s TikTok account, which was followed by almost 800,000 people, was apparently deleted between Thursday and Friday, but footage of the popular influencer on the bridge remains online.

    • TediumWhy Most of the Whipped Cream You Eat Isn’t Actually Whipped Cream

      Let me ask you a question that you probably haven’t considered in the same way that you might have the ol’ is-a-hot-dog-a-sandwich debate. Is Cool Whip ice cream? After all, you buy it frozen. It is creamy, and these days, it includes milk. It is used in many of the same ways as ice cream, on existing desserts and with beverages. You can eat it in a bowl, and when it’s frozen, it kind of looks like ice cream. (Despite this, when I asked folks on Twitter whether they considered Cool Whip ice cream, most said no—with a minority of just 17 percent of respondents conceding that it kind of worked that way when it was frozen.) It struck me recently that whipped cream is a fascinating topic to dive into because it’s so prevalent in artificial form, even though the real thing is pretty easily accessible. Why is that? Today’s Tedium talks about food tech’s influence on whipped cream.

    • Education

      • Jack FranklinLearning to say "I don't know"

        Becoming comfortable saying "I don't know", or "I don't know, but I bet X will", or "I don't know, but I'll find out for you" has become one of the most powerful tools at my disposal. I've learned that being a good TL isn't about knowing everything - there is simply too much to know! - but about being able to fill those knowledge gaps and help your team be more productive as a result.

      • Neil SelwynWhat makes for ‘good’ education research? (interview with Bob Lingard – 30th June 2022)

        In this July 2022 episode of the ‘Meet The Education Researcher’ podcast, Neil Selwyn spoke with Bob Lingard – one of Australia’s leading education researchers over the past 30 years. In this conversation, Bob reflects on the art and craft of being an education researcher. He starts by highlighting the distinction between ‘education’ research and ‘educational’ research, as well as how academics can engage productively with demands for research impact and research excellence. The discussion later moves on to considering the added value of university-based education researchers – particularly in light of the trend for governments to commission consultant produced reports of ‘What works and why?’. All told, Bob makes a persuasive argument for academics take a more proactive stance when engaging in the politics of education research.

    • Hardware

      • HackadayUse AprilTags To Let Guests Open Your Front Gate

        [Herb Peyerl] is part of a robotics team, and in his robotics endeavours, learned about AprilTags; small QR-code-like printable patterns that are easily recognizable by even primitive machine vision. Later on, when thinking about good ways to let his guests through his property’s front gate, the AprilTags turned out to be a wonderful solution. Now all he needs to do is send his guest a picture of the appropriate AprilTag, which they can present to the camera at his front gate using their smartphone.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • teleSURRaped 10-Year-Old Denied Abortion Reflects Failed US Governance

        The tragedy of a child is not an accidental case but the inevitable outcome of America's botched human rights reality and disordered governance.

      • MIT Technology ReviewLondon is experimenting with traffic lights that put pedestrians first

        This “pedestrian priority” approach is a first in the UK, and after a trial of nine months, the data is encouraging: there is virtually no impact on traffic, and pedestrians save a total of 1.3 hours a day at the average crossing and are 13% more likely to comply with traffic signals.

        Compliance can help keep people safe from a very real risk: 868 pedestrians were killed or seriously injured in 2020 in London alone. That was a steep drop from 1,350 in 2019, most likely thanks to covid lockdowns and a decrease in the number of people driving to work. But London is aspiring to match Oslo or Helsinki, where not a single pedestrian was killed in 2019. To achieve “Vision Zero,” TfL is reducing the dominance and speed of motor traffic by adding cycle lanes, closing roads to cars, and building pedestrian infrastructure. For example, it delivered 77 new or improved pedestrian crossings between 2016 and 2020, and it reviews the signal timing at more than 1,000 crossings every year.

    • Linux Foundation

      • WCCF TechNVIDIA Accelerates DPU Adoption via Linux Foundation Project

        The DPU allows accelerators to receive immediate access to the network without going through the standard x86 architecture. Since processors are more adequate for use with application management than PCIe traffic lane management, BlueField would make the process more sensible and take the pressure off other PC components. Currently, a small handful of companies are utilizing DPUs in today's workplace. NVIDIA plans to change this by adopting DPU support through the Linux Foundation Project.

    • Security

      • FOSSLifeFree Course on Using Sigstore to Secure Your Software Supply Chain [Ed: This isn't security; this is edX working for DoD via Linux Foundation to restrict what programs you can run.]

        Sigstore is an open source project that offers a set of tools as well as a new standard aimed at improving the software supply chain through automated signing and verification across files, container images, binaries, and more.

      • VideoCompany Loses $540 Million Because Employee Opened PDF - Invidious

        Why are people still falling for email scams and phone scams?

      • Jump CloudImprove Linux Security Posture with JumpCloud’s New Policies [Ed: Trying to sell proprietary software]

        There are many reasons why IT personnel love to leverage the Linux operating system — it’s reliable, secure, high-performing, and low-cost.

      • IT World CACyber Security Today, July 8, 2022 – IT provider recovering from a cyber attack, more action from Karakurt and Chinese attackers and new Linux malware [Ed: Microsoft publishers keep trying to associate Linux with "malware", which is what Windows is]
      • The Register UKHow a botched kernel patch broke Ubuntu – and why it may happen again [Ed: Microsoft stegnographer Tobias Mann (parroting corporate lies) trying to make "Linux" look bad. Microsoft's media operative keep trying to accuse "Linux" of all the things Windows is in fact most culpable of, e.g. back doors and randomware. It's a tactic. The Register moreover publishes paid-for Microsoft spam (diluting the "Linux" brand), sponsored by Microsoft OEMs. Linux is under attack from Microsoft and those who refuse to see it participate in this attack. Too much of the news [sic] is paid-for corporate propaganda composed directly by the corporations it is about.]

        If you spent the early days of June fighting kernel panics in Ubuntu 20.04, you were not alone – and we now know why.

        A problem with a Ubuntu-specific Linux kernel patch early last month rendered many systems, running Docker on that flavor of the operating system unusable, and it probably won't be the last time.

        The whole debacle can be traced back to a bad distro-specific kernel update for Ubuntu 20.04 — Canonical's long-term support (LTS) release — that started rolling out on or about June 8. Within hours of the patch hitting systems, bug reports began filing in.

        The source of the trouble was quickly isolated to Ubuntu systems running Docker with the hardware-enablement (HWE) stack enabled. As the name suggests, HWE adds support for newer hardware by shipping updated kernels – and Ubuntu routinely pushes out new kernels via these HWE updates. While switching this on is usually a manual process for server systems, it's a standard feature on many Ubuntu images available in the cloud. To this end, several users reported VM images on AWS, GCP, Azure, and Oracle were affected. HWE is also usually enabled by default for new desktop installs.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Computer WorldCookie conundrum: The loss of third-party trackers could diminish your privacy

          With third-party cookies out of the picture, marketers will be forced to double down on the data they collect on their own web properties through first-party cookies, which will still be with us.

        • Site36German Presidency: G7 countries support EU policy on chat control

          The proposal, which the Commission drafted after repeated requests from the Council of 27 EU member states, will be discussed for the first time at the informal Justice and Home Affairs Council in Prague on Monday. In the Internet civil society, the plan, dubbed „chat control,“ is facing widespread opposition. The EU governments are now getting support from the G7 countries, whose heads of government addressed the issue at their summit in Elmau a week ago. Under the German G7 presidency, the interior ministers were subsequently tasked with taking measures.

        • Ali Reza HayatiJustifying privacy!

          You may choose not to use them, but you can never use that as grounds to deny them to others. The answer “because I have a right to privacy” is enough to satisfyingly answer the “I have nothing to hide” paradigm; no justification needed for making use of basic human rights.

        • Light Blue TouchpaperText mining is harder than you think

          We’ve been scanning the Internet for wickedness for over fifteen years now, and looking at various kinds of filters for everything from spam to malware. Filtering requires very low false positive rates to be feasible at Internet scale, which means either looking for very specific things (such as indicators of compromise by a specific piece of malware) or by having rich metadata (such as a big spam run from some IP address space you know to be compromised). Whatever filtering Facebook can do on Messenger given its rich social context, there will be much less that a WhatsApp client can do by scanning each text on its way through.

        • FuturismGoogle Says It Will Automatically Delete Abortion Clinic Visits From Users' History

          Google has finally released some info about how the company will handle sensitive user data related to abortions.

          Following the controversial overturn of Roe v. Wade — which has already caused at least one 10-year-old child to take a risky trip across state lines to seek care — the tech giant said on Friday it will delete user data that confirms a person traveled to an abortion center.

        • Privacy InternationalPrivacy International’s submission to UNSR: “Human Rights Violations At International Borders: Trends, Prevention And Accountability”

          Privacy International (PI) welcomes the call of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants to assess the human rights impact of current and newly established border management measures with the aim of identifying effective ways to prevent human rights violations at international borders, both on land and at sea.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • JNSStudy: UNRWA materials urge Palestinians to take up ‘hobby’ of killing Israelis

        Educational materials produced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) contain content that encourages jihad, violence and martyrdom, in addition to promoting anti-Semitism, according to an analysis by IMPACT-se.

      • IPTIslamist Terrorism Resurfaces in Scandinavia

        The suspect, Zaniar Matapour, is a 42-year-old Norwegian Muslim of Iranian descent. He allegedly is a radicalized Islamist with a history of mental illness, known to Norwegian intelligence services since 2015. According to an official statement from the Norwegian Police Security Service, Matapour recently was a "member of an extremist Islamist network in Norway, with a long history of violence and threats."

        He was in close contact with Arfan Bhatti, a central figure in Norway's extremist Islamist milieu.

        Bhatti, a 45-year-old Norwegian of Pakistani origin, has been a leading member in the Salafi-jihadist Norwegian group Profetens Ummah (The Prophet's Ummah), which was originally inspired by Al-Qaeda and later pledged its support for the Islamic State.

        He "is a supporter of transforming Norway into an Islamist state ruled by Sharia-laws," a 2015 report from Israel's International Institute for Counter-Terrorism said.

      • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer)Highland Park Mass Shooter had active FOID card, father says “no regrets”, police lied and then changed story.

        The Highland Park Mass Shooter had an Active FOID card, the father says “no regrets” helping him get it, and the police lied and said they had no prior contact and then changed their story to “Oh, other than those two times he threatened to kill himself and then ‘everyone’ and we had to take 19 knives, daggers, and swords from the house, but then didn’t place him on a list of people who can’t get a FOID card.”.

      • Telex (Hungary)Head of Hungarian Defense Forces visits Ukraine
    • Environment

      • Energy

    • Finance

      • RFERLTehran ‘Temporarily’ Cuts Off Access To Country’s Banking System To Iranians Abroad

        Iranian authorities have “temporarily cut off” access to the country’s banking system for Iranians abroad to “prevent cyberattacks,” Iranian state news agency IRNA reported.

        IRNA said on July 4 that "the restrictions were applied on the recommendation of the competent authorities and in order to deal with cyber threats."

        The news agency did not specify the "competent authorities" but added that the action "only concerns a limited number of banks that have the most connections abroad to banking systems, including online banking and mobile banking applications."

      • David RosenthalEconomic Model Revived

        Five years ago, at the urging of the Internet Archive, I implemented a simple interactive version of the Economic Model of Long-Term Storage in Python. It estimated the endowment needed to store a Terabyte for 100 years based on a set of parameters that people could vary. It ran on a Raspberry Pi at the end of our Sonic DSL home Internet connection. The endowment is the capital which, together with the interest it earns, is enough to cover the costs incurred stoing the data for the century.

        Alas, the Pi became a casualty when, early in the pandemic, we upgraded to the wonderful Sonic gigabit fiber (Best ISP Evah!), needed to support multiple grandkids each in a different virtual school.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • New York TimesSecret Service Director to Step Down and Join Maker of Snapchat

        The director of the Secret Service announced on Thursday that he would retire at the end of the month after a 27-year career with the agency that is charged with protecting the president of the United States.

        The director, James M. Murray, has accepted a position with the social media company Snap, which is known for its messaging app, Snapchat, an agency spokesman said.

      • Frontpage MagazineIlhan Omar Loudly Booed by Somali Crowd in Minneapolis

        The husband in question was not Omar’s famous brother, but her latest better half (who doubles as her political strategist), Tim Mynett. That in itself may have been part of the reason why the crowd was so unhappy to see her. The marriage raised eyebrows in Muslim communities, as Islamic law forbids Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men. The controversy over this largely died down when Mynett reportedly converted to Islam, but clearly some ill will and suspicion linger. Strikingly, Omar has never received blowback from within the Muslim community for her notorious marriage to her brother, as it is generally understood to have been a fiction for immigration purposes, so as far as the guardians of Islamic morals were concerned, no harm was done.

      • India TimesTwitter says it removes 1 million spam accounts a day

        Twitter said on the call that the spam accounts represent well below 5% of its active user base each quarter. To calculate how many accounts are malicious spam, Twitter said it reviews "thousands of accounts" sampled at random, using both public and private data such as IP addresses, phone numbers, geolocation and how the account behaves when it is active, to determine whether an account is real.

      • ABCElon Musk terminating $44 billion deal to buy Twitter

        Fake accounts have become a sticking point in Musk's rollercoaster bid to acquire the social media platform, with the Tesla CEO previously threatening to end his agreement over concerns about the prevalence of bot and spam accounts.

        In the filing on Friday, Musk's attorney claimed that Twitter "is in material breach of multiple provisions of that agreement" and appears to have made "false and misleading representations" when entering into the agreement.

      • NBCElon Musk files to back out of deal to buy Twitter

        "Twitter has not provided information that Mr. Musk has requested for nearly two months notwithstanding his repeated, detailed clarifications intended to simplify Twitter’s identification, collection, and disclosure of the most relevant information sought in Mr. Musk’s original requests," the filing states.

      • BBCElon Musk pulls out of $44bn deal to buy Twitter

        Mr Musk believes that spam or bot accounts could account for 20% or more of Twitter users.

      • The HillMusk terminates agreement to buy Twitter

        “Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect,” a lawyer wrote on his behalf in a letter to Twitter’s chief legal officer, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

        The letter alleged that the social media platform had rejected or ignored Musk’s requests for information he sought to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform.”

      • The VergeTwitter says it’s going to sue Elon Musk for trying to back out of the deal

        If you’ve been following the twists and turns of this deal, it’s not a surprise that Twitter plans to put up a fight. Soon after Musk said he would buy Twitter and take it private, he began laying the groundwork for why he could back out, claiming that Twitter wasn’t being forthcoming about the number of bots on the platform. Twitter has insisted to Musk and the public that it has bots under control and that it intends to enforce the merger agreement.

      • The VergeElon Musk officially tries to bail on buying Twitter

        It’s incumbent that Musk prove that Twitter has breached their agreement, as he can’t just pull out the signed agreement because he feels like it. And there’s good reason for Twitter to want to keep the agreement together: the deal was a potentially lucrative one for Twitter shareholders, offering $54.20 per share, up from the $36.81 it closed at today. There’s also $1 billion on the line as a breakup fee that will be paid by the party at fault.

      • GannettElon Musk says he won’t buy Twitter. Can he just walk away? Twitter is suing; GOP loses ‘free speech’ savior

        Skadden Arps attorney Mike Ringler said in a letter to Twitter's chief legal officer that “Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations." For nearly two months, the company has failed to provide Musk with information about fake or spam accounts, the letter said.

      • VarietyElon Musk Says He’s Terminating Deal to Buy Twitter, Company Vows to Sue Him

        The mega-billionaire terminated his $44 billion offer for Twitter, notifying the company of the decision on Friday in a letter from his lawyers, according to a regulatory filing. Musk is primarily claiming that Twitter misrepresented the scope of spam and fake accounts on the social network, saying his team’s preliminary estimates put that “wildly higher” than the sub-5% figure that Twitter has repeatedly claimed.

        Twitter said it plans to sue Musk over his nixing of the deal and hold him to his $54.20-per-share deal price.

      • The Telegraph UKElon Musk pulls out of $44bn Twitter takeover

        Mr Musk's lawyers said in filings that Twitter had failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information on fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is fundamental to the company's business performance.

      • SalonElon Musk's decision to back out of Twitter deal may lead to lawsuit

        "While Section 6.4 of the Merger Agreement requires Twitter to provide Mr. Musk and his advisors all data and information that Mr. Musk requests "for any reasonable business purpose related to the consummation of the transaction," Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations," the filing details.

      • CNNMusk tells Twitter he wants out of deal to buy it. Twitter says it will force him to close the sale

        A lawyer representing Musk claimed in a letter to Twitter's top lawyer that he is ending the deal because Twitter (TWTR) is "in material breach of multiple provisions" of the original agreement, which was signed in April, according to a regulatory filing Friday evening.

      • The NationRepublicans Are Attacking Wisconsin’s Lieutenant Governor for Saying Slavery Was Terrible

        Barnes described the legacy of chattel slavery, from the brutal compromises of the founding moment to the Civil War to the era of Jim Crow segregation that followed. He explained that “the impacts are felt today and they’re going to continue to be felt unless we address it in a meaningful way.”

      • ABCWhat Happens When Americans Don’t Trust Institutions?

        Americans aren’t just cynical about their political institutions. In Gallup’s trends, you can see more and more disillusionment with pretty much every major institution. Some of these shifts are hard to blame on politics — confidence in banks, for instance, fell dramatically during the Great Recession. But experts told me that they’re also the result of increasing partisan polarization and a decades-long effort by the Republican Party to sow distrust in a wide range of government institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic may have also reinforced Americans’ sense that the government won’t be there for them in times of crisis: According to a Monmouth University poll conducted from June 23-27, 57 percent of Americans said that the actions of the federal government over the past six months have hurt their family regarding the issue most important to them, up from 34 percent in July 2021 and 46 percent in December.

        x This broad loss of faith in the institutions that organize our society is dangerous, experts say — and it may be hard to reverse. “Despite the political polarization, both sides feel like they’re losing,” said Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University. “And populaces and countries that are pessimistic about the future often end up doing really bad things.”

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Jerusalem PostFemale influencers in Iran targeted by cyberattacks blame Iranian govn't

        A joint letter sent by many of these Iranian women to Meta, the umbrella company for social media platforms including Instagram and Facebook, which was published last month, said that at least 20 of their individual and group accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, often focusing on feminist discourse, saw thousands of followers added in a short period of time that proved to be bots - an automated program designed to mimic human users, usually with nefarious intent.

        The letter accused the Iranian government of being behind the cyberattacks.

      • The VergeJapan to start jailing people for online insults

        Posting “online insults” will be punishable by up to a year in prison time in Japan starting Thursday, when a new law passed earlier this summer will go into effect.

        People convicted of online insults can also be fined up to 300,000 yen (just over $2,200). Previously, the punishment was fewer than 30 days in prison and up to 10,000 yen ($75).

        The law will be reexamined in three years to determine if it’s impacting freedom of expression — a concern raised by critics of the bill. Proponents said it was necessary to slow cyberbullying in the country.

      • [Old] CNNJapan makes 'online insults' punishable by one year in prison in wake of reality TV star's death

        It was only passed after a provision was added, ordering the law be re-examined three years after it goes into effect to gauge its impact on freedom of expression.

        Under Japan's penal code, insults are defined as publicly demeaning someone's social standing without referring to specific facts about them or a specific action, according to a spokesperson from the Ministry of Justice. The crime is different to defamation, defined as publicly demeaning someone while pointing to specific facts.

        Both are punishable under the law.

      • IndiaChristian mechanic Ashfaq Masih in Pakistan gets death for blasphemy

        According to reports, in June 2017, Masih got into a dispute with a Muslim customer in Lahore after he repaired the latter’s bike. When Masih asked for payment, the customer did not pay the entire amount and asked for a waiver on grounds that he was a religious devotee. Masih refused the request, saying he believed in Christ. The issue of money led to a heated argument and a crowd gathered, accusing Masih of “disrespecting” the Prophet Muhammad. The mechanic had allegedly said that for Christians, Jesus was supreme. This was enough for his arrest.

      • The PrintChristian mechanic in Pakistan gets death for ‘blasphemy’. His said ‘Jesus is supreme’

        The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has said that Muslims constitute the majority of people booked under the blasphemy laws, followed by the Ahmadi community. According to data by the National Commission for Justice and Peace, 776 Muslims, 505 Ahmadis, 229 Christians and 30 Hindus have been booked under the blasphemy law from 1987 to 2018.

      • Christian PostChristian man sentenced to death in Pakistan after rival accused him of 'blasphemy'

        Masih, who owns a bike mechanic shop in Lahore, was quoted as saying the charges stem from an incident in June 2017 when a customer refused to pay him for a job.

        In a not-guilty plea obtained by Chruch in Chains, Masih said the man "refused to give me money and said, 'I am a follower of Peer Fakhir [a Muslim ascetic] and don't ask for money from me.' I told him that I am a believer in Jesus Christ and I don't believe in Peer Fakhir and please give me my labour."

        That man went and told Masih's rival bike shop owner, who accused Masih of blasphemy and filed a police report.

        "Muhammad Naveed who is also a motorcycle mechanic and had started a shop in front of me and was jealous because my business was doing well and had a good reputation in the area," Masih said in the statement. "We had already fought a few days before the incident. And he had threatened me with dire consequences."

      • Christian TodayPakistan: Christian man sentenced to death for blasphemy

        The accusation of blasphemy was made a few days after a dispute involving a Muslim customer who refused to pay his bill.

        "I insisted for my bill and said that I don't follow anyone other than Jesus, and so wasn't interested in the man's religious status," said Masih.

        The police registered a first information report under section 295C of the Pakistan Penal Code which imposes a mandatory death penalty for blasphemy.

        He was sentenced to death by the Pakistani Session Court on 4 July.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • ScheerpostUK Bill Threatens Journalists With Life in Prison

        “The glaring omission at the heart of the National Security Bill is a straightforward public-interest defense, so that those who expose wrongdoing, either as whistleblowers or journalists, will be protected,” Tim Dawson, a long-time member of the National Union of Journalists’ National Executive Council told Consortium News.

        “Without this, there is a risk of concerned U.K. citizens being prosecuted as though they were foreign spies,” he added.

        The bill can be seen as part of a growing crackdown in both Britain and the United States against legitimate journalism that challenges establishment narratives.

      • FAIRAdele Stan & Elliot Mincberg on John Roberts, Chip Gibbons on Why Assange Matters
    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • RFERLIran Shuts Three Cafes In Qom Over Unveiled Women

        Recently, the government has reportedly renewed its crackdown on women who are deemed insufficiently veiled.

      • Christian PostChristian convert from Islam killed in Uganda for leading Muslims to Christ: witness

        “Angry Christian residents from Molu village flooded to Molu village swamp to mourn the death of their beloved convert from Islam who had been going from one church to another testifying about how he converted to Christianity,” Pastor Muzei said. “His testimony was an encouragement to many Christians in my church and led many to Christ. We have lost a dynamic evangelist.”

        Police arrested Buyinza, taking him to Kibuku police station amid tight security as residents sought to kill him, Pastor Muzei said. Buyinza told police, “We warned him to come back to our religion and gave him several opportunities, but he turned a deaf ear – we’re proud of killing him,” a source said.

      • Jerusalem PostUN rights body seeks reversal of Taliban policies making Afghan women 'invisible'

        The United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution on Friday condemning rights violations against women and girls in Afghanistan, urging the ruling Taliban to end restrictive practices described as making them "invisible" in society.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • BBCCanada hit by massive mobile and [Internet] outage

        It is not known what caused the outage, which is the second one in 15 months.

        It began at around 04:30 ET (08:30 GMT). Internet traffic had dropped to around 75% of its normal level by Friday morning, according to NetBlocks, an internet watchdog organisation.

      • CBCRogers outage shows need for Plan B when wireless, internet services fail, analysts say

        In an email to some corporate customers, Rogers blamed the disruption on an outage within its core network. There was no estimate for full restoration, though some services appeared to be returning to normal late Friday.

        While Rogers will have to further explain what led to such a significant failure, Ciuriak said Canada has "lagged" in its development of wireless network hardware compared to other countries, as well with its security.

      • The VergeA major Rogers outage has cut off 25 percent of Canada’s internet traffic

        Rogers first addressed the outage in a tweet from its official support account just before 9AM ET and then went silent for a couple of hours. On Friday afternoon, the company tweeted that its technical teams are working to restore services “alongside our global technology partners, and are making progress.” There is still no ETA for restoration, even after services have been available for about 12 hours nationwide. In a follow-up tweet, the company promised that it would be “proactively crediting all customers,” and said that it had “every technical resource and partner” working on getting its network back up.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

    • Monopolies

      • Software Patents

        • Digital Music NewsGoogle Is Actively Violating Sonos Patents, Rules US Customs Service

          “Today, the US Customs Service ruled publicly that Google has been violating the importation ban that the ITC imposed after finding that a host of Google’s products infringe five foundational Sonos home audio patents,” Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus said in a statement.

          “US Customs Service confirmed that Google was flouting the importation ban and continuing to import infringing products in violation of that ban. This finding marks yet another example of Google continuing to misuse our intellectual property and acting in wholesale disregard of the law. We remain committed to defending our IP and will continue to do so on behalf of our own technology and the broader innovation landscape.”

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Baby blues

        I’ve been a parent for a long time, but the arrival of the new baby has alienated me from my friends. Especially (but not exclusively) the childless ones€¹.

        Others have said it — I’ve said it myself, here — but being a parent in this culture is an isolating experience. I exchange messages with a few friends who also have small children now and then. We’re all going through similar things, but it doesn’t feel like we’re in it together. That’s because we’re not, really — these folks live hundreds, often thousands of miles away from us. We can’t watch each other’s kids, have big potluck dinners, or relax together at sunset while the kids chase fireflies. That’s because we all moved to wherever we could get jobs, and now we’re spread out all over.

    • Technical

      • Happy National Video Game Day

        Earlier today, I caught wind that apparently today is national video game day here in the US. It prompted me to go ahead and work on some remixes of video game music to go ahead and commemorate the day.

      • Internet/Gemini

      • Announcements

        • Guestbook Using Titan and Twitch Proxy

          AuraGem now has a Guestbook! You can sign the guestbook by editing the page with Titan, using the token "auragemguestbook". Because of the potential for vandalising the guestbook, it is append-only and any edits uploaded that change pre-existing content or contain profanity or slur words will be rejected by the Titan server automatically.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



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