01.07.23

GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • 9to5Linux ☛ Linux Kernel 4.9 Reaches End of Life After 6 Years of Support

    After being supported for a little more than six years, the Linux 4.9 kernel series has finally reached end of life with the 4.9.337 update released earlier this morning. The kernel is now marked appropriately as EOL on the kernel.org website, which means that it will no longer receive maintenance and security updates.

    Linux kernel 4.9 was released on December 11th, 2016, and it brought support for shared extents and copy-on-write support on the XFS file system, a hardware latency tracer to detect firmware-induced latencies, support for the Greybus bus from Project Ara, a more efficient BPF profiler, a new optional BBR TCP congestion control algorithm, virtually mapped kernel stacks, and more.

• Games

  • Hackaday ☛ Is It A Game? Or A Calculator?

    If you are a certain age, you probably remember the Mattel Football game. No LCD screen or fancy cartridges. Just some LEDs and a way to play football when you should be in class. While these might seem primitive to today’s kids, they were marvels of technology in the 1970s when they came out. [Sean Riddle] looks, well, not exactly at the games, but more like in them. As it turns out, they used chips derived from those made for calculators.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ ASUS stick an OLED display into a controller, Dell want to reinvent it

    A new real controller from ASUS is on the way with the ROG Raikiri Pro that features an OLED display, plus Dell get weird with the Concept Nyx from CES 2023.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Google open sourced CDC File Transfer from the ashes of Stadia

    As Google hover over the nuke from orbit button on Stadia, they’re at least releasing some of it as open source like CDC File Transfer.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Vampire Survivors dev poncle outlines 2023 plans

    Vampire Survivors, probably the most popular game on Steam Deck that keeps being top of the most played list, is set for a busy 2023.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ System Shock remake due to release in March

    Nightdive Studios have now set a launch window for System Shock, with it planned to release in March. That’s if it doesn’t see yet another delay.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Batman Rogue City is a fun looking GZDoom fan game

    Here’s a fun retro fan game for you! Batman Rogue City released in December for GZDoom and looks like a criminal-kicking good time. As a fan game, it of course has nothing to do with DC Comics but you know what these big companies can be like, they might get itchy fingers over someone using their names and designs.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Steam Deck Beta update, plus easy Flatpak updates and more HDR teasing

    Three fun bits for you today including Steam desktop and Steam Deck Beta updates, an easy way to update third-party Flatpaks on Steam Deck in Gaming Mode and another HDR teaser from Valve.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

  • DebugPoint ☛ OpenMandriva Introduces “ROME” 23.01: A New Rolling Release Edition

    OpenMandriva is a free, open-source, independent GNU/Linux distribution that was forked from the Mandriva project. It’s simple, easy to use for your day-to-day use cases and fully contributed by the community. It also features popular desktop environments and comes with a simple Calamares installer.

    A new rolling release-based edition OpenMandriva “ROME” 23.01 debuts with KDE Plasma, GNOME desktop flavours and some cool apps.

    Here’s what’s new.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Hackaday ☛ Arduino Synthesizer Uses Modified Slide Pots

    There comes a point in every Arduino’s life where, if it’s lucky, it becomes a permanent fixture in a project. We can’t think of too many better forever homes for an Arduino than inside of a 3D-printed synthesizer such as this 17-key number by [ignargomez] et al.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Arduino Nicla Voice supports speech recognition, BL5.0 and integrates 9-Axis IMU

    Arduino recently presented a compact low-power embedded module with machine learning capabilities. The Arduino Nicla Voice is based on the Syntiant NDP120 processor optimized for Deep Learning applications and the ANNA-B112 u-Blox module for wireless connectivity.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Hackaday ☛ Chataigne: An Open-Source Swiss Army Knife

  [Ben Kuper] is a developer with a history of working on art installations, and had hit upon a common problem often cited by artists. When creating installations involving light, sound, and motion, they often spend too much time on the nuts and bolts of electronics, programming, and so on. Such matters are a huge time sink with a steep learning curve and oftentimes just a plain distraction from the actual artistic intent they’re trying to focus upon. [Ben] has been working for a few years on a software tool, Chataigne which is designed as the glue between various software tools and hardware interfaces, enabling complex control of the application using simple building blocks.

Leftovers

• The Nation ☛ Public Art, Community Hope

• Education

  • The Nation ☛ Higher Ed Labor Organizing Is Just Getting Started

    About three weeks into the University of California strike—around the time thousands of workers across the state had shared Thanksgiving meals on picket lines—UC Berkeley’s campus health center became inundated with a barrage of strange ailments among student workers. Graduate students were turning up with unspecified leg pain, foot sores, achy hips, repetitive motion problems, and generalized fatigue.

  • The Nation ☛ How Students Fought for Democracy in 2022

    For more than a decade, The Nation has highlighted the work of aspiring journalists in StudentNation, an online section of the magazine written by young people. With generous support from the Puffin Foundation, StudentNation has published hundreds of talented young writers covering a wide range of issues through local reporting, firsthand accounts, interviews, and personal essays. The following material is adapted from three recent StudentNation articles. To see the original stories, go to TheNation.com/students.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Printable Case For Pinecil And TS100 Soldering Irons (Mis)Uses A 608 Bearing

    [PjotrStrog]’s rugged Pinecil / TS100 storage case is the perfect printable accessory to go with a hacker’s choice of either the Pine64 Pinecil, or the Miniware TS100 soldering irons. There are some thoughtful features beyond just storing the iron, too!

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Scheerpost ☛ The NFL: America’s Billion Dollar Blood Sport

    American football has always been a blood sport. It needs to change or die. Tackle must end.  Flags must come. And they will. Why?  Because human lives are at stake…and with them, a trillion-dollar industry. A century ago, football players were maimed and died in droves.  The college game was a cross between […]

  • Why did antivaxxers seize on the Damar Hamlin case?

    The tragic collapse of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin on Monday night due to a cardiac arrest after a tackle led to a tsunami of conspiracy mongering from antivaxxers falsely insinuating (and outright claiming) that it had to be the COVID-19 vaccines that caused it. A lot of people were surprised by the ghoulishness of it all. They should not have been. False claims that vaccines kill have been a staple of antivax conspiracy narratives going back as long as I can remember, starting with false claims that vaccines are responsible for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and, more recently, that HPV vaccines were causing the deaths of adolescent girls and young women. As I mention every time I discuss the antivax “death after vaccination” narrative, there was even an antivax movie about Gardasil called Sacrificial Virgins…in 2018! The Damar Hamlin tragedy is a “teachable moment” because it has featured so prominently in the news over the last three day, which is why I want to discuss it further, particularly how it feeds into a false narrative that COVID-19 vaccines are killing young people, but not just young people, young healthy athletes as well. First, let’s discuss some background again.

  • The Nation ☛ Republicans Are Consigning the Poor to Disease and Death

    Covid-19 cases, predictably, have climbed as the weather turned cold in much of the country. As of mid-December, cases had jumped more than 50 percent, while deaths were up 40 percent.

• Security

  • Hackaday ☛ This Week In Security: Lastpass Takeaway, Bitcoin Loss, And PyTorch

    We mentioned the LastPass story in closing a couple weeks ago, but details were still a bit scarce. The hope was that LastPass would release more transparent information about what happened, and how many accounts were accessed. Unfortunately it looks like the December 22nd news release is all we’re going to get. For LastPass users, it’s time to make some decisions.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Common Dreams ☛ Veterans Understand Martin Luther King Jr’s Powerful Demand for Peace

    Veterans Day celebrations have come and gone. One thing about veterans: Everyone’s for them. But what does that really encompass? How did they get here? And what of the veterans to come?

  • Common Dreams ☛ Two Years After Jan. 6, Omar Says ‘Imagine If This Was to Happen Under Republican Control’

    On the eve of the second anniversary of the January 6 attack, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar asked the public to imagine if far-right Republicans—now locked in a chaotic fight over the House speakership—controlled the lower chamber of Congress two years ago, when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent effort to overthrow the government.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Two Years Later, Neither Trump Nor Worst Actors in Congress Have Been Held to Account for Jan 6. Insurrection

    Two years ago today the United States Capitol was attacked by a mob determined to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as President. They were armed and dangerous. Five people died. It’s a miracle that more did not — including members of Congress and the Vice President whom the mob had targeted.

  • TruthOut ☛ 2 Years After Jan. 6, Part of Congress Has Been Shut Down Again by the Far Right

  • TruthOut ☛ 2 Years After January 6 Capitol Attack, Trump Still Hasn’t Been Charged

  • Common Dreams ☛ After 15 Ballots, McCarthy Finally Elected Speaker of the House

    After nearly a week of chaotic voting on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy of California was elected Speaker of the House of the 118th Congress just after midnight early Saturday morning after finally securing enough votes in the 15th ballot.

  • Common Dreams ☛ The Very Dangerous Reasoning Behind the Freedom Caucus’ Hatred for Kevin McCarthy

    While Kevin McCarthy’s struggle to become Speaker of the House of Representatives appears to be about personality and struggles within the House Republican caucus, it’s really about something much larger: the fate and future of American “big government” and the middle class it created.

  • The Nation ☛ January 6 Comes for Kevin McCarthy

    Poor Kevin. Or “my Kevin,” as Donald Trump once called him.

  • TruthOut ☛ As Speaker Deal Is Considered, Matt Gaetz Indicates He May Never Back McCarthy

  • The Nation ☛ The January 6 Report and Trump’s Gospel of Success

    The report from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol lands at an all-too-apt juncture in our politics. Just this week, the Republican Party launched the new session of Congress with a once-in-a-century failure to designate a House speaker, as the hard-right Freedom Caucus blockaded basic procedural order in favor of raw nihilistic power plays. The right-wing mediasphere continues to light up with baseless, militantly confrontational conspiracy theories, involving everything from Hunter Biden’s laptop to Anthony Fauci to Jewish world domination. Meanwhile, Donald Trump himself is once more dusting off the false election-theft narrative that sparked the January 6 attack, reviving disproven, plainly racist, allegations of election tampering targeting Georgia African American election worker Ruby Freeman.

  • Democracy Now ☛ Two Years After Jan. 6, Capitol Attack Casts Long Shadow Over GOP That Allows Extremism to Fester

    Friday marks two years since the January 6 Capitol insurrection, when President Donald Trump incited thousands of supporters to violently storm Congress, attempting to overturn the 2020 election. The attack on the Capitol briefly shut down Congress as lawmakers fled for their safety from the mob, which included members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and other violent extremist groups. Two years later, part of Congress has been effectively shut down again, this time because a group of far-right Republicans, including many who supported the January 6 insurrection, have blocked Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s attempt to become House speaker. We speak to Andy Campbell, senior editor at HuffPost and author of “We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered In a New Era of American Extremism,” as the House speaker vote drags on and the Proud Boys face trial for seditious conspiracy over their involvement in the insurrection.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Jan. 6 Rally Reminds Public That ‘Trump Is Disqualified’ From Running for Office

    Two years after supporters of former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” stormed the U.S. Capitol, demonstrators gathered in Colorado on Friday to remind the American people—especially election officials—that “Trump is disqualified” from running for public office under Section 3 of the 14 Amendment to the Constitution.

  • Common Dreams ☛ On Jan. 6 Anniversary, Khanna Says ‘Insurrectionists Do Not Belong in Office’

    Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna argued on Friday, the second anniversary of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, that Republican lawmakers who supported former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss should be barred from holding office now and in the future.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Another January 6, Another GOP Mob

    It’s the afternoon of January 6. There is chaos on the floor of the House of Representatives, and the business of Congress is stalled. Will the meeting be adjourned so that leaders can figure out whether and how it might be possible to restore normal order, so that the business of the House can be resumed?

  • Counter Punch ☛ Putin’s Brief Ceasefire is a Prelude to Further Escalation of this Bitter War

    President Vladimir Putin ordered his army in Ukraine to observe a 36-hour ceasefire for the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday this weekend, a move which will raise hopes of a longer-term end to the fighting. It is the first such truce covering the whole battlefield since the Russian invasion 11 months ago and serves Russian interests more than those of Ukraine.

    The Russian temporary truce is apparently unconditional and has the propaganda advantage of making it appear that it is Moscow that wants to stop the fighting and Ukraine that wants to continue it.

  • Common Dreams ☛ War in Ukraine, Drought Pushed Global Food Prices to All-Time High in 2022

    Russia’s war on Ukraine, climate change-intensified drought, and other factors drove global food prices to a record high and worsened hunger around the world in 2022, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said Friday.

  • Democracy Now ☛ “We Need Ceasefires Everywhere”: Bishop William Barber’s Message of Peace for Ukraine & the World

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has unilaterally declared a 36-hour ceasefire in Ukraine to mark Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 7. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected Putin’s overture, however, saying that Russia wants to use Christmas as a pretext to stop Ukrainian advances in the Russian-occupied Donbas region. Putin’s declaration comes after about 1,000 U.S. faith leaders called in an open letter last month for a ceasefire during the holidays, inspired by the Christmas truce of 1914 during World War I, arguing that a pause in the fighting could create room for negotiations to peacefully end the conflict. We air a recent sermon by Bishop William Barber, one of the signatories, in which he discussed the need for a Christmas truce. “We need a ceasefire to interrupt this warring madness,” Barber said. “A ceasefire doesn’t mean both sides are equally culpable for starting the war, but it can have the impact of stopping the massive, massive killing on both sides.”

  • Scheerpost ☛ Putin Orders Unilateral Ceasefire for Orthodox Christmas, Ukraine Rejects It

    The ceasefire would begin at noon on Friday and last through Saturday.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Cuba Says Biden Applies Blockade Even More Aggressively Than His Predecessors

    Biden has maintained many of Trump’s sanctions against Cuba. He must fulfill his promise to reverse Trump’s actions.

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Honored in Cuba and condemned by Washington, Ana Belén Montes walks free from federal prison

  • TruthOut ☛ Police Killed Nearly 100 People a Month in 2022, Data Shows

  • Common Dreams ☛ ‘What Are We Doing Wrong?’: US Police Killed Record Number of People in 2022

    Nearly three years after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked worldwide protests demanding far-reaching reforms to stop law enforcement agents from perpetrating violence against the communities they’re meant to protect, new data shows 2022 was the deadliest year on record for people who had police encounters in the United States.

  • TruthOut ☛ My Neighbors Were “Buffalo Strong” During Storm. Officials Were “Buffalo Wrong.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ New Docs Show US Lied About Civilians Killed in 2021 US Kabul Drone Strike

    U.S. military officials knew that an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul likely killed Afghan civilians including children but lied about it, a report published Friday revealed.

• Environment

  • Hackaday ☛ Salty Refrigeration Is Friendly To The Environment

    Widespread use of refrigerators is a hallmark of modern society, allowing people to store food and enjoy ice and cold beverages. However, a typical refrigerator uses gasses that are not always good for the environment. Now the Berkeley National Lab says they can change that using ioncaloric cooling, a new technique that uses salt as a refrigerant.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Amazon Breathes Sigh of Relief as Lula Returns to Power in Brazil

    The Amazon rainforest is often called the lungs of the planet, covering more than 3 million square miles across nine South American countries. It is an immense carbon sink, drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, storing it as biomass and releasing oxygen. Other tropical rainforests do the same, from the Congo Basin to New Guinea and Indonesian-occupied West Papua and Malaysia. But the Amazon is on a scale of its own, and, with human activity driving catastrophic global heating, protecting the climate-healing power of the Amazon is vital.

  • Common Dreams ☛ EPA Rule to Curb Deadly Air Pollution Fails Communities at Risk, Groups Warn

    While welcoming efforts to update U.S. air quality standards for soot, environmental and public health advocates on Friday warned that the Biden administration’s new proposal falls woefully short of what’s needed to protect vulnerable communities from deadly pollution.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hackaday ☛ MycelioTronics: Biodegradable Electronics Substrates From Fungi

      E-waste is one of the main unfortunate consequences of the widespread adoption of electronic devices, and there are various efforts to stem the flow of this pernicious trash. One new approach from researchers at the Johannes Kepler University in Austria is to replace the substrate in electronics with a material made from mycelium skins.

  • Overpopulation

    • Scheerpost ☛ Dr. Warren Hern: Humans Are a Metastasizing Cancer Terminating Life on the Planet

      Physician and anthropology scholar Dr. Warren Hern delves into some of the most upsetting aspects of human behavior as a fatal threat to all life on earth in the near future.

• Finance

  • TruthOut ☛ Wage Growth Slows as Unemployment Falls Back to Half-Century Low

  • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Bad News for Workers’ as Wage Growth Slows Amid Fed Rate Hike Barrage

    The U.S. Labor Department released data Friday showing that wage and job growth slowed in December as the Fed explicitly targets the labor market and worker pay in its push to tamp down inflation, which has been cooling in recent months.

  • The Nation ☛ California Hangs Its Homeless Population Out to Dry

  • Common Dreams ☛ A Progressive Political Economy Guide to Inflation

    Since 2021, prices have surged dramatically across countries and inflation has become a global challenge. Global central banks delivered historic rate hikes in 2022 in order to tame inflation and continued doing so even when inflation was falling, thereby risking a global recession.

  • The Nation ☛ The Congressional Progressive Caucus Expands

    Even while giving Republicans a narrow margin in the House of Representatives, voters elected a historic cohort of insurgent progressive newcomers, adding at least 11 new members to the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The CPC, which just reelected Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal as its leader, had numbered 101 members, making it the largest ideological caucus in the last Congress. It will grow in the new one, even after losing members to retirement (like Eddie Bernice Jackson of Texas), election to other offices (Karen Bass as Los Angeles mayor, Peter Welch as senator to Vermont), or election reversals (including, regrettably, one of the true champions of working people in Congress, Michigan’s Andy Levin, brought down by reapportionment and a multimillion-dollar dark money assault in the Democratic primary waged largely by AIPAC and Emily’s List).1

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Scheerpost ☛ The Chris Hedges Report: Mickey Huff & Nolan Higden on the Disappearance of Democratic Debate and Dialogue in America

    Democratic debate and dialogue have all but vanished in the United States. There is widespread censorship imposed by social media platforms, private corporations about which we know nothing, while they know everything about us. Mainstream news outlets champion censorship and deplatforming in the name of democracy. Brian Seltzer, for example, on CNN […]

  • FAIR ☛ Under Musk, Twitter Continues to Promote US Propaganda Networks

    Twitter’s “state-affiliated media” policy has an unwritten exemption for US government-funded and -controlled news media accounts. Twitter even boosts these accounts as “authoritative” sources for news during the Russian/Ukrainian war.

  • TruthOut ☛ Democrats’ New House Leader Has Record of Defending Human Rights Violations

  • TruthOut ☛ Companies That Pledged to Stop Giving to Election Objectors Have Given Them $10M

  • TruthOut ☛ Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola Open to Coalition Candidate for Speaker

  • The Nation ☛ Jamie Raskin’s Clear-Eyed View of the Mess House Republicans Are Making of Congress

    If Democrats want to know how best to respond to the mayhem unleashed by House Republicans during the first week of the 118th Congress, they would do well to take notes from Jamie Raskin.1

  • The Nation ☛ The Holy Grail

  • Common Dreams ☛ Federal Court Orders South Carolina to Redraw Racially Gerrymandered Congressional Maps

    A portion of South Carolina’s Republican-drawn congressional map discriminates against Black voters and must be redrawn, federal judges ruled Friday to applause from civil rights groups.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Longtime HRW Head Denied Harvard Post Over Criticism of Apartheid Israel

    Advocacy groups on Friday denounced a decision by a Harvard dean to deny a research fellowship to former longtime Human Rights Watch head Kenneth Roth, allegedly over the organization’s criticism of Israeli apartheid and other crimes in Palestine.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Pro Publica ☛ Talking to an Investigative Reporter Who Exposed Chinese Influence in Canada

      An exclusive news report dominated the headlines in Canada in recent weeks: Canadian intelligence had warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about a vast campaign of political interference by China. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service had learned that Chinese consulate officials in Toronto had covertly funded a network of at least 11 political candidates in federal elections in 2019, the report said. The Chinese operation had also targeted Canadian political figures and immigrant leaders seen as opponents of the regime in Beijing, subjecting them to surveillance, harassment and attacks in the media, the report said. Trudeau responded with promises of action, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they were investigating the alleged foreign interference. The Chinese foreign ministry denied the allegations.

      Not surprisingly, the report’s author was Sam Cooper. An investigative journalist for Global News, a private Canadian media organization, the 48-year-old Cooper has done hard-hitting work about a surprisingly active criminal underworld rooted in a large diaspora from Hong Kong, a bastion of the mafias known as triads. His best-selling 2021 book, “Wilful Blindness: How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West,” examines violent international gangs involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and, most alarmingly, Chinese espionage and influence activity in Canada.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Techdirt ☛ FTC Proposes Banning Non-Competes, Which Would Unleash Innovation

    For years, I’ve been highlighting the overwhelming evidence that non-compete agreements are horrible for innovation. There are multiple studies on this, which show how much of Silicon Valley’s success can be attributed to an almost accidental interpretation of the California business code that outlawed non-compete agreements, while other studies have strongly suggested that a big part of the collapse of the Detroit auto industry could be pinned on Michigan switching from not allowing non-competes to allowing them.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Former Amnesty International Hungary employees write about abuse in the workplace

  • TruthOut ☛ South Carolina Supreme Court Permanently Blocks State’s Abortion Ban

  • The Nation ☛ The FDA’s Abortion Announcement Is Not What You Think

    This week, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would allow mifepristone, the first pill taken in the two-drug medication abortion regimen, to be dispensed at retail pharmacies. The FDA’s decision is a welcome move that has garnered headlines, but the fine print contains significant red tape that will continue to serve as a barrier for people already struggling to access medical care.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Two Major Pharmacies Say They Plan to Offer Medication Abortions. Here’s What That Could Mean.

    The federal government will let retail pharmacies provide mifepristone, which helps end pregnancies, to patients with a prescription. But it’s not clear how widespread the impact will be.

  • Techdirt ☛ Oregon Supreme Court Applies SCOTUS Ruling Retroactively, Overturns All Non-Unanimous Jury Convictions

    In April 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling that made things clear to the two states (Oregon and Louisiana) still inexplicably allowing people to be convicted by non-unanimous juries: to continue to do so violated the Sixth Amendment rights of the accused.

  • Techdirt ☛ ProPublica Exposes Even More Cop Junk Science: Using 911 Calls To Determine If People Are Lying

    Cops like science. Not in the way that say, scientists like science. They just like science-y sounding mumbo jumbo that paves the way for criminal convictions.

  • Techdirt ☛ Congressional Leaders Want To Know Why The DEA Is Deploying Controversial Phone Hacking Tools

    For years, governments around the world have deployed powerful malware to hack the phones of their targets. Most of these deployments went unnoticed, as many governments were less interested in performing oversight than pursuing ends (read: wars on terror, drugs) they felt justified the means.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Biden’s Expansion of Title 42 Violates International Law: UN

    The United Nations refugee agency warned Friday that the Biden administration’s new expansion of Title 42, the Trump-era policy under which the U.S. government has expelled more than 2.5 million migrants, is “not in line with refugee law standards” that the administration is obligated to follow under international law.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ I have to prove that I can do the same things as men

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Matthew Garrett ☛ mjg59 | Asking ChatGPT to write my security-sensitive code for me [Ed: Still attacking software freedom]

    To bind an encryption key to the value of a TPM NV index, you can use the TPM2_NV_DefineSpace command with the TPMA_NV_BIND attribute.

    I’m not afraid of being unemployed in the near future.

  • Techdirt ☛ HBO Max Keeps Losing Popular Content, Highlighting The Raging Stupidity Of Pointless Media Megamergers

    You might recall how AT&T spent nearly $200 billion on megamergers thinking it was going to dominate the online video advertising space. But after spending a fortune on DirecTV and Time Warner, laying off 50,000 people, and killing off popular properties like Mad Magazine, it quickly became clear that AT&T executives had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

• Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ YouTube Wins Partial Summary Judgment in Maria Schneider Copyright Lawsuit

      YouTube’s motion for summary judgment in a class action lawsuit filed by musician Maria Schneider has been granted in part and denied in part. A California district court dismissed all claims related to 27 works, direct infringement claims against 15 works, and 121 other alleged infringements. Other infringement claims stand, and the case will continue.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Anti-Piracy Group Warns of a Problematic Textbook Piracy Culture Among Students

      This week, a Danish court convicted a 26-year-old man for selling pirated digital copies of textbooks. The seller received a suspended jail sentence and was ordered to pay damages. While this incident has been dealt with, anti-piracy group Rights Alliance signals a broader piracy habit among students that has rightsholders worried.

    • Techdirt ☛ Copyright Has Kept De La Soul’s Classic 1st Album Off Streaming… Until Now

      For years, we’ve written about the copyright nonsense around sampling in hip hop music, and how it was treated with very, very different rules than things like cover songs and paying homage to previous artists in other forms of music. As we’ve mentioned for over a decade, filmmaker Kembrew McCleod did a full (fascinating) exploration of this in the documentary “Copyright Criminals” which is worth watching if you can find it. The trailer is here: