It’s easy to think of the earlier history of desktop computing operating systems in terms of DOS, Windows, and Mac OS with maybe a bit of AmigaOS, TOS, or RiscOS thrown in. But the daddy of desktop computing, the OS that put word-processors and spreadsheets in 1970s offices and had a huge influence on what followed, isn’t among that list. Digital Research’s CP/M ran initially on Intel 8080-based machines before losing out to MS-DOS as IBM’s choice for their PC, and then gradually faded away over the 1980s. Its source has been available in some form with a few strings for a long time now, but now we have confirmation from Digital Research’s successor company that it’s now available without restrictions on where it can be distributed.
 Canonical and Google Cloud have formed a partnership where users would benefit from running the Ubuntu Linux operating system on a secure, scalable, and highly cost-effective cloud infrastructure.
The two companies have worked on an optimized Ubuntu image that fits perfectly on the preview of Tau T2A virtual machines (VMs) based on the Ampere Altra ARM architecture on Google Compute Engine (GCE).
 As of today, July 14th, 2022, Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) is no longer supported by Canonical with software and security updates, which means that, in time, your installations will become vulnerable to all sorts of threats if you do not upgrade to a newer release, in this case Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish).
[Guillermo] started a new job a while back. That job came with an NFC access card, which was used for booking rooms and building access. The card also served as a wallet for using the vending machines. He set about hacking the card to see what he could uncover.
In the early months of 1938, the Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen, then 20 years old, moved from her parents’ small Copenhagen apartment into a room of her own. Her mother called her “heartless” for moving, and for taking her nannying wages with her; her father, a frequently out-of-work socialist, added to the guilt trip, reminding her that she already had a bedroom in which to “write all the poems you want.” Ditlevsen left anyway. In her new home, for which she paid 40 kroner a month, she could entertain her friends, come home late, and, most important, nurture the dream of writing a book. That said, the unheated room was “ice-cold,” and the miserly landlady, Mrs. Suhr, was an ardent member of the Danish Nazi Party, prone to addressing a portrait of Hitler she hung in her living room as if it were her boyfriend.
These days, addressable LEDs are all the rage. A little chip paired with each LED receives signals and modulates the light output as needed. [John Peterson] was working on a project along these very lines, designing his Curilights back in 2008!
The proliferation of software-defined radio (SDR) technology has been a godsend for RF hobbyists. SDR-based receivers and transmitters have gotten so cheap that you’ve probably got a stick or two lying around your bench right now — we can see three from where we sit, in fact.
The Odd Inputs and Peculiar Peripherals Contest wrapped up last week, and our judges have been hard at work sifting through their favorite projects. And this was no easy task – we had 75 entries and so many of them were cool in their own right that all we can say is go check them all out. Really.
Sometimes you need a little utility device to do a very simple job, and do it well. This one-shot IR helper from [Gregory Sanders] is just that.€
Recently [Richard Mille] and Ferrari (yes, that Ferrari) announced the thinnest mechanical watch ever made, the RM UP-01.
New research published Wednesday shows that since the coronavirus pandemic began more than two years ago, the five largest pharmaceutical companies in the United States have spent nearly $150 million lobbying against Democratic proposals to lower the country's increasingly outlandish drug prices.
"Big Pharma, like many other industries, knows they cannot justify raising prices so high at the same time they boast of excessive profits."
In the spring of 2009, Elliott Naishtat persuaded his colleagues in the Texas Legislature to pass a bill that he believed would require the state to report court-ordered mental health hospitalizations for Texans of all ages to the national firearms background check system.
Nearly two years had passed since a student with a history of serious mental illness had gone on a deadly shooting rampage that left 32 dead at Virginia Tech. And Naishtat, then a Democratic state representative from Austin, argued that Texas was as vulnerable as Virginia had been to such mass shootings because it didn’t require the reporting of involuntary mental health commitments to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS. Federally licensed dealers are required to check the system before they sell someone a firearm.
You know the drill. Company X over-collects user data in the hopes of monetizing it, then does a poor job securing it or giving their customers control over it. If you’re lucky, Company X comes clean about its failures, whether it’s a hack or just leaving customer data openly accessible on an unsecured Amazon cloud bucket. If you’re not, you’ll find out about the breach years later.
The ways in which this pressure moved Biden from inaction to an executive order illustrates what activist scholars such as historian Howard Zinn long argued: one can’t be neutral on a moving train and change only occurs through sustained protest and agitation from the citizenry.
What, indeed? Eighty years after the United States embarked upon the Great Crusade of World War II, a generation after it laid claim to the status of sole superpower following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and two decades after the Global War on Terror was to remove any lingering doubts about who calls the shots on Planet Earth, the question could hardly be more timely.
“Empire Burlesque,” Daniel Bessner’s Harper’s cover story, provides a useful, if preliminary, answer to a question most members of our political class, preoccupied with other matters, would prefer to ignore. Yet the title of the essay contains a touch of genius, capturing as it does in a single concise phrase the essence of the American Century in its waning days.
The Vallejo PD kills people. That’s an undeniable fact. It does so with alarming frequency, considering the size of its force. Between 2010 and 2020, the PD’s officers killed 19 people. But the PD is uninterested in reducing the number of times its officers kill.
In the 2005 film The President’s Last Bang, Korean audiences were able to glimpse the behind-the-scenes events surrounding the assassination of strong-arm ruler Park Chung-hee. The movie is something of a satire, given the baroque murder plot and the incompetence of the perpetrators. Back in 1979, however, Koreans were shocked by the “10-26 incident” and worried about the trajectory of South Korean politics.
Which brings us to this week’s trip by President Joe Biden to Israel, Palestine and Saudi Arabia. With his critical domestic agenda mostly stalled at home, his trip to the Middle East offers potentially historic opportunities for foreign policy breakthroughs that would dramatically increase regional and global peace and security. The president should go big and go bold, and add at least one stop to his itinerary – Tehran. He has several opportunities to make some lemonade out of lemons, if he displays unusual boldness.
Biden’s first stop, in Israel, will be politically curious as he will meet with a caretaker government (new elections won’t be held until November) and likely offer nothing more than standard blandishments of continued US commitment, and annual funding of more than $4 billion US taxpayer dollars, to Israel’s security.
The press in the United States has scrutinized the trip for how it lets the kingdom of Saudi Arabia off the hook for the high profile murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Though Israel has received less scrutiny for its history of targeting journalists, the government recently faced pushback from international media after its military’s targetted assasination of Shireen Abu Akleh, a trailblazing Palestinian journalist for Al Jazeera and an American citizen.
This trip demonstrates that while officials of the Biden administration often pay lip service in support of press freedom, they will let governments off the hook for high profile murders of journalists if those governments help the United States maintain regional influence. It may be hard for some to admit that the U.S. government disregards press freedom in order to maintain international power, but for those of us who have been following the trial of Julian Assange, it comes as no surprise.
The president will fly to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia directly from Israel on July 15, 2022. The trip comes a year after the Biden administration released a scathing intelligence report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi which concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation “to capture or kill” the Saudi journalist.
In his Washington Post article, Biden touted the sanctions and visa bans introduced by the U.S. in response to the killing.
As one should expect, a few thousands have been killed so far on both sides. Among Ukrainians both soldiers and civilians are victims. Russian casualties have been mainly soldiers. There has also been massive infrastructure destruction in Ukraine.
The outflow of refugees from Ukraine to Poland and other European countries has been heart breaking. The other consequence of the war has been the imposition of severe economic sanctions upon Russia by the United States of America and other Western countries. The sanctioning of the export of oil and gas from Russia has plunged a number of European states into economic crisis. Inflation has soared sky-high and people are struggling to make ends meet especially in those countries where incomes have stagnated for some time. Since Russia is also a major exporter of wheat, Western sanctions have also multiplied the sufferings of people in poor wheat importing countries such as Egypt. Like the fuel supply chain, the global food supply chain has been strained more by the sanctions than by the actual war itself in Ukraine.
In current media, every mention of the war in Ukraine must start with a denunciation of that monster Putin. Or else! What epithet is more withering€ € than “Putin-lover”!
I, too, am not a Putin-lover. And I have a great hatred of war, especially war rained from the skies or aimed from a distance. Waging war, against civilians, even against young uniformed “adversaries,” is inherently wrong. But I will not bow my head to this modern “Gessler’s hat”, no matter what epithets I may be pelted with (crossbows are rarely available). Actually, for my last Berlin Bulletin, while some readers accused me of being too “pro-Putin” others said I was too “anti-Putin”!
Meduza has obtained the results of a closed opinion poll that was commissioned by the Russian presidential administration and conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) in late June 2022. Respondents were asked about their view of the war: “Some people say the military activity in Ukraine should be brought to an end as soon as possible. Others believe it’s not time to end it yet. Which view do you agree with more —€ the first or the second?” How many people responded is unknown.
The seventh House select committee hearing on the January 6 attack at the Capitol examined in detail how then-President Trump went against the advice of top aides to claim President Biden’s win was fraudulent and to strategize a means to overturn the election. Tuesday’s hearing focused in part on a tweet Trump sent on December 19, 2020, in which he called for a “big protest” at the coming joint session of Congress on January 6 and told his supporters, “Be there, will be wild!” Committee member, Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin lays out how Trump sent the tweet just about an hour after a tense meeting at the White House between his official and unofficial advisers that was described in testimony as “unhinged,” and features excerpts of deposition testimony from Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, among others.
A chorus of Democratic lawmakers and watchdog groups said Tuesday that the cumulative case made by the House January 6 panel thus far—including the fresh allegation of witness tampering—amounts to more than enough evidence for the Justice Department to bring criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.
The Justice Department is currently conducting its own investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, an insurrection that—as the House select committee has detailed in high-profile hearings over the past month—Trump fomented in coordination with his far-right allies inside and outside the administration. The January 6 panel has described the effort as a criminal conspiracy.
Chilling live testimony at the seventh hearing of the January 6 House select committee hearing came from former Donald Trump supporters who detailed their own radicalization in response to Trump’s actions leading up to the deadly insurrection. “I think we need to quit mincing words and just talk about truths. And what it was going to be was an armed revolution. I mean, people died that day. Law enforcement officers died this day. There was a gallows set up in front of the Capitol. This could have been the spark that started a new civil war, and no one would have won there,” said Jason Van Tatenhove, former spokesperson for right-wing extremist conspiracy group the Oath Keepers. “It makes me mad,” said Stephen Ayres, a former Trump supporter from Ohio who pleaded guilty last month for illegally entering the Capitol on January 6. “I was hanging on every word he was saying. Everything he was putting out, I was following it. If I was doing it, hundreds of thousands or millions of other people are doing it, or maybe even still doing it.” Both men expressed regret for their actions.
In its seventh public hearing, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol presented evidence and witness testimony that revealed how then-President Trump was a driving force behind assembling a violent mob that would target the Capitol. While Trump’s own Cabinet members and legal advisers found no evidence of voter fraud and advised him to concede the election, he continued to tweet messages to followers that painted the election as stolen. “President Trump is a 76-year-old man; he is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American, and he was told this over and over again,” said committee vice chair, Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney in her opening remarks. “No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind.”
Here are five things that struck me as particularly important in yesterday's hearing of the Special Committee on January 6
Peace advocates on Tuesday derided a New York City public service announcement meant to prepare residents for a nuclear attack as a 21st-century version of the absurd Duck and Cover civil defense film of the early Cold War era.
"Hard to believe the city of N.Y. would produce this!"
Progressive campaigners on Wednesday urged members of the U.S. public to contact their representatives and demand their support for a pair of amendments that would reduce the country's military spending, a call that comes as the House is set to vote on legislation that would hand the Pentagon more than $800 billion in the coming fiscal year.
"Call your Representative directly TODAY, or call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121."
In terms of the gig economy, there are few more ruthless buccaneers than this San Franciscan ride-share company that has persistently specialised in cutting corners and remaking them.€ Those taken aback by the latest leaked files about Uber’s conduct would do well to remember the initial stages of the company’s growth, and the protests against it.€ Globally, the taxi fraternity raged against the encroachment of this new, seemingly amorphous bully.€ Some authorities heeded their wishes, seeing an alternative option in transportation.
In September 2017, Transport for London refused to renew the company’s license, accusing the company of lacking “corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications.”€ For all such rowdy, boisterous resistance, the company continued to spread its tentacular reach, inculcating users and drivers with ratings, incessant surveillance and behavioural observation.
Janine Jackson: If you’ve been following the case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whose revelations about US wars and war crimes outlets like the New York Times published to great acclaim, you know that you haven’t been following it in, for example, The New York Times.
A federal jury in New York convicted former CIA employee Joshua Schulte…
A federal jury in New York convicted former CIA employee Joshua Schulte of violating the Espionage Act when he allegedly released materials on the CIA’s hacking capabilities to WikiLeaks.This was the second trial against Schulte. In March 2020, his first trial ended in a mistrial on several Espionage Act charges, but he was found guilty of contempt of court and lying to the FBI.Unlike the first trial, Schulte represented himself and argued his case. He again maintained he was not the source of the leaks published by WikiLeaks.
A jury deliberated for nearly three days before announcing a verdict. Judge Jesse M. Furman in the Southern District of New York did not schedule a sentencing date because there are other charges pending against Schulte.
Oligarch Evgeny Prigozhin has asked Russia’s top investigative body to launch a criminal case against Meduza editorial director Tatiana Ershova and special correspondent Liliya Yapparova.
A rising star in the contest for a new Prime Minister who has vowed to scrap the UK’s net zero target received a €£1,000 gift from a funder of the UK’s main climate science denial group.€
Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch, a junior minister in the department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, received €£1,000 from Michael Hintze for a ticket to a Conservative Party fundraiser in November, according to the register of interests.€ €
More than 200 congressional staffers have urged the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to finalize a reconciliation package that includes robust measures to tackle the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency before the August recess.
"If we are already witnessing the consequences of inaction in your lifetime, we can scarcely imagine what we will face in ours."
The sprint for a new prime minister marks the latest act in the UK’s political drama.
All of the remaining contenders were elected in 2019 on the Conservatives’ manifesto pledge to “lead the global fight against climate change by delivering on our world-leading target of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”.€ €
Even though non-car retail inventories are very high, we are still seeing sharp price increases for items like apparel and household furniture. This is hard to understand.
Gas prices rose 11.2 percent in June, 59.9 percent year-over-year, adding 2.1 percent to inflation rate. On the plus side, gas prices have been falling sharply since early June. Lower gas prices should pull July inflation lower.
A progressive coalition comprised of nearly three dozen environmental groups and labor unions on Wednesday urged Democratic leaders in both chambers of Congress to significantly increase funding for President Joe Biden's executive orders to ramp up the domestic manufacturing of clean energy under the Defense Production Act.
"At least $100 billion should and could be allocated by the end of this fiscal year to help ensure the security of our nation and the world."
They are sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices at the gas pump and at the grocery store while the oil companies and the food companies are seeing profits at an all-time high.
They are sick and they are tired of struggling to pay for the basic necessities of life while 700 billionaires in our country became $2 trillion richer during the pandemic.
Just last year, economists and policy-makers were still debating whether inflation was worth worrying about. Some argued that it would be a transitory phenomenon with little real impact on working Americans. Others suggested that things could get worse before they got better.
As U.S. inflation hit a new 40-year high Wednesday, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman took aim at the "corporate greed" exacerbating the nation's affordability crisis.
"I am going to go to Washington to fight to bring down prices," Fetterman—who is also Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor—said in response to news that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) soared 9.1% over the past year, the largest annual increase since 1981.
Progressive campaigners on Wednesday responded with frustration to reporting that Congressman Josh Gottheimer may rally right-wing House Democrats to thwart a potential reconciliation package party leaders are working out with Sen. Joe Manchin.
"Gottheimer is just being a saboteur, totally captured by his financial sector donors."
Hotter-than-expected inflation data published Wednesday intensified fears among progressive economists that the Federal Reserve—in its single-minded drive to tame price increases—will needlessly lock in another major interest rate hike at its policy meeting later this month, further suppressing economic demand and moving the country closer to a recession.
"This morning's report highlights the fact that aggressive interest rate hikes by the Fed have done little to combat the inflation that continues to take a toll on workers, families, and small businesses across the country," said Dr. Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative. "Additional rate hikes would push millions out of work and... raise the risk of a recession that would only worsen economic pain."
The Federal Reserve has been under intense pressure in recent months to sharply raise interest rates in the name of taming inflation. The voices calling for these rate increases often explicitly say that they are worth doing even if they greatly increase the risk of recession. At their last open market committee meeting, the Fed heeded these voices and raised rates by 0.75%—the largest single increase in 28 years—and indicated commitment to continuing to raise rates until inflation normalized, even if this increased the risk of recession.
Those 1970’s cartoons weren’t wrong. Voting is the most fundamental act of democratic citizenship. That’s why it has been fiercely contested throughout our history.
But now we’re in the 21st€ century, deluged by information, increasingly divided, with few models of bipartisanship.
Opposition politician Ilya Yashin, the municipal deputy for Moscow’s Krasnoselsky district, has been arrested for allegedly spreading “disinformation” about the Russian military, Mediazona reported. A judge at Moscow's Basmanny District Court granted prosecutors’ request for Yashin to be put in a remand prison until September 12.
The new Chilean Constitution would be one of the most progressive in the world, but passage is anything but certain.
A couple of months ago, the parents of a 10-year-old who died of asphyxiation while allegedly “participating” in a “blackout challenge” sued TikTok, alleging their child’s death was directly related to the social media platform’s moderation efforts (or lack thereof) and content recommendation algorithms. The suit, filed in a Pennsylvania federal court, claimed the death had everything to do with TikTok’s decision to value profits over user safety. And it attempted to dodge the inevitable Section 230 question by alleging this had nothing to do with the third party content the child had viewed and everything to do with TikTok’s handling of, well, third party content.
As we fully expected, Twitter is going to the Delaware Court of Chancery to force Elon Musk to give them the $44 billion he promised. There’s a lot of misinformation being spewed about this case, but let’s go through the details of why Musk is basically in deep shit, and will be lucky if he’s able to escape this by paying “only” $1 billion.
In the wake of massive protests in Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his residence. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced his resignation to pave way for an all-party government.
Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin is slated to join the Russian presidential administration (AP) in the near future, Meduza has learned from three sources close to the Kremlin and an acquaintance of Rogozin’s.
Vladimir Kara-Murza has been in politics for over twenty years, but he’s more famous abroad than inside Russia. When in April 2022 a criminal case was brought against Kara-Murza under a wartime law against “fake news” about the Russian military, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch immediately declared him a prisoner of conscience and demanded his release. Speaking to Meduza, journalist Mikhail Fishman called Kara-Murza “political prisoner number two in Russia” — second only to imprisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Meduza tells the story of how Vladimir Kara-Murza fought the Russian elite, survived two attempts on his life, and wound up in jail for condemning the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.
Dear millennials: back in the 1980s a lot of us worked like hell to try to stop the Reagan revolution. We failed. This may be our last chance to save American democracy and the American middle-class.
Prominent rights groups on Wednesday joined progressive European parliamentarians in urging Polish prosecutors to drop charges against an activist who faces up to three years in prison for helping a pregnant woman access abortion pills.
"No one should be criminalized, let alone prosecuted, for helping someone to get a safe abortion."
Nearly seven dozen House Democrats on Tuesday demanded the Biden administration declare national and public health emergencies on abortion access in response to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
"The Supreme Court's radical and dangerous decision... has precipitated a full-scale reproductive health crisis."
A new analysis released Wednesday argues the right-wing majority now controlling the U.S. Supreme Court has dragged the institution to its lowest point in history by overtly and repeatedly attacking the bedrock foundation upon which the nation was built: representative democracy itself.
In the report—titled The Supreme Court’s Role in the Degradation of Democracy—researchers with the Campaign Legal Center detail how the Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has issued rulings in a "consistently anti-democratic" pattern and by doing so reversed "decades of work by prior Courts that sought to perfect and protect our democracy."
"Mr. President, this is apartheid."
That's the message that U.S. President Joe Biden will see on billboards and digital screens as he travels through parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) this week—the opening leg of his first trip to the Middle East since taking office.
In the 1990s, the sharp-witted Texan and renowned progressive writer Molly Ivins regaled (and appalled) readers with her reports on the tragicomic awfulness of George W. Bush's two terms as the Lone Star State's governor. His tenure was notable for his deep ignorance, frat-boy arrogance and flagrant servility to corporate interests. But those very qualities made America's moneyed powers decide that—Wow!—wouldn't he make a dandy president? Molly warned the general public about the folly of that choice, but in the 2000 race, W's patrons stuffed him with money, buffed him up with a glossy coat of PR Shinola, pulled off a flagrant post-election political heist in Florida ... and squeegeed him, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and that whole regime of horrors into office.
Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem strikes again! The idea put forth by Mike is that the moment a platform really starts to scale upward, doing any actual content moderation well becomes inherently impossible. There are a ton of examples of this, as some reasons as to why it’s so difficult. The spoiler alert on this is that pretty much the moment content moderation is in any way automated, it all starts to fall apart.
The Austin City Council plans to make good on members' pledges to challenge attacks on abortion rights with a vote next week on a resolution intended to help protect patients and providers in the Texas capital.
"The importance of this vote can't be overstated."
Recently, I told my friend Mimi that, only weeks from now, I was returning to Reno to help UNITE-HERE, the hospitality industry union, in the potentially nightmarish 2022 election. “Even though,” I added, “I hate electoral politics.”
A former guerrilla fighter is elected president in Colombia, and Filipinos choose Bongbong Marcos, the son of a dictator, to lead their country. Meanwhile, other nations around the world are teetering between democracy and authoritarianism.
Almost exactly a year ago, Senator Amy Klobuchar (with Senator Ben Ray Lujan) introduced a bill to create a giant hole in Section 230 for “medical misinformation.” The bill would make social media sites like Facebook and Instagram potentially liable for any “health misinformation” found on their platforms. Of course, as we explained at the time, this is a horrifically dangerous idea on multiple levels. First, since there is no set definition of “medical misinformation” (and, in times of rapidly changing information, like a pandemic, accurate information may initially be labeled misinformation), it means that websites will be much more aggressive in taking down content. Second, it opens the door to widespread abuse because whoever is in power gets to determine what is, and what is not “medical misinformation” (the bill gave that role to whoever was the Secretary of Health and Human Services).
If you’re a publicly traded company, it’s not enough to make a decent profit selling products people like. You have to deliver endless quarter over quarter improvements to please investors. So countless companies engage in an act of self-cannibalization, where they begin to cut back on things like customer service (see: U.S. telecom), or annoy their customers with obnoxious cash grabs.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.
