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Links 12/09/2022: rpki-client 8.0 and Game of Trees 0.75



  • GNU/Linux

    • Linux Made SimpleLinux Weekly Roundup #199

      Welcome to this week's Linux Weekly Roundup. We had a good week in the world of Linux releases with OpenMandriva 5.0-candidate, Debian 11.5, and Bluestar Linux 5.19.7.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • VideoHow to install Viber on Pop!_OS 22.04 - Invidious

        In this video, we are looking at how to install Viber on Pop!_OS 22.04.

      • MichaÅ‚ WoźniakDealing with SEO Link Spam E-mails

        Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. None of this is legal advice. All of this might also be a horribly bad idea.

        Ah, SEO link spam e-mails. If you have a blog that’s been online longer than, say, three years, you know what I’m talking about: [...]

      • Linux Made SimpleHow to install Blender 3.3.0 on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Blender 3.3.0 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

        This tutorial will only work on Chromebooks with an Intel or AMD CPU (with Linux Apps Support) and not those with an ARM64 architecture CPU.

      • MakeTech Easier5 Ways to Hide Desktop Icons in Ubuntu - Make Tech Easier

        If hiding the top bar and side panel isn’t enough, and you want everything removed from your Ubuntu desktop, then you’d probably also like to get rid of those pesky icons on its surface. Read on to learn how you can hide desktop icons in Ubuntu.

      • Setting up your own Shiny and RStudio Server on a Raspberry Pi

        This article was originally published back in 2018 and a lot has changed since then, so I have completely re-write it to take into account the most recent advancements in support for the arm64 architecture within the R ecosystem.

        Back in 2018, I participated in a forum topic at Community RStudio where @jladata was asking if a Raspberry Pi 3B+ could make it as a viable Shiny server. I actually use a Raspberry Pi for that very purpose so I decided to share with the R community, my experience setting up Shiny and Rstudio Server natively on a Raspberry Pi.

    • Games

      • ViceForensic Analysts Accuse Billy Mitchell of Cheating for Donkey Kong Record

        The controversy revolves around Billy Mitchell, a well-known player who holds several records on classic arcade games such as Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, and the main character in the documentary King of Kong. For years, some people in the retro arcade game community have accused Mitchell of lying about his Donkey Kong records, prompting Twin Galaxies, an arcade game community that keeps track of high scores (among other things) and the Guinness World Records to strip Mitchell of its recognition, though the organization later reversed its decision.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • BSD

      • Mailing list ARChivesrpki-client 8.0 released

        rpki-client is a FREE, easy-to-use implementation of the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) for Relying Parties (RP) to facilitate validation of BGP announcements. The program queries the global RPKI repository system and validates untrusted network inputs. The program outputs validated ROA payloads, BGPsec Router keys, and ASPA payloads in configuration formats suitable for OpenBGPD and BIRD, and supports emitting CSV and JSON for consumption by other routing stacks.

        See RFC 6480 and RFC 6811 for a description of how RPKI and BGP Prefix Origin Validation help secure the global Internet routing system.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • NBCNurse's vehicle hit 130 mph in collision that killed 5 in L.A. County, prosecutors say

        Data from the Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupe that Nicole Linton was driving show she accelerated in the 5 seconds before the multi-vehicle Aug. 4 crash, going from 122 mph to 130 mph, according to a motion filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and obtained by NBC Los Angeles.

        The document, filed to oppose pretrial release and bail for Linton, 37, a traveling nurse, also alleged that data showed she did not try to brake or slow down before impact.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers

      • Chromium

        • [Old] Brave BrowserComparing the Network Behavior of Popular Browsers on First-Run

          This effort compared the first-run experiences of five popular browsers: Brave, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera. Each of these readings were conducted on an updated Windows 10 (Version 20H2, Build 19042.804) desktop computer, with an authenticated Microsoft account.

    • Programming/Development

      • UndeadlyGame of Trees 0.75 released

        Stefan Sperling (stsp@) noted the release of version 0.75 of Game of Trees: [...]

      • Armin RonacherYou Can't Do That: Abstracting over Ownership in Rust with Higher-Rank Type Bounds. Or Can You?

        Let's set the stage first: The problem I'm talking about relates to abstracting over borrows and owned values when combined with functions or something that uses higher-kinded trait bounds. In other words: one wants to create an API where it's possible to either borrow or clone out of some input value. Think of a generic function that can produce both a String and a &str.

      • Terence EdenRunning a Shortest Splitline Algorithm on the UK - and other mapping adventures

        The Splitline Algorithm is, conceptually, very simple:

        1) Divide the entire map in half based on population.

        2) Repeat (1) for each half.

        3) Once you have reached the target number of voters in each segment, stop.

      • Matt RickardRecursive-length Prefix (RLP)/Simple Serialize (SSZ)

        The problem: data needs to be encoded/decoded over the wire, but also for hash verification (a transaction is signed by signing the RLP hash of the transaction data, blocks are identified by the RLP hash of their header). Additionally, for some cases, there should be support for efficient encoding of the merkle tree data structure.

      • PerlHow does SPVM resolve the problems of Perl numeric operations? | Yuki Kimoto Perl Blog - Perl Club [blogs.perl.org]

        How does SPVM resolve the problems of Perl numeric operations?

        I hear Perl have the problems of numeric operation.

        I realized this problems, and try to resolve them using SPVM. (SPVM is yet experimental release).

      • Tales Tips and Tricks: GSoC 2022 Final Report

        So here we have it, the end of my Google Summer of Code journey. A few more than a hundred days have passed, and I can already tell that the seeds have been sown for me to keep collaborating with open source software from here on out.

        My project’s primary goal was to create unit tests using KUnit for the AMDGPU driver focusing on code used by GPUs from the same generation of the GPU “RX 580” (DCE 11.2). We predicted that KUnit would have some limitations in regards to testing GPU’s drivers, so we expected to see some collaboration in that sense. Finally, we knew that I would be working in parallel with people writing tests for newer generations of GPUs (DCN). I planned to keep track of my weekly progress in my blog, trying to create an introductory material that could help future newcomers.

        For starters, this project was completely different from what I had in mind, given that it was far from an individual experience with the Linux Kernel community; it was actually a team effort to introduce unit testing to the AMD display driver in a way that would encourage the community to spread KUnit into other GPU drivers.

      • R

        • RObservations #38: Visualizing Average Delay Times On TTC Subway Stations | bensstats

          Any Torontonian who has commuted regularly on the TTC has probably experienced their fair share of delays on the subway. Having experienced a few recently I was inspired to visualize the average delay times across all stops on the subway. What are the stations with the longest delays on average this past year? Could we make a nice visual with it?

        • Dirk EddelbuettelDirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.11.2.4.0 on CRAN: Bugfix and Deprecation

          Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra and scientific computing. It aims towards a good balance between speed and ease of use, has a syntax deliberately close to Matlab, and is useful for algorithm development directly in C++, or quick conversion of research code into production environments. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 1016 packages other packages on CRAN, downloaded 26.2 million times (per the partial logs from the cloud mirrors of CRAN), and the CSDA paper (preprint / vignette) by Conrad and myself has been cited 493 times according to Google Scholar.

        • FinnstatsAssess Performance of the Classification Model - finnstats

          Assess Performance of the Classification Model, We can evaluate a classification model’s effectiveness using a metric called the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC).

        • Professional Shiny App UI and Layouts with imola and shiny.fluent - R programming

          Shiny as a web framework is known for its combination of power, simplicity, and flexibility. It’s a convenient tool for app development at all levels, from proof of concept to production-grade Shiny apps. With additional packages like {imola} and {shiny.fluent}, anyone can create professional Shiny app UIs with custom layout options.

          These characteristics make Shiny an easy-to-pick-up technology, helping teams and R users – without web development experience – to create applications and automate tasks fast. But soon we realize that this simplicity comes with a cost: boilerplate applications that look basic and monotonous.

        • How to Concatenate Strings in R

          We can perform string concatenation in R language using the paste() and cat() methods.

        • Notes of a Dabbler - Exploring OMPR with HiGHS solver

          There is a class of software for modeling optimization problems referred to as algebraic modeling systems which provide a unified interface to formulate optimization problems in a manner that is close to mathematical depiction and have the ability to link to different types of solvers (sparing the user from solver specific ways of formulating the problem). Both commercial and open source options are available. GAMS and AMPL are examples of commercial options. The popular open source options are JuMP in Julia and Pyomo in python. I have typically used Pyomo in Python but have explored using it from R. I recently became aware of algebraic modeling system in R provided by OMPR package developed by Dirk Schumacher.

        • FinnstatsHow to Apply AI to Small Data Sets? - finnstats

          How to Apply AI to Small Data Sets? Data science and artificial intelligence collaborate to better gather, classify, analyze, and interpret data.

          But all we constantly hear about is employing AI to comprehend huge data sets.

          This is because individuals can typically understand small data sets, therefore using AI to analyze and interpret them is not necessary.

        • MediumVisualizing OLS Linear Regression Assumptions in R | by Trevor French | Trevor French | Sep, 2022 | Medium

          While most of the time it’s sufficient to programmatically validate your model assumptions, sometimes it’s helpful to visualize them. Here are a few quick ways you can do just that.

        • MediumGlobal vs. local assignment operators in R (‘<<-’ vs. ‘<-’) | by Trevor French | Trevor French | Sep, 2022 | Medium

          Understanding the difference between local and global assignment operators in R can be tricky to get your head around. Here’s an example which should clear things up.

        • How to Find Optimal Clusters in R? - Data Science Tutorials

          How to Find Optimal Clusters in R, K-means clustering is one of the most widely used clustering techniques in machine learning.

          With the K-means clustering technique, each observation in a dataset is assigned to one of K clusters.

          The ultimate goal is to have K clusters in which the observations are relatively similar to one another within each cluster and considerably dissimilar from one another within different clusters.

      • Python

    • Standards/Consortia

      • ViceGoogle Is Begging Apple to Make Life Better for Green Bubbles

        Lately, Google and Apple are openly at war about the iMessage versus not-iMessage controversy. During Vox Media’s Code 2022 event on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook fielded a question about whether Apple would ever adopt the Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard for iMessage, which would improve the quality of images and videos between Android and Apple users, and, in theory, end the green versus blue war. Predictably, he said no.

  • Leftovers

    • 42 of the most annoying buzzwords and what to do about them. | PerfectIt™ | Proofreading Software for Professionals.

      Let’s put it this way: At the end of the day, ditching buzzwords would be a win-win

      [...]

      You’re not always going to be able to remove all buzzwords, of course—for one thing, your boss might be a big fan of them. For another, some of them are truly relevant: KPIs, when used properly, are an important part of business strategy. And beyond that, to a certain extent they can be proof of membership in the business community. But at least you have a sense of what you can do about them when you notice them.

      Which, however, still leaves the challenge of noticing them. When you’re in a business environment, you can be so surrounded by buzzwords that sometimes they sail past you. That’s where PerfectIt comes in. PerfectIt is an easy-to-use add-in to Microsoft Word, and you can make it your buzzword hunter. You can build in the buzzwords and buzzphrases you want to watch out for, and you can put in advice for what to do with it. PerfectIt will let you know about every instance it finds, show your recommended handling of it, and then leave it up to you and your professional judgment. You can even share your PerfectIt style with your colleagues so that they can reduce their buzzwords too.

      So if you want to leverage technology for new synergies in buzzword elimination—in other words, use your computer to help you notice and deal with buzzwords—you don’t need a perfect storm. You just need PerfectIt. If you don’t already have PerfectIt, click to get a free trial.

    • RoseHostingWhat is a CDN and Why You Need It? [Ed: No, CDNs have become an outsourcing thing (risk), as few people bother making their own (w.g. varnish for caching or HA)]

      Google indicated that they emphasize page load speed in their SEO rankings. What’s more, a site that loads in 1 second has a 5x higher conversion rate than a site that loads in 10 seconds.

    • Hardware

      • Ruben SchadeRubenerd: Discovering 850 watt SFX power supplies exist

        Small form-factor computer enthusiasts have to accept compromises to save space. Tall air coolers for dense CPUs might protrude too far, and liquid radiators might be too wide. Larger graphics cards might be too long to fit, take up too many PCI slots, or need additional physical support. But even if our smaller cases could accommodate all this, our power supplies might not.

        My current desktop power supply is a Corsair 750 W Platinum SFX. I’ve used Corsair power supplies for more than a decade; they’re quiet, well constructed, easy to cable up, and have outlived other components by years. They’re also packaged thoughtfully; something you don’t realise is nice until you get it.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • France24Venice film festival: US opioid crisis documentary wins top prize

        A documentary tracing an artist's campaign against the family behind the US opioid drug epidemic scooped the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, on Saturday.

      • HRWAir Pollution Kills Millions Every Year: Action Needed

        Air pollution is a global issue. The World Health Organization calls air pollution the “single biggest environmental threat to human health and estimates that 99 percent of the world’s population live in locations that are above WHO thresholds designed to protect human health. Ambient (or outdoor) air pollution is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, forest fires, waste burning, other industrial activities and natural factors.

        An estimated seven million people die every year from indoor and outdoor air pollution. That’s more than died from Covid-19 over the last two years. Often invisible, air pollution receives little attention compared with other public health emergencies, but the threats to health are every bit as real. In fact, 94 percent of air pollution deaths are due to noncommunicable diseases – notably cardiovascular disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer. And nine out of ten of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.

      • SalonThis president was shot in the back, but the doctors are the ones who killed him

        The underlying issue is that the doctors who probed Garfield's body refused to wash their hands. Even though doctors had known about hand-washing since the 1840s, many American physicians were put off by the idea that a doctor's hands could ever be unclean, or were simply unaware of the strong evidence that hand-washing works. The doctors who attended to Garfield, led by a former Civil War surgeon named Dr. D. Willard Bliss (the first 'D' actually stood for 'Doctor,' his given name), insisted on probing the bullet wound in the president's back without first washing their hands. Dozens of medical professionals — not one of them washing their hands — poked and prodded Garfield's open wound. Even their instruments were not sterilized, despite British surgeon Joseph Lister proving by the mid-1860s that sterilization was important. (These ideas had also either not reached American doctors or, when that happened, been rejected by them.) To add figurative salt to the wound, Garfield's doctors declined to use ether as anesthetic (this practice had existed since the 1840s), meaning the president was in horrible pain every day as they gradually expanded his three-inch bullet wound into a 1 foot, 8 inch long incision that oozed pus.

    • Proprietary

      • RTERTÉ and Twitter partnership to bring Irish football fans to the sidelines of World Cup 2022

        Through Twitter Amplify, advertisers will be able to align their ads with premium video content and utilise the most engaging moments from the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™, posted directly from @RTESport, enabling them to run branded pre-roll video during the world’s biggest sporting tournament.

      • [Old] RNZThree waters IT system project could top $500m, warns National

        He said the department was in "commercial conversations" aiming for the "high tens of millions" on the low end, but his officials said utility projects of this type and size typically cost in the range of between $300 million and $500m.

      • [Old] Dave LaneFixing government IT procurement

        Government procurement officers mistakenly attribute the cost penalty of being "incompatible" to the incoming supplier rather than attributing the cost of migration to an incompatible solution to the business practices of the incumbent which was previously granted a monopoly on that particular service. This is a form of "lock-in" which seems almost entirely unacknowledged.

        It is also extremely prone to abuse by powerful suppliers (the largest of whom individually have market capitalisation in excess of New Zealand's GDP, effectively rendering them "above the law" here) who actively exploit their advantage through monopoly rents, and who quite deliberately use the perceived high cost of switching to other suppliers to maintain their lucrative positions.

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • CNETPasskeys, the No-Password Login Tech, Come to iOS 16 on Monday

          It's a new type of login credential consisting of a little bit of digital data your PC or phone uses when logging onto a server. You approve each use of that data with an authentication step, such as fingerprint check, face recognition, a PIN code or the login swipe pattern familiar to Android phone owners.

          Here's the catch: You'll have to have your phone or computer with you to use passkeys. You can't log onto a passkey-secured account from a friend's computer without a device of your own.

        • CNETBeware, That VPN May Not Be What You Think It Is

          To save you time, here are a few of the biggest red flags to watch out for when taking your new VPN out for a test drive. And on the flip side, here are three things to look for in a VPN.

        • New ScientistYour smartphone could recognise you just by the way you hold it | New Scientist

          Your phone may be able to recognise you just from the vibrations in your hand. An algorithm trained to identify people this way did so with more than 90 per cent accuracy.

          Gentian Jakllari at the Toulouse Institute of Computer Science Research in France and his colleagues trained an artificially intelligent algorithm to identify an individual based on patterns in their hand vibrations when holding a smartphone.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • SalonTrump judge's ruling in Mar-a-Lago case proves Biden was right: MAGA is fascism

        There's been, for good reason, a lot of interest in exactly what Trump wants all these classified documents for. Is it for selling them? Or perhaps exchanging them to hostile foreign leaders for political favors? It's hard to say, but even without knowing his purpose, it's alarming that Trump is going to such lengths to hang onto the documents, and that his supporters are going to such lengths to defend his illegal behavior. This is all about putting Trump above the law. By issuing this ruling, Cannon has blessed Trumpism's basic premise: Donald Trump has powers that not only above those of the elected president but powers that exceed those of the office itself. This ruling proves that Biden was right to warn Americans: Trump is a fascist and a threat to democracy.

      • NBCWhy our 14th Amendment lawsuit against a Trump fanatic sets a key American precedent

        This week’s court decision is the first case in which any judge, at any level, has ruled that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was an insurrection as defined by the Constitution. It reaffirms our basic American commitment to a democratic system with its finding that those who seek to undermine the rule of law and the peaceful transition of power have no place in government.

        The disqualification clause states that anyone who swears an oath to the Constitution and then participates in an insurrection is disqualified from holding state or federal office. As the North Carolina Supreme Court found in 1869, the last year one of these cases previously went to trial: “The oath to support the Constitution is the test. The idea being that one who had taken an oath to support the Constitution and violated it, ought to be excluded from taking it again, until relieved by Congress.”

      • Deutsche WelleFrench terror trial: Survivors of Nice attack are hoping for answers

        The perpetrator, a 31-year-old Tunisian national, killed 86 people that day. More than 400 were injured. He himself won't be on trial. The police shot him dead that night. Investigators believe he became radicalized without being in direct contact with the "Islamic State" terror group who claimed responsibility shortly after the attack.

      • RFIAppeal to start in French court over Charlie Hebdo attack

        Those shot dead in the Charlie Hebdo office included some of France's most celebrated cartoonists including Jean Cabut, known as Cabu, 76, Georges Wolinski, 80, and Stephane "Charb" Charbonnier, 47.

      • New York TimesTrial Over 2016 Terror Attack in Nice Opens in Paris

        The third high-profile terrorism trial in France in two years opened on Monday in Paris, with eight defendants facing charges in a 2016 attack in the Mediterranean city of Nice that left more than 80 people dead and hundreds more injured or traumatized.

        It comes on the heels of monthslong trials in the 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Paris attacks. The three mass killings shook France to its core in the mid-2010s and left unhealed wounds, turning the proceedings into moments of catharsis as much as fact-finding.

      • France24Appeal to start in French court over Charlie Hebdo attack

        The first trial was held in 2020 with 14 defendants -- some tried in their absence -- accused of helping the gunmen prepare and organise the attacks in the French capital.

      • RTLAppeal to start in French court over Charlie Hebdo attack

        Twelve people were killed at the magazine's Paris office by brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who said they were acting on behalf of Al-Qaeda to avenge Charlie Hebdo's decision to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

        The killings signalled the start of a deadly wave of Islamist attacks around Europe.

      • AhvalTurkey pushing migrants in ‘brutal weaponization’ against Greece - Athens

        Turkey is steering the flow of thousands into Greece, it cited Theodorikakos as telling Skai TV, in a “brutal and immoral weaponization” of undocumented migrants.

      • Turkey pushing migrants into Greece, says minister

        Greek Citizens’ Protection Minister Takis Theodorikakos accused Turkey on Saturday of the “brutal and immoral weaponization” of undocumented migrants.

        Speaking to Skai TV, Theodorikakos said that in August alone, 40,000 irregular migrants attempted to cross into Greece at the Evros border, and since the beginning of the year this number has reached 150,000.

      • MedforthAustria: Graz mosque as a hub for terror recruitment

        The accused, aged between 23 and 56 – mostly Bosnians and Austrians – were all active in the Furkan mosque in Graz and held various management positions in the association founded for this purpose, such as chairman, treasurer or secretary. In the course of their activities, they allegedly persuaded young people to go to Syria as IS fighters or prepared them for this. They are charged with membership of a terrorist organisation, membership of a criminal organisation, financing of terrorism and anti-state connections, which is why they have now been tried before a jury. The 400-page case from Graz was delegated to Vienna because Facebook postings were decisive. Thus, it is a media content offence and the Supreme Court decided that the Vienna Regional Court for Criminal Matters has jurisdiction. The defendants, who are all at large, pleaded not guilty.

      • AhvalChristians in Turkey say threatened by ultra-nationalist planning murders

        Malatya is notorious for a hideous murder of Christians who belonged to the Salvation Church of which Serin is a member. Two Turkish converts from Islam and a German citizen were attacked, tortured and murdered in a publishing house by five ultranationalists assailants on April 18, 2007. The murders became known as the missionary massacres in the Turkish media.

        After the killings, the publishing house was shut down and some Christians left the city or Turkey.

      • AxiosHarris says internal threats to democracy fuel questions of U.S. values

        Why it matters: The deadly Jan. 6 Capitol Riot and increasing threats against members of Congress in recent years have shone a greater spotlight on the dangers of domestic extremism.

      • Rolling StonePro-MAGA D.C. Cop Secretly Worked to Undermine Seth Rich Investigation

        But the Rich investigation would test Sines like no other before it. She would have to wade through a morass of online lies and political chicanery in search of Rich’s killer. She didn’t yet know that someone on the inside was leaking information about the investigation itself.

      • MedforthApple promotes the Islamic veil at the launch of its new iPhone
    • Environment

      • US Navy TimesMagnet fishers fined after pulling 86 rockets from Fort Stewart river

        No good deed goes unpunished.

        In the case of some magnet fishers who cleared 86 rockets, a tank tracer round, and .50 caliber ammo belts from a river on Fort Stewart, the toll was a number of fines from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

        The group, led by treasure hunter Bryce Nachtwey, called the bomb squad after their magnet fishing dredged up the ammunition and 86 rockets in a Delta Airlines duffel bag, saying they were just trying to do the right thing.

      • NBCAn intense marine heat wave is setting ocean temperature records in the North Atlantic

        Sea surface temperatures in these regions hit record levels this summer, said Dillon Amaya, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Physical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Parts of the Pacific and North Atlantic have been anywhere from 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) warmer than average at times, conditions that have not been observed since record keeping began roughly six decades ago.

      • Didier StevensQuickpost: Sun Drying Biodegradable Waste | Didier Stevens

        As biodegradable waste contains a lot of water, I was wondering how much mass reduction I can achieve by exposing it to the sun (by evaporating some of the contained water).

      • Energy

        • RlangGraphing California Electricity Supply using ggplot2

          Graphing California Electricity Supply using ggplot2 during record temperatures 9/05/2022 – 09/09/2022

          Raw data from CA ISO. Data is available in 5 minute increments for each 24 hour period.

        • ReasonCryptocurrency's Structural Security Problem

          I explore the remarkable number of failures in cryptocurrency security for Lawfare. I argue that security really is worse for cryptocurrency, because the decentralization that proponents treasure makes it hard to safely disclose and fix security holes: [...]

        • IDALight is Energy: Estimating the Impact of Light Pollution on Climate Change

          All of this wasted light adds up. Globally we spend at least $50 billion in energy costs each year to produce light that escapes into space. In the United States, a conservative estimate of savings by completing the transition to LED lights and using lighting control systems is at least $15.4 billion annually by 2035.

        • YLETampere to launch regular robot bus operations this year

          During the initial phase of operations, there will be a driver on board, but in the future, the aim is for drivers to handle the monitoring remotely. In addition to safety driver skills, students will be trained to drive a traditional minibus, which may be used to replace a robot vehicle in exceptional situations.

          After a two-month trial period early this year, Tampere Regional Transport (Nysse) plans to start using robobuses in regular traffic before year's end. The kilometre-long route connects the tram line's Hervanta terminus with the Lintuhytti residential area.

        • Michael West MediaWhy corporate ’green-washing' causing stir - Michael West

          Progressive, climate-savvy Australians have driven so-called responsible investment to new highs.

          But they expect more than a tick and flick by companies when it comes to backing up their claims on environmental values, gender and racial inclusion or stamping out slavery.

          Environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria are used to screen investments and encourage companies to act responsibly.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Russell GravesGolden Spike National Historic Park

          Last post, I promised a lot more steam locomotives - so, here you go! This was our stop on the way into Utah, and is well worth a stop if you’re in the area!

      • Overpopulation

        • NPRWhatever happened to the 'No Sex for Fish' women after the flood? Hint: It's 'amazing'

          Eventually the waters of the Lake receded and the Nduru Beach women came up with a plan that seemed risky but made sense to them: Let's go back to fishing.

          Here's the story of the unexpected revival of No Sex for Fish.

        • CaliforniaMap shows California’s current drought status as record heat bakes the region

          On Tuesday, downtown Sacramento broke an almost century old record with an all-time high temperature of 116 degrees. Throughout California, power grids are straining as energy usage soars, teetering towards potential blackouts.

        • India TodayOverpopulation, concrete jungle, altered landscape: Decoding Bengaluru’s urban flood woes

          The city’s population, which stood at 1.6 lakh in 1901, is estimated to be more than one crore today. This rapid and extreme growth has triggered a massive demand for land and the city began sprawling out. Ignoring the topography of the land, construction began in the valleys and ridges, which in turn altered the original topography, with minor drains disappearing.

          The new structures not only impacted water infiltration into the soil but also began obstructing the movement of water in the valleys. Most of the drains on private properties disappeared, while public ownership drains proved insufficient to carry water during heavy rainfall days. These existing canals, which were not created for inundation requirements, proved inadequate to the task of carrying excess rainwater. Extreme amounts of engineering, sewage flow and clogging further hampered flow in the canals.

        • BBCHow many people can Earth handle?

          Others, meanwhile – including the British broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Attenborough – have labelled our swarming masses a "plague on the Earth". In this view, nearly every environmental problem we're currently facing, from climate change to biodiversity loss, water stresses and conflicts over land, can be traced back to our rampant reproduction over the last few centuries. Back in 1994 – when the global population was a mere 5.5 billion – a team of researchers from Stanford University, in California, calculated that the ideal size of our species would be between 1.5 and 2 billion people.

          So is the world overpopulated currently? And what might the future hold for the global dominance of humanity? The debate over the ideal number of people on the planet is as fractured and emotionally charged as ever – but time is running out to decide which is the best direction.

    • Finance

      • The Wall Street JournalU.S. Recovers Over $30 Million in Cryptocurrency Stolen by North Korean Hackers

        U.S. authorities have seized more than $30 million in cryptocurrency plundered from an online game this year by hackers linked to North Korea, one of the largest successes clawing back digital revenue from Pyongyang, investigators said.

      • Scoop News GroupPatreon security team layoffs cause backlash in creator community

        Patreon, which boasts as many as 8 million monthly users on its platform for fans to support creators and artists, suffered a major breach in 2015. Hackers broke into the company’s user database and released several gigabytes of internal data including usernames, email address and mail addresses. No credit-card numbers or Social Security numbers were accessed in the breach, the company said at the time.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Michael West MediaGod save the Governor-General? - Michael West

        The Labor government announced that the $18m charity endorsed by the Governor-General, funded by the taxpayer, headed by a low-profile businessman, and with only the vaguest mandate, would be scrapped. But will David Hurley survive this?

      • Michael West MediaElizabeth’s legacy: the enduring Australian monarchy - Michael West

        King Charles III presents a vexed dilemma for the Albanese government as it proceeds with the referendum to enshrine an Indigenous voice in the constitution, writes Mark Sawyer.

      • Michael West MediaThe man who won’t lie down: Australian ice hockey still getting snowed

        Despite our climate, Australian hockey has thrived at the grassroots level. But its administration has long been beset with scandal, incompetence and spin, writes Sandi Logan.

        Recruiters and the board of Ice Hockey Australia (IHA) have not ruled out the possibility disgraced businessman Grove Bennett could return to the organisation under a new six-figure contract position as general manager.

        Bennett, who fled Canada in 2017 leaving behind millions of dollars of debt to 62 creditors, was a director on the board and then president of the national ice hockey organisation from September 2021, and was moving to embed himself as its chief executive officer before he was exposed, resigning in disgrace last May following an MWM exposé.

      • QuilletteReject the Rules of the Social Media Game

        I was not alone in this love affair. According to a 2019 report by ThinkNow, 40 percent of US online users between the ages of 18 and 22 say that they are at least somewhat addicted to social media (this falls only slightly to 37 percent for the demographic aged 23–38). Effects are particularly pronounced amongst the young population, where it has been reported that roughly one-in-five US teens visits YouTube “almost constantly,” while 54 percent of teens say that it would be hard to abstain from social media. In light of these growing levels of dependence, we might reasonably ask how we can forge healthier relationships with the social media machine. What emerges when we dig deeper, however, is disenchanting. Invariably, we do not control the machine, the machine controls us.

      • USAReadout of White House Listening Session on Tech Platform Accountability

        Remove special legal protections for large tech platforms. Tech platforms currently have special legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that broadly shield them from liability even when they host or disseminate illegal, violent conduct or materials. The President has long called for fundamental reforms to Section 230.

      • Broadband BreakfastA White House Event, Biden Administration Seeks Regulation of Big Tech

        “Tech platforms currently have special legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that broadly shield them from liability even when they host or disseminate illegal, violent conduct or materials,” argued the White House document.

        Biden’s hostility towards Section 230 is not new. Section 230 protects internet platforms from most legal liability that might otherwise result from third party–generated content. For example, although an online publication may be guilty of libel for a news story it publishes, it cannot be held liable for slanderous reader posts in its comments section.

        Critics of Section 230 say that it unfairly shields rogue social media companies from accountability for their misdeeds. And in addition to Biden and other Democrats, many Republicans are dislike the provision. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, argue that platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube discriminate against conservative speech and therefore should not benefit from such federal legal protections.

        Section 230’s proponents say that it is the foundation of online free speech.

      • [Old] 47 U.S. Code €§ 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material

        (4) Access software provider

        The term “access software provider” means a provider of software (including client or server software), or enabling tools that do any one or more of the following:

        (A) filter, screen, allow, or disallow content;

        (B) pick, choose, analyze, or digest content; or

        (C) transmit, receive, display, forward, cache, search, subset, organize, reorganize, or translate content.

      • The Kent StaterKent State to spearhead multimillion dollar Intel microelectronics collaboration

        Kent State is joining forces with 13 other higher education institutions to support the microelectronics industry.

        In March, Intel introduced the Semiconductor Education and Research Program for Ohio as part of the company’s promise to invest $100 million into education collaborations with universities across the country, of which $50 million dollars was allocated to Ohio institutions.

      • Le MondeBiden inaugurates Intel's giant chip factory in Ohio

        On Friday, September 9, giant bulldozers surveyed a huge construction site in the countryside near Columbus, Ohio. The entire local economic and political elite was present. The event was the launch of a new construction site by Intel, which will invest 20 billion dollars (19.7 billion euros) to build a huge microprocessor factory that will compete with the Koreans from Samsung and the Taiwanese from TSMC.

      • Muslim world’s intellectual suicide

        When the Asharite school of thought (text over reasoning) won over the Mutazalite school of thought (reasoning over text), the culture of pressure on dissidents and heretics developed, which lead to eventual decay and decline. The Ottoman Caliphate which subsequently absorbed all that was left of the Arab expansionism did its own expansion to Arab lands. Since the Turkic culture was a sequestered one which initially opposed the import of the printing press and had a harem culture, it ended up strengthening the Arab tribal tradition of gender apartheid and enforced an inhuman view of women. That therein is the ‘intellectual suicide’ that the Islamic world committed in the 12th century. The sack of Baghdad by Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, sealed the destruction and the Muslim world has never risen to its former tolerance levels.

      • Frontpage MagazineCognitive Dissonance at the Core of Islam

        Here he is reiterating an objective fact – that Islam definitively permits child marriage. He is also providing the predetermined “reasoning” for this viewpoint, which illustrates the depth of the chasm between Islam and the rest of mankind: Mohammed did it so it can’t be wrong.

      • Corporate Wokeness Hurts the Groups It Purports to Help

        Every day, corporate America has launched a new initiative that reasonably could be described as “woke.” At first glance, this wokeness doesn’t seem so bad. Doesn’t America have a history of racism, discrimination and injustice? Don’t these persist? Shouldn’t we seek to remedy them?

        Yes, of course.

        Wokeness, however, especially among corporations, isn’t the answer. It’s fundamentally illiberal, undermining centuries-old principles such as the rule of law, equality under the law, freedom of speech and due process of law. It harms the very communities it purports to help.

      • Misinformation/Disinformation

        • The EconomistLoudspeakers in Vietnam’s capital will blare propaganda once more

          The lao phuong have a long history. During the war they provided warning of American bombing raids, and shared optimistic updates from the front line. When the conflict ended they were put to other purposes. One Hanoi resident remembers hearing neighbours shamed for not paying their taxes. Another recalls a song encouraging people to clean their neighbourhoods and chastising households which had not yet pitched in. One ditty urged the twice-daily brushing of teeth.

          Endless announcements offended the ears as much as they did the spirit. Pham Gia Ngoc, who spent decades broadcasting statements about everything from power cuts to vaccination schedules, told state media that residents often became so incensed by the racket that they cut speakers’ wires or turned them upside down and filled them with water. Loa phuong became slang. A Hanoian bigmouth can be accused of being “as loud as the ward loudspeaker”.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Screen Rant10 Banned Movies That Only Got More Famous After Their Bans

        While censorship is a tool that some directors might wish governments didn't have, it's a tool nonetheless. With these movies, however, the efforts of governing bodies were all in vain.

        Most notorious in the video nasty era of the '70s and '80s, but still continuing to this day, censorship bodies are keen to limit the distribution of movies that they see as "morally corrupting." Despite their efforts, however, the Streisand Effect often takes effect, making a movie more famous than it ever would've been otherwise, all because people were desperate to stop audiences from seeing it.

      • [Old] ReasonKlobuchar's Media Bill Won't Save the Press

        But laws like the JCPA could make it more difficult and costly for platforms to provide access and allow users to share this sort of information from small, local news sources. Consumers might end up facing additional paywalls as online platforms will have to pay for sharing news.

      • Mark NottinghamA Safer, More Centralised Australian Internet

        There are many potential criticisms of the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth)1. While my own concerns are mostly about whether there are appropriate checks and balances on the eSafety Commissioner’s powers, I will give credit where due; the current Commissioner’s implementation of it has – so far – demonstrated nuance and thoughtful balancing of the legislation’s goals with the preservation and enhancement of the unique properties that make the Internet so valuable to society.

      • ReasonEveryone Wants To Ban Certain Content Online. No One Wants To Talk Enforcement.

        In other proposals, it's all more of the same. The only porn regulation proposal which reliably comes with any discussion of enforcement is increased prosecution of obscenity laws already on the books, as advocated most prominently in a 2019 letter to the Justice Department from several members of Congress. Obscenity, in constitutional jurisprudence, is a far narrower category than the average non-lawyer would suppose. Yet even if this plan had a wider application, it's still not clear how reviving the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, as the lawmakers seem to want, would work in practice—and that brings us to the crux of the enforcement question.

      • Christian Post5 Christian evangelists traveling to plant new church thrown off boat and drowned in Uganda

        Citing Scripture, the evangelists continued affirming the sonship of Christ and, according to Kyakulaga, Bashir told them, “We are giving you one last minute to stop your blasphemy and to convert by confessing the shahada (Islamic creed), or else your lives are at risk.”

        When the five evangelists refused to renounce Christ, the Muslims seized them and pushed them off the boat one by one, Kyakulaga said. While the lake is only 4 to 5.7 meters deep, they were 200 meters from shore, and all five Christians drowned.

      • RAIR FoundationGround Breaking: Germany Sentences Islam Critic to Six Months in Muslim-Filled Prison (Exclusive Interview)

        In Germany, Muslims can spread writings and speak openly in mosques about killing non-muslims. However, a non-Muslim German is not allowed to warn against the Islamic killing orders against people of other faiths.

        Stuerzenberger is one of the most courageous men in Europe today. But unfortunately, he is one of the most prosecuted political dissidents in 21st-century Germany. Stuerzenberger has been taken to court for “hate speech” multiple times in Germany and Austria.

        For over a decade, he has been holding popular presentations on Islam and conducting street interviews in Germany. Recently, he had been on tour with former Al-Qaida member turned Islam critic Irfan Peci to educate Germans about the dangers of Islam.

      • Mexico News DailyThe story of Mexico’s national anthem and its banned verses

        Santa Anna, then anthem’s sponsor, would eventually be vilified by many Mexicans as the leader responsible for losing over half of Mexico’s national territory to the United States. By 1943, during the presidency of Manuel Ávila Camacho, a new official version of the anthem was published that excluded several stanzas referring to Santa Anna.

        The verses about Agustín de Iturbide, an Independence-era general and the country’s first emperor, were also removed. According to Mexican law, a singer can be fined a whopping 900,000 pesos for singing the banned stanzas of the anthem or modifying the lyrics.

      • Legislation to force Big Tech to pay publishers for online news ‘blown up’ by censorship amendment

        The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would temporarily exempt newspapers, broadcasters and other publishers from antitrust laws to collectively negotiate an annual fee from Google and Meta/Facebook, will be held over for a future committee hearing to determine if it moves to the Senate floor for a vote.

        Google and Meta/Facebook, which dominate the nearly $250 billion U.S. digital advertising market, are the only two platforms targeted by the proposed legislation, which seeks to level the online playing field and boost struggling local news media.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • ReutersMexico invites relatives of Assange, Guevara to Independence Day

        Leftist Lopez Obrador said the former presidents of Bolivia and Uruguay, Evo Morales and Jose "Pepe" Mujica, had also been invited, along with relatives of Nelson Mandela, U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King and U.S. labor activist Cesar Chavez.

      • RFAHong Kong police arrest head of local journalists' union on public order charges

        He has frequently spoken out against ever-diminishing press freedom in the city.

        He had been planning study journalism on a scholarship at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, and had been scheduled to leave Hong Kong at the end of September.

        The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong said it was "concerned" over Chan's arrest and was "monitoring the situation very closely."

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Michael West MediaSpies Like Us: how Timor’s oil and gas delivered justice to Bernard Collaery - Michael West

        The prosecution of Bernard Collaery was dropped after pressure from Timor-Leste and fears of China’s expansion. It’s not great news for other whistleblowers such as David McBride, Richard Boyle or Julian Assange.

      • Reason21 Years After 9/11, TSA Still Insists on Grabbing Your Dick When You Fly

        Created just two short months after the 9/11 attacks, the TSA nationalized a largely privatized, decentralized system of airport security that existed previously and replaced it with the federalized behemoth we know today.

        It brought with it many of the things people hate most about airports: long lines, forced shoe removal, and dour government agents giving you the third degree for carrying too much toothpaste.

      • RTERTÉ celebrates Irish Sign Language Awareness Week

        RTÉ will mark Irish Sign Language Awareness Week, from Monday 19th – Sunday 25th September, with some special Irish Sign Language (ISL) programming and content across our services throughout the week, highlighting RTÉ’s ongoing commitment to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community in Ireland

      • teleSUREuropean Taxi Drivers Stage 'Uber Files' Protest in Brussels

        European taxi associations are now calling for thorough investigations at both European and national levels into leaked Uber data, including more than 124,000 internal files, memos, calendars, WhatsApp messages and other data files from the period 2013-2017.

      • ME ForumEgyptian Child Forcibly 'Returned' to Islam

        The police, the ministry of social affairs, and the family-status court based their decision to seize the child on one thing: because the religious affiliation of Shenouda's biological parents is unknown, he must be considered Muslim. This is based on Islamic teaching, whereby every human being is born as a sort of prototypical Muslim; they only "lose" their Islam when taught false things or religions (in this case, Christianity).

      • JNSBritish leaders ask ‘BBC’ to stop featuring contributor with anti-Jewish history

        The letter, addressed to BBC director-general Tim Davie, was signed by a number of Jewish groups, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Community Security Trust, the National Jewish Assembly and the Campaign Against Antisemitism.

        “This man has no place on our television screens and it is shameful that the BBC has yet to recognise that,” a CAM spokesperson told The Jewish Chronicle. “We shall be writing to the BBC and considering legal action over Mr. Atwan’s possible glorification of terrorism.”

      • Turkish Minute31 women fell victim to femicide in Turkey in August

        Femicides and violence against women are serious problems in Turkey, where women are killed, raped or beaten every day. Many critics say the main reason behind the situation is the policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, which protects violent and abusive men by granting them impunity.

      • SpiegelAfghanistan One Year After the Takeover

        On August 15, 2021, Kabul’s government center imploded within a matter of hours – faster than the Western intelligence services and even the Taliban themselves had expected. The scenes of tens of thousands of desperate people at the airport, the last area under the control of the United States, reflected the fears of many Afghans, especially Afghan women. For years, the Taliban had waged a murderous war against the Afghan state and its foreign supporters. Sometimes written on small pieces of paper, other times printed on standard-sized sheets with a seal of the "Emirate," they would threaten all those with death who didn't stop working for the infidels.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Report of the European Working Team on the Digital Commons [bitmap wrapped as PDF]

        Europe is the birthplace of a free, open, neutral, interoperable and secure Internet, which is also the largest digital commons. These funding principles are at the heart of the European Union's values, rooted in the European treaties and emphasized in the Delaration on European Digital Rights and Principles. Alongside its Member States, the Union is becomin more and more mature regarding FLOSS and digital commons issues. They have increasingly taken stock of the tremendous opportunities offered by these models.

      • The VergeMatternet’s delivery drone design has been approved by the FAA

        In a statement, the FAA says Matternet’s Model M2 drone “meets all federal regulations for safe, reliable and controllable operations and provides a level of safety equivalent to existing airworthiness standards applicable to other categories of aircraft.” The four-rotor drone’s been approved to carry four-pound payloads and fly at an altitude of 400 feet or lower with a maximum speed of 45mph.

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • Far Out Mag50 years on from Mott the Hoople’s masterpiece ‘All the Young Dudes’

          Brian Eno once said, “I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!” Thus, it seems fitting that when David Bowie resurrected Mott the Hoople from the ash heap of history that they opened their soaring phoenix record with a cover of ‘Sweet Jane’.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Technical

      • PinePhone first impressions



        I tried very hard to love Plasma Mobile, as a devout KDE evangelist on the desktop. KDE Connect working out of the box was awesome! Performance was very very bad, but I could deal with that for the time being. Unfortunately, I ran into an absolute showstopping bug: whenever I'd unplug a USB device, the entire UI would just crash and dump me into a tty with no on-screen keyboard, necessitating a reboot. Sometimes this would even happen when unplugging a charging cable.

        I had no love for Manjaro, so tried switching to postmarketOS to see if it was a distro-level bug, but it wasn't. So I dumped Plasma Mobile and tried out SXMO.

      • about the cli client

        So one of the reason I didn't post as much is that I thought the cli client no longer works, but as it turns out, after I'm finally bothered to carefully read through the code, the configuration file should be located in ~/.config/.smolpub, in which the smolpub file is a hidden one (a dot before the file name) Then I kinda thought it's my problem all along, but then I read through the manual, and realised it tells us to create the config with the location ~/.config/smolpub, the file is not a hidden one, but the code only regonises one that is hidden, if you don't modify it.

      • DevLog: Trisquare for SEGA Master System

        I took the day to work in some light stuff for my personal projects. Refactoring the Master System version of my puzzle game. Currently the check for a match is probably big O squared since is just the basic for nested in a for to check every space in the playfield. So I'm adding a list of pieces on the playfield instead.

      • Programming

        • Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting

          I've set up a Grafana server six years ago, and I was using Munin for my personal servers.

          However, I recently moved my server to a small virtual machine which has CPU and memory constraints (1 core / 1 GB of memory), and Munin didn't work very well. I was curious to learn if the Grafana stack changed since the last time I used it, and YES.

          There is that project named Prometheus which is used absolutely everywhere, it was time for me to learn about it. And as I like to go against the flow, I tried various changes to the industry standard stack by using VictoriaMetrics.


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



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