Lens, the most popular Kubernetes Integrated Development Environment (IDE), is still open-source software under the new name OpenLens. But, its parent company, Mirantis, is seeking to profit from it with the release of Lens Pro. This has a revised end-user license and includes new features for enterprise users.
Cacti is an open-source network monitoring and graphing tool written in PHP. Learn how to install the Cacti monitoring tool on Ubuntu 22.04 here.
Question – How do I list all the collections available in the MongoDB database?
MongoDB is a NoSQL database, that stores documents in JSON format. A collection is an entity in MongoDB (ie similar to a table in RDBMS databases) that stores JSON documents.
You can use one of the below options to list collections in a MongoDB database.
MongoDB find() method is used to select documents from a specified collection. It also set the cursor position to the selected document.
The default find() method gets the documents from the start of the collection. In some situations, we need to fetch the last record from a collection. Use the following query to get the last records from a MongoDB collection.
If you own and use a computer, there’s a big chance it’s running Windows. However, there’s a better alternative to Windows. It’s called Linux. Unlike Windows, where there’s only one type, there are more than 600 Linux distributions or distro for short. You can think of these as different flavors and each flavor targets a certain audience. For example, Edubuntu, a Linux distro, is targeted toward students and educators. Since there are so many different ones, there’s probably a distro that’s probably tailored for your needs. Also, due to its small user base, it’s less targeted by hackers, making it more secure and better in performance. You can install a distro onto a USB and try it out without replacing your current operating system. In this article, you’ll learn how to create a USB that can be used to install Linux onto any computer. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll be installing the Pop!_OS distribution.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Pantheon Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Pantheon Desktop Environment is the default desktop environment for Elementary OS developed by Elementary OS developers using the GTK3 toolkit and Vala. Pantheon offers an amazingly pretty user interface with a rich set of features, programs, and apps needed in day-to-day use.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Pantheon Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Papirus Icon Theme on Ubuntu 22.04 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Papirus is an icon theme that has been developed using the GTK+ library, so it is compatible with GNOME and its derivative. It is a huge icon set, encompassing close to a thousand icons in its bundle. Papirus is well-known for its polished and stylish look. The Papirus icon theme has three versions, dark, white and simple theme.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Papirus Icon Theme on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.
Minion Masters is a free-to-play tower-defense card game. It was developed and published by BetaDwarf for Mac OS and Windows. Here’s how you can play Minion Masters on your Linux PC.
In this beginner’s guide, you will learn how to mount and unmount ISO image files on the Linux system temporarily and permanently without any applications.
Looking for your next RPG-shooter hybrid with online co-op? OUTRIDERS from People Can Fly recently released the WORLDSLAYER expansion and it's now actually Playable on the Steam Deck (and Linux desktop too). Previously it had problems with Easy Anti-Cheat but that is no longer an issue.
The game store itch.io is running another Creator Day, this is where they don't take any cut from developers. Developers will then get all of the proceeds from each sale (minus any required fees and taxes).
Valve has released the latest update to Proton Experimental, the special version of Proton you can use that has the latest updates bringing more game compatibility to Linux and Steam Deck.
Do you want to play the classic Diablo RPG? Well, not only does GOG have it and the Hellfire expansion but the Native Linux devilutionX game engine can make it even better. Here's how to get it working on Steam Deck (and Linux desktop!).
Yars: Recharged is the latest remake from Atari with developers Adamvision Studios and SneakyBox and it's launching on August 23rd with Native Linux support. This is the latest entry in the Recharged series following€ Missile Command: Recharged, Centipede: Recharged, Black Widow: Recharged, Asteroids: Recharged and Breakout: Recharged. No doubt they have more planned too.
Valve has announced that they've sorted out various issues with their Steam Deck supply chain, so they will get through reservations much faster than expected now. This means a lot of people will be bumped up the list a bit getting their Steam Deck purchase email a lot sooner.
Need some new games for the weekend? Humble Bundle have put up the Amazing Adventures Bundle and there are a couple of gems in it so let's take a look. As usual I'll let you know what you can expect from them on Linux desktop and Steam Deck, along with ProtonDB rating if needed.
 A role-playing game (RPG) is a genre of video game where the gamer controls a fictional character (or characters) that undertakes a quest in an imaginary world. RPG video games originate from tabletop or pen-and-paper RPGs, such as Rolemaster or Dungeons & Dragons — a type of game in which the players impersonate their characters by actively describing their actions and thoughts.
It’s difficult to define an RPG given that modern games often contain elements from another genre. Traditional RPGs often let you improve your character as you play and interact with elements of the environment or storyline. You may have a menu-based combat system, and a central quest.
This week, Aleix Pol Gonzalez put a ton of work into Discover, which you’ll see throughout the post! Beyond that, it was a Plasma-heavy week, with developers adding several useful new features, polishing the UI, and fixing a large number of high-priority issues.
After the necessary foundational work has been finished, Itinerary now has a completely new integration with the corresponding system calendar on Android and Linux.
So far it was only possible to import events created by KMail’s itinerary plugin from the Android calendar. This is now not only also possible on Linux, but is also no longer restricted to those specific events.
Instead, events that the travel document extractor recognizes as e.g. train trip due to being provided by an iCal file from the corresponding train operator or booking agent can now also be imported. You can also import arbitrary events as such.
Events are also no longer imported automatically and from all calendars, but you can now select which calendar to import from, and which events exactly to import. This also avoids ending up with trips in your timeline from other people’s shared calendars.
EasyOS was created in 2017, derived from Quirky Linux, which in turn was derived from Puppy Linux in 2013. Easy is built in woofQ, which takes as input binary packages from any distribution, and uses them on top of the unique EasyOS infrastructure. Throughout 2020, the official release for x86_64 PCs was the Buster-series, built with Debian 10.x Buster DEBs. EasyOS has also been built with packages compiled from source, using a fork of OpenEmbedded (OE). Currently, the Dunfell release of OE has been used, to compile two sets of binary packages, for x86_64 and aarch64. The latter have been used to build EasyOS for the Raspberry Pi4, and first official release, 2.6.1, was in January 2021. The page that you are reading now has the release notes for EasyOS Dunfell-series on x86_64 PCs, also debuting in 2021. Ongoing development is now focused on the x86_64 Dunfell-series. The last version in the x86_64 Buster-series is 2.6.2, on June 29, 2021, and that is likely to be the end of that series. Releases for the Pi4 Dunfell-series are still planned but very intermittent. The version number is for EasyOS itself, independent of the target hardware; that is, the infrastructure, support-glue, system scripts and system management and configuration applications. The latest version is becoming mature, though Easy is an experimental distribution and some parts are under development and are still considered as beta-quality. However, you will find this distro to be a very pleasant surprise, or so we hope.
The term “open source” can be tricky. For many people, it’s taken to mean that a particular piece of software is free and that they can do whatever they wish with it. But the reality is far more complex, and the actual rights you’re afforded as the user depend entirely on which license the developers chose to release their code under. Open source code can cost money, open source code can place limits on how you use it, and in some cases, open source code can even get you into trouble down the line.
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)!
If you’re looking for a cool Raspberry Pi project to jam out with this summer, take a close look at this open-source MIDI controller and sequencer created by maker and musician Niisse. It’s 100% driven by a Raspberry Pi 4 and features handmade modules that handle special effects as well as input controls for real-time jam sessions.
Library, Memories, Game Boy Camera Support, and Spacewar!
Bill O’Sullivan uses a Raspberry Pi to drive a custom Alien-themed motion tracking handheld that works using ultrasonic sensors.
Connecting the $6 Raspberry Pi Pico W to Twitter is a breeze using IFTTTs free service. In this how-to, we send live sensor data to Twitter using IFTTT and MicroPython.
Developer and woodworker Mw33212 has created another beautiful Pi-powered gaming rig—this time with two round LCD displays in a handmade tridiminished rhombicosidodecahedron-shaped case.
Eric Badger is emulating the 8-bit 6502 computer on the Raspberry Pi Pico and demonstrates its ability to run Loderunner.
Putting a computer inside a computer may seem like something Xzibit may have done in the early 2000s. But this awkwardly named Blicube BLiKVM PCIe (Pi CM4) is a PCIe card bearing a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4
FastAPI is a modern, fast (high-performance), web framework for building APIs with Python 3.6+ based on standard Python type hints.
It plays well with other Python libraries as requests, multipart, ujson, pyyaml, and others.
If you depart from an "us vs. them" philosophy of life, your first confrontation is likely to be with the cynics.
In early May, the Meta executive in charge of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, shared some news: the social media app’s main feed would start looking dramatically different to some users.
For those in a small test group, the feed they’d been using for a decade would be replaced with an “immersive viewing experience” containing full-screen photos and videos with many posts coming from people they weren’t following. In other words, Instagram would start to look and feel even more like TikTok, the short-form video app that Meta sees as its fiercest competition.
So, I bought a new guitar over the fourth of July weekend. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was the sudden increase in my credit line or the sudden appearance of one at my favorite music store that drove me toward the purchase. From the day I saw Mary Spender review the guitar on her YouTube channel, I decided to get one sometime. I didn’t realize it would happen a mere six months later. In today’s Tedium, we’re doing something a little different and reviewing the Lava Me 3 from Lava Music. Now, let’s talk about this phenomenal guitar.
"Donkey Punch," a new original cartoon by the inimitable Mr. Fish, looks at the fundamental disconnect between true progressivism and the DNC.
Like artificial intelligence, speech synthesis was one of those applications that promised to revolutionize computing in the 1980s, only to fizzle out after people realized that a robotic voice reading out predefined sentences was not actually that useful. Nevertheless, computer manufacturers didn’t want to miss out on the hype and speech synthesizers became a relatively common add-on for a typical home computer.
Meet [Tanner]. [Tanner] is a hacker who also appreciates the security of their home while they’re out of town. After doing some research about home security, they found that it doesn’t take much to keep a house from being broken into. It’s true that truly determined burglars might be more difficult to avoid. But, for the opportunistic types who don’t like having their appendages treated like a chew toy or their face on the local news, the steaks are lowered.€ All it might take is a security camera or two, or a big barking dog to send them on their way. Rather than running to the local animal shelter, [Tanner] used parts that were already sitting around to create a solution to the problem: A computer vision triggered virtual dog.
No matter the type of vehicle we drive, it has a battery. Those batteries wear out over time. Even high end EV’s have batteries with a finite life. But when your EV uses Lead Acid batteries, that life is measured on a much shorter scale. This is especially true when the EV is driven by a driver that takes up scarcely more space in their EV than a stuffed tiger toy! Thankfully, the little girl in question has a mechanic:
We’ve noticed that [Carl Bugeja] likes flexible PCBs. His latest exploit is to make PCB-based springs that combine with some magnets to create little devices that jump. We aren’t sure what practical use these might have, but they are undeniably novel and you can see them — um — jumping around, in the video, below.
Allwinner H618 processor has started to show up in several TV boxes running Android 12, and capable of playing 6K/4K VP9 and H.265 videos with devices such as T95Z Plus and T95 Max, which may be confusing, as companies are reusing those model numbers over and over.
Featuring a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, an Arm Mali-G31 MP2 GPU, and 6K video support, the Allwinner H618 looks exactly like the Allwinner H616 processor except it can run the more recent Android 12 operating system.
The first case of monkeypox behind bars was reported in Chicago this week, and health experts are warning that jails could accelerate the spread as they are dangerously unprepared to combat against a virus that spreads through close physical contact. We speak with Dr. Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer for New York City’s Correctional Health Services, whose new op-ed for The Hill is headlined ”CDC must act to prevent monkeypox explosion in prisons.”
Public health officials’ international hunt for clues in the case of polio that paralyzed a New York man has turned up a big one: The virus that infected him matches the genetic fingerprint of poliovirus found in sewage samples taken in London and in the Jerusalem area, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization told ProPublica on Friday.
It is not yet clear how the virus moved from one place to another or where it was first.
I have a brother with chronic schizophrenia. He had his first severe catatonic episode when he was 16 years old and I was 10. Later, he suffered from auditory hallucinations and heard voices saying nasty things to him. I remember my father reassuring him that the voices weren't real and asking him whether he could ignore them. Sadly, it's not that simple.
While its thousands of lobbyists work fervently on Capitol Hill, the pharmaceutical industry is flooding the airwaves in several states with deceptive ads in a last-ditch campaign to block Senate Democrats' plan to curb the unchecked pricing power of drug corporations.
Included as part of a reconciliation package negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the proposal would require Medicare to negotiate the prices of a small number of drugs directly with pharmaceutical companies, which can currently drive up costs as they please—boosting their profits at the expense of patients.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Cloud arm of Amazon, now represent an annualised sales run rate of nearly $79 billion that has made it the leading Cloud provider once again.
AWS reported $19.7 billion net sales in the June quarter, up 33 per cent year over year. The operating income of AWS was $5.7 billion in Q2.
Tech giant Apple has announced that it now has over 860 million paid subscribers across all of its services, which includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News, iCloud, and more.
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 220. This version includes the following changes:
* Support Haskell 9.x series files and update the test files to match. Thanks to Scott Talbert for the relevant info about the new format. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#309) * Fix a regression introduced in diffoscope version 207 where diffoscope would crash if one directory contained a directory that wasn't in the other. Thanks to Alderico Gallo for the report and the testcase. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#310)
Cybersleuths at Microsoft have found a link between the recent 'Raspberry Robin' USB-based worm attacks and EvilCorp, a notorious Russian ransomware operation sanctioned by the U.S. government.
911[.]re, a proxy service that since 2015 has sold access to hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Windows computers daily, announced this week that it is shutting down in the wake of a data breach that destroyed key components of its business operations. The abrupt closure comes ten days after KrebsOnSecurity published an in-depth look at 911 and its connections to shady pay-per-install affiliate programs that secretly bundled 911’s proxy software with other titles, including “free” utilities and pirated software.
According to the lawsuit, parents and the public at large are unaware that blood samples taken from their children could be used in this way. “The New Jersey Monitor believe the public would be shocked by what has occurred in OPD’s client’s case and that law enforcement agencies are skirting warrant requirements in this way,” a section of the lawsuit reads. “It also believes that parents in particular would be shocked to learn that their children’s blood samples are being stored by the Department of Health for more than twenty years and are being accessed by law enforcement agencies without their knowledge or consent so that their DNA could be analyzed.”
Blood drawn as part of a mandatory New Jersey newborn testing program could end up as evidence in the hands of law enforcement.
The state Office of the Public Defender is alleging law enforcement in New Jersey obtained blood taken as part of the program and used it to charge the child’s father with a crime, an allegation that has led to cries of alarm from civil liberties advocates.
Ring has been bedding down as many law enforcement partners as possible, turning cops into brand evangelists with the implicit (and sometimes, explicit) promise they’ll have access to private citizens’ recordings. Ring likes this because it increases its market share. Cops like it because it gives them more camera coverage in the areas they patrol, at least theoretically.
The file put together by the Northern Prefecture on Hassan Iquioussen convinced the Commission for the Expulsion of Foreigners, presided over by the President of the Lille Court. It gave a positive opinion on the expulsion on June 22. The decision was not a foregone conclusion. With five children, fifteen grandchildren and all his assets declared in France, Hassan Iquioussen could claim to be integrated in his very own way. At the meeting of the departmental commission on expulsion, the minutes of which Le Point has read, the prefect of the Nord department travelled in person to address the case before the judges, receiving the full support of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin.
A Kurdish commander in the Syrian Democratic Forces, the US-backed group that helped defeat ISIS, was murdered in a targeted assassination by a drone strike in Syria on July 22.
The Economist recounted how innocent Hindus were targeted by frenzied mobs shouting “Hang the culprits”. It was Durga Puja day and people were looking forward to celebrating it but were instead caught up in a wave of violent protests. There was Dilip Das, a washerman, who set out for his local temple to take part in the festivities.
According to the data released, apart from 79 Hindus being killed this year alone, 620 of them have been threatened, 183 of them injured in “targeted” quarrels and fights, 32 of them are missing and more than 145 of them have faced attempt to murder like situation across Bangladesh.
Not only this, the Hindu Mahajot also claims that more than 130 Hindu families have been rendered homeless, 77 Hindus have been kidnapped, while 501 incidents of “organised” attacks on Hindus have been reported. The Hindu Mahajot also claims that this year alone, 95 cases of forced conversion have been documented in the country in the last six months.
The video was posted on Tuesday on the "Houston Azadari" channel which has been active since October 2011 and has over 12,000 subscribers. Azadari, meaning "mourning," refers to a set of commemoration rituals practiced mostly by Shi'ite Muslims to mourn the death of Imam Husayn ibn Ali in the Battle of Karbala.
Now a psychiatric examination came to the conclusion: the man was acting with full consciousness and was not mentally impaired at the time of the crime. In the course of the investigation, IS propaganda had been found on the Palestinian’s person.
John Bolton made a staggering admission recently. Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this month, Bolton denied that what Donald Trump tried to do after the election was a “carefully planned coup d’etat.” When Tapper replied that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to plan a coup,” Bolton pushed back—and drew on his credentials as Trump’s national security adviser and George W. Bush’s ambassador to the UN. “I disagree with that,” Bolton said, “as someone who has helped plan coups d’etat, not here, but, you know, other places. It takes a lot of work…”
Ukraine and Russia traded accusations on Friday after a missile strike on a prison camp in Olenivka, a village outside of Donetsk, reportedly killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
One of the€ GODFATHER’s€ most dramatic episodes is the ‘Day of the Long Knives.’
It was revealed Thursday that additional text messages sent and received by Department of Homeland Security officials before and during the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol are missing—something the DHS inspector general has known for more than five months but unlawfully failed to disclose to Congress.
On top of the Secret Service texts from January 5 and 6 that were deleted after the DHS inspector general's office requested the agency's electronic communications records, messages sent to and from three high-ranking Trump administration officials at DHS in early January 2021 are missing, according to an internal agency record obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and congressional sources.
Sometimes you’ve got to shoot a few civilians to make the public safe. (h/t Maggie McNeill)
The overarching narrative presented by the House January 6 Committee is that the violence of January 6 was the culmination of a long process: that Trump laid the groundwork to undermine the election long before November 2020; promoted the Big Lie every day since the election; invited the mob to the Ellipse on January 6; incited them on that day; urged them to march on the Capitol; and then stood by approvingly while they did what he told them to do.
As U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi departs Friday for an Asian trip that may include a stop in Taiwan, anti-war voices are sounding the alarm over a visit they say would needlessly provoke China during a time of already heightened global tensions from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Chinese officials have warned of serious consequences should Pelosi make the trip."
Ever since Reality Winner was arrested, we’ve written about the ridiculousness of her case. It was yet another in a long line of cases using the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers who aren’t spies, but are actively trying to do the right thing — and, as per the Espionage Act — not even allowed to give the context to the court. And, as we noted, the information that Winner “leaked” and for which she was sentenced to five years in prison, was publicly revealed by other government agencies anyway, which seems to completely erase any claim that the leaking of the documents caused some sort of harm to national security.
The planetary crisis was linked to at least 15 deaths in Kentucky Friday as heavy rains triggered what Gov. Andy Beshear called "one of the worst, most devastating flooding events" in the state's history.
"As we keep kicking the can on climate solutions, more lives will be lost in climate-based tragedies. We must act now."
President Biden is hailing a Senate bill negotiated by Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer as “the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis.” While it faces hurdles before passage, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act would invest $369 billion into renewable energy and other measures to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics who advised Senate Democrats on the legislation, says that while the bill is not perfect, it represents a major step forward. “We just do not have another decade left to wait if we really want to be on track to cut carbon pollution in half this decade,” says Stokes.
Advocates for children and parents on Friday highlighted what they say is a major oversight in the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate and tax bill introduced this week after months of negotiations between Sen. Joe Manchin and Democratic leaders, as the package included no funding to help shore up struggling child care facilities across the United States.
"There is unanimous frustration that Congress continues to push child care to the side, threatening small businesses, keeping parents out of the workforce and putting childrens' development at risk."
After months of protracted and often bitter wrangling, Ireland’s coalition government yesterday published emissions budgets for each part of the economy, in a bid to meet its ambitious climate goals.
They take us a step further to achieving the 51 percent emissions cut by 2030 enshrined in legislation, but leave much to be desired. For a start, when all the sectoral targets are tallied up, they represent – at best – a 43 per cent reduction, according to the government’s own Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC).€
Firefighters don’t normally allude to early English epics, but in a briefing on the massive Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire in northern New Mexico, a top field chief said, “It’s like Beowulf: It’s not the thing you fear, it is the mother of the thing you fear.” He meant that the flames you face may be terrifying, but scarier yet are the conditions that spawned them, perhaps enabling new flames to erupt behind you with no escape possible. The lesson is a good one and can be taken further. If tinder-dry forests and high winds are the mother of the thing we fear, then climate change is the grandmother.
The Congressional Baseball Game is an annual tradition that dates back to 1909. It’s supposed to be a time for both sides of the political system to come together and join in a peaceful nine innings of the national pastime.€
But this year’s game, held on Thursday, July 28 at the Washington Nationals’ ballpark in Washington, D.C., was less sleepy than the average baseball game. Now or Never, a group of justice, faith, and climate organizations, held a protest in an attempt to disrupt the event and draw attention to the urgent need for large-scale climate action.€
As tens of millions of people in the United States live under heat alerts this summer, we look at conditions faced by those in prisons and jails with poor cooling systems and lack of access to running water. “Although heat has been an ongoing issue in Texas, this year it’s exacerbated by a staffing crisis that’s been years in the making,” says Keri Blakinger, the first formerly incarcerated reporter for The Marshall Project. “This is a drastically underappreciated problem,” adds Dr. Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer for New York City’s Correctional Health Services.
Before a deal emerged this week on a bill to address the climate emergency, six congressional staffers were arrested Monday on Capitol Hill as they held a nonviolent civil disobedience protest inside the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, urging him to reopen negotiations on the bill. We speak with Saul Levin, one of the staffers who was arrested, and discuss the role the action had in pushing the bill forward. “Our lives depend on passing climate policy this year,” says Levin. “We hope that this had an impact.” We’re also joined by Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics who advised Senate Democrats on the legislation.
Scientists are warning this week that the prolonged and above-average temperatures gripping the Mediterranean Sea are causing a "marine wildfire" that could permanently alter the ecosystem and cause species extinction.
David Diaz of the Spanish oceanographic institute told Le Monde such ocean heatwaves were "the equivalent of underwater wildfires, with fauna and flora dying just as if they had been burned."
Gas prices hit an all-time high in June, with the national average surpassing $5 per gallon. A shortage of Russian oil due to sanctions imposed by the European Union, United States and others is largely to blame, and in response President Biden has urged US oil companies and other producers—like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—to increase their production to fill the gap.
Recent extreme weather across the globe is showing us how rapidly the climate is changing in an increasingly warming world. Heatwaves are scorching Europe, the United States, North Africa, Siberia, and some parts of the Middle East and China. Last month, the worst heatwave ever recorded hit Japan. In Brazil, more than 20,000 people were displaced after heavy rainfall in May triggered floods and landslides. The month before, extreme rainfall and floods in South Africa killed more than 400 people. In Europe, Spain and Portugal are battling wildfires, while Italy is suffering from the worst drought in the past 70 years, with many municipalities rationing water.
As fossil fuel giants this week reported record profits for the second quarter, an analysis out Friday highlighted how eight oil companies have raked in nearly $52 billion over the past three months "while Americans continue to struggle at the pump."
The review by the watchdog group Accountable.US revealed that from April through June, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Hess Corp, Phillips 66, Shell, and TechnipFMC "saw their profits skyrocket from the same time period last year, with income shooting up 235%."
A climate justice coalition sent a letter Friday imploring President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to reject any proposed fossil fuel expansion during negotiations over the latest iteration of the Democratic Party's reconciliation bill.
"The unnecessary fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline and further drilling in Alaska and the Gulf are not foregone conclusions."
The U.S. oil and gas industry is openly lauding elements of a reconciliation package that includes historic renewable energy investments, a response likely to heighten climate advocates' wariness of the bill as Democrats look to push it through the Senate as soon as next week.
The legislation, whose scope and ambitions were dictated by fossil fuel industry ally Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), includes components "that are helpful to our business,"€ Rich Walsh of Valero said during the fossil fuel giant's earnings call on Thursday, referring to tax credits in the 725-page bill that could benefit the company.
The article states without qualification, “many experts say there is a consensus among scientists and political leaders on the need to thin and burn forests more proactively.”
The article suggests that humans always managed the landscapes in Yosemite and elsewhere. And that there is consensus that Indian burning kept the forests open. This view has been challenged but is not acknowledged in the NYT piece.
Nepal has successfully achieved its goal of doubling the tiger population by 2022, as per its commitment, along with 12 other tiger range countries, the first tiger summit in 2010 in St Petersburg.
In 2010, there were 121 tigers in Nepal. The number rose to 198 in 2013 and 235 in 2018.
Nepal has now easily surpassed its commitment to increase the number to 250 in 2022, as 355 tigers were counted during the last census in December.
Tiger researchers, while optimistic, warn that the fierce hunter remains under threat from both poaching and encroachment into its remaining habitat. And nations are struggling to reach their collective goal of doubling the population of wild tigers worldwide between 2010 and 2022, the last two years assigned to the tiger in the Chinese zodiac.
With fewer than 4,000 wild tigers left in the world, more must be done to ensure tiger numbers keep trending upwards. “Every tiger counts, for Nepal and the world,” said Dr. Ghana S. Gurung, Country Representative of WWF-Nepal. “While Nepal is but a few tigers away from our goal to double tiger numbers by 2022, this survey underscores the continued need to ensure protection and improved and contiguous habitats for the long-term survival of the species.”
Nepal's zero-poaching approach has worked to protect the tigers. The military units support the national park teams. And in buffer zones next to the park, community anti-poaching units monitor nature corridors that allow tigers to roam safely.
July 28 is Earth Overshoot Day. As of that day, for the rest of 2022, human economic activity will be using the planet's resources beyond its capacity to renew them. Humans now consume things like wood, water, and soil at nearly twice the rate the planet can support.
We're also fast approaching climate overshoot, beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, by 2030. The Climate Overshoot Commission will meet several times this year to discuss ways to keep that from happening. Meanwhile the World Meteorological Organization calculates a 50 percent chance of touching the 1.5 degree threshold by 2026. Recent intensified storms, fires, floods, and droughts are all symptoms of the fever.
The dominoes are falling. Resource consumption drives climate change, and the biggest driver of consumption is population growth. Strategies for perpetual economic growth demand ever increasing consumption, requiring more and more people, pushing us into overshoot.
A recent UN report titled ‘World Population Prospects 2022’ revealed that Pakistan’s population will jump to 366 million by 2050. To put into perspective, it will be an increase of 56% in the country’s current 220 million population.
Instead of taking holistic measures after the publication of the UN report, Federal Health Minister, Abdul Qadir Patel, has come up with an absurd solution to rein in the rapidly rising population of Pakistan.
Federal Minister for Health Abdul Qadir Patel Monday gave an out-of-the-box solution to couples who want more children.
Presenting a solution to them, the federal minister said during an event that if couples want to have more children, they can go to a country where there are fewer Muslims — so that the Muslim population increases there.
We are now faced with a perfect storm. Inadequate investment in education and poor economic growth have generated enormous resentment and anger among a youth cohort that sees few prospects for advancement amid contracting employment opportunities. The effects of climate change are bearing down unmistakably upon us, and making scarce resources even more so. Unpredictable weather patterns and rising temperatures are adversely affecting harvests and exacerbating food insecurity. Population pressures also leave us much more vulnerable to international developments such as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war that disrupt global supply chains. Shortages of water and electricity have already begun to spark unrest; the smallest provocation, it seems, is enough to trigger mob violence in a people whose patience has been stretched thin by poor governance, rising inflation and urban crime. This is not how a country’s future is secured.
British High Commissioner on Tuesday observed that Pakistan’s population was going to double in the next 30 years putting a huge burden on its resources that demanded a proper response to address the pressing issue.
The British envoy made these remarks during a ceremony to commemorate World Population Day, a collaborative event conducted here in a joint effort of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Pakistan, British High Commission, Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations & Coordination (NHSRC), and Population Programme Wing (PPW), the event revolved around the theme” A world of 8 billion: Towards a resilient future for all – Harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices for all,” a news release said.
While addressing the ceremony, Dr Christian Turner said, “The business-as-usual approach needs to stop. It is important to talk about family planning. The UK is the largest donor on Family Planning in Pakistan and has been supporting the country since 2012. Delivering Accelerated Family Planning in Pakistan (DAFPAK) is a €£90 million programme that has so far reached 7 million family planning users mostly from marginalised communities. The UK remains committed to support Pakistan.” While addressing the World Population Day event via a video testimonial, President Dr Arif Alvi expressed concern over the constant population growth and the meager resources available in Pakistan.
Confronted with China’s industrial prosperity based on self-financed public investment in socialized markets, U.S. officials acknowledge that resolving this fight will take a number of decades to play out. Arming a proxy Ukrainian regime is merely an opening move in turning Cold War 2 (and potentially/or indeed World War III) into a fight to divide the world into allies and enemies with regard to whether governments or the financial sector will plan the world economy and society.
What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education. The alternative is what President Biden calls autocracy, a hostile label for governments strong enough to block a global rent-seeking oligarchy from taking control. China is deemed autocratic for providing basic needs at subsidized prices instead of charging whatever the market can bear. Making its mixed economy lower-cost is called “market manipulation,” as if that is a bad thing that was not done by the United States, Germany and every other industrial nation during their economic takeoff in the 19th and early 20th century.
Russia’s movie theater industry is on the brink of collapse. After the country launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, Hollywood’s largest studios were quick to pull out of the market. Russian distributors initially thought they could make up for the lost movies by showing Indian and Latin American films, but filling theater seats has turned out to be harder than they anticipated. Now, the industry is discussing "solutions” such as the parallel import of foreign films, "compulsory licenses" issued by the Russian government, and the “non-contractual use of rights” to new films. Some theaters have already screened the latest Top Gun and Doctor Strange films illegally, and industry experts say illegal showings will only become more common as theaters fight to stay open. Meduza weighs the future of going to the movies in Russia.
Brett Wilkins reports on how grocery store workers in Hadley, Mass. organized and won a huge labor victory despite anti-union moves.
The truth about inflation is getting covered up by countless myths spewed by corporations and their political lackeys.
You might recall that John Oliver bit years ago about how Americans fall asleep when they hear the word “infrastructure.” We’ll obsess for hours over Elon Musk showmanship, or the innovative potential of NFTs, but the U.S. press in particular falls into a lazy stupor any time actual, essential infrastructure is mentioned. It’s a problem for a species facing an historic climate destabilization that heavily targets… infrastructure.
In prescribing cures for inflation, economists rely on the diagnosis of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman: inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon—too much money chasing too few goods. But that equation has three variables: too much money ("demand") chasing (the "velocity" of spending) too few goods ("supply"). And "orthodox" economists, from Lawrence Summers to the Federal Reserve, seem to be focusing only on the "demand" variable.€
The Federal Reserve's interest rate policy is one of the most important economic decisions that our government makes. If it were more widely understood, and the Fed were held more accountable, Fed officials would probably be more careful about the downside risks of raising interest rates too much.
There is a good debate to be had about whether newspaper endorsements still carry the weight in political races that they once did. But if Missouri Democrats are serious about winning the race for that state’s open US Senate seat, they will pay close attention to the reasoning of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board than they do to ads from millionaire candidates and special-interest groups that are flooding the state’s airwaves.
As the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) invests millions in Democratic primaries to defeat progressives who support Palestine, we speak to one of the candidates: Michigan Congressmember Andy Levin, whose primary is on Tuesday. He is a self-described Zionist who supports a two-state solution, but earlier this year a former president of AIPAC described him as “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the U.S.-Israel relationship.” “What you have here is a real threat to the Democratic Party being able to choose our own nominees that we send to the general election in November,” says Levin. Levin was among 17 House Democrats arrested Tuesday in a pro-abortion protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Fun Fun Fun," a new original cartoon by the inimitable Mr. Fish, considers the altruistic side of the Republican Party.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy's introduction Friday of a bill to make federal bureaucratic personnel at-will employees further stoked fears that marginalized workers will suffer discriminatory firings under a future Republican administration or even GOP-controlled Congress.
"This is obviously a huge and major change, an effort to gear up a major assault on the federal employment system."
The comedian and host of two popular progressive podcasts offers her take on why the American left keeps getting things wrong.
“There is a wide open park with a shade filled pavilion. Completely empty. You would figure that would be the perfect area for evacuees to eat and unwind, but no, they chose a couple parking lots in the middle of town, highly visible, so they could advertise,” a commenter responded.
“They have no authority. They are in costume and they want attention. That is all. Otherwise they would move their charade to a place that makes sense.”
Tech giant Meta has started informing its news partners that the company will stop paying publishers for their content to run on Facebook's News Tab in the US.
According to Axios, as the company is moving forward with sweeping changes to the Facebook experience, news has become less of a priority.
It wasn’t clear why Musk asked the court to keep details of his countersuit confidential when the billionaire, who is also the CEO of SpaceX, had been vocally critical of Twitter on social media and in press interviews in recent months.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confidentially filed a countersuit against Twitter after the company sued him for terminating a deal to buy the social media platform for $44 billion earlier this month, according to multiple news reports.
Elon Musk countersued Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) on Friday, escalating his legal fight against the social media company over his bid to walk away from the $44 billion purchase, although the lawsuit was filed confidentially.
While the 164-page document was not publicly available, under court rules a redacted version could soon be made public.
Catch up quick: Facebook brokered a slew of three-year deals with publishers in 2019. At the time, the company was ramping up its investment in news and hired journalists to help direct publisher traffic to its new tab for news.
The deals were worth roughly $105 million in the U.S., sources told Axios. In addition to that, the company spent around $90 million on news videos for the company's video tab called "Watch."
Driving the news: The tech giant told investors Wednesday that it's planning to cut costs, slow investments and reduce head count as it braces for what CEO Mark Zuckerberg called a "downturn" that has already begun to wreak havoc on its business.
The WSWS continues to receive statements in defence of Dr David Berger, a respected Australian physician and dedicated zero-COVID advocate who is being threatened with deregistration by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) over his social media condemnations of the government’s “let it rip” coronavirus policies.
The man is accused by Turkey of posting derogatory pictures of the President and derogatory comments about him on Facebook, according to the prosecutor. The man from Tampere has repeatedly denied the crime [sic].
Bahrami was one of some 800 women to recently sign a statement denouncing the “systematic” sexual harassment and violence against women in the Iranian film industry and had called for a mechanism to ensure those responsible were dealt with.
Her relatives said Bahrami was returning home in the capital from work when she was surrounded by plainclothes police and taken into custody.
Her whereabouts are not known and officials have not commented on the situation.
The problem with this law is not so much that its sentencing is extreme and irrevocable but rather that Muslims regularly exploit it to settle personal grudges against non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan, as in this case. The fact is, Pakistan’s non-Muslim minorities, mostly Christians and Hindus, know better than to say anything that can be misconstrued as offensive to the Muslim prophet—being, as they are, well acquainted with the dire repercussions. They are taught from youth to exhibit nothing but deference for Islam’s prophet. But that does not stop Muslims from falsely accusing those “infidels” they have a grudge against of vocally insulting Muhammad.
AI is concerned that a number of people facing charges of blasphemy, or convicted on such charges have been detained solely for their real or imputed religious beliefs. Most of those charged with blasphemy belong to the Ahamdiyya community but Christians have increasingly been accused of blasphemy, among them a 13-year-old boy accused of writing blasphemous words on the walls of a mosque despite being totally illiterate. The following case histories are supplied: Anwar Masih, a Christian prisoner; Arshad Javed, reportedly mentally ill, sentenced to death; Gul Masih, a Christian, sentenced to death; Tahir Iqbal, a convert to Christianity, died in jail while on trial; Sawar Masih Bhatti, a Christian prisoner; Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan, Muslim social activist; Chand Barkat, a Christian acquitted of blasphemy but continuously harassed; Hafiz Farooq Sajjad, stoned to death; Salamat Masih, Manzoor Masih and Rehmat Masih, three Christians.
Donald Trump, whose supporters still pretend is a “free speech” champion, has regularly been known to sue news organizations that are mildly critical of him. You may recall that back in 2020 he hired notorious-lawyer-for-suing-media-companies (yes, he once was the lawyer in a case against us), Charles Harder, and sued both the NY Times and the Washington Post. The NY Times case was dismissed easily. The Washington Post case appears to somehow still be alive, though not much has happened in a while. It was, initially, assigned to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has since received two separate promotions, which took her off the case. Somewhere along the way, Harder left the case and was replaced by Harmeet Dhillon, who has been a favorite lawyer of perpetually aggrieved culture warriors.
In September 1965, David Moberg, a 22-year-old reporter in Newsweek’s Los Angeles bureau, interviewed Bob Dylan, who had just begun using electric instruments in his recordings and concerts, which upset fans who preferred a more traditional, acoustic sound. He asked the singer if there was a “new” Bob Dylan. Dylan responded, “How would you like it if somebody introduced you as the ‘new’ David Moberg?”
Rights groups report that Iran also executes more women than any other country, the majority of whom are thought to have been found guilty of killing their husbands.
On Wednesday, the Iran Human Rights Group says former child bride Soheila Abadi was hanged in prison after being convicted of killing her husband after marrying him 10 years previously when she was 15 years old.
In the latest edition of the Delhi Government’s CCTV saga, parents will now be able to livestream CCTV footage of the children who study in Delhi govt. schools. Concerned about potential misuse, we wrote to the Chief Minister’s Office urging them to recall the scheme.
Why should you care?
CCTV surveillance has risen exponentially in the national capital. According to a report titled, “Delhi, Chennai among most surveilled in the world, ahead of Chinese cities”, published on the Forbes India website on August 26, 2021, Delhi is the most surveilled city in the world with 1,826.6 cameras per square mile. While we were concerned after seeing this report, the Government of Delhi on the other hand seemed to take it as an achievement. Now, the Government of Delhi is planning to livestream CCTV footage from government schools to the parents of their children. It is essential that we resist the urge to normalise these levels of surveillance, especially because increasing surveillance fails to fulfil its primary promise, a corresponding increase in security.
The conservative movement that has worked for a half century to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade has finally succeeded: As of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case in June, abortion is no longer a constitutional right guaranteed across the country.
Reproductive freedom advocates on Friday praised President Joe Biden's nomination of an abortion rights attorney to the federal bench in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court reversing Roe v. Wade.
"This important nomination... could not come at a more important time in the fight for reproductive freedom."
Comcast had a particularly ugly second quarter, according to the company’s latest earnings report. The nation’s biggest cable giant not only lost half a million pay TV subscribers as the cord cutting trend continued, it failed to add any new broadband customers for the first time in company history.
The FTC’s latest suit targets the specific category of VR fitness apps. But a key claim is that buying Within has a larger purpose for Meta: “building, and ultimately controlling, a VR ‘metaverse.’” It asserts that by buying the fitness studio, Meta is removing competition that could spur it to keep improving its own software offerings, including the fitness-adjacent rhythm game Beat Saber. “As early as 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg instructed key Facebook executives that his vision for ‘the next wave of computing’ was control of apps and the platform on which those apps were distributed,” it says. “A key part of this strategy was for his company to be ‘completely ubiquitous in killer apps.’”
I’ll preface this post with this short bit of throat-clearing: no writer or reader of this site should expect the average person on the street to understand the nuances of intellectual property at the same level of those of us interested in the topic. The law is complicated and nuanced, and the layperson is simply not going to have the background that some of us have.
Piracy lawsuits should be pretty straightforward. Rightsholders must provide solid evidence that someone shared a copy of their content without permission. However, in a piracy case filed by adult entertainment company Strike 3 the purported "Hollywood style quality" of the porn videos is now a topic of contention.
Players take turns saying a number or passing. You can’t say a number higher or the same as what’s already been said. It’s an action and who bids lowest is the equalizer.
The equalizer sits on black’s left side and white’s right. East, if black is north and white is south.
I've re-watched all the Terminator movies in the past few days, trying to determine how they fit together in some sort of watch order. (A small disclaimer is in order: I haven't seen a single episode of the Sarah Connor Chronicles. This post is about the movies only.)
It's not... easy. Almost all those following Terminator: Judgment Day are reboots or rewrites of the storyline. Although they do take advantage of the confusing mechanics of time travel to sort of make it work.
So how do we do this? Let's attempt to make some sense to it. Here's what I choose to call the School Bus Approach to Terminator (stupid name, sure, but I'm just now re-watching the scene in Genisys where a school bus tumbles around on the Golden Gate Bridge).
I rewatched The Martian some weeks back and had the idea to read the book by Andy Weir it was based on. I ended up liking it enough to also check out Andy Weir's most recent book, Project Hail Mary. And it's a good thing I did since that one, in my opinion, is even better.
I won't go too into detail but the two books are pretty similar. If you like one you'll almost certainly enjoy the other. But they each also feel different and unique which I appreciate having read the two back to back.
My wife and I took our first ever real vacation in the 17 years we have been married.
I've recovered from whatever illness I had before. Perhaps it was food poisoning, or some side-effect of jet lag, or some virus or bacterium. Whatever it was, it's done.
I'm taking a couple days vacation with my family in The Windy City before I start working for the nonprofit. We drove here 2 days ago and spent yesterday at a car dealership looking at folkloric shirts (it's a long story). Today we're going to visit museums.
Greetings fellow pub-goers, it's been a while and I'm all traveled out.
Maybe it was an attempt to make up for the lack of going anywhere over the last two years, or just a yearning for being anywhere else -- but after visiting my family earlier this year, going to a wedding in a hot country last month, and spending three weeks just now in the US -- I can safely say that I'm done.
There is only so much walking under the midday summer sun in a hot country that I am willing to do, and I think I'm well past any healthy limit. Plus, I just can't handle takeoff's and landings anymore. It's gotten to the point that I automatically revert into a meditative state where I hum a song to myself with my hands clasped lightly together until the plane levels out.
Running FreshRSS has been a great experience. So much so that I almost forgot that I had Feedly account, despite using it for more than a decade.
I'm subscribing to more feeds now. Adding new subscriptions no longer feels like a dumb idea; reading posts on Feedly was starting to become so annoying I just didn't want more there.
Because I've locked my FreshRSS instance between HTTP Auth (it's only for me, after all) it can't do WebSub (formerly PubSubHubub). But that's okay. It just meant that the initial import from the OPML file I got from Feedly threw a few errors. It quickly adapted.
Most of the time, I focus on one or two applications (a browser or a text editor and a browser), and everything else (like the IRC client) is packed neatly in the stack area. Therefore, I'm fine with this limitation. I tried to tune the formula to allow 3 tall windows in the master area even with a 16:9 monitor, but they're just too narrow. A high-resolution display doesn't help, because many UIs (especially IDEs with sidebars) don't work well when they're so narrow.
I find the snail layout very nice to use when I combine it with "workspaces". I have one tag with my coding setup (text editor, browser, IRC client, two general-use terminals) and another for everything else (audio mixer, Bluetooth settings, etc'). The former has room for two tall windows in the master area, and the latter is always a mess with "temporary" windows I forgot to close, and changes constantly.
There are many ways to test HF antennas ranging from simulation to various antenna analyzers and bridges. However, nothing can replace simply using the antenna to see how it works. Just as — supposedly — the bumblebee can’t fly, but it does so anyway, it is possible to load up some bed springs and make contacts. But it used to be difficult — although fun — to gather a lot of empirical data about antenna performance. Now you can do it all with WSPR and [TechMinds] suggests a moderately-priced dedicated WSPR transmitter to do the job. You can see a video about the results of this technique below.
If you had the traditional engineering education, you’ve made your peace with calculus. If you haven’t, you may have learned it on your own, but for many people, calculus has a reputation for being super difficult. While some of the details can be very tricky, the core concepts are actually simple and [Mathologer] has a very simple explanation along with some good graphics that can help you get started on calculus mastery if you’ve been putting it off. Using a car on the highway as the prototypical example, he covers quite a bit of ground in the 30 minute video that you can see below.
I've packaged W95FA for the Lagrange gemini browser as a bit of fun.
I've been contacted by several HR people who are looking for a software engineer. It's good. I'm always looking for new challenges. What I can't stand is a large portion of the company decides that they should test the candidate's algorithm skill. Sorry, what? You just said you want to hire a senior GPU developer. Instead of interviewing with actual related domain knowledge and writing code that runs on the GPU. You decided if I want the potision, I should spend time on LeetCode and write algorithm questions. You are waisting my time. And so I'll have my revenge.
I'm a strong advocate of downstream packaging, however, one of the downsides I neglected to mention is when a package becomes unmaintained (i.e, orphaned). I've seen this happen with both traditional package management and also on Flathub.
In the latter case, the update for an app and a PR was available for months, but the maintainer was inactive. I e-mailed the Flathub admins and they manually intervened. It was for an emulator, so not a big deal and I didn't plan on using it for long anyway. As another example, arc-theme (a GTK theme) was outdated for months as the original upstream was no longer maintained. It took a while for the package for a new maintainer to adopt the package and switch to the new upstream.
So I got let go from Google Summer of Code, it's unfortunate, but the project just involved different skillsets than I expected, and I wasn't able to hack it. I have enough money to probably get me through August and into the period of time I go to houston to visit family.
I originally saw these as two seperate projects, but in the process of writing them, I have realized that they can be completed in sequence.
Start a personal project, see if it gets big, then either go to houston and work on it there for free for a while, or come back after going there for a few weeks and work on it here. Coming back would be preferable, but I probably would have to get a "regular job" to pay for myself until I could get it out.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.