12.29.22

Links 29/12/2022: siduction 2022.1, MariaDB 11.0, and RISC-V Proliferation

Posted in News Roundup at 9:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Systemd 76 ☛ 2022 at System76: A Year in Review

        PNY, NVIDIA, and System76 have teamed up to give away a System76 Thelio Mira Workstation! Check out the Watch2Win contest for details on entering. There are 16 ways to enter! Deadline for entry is January 31st.

    • Google

      • Kubernetes Blog ☛ Kubernetes v1.26: Advancements in Kubernetes Traffic Engineering | Kubernetes

        Kubernetes v1.26 includes significant advancements in network traffic engineering with the graduation of two features (Service internal traffic policy support, and EndpointSlice terminating conditions) to GA, and a third feature (Proxy terminating endpoints) to beta. The combination of these enhancements aims to address short-comings in traffic engineering that people face today, and unlock new capabilities for the future.

      • 9to5Google ☛ Google ramping up Fuchsia development going into 2023

        Ahead of the new year, Google has been making preparations for more of its developers to work with the Fuchsia operating system.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Collabora ☛ Always growing, always evolving

        With only a few months passing since our last new joiner update, it should come as no surprise that the Collabora crowd has expanded yet again. Our flexible disposition affords us an exceptional bunch to onboard when opportunity knocks, but also leaves room to hear new voices as we shape our path forward.

        We’re fortunate that our newest team members will be able to bring fresh eyes to the departments of Core, Collabora Productivity, Graphics, DevOps, Multimedia, and People Operations. Their skills and innovation will help advance our many projects within the pipeline. Without further ado, let’s meet our new teammates!

    • Applications

      • How to use Matrix

        As I’ve gotten more into FOSS, I’ve noticed a lot of FOSS projects, like KDE, use Matrix protocol.

        A protocol that lets you use any client you wish to chat with each other. Basically, it’s IRC but with more features.

        And I’m into that! So I decided to move my Aks_Dev community from Discord to Matrix. Just to support the project in general but also I do not want my community to be tied to one client. In fact I’ve been using Matrix-Discord bridge for a while, but it is not the optimal way to chat, IMO. Some things just drop out, like replies from Discord side. It works but.. It would be better if everyone was just on the Matrix side.

        On top of the bridge being Very Good but Not Optimal, Discord being proprietary platform can easily follow the path of Twitter. Who knows when Discord decides to add cryptocurrencies or other meaningless crap? Who knows where your data is going to? And if you want to use different client, Discord just can easily ban you because it’s their walled garden and you’re the prisoner of convenience.

      • 9to5Linux ☛ HandBrake 1.6 Open-Source Video Transcoder Finally Brings AV1 Video Encoding

        HandBrake 1.6 open-source, free, and cross-platform video transcoding application is now available for download as a major release that introduces support for the AV1 video codec and numerous other new features and improvements.

        HandBrake 1.6 is here almost a year after HandBrake 1.5 and it finally adds the long-anticipated AV1 video encoding support through the implementation of SVT-AV1 (software) and Intel QSV AV1 (hardware) video encoders, along with 4K AV1 General, QSV (Hardware), and MKV (Matroska) presets.

      • How BASB, GTD, and Scrum help me to manage my productive life – Real App User

        People often tell me that I seem to have a very busy life. They ask how I keep it up, and whether I should relax once in a while. And even though I really make room in my life to watch tv series with my wife every day, listen to some music, discuss a good book together, or just talk and think together about life and the world, nevertheless I also have a creative and productive side that I want to give attention, just because it gives me pleasure and energy. In addition to my daily work as an IT Solution Engineer, I have many creative interests, like photography, drawing, writing books, and writing articles for my two websites. I cannot balance my day job, all these interests, and normal life activities in a healthy way without some kind of productivity system. In this article, I want to give you a look into how I implemented a combination of BASB (Building a Second Brain), GTD (Getting Things Done), and Scrum, to manage my productive life. This article will also be the foundation for future articles in which I will fill in this productivity system with a diversity of productivity tools.

      • [Old] How to be more productive with Kanban and what are my favorite Kanban apps – Real App User

        In 1997, directly after University, I started as an IT specialist and have been working in this area ever since in different roles. During these more than 20 years of being part of and later also leading IT related projects, our teams were using several methods and supporting software solutions to plan our projects in the best possible way. Not all were equally successful. Currently our teams are working in a Scrum approach which is part of the Agile methodology. To support this way of working we use among others an Microsoft Azure Kanban board to plan and monitor our daily work. Kanban is nothing new but seems extremely popular at the moment. It is not only a great approach for large and complex projects, but also on a smaller scale for your study and your personal projects. In this article I want to explain three topics: What is Kanban, Why should you use Kanban to be more productive and what are some of the best Kanban apps available.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Mattermost on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Mattermost on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Mattermost is an open-source, self-hosted chat and collaboration platform that is designed for modern teams. It is similar to other chat platforms like Slack, but it is designed to be more flexible and customizable, with a focus on security and privacy. One of the main advantages of Mattermost is its flexibility and customization options. It can be easily integrated with other tools and services, such as GitLab and JIRA, and it can be customized to meet the specific needs of a team. It is also highly scalable, with support for large organizations and distributed teams.

        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 Mattermost on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

      • Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install Wrapper Offline on a Chromebook
      • Video ☛ How to install Microsoft Edge on KDE Neon – Invidious [Ed: It's proprietary, it is Microsoft, and it is a notorious password stealer that ought to be subjected to fines and penalties. No GNU/Linux users has a good reason to install this.]
      • Make Use Of ☛ How to Use Vim to Encrypt Text Files on Linux

        Most of us keep important notes, login credentials, and other sensitive information in text files. However, it is unsafe to keep this information in plain text. One of the ways to protect sensitive information is to use encryption.

      • Simon Josefsson ☛ Preseeding Trisquel Virtual Machines Using ‘netinst’ Images – Simon Josefsson’s blog

        I’m migrating some self-hosted virtual machines to Trisquel, and noticed that Trisquel does not offer cloud-images similar to the Debian Cloud and Ubuntu Cloud images. Thus my earlier approach based on virt-install –cloud-init and cloud-localds does not work with Trisquel. While I hope that Trisquel will eventually publish cloud-compatible images, I wanted to document an alternative approach for Trisquel based on preseeding. This is how I used to install Debian and Ubuntu in the old days, and the automated preseed method is best documented in the Debian installation manual. I was hoping to forget about the preseed format, but maybe it will become one of those legacy technologies that never really disappears? Like FAT16 and 8-bit microcontrollers.

      • Make Tech Easier ☛ How to Securely Transfer Files in Linux Using SCP – Make Tech Easier

        When transferring files to a remote Linux server, you have a few options. One of the best way is to use a program called Secure Copy, or SCP, that runs over the SSH protocol to quickly transfer files over your network to a remote system. This tutorial shows you how to transfer files securely using SCP in Linux.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install osTicket on Ubuntu 22.04

        osTicket is an open-source and one of the most widely used ticketing systems by small and medium-sized businesses. It is a simple and easy-to-use web-based customer support portal that helps you to manage and track all tickets.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Mastodon Social Network on Debian 11

        In this tutorial, you’ll install Mastodon, a decentralized microblogging platform on a Debian 11 server. With this guide, you’ll set up Mastodon with PostgreSQL as the database server and Nginx as a reverse proxy.

      • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Don’t Like Ubuntu’s Apt “News” Feature? You Can Turn it Off – OMG! Ubuntu!

        It’s easy to disable the apt awareness message that appears each time you run an apt update on Ubuntu 22.04 Why is it needed at all? We discuss inside.

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Gradle on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Gradle on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Gradle is a build automation tool that is used to build different applications, from mobile applications to microservices. It is flexible and helps developers’ teams to automate and build easier and faster software. Gradle is written in the Java programming language and is widely used in the development of Java-based projects, particularly those that use the Java Developer Kit (JDK).

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Gradle on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ Working with MooseFS

        MooseFS is a distributed file system that aims to be a fault-tolerant, highly available and performing, scalable general-purpose network distributed file system for data centers. In this article I’ll show how I’ve started working with MooseFS.

      • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ HandBrake 1.6.0 Released! How to Install in Ubuntu 22.04 | 22.10 | UbuntuHandbook

        HandBrake video transcoder and DVD ripper announced new major 1.6.0 release today. Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu Linux users.

        HandBrake 1.6.0 is a big release with new AV1 video encoding support. They are SVT-AV1 (software) and Intel QSV AV1 (hardware) video encoders.

        This release as well introduced high bit depth and color depth support to various encoders and filters, including VP9 10-bit, NVENC HEVC 10-bit, and VCN HEVC 10-bit encoders.

      • Introducing parity declustering RAID

        Declustered RAID decreases resilvering times, restoring a pool to full redundancy in a fraction of the time over the traditional RAIDz. We look at OpenZFS, the first freely distributed open source solution to offer a parity declustered RAID feature.

        Fault tolerance has been at the forefront of data protection since the dawn of computing. To this day, admins continue to struggle with efficient and reliable methods to maintain the consistency of stored data, either locally or remotely on a server (or cloud storage pool) and keep searching for the best way to recover from a failure, regardless of how disastrous that failure might be.

        Some of the methods still being used today are considered ancient by today’s standards. Why replace something that continues to work? One such technology is called RAID. Initially, the acronym stood for redundant array of inexpensive disks, but it was later reinvented to describe a redundant array of independent disks.

        The idea of RAID was first conceived in 1987. The primary goal was to scale multiple drives into a single volume and present it to the host as a single pool of storage. Depending on how the drives were structured, you also saw an added performance or redundancy benefit. (See the box titled “RAID Recap.”)

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • MX Linux ☛ Xfce 4.18 coming soon to MX-21 – MX Linux

        Xfce 4.18 will be coming soon to MX-21 users. We intend to add Xfce 4.18 to the main MX repositories sometime in January, and the update should come to existing Xfce users via the usual update channels. There are a lot of benefits to Xfce 4.18, including dual pane capability in thunar, updates to the Xfce settings applets, panel, and terminal, and options to have Xfce apps use the older Xfwm window theming instead of gtk3-client-side-decorations.

      • Neowin ☛ MX Linux set to receive Xfce 4.18 update sometime in January – Neowin

        The team behind MX Linux – the number one distro in DistroWatch’s rankings – has said that Xfce 4.18, which was released in mid-December, will be available to MX Linux users in January. The plan is to add Xfce 4.18 to the main MX repositories in January, then MX-21 users running Xfce will get the upgrade through the MX Updater program.

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • MauiKit ☛ Maui Report 20 – MauiKit — #UIFramework

          Today, we bring you a new quick report on the Maui Project’s progress before new years eve.

          Maui 2.2.1 was released almost one month ago, and since then, new features, bug fixes, and improvements have been made to the Maui set of apps and frameworks; the following blog post will cover some of the changes and highlights building up to the upcoming stable release.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • My geek stuff blog: [GNOME] Maps wrap-up 2022

          As I was quite busy during the days before Christmas this year I didn’t get time to write the traditional holidays Maps blog post.

          So I thought I should at least write a quick wrap-up of the happenings during 2022 before the end-of-year.

          As always, we started out in spring with a new major release along the spring GNOME release (42.0).

          In 42.0 (or rather during the development cycle leading up to it) Maps gained support for using the development profile, so that you can install nightly snapshot releases from the GNOME nightly Flatpak repo (or using locally-built bundles) in parallell with a stable release (using the Flathub release or from a „traditional“ distro package).

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Debian Family

      • Release Notes for siduction 2022.1 »Masters of War« – siduction Linux

        During holiday season we present to you our new release siduction 2022.1. This edition for obvious reasons has been given the code name »Masters of War«. This goes back to a Bob Dylan song of the same name from 1962. Users that have been with us for a while will remember that we used to use rock songs as code names for our releases. Well, today we are returning to that tradition. The wallpaper of this release combines the artwork for Debian GNU/Linux 12 »Bookworm« with this Bob Dylan song, that is as fresh today as it was in 1962.

      • 9to5Linux ☛ Debian-Based siduction 2022.1 Arrives with Linux Kernel 6.1, Xfce 4.18, and LXQt 1.2

        Dubbed “Masters of War,” siduction 2022.1 is powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.1 kernel series to provide users with the best possible hardware support. The ISO images come with Linux kernel 6.1.1 by default, which is the latest release at the moment of writing.

        Three flagship editions are provided with this release featuring the latest KDE Plasma 5.26.4 desktop environment, which is accompanied by the latest KDE Frameworks 5.101 and KDE Gear 22.12 software suites for the best Plasma experience, as well as the recently released Xfce 4.18 and LXQt 1.2 desktop environments.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Getting a First Picture on my Nezha RISC-V Board – cordlandwehr

        Compared to other embedded boards that I have, this one is surprisingly well documented; given you find the right webpages (list at the end). The vendor page itself is in a rather typical state, where an online translator occasionally comes handy to translate Chinese into something I understand 😉 But then, there is the really nice sunxi community wiki with has all extra information that you need.

        For the device itself, some months ago I decided to get this one mostly because of the reasons price and delivery date. However, it has a big disadvantage for me when I use it for testing the KDE Yocto layers: There is only a 2D GPU on the board (namely a “G2D” unit) for which also no Kernel drivers are present at the moment (except those from the Kernel source blob by the device vendor). However, for all other parts there is impressive community work. Most notably, coming with Kernel 6.2, there is finally the HDMI driver support that made the above picture possible.

        [...]

        Unfortunately, I do not expect any Plasma or KDE application running on the Nezha board in the sooonish future (at least not accelerated via the G2D chip)… Yet, if you recall, at FOSDEM 2019 Alistair already demonstrated Plasma running on a HiFive Unleashed board, using an expansion board for graphics. Finally, there is right now another very interesting and not too expensive RISC-V board becoming available with on-board 3D GPU and it is already on my shopping list… I am looking forward to 2023 🙂

      • Ventana RISC-V CPUs Beating Next Generation Intel Sapphire Rapids! – Overview of 13 RISC-V Companies, CPUs, and Ecosystem

        Last week we attended the RISC-V Summit in San Jose. Traction in the RISC-V ecosystem is accelerating faster and faster. The embedded world has shipped 10’s billions of RISC-V cores collectively over the last few years. Qualcomm has silently shifted control and security cores that are not exposed to the user since the 2020 S865 chip. This has enabled them to ship a total of 650 million RISC-V cores! Andes and Codasip are each at over 2 billion RISC-V cores shipped, Western Digital ships over a billion RISC-V cores a year, and even Apple is converting some non-user-facing functions to RISC-V!

      • Arduino ☛ This train of trash bins moves to the curb with the press of a button | Arduino Blog

        Once a week, millions of people set out their trash cans next to the curb for collection the following day, which many consider to be extremely annoying or laborious. So rather than manually dragging out the garbage and recycling bins, the YouTuber known as Max Maker decided to build a system that could automate the task at the touch of a key fob button.

        Max’s idea involved creating a single track that would span from the back garden area all the way down the driveway to the curb. From here, a train consisting of several flat carts with wheels underneath would be connected together in addition to a single locomotive cart at the rear. The first version of the locomotive used a windshield wiper motor, controlled by an Arduino Uno and motor driver board, to rotate a pair of rubber wheels along the lower track. However, the lack of power from the windshield wiper motor combined with the lack of grip from the wheels meant the heavy weight of the loaded trash cans could not be moved uphill.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • Monty says: I want to wish you a happy new year with MariaDB 11.0!

        When I created the original MySQL optimizer in 1995, it was quite simple. A big part of the plans were based on costs, but there where also a lot of rule based choices. The original ‘base of cost’ was “one disk seek”. The cost of key read was also a disk seek.

        Over time a lot of developers have worked on the optimizer and added many new features, but the original cost model has stayed the same (until now). Most new features was done with based on a cost model, but still some new things (like deciding which index to use for sorting) were still partly rule based.

        If there was only one or a few choices for a plan, the old optimizer was reasonably good in finding a good plan. But the more complex the queries got (complex = a lot of different choices could be made for each table) the more chance that it would not find the optimal plan. This goes all back to the original cost model not being ‘good enough’.

        The main developers of the 11.0 optimizer changes in MariaDB 11.0 are Sergei Petrunia and me. Vicențiu Ciorbaru has also provided some code and help.

        The optimizer changes consist of more than 100 commits, starting from October 2021!

        It has been a long project!

    • FSF

      • FSF ☛ Sharing is at the core of the free software community

        FSF program manager Miriam Bastian shares why she thinks the freedom to share is important.

        Sharing is what makes a strong community. It has always impressed me to see how people in the free software community share their time, ideas, achievements, knowledge, and software with others. This sharing community is what attracted me in the first place to the free software movement: I wanted to know what it is that people spend so much time and joint effort on and why. What I found convinced me and won me over to free software.

        I started to climb the freedom ladder in 2014. Having profited from software like KeePassXC, Calibre, LibreOffice, F-Droid, Zotero, VLC media player, Privacy Badger, and TeXstudio for more than seven years, I wanted to give back to the free software community. When the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was looking for a program manager, I considered this to be the perfect opportunity to utilize my organizational, managerial, and interpersonal skills, and I am immensely grateful that I now have the privilege to contribute to the free software movement as the FSF’s program manager.

    • Programming/Development

      • Daniel Stenberg ☛ An m1 for curl | daniel.haxx.se

        A generous member of the wider curl community stepped up and donated an unused Mac mini m1 model to me to be used for curl development. Today it arrived at my home. An 8C CPU/16GB/1TB/8C GPU/1GbE model as per the sticker on the box.

      • Perl / Raku

        • Raku CLI AWS – Postvent – Physics::Journey

          These posts presented my work in progress, in advent calendar style of course, on a new raku module: CLI::AWS::EC2-Simple. The module is now available at the raku zef repository via raku.land with github repo here. This post completes the CL::AWS trilogy with a demo of it in action and how the OO model from last time is now wrapped as a command.

        • Perl ☛ Done before, Done better, Done again differently. | Saif [blogs.perl.org]

          It is my firm belief that every thought or idea that you or I have, has been had before. On the balance of statistics, the chances are that those that had these ideas handled it better, and have developed more powerful utilities to exploit these innovations. One therefore has a few possible options, when thinking of creating a solution to a problem. The first probably is to look for other published solutions and use them; these may be more mature, tried, tested and optimised. The second is to go ahead and implement another idea, foolishly perceived as an innovation, leading to a proliferation of methods duplicating, triplicating existing work, in the end producing a half-baked distraction.

          Statistics indicate that someone will take that path of the fool. I am not going to argue with Quantum Programmodynamics; if it has to be someone, let it be me. Interaction in console applications may involve the ping-pong between a script and STDIN. It may be more sophisticated using Curses::UI. This is established, used for heavyweight applications and has a superb feature set. It could be more modern using Tickit by Perl’s resident genius and author of over 235 Perl modules, Paul Evans; powerful, versatile, event-aware and handled in a Perlish way, Tickit is the API for the future of Perl console applications. Or one could try and invent something different. Not better, not more powerful, not more elegant. Just different. Why? Quantum, that’s why.

          There may be reasons other than pure bloody mindedness or foolishness for doing something differently. Indeed, perhaps the only way to learn to appreciate the right way, is to do the wrong thing. Honestly.

  • Leftovers

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Dear Hell

        All the times, I smile, the thoughts.
        Every time, I wish those, feelings.
        Many times, I wonder, emotions.
        Make my life, heaven, hey Hell!

      • saving the osprey

        i have a ultra lightweight osprey backpack: might be very useful except the zips open by themselves and then stuff falls out!

        today i sewed the zips so that these can’t open past the top of the backpack. one side i did with a button foot, the other with a wide zig-zag. the zig zag was the better of the two.

      • Picking up my Guitar

        Just kidding, I don’t have a guitar. I borrowed my sisters acoustic guitar, so that’s the one I am picking up.

        I am not new to the guitar, it’s just that when I discovered triathlon in the earliest 90′ies I immediately got real serious about that, it completely took over my life, in a good way, for some years. And now, about 30 years and a lot of triathlon training and racing later, I feel quite done with that.

      • Gardening descrescendo

        It seems like the history of me writing about gardening on the small internet is basically the story of my efforts getting ever, well, smaller. But not in the warm and fuzzy “smol” sense, although maybe I ought to try to mentally reframe it that way.

    • Technical

      • Programming

        • Using markov chains to generate gibberish

          A couple of weeks ago I was playing with Haunt to see if it was an good candidate to replace Jekyll for a couple of websites I host.

        • My game on itch.io

          I forgot to publish here that a few weeks ago I had published an alpha version of my ninja platform game Pagoda of Death on itch.io. I had this project rolling since 2015 or 2016 but I was trying to make it perfect, so didn’t shipped anything since. Now I said “screw it” and published it anyways:

        • On Sources

          I’ve mentioned that an artifact (a compiled function or data) ingested into harn is stored with all the metadata needed to recreate it. This metadata includes the source code of the artifact.

          Note that unlike current systems, I am not satisfied with leaving the source in the middle of some text file in some directory. I want the source for that particular artifact in _my system_, and to that end, I keep a running log of all compiled C code in the ‘sources’ file.

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

Links 29/12/2022: GNUnet 0.19.1 and ArcoLinux Beta 23.02

Posted in News Roundup at 11:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Graphics Stack

      • Linux Links ☛ 10 Best Free and Open Source Tiling Wayland Compositors – LinuxLinks

        A window manager is software that manages the windows that applications bring up. For example, when you start an application, there will be a window manager running in the background, responsible for the placement and appearance of windows.

        It is important not to confuse a window manager with a desktop environment. A desktop environment typically consists of icons, windows, toolbars, folders, wallpapers, and desktop widgets. They provide a collection of libraries and applications made to operate cohesively together. A desktop environment contains its own window manager.

        There are a few different types of window managers. This article focuses on tiling Wayland compositors.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Manuel Matuzovic ☛ Day 68: cascade layers and browser support

        Cascade layers are one of the most interesting and useful additions to CSS recently. It will change the way we write CSS, how we use selectors, naming conventions, and probably also more things that I can’t think of right now.

        If you’re as excited about using cascade layers as I am, you have to consider browser support before you get started.

      • Manuel Matuzovic ☛ Day 67: counting children

        There are a lot of interesting things you can do with the :has() pseudo-class. I’ve already covered some of them on day 26.

      • Light Blue Touchpaper ☛ Evidence based policing (of booters)

        “Booters” (they usually call themselves “stressers” in a vain attempt to appear legitimate) are denial-of-service-for-hire websites where anyone can purchase small scale attacks that will take down a home Internet connection, a High School (perhaps there’s an upcoming maths test?) or a poorly defended business website. Prices vary but for around $20.00 you can purchase as many 10 minute attacks as you wish to send for the next month! In pretty much every jurisdiction, booters are illegal to run and illegal to use, and there have been a series of Law Enforcement take-downs over the years, notably in the US, UK, Israel and the Netherlands.

      • University of Toronto ☛ Our varied approaches to upgrading machines with local state

        If the machine has only a small amount of local state, such as currently queued email and email logs (on our central email server), then we’ll usually copy the data over as part of the machine shuffle. We can also use this approach if the data is larger but mostly static, so we can rsync most of it across in advance (we did this when we upgraded our Prometheus server). We may also take this approach for the fileserver with /var/mail, since we can use ZFS snapshots and its good incremental copy support, and this would allow us to switch to new SSDs at the point where we upgrade it.

      • Sean Conner ☛ It’s not a “security hole,” it’s a “privacy hole” and I don’t think it’s anything to worry about

        I feel this is more of a “privacy hole” than a “security hole” but that’s could be me being pedantic. Honestly, I don’t feel like this is anything that needs to be worried about. Gemini is much too small to worry about. I suppose a Gemini server could generate client certificates and a compliant Gemini client could accept them for later use to reference a Gemini site, but that’s not now client certificates are specified as working—it’s the client that generates the certificate and the server can accept or reject it (odd, I know, and not how I would envision them working).

      • Terence Eden ☛ Naming things is hard – DNS for the Federated Web

        I want to be a “first class” citizen of the Fediverse. I want a dozen different apps installed on my little slice of the Internet. I want a fairly consistent online identity. What’s the best way to do that?

      • Dan Langille ☛ using syncoid to backup ZFS snapshots – home assistant

        So far, so good. I’m liking this solution. It is very specific to this one filesystem, and I am sure I could adopt it to any others I need to replicate like this.

      • Make Use Of ☛ How to Host an App on Docker Registry

        A Docker registry is a system that stores and distributes Docker images. There are many images hosted on a registry hub. One image can have multiple versions, each identified by a different tag.

        A registry lets users pull Docker images from it and push new images to it for hosting. This allows you to have a copy of your application online. It also enables you to share the images with others.

        Find out everything you need to push an image of an application to the Docker registry.

      • Unix Men ☛ How To Check Disk Space in Linux: Fast and Easy Ways | Unixmen

        Whether you’ve never used Linux servers or switched to one from a Windows server, you might want to know how much free space you have on your drive.

        The nice thing about Linux is that it allows you to find such details quickly with a terminal. In this guide, we’ll see how you can use two commands to accomplish this.

      • DebugPoint ☛ How to Install MX Linux Step-by-Step Guide

        A simple tutorial shows how to install the popular lightweight distribution MX Linux as a standalone system, dual-boot and in VM.

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Undeadly ☛ OpenBSD KDE Status Report 2022

          The end of the year is rapidly approaching, and Rafael Sadowski (rsadowski@) has published the OpenBSD KDE Status Report 2022. The report leads in, [...]

        • Rafael Sadowski ☛ OpenBSD KDE Status Report 2022

          We welcome Qt6 into OpenBSD! Our Telegram client port (net/tdesktop) depends on it and kn@ is actively maintaining the client. tdesktop always quickly goes with the latest Qt6 version. So there is always some pressure for us to keep Qt6 up-to-date. I think this will pay off when KDE switches to Qt6. Besides tdesktop security/qdigidoc4 and net/wireshark also use Qt6 by now.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • New Releases

      • ArcoLinux Beta 23.02 | ArcoLinux

        Archiso 69-1 has been implemented in ArcoLinux.

        Extra line to test your RAM in UEFI.

      • 9to5Linux ☛ Latest IPFire Hardened Linux Firewall Distro Release Future-Proofs VPN Cryptography

        The biggest changes in this new IPFire hardened Linux firewall release are the improvements the development team added around the VPN (Virtual Private Network) implementation offered within the distribution in an attempt to future-proof VPN cryptography.

        More specifically, IPFire 2.27 Core Update 172 updates the key lengths of root CA (Certificate Authority) certificates for both IPsec and OpenVPN VPN clients/peers from 2048 bit to 4096 bit RSA, due to the fact that 2048 bit encryption is no longer recommended by security experts for long-term security purposes. Also updated to 4096 bit RSA encryption is the key pair generated for IPFire’s web interface.

    • BSD

      • MWL ☛ “OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems” print layout notes

        So I’m reverting to the previous design for OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems. It might result in a price increase. Maybe not, because it’s a little shorter than the SNMP book. But the result will be a nicer physical artifact that provides a better reading experience.

      • TuMFatig ☛ Installing OpenBSD 7.2 on an ODROID-HC4

        Those are my notes about installing OpenBSD 7.2 on the ODROID-HC4 ; an arm64 board that provides SATA slots. It is quite straightforward to install, once you get the ordered steps.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Stacey on IoT ☛ A few devices and services for securing your smart home

        A few weeks back, I explained how I think about my risk model when it comes to cybersecurity in my smart home. Shortly after that piece was published, Comcast issued a report that showed how wrong many people were when it came to understanding which devices posed the largest threat to their home network security.

        In my article, I recommended using an outside device or service to monitor your network, so I figured I’d share my experience with some of the options out there.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Hackaday ☛ USB Host On RP2040 – With PIO

        Folks from [Adafruit] are showing off a neat hack – USB host on RP2040, using the now-famous PIO peripheral. [Adafruit] builds a lot of RP2040 boards, and naturally, you gotta test them before you ship them to customers. They’ve been using very specific Teensies for that, and at some point, those became unobtainium. Based on the work of [sekigon-gonnoc] and with help of [Thach], they’ve made their TinyUSB library support bitbanging of USB over PIO, and successfully ported their test jig firmware to it!

      • Hackaday ☛ Building A New Commodore 64 In 2022 With All New Components

        Call it fake or simply new, but when [DusteD] set out to build a brand-new Commodore 64 with only new parts, it resulted in Project MaxFake64 that is electrically and binary compatible with any genuine C64 out there. While not really ‘fake’ in the sense that a C64 emulator is fake, it is in the sense that it uses no parts produced before this millennium. This might actually be easier than getting a used C64 in fully working condition these days.

      • Carl Svensson ☛ Stranger Things and the Amiga 1000

        About a year ago, I cancelled by Netflix subscription. One of the few shows listed on the “plus” side when I made my decision was Stranger Things: an entertaining series with an excellent first and good second season. In short, I’m a fan of the show – though my appreciation of it doesn’t come near my fanatical passion for the Amiga home computer.

      • David Rosenthal ☛ Brio-Compatible “Big Boy” Model

        One of the things our grandson is interested in is trains, especially steam trains. Via gifts from various friends and relations he accumulated a vast collection of the Brio wooden model trains and tracks; it is favorite plaything at our house. I added needed pieces to the collection by downloading models from the amazing selection of Brio-compatible pieces on Thingiverse and printing them using the Creality CR6-SE that I got via Kickstarter two years ago. These included switches, buffers, gender changers and long straight tracks.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Troy Patterson ☛ Software That I Use

      I thought that I’d share some of the applications that I use regularly. Most of these are Mac-centric, but many are cross-platform.

    • Events

      • Hackaday ☛ Decentralized Chaos In Germany

        When you’re planning an event with 15,000 hackers in a tight space these days, the COVID logistics can take the wind right out of your sails. And so the Chaos Computer Club decided, for one more year, to put aside plans for the traditional year-end Chaos Communications Congress. In it’s place this year? Everyone is doing their own thing, together but apart, for the “Dezentrale Jahresendveranstaltungen”.

    • Education

      • FOSDEM ☛ FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate.

        Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels.

      • ROS Industrial ☛ Summary of ROS-Industrial Conference 2022

        The 10th edition of the ROS-Industrial Conference took place on December 15-16, 2022 in Stuttgart, Germany and remotely. During the conference, 55 participants present in Stuttgart and an online audience of more than 200 people attended 17 talks in six sessions. The goal of the conference was to show and discuss what currently is possible in the ROS2 ecosystem when it comes to industrial applications.

    • GNU Projects

      • GNUnet ☛ GNUnet 0.19.1

        This is a bugfix release for gnunet 0.19.0.

    • Programming/Development

      • Jim Nielsen ☛ Prototyping and Practicing

        All that training, gear, computer models, data, teams of experts, helicopters, motorcycles, parachutes, hours of practice — in short all that prototyping — for what? A single scene in the movie? Granted, the final product will not be a single continuous shot. I’m sure it’ll be a composite of the six different takes they ran of the final jump.

        But more than that composite, what we’ll see on film is the culmination of everything learned from those prototypes. The backyard motocross jumps, the sky diving attempts, the quarry jumps and 3D models — the final product is the summation of the prototypes in a polished, edited form.

      • Seth Michael Larson ☛ Working on urllib3 full-time for one week

        Without the generous support we receive from sponsors like Spotify we wouldn’t be able to accomplish everything we did in the span of months, let alone a week. Thanks to everyone who supports our project!

      • Andrew Healey ☛ A Personal File Share CLI

        There are a few ways around this problem without paying for a subscription. Like emailing the PDF as an attachment or uploading it to Google Drive with share permissions.

        None of the alternatives are perfect. When I need to quickly share a file during an online conversation (on a platform without unrestrictive, native file upload) I waste time.

        I estimated that by building a custom solution within a time budget of two hours, I would start saving time within one year.

      • Matt Rickard ☛ Turing Social: Twitter, For Bots

        I set up a fun experiment over the weekend – a social network for bots, turing.social. Using GPT-3, ChatGPT, or Stable Diffusion is actively encouraged on this platform. Automated accounts that use the API are also encouraged (although there’s a normal human interface to copy-paste).

      • Robin Schroer ☛ Lessons Learnt From Solving AoC in One Second

        In recent years, there have been several blog posts similar to the original one about solving all the puzzles in Advent of Code in less than one second. Having some friendly competition this year, and using Rust, I thought I would give this a shot as well.

      • InfoWorld ☛ How to create your own RSS reader with R

        RSS feeds have been around since the late ’90s, and they remain a handy way to keep up with multiple news sources. Choose your feeds wisely, and your RSS reader will let you easily scan headlines from multiple sources and stay up to date on fast-moving topics. And while there are several capable commercial and open-source RSS readers available, it’s a lot more satisfying to code your own.

        It’s surprisingly easy to create your own RSS feed reader in R. Just follow these eight steps.

  • Leftovers

    • Common Dreams ☛ Southwest Airlines Spent $5.6 Billion on Shareholder Gifts in Years Ahead of Mass Cancellation Crisis

      As travelers and airline workers reel from mass flight cancellations, a corporate watchdog noted Wednesday that Southwest spent nearly $6 billion on stock buybacks in the years ahead of the coronavirus pandemic instead of devoting those resources to technological improvements that unions have been demanding for years.

    • Common Dreams ☛ Sanders Calls on Buttigieg to Hold Southwest CEO Accountable for ‘Greed and Incompetence’

      Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday urged the Transportation Department to ensure Southwest’s chief executive pays a price for mass U.S. flight cancellations that have left passengers and employees stranded around the country, throwing lives into chaos and drawing further attention to the company’s business practices.

    • TruthOut ☛ Southwest Prioritized Shareholder Gifts Instead of Tech Upgrades Union Demanded
    • TruthOut ☛ Warren Says Southwest Airline Failures Show Need for Stronger Antitrust Law
    • Democracy Now ☛ “Tired of the Apologies”: Workers, Flyers Say Southwest Airlines Meltdown Was Decades in the Making

      The U.S. Department of Transportation says it will investigate cancellations and delays by Southwest Airlines after the airline canceled about two-thirds of its flights since a Christmas snowstorm. The unprecedented operational meltdown left thousands of travelers stranded, causing scenes of chaos at airports across the country during one of the busiest travel seasons in the year. Corliss King, vice president of TWU Local 556 representing Southwest flight attendants, says the union has warned the company for years about the technical issues that contributed to this week’s chaos. We also speak with Paul Hudson of FlyersRights, the largest nonprofit airline passenger rights organization in the U.S., who blames decades of cost-cutting and chasing profits for the deteriorating service in the airline industry. “It’s more profitable to have bad service than good service,” says Hudson.

    • Counter Punch ☛ Philip Roth: The Imp of the Perverse “I”

      Preparing to review Blake Bailey’s Philip Roth: The Biography (2021), I recalled the conundrum I faced a couple of years back when I was preparing to review Woody Allen’s memoir, Apropos of Nothing. The cultural boo-birds were saying that nobody — mere reader or critic — should have anything to do with Woody Allen; he was being ‘cancelled’ and his career forgotten, as if word had gotten around that Allen was a real-life Judah Rosenthal, the murderous ophthalmologist who brings about a moral crisis in a knowing Cliff Stern, played by Allen.

      The prolific writer and director, and American icon for generations, was being accused of child molestation by Mia Farrow, with whom he had a long-term relationship. Apropos of Nothing begins by reminding readers of his long-established cultural worth and then closes with an assault on the career-wrecking allegations of Mia and New Yorker writer Ronan Farrow, Woody’s natural son with Mia. Apropos of Nothing was originally scheduled to be published in April 2020 by Hachette, but when Allen came under fire by influential figures in the mainstream media (including Ronan Farrow’s employer), the book was cancelled by Hachette and then picked up by publisher Arcade, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing. (See my review.)

    • Meduza ☛ ‘I know how they think’ A Hezbollah official-turned-critic explains the group’s relationship with Moscow and how Russia’s failures in Ukraine likely derailed a real partnership — Meduza

      Interview by Lilia Yapparova. English-language version by Sam Breazeale.

    • The Nation ☛ The Best Albums of 2022

      A strain of retrospection unites two of the most popular albums of the past year: Beyoncé’s Renaissance, her throwback to disco and the house music of the late 20th century, and Taylor Swift’s Midnights, her return to the club-night fun that helped make her a pop star. For each, a look into the past provided pleasures that the uncertain present did not seem to offer. Meanwhile, an impressive number of artists have turned in a different direction—inward—to create new works that aim in a range of ways to take up personal, enigmatic matters of the heart and mind. Here are 10 of the year’s best, along with 10 more worth listening to. (The listing is alphabetical by album title, not ranked by preference.)

    • Hackaday ☛ Film Is Dead. Long Live Film, Say Pentax

      If your answer to the question “When did you last shoot a roll of film” is “Less than two decades ago”, the chances are that you’re a camera enthusiast, and that the camera you used was quite old. Such has been the switch from film to digital, that the new film camera is a rarity. Pentax think there may be an opening in the older format though, as they’ve announced in the videos below the break that they’re working on a fresh range of film cameras to serve the enthusiast market.

    • Hackaday ☛ Shopping Cart Does The Tedious Work For You

      Thanks to modern microcontrollers, basic home automation tasks such as turning lights on and off, opening blinds, and various other simple tasks have become common DIY projects. But with the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning the amount of tasks that can be offloaded to computers has skyrocketed. This shopping cart that automates away the checkout lines at grocery stores certainly fits into this category.

    • Hardware

      • Filippo Valsorda ☛ My age+YubiKeys Password Management Solution

        Password managers are in the news, and it’s the holidays, so it’s as good a time as ever to describe my password and secret management setup. It’s very much not for everyone, but it’s minimal, simple, and has some interesting security properties: even if my laptop were compromised, it would take an attacker a very long time to extract more than a few low-importance secrets.

        I use passage, a fork of password-store that encrypts files with age instead of GnuPG, along with age-plugin-yubikey by Str4d.

      • Hackaday ☛ Workbench PC With A 50s Twist

        [HolGer71] had a Mini-ITX Intel Atom-powered mainboard that he found useful for its vintage interfaces like COM and LPT. On a whim, he decided to give it even more vintage of a look – transforming it into a device more akin to a 50s home appliance, complete with a fitting monitor, mouse and keyboard. The project, dubbed Legacy-PC Computer Case, imitates the sheet metal construction masterfully in its 3D-printed design. That’s not all there is to it, either – everything is open-source, and there is enough documentation that you can build your own!

      • Hackaday ☛ 2022 FPV Contest: Get The Train Driver’s View In Your N-Scale Railway

        Model railroaders typically observe their project from high above. It would be neat to see what the world looks like to the residents of your little town, but getting down to their point of view is difficult, especially if you’re working in one of the smaller scales. For those working in the N scale, there’s now an easy way of observing your project as the train driver would see it: [Vassily98] managed to squeeze a wireless camera into an N-scale railcar.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Overpopulation ☛ In America, reproductive rights have fallen prey to a creeping theocracy

        The United States of America is becoming a theocracy. The Dobbs decision has bypassed the Congress by having the Supreme Court establish a de facto religion which forces unwilling women to become mothers.

      • TruthOut ☛ This Year, the Reproductive Justice Movement Showed Us What It Means to Fight
      • Scheerpost ☛ This Year, the Reproductive Justice Movement Showed Us What It Means to Fight

        In a year of worst-case abortion access scenarios, reproductive justice activists showed us what solidarity looks like.

      • Foreign Policy ☛ Tick-Tock, TikTok

        The debate centers on TikTok’s ownership by Chinese tech giant ByteDance and the degree to which the government in Beijing has access to and influence over the data it collects on its users. Critics of TikTok argue that the app could be used to spy on Americans, influence public opinion, and expose them to Chinese propaganda.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Choosing to Live

        A simple wish to be free from harm is not something that we are all granted at this time.

        Not all of us are free from the obligation to engage in actions that harm others either.

      • Pro Publica ☛ The Fight of the Salmon People

        The salmon were late and the nets were empty.

        Two weeks had passed since the Yakama Nation opened its ceremonial and subsistence spring fishing season on the Columbia River. Randy Settler and Sam George had spent $400 on gas for their boats, and had just two fish so far to give to their tribe for ceremonies.

      • There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause “turbo cancer”

        One of the oldest antivax tropes, one I recall encountering beginning soon after I started paying attention to the antivaccine movement, is that vaccines somehow cause cancer. As I wrote ten years ago, the original version of this claim derived from the observation that an early batche of the polio vaccine from the 1950s, particularly Albert Sabin’s oral vaccine, were contaminated with SV40, which led to a “cancer epidemic” over the coming decades. (SV40 is a monkey virus known as SV40, which stands for “Simian Vacuolating Virus 40” and was found to have contaminated some of the cells that the virus was grown in, specifically kidney cells derived from Asian rhesus monkeys.) The gory details aren’t important for purposes of what I’m about to discuss—and I’ve already written in depth about what happened and why this claim, although plausible because SV40 was one of the first oncogenic viruses ever discovered, turned out not to have any good evidence to support it. (Oncogenes are genes that cause cancer in experimental animals and, in some cases, humans.)

      • Counter Punch ☛ A Winter Harvest

        On the winter solstice (December 21st) I finally began pulling the remains of our “high tunnel” tomato crop, cleaning out the greenhouse-ish space in preparation for next year’s planting. We’ve always grown tomatoes outside here in the Northeast and had to deal with the diseases that sicken tomatoes every year when they’re grown that way. And in Maine’s relatively cool weather the crop typically doesn’t ripen until late July or—more commonly— August.

        When it rains, dirt gets spattered onto tomato leaves and soil-borne diseases come with the spatter. Under the clear plastic cover of a high tunnel there’s no such splashing and much less disease pressure. And it’s warmer, earlier, longer. Tomatoes do better in there as do other warm weather vegetables. Living things need help.

    • Security

      • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

        • Privacy International ☛ An explainer on SMS, 30 years down the line

          SMS is also one the most commonly offered methods for multi-factor authentication, being used in a variety of contexts from access to banking and government services, to acessing online accounts such as e-mail or social media. While setting up multi-factor authentication is a simple and effective step in keeping your accounts safer, different authentication methods offer different levels of integrity, and despite its popularity, SMS is likely one of the least secure authentication methods you can choose from. We will delve into some of the reasons why bellow. Having an additional authentication factor is still preferable than relying on a username and password only, but you may want to consider using a different method other than SMS.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • IBM Old Timer ☛ Irving Wladawsky-Berger: Will the Metaverse and AR/VR Headsets Be IT’s Next Big Thing?

          “Is it really the next big thing,” asked The Economist in A reality check for the metaverse is coming, another recent article in “The World Ahead 2023”, its year-end issue which I wrote about last week. “After desktop computing, the consumer internet and the smartphone boom, the consumer-computing industry is past due its Next Big Thing,” said the article. “The coming year will see big tech firms doubling down on two related, much-hyped possibilities. One is virtual- (vr) and augmented-reality (ar) headsets; the idea that, having shrunk computers into our pockets, the next step is to strap them to our faces. The other is the metaverse, which holds that an internet which is still largely flat – based on two-dimensional text, images and video – is ripe for replacement with one that is three-dimensional and immersive, experienced as a sort of globe-spanning video game.”

          [...]

          Another article, adds that there’s no clear definition of the metaverse.

        • Scheerpost ☛ Scheer & Hedges: They Know Everything About You
        • Techdirt ☛ Ring Doorbell Cams Hijacked By Assholes To Provide Live Streams Of SWATtings

          Amazon’s home security tech acquisition, Ring, has become a dominant player in this industry sector. Some of that is due to Amazon’s backing. A lot of this is due to extremely inappropriate relationships with law enforcement, which convert cops to Ring proselytizers whose public statements are subject to review by the company’s PR wing.

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Environment

      • Scheerpost ☛ California Passed a Milestone Law To Stop Neighborhood Drilling. Now Big Oil Has Launched Its Counterattack

        A new fossil fuel-sponsored ballot initiative could reverse a major environmental justice victory.

      • ADF ☛ Rampant Illegal Fishing Threatens Marine Ecosystems, Fish Stocks

        Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing continues to rob the Gulf of Guinea of precious fish stocks and threatens the marine ecosystems necessary for their survival.

        Maj. Gen. Richard Addo Gyane, commandant of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Ghana, made his frustration with the situation clear during a maritime security conference in late November.

      • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia’s Ministry of Finance Calls for Inclusion of Natural Resources in Development Planning

        The Ministry of Finance in Zambia has made a significant call for the inclusion of natural resources and ecosystems in development planning. This is due to the fact that a significant portion of the country’s wealth, approximately 40%, is made up of natural resources. The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Dennis Chisenda, emphasized the importance of biodiversity in promoting people’s livelihoods and called for it to be safeguarded.

      • Overpopulation ☛ A year of milestones and mourning

        2022 saw record amounts of ink spilled and electrons broadcast about the chief environmental disorders of our time – climate change and biodiversity loss – while the global population surpassed 8 billion people. Compared to past years, it seemed as if the media did a somewhat better job connecting the dots between the first two problems and the third one – or was that just our wishful thinking?

      • The Revelator ☛ Our Best Articles of 2022
      • TruthOut ☛ Death Toll Rises as Activists Slam Buffalo’s Failed Prep, Response to Blizzard
      • Democracy Now ☛ “Abject Failure” in Buffalo: Blizzard Death Toll Rises as Activists Slam City’s Failed Prep, Response

        Buffalo, New York, is experiencing a Katrina moment after this weekend’s historic blizzard. The death toll has climbed to at least 32 as people froze to death in their homes and cars, with nationwide fatalities surpassing 60 people. State and military police have been deployed to Buffalo to enforce the city’s ongoing driving ban as road conditions remain treacherous after a 51.5-inch snowfall. We’re joined by India Walton, former Buffalo mayoral candidate and longtime community activist, as well as Cariol Horne, a community organizer and racial justice advocate who was arrested by Buffalo police during the storm, to discuss the nation’s latest climate emergency and the city government’s role in the tragedy.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Donziger Files Response to ‘DOJ’s Disastrous Decision to Side With Chevron’

        The legal team of human rights attorney Steven Donziger is challenging what he describes as the U.S. Department of Justice’s “disastrous decision to side with Chevron and back private corporate prosecutions.”

      • Scheerpost ☛ Donziger Files Response to ‘DOJ’s Disastrous Decision to Side With Chevron’

        Kenny Stancil reports on environmental Steven Donziger’s response to Merrick Garlands decision to take Chevron’s side against him.

      • Common Dreams ☛ The Future of the Amazon Rainforest Under Lula

        Luiz Inácio da Silva, the progressive politician popularly known as Lula, is poised to take office as the president of Brazil on January 1. His administration is set to embrace a return to environmental protection following the destructive policies of outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro. Key to these efforts is slowing the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest,more than half of which is in Brazil.

      • Energy

        • Common Dreams ☛ Regulators Launch Probe to ‘Dig Deeper’ Into Winter Storm Elliott Power Outages

          On the heels of yet another extreme weather event showcasing the inadequacy of the United States’ fossil fuel-dependent energy system, U.S. and North American regulators on Wednesday announced an investigation into power outages during Winter Storm Elliott.

        • DeSmog ☛ 2022 Was a Big Year for Climate Action in the Courts

          It was another busy year in the courts for climate-related cases. From challenges to fossil fuel and petrochemical expansion to climate lawsuits against Big Oil and national governments, there were notable victories for climate action and accountability in 2022. There were also some setbacks, for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court’s limitation of the U.S. EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Here are some of the highlights.

          More than 20 U.S. cities, counties, and states have filed lawsuits against major fossil fuel producers aiming to hold them liable for the mounting costs of climate impacts and for allegedly engaging in deceptive campaigns to deny the risks of their products and promote misleading greenwashing advertising. The litigation has been tied up in procedural battles and no case has yet made it to trial. But several cases are nearing that stage, with breakthrough decisions this year setting them firmly on the path to trial.

        • TruthOut ☛ Incoming GOP House Majority Could End Big Oil Investigation, Advocates Warn
        • Scheerpost ☛ Senate Democrats Seeking ‘Significant Monetary Compensation’ for Southwest Airlines Customers

          By Brandon Gage / AlterNet Southwest Airlines is staring down the barrel of federal and congressional investigations amid the fallout from the more than five thousand flights that it abruptly canceled since Christmas weekend. The Dallas, Texas-based carrier was crippled by “a combination of bad luck and bad planning,” according to CNN Business. “About 87% of […]

        • Common Dreams ☛ Campaigners to House Dems: Not Giving Big Oil Documents to the Senate Would Be an ‘Epic Failure’

          A House committee that has spent more than a year investigating the fossil fuel industry’s climate disinformation efforts has reportedly decided not to hand the subpoenaed documents it compiled over to the Senate, a reversal that would likely spell the end of the probe as industry-friendly Republicans take over the chamber.

        • DeSmog ☛ How a Colorado Law Could Force Boulder to Sell Oil and Gas to Private Company

          Extraction Oil and Gas, a Denver-based energy company, sent Boulder County an offer this summer. It’s one that local officials don’t want, but can’t refuse.

        • Teen Vogue ☛ Andrew Tate Comes At Greta Thunberg – And Misses

          Who knows what prompted a 36-year-old man to tweet at a teenager about how many cars he owns and how much carbon emissions he’s responsible for? But what we do know is Thunberg’s response. “yes, please do enlighten me,” she tweeted. “email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com”

        • NPR ☛ 2022 was the year [cryptocurrency] came crashing down to Earth

          In the future, 2022 may be regarded as a turning point for the world of virtual currencies, when they lost their luster and were cast out as a fringe product most people approach with skepticism and caution. Or it may simply be remembered as a stretch of excruciating growing pains for an industry still in its infancy.

        • Common Dreams ☛ Flush With Record Profits, Exxon Sues to Block EU Windfall Tax

          Fresh off posting the highest quarterly profit in its history, the U.S.-based fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil sued the European Union on Wednesday in an attempt to stop the bloc from imposing its recently approved windfall tax targeting major oil and gas companies.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Why are there Yangtze River jellyfish in Hungarian lakes?
        • Counter Punch ☛ Conservation Groups Force Forest Service to Drop Huge Clearcutting and Road Bulldozing Project in Boise’s Most Popular Recreation Area

          Thanks to a lawsuit filed by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Wildlands Defense, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, and Native Ecosystems Council, the Forest Service was forced to withdraw a huge logging and road bulldozing project in Boise’s most popular recreation area. The groups contended the agency did not comply with the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and attempted to exclude public review and comment by using a “condition based management” scheme left over from the Trump administration that has been rejected by courts.

          The Sage Hen project encompassed nearly 67,800 acres and involved commercial logging on nearly 20,000 acres, lighting fires on approximately 45,000 acres, and bulldozing up to 83 miles of roads in one of Idaho’s most popular recreation areas. Because of the area’s close proximity to Boise, the Sage Hen forests receive very heavy public recreational use including camping, hiking, wildlife watching, hunting, and both motorized and non-motorized use.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Scheerpost ☛ Suing Meta in Kenya

        Africa has been a continent exploited since the European scramble carved it out in lines of a draughtsman’s crude design.  Its resources have been pilfered; its peoples enslaved for reasons of trade and profit; its political conditions manipulated to favour predatory companies. A similar pattern is detectable in the digital […]

      • University of Toronto ☛ More use of Rust is inevitable in open source software

        This shift will inevitably make life harder for smaller and more niche (Unix) operating systems and architectures, since you’ll increasingly need a Rust toolchain as well as a C and C++ one in order to bring up various important software. In that way it’s just as harmful and also just as inevitable as the migration from HTTP to HTTPS for websites. The security landscape isn’t getting much better for C and C++, and at the same time we have a steady increase in the amount of code out there. There are plenty of developers who really want to bend this curve, and asking them to refrain from their best and easiest option in order to help a small fraction of people is not likely to work.

      • TruthOut ☛ Groups Connected With Leonard Leo Have Funneled $31 Million to State Court Races
      • Democracy Now ☛ Supreme Court Keeps Title 42, Causing Rise in Deadly Human Trafficking & Blocking Asylum Seekers

        The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has ordered the Biden administration to continue enforcing Title 42, blocking asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Trump-era pandemic policy Title 42 has been used to expel over 2 million people at the border since March 2020. The court is preparing to hear oral arguments in February by mostly Republican-led states who are challenging Biden’s push to end the policy, while hundreds of migrants face freezing cold temperatures in camps along the U.S.-Mexico border. We speak to Luis Chaparro, a journalist reporting from the U.S.-Mexico border, about the fight to put an end to Title 42, and how gangs in Mexico have pivoted much of their operations to human smuggling as the policy drags on.

      • Meduza ☛ Kemerovo judge reprimanded for publishing dissenting opinions — Meduza

        The disciplinary branch of the Russian Supreme Court has reprimanded Alexander Nesterenko, a judge at the Eighth Kemerovo Court of Appeals, for publishing his dissenting opinions on the court website.

      • The Hill ☛ Twitter back online after widespread outage Wednesday night

        Eighty-two percent of users reported problems with Twitter’s website, while 10 percent of users reported issues with the platforms app and 8 percent reported server connection problems.

        Downdector also reported Twitter outages in multiple countries such as Germany, Italy, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France.

      • Techdirt ☛ It Took Just Four Days From Elon Gleefully Admitting He’d Unplugged A Server Rack For Twitter To Have A Major Outage

        I know, I know. Some of the more angry commenters around here keep insisting that I should stop talking about Elon Musk and Twitter, and I want to do exactly that. I planned to do exactly that and not write another post about it all until next week. And then… Twitter crashed hard last night. Downdetector has the receipts…

      • Techdirt ☛ Elon Musk’s Biggest Success Story: Convincing People To Try Out An Open, Distributed Social Network

        A few months ago, I attended a wonderful conference put on by the “Global Freedom of Expression” program at Columbia University discussing decentralized social media and regulations around social media. One of the speakers, Alison McCauley from Unfinished Labs, gave a very interesting presentation on the first day of the conference, October 3rd, (which kindly praised my Protocols, Not Platforms paper), talking about how the world world would eventually move to decentralized social media. I found one slide in the presentation particularly interesting:

    • Common Dreams ☛ Brazil Ramps Up Security for Lula Inauguration Amid Concerns Over Right-Wing ‘Terrorists’

      With Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva set to be inaugurated on Sunday, the country’s authorities are ramping up security measures amid fears that supporters of defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro will attempt to cause chaos and possibly launch a violent attack on the ceremony.

    • Counter Punch ☛ No Room at the Texas Inn … or the US Naval Observatory

      One thing you can say about Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: He has no sense of irony or timing.

      Bad enough that this smug Christian fundamentalist lacks any sense of human empathy, choosing to take “the least among us” — that being penniless immigrants fleeing crime, poverty and oppression in their countries–7900 of whom he has so far stuffed onto buses with nothing, not. even donated coats and blankets, and shipped of to northern “liberal” states to be abandoned on the street to make a political anti-immigrant point. But this Christmas Eve he did it to another 140, who were bussed north on a grueling 36-hour ride to the nation’s capital, where they were dumped for effect outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been charged with dealing with the nation’s purported immigrant crisis.

    • TruthOut ☛ White House Condemns Abbott for Bussing Migrants to DC in Freezing Temperatures
    • Meduza ☛ The revolution and its bastards Why invading Ukraine and scapegoating ‘foreign agents’ and the LGBTQ community are two sides of the same coin: the Kremlin’s flight from accountability — Meduza

      Just before the curtain would finally drop over the whole macabre spectacle of 2022, Russia adopted two new openly repressive laws: one about the so-called “foreign agents” (whom the law defines as “persons under a foreign influence”), and the other criminalizing most communications about the LGBTQ community, lifestyle, and sexual health as “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.” Maxim Trudolyubov, Meduza’s ideas editor, explains why these discriminatory laws are likely just the first harbingers of repressive legislation yet to come — and also why this legislation goes hand-in-glove with the Ukraine war, stubbornly continued by Putin’s regime (apparently regardless of military failures and the increasingly obvious futility of the “special operation”). Be it discrimination at home or war abroad, “traditionalism” or outright fascism, the Kremlin will run with it, desperate to escape accountability for its policy blunders and mounting crimes, explains Trudolyubov.

    • Meduza ☛ Drone triggers Russian air-defense systems in Saratov region — Meduza

      Air-defense systems in the Engels district of Russia’s Saratov region have shot down a drone, reports Saratov Governor Roman Basurgin on Telegram. Basurgin writes that the crashing drone remnants struck the fence around a private home, a car, and a garage, also shattering windows nearby.

    • Common Dreams ☛ Citing ‘Stunning’ Lies, NY DA Launches Probe of Republican Congressman-Elect Santos

      A Long Island prosecutor on Wednesday launched an investigation into George Santos after the Republican congressman-elect admitted to telling a litany of campaign trail lies about his religious background, education, and employment history.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

      • New York Times ☛ As Covid-19 Continues to Spread, So Does Misinformation About It

        The ideas still thrive on social media platforms, and the constant barrage, now a yearslong accumulation, has made it increasingly difficult for accurate advice to break through, misinformation researchers say. That leaves people already suffering from pandemic fatigue to become further inured to Covid’s continuing dangers and susceptible to other harmful medical content.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Project Censored ☛ THE PROJECT CENSORED NEWSLETTER December 2022 – Censored Notebook

      We’ve been busy promoting these two great titles.  Allison Butler has appeared on the Karen Hunter Show, the Keen On podcast, and, with Nolan Higdon, on Teaching Matters to discuss The Media and Me, with forthcoming interviews scheduled for The Curious Man podcast, the David Pakman Show, Getting Smart, and the Art of Advocacy.

    • Scheerpost ☛ Joe Lauria: Fighting the “Pysopcracy”

      It is a hard thing to combat because it’s not a physical enemy but rather messages that lodge themselves in millions of people’s minds. And it has come to rule over us.

    • ADF ☛ To Stifle Dissent, Countries Turn to ‘Digital Authoritarianism’

      Zimbabwe’s constitution guarantees free expression, but in recent years authorities have cracked down on social media posts and other online activity deemed critical of the government. In December 2021, President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed the Data Protection Act, which criminalizes the publication of false information online.

      Critics says the law is too broad and does not clearly define false information.

    • Bangladesh ☛ Without Stan Lee’s stance against censorship, comics may have looked very different today

      Lee has left an enormously impactful footprint on the medium with his creation of characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Ant-Man, Black Panther, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, the Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, and more. Fans also recognise him for his funny and inspirational cameos in many Marvel movies. However, his contributions to the industry transcend the superheroes we now love.

      As a stalwart of comics for nearly eight decades, Lee saw the medium develop and played a part in its progress. One standout moment was the moment he took a stance against censorship.

    • Counter Punch ☛ FBI Cointelpro is Back and Worse Than Ever

      Elon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI’s latest war on Americans’ freedom of speech.  The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved, including parody accounts.  The FBI and other federal agencies also browbeat Facebook, Instagram, and many other tech companies.

      Thus far, most of the American media has ignored or downplayed the story, known as the Twitter Files. Since many of the individuals who the FBI got squelched were pro-Trump, the violation of their rights is a non-issue – or a cause for quiet celebration.  At this point, it is difficult to know whether the scant reaction to the Twitter Files is the result of political bias, collective amnesia, or simply a total ignorance of American history.

    • Counter Punch ☛ Two Barrels Aimed at African People’s Socialist Party

      With new FBI and Department of “Justice” (DOJ) attacks expected in early January, a defense, mobilization and information session attracted hundreds of allies of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP).  On Friday, December 23 they zoomed into the “Emergency Mass Meeting: Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!”  The APSP told its supporters that it expects indictments in early January 2023 and possibly sooner.

      Indictments could include many more than the four names listed as “unindicted co-conspirators” during raids of July 29, 2022: Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Party Director of Agitation and Propaganda Akilé Anai, African People’s Solidarity Committee Chair Penny Hess and Uhuru Solidarity Movement Chair Jesse Nevel.

    • Techdirt ☛ Block Ads For Your Own Safety, Says The Man

      Careful, kids. The FBI is recommending something useful. The same entity that thinks encryption is the enemy has delivered a message suggesting it may still care about the safety and security of internet users… at least those it doesn’t consider to be persons of interest. Here’s Daniel Sims of Techspot with more details.

  • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • CPJ ☛ Algerian authorities arrest journalist Ihsane el-Kadi, shutter outlets Radio M and Maghreb Emergent

      On December 24, plainclothes police officers arrested el-Kadi, editor-in-chief of both outlets, from his home in the city of Boumerdes, east of Algiers, according to a statement by Radio M, news reports, and local journalist Mustapha Bendjama, who is familiar with the case and spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

      Officers brought el-Kadi to Maghreb Emergent and Radio M’s shared headquarters, confiscated computers and documents, and shuttered the outlets, according to those sources.

    • CPJ ☛ Taliban intelligence officials beat, interrogate journalist Zabihullah Noori

      The men beat Noori and some of his family and searched his home for hours before detaining the journalist and transferring him to the provincial headquarters of the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI). Rohullah Noori told CPJ by phone that the journalist was interrogated for 48 hours about the station’s programming, which his interrogators said had not been approved by the Taliban without giving further details.

    • Meduza ☛ Latvia lets TV Rain staff keep their work visas — Meduza

      Latvian immigration authority PMLP has permitted the staff of TV Rain, a liberal Russian media company exiled in Latvia, to keep their Latvian work visas after the revocation of TV Rain’s broadcasting license.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Pro Publica ☛ They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars.

      So far, researchers who have tried to corroborate Harpster’s claims have failed. The experts most familiar with his work warn that it shouldn’t be used to lock people up.

      Prosecutors know it’s junk science too. But that hasn’t stopped some from promoting his methods and even deploying 911 call analysis in court to win convictions.

    • DagHammarskjöld ☛ Pathways to Peace Report: An opportunity to change mindsets and build inclusive, democratic societies

      Fast forward to 2022, perhaps it’s time to revisit some of the report’s findings. We are seeing that violent conflict has not dissipated. If anything, it has gotten worse as we witnessed with the war in Ukraine, the ongoing instability in Afghanistan, a fragile peace treaty in Ethiopia, a protracted conflict in Syria, or the simmering social tensions in Iran. In addition, it seems that inter-state conflicts, that showed a considerable downward trend in the post-Cold War era, have made a troubling comeback.

    • RTL ☛ G7 tells Taliban to ‘urgently reverse’ ban on women aid workers

      The G7 ministers along with those of Australia, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and the Netherlands said in a joint statement they were “gravely concerned that the Taliban’s reckless and dangerous order… puts at risk millions of Afghans who depend on humanitarian assistance for their survival”.

    • VOA News ☛ UN Halts Some Programs After Taliban Bans Women Aid Workers

      The United Nations said Wednesday that some “time-critical” programs in Afghanistan have temporarily stopped and warned many other activities will also likely need to be paused because of a ban by the Taliban-led administration on women aid workers.

      U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths, the heads of U.N. agencies and several aid groups said in a joint statement that women’s “participation in aid delivery is not negotiable and must continue,” calling on the authorities to reverse the decision.

    • VOA News ☛ US Spending Bill Includes Sanctions for Harassing, Surveilling Iranian Citizens

      “Congress finds that the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran surveils, harasses, terrorizes, tortures, abducts, and murders individuals who peacefully defend human rights and freedoms in Iran, and innocent entities and individuals considered by the Government of Iran to be enemies of that regime, including United States citizens on United States soil, and takes foreign nationals hostage,” the legislation says.

      The measure directs the U.S. secretary of state to file a report detailing the state of human rights in Iran, what actions the Iranian government has taken during the past year to target dissidents inside and outside of Iran and how it finances the silencing of its critics.

    • Scheerpost ☛ ‘Disastrous’: SCOTUS Upholds Title 42 Migrant Policy During Court Fight

      “Title 42 was unnecessary when it was first used and it continues to be wrong. It must end,” said one rights advocate. “This country is at its best when it welcomes people seeking asylum with dignity and compassion.”

    • The Nation ☛ The Supreme Court Orders Title 42 to Remain in Place—but Biden Can Still Act

      This has been a painful year for immigrant children and their families. While the world transitioned to a “new pandemic normal” in 2022, families who were blocked from entering the United States at the start of the pandemic remain in the dark about when they might be able to cross the border to seek safety and reunite with loved ones. Their dangerous and seemingly endless wait—in the face of an illegal border closure—has been filled with uncertainty. All the while many members of Congress and media outlets call their arrival a crisis, ignoring that the real crisis is the suffering that Title 42 inflicts on children, adults, and families.

    • The Nation ☛ The Faith of Halldór Laxness

      When Halldór Guðjónsson converted to Catholicism in 1923, he changed his surname to Laxness, after the farm in Iceland where he’d been raised. At first glance, it’s a curious gesture to make at the moment of conversion, which so often seems intended as an entirely new beginning, an enlightened break with a dark past. But the Icelandic writer’s conversion occurred at a particularly complex moment in European cultural history: in the midst of a widespread Catholic revival that saw conflicts between reactionary neotraditionalists and those philosophers, theologians, and writers who sought new approaches to questions of tradition, faith, and desire.

    • The Nation ☛ Stand With Iranian Women
    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Iranian star chess player ‘moving to Spain’ after competing without hijab

      According to the Spanish newspaper El País, the 25-year-old Ms Khadem now plans to take up residence in Spain along with her husband, film director Ardeshir Ahmadi, and their young child.

      The newspaper quotes sources close to Ms Khadem who say that the couple own an apartment in Spain, but do not wish the location to be revealed over fears for their safety.

      “She is aware that her life would be in danger if she returned to Iran because she has been shown playing without a head covering in several photographs,” El País quote the sources as saying.

    • VOA News ☛ Italy Urges Iran to Stop Executions, Start Open Dialogue With Protesters

      Iran must stop executing and persecuting protesters and should open a dialogue with them, Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Wednesday after summoning the Iranian ambassador.

      Tajani said death sentences against people who take part in demonstrations or women who refuse to wear headscarves were a grossly disproportionate and unacceptable form of punishment.

    • The Nation ☛ Grim Until Griner: The Year in Sports and Politics

      There is a famous, apocryphal quote about the onset of revolution: “There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” Flip that quote on its head, and you can understand what the politics of sports has felt like since the summer of 2020. It’s been less than three years, but it feels like decades. Or, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde on prison, “Each day is like a year. A year whose days are long.”

    • Pro Publica ☛ How to Check Out a Charity Before You Donate

      Here’s what we’ll go through in this guide:

      In general, nonprofit organizations exist to further a social cause or provide a public benefit.

    • Pro Publica ☛ Many Constitutional Rights Don’t Apply in Child Welfare Cases

      Every year, child protective services agencies across the nation investigate the family lives of roughly 3.5 million children, or about 1 out of every 20 American kids.

      In these cases, government officials frequently accuse parents of wrongdoing. They enter homes to conduct searches and interrogations, and what they find can be used against the parent by a state attorney in court. And the accused will face punishment — including, often, having their children removed from them indefinitely.

    • EFF ☛ Pushing for Strong Digital Rights in the States: 2022 in Review

       In California, EFF was proud to support three bills—A.B. 2091, A.B. 1242, and S.B. 107– that passed into law and take crucial first steps to make California a data sanctuary state for anyone seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care. Authored by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, Assemblymember Mia Bonta, and California State Sen. Scott Wiener, these bills will protect people by forbidding health care providers and many businesses in California from complying with out-of-state warrants seeking information about reproductive or gender-affirming care. EFF also supported A.B. 2089, authored by Asm. Bauer-Kahan, which extended the protections of the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) to information generated by mental health apps.

      Not every privacy bill sailed through the California legislature, however. EFF sponsored two strong privacy bills in California this year to curb unnecessary data collection: the California Biometric Information Privacy Act (S.B. 1189) and the Student Test Takers’ Privacy Act (S.B. 1172). Unfortunately, S.B. 1189 was stopped before it could reach a floor vote in the Senate, after facing heavy business community opposition. And after S.B. 1172 was severely weakened by removing its primary enforcement mechanism—the individual right to sue or “private right of action”—neither EFF nor our co-sponsor Privacy Rights Clearinghouse could continue to support it.                                                                                                                                   

      Of course, not all of our work happened in California.

    • Counter Punch ☛ Country for Bad Dreams: Vandalism on the Nullarbor Plain

      “This is quite shocking,” declared South Australia’s Attorney-General and Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Kyam Maher.  “These caves are some of the earliest evidence of Aboriginal occupation of that part of the country.”  That evidence was subtracted this month by acts of vandalism inflicted on artwork in Koonalda Cave on the Nullarbor Plain, claimed to be the world’s largest limestone karst landscape and covering over 200,000 square kilometres.

      Edward John Eyre, the first European to cross the Plain in 1840-1841, wrote hauntingly of it as “a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into bad dreams”.  In his case, personal circumstances soured the impressions: horses dying of dehydration; a case of mutiny resulting in the killing of his companion John Baxter; the theft of the party’s supplies; the slimmest chances of survival.

    • Counter Punch ☛ Unrest in Peru

      Peru unrest highlights country’s instability As Peru experiences nationwide anti-government protests following the removal of President Pedro Castillo after what appears to have been an attempted self-coup, current President Dina Boluarte said she would not step down in the face of violent protests over her predecessor’s ouster as she called on lawmakers to bring forward elections as a way to quell unrest.

      Authorities in Peru also arrested six police generals on Monday as part of an investigation into corruption which authorities say Castillo was directly involved in.

    • TruthOut ☛ Cori Bush Pushes to Stop Missouri’s Execution of Amber McLaughlin
    • Common Dreams ☛ ‘A Sigh of Relief’ as Hundreds of Rohingya Refugees Rescued After Harrowing Sea Journeys

      The rescue of hundreds of Rohingya refugees by fishers and local authorities in Indonesia’s Aceh province was praised Tuesday as “an act of humanity” by United Nations officials, while relatives of around 180 Rohingya on another vessel that’s been missing for weeks feared that all aboard had perished.

    • Common Dreams ☛ Study Ties Abortion Restrictions to ‘Significant’ Jump in Suicide Rates for Young Women

      With abortion currently inaccessible in over a quarter of U.S. states, peer-reviewed research published Wednesday highlights the impact of cutting off care, revealing that restricted access is linked to increased suicide risk in young women.

    • Scheerpost ☛ Study Ties Abortion Restrictions to ‘Significant’ Jump in Suicide Rates for Young Women

      Jessica Corbett reports on a recent study that highlights the impact of cutting off care in the post-Dobbs era.

    • Common Dreams ☛ ‘The System’ Is Ruining Our Present and Collective Future

      Now is a time of unprecedented opportunity for progressive change. The reason is simple: “the system” is ruining the future for young people. Any system that threatens the future of its young people cannot retain their support and therefore is ripe for basic change.

    • Scheerpost ☛ Washington Expands the War State, Miranda Devine on Democrat’s Censorship Regime
    • Scheerpost ☛ Thousands March in Occupied Territories Demanding Release of Bodies of Palestinians

      Israel has kept the bodies of over a hundred Palestinians who were killed by its forces or died inside its prisons as ‘bargaining chips’, including that of Palestinian freedom fighter Nasser Abu Hmeid who died last week.

    • Scheerpost ☛ The First Big Strike of 2023 May Happen Behind Prison Walls

      The new year is set to kick off with a statewide strike by incarcerated workers in Pennsylvania.

    • Techdirt ☛ New York’s Rikers Island Has A Drug Problem That’s Being Aided And Abetted By Jail Staff

      Rikers Island doesn’t just house the convicted. It also houses those merely accused of crimes who are awaiting trial. The difference between the two doesn’t matter much to those staffing Rikers. If you’re there, you’re no longer a human being.

  • Monopolies

    • EFF ☛ An Urgent Year for Interoperability: 2022 in Review

      Walled gardens can be terrible: when all of our data, our social relations and our educational, romantic, professional and family ties are trapped inside a company’s silo and the company does something we don’t like, the garden walls become prison walls. 

      Leaving Facebook or Twitter or Amazon or Google means leaving behind many important, valuable things, from media to data to social connections, and these companies know it, and that means that when our wellbeing comes at the expense of their profits, they’re tempted to sell us out, knowing that we won’t leave. Far too often, large tech companies yield to that temptation.

      That’s where interoperability comes in. From federated social media to alternative app stores to alternative clients to multiprotocol clients to tracker-blockers, interoperable tools put you in charge of the technology you use. You can block the parts you don’t like – like algorithmic feeds or bad moderation or privacy invasions -  and keep the parts you like: contact with your friends, colleagues and customers or access to your data and the media and apps you’ve paid for.

    • Copyrights

      • Torrent Freak ☛ Where Are the Pirated Movie Screeners This Year?

        Towards the end of the year, leaked screener copies of Hollywood films traditionally leak online. This year, no notable screeners have surfaced. This absence may be in part due to security and enforcement measures, but streaming services and shorter release windows are dominant factors too.

      • Torrent Freak ☛ Russian Cinemas Get Help to Bypass Sanctions to Screen “Avatar: The Way of Water”

        Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the latest Hollywood blockbusters are no longer available in local cinemas. Not with permission from rightsholders, at least. The Russian cinema business was hit hard by these restrictions but with some tricks and help from “friendly” neighbors, pirated copies of “Avatar: The Way of Water” have found their way onto the big screen.

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

Links 29/12/2022: IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 172 and OpenCV 4.7.0

Posted in News Roundup at 9:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Video ☛ OpenIndiana 2022.10 Quick overview #shorts – Invidious

        A Quick Overview OpenIndiana 2022.10 #illumos #OpenIndiana #mate #opensource https://youtu.be/dHkRq9FpKyE OpenIndiana is a continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system. It was conceived during the period of uncertainty following the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems, after several months passed with no binary updates made available to the public.

    • Applications

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • TecAdmin ☛ Understanding the “/etc/shadow” File in Linux – TecAdmin

        The `/etc/shadow` file in a Linux system stores password information for user accounts. It is a secure file that is readable only by the root user and is used to store the encrypted password for each user account, as well as other optional password-related information.

      • Red Hat Official ☛ Top 10 tutorials for Linux administrators of 2022 | Enable Sysadmin

        Get some tips and tricks to help you become a better sysadmin from Enable Sysadmin’s community of writers.

      • Open file in Google Chrome / Chromium, Google Chrome

        Over the years one feature that has been removed from web browsers such as Google Chrome and Chromium is the file menu, which gave you the ability to open a file a directly in the browser.

        To open a file locally in your web browser you need to locate the file, then right click and open with Google Chrome or Chromium.

      • Unix Men ☛ The Dig Command: An Introduction to Linux Digging | Unixmen

        The Domain Information Groper command, or “dig” for short, collects data about Domain Nameservers and enables troubleshooting DNS problems.

        It’s popular mainly because it is one of the simplest and most flexible networking commands and provides a clearer output than the host command.

        You can use the dig command on Linux and Unix machines to perform DNS lookups, verify ISP internet and DNS server connectivity, check spam and blacklisting records, find host addresses, mail exchanges, nameservers, CNAMEs, and more.

        In this guide, we’ll walk you through how the command works. Boot your machine, launch a terminal, and ensure you have sudo privileges, and we’re ready to go.

      • Unix Men ☛ Fsck: How to Check and Repair a Filesystem | Unixmen

        Every operating system needs a mechanism to store and recover data. This mechanism is called the filesystem.

        But the odds of a filesystem failing increase over time for one reason or another. If your filesystem goes corrupt, you might not be able to access certain parts of your data.

        The good news is that inconsistencies can be checked for and repairs carried out accordingly. You can use the fsck system utility to verify your filesystem’s integrity.

        In this brief post, we’ll walk you through using the utility and repairing disk errors.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Audacious on Manjaro Linux

        Audacious is an lightweight open-source audio player that comes with different skins like Winamp Classic, amongst many other things. The following tutorial will demonstrate how to install Audacious on Manjaro Linux using the command line terminal.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Stellarium on Manjaro Linux

        Stellarium is a free, open-source planetarium software package. The software renders the night sky in 3D, allowing users to see stars, constellations, planets, nebulae, and other astronomical objects in their correct positions relative to each other. Users can also set the time and date to see how the night sky changes. The following tutorial will teach you how to install Stellarium on Manjaro Linux. The tutorial will use the command line terminal with the Arch Linux user repository for the latest Stellarium version.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • New Releases

      • IPFire Official Blog ☛ blog.ipfire.org – IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 172 released

        Shortly after Christmas, we release IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 172. It comes with cryptography improvements for IPsec and OpenVPN, as well as security improvements under the hood, a plethora of package updates and various bugs fixed across the place.

        [...]

        OpenVPN is automatically reconfigured to use a secure Diffie-Hellman parameter, both of sufficient length of 4,096 bit and standardized (see RFC 7919, section A.3, bug #12632). All OpenVPN clients and peers will automatically benefit from this cryptography improvement; no manual action is required. This also obsoletes the necessity of generating or uploading Diffie-Hellman parameters while configuring OpenVPN, saving a lot of time, as the generation of such parameters could have taken hours on slower hardware.

        For early 2023, we anticipate post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to land in IPFire for IPsec, for which there is a strong (and growing) need, thanks to so-called “capture now, decrypt later” attacks endangering the confidentiality of information with long-term secrecy demand, such as biometric and health data.

    • BSD

      • DragonFly BSD ☛ [DragonFly] New packages: 2022Q4 and upgrade notes
        Hi all,

We've updated the binary package sets for both master and RELEASE 6.2. 
You can use the conventional upgrade method (aka the bulletproof method).

There are a few caveats to take in consideration:

1. Wayland isn't working

Previously we had a locked Wayland version (1.18.0) that was working but 
we were forced to upgrade it and there are still things to be added 
before it can work. Sorry for the inconvenience.

2. Xorg defaults to evdev now

We have EVDEV support in kernel for a while but recently we had to 
change the default mask to '12' to avoid duplicated events from the 
input devices:

     $ sysctl kern.evdev.rcpt_mask
     kern.evdev.rcpt_mask: 12

If you're not running master or the latest stable RELEASE from source, 
you'll have to set it via sysctl.

You will also need to install 'xf86-input-evdev', if you don't have it 
already, to have a working mouse/keyboard.

After the full upgrade, see if you have the following file:

     $ ls -l /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-evdev-kbd.conf
     -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  152 05-Dec-2022 23:50 
/usr/local/etc/X11xorg.conf.d/20-evdev-kbd.conf

If it's not the case, you can grab it from here: 

https://github.com/DragonFlyBSD/DPorts/blob/master/x11-servers/xorg-server/files/20-evdev-kbd.conf

3. LibreSSL in base was upgraded (only in master)

We've upgraded LibreSSL in the base system from 3.2.5 to 3.6.1. The 
shlib version has changed so you'll find the following message after 
running 'make upgrade':

     ===> Checking for deprecated files
          (harmless ELF linker warnings may appear here)
     /lib/libprivate_crypto.so.46 is deprecated
     /lib/libprivate_ssl.so.48 is deprecated
     ==================================================================
     = You have 2 now deprecated files.
     = Once you are sure that none of your third party (ports or local)
     = software are still using them, rerun with:
     =     make upgrade -DREMOVE_DEPRECATED
     ==================================================================

If you want the current binary package set to work on your system, 
please do not run 'make upgrade -DREMOVE_DEPRECATED' just yet.

The reason why we built this binary package set with the previous 
LibreSSL version is because we wanted it to work in system pre- and 
post-LibreSSL upgrade.

--

If there are other issues, please reply to this thread so that we can 
have all the information in the same place.

Regards,
Antonio Huete
      • The BSD Now Podcast ☛ BSD Now 487: EuroBSDcon Interviews Pt. 2

        This year end episode of BSDNow features a trip report to EuroBSDcon by Mr. BSD.tv, as well as an interview with FreeBSD committer John Baldwin. Happy New Year, 2023!

      • Vermaden ☛ Valuable News – 2022/12/27 | 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚗

        The Valuable News weekly series is dedicated to provide summary about news, articles and other interesting stuff mostly but not always related to the UNIX or BSD systems. Whenever I stumble upon something worth mentioning on the Internet I just put it here.

      • DragonFly BSD Digest ☛ Lazy In Other BSDs Reading for end of 2022 – DragonFly BSD Digest

        Merry Christmas! Here is a present. I haven’t been posting while I fiddle with layouts, or just get too busy from holiday work, but here’s a pile of links, also known as “all my open tabs so that I can now close them”.

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Enterprisers Project ☛ 8 resources for navigating the cloud during digital transformation

        Hybrid cloud figures prominently as companies continue to accelerate their digital transformation plans. For CIOs, delivering strategic business value requires more agility and flexibility in your technology stack than ever. This year, we shared valuable insight from our community with advice for navigating the cloud during digital transformation.

      • Enterprisers Project ☛ Product leader: A day in the life | The Enterprisers Project

        Many people associate product leaders with owners of strategy, tools, and systems. But I think a product leader is someone who helps individuals and teams be their best selves.

        A product leader’s role is to listen, learn, and ask questions; define a positive, trusting culture; and hire and promote top talent to achieve the best results on behalf of customers, stakeholders, shareholders, and users.

        Each day, I set out to accomplish this while navigating the demands of family, business, and industry. I believe that everything and everyone has an opportunity to continuously improve. This foundational belief is powerful to me as a product leader because digital transformation requires enormous amounts of change, adaptation, and general evolution. It’s not only about changing technology but also processes and the skills people bring to the table, both for technology and those it reaches.

    • Debian Family

      • Linuxiac ☛ Zephix 6 Portable Linux OS Released Based on Debian 11.6

        Zephix is a USB-ready portable Linux OS based on Debian’s stable branch that can be easily installed and run from a USB drive. This allows you to take the operating system wherever you go and use it on any computer with a USB port.

        You’ll find Zephix very useful if you need to use multiple computers or want to have a portable and secure operating system for use on the go. Furthermore, when running from USB, you can make additional changes and then save them back to the USB device as a module. As a result, they will be available after a system reboot.

        Recently, a brand-new release of Zephix 6 has been announced, so let’s see what’s new.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Tom’s Hardware ☛ Raspberry Pi ‘Holographic’ Christmas Tree Spins Ridiculously Fast | Tom’s Hardware

        We’ve seen Raspberry Pi hologram projects before but this is the first one we’ve seen that functions as a Christmas tree. This project, created by Sean Hodgins, uses a Raspberry Pi 4 and relies on the principle of persistence of vision. This principle uses an LED strip to “paint” light at a specific speed. Using the tree’s rotation, it displays custom 3D effects in mid-air that in this case resemble a festive holiday evergreen.

        This tree is made from a metal, triangular frame. It’s mounted to a larger frame that has a motor capable of spinning the triangle into a cone at 10 Hz. The tree is capable of displaying both static and moving images. This makes it possible to display a simple tree or cartoon images and, in one demonstration, a flaming tree.

      • Tom’s Hardware ☛ How To Monitor Temperature With a Raspberry Pi Pico | Tom’s Hardware

        The Raspberry Pi Pico is the ideal way to get into microcontrollers. Starting from $4, the board is cheap and easy to work with. The low cost and ease of use means we can easily drop them into a project without fearing the worst for our wallet.

        In this how-to, we will use a Raspberry Pi Pico to capture live temperature data using a DS18B20. This sensor comes in many forms, from a bare transistor chip, to a water resistant cable. We’ll be using the latter version, which can be partially submerged in a liquid to monitor the temperature. Our project will take a temperature reading and using a conditional test in MicroPython it will trigger an LED to flash if the temperature goes below 20 degrees Celsius.

      • Memfault Adds Embedded Linux to IoT Platform

        Memfault, which provides an Internet of Things (IoT)-based reliability platform, has announced that its solution now includes full support for embedded Linux. This expansion, according to the company, offers cross-platform support for developers building on microcontroller units (MCUs), Android-based devices or embedded Linux for any hardware, for an unlimited number of devices running any use case.

      • CNX Software ☛ Boufallo Lab BL616/BL618 RISC-V MCU supports WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and Zigbee – CNX Software

        Boufallo Lab BL616/BL618 is a 32-bit RISC-V wireless microcontroller with support for 2.4 GHz WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 dual-mode, and an 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee, Thread, and Matter designed for IoT applications.

        We first spotted the BL616 RISC-V IoT MCU during the BL602/BL606 announcement in November 2020, but we had virtually no additional information about it so far. It appears both BL616 and BL618 will be launched next month with the main difference between the two being that BL616 has 19 GPIOs and BL618 comes with 35 GPIOs.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • OpenSource.com ☛ How open source provides accessibility for the neurodivergent community | Opensource.com

      Not everyone uses the internet or digital assets in the same way. When some people think about accessibility, they only think of people with physical disabilities, which accounts for a portion of disabilities worldwide. According to the National Cancer Institute, 15-20% of people live with neurodivergence.

      [...]

      Light sensitivity is common in people who are autistic, as well as folks who just had their eyes dilated or have a migraine. There are two articles from 2022 that support the configurability of light and dark modes.

      In Ayush Sharma’s A practical guide to light and dark mode in Jekyll, you walk through how to tighten up HTML and then utilize CSS and Sass to create classes. Once you consolidate your styles, you can reuse them, define the new styles, and apply them to the HTML elements. Lastly, you can add a toggle so folks can easily switch modes.

      A beginner’s guide to making a dark theme for a website by Sachin Samal introduces a beginner-friendly way of programming a dark theme. Samal gives you practical code examples of how icons can be inserted and how to toggle between themes. It reminds you that you can utilize your browser inspector to play around with styling.

    • Programming/Development

      • Matt Rickard ☛ Shortest Time-to-Launch

        There’s a class of software that solves the simplest case and optimizes for the shortest time-to-launch (a different sort of TTL). When code is a liability, sometimes these are the best options. Think of this post as a continuation or list of examples for Solving the Simple Case. While these products aren’t always the best for real stacks, they can be invaluable for a proof-of-concept or demo app. I imagine looking back at this list in a few years will be interesting.

      • Rlang ☛ MIDI madness with ChatGPT: the AI-powered tunes that will make you laugh, cry, and dance | R-bloggers

        ChatGPT seems to be taking the world by storm. This is version of the GPT3 language model which is somehow optimised for chat dominates my Mastodon feed and inspired countless articles and discussion. 1

        A decent chunk of the discourse has been about how the outputs of the models sound very plausible and even authoritative but lack any connection with reality because the model is train to mimic language, not to give truth. Another chunk of the discourse is dominated by funny responses and creations. Things like poems, stories, limericks.

      • Andrew Healey ☛ A Personal File Share CLI — Andrew Healey

        There are a few ways around this problem without paying for a subscription. Like emailing the PDF as an attachment or uploading it to Google Drive with share permissions.

        None of the alternatives are perfect. When I need to quickly share a file during an online conversation (on a platform without unrestrictive, native file upload) I waste time.

        I estimated that by building a custom solution within a time budget of two hours, I would start saving time within one year.

        This is where I lose time when I have to share a file.

      • Carlos Becker ☛ Announcing GoReleaser v1.14 — the Christmas release

        Another month, another release! In fact, the last release of the year.

        This one in particular marks the 6 years anniversary of GoReleaser, and is packed with new features and improvements.

      • Python

        • TecAdmin ☛ Python readlines() Method – TecAdmin

          Have you ever wanted to read a file line by line in Python? Then you should be familiar with the Python `readlines()` Method! This powerful Python Method is used to read a file line by line and store each line in a list. This means you can access each line of the file using a simple list index, and you can easily manipulate the contents of the file.

          The `readlines()` Method is very useful for reading files that contain lots of information or have many lines of text. You can also use the `readlines()` Method to read a file one line at a time, which is great for file-processing tasks. What’s even better is that the `readlines()` Method is easy to use and can be implemented in just a few lines of code. So if you’re looking for a reliable way to read files in Python, look no further than the `readlines()` Method!

      • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

        • Unix Men ☛ A Complete Guide to Check If File Exists in Bash | Unixmen

          A Shell script might demand that you check whether a file exists before doing a task.

          You could always assume that the programmer or user that will run the script will do their due diligence and ensure the file is present. But bash offers the ability to check that a file exists, and leaving it to chance will be the clumsy thing to do.

          Also, assuming a file is present isn’t the right way to go if the script is distributed on various operating systems.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • “The most intrusive animation is a train that twice interrupts the mathematician Moon Duchin, who is reflecting on what it would mean for a mathematical object like infinity to ‘exist.’”

        “The second appearance of the train blocks her entirely from view and rumbles over her thoughts, as though the underlying ideas aren’t interesting enough on their own. As a mathematician, I may be biased, but I think that they are. Is the universe as infinite as we might imagine it to be?”

      • The New Stack ☛ Donald Knuth’s 2022 ‘Christmas Tree’ Lecture Is about Trees – The New Stack

        This year, 2022 marks the 60th anniversary of that fateful day in 1962 when a 24-year-old Donald Knuth started writing “The Art of Computer Programming.” Now approaching his 85th birthday, Knuth has become almost a legend in the world of computer programming — and he’s still writing additional volumes for his massive analysis of algorithms.

        But every year, right around Christmas time, there’s another tradition. Knuth gives a special lecture “pitched at non-specialists” for a small audience at Stanford University (where Knuth is a professor emeritus) and a larger audience online. Because of the pandemic, it’s been three years since Knuth has been able to honor this tradition.

        [...]

        So this year’s triumphant “homecoming” lecture would indeed include trees — specifically a phenomenon Knuth describes as “twintrees,” along with Baxter permutations, and Floorplans. Knuth noted they’re all topics touched on in the latest volume of The Art of Computer Programming, before jokingly reminding the audience that his book makes an excellent Christmas present.

        He added with a laugh that “From a lecturer’s point of view, it’s always best when you have something that you love to talk about.”

        Knuth began by introducing the audience to binary trees — a familiar branching data structure where, as you work your way down, each node can have up to two lower nodes (a left and a right “child” node). But then he showed the audience “one of my favorite algorithms of all time, for more than 50 years… binary tree insertion.” This is where data is inserted in the left fork if it’s lower than the key value, and in the right fork if it’s higher.

      • Video ☛ Stanford Lecture: Don Knuth – Twintrees, Baxter Permutations, and Floorplans (2022) – Invidious

    • Hardware

      • Ruben Schade ☛ Rubenerd: Cleaning and retr0brighting a Commodore 64C

        A fortnight ago I bought a Commodore 64C because I’d always wanted one, though I rationalised it by saying it was so I could try out carts that aren’t compatible with my 128. It was in excellent working order, but the keyboard was a bit gross, and the case had an ugly, blotchy band of yellow along the front and edges of the case.

        Last weekend I popped the keys off, removed the springs, washed the individually in warm water mixed with dishwashing detergent, then gave them a scrub with 303 cleaner as Adrian’s Digital Basement recommended in a throwaway line on a video. They look practically brand new; I couldn’t be happier with the results.

        [...]

        I put on gloves and smoothed the cream across the worst parts of the case, then wrapped it in plastic cling wrap and set it on our balcony for some Australian sun. Every half an hour I went back out and smoothed the cream around to reduce the chance of streaks where it was thicker than in other places.

        We’ve been having an uncharacteristically brisk summer in Sydney again, so it ended up staying outside for much of the day. But by the evening I unwrapped the shell, gave it a solid soak in the shower, and was shocked at how well it worked. The blotchy texture was completely gone, and what was an ugly yellow streak is now an almost unnoticeable line. Paired with the freshly washed and buffed keys, and it almost looks new.

    • Security

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Michael West Media ☛ A cry from the regions: media dominated by billionaires and corporations is not journalism – Michael West

        This submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Regional Newspapers by Broome journalist Andrew Chambers was rejected by the Committee for containing content “adverse” to another party so we published it here.
        I live in Broome, Western Australia, in the fiefdom of Kerry Stokes, owner of the Seven West network.
        Our regional weekly is The Broome Advertiser which offers little in the way of news in a traditional sense. It fills the columns between advertisements with a variety of re-written press releases, opinion pieces and the very occasional facsimile of news when it suits the editorial diktat.
        My understanding of what news should be is probably one based on a romantic notion, that it should attempt to retain some balance in reporting on an issue, to inform the public debate on issues that are of importance to the readership of the community. That, I had hoped, would include some attempt at fact-checking or seeking the response of named parties in any piece being published.
        This is almost explicitly not the case when it comes to publication of items under the banner of “news” in the Advertiser. It is invariably a trenchant supporter of big business and a slavish correspondent on behalf of those who take out advertising space, evidently the larger the advertisement, the more lavish and purple the prose.

      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

        • RFA ☛ Limited TikTok ban could augur sweeping changes — Radio Free Asia

          A new ban on TikTok’s use on U.S. government devices may only be the start of congressional prohibitions against the Chinese social media app, with lawmakers from both parties angling for more decisive action against what they say represents a national security threat.

          The $1.7 trillion spending bill, which funds the federal government through to September 2023 and was passed by the Senate on Thursday morning, now heads to the House. Included in the package is a law that prohibits the installation of TikTok on federal government devices.

          But revelations this week that employees at TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, used the app to track the physical movements of some of its users, including two journalists, may add momentum to efforts in Congress to pass even more restrictions on the app’s use.

          When he introduced a bill to ban TikTok entirely in the United States earlier this month, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) accused TikTok and its parent company ByteDance of “collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults” in order “to spy” on them on Beijing’s behalf.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Xmas Road Trip Report

        My wife and I just got back from

        Northern Alberta. It was a nice — but

        eventful — trip. The trip up to the

        Peace River area took three days

        because of a bad accident south of

        Grande Prairie. Traffic was stopped

        for almost 12 hours. It was -40C

        (which is pretty much -40F) and we

        waited for a bit, but neither of us

        felt like doing the “how much gas do

        we have left” math while trying to

        keep warm. So we went back to Grande

        Cache (an old coal mining town) and

        spent a lovely evening there.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: BEHNXPO Wordo: FREON
      • META: content in atom feed

        So I recently went back to using feed readers and it has made my life much much easier, only problem is – the feed does not have a <content> tag. So I have to open any posts in their own links. Could we add a <content> tag to midnight pub if possible?

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

[Meme] Ultimate Sirius ‘Open Source’ Cover-up

Posted in Free/Libre Software at 6:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Based on a true story

UK host: your invoice is many months overdue already, we're shutting down the server

Captain, I think we've just cut an underwater cable

Regine, we're seeing a damaged asset

Meanwhile at Sirius 'US Enterprise': I can't find a credit card with enough credit on it to pay the bill

Sirius 'UK': we'll pretend we don't know what happened

Global Shipping Corp. (fictional company name): Sirius, WTF just happened?

Sirius 'UK': a reboot always works!

Sirius clients

Sirius: SLA met

Roy: and later you'll blame the host you failed to pay so many times and tell the client to move to the US for ripoff 'clown computing' (surveillance)

Summary: Things have gotten so bad at Sirius that a scenario like the above (fictional client name) actually happen

Links 29/12/2022: Mostly HowTos

Posted in News Roundup at 3:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Joe Brockmeier ☛ Lazyweb: Best Linux distro for a 2015 MacBook Pro? : Dissociated Press

        Apple has decided that my 2015 MacBook Pro isn’t deserving of the latest macOS, so I’m looking to run Linux on it to get a few more years out of it. My first plan was to put Fedora on it, but Fedora 36 and 37 have failed to “set a new efi boot target.”

        Chrome OS Flex installed just fine, but I don’t know if I want to stick with Chrome OS long-term. It’ll do if all I use it for is couch surfing, but I might like to turn this machine into a home server running a few VMs or similar.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Dave Airlie ☛ vulkan video encoding: radv update

        After the video decode stuff was fairly nailed down, Lynne from ffmpeg nerdsniped^Wtalked me into looking at h264 encoding.

        The AMD VCN encoder engine is a very different interface to the decode engine and required a lot of code porting from the radeon vaapi driver. Prior to Xmas I burned a few days on typing that all in, and yesterday I finished typing and moved to debugging the pile of trash I’d just typed in.

        Lynne meanwhile had written the initial ffmpeg side implementation, and today we threw them at each other, and polished off a lot of sharp edges. We were rewarded with valid encoded frames.

        The code at this point is only doing I-frame encoding, we will work on P/B frames when we get a chance.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • What is inode in Linux?

        In this article, you will learn what an inode is, how to check an inode and its size in Linux, and their roles in soft/hard links and system updates.

      • The curious case of bad blocks on an SSD, and how I got rid of them – Andrea Corbellini

        In this article, you will learn what an inode is, how to check an inode and its size in Linux, and their roles in soft/hard links and system updates.

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install QOwnNotes on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install QOwnNotes on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, QOwnNotes is a note-taking application that allows users to create and organize notes, to-do lists, and ideas. Additionally, it integrates with the notes feature of ownCloud or Nextcloud. it is also available for a wide range of platforms, including Linux, macOS, and Windows.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the QOwnNotes open-source text editor on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

      • DebugPoint ☛ How to Boost Speaker Volume in Ubuntu and Other Linux (beyond 100)

        Here’s how you can boost your Laptop and desktop’s volume by more than 100% in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.

        Have you ever felt that your Ubuntu Laptop’s volume is too low, despite you selected the volume to 100%? I’m sure you had. The primary reason is – obviously, laptop speaker output intensity is lower than large speakers.

        In addition, Ubuntu and other distros set the default maximum volume to 100%, i.e. 0dB (decibel). The 0dB is the maximum volume reference. To compare, if you set the volume to -10dB, that means your volume is quieter than the maximum 0dB.

        VLC and some media players allow you to increase the volume by up to 200%. Using some settings in the latest Ubuntu, you can boost the volume to further.

      • H2S Media ☛ 3 Commands to Shutdown Linux systems with options

        Yes, we can use the regular Power Off button on our Linux system to shut down it but what if you are using a command line system? Then how are you going to shut down it properly without pressing the hardware power-off button on the PC Cabinet?

        Shutting the system properly is necessary to not only close the application process in the right way but to also avoid any data corruption problems. On the one side, it not only helps to reduce our electricity bills even the component from unnecessary usage.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Python 3.12 on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

        Python 3.12 is still in the development phase, which started on the 24th of May, 2022. For developers and enthusiasts that wish to install the latest version of Python 3.12 to get a head start, this tutorial will teach you how to import the Python PPA and install Python 3.12 on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa. The tutorial will also cover swapping alternative default versions, so you can easily switch between Python versions.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install MakeMKV on Linux Mint 21 | 20

        MakeMKV is a free, open-source tool that can convert video clips from DVDs and Blu-rays, usually encrypted. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install MakeMKV on Linux Mint 21 or Linux Mint 20 utilizing the command line terminal using the recommended Launchpad PPA repository MakeMKV team to provide the most up-to-date version.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Blender on Linux Mint 21 | 20

        Blender is a 3D creation suite that is free and open-source. It supports the entire 3D pipeline, from modeling and rigging to animation and rendering. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Blender on Linux Mint 21 or Linux Mint 20 release using two different methods: APT and Flatpak, using the command line terminal alone.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ How To Install Kapacitor on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

        In this tutorial, We will show you how to install Kapacitor on Ubuntu systems

        Kapacitor is a real-time streaming data processing engine.It is designed to process streaming data in real-time. It can be deployed across the infrastructure as both a pre-processor to down sample and perform advanced analytics before shipping the data to InfluxDB, and a post-processor allowing older high-precision data to be stored in data stores like Hadoop (for example) for further analysis. Kapacitor is very easy to use and is also very powerful. It allows the scripting to be done using lambda expressions to define transformations on data points as well as define boolean conditions that act as the filter.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ How to Install VSCodium on Ubuntu 20.04 22.04 | LTS [Ed: Adopting this helps Microsoft attack Software Freedom by spreading its proprietary spyware that's supposedly the "real deal"]

        VSCodium is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VS Code. VScode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking.

      • Seth Michael Larson ☛ [Older] Ubuntu 22.10 on Dell XPS 15 9520

        I recently purchased a new laptop after spending a few months without one. This purchase has been a long time coming as I was waiting for Black Friday deals to start in the US to save some money.

      • Barry Kauler ☛ Required key not available fix for CUPS

        It is because of fscrypt. This is the ext4 per-folder encryption mechanism. In the initrd, when the password is entered, a kernel “key” is acquired that decrypts the folders. This key applies to the root user after login; however, if an ‘su’ or ‘sudo’ is performed to a non-root user, the key has to be linked to the user “keyring” to be able to read/write files.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Odoo 15 on Linux Mint 21

        Odoo 15 is a customizable management software that comes in handy in many businesses, applications like inventory management, billing, e-commerce, and many others. Further read this guide to install Odoo15 on Linux Mint 21.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install and Configure an NFS Server on Linux Mint21

        File sharing is one of the major issues Linux users faces, especially transferring files from one system to another though there are some easy ways to transfer a file. Using the NFS tool on Linux Mint is the best way to share files between other systems as long as all the systems are connected to a network. So, if you are interested in sharing files and looking for an easy-to-use tool then try NFS and for that read this guide.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Apache Subversion on Linux Mint 21

        Apache subversion is a version control system that keeps track of changes in the files, folders, and directors of your Linux Mint 21. Not only that this also allows users to restore files to their previous versions and gives the whole history of all changes. Further if you are looking for an easy way to get Apache subversion on Linux Mint 21 then this guide is for you.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Django on Linux Mint 21

        Looking for an easy and robust way to make web applications then try the Django framework as it requires less lines of code and is highly scalable. Its framework is based on Python; if you have sound knowledge of the Python programming language then it would be of great help. If you are interested in using this Django framework for web-based applications then you need to to install it on Linux Mint 21 so read this guide to get complete information on its installation.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install FreeFileSync on Linux Mint 21

        File syncing is one of the most demanded features particularly when it comes to sharing files, not only that it also serves the purpose well for syncing the data with cloud storage. So, if you are looking for a tool that is freely available and is easy to use on Linux Mint then try FreeFileSync 11.29 and for that read this guide.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install MinIO Server and Client on Linux Mint 21

        If you are looking for a substitute for the Amazon S3 cloud storage system, then try MinIO as it is free and quite easy to use. It is primarily an object storage system that can be used for a number of applications related to AI and machine learning.

        Moreover, its functionality can be increased when used with Intel products and not only that MinIO provides MinIO server, MinIO client and some software development kits as a solution for cloud storage. So, if you are interested in using MinIO on Linux Mint 21 and looking for a complete installation guide for MinIO server and client then go through this guide.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Use Raspberry Pi GPIO Pins – Python Tutorial

        One of the amazing features of Raspberry Pi is its programmable pins known as GPIO Pins. Just like any microcontroller, these GPIO pins can be used as output or input pins to control different circuits using Raspberry Pi. The official language for the Raspberry Pi operating system is Python so, in this tutorial, we will show you in detail how to use Raspberry Pi GPIO pins through Python.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install RISC OS on Raspberry Pi 

        The Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) OS is based on RISC architecture which is an open-source, lightweight architecture designed for the ARM chipset that supports Raspberry Pi devices. Most of the OS that can be installed on Raspberry Pi are Linux based but RISC OS is a non-Linux OS. So if you are looking for some non-Linux OS for Raspberry Pi, then RISC OS is a good option.

        The complete installation of the RISC OS on Raspberry Pi is discussed in the article.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install QT Creator on Raspberry Pi

        QT Creator is based on the complete Integrated Development environment (IDE) tool, which allow developers to create software, access embedded platform, and mobile applications including Android and iOS. Additionally, QT Creator facilitates developers to share different projects throughout multiple development platforms with the help of a single tool for development and debugging. The major objective of QT Creator is to satisfy the development requirements of QT Creator’s developers seeking productivity, and ease of use.

        Based on the debugging and ease integration of QT Creator with other platforms, this tool can easily be merged with Raspberry Pi OS.

        If you are a Raspberry Pi user and looking forward to work on the QT Creator, this guide will help you install QT Creator on Raspberry Pi device.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install TShark on Raspberry Pi

        TShark is a command line-based tool that allow users to examine the ongoing traffic of the network. It allows users to save and retrieve information of ingoing and outgoing data from network packets. TShark utilizes the command line terminal to capture data instead of the graphical user interface.

        If you are a Raspberry Pi user and want to monitor traffic, this article will help you to install TShark on Raspberry Pi.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Gifsicle on Raspberry Pi

        The Gifsicle is a command line tool that allows user to create, edit, optimize, and retrieve information, about Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) images and animations. Additionally, the integration of Gifsicle with Raspberry Pi allows users to modify pictures within the Raspberry Pi terminal.

        If you are a Raspberry Pi user and want to edit pictures using Gifsicle, then this article gives you a guide install and user this tool on Raspberry Pi system.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Memcached on Raspberry Pi

        Memcached is an open-source general-purpose memory caching system widely used for increasing the speed and performance of dynamic database-driven websites. It reduces the load on databases by storing the data objects in dynamic memory.

        Since Raspberry Pi is highly utilized for database management, installing Memcached on the system helps to improve the performance of different web-based applications. You can follow this article to install Memcached on Raspberry Pi.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Raspberry Pi OS on SD Card Using Raspberry Pi Imager

        The Raspberry Pi is a device that has a CPU module used to run a lightweight operating system. It doesn’t come with a pre-installed operating system however; the users can install the OS on the SD Card or portable USB according to their own choice. Utilizing the different imager tools make the Raspberry Pi device capable to install any operating system. The Raspberry Pi Imager is one of the most compatible tools that can be utilized for install Raspberry Pi OS on the SD card.

        This article describes step by step method to install Raspberry Pi operating system on the SD card by utilizing Raspberry Pi Imager.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Any OS on Raspberry Pi – 3 Different Methods

        A single-board computer, Raspberry Pi can be used to perform various computing tasks. Just like any other computer Raspberry Pi also requires an operating system to perform different operations/tasks. There are multiple operating systems that can be installed on Raspberry Pi such as Raspberry Pi OS, tiny core Linux, RISC OS, and many others.

        If you need help installing an operating system on Raspberry Pi, follow this article for guidance.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • It’s FOSS ☛ Be Delighted! Unity Teases Version 7.7 as the Sign of Active Development

        Unity, the classic desktop environment, a part of Ubuntu from 2010 to 2017, is all set to receive a big new release. You can expect it to release sometime in 2023, but there is no concrete release date yet.

        But not by Canonical.

        If you did not know: The development of Unity was taken over by a young developer, Rudra Saraswat, who is also the creator of Ubuntu Unity, an official flavor of Ubuntu.

        In a recent blog post, Rudra showed us a sneak peek of Unity 7.7 and the various improvements that are set to come.

        Let me take you through those.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • CNX Software ☛ Pico-ITX SBC features NXP i.MX 93 LGA system-on-module – CNX Software

        iWave Sytems iW-RainboW-G50M is an NXP i.MX 93 OSM-L compliant LGA module with up to 2GB RAM, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.2 module that is found in the company’s iW-RainboW-G50S Pico-ITX SBC designed for industrial applications.

        The NXP i.MX 93 single and dual-core Cortex-A55 processor with an Ethos U65 microNPU was announced in November 2021, but we had yet to see any hardware based on the new NXP i.MX 9 processor family. The iW-RainboW-G50M and iW-RainboW-G50S change that with a system-on-module and single board computer.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Mozilla

        • Mozilla ☛ A glimpse of 2022 – The Mozilla Support Blog

          Time surely flies, and here we are, already at the end of the year. 2022 has been an amazing year for the Customer Experience team. We welcomed 5 new people to our team this year, including 2 engineers, and 1 technical writer.

    • Programming/Development

      • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

        • TecAdmin ☛ Docker Build: A Beginner’s Guide to Building Docker Images – TecAdmin

          Docker is a popular tool for packaging and deploying applications in an isolated environment, and a key part of the Docker workflow is building Docker images. We can build our own images with the help of base images and use them to create containers. We can also pull the images directly from the docker hub (https://hub.docker.com/) for our application. In this beginner’s guide, we will explain what Docker images are and how to build them.

        • TecAdmin ☛ A Beginner’s Guide to Use Bash Functions! – TecAdmin

          Bash functions are a handy way to group a series of commands that you often use together. They allow you to reuse code, make your scripts more organized and easier to read, and save you time by not having to type out the same commands over and over again.

  • Leftovers

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Rubenerd: You searched for a user’s guide, sir?

      Online store recommendation engines are always funny, whether they’re advertising mattresses to the happy owner of a new one, a guide to Windows 11 after you bought a MacBook, or cuts of meat to someone wheeling out a stack of new vegetarian cookbooks. They offer us a glimpse behind the hubris of so many systems sold as intelligent, but in practice are anything but.

    • New York Times ☛ Thousands of Canceled Flights Cap Holiday Weekend of Travel Nightmares – The New York Times

      Thousands of travelers were stranded at U.S. airports on Monday as a wave of canceled flights — many of them operated by Southwest Airlines — spoiled holiday plans and kept families from returning home during one of the busiest and most stressful travel stretches of the year. The cancellations and delays one day after Christmas left people sleeping on airport floors, standing in hourslong customer service lines and waiting on tarmacs for hours on end.

      The problems are likely to continue into Tuesday and later this week. As of Monday night, about 2,600 U.S. flights scheduled for Tuesday were already canceled, including 60 percent of all Southwest flights.

    • John Gruber ☛ Southwest Airlines Has Fallen Apart

      I too was surprised to see Southwest handling this so badly. For the last decade or so I’ve mostly flown American, because they have such a dominant position in Philadelphia and I’ve racked up a slew of points and status with them. But before that I flew on Southwest frequently, and was always impressed by their combination of low prices, great execution, and their outstanding, very friendly customer service. One time I missed a flight home to Philly from Chicago, and I expected it would be a hassle — and expensive — to get rebooked. Instead, I was on the phone for no more than five minutes, and they rebooked me on the very next MDW-PHL flight for no charge. I don’t think that would have happened with any other airline. Southwest also has, in my experience, the very best flight attendants in the industry.

    • Xe’s Blog ☛ Media I experienced in 2022 – Xe Iaso

      Over the year I took some notes on the games, hardware, and TV shows I experienced. Here’s the best and worst of what I experienced and some thoughts on all of it. I hope you enjoy all these mini-reviews.

    • Bryan Lunduke ☛ BREAKING: The Lunduke Journal predicts 37% more buzzwords in 2023

      The Lunduke Journal has predicted unprecedented, and terrifying, increases in the total number of buzzwords, in use by the Tech industry, for the coming year.

      “2023 is going to see an onslaught of new buzzwords — resulting in a 37% increase in total buzzwords by years end,” stated Bryan Lunduke, the Tech industry’s leading prognosticator. “What those buzzwords will be, we can only speculate. But there’ll sure as heck be a lot of them. Swarms of them. Coming from almost every direction. Imagine a sharknado… but with buzzwords instead of sharks. Horrifying.”

      Industry analysts from both IDC and Gartner issued their own 2023 predictions regarding buzzwords.

    • Hardware

      • Bryan Lunduke ☛ What was the first PDA?

        It’s always fun to look at who was the “first” to do something amazing.

        Who made the first computer shell? Who was the first computer programmer? What was the first smartphone?

        Today, let’s ask another simple question: What was the first PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)?

      • Bryan Lunduke ☛ PDA Week Wrap-up!

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Time to pause covid mass vaccination

        My name is John Campbell, I am a semi-retired clinical nurse, nurse lecturer, academic, researcher and author of numerous articles and two text books.

        My specialisms are human physiology and pathophysiology, as applied to clinical practice. I have also produced many educational videos which are used extensively around the world.

        In my view the UK health authorities should pause the current covid-19 vaccination programme, due to the risks associated with vaccination.

    • Finance

      • Michael West Media ☛ Foreign fossil fuel juggernauts dominate the annual MWM Top 40 Tax Dodgers chart – Michael West

        It’s a post-Christmas feast. We are rolling out the Top 40 Tax Dodgers, the crème de la crème of Australia’s biggest and meanest tax tricksters. Callum Foote reports.

        [...]

        There are a few notable inclusions in the latest Top 40 charts due to a change of methodology, notably the property development giant Lendlease. Lendlease has made a total of $68.1 billion in total income since 2014 when the ATO’s public records begin and posted just $8 million in tax payable in 2021.
        Having been outed here for its $300m retirement village tax scam, the big developer sups large on government contracts largesse but has paid more tax in other countries over the past 8 years than it has in Australia. Profit margin, prima facie, is just 0.85%.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Dies septimus

        The seventh day of our vacation. This far I haven’t really done

        anything. As always full of plans, but at the end none becomes

        reality.

        Christmas was great, although far from the family (only my brother

        came to visit us).

        At least I upgraded NetBSD on the Pi. sysupgrade(8) works fine, it

        upgrades the sets and whatnot, but can’t upgrade the kernel. The Pi

        expects netbsd.img on the FAT partition mounted under /boot (as

        configured in /boot/config.txt). So I downloaded the generic kernel

        img for evbarm-aarch64 and copied it to /boot. Now I have a 9.3

        system. Then I upgraded all the packages with pkgin. That went well,

        too.

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

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[Meme] When You Start Lying to Clients Because You’re Broke

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software at 12:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Man: I know why the server went offline; Sirius manager: tell them a reboot always works; Man: I know you are lying but ok

Summary: At Sirius ‘Open Source’ the self-demolition has been fast-tracked lately; one key problem was, workers were expected to lie to longtime well-meaning clients with critical services

Kangaroo Courts Against Voices of Morality (and of Compliance With Laws) at Sirius ‘Open Source’

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software at 12:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Slobodan Milošević: I heard Sirius is hiring

Summary: At Sirius ‘Open Source’ people who lie, cheat and trample all over other people are trying to frame themselves as voices of reason and justice; nothing could be further from the truth and it casts Sirius in a negative light (as if it’s an outlaw organisation that escapes from one shell to the next to dodge liabilities, accountability and thus enjoy de facto impunity)

THE management at Sirius ‘Open Source’ has begun to resemble the EPO‘s Benoît Battistelli. Sure, it’s not French (EPO management has been French for like 85% of the time in recent years; António Campinos was no exception). There are even kangaroo courts. For those who don’t know, kangaroo courts are meant to seem like a place where justice is available; but in practice it’s just theatrics.

The management at Sirius ‘Open Source’ has been trying to downsize, but it is struggling to come up with the money required for separation fees. Moreover, instead of keeping skilled people it is aiming to retain family members. Yes, this is how awful things have become…

“…instead of keeping skilled people it is aiming to retain family members.”Having failed to convince people to leave willfully (to avoid having to pay separation fees), the management began trying to cause guilt, shame, and humiliation. It’s a common tactic (making staff miserable). Then it started changing addresses (3 times in just over a month). It won’t say why, but that might be a legal defence strategy (making lawsuits against the company more cumbersome). Then it picked on yours truly for calling a liar “liar”. As if the lying is absolutely acceptable and the problem is opposition to lies. Narrative inversion is also misused in this way in politics, e.g. misframing those who expose war crimes as some sort of unethical “foreign agents” and reckless, disloyal voices. So what we now deal with is a bunch of rascals trying to judge or even crucify their exposers, critics, and so on. This happened in Debian too, as yesterday’s story from Daniel Pocock explains. For those who didn’t see it, the gist as per this new story is that Debian ‘family’ (people who never coded anything in their entire life!) started intimidating and shaming people who say the truth — all in the name of protecting some brand or reputation!

To be clear, when I used the word “liar” I did not name a person and did not even name my employer, only judged its behaviour in a two-person conversation, berating unethical behaviour that had long been observed and pointed out internally (to no avail).

“Having failed to convince people to leave willfully (to avoid having to pay separation fees), the management began trying to cause guilt, shame, and humiliation.”Sirius must be doing the same thing to other people, but it threatens people not to talk to each other (a divide-and-rule tactic) whilst inducing some sense of baseless regret, having done nothing wrong yet led to a conflict over someone’s ego, covering up likely unlawful behaviour.

The sad reality is that Sirius is now governed by a so-called ‘boss’ that sends nasty letters (days in the making but still with the wrong names in them; maybe attention and concentration issues), pretending to be all-knowing while lying to people, lying about people, and so on. Despite going by the title “CEO”, he is basically ‘bossing’ maybe a handful of people and some of them mock his lack of technical skills (even right to his face!). He has been trying to create a culture of lying, cultivating deceit and fostering cover-up instead of honesty, compelling colleagues to compromise their integrity (visibly against their will; they did complain, as we showed in prior parts).

“What was envisioned? That technical staff (geeks) would end up idolising or looking up to (or using as a role model) nothing short of a “bullshit artist”, who is conning clients as a short-term strategy of client retention?”The sad thing is that unethical people like these never belonged in the company in the first place! But in terms of recruitment the company has been racing to the bottom — to the point of hiring based on family connections and in spite of zero relevant skills. For management, the company started recruiting based on accents and style rather than knowledge and substance.

What was envisioned? That technical staff (geeks) would end up idolising or looking up to (or using as a role model) nothing short of a “bullshit artist”, who is conning clients as a short-term strategy of client retention? This is hardly a good investment, as it is tarnishing the names of workers, not just the company. I’ve wanted to leave for years, seeing the company was becoming a stain on my name (the company still uses my name in its Web site!).

“I refused to participate in kangaroo courts (not in compliance with the most basic international laws anyway) and resigned at the start of this month.”Companies where ambition is tied to ruthlessness (towards clients and staff, burning people to get “ahead”) are likely to accept all sorts of truly unethical clients. This is what has happened in recent years. To make matters worse, the company was living a lie, naming bogus days for future meetings, saying in vain they’d advertise and hire in the US (later, upon inquiry, they admitted they hadn’t done that at all), and pretending to be vastly bigger or “growing” (there was no actual growth).

Finally, seeing that staff was resisting the lies, management decided to embark on a witch-hunt, hinged on a low-grade fishing expedition or muck-raking adventure. I refused to participate in kangaroo courts (not in compliance with the most basic international laws anyway) and resigned at the start of this month. Below is a portion of the report I sent days prior to the resignation.

The allegations is that Roy and Rianne do not speak to the management directly, as they wish to instead communicate through a legal representative. Roy has explained to managers that they are not an appropriate tribunal (clearly HR hasn’t been properly consulted about this):

Under the European Convention on Human Rights Article 6 (England is in the European Court of Human Rights) I am entitled to have a representative and access an objective tribunal. You will hear from my lawyer soon.

So basically they improvise and make it up as they go along, thinking they’re a sheriff or something — very unprofessional.

Why does this happen? It’s plausible that tribalism and self-service are the motivation.

The current CEO seems to have zero experience with Open Source, and some workers lack even a relevant degree in a computing-related field (it’s all about nepotism — harsh to hear, but true; it wasn’t like this when Roy joined the company).

As noted before, the company is misrepresenting itself to the public. It’s portrayed as a cross-Atlantic enterprise and the web site is faking the size of the company, which is like 1 or at most 2 people in the US and only half a dozen in the UK. They mislead existing and maybe future clients.

Other colleagues have long spoken about these issues (also past colleagues), a reputation harm to the company, but they have not been subjected to stalking or singling out. Why? Probably because they left the company early enough.

The company is basically looking for a finger-pointing opportunity, it tries to cover this up, and may conveniently cheery-pick Roy’s criticisms, which don’t name people or companies.

To make matters worse, the managers accuse Roy of “defamation” even though everything said by Roy is easily provably, just not very convenient. Conversely, the company itself lies routinely; for instance, the managers repeatedly said they would hire in the US; in a later meeting they admitted this was not done. █

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