An "amateur phone collective" is making creative use of Linux and special hardware to help people without cellphones stay connected.
As payphones have largely been superseded by cellphones, many cities have begun to remove them. One group in Philadelphia is actually putting them back in, and the new ones are powered by Linux and open-source software. Better yet, you don't have to fumble for coins to use them.
This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to discuss the Twitter saga. What alternatives can you look at? Then we will be taking a look at Firefox and some sweet deals on services. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those penguins marching!
Maayan Salom is Co-Founder of Elementary Data, the open source data observability platform which allows users to monitor their data warehouse directly from dbt.
Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of release 12.14 of our USB stack.
This is a maintenance release that contains some minor fixes.
You might have seen some colleagues or YouTubers using a terminal window with multiple terminal sessions running in it.
Some pro Linux users do the multiple split pane with screen or tmux commands. These commands work in any terminal application but involve a steep learning curve.
If you want multiple terminal sessions in the same application window without the complexity of the tmux or screen commands, Terminator is your friend.
OpenRGB is a stellar open source project that aims to allow you to deal with all the various RGB lights your hardware comes with, as most vendors don't have apps for Linux. It's cross-platform so it works across Linux, macOS and Windows.
The Red Hat Data Grid is a hosted data storage platform that offers different levels of caching for fast access to data in memory. Well-chosen indexes allow the data store to fetch results faster than non-indexed caches. This article demonstrates how to create indexes in Data Grid and use them in a Java application built on Spring Boot. Then we will run and test the application in a container on Red Hat OpenShift.
On day 9 I’ve talked about the inset shorthand properties inset, inset-inline, and inset-block. I don’t believe that I will need those often, but inset can come in handy when you want one element to fill another element entirely.
You can use the overscroll-behavior property to disable scroll-chaining.
If you scroll the inner box in the following example to the end and you keep scrolling, the outer box starts scrolling, too, and finally the whole page.
Even with a metrics system, this isn't a straightforward question to answer, and in fact we haven't tried to do any sort of systematic assessment. A lot of the time we've shoved more memory in servers more as a precaution than anything else; at our scale, it's not particularly expensive to overshoot on a few servers, while if we undershoot we'll have to have a server downtime to add more RAM. The initial deployment is the one time when the choice of RAM amount is basically free.
Christmas is all about food and, if there’s one food that we can’t do Christmas without, it’s mince pies. These little sweet fruit delights are so emblematic of the season. However, too often we see sub-standard mince pies churned out by the million by supermarkets with more of an eye on shelf life and profit per unit than quality. In this article, we’re going to go through our technique for making mince pies that we’ve honed over a couple of decades.
I learned that in a few simple steps you can setup a listener macOS daemon that will allow an incoming telnet connection to a specified port and present a shell session with a login prompt where you can login and execute terminal commands. When I do so, I’m usually there to launch irssi and connect to an IRC server, but other commands work nicely, such as the system monitor top, if you want to keep an eye on how things are doing when fullscreen apps are hogging the displays. (Another nice terminal-based IRC client is WeeChat, by the way.)
Before I go to the trouble of installing the latest version of Apache, I want to ensure my updates to mod_litbook will compile on the lastest version of Apache. I've been developing it using Apache 2.4.38, a version from 2019 (and because I'm using mod_lua it's vulnerable to CVE-2021-44790). So I pull down the latest version (as of this writing, the latest stable version is 2.4.54) and start compiling.
When you say “value” in CSS, you might think you know what it means. But if you look closer — especially at the spec — you’ll find there are lots of different meanings for the word “value” in CSS, each one different than the next.
OpenSUSE is one of a few Linux operating systems that use BtrFS by default instead of Ext4. The BtrFS filesystem is excellent on OpenSUSE, and with it, users can take filesystem snapshots for each update and change made and roll it back if anything happens. In this guide, we’ll show you how you can use the robust snapshot feature in both OpenSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed.
On Linux, every file has an owner and a group. They are given access rights accordingly.
With the chown command, you can change the owner and group of a file or directory. Configuring file and folder permissions is critical to the security of the files.
In this brief guide, we will cover all you need to know to use chown to change permissions. We use chown version 8.28 in Ubuntu 18.04.2. We also provide some examples.
You will need a Linux machine with access to a terminal. You need to have superuser privileges (so you can use the sudo command) to change ownership of any file.
ClamAV is a versatile and powerful antivirus toolkit that can protect against such malicious software. One of its most important uses is on mail servers, which can scan incoming emails for viruses and other threats. Still, it can also be used on file hosting servers to periodically scan files that are available for download to the public. In addition to its use on servers, ClamAV can also be used on individual computers to scan for malware and other threat. The antivirus software also supports multiple file formats, utilizes multi-thread scanner features, and receives updates for its signature database daily to sometimes numerous times per day for the latest protection making it a popular software choice for Fedora users.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install ClamAV on Fedora 37/36/35 desktop or server and some basic scan commands using the command line terminal.
Comparison and checking might not be suitable in real life, but it is essential in programming. It helps to ensure that you have good code that interacts well and works as expected. Comparison of various values, checking of the different properties of files, and logical reasoning with and/or methods is a massive part of any programming language and the entire basis of reasoning within any script’s framework. For Bash, the command test provides many of these features, and as we will see, an even more simplified version of that also exists. So let us know what it is all about.
Displaying a specific number of documents in a particular collection is one of the retrieval queries. Use the distinct count query when you have hundreds of documents in a collection and want to know the total number of distinct documents in that collection.
In today’s MongoDB tutorial series post, we shall discuss the fundamental notion of distinct count queries and their use in MongoDB.
MongoDB is a NoSQL database that can store many forms of data, including unstructured data. Data in MongoDB is stored as collections and documents rather than relations. This enables it to keep any form of data. MongoDB has hundreds of operators and accepts several document storage and retrieval techniques.
MongoDB also includes the Mongo Shell, a command-line interface and interactive tool written in JavaScript. Using Mongo Shell, you may perform queries and engage with your MongoDB databases, collections, and documents. You need to know the database name and its fundamental attributes while working on a database. You may quickly list the available databases for this purpose, and MongoDB has several choices for checking the size of databases, approved databases, or empty databases.
This post will teach you about the various Mongo Shell list database commands and how to list databases in JSON format.
Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to extensive projects quickly and efficiently. Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning-fast performance. It outclasses SCM tools like Subversion or CVS with features like cheap local branching, convenient staging areas, and multiple workflows.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install GIT on Ubuntu 22.10, 22.04, or 20.04 Linux with instructions on using the standard repository or importing the latest version from the Ubuntu Git maintainers teams. The tutorial will cover some basic Git commands required for everyday use.
Beekeeper Studio might be perfect for an easy-to-use and comprehensive GUI electron front end for database management. This open-source database GUI can easily connect with any MariaDB or Postgres and works well alongside popular databases such as MySQL, CockroachDB, Amazon Redshift, SQLite, and SQL DB. Currently, Beekeeper Studio only supports TCP connections for PSQL or MySQL, not Unix socket connections. It is equipped with all sorts of useful features you would expect in a quality SQL program: autocomplete functionality includes completable queries without having to make multiple trips back and forth between programs; there’s even live reflection on what your query will do right before it finishes running so that minor mistakes don’t go unnoticed while typing.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install Beekeeper Studio on Ubuntu 22.10/22.04/20.04 LTS by importing the official repository and installing the application with cli commands.
In this post, you will learn a useful and simple trick that will help you to protect files. To achieve this, use GnuPG.
[...]
In other words, thanks to GnuPG we will be able to obtain several functionalities around file encryption but also signatures for repositories.
Being an open-source project, it is possible to find it without too many problems in many Linux distributions. So, it is easy to install and use it.
Let’s use it to protect a specific file.
VSCodium is a code editor based on the open-source version of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code (VSCode). The source code for VSCodium can be found on GitHub, and it is licensed under the MIT license. This means it will remain free to use, provided you don’t mind installing extra features via third-party plugins or extensions. It is a solid alternative for users seeking to keep utilizing VSCode but reducing their footprint to Microsoft, especially if you do not require third-party plugs or extensions.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install VSCodium on Ubuntu 22.10/22.04/20.04 Linux. The tutorial will use the command line terminal with complete steps to install the official repository and tips on updating and removing the IDE securely and adequately.
Avidemux is a free, open-source software application for non-linear video editing and transcoding multimedia files. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD-compatible MPEG files, MP4, and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Avidemux has a wide range of features that makes it a popular choice for video editing, including support for most popular video formats, the ability to cutting and joining video files without re-encoding, and power management features allowing you to automatically shutdown your computer when the job is done and much more. If you are looking for an easy-to-use video editor with all the features you need, then Avidemux is worth checking out.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install Avidemux on Ubuntu 22.10/22.04/20.04 Linux using the command line terminal the LaunchPAD PPA by the XtraDEB team.
Linux kernel 5.15 dropped support for NTLMv1, a weaker authentication algorithm.
As a consequence, if you have old hardware that only supports SMB1 (such as Apple’s Airport Time Capsule), you may have trouble mounting them on recent distributions like Ubuntu 22.04.
Lightspeed Studios and NVIDIA have announced that the Portal with RTX free DLC will be release on December 8th. It's only been announced with a Windows build, so for Linux you'll need to run it with Proton.
Paradox have put out the latest free update to their grand space strategy game Stellaris, the 3.6 "Orion" update is less about new content and more about improving the game.
Fans of GOG and adventure games will be happy, as the new Return to Monkey Island is now available on GOG. The release comes with the Native Linux build too. Probably one of the most highly rated games of the year too, nice to see it didn't take long to come to other stores.
Another update is now available for the Steam Deck with a Client Beta, fixing up some annoying issues people keep finding and reporting to Valve.
While Valve continues working towards replacing the old Big Picture Mode with the UI from the Steam Deck, a few more fixes are in the new Steam Client Beta.
Heroic Games Launcher v2.5.0 is out now for managing GOG and Epic Games Store, this new release has some pretty exciting features like sideloading.
I can lie: my excitement levels are rising because an all-new version of the Xfce desktop environment is edging towards release.
Nearly two years of development has gone in to shaping Xfce 4.18, which is due for release on December 15, 2022. The release will be the stable series follow-up to Xfce 4.16 which debuted back in Christmas of 2020 (and brought some cool new features like fractional scaling support).
Keen to discover what’s new and improved in the latest version of this lightweight desktop I’ve dug through code commits, developer tweets, and the odd bug report or two to write-up this run-down about what to expect.
Let’s dive in!
Welcome antiX and Noir linux to the strict list, with edition 22 antiX is fully functional and lighter than ever without a trace of elogind!
This means this list has grown more than it has shrunk, over the past 2+ years it has been dynamically published.
Edited: November 30th 2022 (replacing older strict list)
This list is going to be short and there may be a sublist of distros with a medium strict standard. We shall explain what the object is, below the short list (which we hope the community will assist in making longer as we have not been able to currently review the work of every distro and fork).
In OpenBSD 7.2 release, PostgreSQL was upgraded to 14.5. This post shows how to install it on the latest OpenBSD.
The Radxa Taco is a carrier board for Raspberry Pi CM4 and compatible system-on-modules that is designed for NAS applications with five SATA ports for 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives, 2.5GbE and GbE networking, M.2 sockets for expansion, and more.
The new board is the successor of the Rock Pi SATA HAT designed for the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC or Raxda Rock Pi 4 single board computers and supports more SATA drives, M.2 NVMe storage, optional WiFi 6, built-in RTC support, and so on.
AAEON PICO-V2K4-SEMI mini PC, powered by an AMD Ryzen Embedded V2516 or V2718 processor, can drive up to three 4K displays, offers 2.5GbE and GbE networking, several USB 3.2 ports, as well as two optional COM ports supporting RS232, RS422, and RS485.
The first mini PC from the company featuring AMD Ryzen V2000 Series processors also comes with up to 32GB RAM, a 64GB NVMe SSD, as well as M.2 and mPCIe sockets for expansion, and its compact form factor makes it suitable for edge computing, embedded gaming, and image processing applications.
Those of us hardware types that spend a lot of time designing PCBs will often look at other peoples’ designs with interest, and in some cases, considerable admiration. Some of their boards just look so good. But are aesthetics important? After all, for most products, the delicate electronic components on that PCB are tucked safely inside a protective enclosure. But, as [Phil’s Lab] explains, aesthetic PCB designs can lead to functional improvements, such that better-looking designs are also better performing, in terms of manufacturability (and therefore yield), electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), and several other factors that can be important.
Today we are sharing an evaluation report on another study that’s part of our Gender Balance in Computing research programme. In this study, we investigated the impact of using relevant contexts in classroom programming activities for 12- to 13-year-olds on girls’ and boys’ attitudes towards Computing.
Rikomagic RKM V7 is an HDMI TV stick running Android 11 on a Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor with 2GB RAM, 16GB flash, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 5/6 connectivity, as well as HDMI female port, and two USB ports. While the device could be used as a general-purpose Android mini PC, it is also suitable as a digital signage player with features such as RTC for time on/off control, screen rotation support, and a watchdog timer to ensure continuous operation even if a software crash occurs.
Mastodon - the distributed social network - has two interesting challenges when it comes to how users share links. I'd like to discuss those issues and suggest a possible way forward.
The state-of-the-art in generative AI is advancing fast. But, unlike previous AI waves marked by big launches and research papers, generative AI is spreading in a much more grassroots (and unlikely) medium: through Google Colab notebooks.
Google Colab notebooks are free Jupyter notebooks that run in the cloud and are easy to share. Many people use them to tinker with models, experiment with code, and share ideas. Interestingly, it was launched by Google Research during the time I worked on Google Cloud AI (we shipped a similar but unbranded Jupyter workflow).
So why are Colab notebooks the medium of exchange?
In 1994, a press release read: “Netscape Communications Corporation today announced that it is offering its newly introduced Netscape(TM) network navigator free to users via the Internet.” That was when Netscape released its first commercial browser for free. Netscape was probably one of the most important companies of its time and if you had access to a computer and the web in the early 90s, chances are you were using a Netscape browser.
However, the company failed to live up to expectations and despite a stellar IPO, failed to compete with the likes of Microsoft. Netscape ended up disbanded, but it did leave a legacy behind.
Tor is powered by community. Just as the privacy the Tor network provides is made possible by a decentralized network of volunteers running relays—the Tor Project is made possible by a wide variety of supporters.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Tor Project relies on external support to fight for your privacy online. We will always build and offer free software. It’s part of our mission and our vision of a better internet. We don’t harvest or sell your data. We don’t charge you to use what we build. That means that everyone in the world can use Tor. It also means that if you have the ability, making a monthly donation to Tor ensures its availability for others.
Tor Browser 11.5.10 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.
This is an Android-only release which fixes crashes on Android 12+ devices caused by the targetSdkVersion update in 11.5.9.
After a successful and fun inaugural class, we’re eager to see what the second round of our residential incubator project will bring. A few talented independent developers will spend February 1st to May 1st, 2023 building their dream anti-establishment project without having to give up any equity or compromise on any principle. This round of fellows will be the very first to work out of FUTO’s new, 13,000 sq. ft. Austin campus.
If selected, each member of your team will receive at least $20,000 of funding, airfare to Austin, free housing for three months, incubator space, equipment, mentorship, and VIP invites to a full slate of events.
It’s not very efficient, as deserialization seems to parse the JSON in both Jackson and Circe, but I don’t have better ideas.
Javascript Object Notation (JSON) as a data transfer format has been widely used by the developer community and still remains a mainstay to store data on the server side. This archaic format is all set to get fresh coat of paint with the launch of JSON Hero, a new and improved way to handle data stored in the JSON format.
OpenAI has built the best Minecraft-playing bot yet by making it watch 70,000 hours of video of people playing the popular computer game. It showcases a powerful new technique that could be used to train machines to carry out a wide range of tasks by binging on sites like YouTube, a vast and untapped source of training data.
The Minecraft AI learned to perform complicated sequences of keyboard and mouse clicks to complete tasks in the game, such as chopping down trees and crafting tools. It’s the first bot that can craft so-called diamond tools, a task that typically takes good human players 20 minutes of high-speed clicking—or around 24,000 actions.
In this lab session, I share how to use apriori algorithm for association mining. The goal is to find useful causal and association rules which can help in designing promotions for the company. Plus, you get to see what's served at an Indian cafe.
In this tutorial, we look at the 8 best HTML and CSS Code editors for Linux developers.
Click on "pkg" icon and choose to update the database, and it can be downloaded and installed.
Welcome to the 14th edition of this Advent Calendar, which started at the old site, and continues in this new one. According to the Wikipedia, 14 years marks the ivory anniversary.
If you really want to nitpick, it’s the 13th anniversary since it started in 2009, making it the lace anniversary. I’ll go for that. Lace adds nice touches to fabric, and it semi-transparent, making it a go-to choice for occasions, and also, why not, for your daily life; lace doilies are used for dinner tables, or over furniture.
The site is now served over HTTPS.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how structural pattern matching works in Python by coding several examples in the context of working with web services. We’ll explore this new feature to match the structure and attributes of the response from the JSONPlaceholder Fake API. JSONPlaceholder is a free online REST API that you can use whenever you need some fake data.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence libraries are available in almost all the languages but Python remains the most popular programming language of all. One of the most important aspects that makes the language the go-to choice for developers and enthusiasts is its sizeable community and the fact that it has more than 137,000 libraries for data science.
The communities on GitHub are contributing almost everyday to make the libraries even better and overcome the existing issues and challenges in AI/ML.
Here’s a list of the top Python libraries that were the most contributed to and used in 2022!
In 1992, the mood in the United States should have been triumphal. The country appeared on the verge of reigning supreme: The Soviet Union had fallen, and the rusting tyrannies across the Eastern Bloc were turning to democracy. The US military had recently pummeled petty dictators in Panama and Iraq, exorcising the ghosts of Vietnam. And although China had avoided the fate of the USSR by brutally crushing dissent in Tiananmen Square, the country was embracing the American way—or at least its markets—and emerging as an eager trading partner. But going into the election year, the United States was surly, restless, preoccupied with grim fantasies of decline and collapse, and fearful of being overtaken by old foes and new rivals.
Zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs are useful cryptographic tools that have seen an explosion of interest in recent years, largely due to their applications to cryptocurrency. The fundamental idea of a ZK proof is that a person with a secret piece of information (a cryptographic key, for instance) can prove something about the secret without revealing the secret itself. Cryptocurrencies are using ZK proofs for all sorts of fun things right now, including anonymity, transaction privacy, and “roll-up” systems that help increase the efficiency of blockchains by using ZK proofs to batch transactions together. ZK proofs are also being used in more general ways, such as allowing security researchers to prove that they know how to exploit a software bug without revealing information about the bug.
Standing desks (also known as sit-stand desks) are somewhat polarizing. The height is adjustable, but the idea is that you move between sitting and standing while you work. Hundreds of manufacturers are out there, but they’re all the same. Two metal legs that extend and one or more motors to move the legs up and down. [JAR Made] tried to make something slightly different for their standing desk with an extending curved surface.
[Luke Towan] has a cool HO scale Escalator mostly made of 3D printed parts, with some laser cut acrylic, for a station on his HO model railroad.
For basic prototyping, the go-to tool to piece together a functioning circuit is the breadboard. It’s a great way to prove a concept works before spending money and time on a PCB. For more complex tasks we can make use of simulation software such as SPICE. But there hasn’t really been a tool to blend these two concepts together. That’s what CRUMB is hoping to solve as a tool that allows simulating breadboard circuits.
[Glen Akins] had a WW2-era aircraft engine cowl flap indicator lying around (as you do) and thought it would make a jolly fine USB-attached indicator. The model in question is a General Electric model 8DJ4PBV DC Selsyn, which was intended for four-engined aircraft. For those not familiar with the purpose [Glen] explains in€ his detailed writeup, that piston-engine aircraft of that era were air-cooled, and during conditions of maximum engine power — such as during take-off — flaps on the side of the engine cowling could be opened to admit additional cooling airflow. These indicator dials were connected to a sender unit on each of the flap actuators, providing the pilots an indication of the flaps’ positions.
Nothing beats a day on the lake in a little boat with an outboard motor putt-putting along behind you. It’s great fun, if perhaps a little noisy with all that putting going on. And maybe that oily sheen on the water in your wake is not so nice. it could be that the fish are a little annoyed with your putting, too. Come to think of it, outboard motors are a bit of a problem.
Too bad because we want to know: two weeks ago, Tristan Harris, a tech ethicist trained at Stanford and who heads the Center for Humane Technologyconfided to the magazine of CBS 60 Minutes : “TikTok reserves the organic version of its app for the Chinese market and floods the world with the opium version”. This is much more restrictive and its algorithm primarily serves educational, scientific (and also patriotic) videos to very young Chinese people, says Harris. And the researcher cites an international study where, when asked about their future aspirations, American pre-teens say they want to become “influencer” while the Chinese say “astronaut”.
[...]
Bytedance, the parent company is not a start-up, but a multinational media company. This year, TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin are expected to achieve $12 billion in revenue. We are therefore entitled to wonder how Bytedance allows communication to be so disconnected from the real issues.
The Environmental Protection Agency has granted the state of Mississippi $500,000 to conduct air monitoring in Pascagoula, a year after ProPublica reported elevated cancer risks from industrial air pollution in the city.
Residents in the Cherokee Forest subdivision had long complained of toxic fumes and persistent health problems including headaches, dizziness and nausea. The neighborhood is surrounded by industrial sites, including a Chevron oil refinery and a shipbuilding facility that Bollinger recently purchased from VT Halter Marine.
Private equity has succeeded in depicting itself as part of the productive economy of health care services. even as it is increasingly being recognized as being parasitic. The essence of this toxic parasitism is not only to drain the host’s nourishment, but also to dull the host’s brain so that it often does not even recognize that the parasite is there. This is the illusion that health care services in the United States suffer under today.€ € € Parasitic private equity is consuming US health care from the inside out, weakening its structure and strength and enriching investors at the expense of patient care and patients. Incremental health reforms have failed. It’s time to move past political barriers to achieve consensus on real reform. says J.E. McDonough, Professor of Practice at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Private equity firms are financial termites devouring the woodwork and foundations of the US health care system. Laura Katz Olson documents in her new book, Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms US Health Care, “PE firms are gobbling up physician and dental practices; homecare and hospital agencies; mental health, substance abuse, eating disorder, and autism services; urgent care facilities; and emergency medical transportation.” Private equity has become a growing and diversified part of the American health care economy. Demonstrated results of private equity ownership include higher patient mortality, higher patient costs, fewer jobs, poorer quality, and closed facilities.
The tire fire that Elon Musk seems to be making out of his new toy, Twitter, is leading some to call for an overdue, society-wide jettisoning of the whole “if he’s a billionaire, that means he’s a genius” myth.
In the United States, we are now treated to regular announcements about benevolent billionaires pledging to share their wealth. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for instance, recently told CNN that he would be giving away the majority of his $124 billion fortune in his lifetime. Further back in 2015, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he would give away what he makes from 99% of his Facebook shares.
The World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday in its first annual State of Global Water Resources report that every region of the world suffered water extremes last year as the climate crisis intensified flooding and droughts, inflicting deadly damage on the most heavily impacted areas.
"In 2021, all regions experienced significant hydrological extremes in the form of floods and droughts, having substantial impacts on communities, including numerous fatalities," the WMO, a United Nations agency, notes in its new report. "Record-breaking floods were observed in western Europe and in the northern Amazon. At the same time, the Paraguay and Paraná Rivers experienced all-time record low water levels."
Telecommunications company Telstra claims to have blocked around 332 million incoming scam and potentially unwanted emails to Bigpond customers—over a third (38%) of all inbound email to Bigpond accounts. To put into context: Telstra blocks 7,600 emails every minute, based on January – October 2022 figure.
In this paper, we point out the shortcomings of this international agreement in terms of fundamental rights protections which, if ratified by EU Member States without further amendments (or at least significant reservations and declarations), could lead to substantive breaches of EU law. The paper focuses on the direct transfers of personal data from service providers in the EU to law enforcement authorities in third countries (Articles 6 and 7), and is not exhaustive for the potential incompatibility of the Protocol with the Treaties.
Our analysis, which takes into consideration the opinions of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and Board (EDPB), points out the following issues in particular: [...]
To address this information gap, EFF is releasing a series of images taken along the U.S. Mexico-Border in California, Arizona, and New Mexico under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which means they are free to use, so long as credit is given to EFF (see EFF's Copyright policy).€ Our goal is not only to ensure there are alternative and open sources of visual information to inform discourse, but to raise awareness of how surveillance is impacting communities along the border and the hundreds of millions of dollars being sunk into oppressive surveillance technologies.
The images include various types of surveillance towers adopted by Customs & Border Protection over the last two decades:€
Clearview wants to be the best in a shady business. As facial recognition tech has undergone increasing public scrutiny, Clearview has chosen to be the turd floating in the government surveillance punchbowl. Clearview scrapes public websites for pictures and data, and sells access to its immense database and the AI to exploit it to whoever wants it — something that has seen it sued, fined, and ejected from barely polite facial recognition society.
But the foundation of the government's case was the hundreds of text messages, Facebook communications as well as audio and video recordings that allowed jurors to see and hear what the defendants were saying and thinking in the months leading up to Jan. 6, on the day itself and afterward.
In many of those communications, Rhodes and his co-defendants spoke in incendiary, sometimes even apocalyptic, terms about violence, civil war and the need to fight to keep Donald Trump in power.
Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was convicted Tuesday by a federal jury of seditious conspiracy for his leading role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump and his "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
"Stewart Rhodes being convicted for seditious conspiracy will be a wake-up call for a LOT of other January 6 defendants."
The historical record challenges another fundamental part of the revisionist argument: that the war was caused by US “imperialism.” On the contrary, the conflict demonstrated what can happen when America sends mixed signals about its willingness to defend its allies. After all, one of the principal reasons Stalin granted Kim permission to invade the South was that he believed Washington wouldn’t come to Seoul’s rescue. The Truman administration’s failure to save its Chinese nationalist allies and its decision to withhold heavy weaponry from the ROK military suggested a strong aversion to intervention on the Asian mainland. In January 1950, Stalin’s convictions were reinforced when US Secretary of State Dean Acheson excluded South Korea when he announced the American defensive perimeter in Asia. Even after the North Korean invasion, Truman waited almost a week before committing US ground troops, initially hoping that communism could still be contained in Asia without direct American involvement.
Admiral Richard last year sounded the alarm that China was staging a “strategic breakout”. This month he warned that America was losing the military contest: “As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking.” President Joe Biden says America faces a “decisive decade” in which to shape the global order. In a flurry of national-security policy documents this autumn his administration classifies Russia as the “acute” threat and China as “the “pacing challenge”.
The historic verdict — the most serious yet secured in relation to the events of Jan. 6 — was nonetheless mixed. Alleged co-conspirators Jessica Watkins, Thomas Watkins, and Kenneth Harrelson were found not guilty of sedition. Meggs and Watkins were, however, found guilty of the lesser charge of conspiring to disrupt the counting of the votes of the Electoral College. All five prosecuted members of the militia group were found guilty on charges of obstructing an official proceeding. Four of the five, including Rhodes, were found guilty of “tampering with documents or proceedings and aiding and abetting.”
A federal jury in Washington on Tuesday found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, another member of the far-right organization, guilty of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a victory for the government in a case that involved a rarely used Civil War era statute.
For more details, see the factsheets€ Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy transition targetsand€ Germany’s energy consumption and power mix in charts.
This article was first published by Clean Energy Wire. It is available under a€ “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)”€ .€
Rebuilding Ukraine will cost more than $1 trillion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a video address to the General Assembly of the International Bureau of Expositions on Tuesday.
Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov has responded to Pope Francis’s statement calling Chechens and Buryats “the cruelest” Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.
In a recent interview with the Catholic magazine America, Pope Francis shared some striking words on the violence in Ukraine. He didn’t name Putin, for example, among those responsible for the war because “it is already known.”
Russian soldiers retreating from Ukraine’s Kherson region took Ukrainian prisoners to dozens of prison colonies within Russian territory, according to Sirena, a publication from Alexey Navalny’s team. The Sirena report cites their own data and information from the organizations Russia Behind Bars and Gulagu.net.
Last month Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) agreed for BP to start drilling for and producing natural gas in a major project off the coast of the north African country.
The UK corporation, on whose board sits former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, controls exploration areas in Libya equivalent to nearly three times the size of Wales.
British officials have long sought to profit from oil in Libya, which contains 48 billion barrels of reserves – the largest oil resources in Africa, accounting for 3% of the world total.
BP is one of the few foreign oil and gas companies with exploration and production licences in Libya. Its assets there were nationalised by Muammar Gaddafi soon after he seized power in a 1969 coup that challenged the entire British position in the country and region.
Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Vakulenko died in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region while it was under Russian occupation. He was buried in the city of Izium, where about 400 new graves were found after the city's liberation.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukraine’s high-voltage transmission operator Ukrenergo, says that all of Ukraine’s larger thermal power plants and HPPs have been damaged by the massive missile strikes conducted by Russia since early October.
“Let me form a platoon made up of children of the elite, and the war will end within a day,” goes a popular, if apocryphal, quote often attributed to the late Russian General Alexander Lebed. In this spirit, journalists at the investigative news outlet iStories telephoned the draft-age children of several Russian politicians and oligarchs and asked if they have received draft orders€ and how they feel about the war generally. These were the responses.
The Russian Attorney General’s Office has declared the Lithuania-based analytical platform Riddle Russia an “undesirable organization.”
Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin has confirmed reports that Lemekhani Nyirenda, a Zambian citizen recently reported to have died in the war in Ukraine, was recruited from a Russian penal colony by PMC Wagner, the mercenary group Prigozhin founded back in 2014.
There is something in the modern radical mind that wants the climate negotiations to fail. Such a failure, after all, would seem to prove that this wretched system cannot be reformed, that only a revolutionary break can save humanity’s future.
Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh made itself looking green and sustainable – thanks to corporate PR superstar company Hill+Knowlton which also supplied corporate propaganda for ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco.
Like whitewashing that seeks to wash things clean, corporate greenwashing is a form of corporate marketing spin telling you that toxic sludge is good for you. In short, greenwashing is designed to make people believe that a company is doing more to protect the environment than it really does. It sells lies.
These points launch the world into the unknown and unknowable, as they engage feedback loops the consequences of which we cannot accurately predict. And yet those predictions concern the mass suffering and death of tens of millions, and maybe more. We are at a tipping point. And President Biden has yet to declare the climate emergency he publicly pondered in July 2022. He likely (and legitimately) fears a political backlash; populism is seen now as a barrier to climate reforms.
What’s wrong? Threats to our species as a whole, and to our survival, are amorphous things. They are too large, and too slow, for us—for the slowly evolving human brain—to see properly. But threats framed as originating from other persons, from the people around us are not. Our species is quite accustomed to dealing with such threats—this is the history of war. And in the case of things like pandemics, where amorphous threats like contagions were framed as threats by the government to deprive us of liberty, they have triggered terrifying populist responses.
These talks have been an on-again, off-again proposition since President Barack Obama initiated them before the Paris climate summit of December 2015, at which delegates were to vote on a landmark measure to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (the maximum amount scientists believe this planet can absorb without catastrophic consequences). The U.S.-Chinese consultations continued after the adoption of the Paris climate accord, but were suspended in 2017 by that climate-change-denying president Donald Trump. They were relaunched by President Biden in 2021, only to be suspended again by an angry Chinese leadership in retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2nd visit to Taiwan, viewed in Beijing as a show of support for pro-independence forces on that island. But thanks to Biden’s intense lobbying in Bali, President Xi agreed to turn the interactive switch back on.
Behind that modest gesture there lies a far more momentous question: What if the two countries moved beyond simply talking and started working together to champion the radical lowering of global carbon emissions? What miracles might then be envisioned? To help find answers to that momentous question means revisiting the recent history of the U.S.-Chinese climate collaboration.
As President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping arrived on the resort island of Bali, Indonesia, for their November 14 “summit,” relations between their two countries were on a hair-raising downward spiral, with tensions over Taiwan nearing the boiling point. Diplomats hoped, at best, for a modest reduction in tensions, which, to the relief of many, did occur. No policy breakthroughs were expected, however, and none were achieved. In one vital area, though, there was at least a glimmer of hope: The planet’s two largest greenhouse-gas emitters agreed to resume their languishing negotiations on joint efforts to overcome the climate crisis.
Michael Klare tries to imagine where those two governments could actually go if they truly decided to cooperate.
We’re all familiar with batteries. Whether we’re talking about disposable AAs in the TV remote, or giant facilities full of rechargeable cells to store power for the grid, they’re a part of our daily lives and well understood.
A group of 16 Puerto Rican municipalities has sued Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and other fossil fuel giants for alleged violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
The lawsuit, filed last week in federal court and described by plaintiffs as a first-of-its-kind RICO case, accuses Big Oil of colluding to deny the climate-wrecking impacts of their fossil fuel products.
Ukrainian news agency UNIAN described him as a "billionaire [cryptocurrency] businessman with likely ties to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service".
When the cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, the company’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, announced the news in a contrite message on Twitter.
But his attempt to calm the situation belied what had just taken place within the company. As the crisis unfolded, a group of FTX lawyers and executives moved to strip authority from Mr. Bankman-Fried and urged the company’s top leaders to prepare for bankruptcy. For days, Mr. Bankman-Fried ignored their warnings and clung to power, seemingly convinced that he could save the firm, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
[Cryptocurrency] isn’t just a financial space where the line goes up and the line goes down; it’s also a place where the line goes poof! and disappears.
In The Stablecoin Saga I discussed the first of Datafinnovation's two series on (meta)stablecoins, about the mystery of where the backing for coins like USDT is. Now, below the fold, it is time to look at their second series, mostly about tracing the flows of stablecoins using data from their blockchains.
After a whale moved a large sum of cryptocurrency to Binance, the on-chain researcher Lookonchain warned of selling pressure in Ether. Here's what we know so far
Major investment funds available to UK consumers are marketing themselves as “sustainable” and “ethical” while financing fossil fuel companies, research has found.
Numerous asset managers are using “green” terms in their branding despite investing in oil giants, with the worst performer being a fund managed by BlackRock, a report by the Ethical Consumer magazine shows.
The Fed Unbound is a short non-fiction exploration of US Federal Reserve actions to reducing systemic risk caused by shadow banking. Its particular focus is the role of the Fed from the 2008 financial crisis to the present, including the COVID shock, but it includes a history of what Menand calls the "American Monetary Settlement," the political compromise that gave rise to the Federal Reserve.
[...]
Most people are familiar with the basic story of how banks work. Essentially no bank simply takes people's money and puts it in a vault until the person wants it again. If that were the case, you would need to pay the bank to store your money. Instead, a bank takes in deposits and then lend some portion of that money out to others. Those loans, for things like cars or houses or credit card spending, come due over time, with interest. The interest rate the bank charges on the loans is much higher than the rate it has to pay on its deposits, and it pockets the difference.
The problem with this model, of course, is that the bank doesn't have your money, so if all the depositors go to the bank at the same time and ask for their money, the bank won't be able to repay them and will collapse. (See, for example, the movie It's a Wonderful Life, or Mary Poppins, or any number of other movies or books.) Retail banks are therefore subject to stringent regulations designed to promote public trust and to ensure that traditional banking is a boring (if still lucrative) business. Banks are also normally insured, which in the US means that if they do experience a run, federal regulators will step in, shut down the bank in an orderly fashion, and ensure every depositor gets their money bank (at least up to the insurance limit).
Theories of capitalism have always also been theories of crisis. John Maynard Keynes linked the instability of capitalism to the instability of aggregate demand, and Marxist thinkers like Rosa Luxemburg pointed out that capitalism depends on noncapitalist markets to survive but disavows and destroys them. In her new book, Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It, Nancy Fraser—one of the best-known feminist political theorists working today—advances a similar argument but adds that capitalism should be viewed as an “institutionalized societal order” on par with feudalism. She calls for a broader understanding of capitalism that isn’t exclusively focused on private property, the means of production, wage labor, and accumulation. Just as we need an expanded view of capitalism, so too, she argues, do we need a broader conception of socialism.
5.6 billion rubles (about $91.45 million) were sent from Russia to Kazakhstan through money transfer systems in October 2022, according to RBC. That’s reportedly 13 times more than the amount sent in October of last year.
Twitter is unraveling at the speed of a SpaceX rocket. Things have gotten so bad under the erratic reign of Elon Musk that the future of the social-media company is in question. What, if anything, should be done to pull Twitter from the brink?
This blog has just written about the likely loss of a very particular kind of culture –€ K-pop live streams. Culture is culture, and a loss is a loss. But potentially we are facing the disappearance of a cultural resource that is indisputably more important. I’m talking about Twitter, and its vast store of tweets that have been written over the last 16 years of its existence.
It soon became clear that Youngkin regarded the governorship as a stepping-stone to something greater, coy though Youngkin has been about his presidential ambitions. To some extent this tentativeness is understandable.
If Joe Biden wins a second term in 2024, it will be 2028 before Youngkin can make a run at the presidency. If a Republican wins in 2024, they will almost certainly run for reelection in 2028, which will delay a Youngkin presidential bid by another 4 years, that is, until 2032. So 2024 is probably the optimal date for a Youngkin pitch at the presidency.
“If there was sincerity on your part,” the Chinese President told Trudeau, “then we shall conduct our discussion with an attitude of mutual respect, otherwise there might be unpredictable consequences.”
At the end of the awkward conversation, Xi was the first to walk away, leaving Trudeau uncomfortably making his way out of the room.
Demands for a congressional investigation into potential ethics violations at the U.S. Supreme Court intensified Monday after a lawyer for the court refused to answer questions from two lawmakers about allegations regarding Justice Samuel Alito.
Ethan Torrey, legal counsel for the high court, responded to a letter from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) dated November 20, in which the lawmakers had asked a series of questions about a bombshell New York Times report detailing a former anti-abortion activist's efforts to gain access to Supreme Court justices.
If his first term in the White House is any indication, Trump could wreak havoc both on the domestic and foreign levels. Michael Dimock and John Gramlich note in PewResearch that even before he took office in 2016, “Trump divided Republicans and Democrats more than any incoming chief executive in the prior€ three decades.€ The gap only grew more pronounced after he became president.”
In addition, according to Jeff Tollefson writing for Nature, Trump “exacerbated the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the United States, rolled back environmental and public-health regulations and undermined science and scientific institutions.”
An intriguing proposal is in the works, backed by a congressman, that could sideline Trump from seeking the White House forever.
The Copia Institute was back at the Supreme Court last week with a new amicus brief urging it to grant review of the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in NetChoice v. Moody. That case, if you remember, took issue with the Florida’s attempt to regulate the Internet with its social media bill (this was the one with the erstwhile “theme park exception.”). And that decision was largely a good one, with some strong language by the Eleventh Circuit explaining how platform moderation was a First Amendment-protected activity that states couldn’t mess with.
Elon Musk said on Monday that Apple Inc has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter, the most high-profile company to pull ads from the social media platform over concerns about content moderation policies under its new owner.
The move aligns the iPhone maker with a rising list of firms from General Mills Inc to luxury automaker Audi of America that have stopped or paused advertising on Twitter since the billionaire's $44 billion buyout last month.
In a series of tweets over 15 minutes, Mr. Musk, the new owner of Twitter, accused Apple of threatening to withhold Twitter from its App Store, a move that would limit some new users from downloading the app. The action would amount to censorship, Mr. Musk said, with no explanation from Apple for why Twitter would be blocked. He added that Apple had also reduced its advertising spending on Twitter.
With his tweets, Mr. Musk set the stage for a power struggle with Mr. Cook, who holds immense influence over other tech companies through Apple’s dominance. Mr. Musk has a vested interest now in Apple’s clout because of his ownership of Twitter, which he bought last month for $44 billion. Twitter is distributed through Apple’s App Store and is used by iPhone and iPad owners around the world. In one tweet, Mr. Musk implied he was ready for “war” with Apple.
First, let’s talk about the Senate: If Warnock wins, it will reduce the hurdles Democrats face as they push legislation to the floor for a vote. In the first two years of the Biden administration, the Senate was split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote. That meant there was little room for opposition within the party. This has significantly empowered conservative-leaning Democratic senators, such as Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and made it challenging for the party to pass some of the legislation that its voters support.
Ralph Nader writes about the winning policy messages that the Georgia senator is ignoring as the December election approaches.
We’ve been somewhat critical of Elon Musk‘s tenure as Twitter owner and CEO (I think for fairly good reasons), but he does have a few good ideas. Lead among them, wanting to enable encrypted direct messages (DMs). He’s mentioned it before, but also had this slide in a recent internal presentation he gave...
While more than 500,000 Georgians have already cast their ballots for a December 6 runoff, progressive leaders and groups are encouraging Peach State voters to help U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, defeat his GOP challenger, ex-football player Herschel Walker.
The tight race has implications for not only Georgia but the entire country; though Democrats lost their majority in the U.S. House earlier this month, Warnock winning reelection would give his party 51 Senate seats—allowing for control of the chamber without a power-sharing agreement and making it easier to confirm President Joe Biden's judicial nominees, including to the Supreme Court.
Advocacy groups on Tuesday joined rail workers and progressives in Congress in calling out U.S. President Joe Biden for encouraging legislative action that would avert a December strike and force through a contract with no paid sick leave.
"If Congress must intercede, Biden should instead ask legislators to pass a better deal, including the necessary sick leave."
Rank-and-file rail workers voiced frustration and anger late Monday after Joe Biden—a self-described "pro-labor president"—urged Congress to pass legislation forcing unions to accept a contract agreement without any paid sick days, a step that would avert a looming nationwide strike and deliver a win for the profitable railroad industry.
"By forcing workers into an agreement which doesn't address basic needs like healthcare and sick time, President Joe Biden is choosing railroads over workers and the economy," said Ross Grooters, an engineer and co-chair of Railroad Workers United, an inter-union alliance that supports public ownership of the national rail system.
The six co-chairs of the Congressional Labor Caucus on Tuesday implored House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to ensure that the cash-starved National Labor Relations Board receives additional funding in the final appropriations bill of the lame-duck session.
"The status quo of NLRB funding is untenable."
After a period of silence, progressive members of Congress began to push back Tuesday as President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders moved ahead with plans to approve legislation that would prevent a nationwide rail strike by forcing workers to accept a contract deal without any paid sick days.
The president's endorsement of congressional action—and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) subsequent vow to swiftly bring legislation to the floor—sparked a furious response from rank-and-file rail union members, a majority of whom voted to reject the White House-brokered contract agreement that Biden and lawmakers are now trying to impose on workers, denying them the right to strike and stripping them of any leverage to negotiate a better deal.
We said when we ran that we’d make this place great. We’ll honor that pledge, but right out of the gate, Inflation, the border, will just have to wait. We need to nab Hunter before it’s too late.
In the wake of the 2022 midterm elections, many Democrats find themselves in an unfamiliar position: winners. In our state of Pennsylvania, Democrats won big. Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman ran remarkably different statewide campaigns—and both won. Rather than argue over which win is more instructive, we want to explore what each of these campaigns did right, and what we can learn from them going into 2024 and beyond.
The morning after Election Day, as many Americans waited to learn whether Democrats would retain the power to pass laws that will later be invalidated by conservatives on the Supreme Court, the court heard a critical case aimed at rescinding key rights held by Native Americans. The conservative legal apparatus has launched a frontal attack on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), and with it an attempt to redefine the nature of tribal sovereignty.1
Here’s another positive outcome of the surprising midterm elections: They should put an end to the crime scare.
I am deeply disturbed by the response to my recent column about what we know about the abhorrent prison conditions that Brittney Griner is enduring in a labor camp in Mordovia, Russia. While the article garnered attention to her plight, there were two trends on the right and among some supposedly on the left that speak to how toxic and enraging our political world has become. Part of the problem is my own naivete in thinking that the idea of an Olympian in a penal colony for nine years just might create unity across the political spectrum. There are points of unity, all right, but nothing like what I expected.
Maria Kalesnikava, the Belarusian opposition leader who had been serving an 11-year sentence in a penal colony, has been rushed to an emergency hospital. On November 28, she was admitted to a surgical ward, and was later moved to an ICU.
The two met privately, held a press conference together, and released a joint statement.
While critics derided the meeting as just another propaganda spectacle for Maduro, Petro has sent a signal to opposition parties in Colombia and the international community, particularly the United States, to rethink its approach if they hope to improve relations and achieve a successful political transition in Venezuela.
250 people sentenced to “obligatory work” in Nizhny Tagil will serve their sentences at the Uralvagonzavod industrial plant, a nominal cargo-train manufacturer that also produces tanks and armored vehicles for the Russian military. This was reported by the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) for the Sverdlovsk region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has submitted a request to the Federation Council asking for head Alexey Kudrin to be dismissed from his post as Audit Chamber head, the Russian state outlet RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday, citing Federation Council Budget and Financial Markets Committee Chair Anatoly Artamonov.
President John Kennedy reached heights of inaugural oratory when he€ declared€ that “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” Three decades later, when Bill Clinton won the presidency, a Newsweek headline proclaimed “THE TORCH PASSES.” The article underneath glorified “a film clip that made its way into a widely seen campaign ad: a beaming, 16-year-old Bill Clinton on a sun-drenched White House lawn, shaking the hand of his and his generation’s idol, John F. Kennedy.”
Weeks later, when Time magazine named Clinton “Man of the Year,” its cover story carried the headline “THE TORCH IS PASSED.”
Images of passing the torch can be stirring.
I suspect that it is the triumph of the “pundit class” on US television which makes so much of it boring and uninformative. What makes the tedium so irritating is that it is quite unnecessary as Washington is bulging with real experts on almost every conceivable thing. But few of them get within sniffing distance of a TV studio where they might say alarming, unexpected and interesting things.
Unfortunately, it is this same pundit class which decides which issues are important and which are not. Many of those who were speaking knowledgably a month ago about the inevitable “Red Wave” and “Republican Tsunami” in the midterm elections are now busy setting the news agenda for the coverage of the presidential election in 2024.
Rights groups and other supporters of marriage equality celebrated Tuesday after 12 Senate Republicans joined with all Democrats present to pass protections for same-sex and interracial partnerships.
"Today we celebrate this win, tomorrow we continue to fight for the justice and equity that every American deserves."
Twitter will no longer enforce its policy against COVID-19 misinformation, raising concerns among public health experts and social media researchers that the change could have serious consequences if it discourages vaccination and other efforts to combat the still-spreading virus.
Eagle-eyed users spotted the change Monday night, noting that a one-sentence update had been made to Twitter's online rules: "Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy."
Twitter had previously reported suspending more than 11,000 accounts for [COVID-19] misinformation as of September this year.
BBC News has approached Twitter for comment.
Its other policies on false information remain on Twitter's website, without a similar notice saying they will no longer be enforced.
The campaign to quash the protests on multiple fronts draws on the party’s decades-old tool kit of repression and surveillance, which Mr. Xi has upgraded in pursuit of unshakable dominance. He has expanded the police forces, promoted loyal security leaders into key positions and declared that “political security” — for him and for the party — must be the bedrock of national security.
There is “so much heat on us right now from these parent groups that we’re treading carefully,” said one principal in a purple Ohio community, who like all the study’s participants was given a pseudonym. Some teachers at his school have questioned whether they can teach about the civil rights movement and Jim Crow without being accused of conveying that all white people are bad. Others have considered retirement.
The censorship has also gone into overdrive after the widespread civil unrest that started after a deadly fire at a high-rise building in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, killed 10. Frustration mounted as purported videos of the incident led to accusations that lockdown hampered rescue efforts.
The protests slowly spread to over a dozen cities and China resorted to detention, surveillance and censorship to quell further dissent amid a record spike in Covid cases in the country.
Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson said Chinese officials appear to be resorting to "low-tech approaches" to tamp down online speech even as the protesters have become more adept at getting their messages past government censors.
"Literally police stopping people on the streets, on public transportation, and forcing them to hand over their smartphones so that police can inspect them to see if they've got chats about the protests, if they've taken pictures or videos, or if they've sent these kinds of materials to other people," she told VOA via Skype on Tuesday.
The change in how AirDrop works has been included in both iOS 16.1.1 and iOS 16.2 beta 2, both released today for users and developers. Also noted by our readers, this restriction is based on hardware rather than software. This means that only iPhone models purchased in Mainland China are affected by the update.
Brazilian President Elect, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, welcomed Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief, and Joseph Farrell, WikiLeaks Ambassador, in a private meeting in the capital Brasilia yesterday (28 November 2022) to discuss the condition of Julian Assange’s detention for his WikiLeaks publications which exposed evidence of government crime, corruption at the highest level and flagrant war crimes.
New information raises further concerns about the politicisation of the WikiLeaks founder’s legal case.
Apart from a meeting with Lula, the two are also expected to meet with the civil society groups, trade unions, federations and journalist guilds to not only raise solidarity for Assange but also to campaign in defense of the right to information.
The visit to Brazil is being coordinated by the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA) and is part of a series of events and meetings that the two will be participating across Latin America with political and social leaders, movements, organized civil society and all those who support Assange’s release.
According to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC), which represents journalists from over 40 countries but is not officially recognized by the Chinese authorities, “[Lawrence] was seen being wrestled to the ground by multiple officers before being led away.” The journalist was allegedly beaten and kicked by Chinese police authorities while in their custody for several hours before being released. Lawrence further shared that at least one Shanghai resident was arrested after trying to stop the police from beating him.
Two particular threads are worth serious consideration. The first is that it was Stefania who discovered that the Crown Prosecution Service had been insisting to the Swedish prosecution service that the allegations against Julian must be continued, when the Swedes had wished to drop them for lack of evidence.
She also found that the Crown Prosecution Service had deleted almost all the relevant emails – allegedly because the staff member working on the case had retired.
The CPS had claimed that when anyone retired their records were deleted, even on continuing cases. That is utterly false – government archives are not personal to the individual and case files do not belong to one person.
As a lie it is particularly desperate. It is of course the case that once Julian was actually in custody, the Swedish allegations, which never had any real foundation, simply disappeared.
"The promise was very simple," said Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. "The treaty literally says the Cherokee Nation 'shall have' a right to a delegate in the House of Representatives."
The non-voting position, similar to a role held by representatives of the District of Columbia, Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands, would give the Cherokee a voice at the epicenter of political power.
The German Campaign for Victims of Racist Police Violence (Kampagne für Opfer rassistischer Polizeigewalt, KOP) calls for documenting police actions with video footage. Initially, the police defended themselves against this with the Art Copyright Act, now the police often describes its spoken word as ââ¬Å¾non-public“. I spoke about this with Maren Burkhardt, who represented and supported the campaign as a lawyer.
In a video posted online by her France-based brother, Farideh Moradkhani urged "conscientious people of the world" to support Iranian protesters. The video was shared online this week after Moradkhani's reported arrest on Nov. 23, according to U.S.-based rights monitor HRANA.
As the 2022 World Cup plays out in Qatar, the first Arab country to host the major sporting event, we speak with history professor Abdullah Al-Arian, who says the international media is projecting an “Orientalist outlook” in its coverage of the games. Al-Arian says despite mainstream discourse, football in the Middle East has historically been used by nationalist movements as “a means of organizing collectively on the basis of achieving their own liberation against colonial rule.” His recent New York Times opinion piece is “Why the World Cup Belongs in the Middle East.”
We speak with author Jules Boykoff about the climate and political implications of the 2022 World Cup. The soccer tournament is being played in the winter for the first time due to Qatar’s extreme summer temperatures. Boykoff says Qatar and FIFA have greenwashed the event by erroneously claiming the World Cup is “fully carbon neutral” despite blocking an independent review of the games. Boykoff also says Qatar is participating in “sportswashing” by using the games to deflect attention from labor abuses. Boykoff’s article in Scientific American is “The World Cup in Qatar Is a Climate Catastrophe.”
Focus on its labor system zeroed in on the construction industry, since so many new facilities were built and because it can be such dangerous work. A Guardian story from 2021 found that 6,750 South Asian workers in all industries died over a 10-year period in Qatar; only 37 of those workers were directly linked to the construction of World Cup facilities. Still, as the Washington Post reported earlier this month, many families of deceased migrant laborers still lack meaningful information about how and why their loved one died, as well as compensation for their loss.
An Amnesty International campaigner on Tuesday led calls for "truth, justice, and compensation" after Qatar's World Cup chief admitted that hundreds of migrant workers died during the construction of projects related to the FIFA tournament.
"Without€ full investigations the€ true€ scale€ of lives lost€ can never be known."
State Police defended the PIT technique at the time. And in a recent appearance before legislators, Cody Hiland, legal counsel for the Department of Public Safety, continued to defend the practice. It was defended as an almost scientific practice. He acknowledged an increasing use of the technique but put it down to more reckless drivers. A Fox 16 investigation had found, however, that it was frequently being used for minor offenses, such as Harper’s speeding case. The ACLU had called on State Police to review the use of the technique.
The accessibility travel blogger held his ground as his request falls under the Air Carrier Access Act, which allows a passenger to remain seated until their wheelchair is brought to them.
According to the US transportation department, the law mandates airlines return wheelchairs to users as closely as possible to the door of the aircraft, if requested.
As we’ve said before, KOSA would not protect the privacy of children or adults, and would force technology companies to spy on young people and stop them from accessing content that is “not in their best interest,” as defined by the government, and interpreted by tech platforms. KOSA would also likely result in an elaborate age-verification system, run by a third-party, that maintains an enormous database of all internet users’ data.€
Ohio cops just can’t seem to get their head around First Amendment protections. A case hopefully en route to a Supreme Court review involves Parma, Ohio cops who decided it was completely legal to arrest a town resident for creating a clearly satirical Facebook page that suggested the Parma PD was offering free abortions in a roaming van and promoting a “pedophile reform” event.
The leading Australian clean energy association warned Tuesday that modern-day slavery plagues global renewable energy supply chains, and that the industry must take "urgent action" to ensure human and worker rights are respected as nations decarbonize.€
"Renewable energy technologies can have long supply chains that are linked at various points to modern slavery."
Just in case you didn’t notice, authoritarianism was on the ballot in the 2022 midterm elections. An unprecedented majority of candidates from one of the nation’s two major political parties were committed to undemocratic policies and outcomes. You would have to go back to the Democratic Party-dominated segregationist South of the 1950s to find such a sweeping array of authoritarian proclivities in an American election. While voters did stop some of the most high-profile election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and pro-Trump true believers from taking office, all too many won seats at the congressional, state, and local levels.
Despite the fact that federal law enforcement agencies have in recent years acknowledged that white supremacy represents a major threat to public safety in the United States and is fueling domestic terrorist attacks, a new U.S. Senate report reveals that authorities are continuing to pour resources into fighting international threats instead of addressing extremism stateside.
After a three-year investigation, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this month released a nearly 130-page report detailing how the FBI—part of the Justice Department—and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have "failed to adequately align resources to address the threat from domestic terrorism, despite the agencies highlighting the magnitude of the threat in their annual strategic intelligence assessments."
Caracas—For the first 45 days of their imprisonment, three Venezuelan human rights defenders languished in a cold 13-by-13-foot cell. There was no natural light, fresh air, or communication with the outside world. Their only water source was the toilet pothole. Subject to what’s known as “white torture,” a method of psychological punishment the Nicolás Maduro government uses on political prisoners, they lost track of time and place. One of the prisoners, Rafael Tarazona, told me, “Psychologically, the hardest thing was not having information about our family, about our mom.”
In a remarkable courtroom scene, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg asked a New York judge Monday to dismiss murder charges against Tracy McCarter, who says she acted in self-defense when her estranged husband died from a stab wound in the chest in 2020. Bragg campaigned on a promise to fight to free McCarter of murder charges, though, when elected, advocates say his actions initially fell short. This comes as pressure is growing in New York to end the criminalization of domestic abuse survivors, which happens at a disproportionate rate against Black women. Advocates say 90% of women who are incarcerated in New York have been subjected to domestic violence. McCarter “had done everything we tell domestic abuse survivors to do,” says journalist Victoria Law, who has closely followed McCarter’s case, but the nurse still finds herself “in legal limbo, waiting to see if she can try to start picking up the pieces of her life or if she will be facing trial for murder.”
The Union of Southern Service Workers is organizing food service, retail and health care workers through direct action against low wages and historical racism.
"Biden is siding with corporate rail bosses over the rank-and-file workers who voted against this agreement," said one progressive commentator after the president urged lawmakers to take action to force through a deal without paid sick leave.
Nations now fashioning a post–Western world order appear to be abiding by the Five Principles espoused by China’s first and long-serving premier.
On a hot Texas morning in 2020, Giselle, who goes by G, slipped her arms into a borrowed blazer, flipped up the nose ring in her septum so it couldn’t be seen and walked into the Coryell County Courthouse. It was the first time she had ever been to court. She was 17, 11 weeks pregnant and already beginning to show. She was going to ask a judge for authorization to seek an abortion. Her lawyer had explained that she needed to prove that she was mature enough to make this decision. G squeezed her lips around her braces, reminding herself not to smile. She didn’t want the judge to see her as a child.
After Dr. Karen Gibbins’ son was stillborn in 2018, doctors could not explain why it happened.
She underwent genetic testing, which came back normal, and an examination of her placenta, which her medical records show was “notable for the lack of evidence” of an infection or any abnormalities.
Starlink, the satellite Internet provider that has been crucial for keeping Ukraine connected in the wartime, is raising its monthly service prices in Ukraine.
Aaron Good is the author of “American Exception: Empire and the Deep State,” a new book from Skyhorse Publishing. He also hosts a podcast titled “American Exception.” He holds a Ph.D from Temple University. In the tradition of Peter Dale Scott, Aaron’s writing emphasizes the role of a ‘deep state’ (a powerful, secretive, unelected governing force) in history. Chris Garaffa is co-host of the Covert Action Bulletin podcast, and is a frequent radio guest on issues of technology and surveillance.
The “cord cutting” phenomenon the cable and broadcast sector long denied or downplayed simply shows no sign of slowing down. According to the latest data by Leichtman Research, the top U.S. pay TV companies lost another 785,000 subscribers last quarter as younger Americans continue to shift to streaming video, over the air antennas, or free services like TikTok and YouTube.
Last week, I wrote about Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner’s comments at the Heritage committee study into Bill C-18, as she dismissed a proposed Conservative amendment by offering a misleading take on CRTC regulation of the news and stating that online news outlets are “not news.They’re not gathering news. They’re publishing opinion only.” Those comments unsurprisingly sparked anger from many online news outlets, leading to an apology from Hepfner in which she said that Bill C-18 will support digital journalists in their work. Yet a day later, the committee was back at clause-by-clause review and while Hepfner remained silent, her colleagues voted down an amendment proposed by online news services which re-affirms that action speaks louder than words.
Indeed, the rejection of online news outlet concerns suggests that Hepfner’s comments are closer to the mark than the government would like to admit. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has already estimated that over 75% of the revenues from Bill C-18 will go to large broadcasters such as Bell and the CBC. Once Postmedia and Torstar get their share, there is likely to be little left for independent and online news outlets. Of course, if your view is that those outlets don’t matter, that isn’t a problem.
This study, led by Plum and commissioned by Google, explores in detail how the modern Internet actually works to deliver content to end users. This includes analysis of how data moves around the Internet, how the Internet is coordinated and governed, and the key features of today’s Internet. It also includes analysis of the economics of the Internet and how its infrastructure is paid for.
Elon Musk unleashed a stream of confrontational Twitter posts directed at Apple — including claiming that the tech giant has threatened to remove the Twitter app from the Apple App Store without providing a reason for doing so.
Trustbusters’ immediate concern is the console market. For two decades Sony and Nintendo have had the upper hand in the “console wars”, even as supply-chain problems have inhibited sales of Sony’s latest PlayStation (see chart). Nonetheless, Sony worries that gamers might desert the PlayStation if Microsoft made “Call of Duty” exclusive to Xbox. Some 45% of PlayStation owners play the game, according to MIDiA Research, a data firm.
Bell, Rogers, and other copyright holders have obtained a new piracy-blocking order at Canada's Federal Court. The 'dynamic' injunction requires Internet providers to block access to unauthorized IPTV streams during the current NHL season. It's the second order of its kind and, if effective, it won't be the last either.
There's no announcement on the site itself but in just two days, maybe even less, Uploaded.net will shut down, taking users' files with it. In brief emails to customers, Uploaded owner Cyando blames "the situation" for the site's closure, but provides no other details. It seems likely that Uploaded is being pushed off a cliff before a quagmire of legal action suffocates it to death.
We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again: it cannot make sense to extend copyright terms retroactively. The entire point of copyright law is to provide a limited monopoly on making copies of the work as an incentive to get the work produced. Assuming the work was produced, that says that the bargain that was struck was clearly enough of an incentive for the creator. They were told they’d receive that period of exclusivity and thus they created the work.
This week, God put most of Alaska inside of a high pressure bubble, which gave us clear skies last night, so I was determined to do some more stargazing. Interestingly, the NWS forecast had predicted the skies would be mostly clear by Monday morning, but by mid-morning there was a layer of low-altitude clouds covering almost the whole sky. I checked the forecast again and the clear skies had been pushed back about a day. I'd have to say that, for all the great weather tracking tools we have, God is still in control of the weather, and our forecasting is just educated guesses.
Thanksgiving was fabulous. Despite being sick with some sort of weird sinus infection, I successfully made (mostly from the World of Warcraft cookbook) roast turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, spiced stuffing, cranberry chutney, and candied sweet potatoes. I forgot to plan ahead for pie but thankfully there was a bakery open so husband was able to order some pumpkin pie! We feasted and watched the National Dog Show together and then played games, relaxed, and tried our best to stay awake until bedtime. The whole experience was pretty much stress free for me. I bought everything I needed only a few days beforehand instead of obsessing over it weeks in advance. I started preparing most of the dishes on Wednesday, and only in between other tasks when I really felt like it. Nothing was written in stone. I find I work so much better when this is the case. I made the the foods I wanted to make. It's my Thanksgiving now.
Better late than never! I ended up falling off of gemini last year so I never got around to compiling this list but I didn't stop the data gathering!
If you hadn't read my previous post for 2020 I'll share the link at the bottom!
I've found that sometimes it's a good idea to learn something completely new and unfamiliar to avoid getting burned out on any one project or task. My latest go at that was learning Textual, a Python framework for building text user interfaces (TUIs).
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Textual left a positive first impression on me. If you've ever worked on a web app using Vue or a similar javascript framework, Textual feels very similar where you're quickly building widgets then piecing them together alongside the code and styling them with CSS. It might feel overkill for a TUI but as a result, UIs built with Textual are really rich and highly interactive. Just go check out some of their official examples on GitHub or projects other people have made if you don't believe me.
Before I go to the trouble of installing the latest version of Apache [1], I want to ensure my updates to `mod_litbook` [2] will compile on the lastest version of Apache. I've been developing it using Apache 2.4.38, a version from 2019 (and because I'm using `mod_lua [3]` it's vulnerable to CVE-2021-44790 [4]). So I pull down the latest version (as of this writing, the latest stable version is 2.4.54) and start compiling.
I then got a compilation error about a missing field in a structure definition. _Great!_ I think. _Just how much of my system will I have to have to upgrade?_ I start investigating and find something odd—said field not only exists, it exists in the source code for Apache! The very codebase I'm compiling. Yet, for some reason, the compiler thinks the field doesn't exist.
I'm always looking for ways to run things more efficiently, and for fun new projects. Now, Agate is a great high performance server, but Agis uses significantly less memory at idle than Agate. The biggest difference I believe is that Agate is using the Tokio async runtime. Tokio is great. It's really high performance, and you can build monstrously high capacity web services with it. But that's just it. It's overkill. Instead of using async code everywhere and pulling in everything that Tokio requires, when I built Agis I did so with a simple threadpool model and four worker threads handling requests. This is configurable of course, but let's be honest and assume that for most of us four simultaneous requests is wishful thinking on Gemini. But let's stick with four worker threads vs the whole async runtime and check out the momory usage.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.