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Links 13/10/2022: LibreOffice 7.4.2 is Out, KDE Gear 22.08.2, Debian 14 Gets Codename



  • GNU/Linux

    • Graphics Stack

      • GamingOnLinuxNVIDIA 520.56.06 driver adds easier NVIDIA NGX updates for Wine / Proton

        NVIDIA has today released driver version 520.56.06, adding support for NVIDIA RTX 40 series and adding a bunch of new features and fixes for Linux gamers.

      • Its FOSSBlender 3.4 to Enable Native Wayland Support for Linux

        Blender is a popular 3D creation suite that many professionals use. The developers of Blender have recently added native Wayland support for Linux in the daily builds, and have confirmed adding the support in the upcoming Blender 3.4 release. This is probably one of the significant development progress after Blender 3.0 release last year!

    • Applications

      • Linux Links4 Best Free and Open Source Shutdown Timers

        The desktop environment with its bundle of programs sharing a common graphical user interface (GUI) remains a firm favorite with users. Not surprising really given that a good desktop environment makes computing fun and simple.

        Here’s our verdict of the tools succinctly summarized in a LinuxLinks styled ratings chart.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Manuel MatuzovicDay 13: the :where() and :is() pseudo classes

        It’s time to get me up to speed with modern CSS. There’s so much new in CSS that I know too little about. To change that I’ve started #100DaysOfMoreOrLessModernCSS. Why more or less modern CSS? Because some topics will be about cutting-edge features, while other stuff has been around for quite a while already, but I just have little to no experience with it.

      • Klara5 Key Reasons to Consider Open Source Storage Over Commercial Offerings

        Storage is the most critical and sensitive component of your infrastructure. Applications that crash can be restarted, network packets that are lost can be retransmitted, but storage needs to be always on, and absolutely reliable. This is where it might seem to make sense to go with a popular commercial offering, even falling into the mantra of “Nobody ever got fired for buying $vendor”. However, being locked into a single vendor means you are utterly at their mercy when it comes to upgrades, price increases, and the quality of support they offer. If your storage vendor releases a new version of their software that causes issues for you, they may help you right away, or your issue might be exotic enough that it goes to the back of their support queue. The vendor might also release a newer product focused on a different use case and decide to end-of-life the product you are using. In any of these cases, you are left with just two choices: stay locked-in with the vendor, or take on the pain of a migration.

        Storage can be incredibly hard to migrate, due to the amount of data involved, the fact that it is constantly changing as you are trying to migrate it, and the requirement for absolute accuracy.

        What if we told you there was a third choice? Open source infrastructure. When you have the source code, you control your own destiny and have the freedom to ensure your infrastructure works for you. Open source solutions are reliable, have outstanding performance, and offer a degree of flexibility that is not available with commercial vendors.

      • ID RootHow To Install IntelliJ IDEA on Rocky Linux 9 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install IntelliJ IDEA on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, IntelliJ IDEA is an open-source Integrated Development Environment(IDE) used for developing Java applications. It is developed by JetBrains and is available in two editions, Community and Ultimate. IntelliJ IDEA has built-in support for Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and XML/XSL languages. You can also install plugins to support other languages such as Go, Python, Perl, Erlang, etc.

        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 IntelliJ IDEA on Rocky Linux. 9.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Wine (WineHQ) on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS

        Wine is a software application that translates Windows system calls into POSIX-compliant functions, allowing Windows applications to run on operating systems such as macOS and Linux. Wine is open source and provides an excellent compatibility layer for running Windows applications on these alternative platforms. While Windows applications typically have better performance and stability on their native platform, Wine can be beneficial if one needs or wants to use specific features only available on Windows. Additionally, because Wine is open source, it is possible to run Windows applications on platforms that do not have stable or supported versions of Microsoft’s operating system, such as Android. In general, Wine is a handy tool for anyone who needs or wants to run Windows applications on another platform. Thanks to its compatibility layer, many Windows applications can be run without any issues on macOS and Linux.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Wine on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS release series using the command line terminal by importing the official WineHQ repository and installing the latest stable or next release titled development for those eager to try the latest bleeding-edge version of Wine for your windows compatibility needs.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install VirtualBox 7.0 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

        VirtualBox 7.0 is the latest version of the free and open source (FOSS) hypervisor developed by Innotek, which Sun Microsystems acquired in February 2008 – barely more than a year before Sun was itself acquired by Oracle. VirtualBox allows multiple operating systems to run on a single physical server, providing high flexibility and efficiency for enterprise deployments. Since the acquisition, Oracle has continued to develop and support VirtualBox, and the latest release includes several new features and improvements.

        Among the most notable changes in VirtualBox 7.0 is the remote control of VMs hosted in the cloud and support for encrypted VMs. The GUI has been streamlined, with better integration of help and error messages and the ability to easily tweak settings such as the number of CPU cores during VM creation. The new version also includes several other features, such as support for high-resolution displays, support for multiple monitors, and the ability to print from a VM. Overall, the new version of VirtualBox is a significant improvement over previous versions and should be welcomed by users.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install VirtualBox 7.0 on your Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish system by importing the official virtual box repository and installing the most up-to-date version using the command line terminal. The extra benefit for users using this method is that you will receive them instantly from the VirtualBox repository when updates drop.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install NVIDIA Drivers on CentOS 9 Stream

        When it comes to graphics drivers for NVIDIA video cards, there are two main options: the proprietary/open-source NVIDIA drivers or the open-source Nouveau drivers. Most importantly, the Nouveau drivers are perfectly acceptable; however, if you use your Linux system for activities requiring high-performance graphics, you may want to consider using the official NVIDIA drivers. The Nouveau drivers are community-created and -supported drivers that are available free of charge; however, they may not offer the same level of performance as the NVIDIA drivers. Ultimately, deciding which driver to use depends on your needs and preferences.

        The following tutorial will teach you how to install the NVIDIA drivers on CentOS 9 Stream using the command line terminal with alternative installation methods of RPM Fusion or the NVIDIA Cuda Repository.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Linux Kernel 6.0 on CentOS 9 Stream

        As anyone who has used CentOS Stream for any time knows, one of its primary focuses is stability. This can often mean that the distribution is relatively stable but usually has very outdated packages in terms of new features. For example, at the time of this writing, CentOS Stream features kernel 5.14, but some users may require a more recent kernel for better hardware compatibility, among many other things. While this focus on stability is admirable, it can be frustrating for users who need the latest and most significant features that newer kernels often provide. Fortunately, there are a few ways to work around this issue. One option is to use the ELRepo repository, which has an excellent reputation amongst EL9 distributions such as CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, etc.

        Additionally, ELRepo offers many updated packages across various categories, including everything from kernels and drivers to multimedia codecs and desktop applications. As a result, ELRepo is an excellent option for users who need access to the latest and greatest software while still using a stable distribution like CentOS Stream.

        Some of the various changes besides the typical CPU improvements include the following.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Google Chrome on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS

        Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world, and for a good reason. It’s fast, feature-rich, and compatible with nearly every website and online service. And for Pop!_OS users, Chrome is an especially great choice. That’s because it’s faster than Firefox, the default browser installed on your desktop. Additionally, Chrome has several features that make browsing the web a better experience. For example, Chrome has a built-in PDF viewer, so you can open PDFs without downloading them. Chrome also has an incognito mode, which allows you to browse privately without saving your history or cookies. And because Chrome is synced with your Google account, your bookmarks and passwords will be available on all your devices. So if you’re looking for the best browser for Pop!_OS, try out Google Chrome.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Google Chrome on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS release series in three ways: stable, beta, or unstable versions, along with some essential command tips for users.

      • Linux NightlyHow to Install Steam on Manjaro - Linux Nightly

        This tutorial shows you how to install Steam on Manjaro Linux via command line and GUI step by step instructions.

      • UNIX CopHow to install Jenkins on Rocky Linux 9 / Alma Linux 9

        In this post, we will talk about a vital tool in continuous integration. Today, you will learn how to install Jenkins on Rocky Linux 9 / Alma Linux 9.

        Jenkins is an open-source server for continuous integration. It is a tool used to compile and test software projects continuously. This has the advantage that developers can quickly integrate their changes into the software on the application server.

        Some details about Jenkins include that it is open source and built in Java. With this in mind, it is deducible that it is cross-platform and that you can use it in many environments.

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDE Gear 22.08.2
          Over 120 individual programs plus dozens of programmer libraries and feature plugins are released simultaneously as part of KDE Gear.

          Today they all get new bugfix source releases with updated translations, including...

        • 9to5LinuxKDE Gear 22.08.2 Adds 7-Zip and Samba 4.16 or Later Compatibility, Many Bug Fixes

          KDE Gear 22.08.2 is here a little over a month after the first point release, KDE Gear 22.08.1, and it brings compatibility with Samba 4.16 or higher to allow connections to Windows Samba shares from within KDE apps like the Dolphin file manager.

          This second KDE Gear 22.08 point release also updates the Ark archive manager to restore compatibility with the original 7-Zip archiver, updates the KDE Connect app to prevent a crash when there are no audio devices present, and updates the Firefox version in the user agent manager for the Falkon web browser.

        • KDE Crash Tracking System

          KDE is now evaluating Sentry, a crash tracking system.

          Who can get access? Everyone with a KDE developer account.

          But what is it?

          Since forever we have used Bugzilla to manage crash reports but this has numerous challenges that haven’t made any improvements in at least 10 years...

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • [Old] Topic: Why do systemd users get very angry when you say systemd bad?

      And they protect it like, some kind of political ideology. And they can get very angry when people opposes them. Yet we are calm. It's slow, we simply want it gone. Atleast for us home users.

    • No systemd

      A good summary about most of the beforementioned distributions can be found here.

      You can also consider changing to BSD derivates: [...]

    • Arguments against systemd

      1 Conceptional problems

      2 Poor design

      3 Scope creep

      4 Scope creep leads to vulnerabilities

      5 Absurd bugs and responses

      6 Breaking promises and immaturity

      7 Ignorance of fundamental operating system concepts

      8 further reading: additional links

    • systemd is the best example of Suck.

      systemd is driving "just google the problem" attitude, because how the hell are you expected to troubleshoot this kind of error otherwise?

    • [Old] Systemd: The Biggest Fallacies

      Over this past year, I've seen a lot of frequently-used but logically invalid arguments for using systemd. This blog post is meant to serve as a repository of common but invalid arguments for using systemd that I and others have had to refute multiple times. This is meant to be a living document--I'll update it with more fallacies as I encounter them, and I will direct people here who make these mistakes.

      Please be informed that this post is not meant to be a criticism of systemd or its authors. For the record, I personally believe that the question "is systemd good or bad?" can only be answered in terms of a particular user's requirements--systemd is good for the people who need it, but perhaps less desirable for people who do not.

    • SystemD – it keeps getting worse

      There are some things where your first impression is “WTF?”, but on closer inspection turn out to have good features. The point of the pyramid is not so good looking, but the deeper you dig, the better it gets. Then there are other things where the top view is great, but “the digger you deep the deeper the doo”…

    • [Old] Broken by design: systemd

      My view is that this idea is wrong: systemd is broken by design, and despite offering highly enticing improvements over legacy init systems, it also brings major regressions in terms of many of the areas Linux is expected to excel: security, stability, and not having to reboot to upgrade your system.

    • [Old] Internet ArchiveUbuntuBSD
    • [Old] Re: OT: Open letter to the Linux World

      But systemd has no clear goals, no specification, the single implementation is a moving target... it's basically a microsoft product. Remember the days when the *.doc file format was "what microsoft offices produces and is capable of consuming", and the staroffice guys went to GREAT LENGTHS to reverse engineer it made possible only by the fact that Microsoft went years between releases so they had time to work out what the office 6 format was before office 7 came out, and so on. Same for the Excel file format being "what microsoft's implementation produces and consumes is correct by definition, every strange corner case bug of that one magic implementation _is_ the spec and there is no other."

    • [Old] DnEStructural and semantic deficiencies in the systemd architecture for real-world service management, a technical treatise

      The conventional understanding of systemd is usually related to its features as a service manager, or as an init system, and it is most often promoted and defended in relation to its capacity in that problem domain. Perks like journald are part of that, as reliable logging has long been established as an important part of a process supervision toolkit. The auxiliary components, such as logind and nspawn, are also frequently given praise, but they largely exist as services and utilities built on top of and consuming the capabilities of the systemd service manager, thus they are seldom advertised in isolation.

      The thrust of my argument, and the positions espoused in this paper, is that this interpretation is wrong, and that in fact almost all commonly given existing definitions of systemd lead to thinking of it in the wrong mental model. It is improper to interpret systemd as an “init system”, as a “service manager”, or as a “software suite for central management and configuration of the GNU/Linux operating system,” (as defined by Wikipedia at present), or even as a low-level userspace middleware.

      Instead, these all emerge or are designed on top of what systemd fundamentally provides and is: an object system for encapsulating OS resources alongside a transactional job scheduling engine (itself consisting of such objects) with the intention of providing a uniform interface for controlling and partitioning the units of CPU time, as well as static names and entities, in a GNU/Linux system.

      Many of my positions will be related to the complexity, inflexibility, inconsistencies and excessive indirection of the aforementioned object system, and why the model it presents is dubious for its stated goals of being a standard building block suite to base OS distributions (GNU/Linux, specifically) under.

    • [Old] AyerHow to Crash Systemd in One Tweet

      After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system. The system feels generally unstable (e.g. ssh and su hang for 30 seconds since systemd is now integrated with the login system). All of this can be caused by a command that's short enough to fit in a Tweet.

      Edit (2016-09-28 21:34): Some people can only reproduce if they wrap the command in a while true loop. Yay non-determinism!

    • [Old] Why Would You not Use Systemd?

      I often see posts elsewhere about some folks not using systemd nor having any interest in using. It raises a few questions: [...]

    • [Old] s6/s6-rc vs systemd, or why you probably do not need systemd

      Depending on your actual application scenario, sysvinit, OpenRC, or even upstart and systemd may actually be appropriate for your use, so this post does not attempt to persuade you to migrate to s6/s6-rc. Instead, it just uses s6/s6-rc to help you understand how the most touted features in systemd can be better implemented, and how necessarily (or not) these features are dependent on systemd's architecture. I try to keep this post factually and logically correct, so please feel free to tell me if you find any mistake; I will update the post as necessary. If you like this post, please consider helping to spread the voice, so that more people will know superior alternatives to systemd.

    • [Old] Dealing with Systemd

      Once again something new and unnecessary. We liked, even loved, the old shell script based scheme. But there are bored and restless programmers out there without enough imagination to find better things to do. So, like Hollywood remakes of old classics (which again underscore lack of imagination and creativity), we have systemd and are probably stuck with it.

      One justification for added complexity that I have heard is that systemd allows things in the boot process to run in parallel when possible. This makes boot faster (supposedly), as if we or anybody cares. It also has broken things by introducing nasty race conditions (notably nfs, which has even bitten me!).

      And, I have to point out, most users don't give a flip how fast a system boots. Most of my systems run 30-40 days at a time, with reboots being done for maintenance (typically to pick up a new kernel). So, I could care less if boot takes 1 or 5 minutes, so long as it doesn't take an hour. I am sure that most people feel this way, except a handful of developers. This tiny gain is not balanced by the price of introducting new complexity and breaking important things (like NFS, which still is not adequately fixed).

      So, we are stuck with systemd (and plymouth, and gnome3, and grub2), but we don't have to like it.

    • What is a Rc2040

      The RC2040 is an emulated RC2014 (a build your self Z80 computer). But this one is entirely contained within a RP2040 (Raspberry Pi PI Pico) processor.

      On the RC2040 you can Run any RC2014 Stock ROM image. including Basic and various Z80 monitors and CPM monitor. (except RomWBW there isn’t enough RAM) RC2014 Rom Image details are here

      Details on running the various RC2014 ROM based programs are here

    • 10 logical fallacies to avoid in UX & product design
  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • [Old] Software Heritage - CVS loader

      The Software Heritage CVS Loader imports the history of CVS repositories into the SWH dataset.

    • TorNew Release: Tor Browser 11.5.4 (Android, Windows, macOS, Linux)

      Our Android release follows our alpha branch to the ESR 102 release train. Please see the 12.0a2 blog post for details.

    • Mailing list ARChivesSoftware Heritage CVS loader - Call for public review

      The mission of Software Heritage is to collect, preserve and share all the publicly available source code (see https://www.softwareheritage.org for more information).

      Thanks to Stefan Sperling (@stsp), Software Heritage now has a CVS loader [1] [2]. It's been deployed in our staging infrastructure [3]. We have ingested CVS origins that were listed from sourceforge [3].

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • Nicholas Tietz-SokolskyPaper review: The Gamma Database Project

        Last week, I read "The Gamma Database Project" for a Red Book reading group. Unlike the last paper for this group, this one was a lot more approachable in length: 19 pages.

        I'm putting up some of my notes here from reading the paper. If you read through to the end, there's dessert: a quibble I have with the paper.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • 9to5LinuxLibreOffice 7.4.2 Office Suite Released with 80 Bug Fixes, Download Now

        Arriving about a month after LibreOffice 7.4.1, the LibreOffice 7.4.2 point release is here to further address various issues, bugs, and annoyances discovered in the LibreOffice 7.4 office suite series. There are exactly 80 bug fixes included in the LibreOffice 7.4.2 point release.

        These bugfixes further improve compatibility with document formats from proprietary office suites, as well as support for LibreOffice’s native document format, ODF (OpenDocument Format). They also address crashes, bugs, and other errors reported by the community.

      • Document FoundationRelease of LibreOffice 7.4.2 Community

        LibreOffice 7.4.2 Community, the second maintenance release of LibreOffice 7.4, the volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity on the desktop, is immediately available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows (Intel and Arm processors), macOS (Apple M1 and Intel processors), and Linux.

        LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite market segment, with native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) – beating proprietary formats for security and robustness – to superior support for MS Office files, to filters for a large number of legacy document formats, to return ownership and control to users.

    • Education

      • Announcing SWHAP Days in October for Landmark Legacy Software Preservation

        We are very excited to announce the launch of SWHAP Days, a two-day workshop to reflect on the current state and the future of software preservation, exploring challenges and opportunities related to the collection, archival and display of our landmark legacy software.

        Organized with the support of [UNESCO], [INRIA] and [LIP6], this workshop will also be the chance to learn more about the Software Heritage Acquisition Process (SWHAP) and the Software Stories presentation platform, developed with support from [UNESCO] in collaboration with the University of Pisa and the sciencestories.io team.

    • Programming/Development

      • uni TorontoWe are stuck with egrep and fgrep (unless you like beating people)

        What's special about GNU Grep 3.8 is that its version of egrep and fgrep now print an extra message when you run them. Specifically, these messages 'warn' (ie nag) you to stop using them and use 'grep -E' and 'grep -F' instead.

        (I assume that these messages are printed to standard error, because not even GNU Grep would be so hostile as to put them in standard output.)

      • ButtondownWhat a Wedding Taught Me About Software Engineering

        Same way for all heuristics: use it to make very low cost judgements or to jumpstart deeper investigations. If simplicity and performance are distinct goal qualities, what do the tradeoff choices look like? Is there a common pattern to them? Is there a conceptual group of “things that trade simplicity for performance” and vice-versa?

      • RTLBrain cells in dish learn to play video game

        Brett Kagan, who led a study published in the journal Neuron Wednesday, told AFP his findings open the door to a new type of research into biological information processors, complementing normal digital computers.

      • Trail Of BitsPorting the Solana eBPF JIT compiler to ARM64

        During my summer internship at Trail of Bits, I worked on the fork of the RBPF JIT compiler that is used to execute Solana smart contracts. The RBPF JIT compiler plays a critical role on the Solana blockchain, as it facilitates the execution of contracts on validator nodes by default.

      • Unravelling `if` statements

        The key insight is that if you put a break at the very end of a while statement, it will exit the loop unconditionally. That means if you make the conditional guard on the while loop be what the conditional guard would have been for an if statement, you end up with the same outcome!

      • Idiomdrottningref

        Ref is a universal version of list-ref, hash-table-ref etc.

        It can handle lists, alists, hash-tables, strings, vectors, records, and all callable procedures (like call-tables).

        You can also pass multiple arguments to dereference recursively.

      • OpenSource.comWhat you need to know about compiling code

        Source code must be compiled in order to run, and in open source software everyone has access to source code. Whether you've written code yourself and you want to compile and run it, or whether you've downloaded somebody's project to try it out, it's useful to know how to process source code through a compiler, and also what exactly a compiler does with all that code.

      • Python

        • James GAdding fragmention links to my website

          An extension of this idea is the "fragmention." Fragmentions let you link to a particular string of text on a document. This is useful if you want to link to a particular paragraph rather than an entire section. With direct links to a text in a paragraph, a website can apply styling to highlight either a particular string or a whole paragraph. I like this idea. Imagine being able to link to exactly the part of a document rather than conveying "click this link, then read the third sentence two paragraphs down."

        • ViraptorPython dependency management difficulty is an unhelpful meme

          Python package management / installation is famously difficult… or so the story goes. This keeps getting reinforced by forum comments, quoting that one xkcd page, and people who aren’t actually running into the issues repeating the meme. In practice, it will take just a few minutes to understand and not end up in a mess.

          That’s not to say the Python ecosystem doesn’t have its issues. But let’s have a look at what’s actually simple, how things work in practice and what the real issues are. Warning: things will be simplified - if you think “yes but actually …”, you’re likely right and likely not the target for this post :)

          Let’s start with tooling. There are 3 categories of tools for helping with Python development: [...]

        • AdafruitPython on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython Supports Pico W in Latest Beta and much more! #CircuitPython #ICYMI #Python @micropython @Raspberry_Pi

          Work on the CircuitPython support for Raspberry Pi Pico W has reached the point where it has been released on circuitpython.org. While not feature-complete in CircuitPython 8.0.0-beta.1, it is usable for several types of WiFi use. It is currently being actively worked on by Adafruit – circuitpython.org.

      • Rust

        • Rust Weekly UpdatesThis Week In Rust: This Week in Rust 464
        • OpenSource.comAsynchronous programming in Rust

          Asynchronous programming: Incredibly useful but difficult to learn. You can't avoid async programming to create a fast and reactive application. Applications with a high amount of file or network I/O or with a GUI that should always be reactive benefit tremendously from async programming. Tasks can be executed in the background while the user still makes inputs. Async programming is possible in many languages, each with different styles and syntax. Rust is no exception. In Rust, this feature is called async-await.

          While async-await has been an integral part of Rust since version 1.39.0, most applications depend on community crates. In Rust, except for a larger binary, async-await comes with zero costs. This article gives you an insight into asynchronous programming in Rust.

    • Standards/Consortia

      • IdiomdrottningTools vs standards

        Figure out ways to use what’s there and to make what’s there better.

  • Leftovers

    • HackadayBe The Star Of The Evening With This Light Up Prom Dress

      [Kellechu] went full parent beast mode by creating a prom dress for her daughter. This incredible build is a tour-de-force of DIY crafting, combining sewing, electronics, 3D printing and programming.

    • HackadayEnjoy The Beauty Of Corona Discharge With This Kirlian Photography Setup

      In our age of pervasive digital media, “pics or it didn’t happen” is a common enough cry that most of us will gladly snap a picture of pretty near anything to post online. So if you’re going to take a picture, it may as well be as stunning as these corona discharge photographs made with a homebrew Kirlian photography rig.

    • The NationBeyond the Wall: On Rick Barton

      I’m not the only one who’s been complaining lately that our art museums seem to have lost their nerve. In Artforum last year, for instance, Alex Kitnick lamented that “the dream of the avant-garde museum…has vanished into historical oblivion.” One side effect of the general malaise is that when a museum and its curators not only live up to their promise of serving all who are passionate about art—artists themselves first of all—but go to heroic lengths to do so, it’s newsworthy. You’re tempted to want to pin a medal on someone’s lapel. That’s how I feel about the Morgan Library and Museum and its associate curator of modern and contemporary drawings, Rachel Federman, for organizing the recent exhibition “Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Barton.”

    • The NationThe Politics of Star Wars

      The Star Wars franchise has long seemed to have exhausted itself with endless sequels and prequels offering variations of the same old stories. That’s why the new Disney+ program, Andor, has come as a surprise to many viewers. In tone and story, it’s very different than the Star Wars norm, offering a much grittier story about imperial oppression, police violence, and the emergence of a revolutionary movement.

    • Counter PunchIn Search of a Vegan Christianity

      So while there are other elements of my background that made embracing anti-speciesism a struggle, thankfully, when it came to religion, I had a resource that made it considerably less difficult than it might have been. I’m the world’s most distracted and impatient meditator, but I’m very grateful for this. Not everyone has such a resource.

    • Counter PunchAnother Day at People’s Park

      Of course, the members of the Regents themselves didn’t dirty their own hands and aren’t directly responsible for the trunks of trees on the ground, the wood chips in huge mounds and the trash and garbage. But the Regents gave the green light to the men with chainsaws and heavy machinery who erected a chain link fence around the lot and then created chaos. For the Regents, the worse the better. As an eyesore, the lot persuades some citizens to say forget about the Park. Build, build, build.€ € 

    • Counter PunchRevolution in the Revolution

      The Berkeley Barb was an aggregator, a Huffington Post with sex ads. My job was to coordinate those sex ads. My ads upheld the lowest end of the Barb’s revenue stream; the paper’s economic engine was powered by full page display ads for records, concerts, and sex worker services: “BIG BUSTED BROADS OVER 21 looking for easy work with groovy hours & good pay. For Men Only.”

    • Science

      • MIT Technology ReviewWhat happens when you donate your body to science

        The lab is secured both by ID badges and by Puche’s own rigorous standards. The timing of my visit was carefully planned to minimize the impact on students. When I asked to take a reference photo of a cabinet of wet specimens showing livers, gall bladders, and other organs from donors with specific medical conditions, Puche politely shook his head. The work of protecting donors’ dignity extends to those represented in the museum, who lived a century ago. This is what he’s trying to teach future physicians, who are supposed to treat body donors as they would a living patient. In addition to what’s on the intake form, students at Maryland are expected to keep charts on donors. As they discover new conditions a patient may have—a cyst, a past broken bone, a previous surgery—they note it. Students are required to follow HIPAA rules when discussing their donors outside the lab.

        “These are going to be physicians from day one,” said Puche. “We need them to be exercising the appropriate language choices, appropriate actions. So not only do I firmly believe in what I’m telling you as the right way to do it; it’s important for all faculty members to continuously and consistently display that to our students.”

    • Hardware

      • Computer WorldPC sales fall off a cliff

        The sale of PCs in the third quarter of the year fell nearly 20% compared to a year ago, the largest drop in decades and the fourth straight quarter of year-over-year declines, according to preliminary research by two analyst firms.

        The surge in PC sales created by the pandemic and the tremendous uptick in hybrid and remote work is over and no longer adding to computer sales. Back-to-school PC purchases also showed “disappointing results, despite massive promotions and price drops, due to a lack of need as many consumers had purchased new PCs in the last two years,” according to Mikako Kitagawa, a director analyst at Gartner.

      • HackadayThis Infinity Dodecahedron Build Shows All The Tricks

        The infinity dodecahedron is one of those super eye-catching builds that many of us hardware hackers have on our ‘build one day’ project list. The very thought of actually€ doing€ it strikes a little fear into the heart of even the most intrepid maker, once you start to think about all the intricate little details and associated ways it could all go horribly wrong. Luckily for us, [Hari Wiguna] has€ documented his latest build as a long video build log, showing lots of neat tricks and highlighting many problems along the way. With the eventual goal of removing many of the issues that make such a build tricky, [Hari] hopes to make it practically€ easy. Let’s see how that turns out!

      • HackadayThe 2022 Supercon Badge Is A Handheld Trip Through Computing History

        Over the last several years, there’s been a trend towards designing ever more complex and powerful electronic event badges. Color displays, sensors, WiFi, USB, Bluetooth — you name it, and there’s probably a con badge out there that has packed it in. Even our own 2019 Supercon broke new ground with the inclusion of a Lattice LFE5U-45F FPGA running a RISC-V core. Admittedly, observing this unofficial arms race has been fascinating. But as we all know, a hacker isn’t defined by the tools at their disposal, but rather the skill and imagination with which they wield them.

      • HackadayToilet Paper Tube Pulls Dissolved Resin From IPA, Cures It For Disposal

        SLA 3D printing with resin typically means rinsing parts with IPA (isopropyl alcohol). That process results in cloudy, used IPA containing a high concentration of dissolved resin. The dual goals of cleaning and reusing IPA are important ones, and we have to say, [Jan Mrázek]’s unusual experiment involving a UV source and slowly-rotating paper tube to extract and cure dissolved resin might look odd, but the results are definitely intriguing.

      • HackadayWatermelon CNC Uses Lazy Susan

        It is the time of year when a lot of people in certain parts of the world carve pumpkins. [Gonkee] is carving a watermelon, which we assume is similar. He decided to make a CNC machine to do the carving for him. The unusual part is the use of two lazy Susans to make a rotary carving machine. You can see the result in the video below.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • SalonMicroplastics found in human breast milk for the first time

        Indeed, a recent study in the scientific journal Polymers, conducted by Italian scientists, analyzed breast milk taken from 34 healthy mothers one week after they gave birth in Rome. The researchers then analyzed the breast milk to determine if there were microplastics present — and, in 75% of the cases, there were. When combined with the knowledge that microplastics have been found in human placentas, the authors argue, these results should raise a red flag.

      • New ScientistExoskeleton boots learn how you walk to help improve your gait

        The exoskeleton boots used in the trials were built from aluminium and carbon fibre and have a motor to pull on a lever that helps to rotate the ankle and push off harder with the toes. The team found that the device, when trained outside a lab, led to a 9 per cent increase in walking speed and a 17 per cent reduction in energy cost during natural walking compared with normal shoes. The researchers calculate that these energy savings are roughly equivalent to removing a 9.2-kilogram backpack.

      • Rolling StoneLawsuit: Health Influencer’s Diet Made People Sick

        An attorney for the plaintiffs, Nathan Werksman, told Rolling Stone in a statement, “Just because F-Factor Defendants and their defense attorneys say the F-Factor products are safe or have been reviewed by experts does not make it true. As we have alleged, F-Factor Defendants have repeatedly made false statements to the public about their products. Sadly, in my opinion, this is more of the same from them.”

      • Pro PublicaDeaths Raise Concerns About Roseland Community Hospital Quality of Care

        The hospital’s website is loaded with pithy phrases to reassure patients: Trust us. People come first. We provide best quality care. Always on time.

      • Democracy NowHealth Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is “Heist” by Private Firms to Defraud the Public

        Many of the nation’s largest health insurance companies have made billions of dollars in profits by overbilling the U.S. government’s Medicare Advantage program. A New York Times investigation has revealed that under the Advantage program, health insurance companies are incentivized to make patients appear more ill than they actually are. Some estimates find it has cost the government between $12 billion and $25 billion in 2020 alone. We speak with former healthcare insurance executive Wendell Potter, now president ​​of the Center for Health and Democracy, who says Medicare Advantage will be recognized in years to come as the “biggest transfer of wealth” from taxpayers to corporate shareholders, and blames the lack of regulation over the program on the “revolving door between private industry and government.”

      • Common DreamsWHO Chief Demands 'Sustained Action' to Help Long Covid Patients

        "On behalf of the scientific community, health workers, and the patients with long Covid WHO has worked with, I urge all leaders to seriously ramp up support."

      • Common DreamsMore Than 57,000 US Sites Contaminated by Toxic 'Forever Chemicals'

        Scientists at Northeastern University in Boston led the study, which was published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology Letters and identified 57,412 sites where per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) contamination is presumed.

      • The NationBernie Sanders Should Know by Now: Abortion Is an Economic Issue

        Even before Roe v. Wade was overturned, whether you have a right to abortion has, in most of the country, boiled down to a simple economic question: Do you have hundreds of dollars for an emergency expense? Many Americans did not, even before outright bans forced swaths of the country to contend with travel, child care, and lodging costs, too. Whether you can access abortion depends not just on where you live but on whether you have sick days, health insurance, and child care. Whether you want an abortion in the first place is an economic question, too. Economic insecurity is one of the most common reasons people seek an abortion—and how messed up is that?

      • The NationEverything Biden’s Pardon for Marijuana Convictions Does and Doesn’t Do

        The president’s issuing blanket pardons for all federal convictions of simple marijuana possession is, to put it in Biden-esque tems, a big fucking deal. At least 6,500 people charged with federal pot possession dating to 1992 will have their convictions overturned, as will an as-yet-unknown number of folks convicted as far back as the 1970s. Thousands more convicted of simple pot possession under Washington, D.C., drug laws will also have their convictions scrapped. Just as importantly, after more than 50 years of the federal government rating pot as in league with heroin and fentanyl, the president announced that Attorney General Merrick Garland and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra have been tasked with “expeditiously” reassessing pot’s categorization as a Schedule I drug. Considering the fact that its status deems it a substance with “no currently accepted medical use,” despite pot’s being legalized in at least 37 states for precisely that purpose, the move seemed long overdue. It’s no wonder the Internet applauded the president’s order by flooding social media with “Dank Brandon” memes.

    • Proprietary

      • UXCollectiveOne trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

        The blue Apple picked for the iMessage bubbles provides a better color contrast against the white text on it compared to the green Apple picked for the Android bubbles. In other words, since text is white, Apple picked a darker blue but a lighter green to purposefully make the iMessage text more readable.

        To be clear, it is not that green is gross. It is the low color contrast of the green Apple picked and used against white text is gross.

      • India TimesCisco has cut prices of WebEx services by 50% to strengthen its hold on Indian market

        To provide the complete bouquet of video and messaging services to clients in India, the company has also taken a unified license from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Patrick BreyerPirates are against the new rules on [cryptocurrency] assets which will ban anonymous payments

          Tonight, the ECON and LIBE committees of the European Parliament will vote on a complete ban on anonymous [cryptocurrency] payments. The latest agreement between the European Parliament and the European Council goes even further than the original European Commission’s proposal which was setting the limit at the equivalent of €1000. The new rules will impose an identification requirement for crypto-asset transactions in all amounts. Moreover, all users of hosted wallets will now have to identify themselves, as well as all users who send non-hosted funds to hosted [cryptocurrency] wallets.

        • India TimesNew data protection bill draft is coming: 6 ways to ensure data security

          Speaking recently at the Global Fintech Fest’s third edition, Indian Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that in the next few days, the Centre will be coming out with a fresh draft of the data protection bill. The data protection bill is a landmark legislation meant to regulate how various companies and organizations use individuals’ data in India. The bill is aimed to provide protection of digital privacy to individuals relating to their personal data, specify the flow and usage of data, and create a relationship of trust between persons and entities processing the data. Such regulations are needed to safeguard the data and privacy of citizens.

        • MIT Technology ReviewThe complicated danger of surveillance states

          I recently had a very interesting conversation with Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin. They wrote a new book called Surveillance State, which explores how China is leading the global experiment in using surveillance tech.

          We covered a lot of important topics: how covid offered the ideal context to justify expanding government surveillance, how the world should respond to China, and even philosophical questions about how people perceive privacy. You can read the takeaways in full here.

          But in this newsletter, I want to share a few extra snippets from our conversation that have really stuck with me.

        • HackadayRollercoasters Are Triggering The IPhone’s Crash Detection System

          Apple has been busy adding new features to its smartphone and smartwatch offerings. Its new iPhone 14 and Apple Watch 8 now feature a safety system that contacts emergency services in the event the user is in a automobile accident.

        • TechdirtEmployees Reveal Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Vision Is A Clunky, Boring, Ego-Driven Mess

          It will never stop being bizarre to me that a social media app tried to claim ownership of VR, AR, and effectively every next-gen, Internet-related technology under the “Metaverse” brand… and the entirety of the tech press just simply… went along with it. As a result, we’ve spent the better part of the last few years mired in an endless ocean of unhinged hyperbole about “the Metaverse vision” and what it means.

        • TechdirtBiden’s Executive Order On Surveillance Doesn’t Do Nearly Enough To Protect Privacy; Playing Word Games Doesn’t Actually Limit NSA Surveillance

          Back in March, we noted that the EU and US had announced that they had come to an agreement on transatlantic data flows. This is actually a really big and important story that gets almost no attention, because “transatlantic data flows” sounds boring. However, it’s really, really big and matters for the future of a global internet as opposed to an extremely splintered regional set of internets. People within Facebook have suggested that this is the single biggest issue facing the future of the company, which might be slight hyperbole, but just… slight.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • ABCEx-Oath Keeper says 'many weapons' were stored outside capital during Jan. 6 attack

        A former member of the Oath Keepers militia group testified Wednesday about the large stash of weapons stored by the group at a hotel just outside Washington, D.C., during the Jan. 6, 2001, assault on the Capitol, as prosecutors provided more details on the group's planning and private communications leading up to the attack.

      • Members of the Riigikogu aim to declare the Russian regime a terrorist regime

        Today, 85 Members of the Riigikogu submitted a draft statement for legislative proceeding, condemning the annexation of the territory of Ukraine and declaring the Russian regime a terrorist regime.

        In the draft statement, the Riigikogu strongly condemns the military actions of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and the illegal annexation of the territories conquered during the aggression and avows that Estonia will never recognise the violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine through aggressions or sham referendums. “Violation of law can never create law. Putin’s regime with its threats of nuclear attack has turned Russia into the biggest danger to peace both in Europe and in the whole world Statement points,” the draft reads.

      • SalonAmerica's most effective fascism enforcers are bored boomers, not youthful brawlers

        To understand the threat, it's crucial to look at how elections are being undermined in 2022 and ahead to 2024. As January 6 showed, violence may make a big splash, but it's harder to actually hijack elections that way in the high-tech 21st century. For that, you need systematic breakdowns. The GOP has long used red tape regulations to gerrymander and suppress voter turnout. Even Trump, despite his fascination with violence, first tried to get the courts to steal the 2020 election for him, before resorting to inciting the Capitol riot. Even then, the violence of January 6 ultimately revolved paperwork: Preventing electoral votes from being counted in hopes of invalidating the election.

        What you need, in other words, are people who have the time and resources to engage in bureaucratic meddling. Trump is very fortunate in that regard — by far his largest and most robust vein of support comes from people of retirement age. (People over 65 turned out for Trump in greater numbers than any other group of voters.) A veritable army of Fox News-drunk grandparents is forming, ready to interfere every step of the way with the systems that turn out, collect and count votes.

      • ANI NewsPakistan: TLP cleric calls for attack on Ahmadi pregnant women

        A video has emerged on social media showing a speech by TLP cleric Muhammad Naeem Chattha Qadri calling on his supporters to carry out attacks against pregnant Ahmadi women to "make sure that no new Ahmadis are born."

        He insisted that "there is but one punishment for blasphemers, decapitation." The preacher said should the attacks not be successful, "those babies who are being born should be killed," according to a report in Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights.

      • Eesti RahvusringhäälingOver a tenth of snap military exercise call-up emails went unopened

        Even if a person never views the eesti.ee site and their in-box, they will get a notification to their regular email address as provided, and also by SMS text message, while the call-up will also be placed on the EDF service website (secure login needed to access).

      • ScheerpostHopes of Peace in Yemen Are Fading

        Congress has the power to end the war in Yemen, but how likely is that?

      • ScheerpostPatrick Lawrence: Our Shared Addiction to Empire

        "If the Columbus myth has been thoroughly discounted, what is it that causes us to continue closing the banks, stopping the mail, and marching in parades on a Monday around October 12 each year?"

      • ScheerpostThe World’s Other Nuclear Flashpoint

        Michael T. Klare examines how, as Ukraine burns, the U.S. is playing with fire on another continent.

      • Telex (Hungary)Russian press reviews Telex's interview with advisor to Ukrainian president – with modifications

        Mykhailo Podolyak's statement on Transcarpathia made a big splash in the confined Russian media space. The bit about Putin was mostly omitted, but Regnum published a massive distortion in its coverage.

      • MeduzaThis is no second draft round — ‘we’re just topping up’ the army, regional officials say — Meduza

        Following the Kremlin’s lead, regional authorities across Russia are now denying the “second wave” of mobilization announced yesterday by the governors of Rostov and Kursk regions. Regional officials now say that there’s no such thing as a “second wave” of the draft. Instead, they’re just “slightly topping up the numbers.”

      • Common Dreams'Protection Zone' Around Ukraine Nuclear Plant Urgently Needed, Says IAEA Chief

        A pair of independent monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who have been stationed at Europe's largest nuclear plant since the conclusion of an inspection last month informed IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi around 8:30 am ET that the Zaporizhzhia facility had been reconnected to the grid several hours after a missile damaged an electrical substation more than 100 miles north of the site and caused it to go offline.

      • MeduzaRussia’s ‘irrecoverable losses’ in Ukraine: more than 90,000 troops dead, disabled, or AWOL — Meduza

        More than 90,000 troops make up Russia’s “irrecoverable” military losses in Ukraine, as reported by the Russian media project iStories (or Vazhnye Istorii). One of the two sources of this information works in the FSB; the other is a former state security officer.

      • MeduzaRussian authorities reportedly conscripting refugees from Mariupol — Meduza

        Authorities in the Russian city of Lipetsk have begun conscripting refugees from Mariupol, according to the independent Russian outlet Verstka.

      • MeduzaPutin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says mobilization has not entered ‘second wave’ — Meduza

        Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov denied reports that Russia has begun a “second wave” of mobilization, according to an audio clip posted by the radio station Mayak.

      • Democracy NowMedea Benjamin & Nicolas Davies: Negotiations “Still the Only Way Forward” to End Ukraine War

        The Biden administration has ruled out the idea of pushing Ukraine to negotiate with Russia to end the war, even though many U.S. officials believe neither side is “capable of winning the war outright,” reports The Washington Post. This comes as the war in Ukraine appears to be escalating on a number of fronts, with Russian President Vladimir Putin accusing Ukraine of committing a “terrorist act” and launching the largest strikes on Ukraine in months. For more on the war, we speak with CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and independent journalist Nicolas Davies, the co-authors of the forthcoming book, “War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.” “We, the American public, have to push the White House and our leaders in Congress to call for proactive negotiations now,” says Benjamin.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | On Disagreements Between Left Comrades Over the War in Ukraine

        Anthony Burnett, a friend, comrade and collaborator, just published an article in openDemocracy, a splendid and much loved source of progressive ideas and material, to which he alerted me in a mail reading: “Dear Yanis, we disagree but in solidarity!” Since Anthony’s article mentions me, along with Jeremy Corbyn, in its subtitle, here I am, responding in the spirit of solidarity, affection and goodwill.

      • Counter PunchDangerous Extreme Republicans

        They mean it, regardless of the impact their actions have on the majority of folks. Frankly, they don’t give a damn. It’s all about power. Theirs.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | The GOP Is a Cultish, Destructive Fascist Organization—Not a Legitimate Political Party

        US News and World Report has a story about how the fringe has become the mainstream in the Republican Party. The headline of their story says it all: "Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Rises From GOP Fringe to Front."

      • MeduzaFSB arrests suspects in the Crimean Bridge explosion Russia releases its version of events relating to the bridge explosion. Ukraine calls the whole thing ‘nonsense’ — Meduza

        The FSB has identified 12 people suspected of coordinating and carrying out the October 8 explosion on the Crimean Bridge. It named the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, its director Kyrylo Budanov, and its “employees and agents” as organizers of the explosion. The agency also released its official account of the explosion, including a description of how an explosive device reached the Crimean Bridge on a truck. The Ukrainian intelligence agency declined to comment, calling the FSB’s activities “nonsense.”

      • Meduza‘You don’t cover up disfigured corpses by saying something positive’ The Kremlin’s written instructions to propagandists tell a story of desperation, failure, and frictions with the media — Meduza

        The Russian President’s Office regularly sends detailed written instructions to state-controlled media, telling them exactly how to cover daily events in the country. Over the past six months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s publicity efforts were increasingly criticized by people who supposedly take their cues from those memos — the propagandists themselves. The Russian media are, of course, prohibited from calling the war a “war” and must instead always minimize it as merely a “special military operation.” But there is a lot more to how the Kremlin strives to limit and shape the information that reaches mass audiences. Meduza’s special correspondent Andrey Pertsev has pored over six months’ worth of the close-to-daily€ instructions — the so-called “metodichkas” — sent by the Kremlin to propagandist journalists, editors, and bloggers. It turned out that these documents speak volumes about current events — and Vladimir Putin’s attempts to maintain a grip on public opinion.

      • MeduzaRussian journalist says he was signed up as a volunteer for the war without his knowledge — Meduza

        Vasily Krestyaninov, a journalist with Russian publication The Insider, says that his online state services account was hacked and he was signed up as a volunteer for the war in Ukraine.€ 

      • MeduzaTwo Russian conscripts die during training in Sverdlovsk region — Meduza

        Two conscripts have reportedly died in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region in the last week, according to Russian news outlets.

      • Meduza‘Entire subjects are being cut’ Russia's schools are hemorrhaging teachers as they flee mobilization — Meduza

        In the three weeks since it began, Russia’s mobilization campaign has kneecapped the country’s education system. A new investigation from the independent media outlet Verstka found that Russian teachers, who aren’t exempt from the draft, are going into hiding and fleeing the country in droves. Private schools, many of which saw a spike in enrollment this year as families scrambled to avoid the “patriotic” curriculum implemented in public schools this fall, are facing closure. With no other options, students and parents have begun writing directly to politicians, pleading for individual teachers to be made exempt —€ a painful exercise for war opponents, who know that their appeals need to be soaked in praise for Putin and the Motherland to have a chance of being heard. Meduza recounts Verstka’s findings in English.

      • MeduzaEight people arrested in connection with Crimea bridge explosion — Meduza

        The Russian FSB has arrested five Russian citizens and “three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia” in a criminal case related to the October 8 explosion on the bridge between Russia and Crimea, Interfax reported Wednesday.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | The Media Finds Its War

        On Sunday, October 9, The New York Times published an article entitled “An American in Ukraine Finds the War He’s Been Searching For.” It could just as easily be entitled “The Media Finds the War It’s Been Searching For.” It is, sadly, a story of the corrupting influence war and profits have on everything, including the press, that very institution which is to keep a constant check on our government, particularly in affairs of war.

      • MeduzaCzechia will ban entry for Russians with tourist visas from October 25 — Meduza

        Starting October 25, Russian citizens will not be allowed to enter Czechia on Schengen tourist visas issued by any EU country, Jan Lipavsky, Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs told the publication Novinky.

      • MeduzaGeorgia says it had no part in Crimean Bridge explosion — Meduza

        Georgian authorities announced that a truck, which exploded on October 8 on the bridge over the Kerch Strait, did not cross Georgian borders.

      • MeduzaPutin speaks of Nord Stream explosions at Russian Energy Week — hinting at guilty parties — Meduza

        Explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines are a “most dangerous precedent” and “an act of international terrorism,” said President Vladimir Putin during the Russian Energy Week forum in Moscow, as reported by the Interfax.

      • Counter PunchHiroshima, Nagasaki and Ukraine

        Let’s review the justification that U.S. officials cite for targeting those two cities with nuclear bombs.€ 

      • Counter PunchGerman Unity, War or Peace?

        The first years were great for Ossies’ travel possibilities and lovely commodity assortment, but otherwise – for millions – pretty ghastly! The over-hasty introduction of the “West-mark” into East Germany and the seizure, shuttering or penny-ante sellout of its entire, substantial industrial base caused havoc, misery and bitterness. Adding insult to injury, second or third string “Wessies” moved in and seized control and jobs – in the judiciary, police, education, journalism and economy. By and large, they still run them.

      • Counter PunchSurviving the Killing Fields: a Worldwide Challenge

        Absent from the briefings was any mention of regret or compensation for the thousands of civilians like Adel and his family whose lives have been forever altered by a drone attack. Human rights organizations like the UK- based€ Reprieve€ have sent numerous requests to the U.S. Department of Defense and the State Department, seeking compensation to assist with Adel’s medical care, but no action has been taken. Instead, Adel and his family rely on a€ Go Fund Me€ campaign which has raised sufficient funds to cover the most recent surgery and hospitalization. But, Adel’s supporters are now begging for more assistance to pay for crucial physical therapy plus household expenses for Adel and two of his sons, his primary caregivers during the extended stay in Egypt. The family struggles with precarious finances, yet the Pentagon budget seemingly can’t spare a dime to help them.

      • Counter PunchAttack on Crimea’s Kerch Bridge is Damaging to Putin, But It Doesn't Change the Dynamics of the War

        The partial severing of the bridge linking Russia and the Crimean peninsula may be more important politically than militarily. It will further persuade countries such as China and India that Russia is losing the war and that they need to avoid becoming collateral damage. Russian allies in Central Asia and the Caucasus will see it as further evidence of Russia’s decline as a regional power.

      • TruthOut66 Countries at the UN General Assembly Urge Ukraine-Russia Negotiations
      • TruthOutNuclear Power Isn’t Clean -- It Creates Hellish Wastelands of Radioactive Sewage
    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • The Telegraph UKChaucer wrongly accused of rape for 150 years, newly unearthed documents show

        Documents appear to indicate that “raptus” refers to Chaumpaigne suddenly breaking the terms of her employment with Staundon in order to join Chaucer’s service instead.

      • Telex (Hungary)Hungary's biggest opposition party has ignored Telex's questions for months – they now say they will look into it
      • Democracy NowMassive Leak of Military Docs Reveals Mexico Armed Cartels, Surveilled Journalists & Zapatistas

        A stunning leak of more than 4 million documents from inside the Mexican military has revealed collusion between high-level military officials and the country’s cartels. The leak, published by the hacking group Guacamaya, is one of the largest in Mexico’s history and shows how military officials sold weapons, technical equipment and key information about rival gangs to cartels. The documents also show how officials monitored journalists and activists using Pegasus spyware, and evaded cooperation with the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa. For more, we’re joined by journalist Luis Chaparro, who examined some of the documents and reported in a piece for Vice that they reveal Mexico’s military sold grenades to the drug cartels.

      • TechdirtUS Federal Courts Agree To Refund Fees They Overcharged People For Access To PACER

        You may recall that, back in 2016, a lawsuit was filed against the US federal judiciary and how it charges for PACER. If you don’t know, PACER is the court system’s electronic filing/records system, that allows users to access documents in federal court. It looks and acts like it was designed in the 1990s, and charges absolutely ridiculous amounts to use. Every “page” costs $0.05, and that includes for any searches that you do (with a somewhat arbitrary definition of a “page.”) The problem is that the law that enables the judiciary to charge for PACER pretty clearly says that the courts can only charge “reasonable fees” and can do so only to the extent necessary to fund the PACER system itself.

    • Environment

      • The EconomistRichard Mosse documents the hidden war in the Brazilian Amazon

        “Broken Spectre” is urgent. On October 30th Brazilians will vote in a run-off to decide whether or not to give Jair Bolsonaro a second term in office. The fate of the rainforest hangs in the balance. Levels of deforestation have reached a record high on Mr Bolsonaro’s watch, and nearly all of it is illegal. His scorn for indigenous reserves and environmentalists has emboldened criminals, who are among the subjects of Mr Mosse’s work.

      • Energy

        • Dawn MediaScammers make off with $100m from [cryptocurrency] firm

          The total stolen was $580 million, but company chief Changpeng Zhao said roughly 80 percent had been frozen immediately, and the damage had been limited to less than $100m.

        • New York TimesCan E-Bikes Go Mainstream?

          In a bike market remade by the pandemic, VanMoof, the Dutch e-bike company started by the brothers, has been among the biggest winners. With a simple and stylish design and clever integration of technology, the company has drawn comparisons to Apple and Tesla and has attracted a loyal and fast-growing customer base among urban professionals in Europe and the United States.

          Sales of the battery-powered bikes more than tripled during the pandemic, and the company has raised more than $150 million from venture capitalists who don’t typically bet on bicycles.

        • Common DreamsScientists Launch Petition Urging Academic Publisher to Stop Aiding Fossil Fuel Industry

          Elsevier, a Dutch firm that operates more than 2,700 scientific, technical, and medical journals in which research is peer-reviewed and disseminated, and its parent company, RELX, claim to be committed to environmental protection, vowing to minimize their "contribution to climate change, in line with the scale of action deemed necessary by science."

        • Common DreamsOpinion | Want to Punish the Saudis? Fast-Track Nuke Agreement With Iran and the Green New Deal

          Reuters reports that the Biden White House is upset with Saudi Arabia over the recent OPEC+ decision to cut the output of the 21 nations grouped in the bloc by 2 million barrels a day. President Biden told CNN's Jake Tapper in an interview Tuesday, "there will be consequences" for Saudi Arabia's relationship with the U.S.

        • Counter PunchWill NOPEC Bill Spell the End of Saudi Treachery?
      • Wildlife/Nature

        • The Telegraph UKMeet the 66-year-old ranger still battling poachers in Zambia

          Now his efforts have been acknowledged with a prestigious Tusk Wildlife Ranger Award, sponsored by the Nick Maughan Foundation, to be presented at the Tusk Conservation Awards, in partnership with Ninety One, on November 1 at Hampton Court Palace.

          The veteran scout was an easy choice for the judges. During his 14 years in office as a Senior Ranger Support Manager, 570 firearms have been confiscated, 2,660 snares removed, and 1,250 poachers stopped in their tracks.

        • The ConversationThe science of why hawks are one of nature’s deadliest hunters

          How do hawks steer clear of the confusion effect that bewilders us humans when watching a swarm? To answer this question, we filmed the hawks as they plunged into the stream of bats flowing from a cathedral-like cave. High-definition video cameras placed strategically around the mouth of the bat cave allowed my team to reconstruct the 3D trajectories of the hawks and the bats they attacked. But recreating a behaviour is only the first step towards understanding its mechanics. Next, my team analysed how the hawks steered their line of attack.

          We used a computer simulation approach that we had first developed in 2017 to study the attack behaviours of peregrine falcons. This method uses a set of mathematical formulae called differential equations to simulate the birds’ behaviour.

        • The Revelator30 Ways Environmentalists Can Participate in Democracy
      • Overpopulation

        • uni MichiganTools help Great Lakes region plan for climate-change migrants

          Communities in the Great Lakes region need to start planning now for a future that may include “climate migrants” who leave behind increasingly frequent natural disasters in other parts of the country.

          And user-friendly web-based tools can be a central part of that planning process.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Robert ReichThe Election Deniers on the Ballot: What You Need to Know
      • Patrick BreyerEuropean Digital Identity: EU Parliament wants decentralized data storage and right to anonymity

        Tonight, the EU Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) will vote on amendments to the envisaged “European Digital Identity” and “digital wallet”, calling for far-reaching changes to the Commission’s proposal. Among other things, use is to remain voluntary and alternative identification without disadvantages is to remain on offer. Service providers should, as far as possible, enable the anonymous use of their services; otherwise, self-selected, changing pseudonyms could be used for signing up to Internet services. Instead of mandating a unique personal identification number or “citizen number” throughout Europe, every Member State would be able to opt for identifiers that are different for every service. The committee also calls for decentralized storage of the contents of the personal “digital wallet” (e.g., credit card data, driver’s license, medical prescriptions) exclusively on the holder’s own device, unless the holder requests external backup and data storage.

      • The HillCourt blocks Texas social media law from taking effect

        The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a controversial Texas social media law from going into effect Wednesday as industry groups seek to bring the case to the Supreme Court.

        The court granted a request from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice to prevent the law’s implementation ahead of a potential Supreme Court hearing on the case, the tech associations said Wednesday.

      • JoinupThe United Nations E-Government Survey is out

        The United Nations E-Government Survey 2022 is the 12th edition of the United Nations’ assessment of the digital government landscape across all 193 Member States. The E-Government Survey is informed by over two decades of longitudinal research, with a ranking of countries based on the United Nations E-Government Development Index (EGDI), a combination of primary data (collected and owned by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and secondary data from other UN agencies.

      • UN E-Government Survey 2022

        This edition of the Survey includes data analysis in global and regional contexts, a study of local e-government development based on the United Nations Local Online Service Index (LOSI), consideration of inclusion in the hybrid digital society, and a concluding chapter that outlines the trends and developments related to the future of digital government. As wish all editions, it features extensive annexes on its data, methodology and related pilot study initiatives.

      • AxiosScoop: TikTok chases Amazon with plans for U.S. fulfillment centers

        Why it matters: The move signifies TikTok's commitment to e-commerce as its next major revenue stream, following the explosive growth of its ads business.

      • Jacobin MagazineAfrica Is Not Immune to the Rising Tide of Xenophobia

        Xenophobic politics aren’t just on the rise in the West, but in African countries like South Africa. And the culprit is similar: a ruling elite that refuses to address rapacious economic inequality and instead fans the flame of anti-foreign resentment.

      • The AtlanticJ. D. Vance and the Collapse of Dignity

        Today, we no longer expect or even want our politicians to be better than we are. The new American right, however, has blown past the relatively innocuous populism of the past 40 years and added a fetid cynicism about almost everything related to public life. Not only are the MAGA Republicans seemingly repelled by the idea of voting for someone better than they are; they support candidates who are often manifestly worse people than the average citizen, so that they may slather their fears about their own shortcomings and prejudices under a sludgy and undifferentiated hatred about almost everyone in public office.

        These populists not only look past the sins of their candidates but also defend and even celebrate them. Let us leave aside the cult around Trump, which has now reached such levels of weirdness that the specter of Jim Jones is probably pacing about the netherworld in awe. Instead, consider how many people cheer on unhinged cranks such as Marjorie Taylor Greene or allow themselves to be courted by smarmy opportunists such as Vance and Ted Cruz.

      • Pro PublicaWho Is My Member of Congress & What Do They Do?

        Here’s a refresher how the lawmakers we elect are supposed to make laws.

      • Telex (Hungary)Orbán: When I visited Putin before the war, I could tell there was trouble
      • Common DreamsCori Bush to GOP: Stop Putting 'Profits Over People' With Attacks on Student Debt Relief

        "Efforts to undermine the Biden administration's student loan cancellation program are the latest example of Republicans and student loan servicers prioritizing profits over people and corporations over constituencies," Bush said in a statement as a group of GOP attorneys general—including Missouri AG Eric Schmitt—made their case for an injunction against student debt forgiveness.

      • The NationThe American Socialism That Might Have Been

        Donald Trump has had the urge to crush many things, including the last election. So I must admit I found it eerily amusing that when the FBI entered his estate at Mar-a-Lago recently, they did so under a warrant authorized by the Espionage Act of 1917. History certainly has a strange way of returning in our world and also of crushing alternatives. Whatever Trump did, that act has a sorry track record in both its own time and ours when it has been used, including by his administration, to silence the leakers of government information. And because my latest book, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and America’s Forgotten Crisis, is about the crushing of alternatives a century ago in this country, in the midst of all this, I couldn’t help thinking about a part of our history that The Donald would undoubtedly have been the first to crush, if he had the chance.

      • Common DreamsLosing Ground, Cortez Masto Defeat in Nevada Could Cost Democrats Senate Majority

        Cortez Masto's is one of few key Senate races—along with those in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that election watchers largely consider a toss-up. In Nevada, the first-term incumbent senator faces Republican Adam Laxalt, who succeeded her as state attorney general.

      • The NationThe Future of Democracy Depends on the Ground Game

        Anybody paying attention—and not everybody is—knows that the upcoming midterms are different. This election will determine whether autocrats gain ground, consolidate power, and set themselves up for a 2024 federal trifecta, or whether they are pushed back hard enough for a nascent pro-democracy alliance to cohere.

      • TruthOutFar Right Supreme Court Justices Reject Appeal of Man Condemned by Racist Jurors
      • TruthOutNevada GOP Candidate Vows to “Fix” Elections to Reinstate Trump as President
      • TruthOutWall Street Lobbyists Admit Big Banks Don’t Plan to Honor Their Climate Pledges
      • TruthOutThe Treasury Department Is Investigating DeSantis's Migrant Transporting Stunt
      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

        • New York TimesMisinformation Swirls in Non-English Languages Ahead of Midterms

          Unsubstantiated rumors and outright falsehoods spread widely in immigrant communities ahead of the presidential election in 2020. That is happening again in the run-up to this year’s midterm elections, researchers say, but with an insidious twist: The social media accounts pushing misinformation are now targeting audiences in more languages on more topics and across more digital platforms, with scant resistance from social media companies.

        • The HillGoogle adds Trump’s Truth Social to Play Store after holdup

          Google has added former President Trump’s Truth Social app to its Google Play Store after a holdup over its content moderation plans.

          Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, had criticized the tech giant in August after it said the app did not meet Google’s standard policies, namely having effective systems for moderating user-generated content.

        • Hollywood ReporterJudge Dismisses John Stossel’s Defamation Suit Against Facebook Over Fact-Checking

          U.S. District Judge Virginia DeMarchi found that Facebook couldn’t have defamed Stossel because its fact-check program “reflects a subjective judgment about the accuracy and reliability of assertions” made in the content that’s been checked. “Simply because the process by which content is assessed and a label applied is called a ‘fact-check’ does not mean that the assessment itself is an actionable statement of objective fact,” reads the order.

        • BBCUS midterm elections: Does Finland have the answer to fake news?

          More than ever, the spotlight is on the so-called fake news problem and the real-world consequences it can have.

          Despite the increased focus on tackling false and misleading claims on social media, including from the tech giants themselves, disinformation is still seeping through the cracks.

        • Common DreamsFar-Right Conspiracy Grifter Alex Jones Hit With Nearly $1 Billion in Damages for Sandy Hook Lies

          "There will be more Alex Jones in this world, but what they learned here today is that they absolutely will be held accountable."

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • The HillPayPal just gave America an eerie glimpse into the future. There’s no going back

        It is not difficult to imagine the consequences of a payment processing giant instituting such a policy, making it the arbitrator of “truth” and giving it a stranglehold over a person’s livelihood when it disagrees with that individual. The chilling impact on speech was evident, for example, when the Canadian government froze the bank accounts of protesting truck drivers during the pandemic. Did PayPal observe the effect that Canada’s policy had, essentially eliminating the protests overnight, and decide to introduce a similar rule to establish themselves as influential speech moderators?

        Misinformation is harmful to society and should not be tolerated. However, creating rules that permit a single body to determine what constitutes “information” and what constitutes “truth” is inappropriate. Frequently, misinformation is just an unproven theory or a disputed viewpoint that causes dissidents to consider the opposition as the enemy.

      • The EconomistDespite lethal repression, Iran’s protests continue

        Almost a month after protests erupted at the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman detained by the morality police for showing too much hair, Iran’s ayatollahs are still struggling to keep order. Unrest has spread across the country, prompting strikes in some bazaars and oil installations. State news bulletins which ignored the protests now denounce them as foreign plots. And in an effort to regain full control the ayatollahs have reinforced the police with units of ideological paramilitaries known as the Basij. The loyalty of the army, which has stayed on the sidelines, has yet to be tested.

      • VOA NewsIran Sees 'Major' Internet Disruption Amid Renewed Protests

        Calls for protests beginning at noon Wednesday saw a massive deployment of riot police and plainclothes officers throughout Tehran, witnesses said. They also described disruptions affecting their mobile internet services.

        NetBlocks, an advocacy group, said that Iran's internet traffic had dropped to some 25% compared to the peak, even during a working day in which students were in class across the country.

      • New Indian ExpressThe censor cannot hold: the pressure of controlling China's hidden internet content

        What he found when he went online was astounding.

        "There was just like a whole new world that was waiting for me to explore," he told AFP. The Chinese government's early attempts at web censorship were imperfect; VPNs provided access to subjects and information not discussed publicly.

        In amongst the forbidden fruit was "The Gate of Heavenly Peace", a three-hour documentary on student protests in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

      • SCMPChina blocks internet anticensorship tools ahead of 20th party congress as the Great Firewall grows in sophistication

        The move marks an escalation of the Great Firewall’s censorship ahead of the party congress expected to extend President Xi Jinping’s term in power

      • TechCrunchPopular censorship circumvention tools face fresh blockade by China

        TLS, or transport layer security, is a ubiquitous internet security protocol used for encrypting data sent across the internet. Because data shared over a TLS connection is encrypted and cannot be easily read, many censorship circumvention apps and services use TLS to keep people’s conversations private. A TLS-based virtual private network, or VPN, directs internet traffic through a TLS connection instead of pushing that traffic to one’s internet provider.

        But Chinese censors seem to have found a way of compromising this strategy. “The blocking is done by blocking the specific port that the circumvention services listen on. When the user changes the blocked port to a non-blocked port and keeps using the circumvention tools, the entire IP address may get blocked,” GFW Report says in the post.

        According to GFW Report’s estimates provided to TechCrunch, more than half of China’s netizens who circumvent online censorship use some sort of TLS-based tools.

      • Dawn MediaTikTok deletes 15.4m videos from Pakistan

        Pakistan, with 15,351,388 videos removed for violating Community Guidelines, ranked second in the world for the largest volume of videos taken down in Q2 2022.

      • Dawn MediaTwitter reviews policies around permanent user bans

        Twitter has been exploring if there are other content moderation tools that could replace a ban, its harshest penalty for violating rules, the newspaper said, citing multiple people familiar with the situation.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • VOA News'Bucha Became the Turning Point,' Says Russian Journalist

        But when Moscow invaded Ukraine, the pressure on Fomina and her news outlet, iStories, ratcheted up.

        IStories, which is registered outside Russia, was designated a foreign agent in 2021. But in March, she and her team learned that just a few days before the war, Russian authorities had also declared their media outlet an "undesirable organization."

        The media team’s reaction was unanimous. They needed to leave.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent FreakMore Than 20,000 Pirate Sites Are Blocked By ISPs Around the Globe

          The Motion Picture Association has provided a fresh overview of global pirate site-blocking efforts, which now span over 20,000 sites. Blocking measures have expanded to 39 countries in recent years, with the United States remaining the key absentee. The lack of US participation is partly due to a shortcoming in US copyright law, which lacks a carve-out for no-fault injunctions.

        • Torrent FreakPirate Streaming Site Punishes Movie Fans With Free Festival Tickets

          People searching for movies on pirate streaming sites are regularly presented with 'interesting' offers. Whether it's the prospect of becoming a crypto-billionaire overnight or learning one simple trick to lose belly fat, few are known to deliver. With that in mind, we checked out a new pirate site that hopes to connect movie pirates with those behind the silver screen.

        • TechdirtTechdirt Podcast Episode 333: Walled Culture

          One of the oldest and most important topics on Techdirt is copyright, and the many problems with the law both here and abroad. One of the best voices on the subject, here and in many other publications, is Glyn Moody, who recently released his book Walled Culture, that goes through the history of how legacy copyright industries have tried to harm the internet and gain ever greater control over the work of artists and creators. It’s available as a free e-book under a Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication, and today Glyn joins the podcast to discuss the book and the long, often-sad story of copyright law around the world.

        • TechdirtEd Sheeran Just Can’t Get Away From Ridiculous Copyright Lawsuits

          We’ve written a bunch about how Ed Sheeran recognizes how batshit crazy current copyright law is. One of the most successful recording artists today, you’d think that maybe he’d be a copyright maximalist, and yet copyright just seems to keep getting in the way of his creativity. Sheeran has admitted that piracy made him successful. When he started out as an independent artist, he says it was people sharing his music through pirate sites that built up his fan base, eventually leading to his record deals. He’s also been supportive of fans who got hit with copyright claims for covering his songs.

        • NPRThe Supreme Court meets Andy Warhol, Prince and a case that could threaten creativity

          As you might imagine, each side has its experts, and indeed two lower courts disagreed on the matter. A Federal District Court judge found that the Warhol series is "transformative" because it conveys a different message from the original, and thus is: "fair use" under the Copyright Act. But a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, declaring that judges "should not assume the role of art critic and seek to ascertain...the meaning of the works at issue." If the Supreme Court agrees, the Warhol Foundation will have to pay royalties or licensing fees, and potentially other damages to the original creator, Lynn Goldsmith.

          However the Supreme Court rules, its decision will have rippling practical consequences. So it is no surprise that some three dozen friend of the court briefs have been filed arguing on one side or the other, and representing everyone from the American Association of publishers and the Motion Picture Association of America to the Library Futures Institute, the Digital Media Licensing Association, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the Recording Industry Association of America, and even the union that represents NPR's reporters, editors and producers, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

        • TechdirtFrench Parliament Wants To Make People Pay A License Fee To Use Public Domain Works

          The€ public domain€ is the natural state of creative material. It’s where creations end up once copyright’s monopoly has expired. Crucially, it is the€ quid pro quo€ for that monopoly. The deal is that the creator of a work is granted a government-enforced intellectual monopoly for a limited period, after which the work enters the public domain for anyone to use for any purpose, including commercial ones. That’s the bargain, but it seems that the copyright maximalists in the French Parliament want to renege on it. Here’s€ an amendment to a finance bill€ that was proposed by 75 politicians in the National Assembly a few days ago (translation by€ DeepL):

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Where are My Philosopher Kings?

        Plato's Republic can come across as naïve, and I find that fact tragic.

        Broadly, the book climaxes with a plan to make a state ruled by Philosopher Aristocrats. While Plato calls these rulers "Philosophers", we shouldn't picture modern Philosophy students, but academics.

        I find the failure tragic because all rulers - whether by committee or a single ruler - have failed spectacularly at plenty of basic questions.

    • Outages

      • thebackupbox.net outage on 2022-10-12

        A thunderstorm rolled through and seems to have fried JUST the PoE injector that my internet connection uses to power an antenna that's outside for the point-to-point wireless connection to a tower the ISP owns.

        Having woken up at 3pm and not getting my butt in gear until 6pm, I didn't really have much choice of physical-store to buy one of these at.

    • Technical

      • apps are (mostly) overrated

        The more I think about it the more I realise there's no point in most of the apps. After not touching grass for years, looking at how people live their lives with their phones, their use case seems to be very different to mine, and there are serveal things about it.

        Apps like YouTube or Instagram are basically mobile frontend for Web 2.0 sites. Sure they may load stuff faster but them being apps also grant them unnecessary power and control to your device. Besides, some of them even tries to make their website worse so that the app may offer a generally better experience to the user, or at least on the outside that is.

      • GrapheneOS - A Short-Term Review

        I've been running GrapheneOS, a custom Android OS built for privacy and security, on my Pixel 4 XL and have really been enjoying it. It's been a couple weeks now so I think it's time I share some thoughts on it.

        If you haven't seen my recent post on choosing a custom OS to install, it may be worth a read first if you're unfamiliar with custom Android OSs/ROMs.

      • Programming

        • Overflowing with Colours

          The current Project Euler is going to force me to create a program that does *manual division* and that is quite ok, but it's getting late and yes that's an excuse, but fuck um. I shall write some hovno and then get on with my day, saving the *manual division* for tomorrow morning. Hopefully, my sodden brain will muse over it throughout the current day and my sprightly morning mood will conquer it's flimsy heights with ease. But yes - tomorrow.

          I've begun the second revision of *Pony Ride*. It gurgles and eructs as if it were galloping through the scented air of my studio. An issue I'm encountering, which is an issue entirely in my mind, is that of timbre variation. Rock bands have it easy. The basic timbres are established and beyond a bit of distortion or flange on the guitars and bass, they can concentrate on harmonic and melodic ideas.

        • Re: What is a "unit test"?

          Like Sean, a major portion of my developer career has been in the realm of C. However, I have release production quality code in languages from Assembly, C++, C#, F#, Javascript, Python, Rust, tcl/tk and Racket. All of these follow different paradigms. Procedural, OOO, Functional. Statically and Dynamically typed. With how different they all are, you'd expect Unit Testing to be just as complex and nuanced. When I was doing low level system development in I was building industrial control communications systems that could not have failures or down time. For that reason the QA/UAT process was very long and arduous. In the field beta testing took months. From the software side I wrote two types of tests: Unit Tests and System Tests.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

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