The darling of open-source-powered laptops and desktops will soon drop a new AMD Ryzen 7-powered version of their popular Pangolin laptop.
System76 recently announced they would soon give their fan-favorite Pangolin laptop a boost with the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U CPU 2.7 up to 4.7 GHz with 8 cores and 16 threads, which includes an AMD Radeon 680M GPU. With the Ryzen 7, users get increased CPU clock speeds, doubled read/write speeds, and faster bandwidth at the tune of 40% faster.
The Pangolin chassis is built with magnesium and offers 150 degrees of flexibility for the screen. The display has a 1920x1080 FDH matte with a 144Hz refresh rate.
Tucked inside the chassis is a battery with 10% more life than previous iterations, so you can expect to get roughly 10 hours of productivity from the new configuration.
Other specs include 32 GB LPDDR5 RAM @ 6400 MHz, 2 x M.2 SSD (PCIe NVMe) with up to 16TG total in storage, 3 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C port, an SD card reader, single color backlit keyboard, gigabit ethernet, WiFI 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, Video ports (including HDMI 2.0, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C w/displayport), full-range speakers and 1 headphone/mic combo jack, a single 1.0 MP 720p HD webcam, and a 70 Wh Li-Ion battery.
Installing Windows or any other Linux distro is possible on the Steam Deck. So why do most people choose not to replace the default SteamOS?
The Steam Deck is a portable gaming PC, and Windows dominates the PC gaming landscape. It makes sense to assume people would want to install Windows on the Steam Deck for the best gaming experience. Many of us suspected this would be the case, back before the Steam Deck’s launch.
But the Steam Deck is out now, and most people don’t bother with installing Windows. The majority stick with Linux, and here’s why.
With a Gnome desktop that offers different layouts and a custom kernel, PikaOS is a great option for gamers of all types.
PikaOS wants to be your new favorite desktop Linux, especially if you're into games. This distribution is similar to what Nobara offers, only instead of using Fedora as its base, it opts for Ubuntu.
PikaOS promises gaming "out-of-the-box" so you don't have to bother with complicated configurations or complex third-party app installation. You'll find the best drivers installed or readily available via the Welcome App and a high level of compatibility for both software and hardware.
PikaOS goes with the XanMod kernel, which implements numerous customized settings to provide ultra-low latency and support for cutting-edge hardware. You'll also find the APX package manager, which is a wrapper for managing APT packages.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that PikaOS doesn't come with a large selection of pre-installed apps. Even the apps commonly associated with gaming on Linux aren't installed by default.
I am hoping that with change I can get some of the translations moving. Some of them have been "in progress" for more than 5 years and it would be great if they got finished.
I will be making the change to the "Books" page soon, so keep an eye out for your chance to contact one of the translation team to offer help or encouragement.
In this video, I am going to show an overview of MX Linux 21.3 KDE and some of the applications pre-installed.
I was recently in a position to replace my old Avermedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus but when buying a capture card on Linux it can be a bit of a nightmare so what should you be looking for to make your life a little easier.
Alex Belokrylov of Bellsoft tells Doc Searls and Jonathan Bennett how Java has evolved into an ideal language for cloud infrastructure, especially through the Liberica JDK and Bellsoft's new Alpaquita Linux distro: the only Linux optimized for Java. Reduced costs, faster deployment, better security, and a brightening future are just a few of the topics discussed on FLOSS Weekly.
In this video, I take a quick look at CachyOS Linux! CachyOS is a distribution based on Arch Linux that offers an easy installation, several customization options to suit every user, and special optimizations for improved performance while remaining simple.
A quick video covering Linux terminal commands I believe everyone should know.
This week, Linux Out Loud chats about the age of building PCs coming to an end.
Welcome to episode 47 of Linux Out Loud. We fired up our mics, connected those headphones as we searched the community for themes to expound upon. We kept the banter friendly, the conversation somewhat on topic, and had fun doing it.
Most Linux distros will eventually die. Chances are that your current Linux distro won't be around in 5, 10 or 20 years. Here are five Linux distros that I thought were great that are no longer with us...
Linux Kernel: The Heart of the Linux Operating System
The Linux kernel is the core of the operating system, and it is responsible for managing the resources of the computer. Linux also includes a wide range of tools and utilities that make it easy to manage and customize the operating system.
RSS feeds remain one of the best ways to keep a (non-algorithmically-adjusted) eye on the latest content from your favourite websites, blogs, projects, and more.
When combined with an RSS reader, the “Really Simple Syndication” format does the hard work of fetching news for you. Instead of you needing to open 10 different websites in your browser each morning, you open your RSS reader and see it all there, saving you time and effort.
A wide range of RSS reader apps (often called a news aggregator) for Linux are available. This includes desktop clients like NewsFlash, Liferea, and RSSOwl, through to side-features in other apps, like Thunderbird and Vivaldi (that browser does everything but your laundry).
You can also use a command line RSS reader, like the ones featured below.
Shin (shell input method) is a tool that lets you run shell commands in almost any text input on your Linux desktop.
A Shell provides an interface to Linux and Unix-like systems by interpreting commands and acts as an intermediary between the user and the core workings of the operating system.
Undoubtedly, the bash shell is the most popular one, and some users prefer other shells like ZSH, which is the default shell in macOS. But many shells exist other than these popular ones, with different features and use cases.
In this article, we will take a look at some less popular shells that are actively maintained and provide a different user experience.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Matomo on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Matomo, previously known as Piwik, is an open-source web analytics software that allows you to track and analyze your website’s visitors and their behavior. It can be used to track website visitors, track user interactions on a website, and generate reports on website traffic, search engine optimization, and conversion rate optimization. Matomo is written in PHP and uses a MySQL/MariaDB database to store data.
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 Matomo Web Analytics 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.
Want to use Chrome web browser on Linux Mint? Learn the easy way to install Google Chrome on Linux Mint in just a few simple steps!
Google Chrome, developed by Google, is the world’s most widely used web browser. At the same time, most Linux distros ship with Firefox by default because it is open-source software, and Linux Mint follows this trend. However, many Linux users prefer to use Google Chrome as their primary web browser.
In this guide, I will show you three easy ways to install Google Chrome on Linux Mint, so you can start browsing the web with your favorite browser in no time. Choose the one that is the easiest to implement for you.
Adminer is a web-based tool that allows you to manage multiple database systems from a central location. The tool is user-friendly, lightweight, and top-notch in performance with a neat user interface.
The Adminer database manager is available on all Linux distributions. You can easily install and configure it on Ubuntu via the terminal and access its web interface via any browser. You can run database operations directly from the Adminer dashboard and easily manage multiple databases.
Here's how to install and set up Adminer on Ubuntu.
I am a fan of productivity applications, like To Do and Kanban applications. In the past, I have paid attention to the open source To Do applications named Planner and Super Productivity, both of which I think are superb productivity applications for Linux, with both their own specific qualities. In this new article, I want to give an introduction to the To Do app from the Zenkit Suite, which is not open source and is only partly free. Although I think open-source as a concept is important, I am not an open-source purist. In my opinion, the availability of quality closed-source applications is of great importance for the wide acceptance and growing success of Linux on the desktop, because it can attract existing macOS and Windows users who already use these apps and simply can switch over to Linux without the need to immediately search for alternatives. In this article, I want to share how to use Zenkit To Do on Linux to support your productive life.
The user-space application software iptables allows you to configure the tables supplied by the Linux distro firewall and the chains and rules stored in them. The iptables kernel module only applies to IPv4 traffic; to create firewall rules for IPv6 connections, use ip6tables, which corresponds to the same command structures as iptables.
The iptables program is a Linux-based firewall that is included with various Linux distributions. It is a prominent software-based firewall solution. It’s an essential tool for Linux system administrators to learn and comprehend. For security reasons, any publicly accessible server on the Internet should have a firewall activated. In most cases, you would only expose ports for services you want to be available through the Internet. All other ports would stay blocked and Internet-inaccessible. You might want to open ports for your web services in a standard server, but you probably don’t want to make your database publicly available!
PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used, open-source programming language particularly suited for web development. It can be easily integrated into the CentOS stream system, providing many benefits.
NetBox is an Infrastructure Resource Modelling (IRM) software designed for network automation and infrastructure engineering.
Wireguard is an open-source VPN protocol alternative to IPSec, IKEv2, and OpenVPN.
As a sysadmin, when you are working on a remote system or server, multiple users might be accessing the same system via SSH simultaneously.
Active users can gently disconnect from the server by issuing the “exit” command in the terminal once they are done with their work.
However, some careless users fail to logout and leave the session running in the background, which will logout the user only if you configured SSH to automatically kick out the user after a certain amount of idle time or the user logs out manually.
In this quick tutorial, you will learn how to kick out SSH-connected users from the target system from your end as a sysadmin.
The “mv” command is generally used in Linux to rename a single file. But sometimes, it requires to rename a batch of files. Many utilities exist in Linux to do this task. Some of them are “rename”, “imv”, “qmv”, “mmv”, etc. These are not installed in Linux by default. These utilities are required to install to rename a batch of files. The batch of files can also be removed using the built-in “mv” command with the loop or other commands. The different ways to rename a batch of files in Linux are shown in this tutorial.
The full form of the “sed” command is a stream editor. This command is a very powerful command of the Linux operating system and it is used for various purposes. One of the common uses of this command is to find and replace one or more string values of a file. The particular content of a file can be replaced by this command without opening the file. The “sed” command supports regular expression. The specific string value can be searched inside a file based on the regular expression which is defined with this command. The different ways of searching and replacing the particular string in a file using the “sed” command are shown in this tutorial.
The full form of curl is the Client URL. It is a command-line tool that is used to transfer the data from or to any server using a particular protocol such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, TELNET, LDAP, etc. A specific URL is used by this tool to communicate with a web server or the application server to get or send the data. It can be used directly from the terminal or by using any script. Downloading the files from the server, debugging, endpoint testing, and other tasks can be done using curl. The different uses of the curl command are shown in this tutorial.
The “if” statement is used in Bash for conditional branching like in other programming languages. The “if” statement can be used to check the different conditions in Bash. The different types of comparison operators, logical operators, and options are used with the “if” statement for testing. The uses of the “-z” and “-n” option to test the string values using the “if” statement in Bash are shown in this tutorial.
Many built-in commands exist in Bash to perform different types of tasks. Bash has no built-in function like other programming languages. But the tasks of the built-in functions can be done easily using the different types of built-in commands of Bash. Bash has some special built-in commands and some inherited built-in commands which are inherited from the shell commands. The purposes of the most commonly used built-in commands of Bash and the uses of some built-in commands are described in this tutorial.
The PATH is an environment variable that is used to store the location of the resources that contain executable files on the Linux operating system. The PATH is defined using slash(/) and alphanumeric characters. Two types of PATH can be defined in Linux. One is an absolute path and the other is a relative path. The full location of a particular file or directory or file system is defined by an absolute path. The location that is relative to the current working directory is defined by the relative path. The $PATH variable mainly contains the location of those directories that execute frequently such as/bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, etc.
Normally, we get the output of any command into the terminal. Sometimes, we need to send the output of the command as the input of another command. This task can be done by executing the commands multiple times. But this task can be done easily using a pipe command that executes two or more commands at a time in Linux where the output of the one command is the input of the next command. The ‘|’ operator is used for piping. The uses of the pipe command are described in this tutorial.
Three streams are opened when the Linux operating system starts. These are stdin, stdout, and stderr. The full form of stdin is standard input which is used to take an input from the user. The full form of stdout is the standard output which is used to store the output of the command into the stdout stream. The full form of stderr is the standard error which is used to store the error message that is generated from any command into the data stream. The uses of these streams are shown in this tutorial. The corresponding numerical identifier values of stdin, stdout, and stderr are 0, 1, and 2.
Becky Stern is back with another of her excellent Digi-Key electronics tutorials. In this one, she covers the basics of Arduino I/O, both analog and digital.
GCompris 3.0 is here more than a year after GCompris 2.0 and introduces eight new activities, including “Mouse click training” for practicing using a mouse with left and right clicks, as well as “Create the fractions” and “Find the fractions” for learning decimal quantities with pie or rectangle charts.
Other new activities included in this release are “Discover the International Morse code” for learning how to communicate with the international Morse code, “Compare numbers” for learning how to compare number values using comparison symbols, “Find ten’s complement” for learning the concept of ten’s complement, along with “Swap ten’s complement” for swapping numbers of addition to optimize it using ten’s complement and “Use ten’s complement” for decomposing an addition to optimize it using ten’s complement.
Last summer GNOME invited its users to run a simple information collection tool to provide them with data on how they configure their systems.
And now it’s sharing details about what it learned.
More than 2,500 people ran the gnome-info-collect tool on their systems, which relayed (non-sensitive or identifiable) data back to the GNOME servers. The aim: to learn more about how GNOME users use GNOME, and use the information to make GNOME better.
If you’re interested in hearing about every dot, dime, and detail of what GNOME learned you’ll want to grab a coffee (no, really) to imbibe the info-dense blog post GNOME’s Allan Day has put out. It long, but it’s incredibly informative.
Last August, we ran a research exercise using a small tool called gnome-info-collect. The tool allowed GNOME users to anonymously send us non-sensitive data about how their systems were configured. The plan was to use that data to inform our design and development decisions. We got a fantastic response to our call for participation, with over 2,500 people uploading their data to the GNOME servers.
We’ve just finished the final parts of the analysis, so it’s time to share what we’ve learned. This post is on the long side, so you might want to get a brew on before you start reading!
The last mainstream DOS-based OS was Windows ME, which went out of support 20 years ago. And yet, thanks to free software, DOS lives on. We spoke to FreeDOS founder Jim Hall about how the project started and how it's progressing.
A new version of the MX Linux, a Debian-based Linux distro, is available to download.
MX Linux 21.3 “Wildflower” is the third refresh in MX 21 series. Like the last one, this uplift consists primarily of bug fixes, application updates, plus access to a new(er) Linux kernel (though an older, stable Linux kernel is provided by default).
But there are a few notable changes offered, too.
MX Linux 21.3’s flagship edition is built around Xfce and thanks the Debian 11.6 Bullseye base Xfce 4.18 is included. Xfce 4.18 features include new Thunar file manager features, like file highlighting and recursive search, and new preferences in the xfce4-panel.
Inherited Will of Spread the free software philosophy, Building a free "as freedom" Software, Establish and maintain good projects . As Long As Programmer Continue To Pursue The Meaning Of Freedom of software, These Things Will Never Cease!, and because Our dreams don't ever end! We believe even a small act can start a great things, So we proudly announce the new flavor of Uruk GNU/Linux 3.0 with Cinnamon DE.
People interested in mentorship for this year’s Google Summer of Code as part of openSUSE’s application will conclude a finalization meetup on Feb. 7 at 15:30 UTC on the project’s Jitsi instance channel.
After the project meeting, the project will submit an application for the openSUSE Project being a mentorship organization for 2023.
A large group of people involved in the project participated in a workshop on Jan. 10 with a focus on increasing mentorship for the organization and listing project mentoring ideas. Participants brainstormed project ideas during the workshop on the event’s etherpad and created listings for the project’s mentorship repository.
Catching signals from others is how we have started communicating as human beings. It all started, of course, with our vocal cords. Then we moved to smoke signals for long-distance communication. At some point, we discovered radio waves and are still using them for contact. This article will describe how you can tune in using Fedora Linux and an SDR dongle.
Get started with FleetDM, an open source tool to submit and schedule queries across your Osquery agents, filtering them as needed.
As we all know, in order to thrive in the technology world, it is essential to learn what is happening now to help shape what is coming next. Staying informed is key to helping your organization prepare for what’s to come. Our flagship event, Red Hat Summit, puts you right in the center of that evolution, giving you the opportunity to connect, innovate and ultimately help shape the future of IT.
If you join us May 23-25 in Boston, Massachusetts, you’ll be at the forefront of technological innovation alongside Red Hat experts, customers, partners and community members. Build your skills. Discover new features. Meet industry leaders. And so much more. With a full slate of keynote speakers, interactive sessions and hands-on labs, Red Hat Summit can help you and your team move forward, together.
We’re delighted to share that Enzo Compagnoni has moved into the role of regional vice president and general manager for Red Hat Australia and New Zealand (ANZ). In his new role, Compagnoni will be responsible for leading the Red Hat business in ANZ, helping to drive the digital transformation success of customers and partners across the region.
Compagnoni has over 25 years of experience in the enterprise IT industry under his belt and has been with Red Hat for more than six years, most recently as senior director for enterprise sales, ANZ. Prior to Red Hat, he has held various leadership roles in technology companies including EMC, PeopleSoft and PTC.
This past year has been full of employee retention and job security challenges. In the spring and summer, leaders were tasked with combating The Great Resignation, “quiet quitting,” and the ongoing technical skills gap. Now the tables have turned: Many employees risk losing their jobs with massive layoffs in the tech industry.
At its core, the employer/employee relationship must be mutually beneficial. Power dynamics are constantly shifting depending on the state of the job market, but to find the best match, companies and individuals should focus on aligning mission and values.
When considering a potential employee’s experience and demeanor, look for candidates who are personally aligned with your company’s overall mission. Likewise, if you’re a job seeker, look for companies that share your values, where you can leave your mark on the world while working toward a common goal in a role that challenges you to grow your skills.
Itel has launched its new L-series smart TVs in India in two sizes. Meanwhile, LG India has inaugurated a new local manufacturing facility.
iTel has introduced two new smart TVs under its L series in India. The new iTel L4365 and the iTel L3265 are Linux-based and come with Dolby Audio support among other things. Have a look at the price, features, and more details.
I’ve recently watched a few videos where people have been experimenting with Dream Studio’s AI image generator. So, I thought I’d try giving it a few prompts to generate interesting desktop computer case designs that I could turn into a new case for my Raspberry Pi.
MacroPad RP2040 + Raspberry Pi + some code = Rock and Roll. A severely over-engineered music player
AAEON has just launched the UP Xtreme i12 Edge mini PC based on the company’s UP Xtreme i12 SBC equipped with an Intel Core i7-1280PE and other Alder Lake processors, up to 32GB LPDDR5 memory, and support for two M.2 NVMe SSD as well as SATA storage
The Xtreme i12 Edge is the successor of the Xtreme i11 Edge Compute Enabling Kit powered by a choice of Intel Tiger Lake processors. It also comes with 2.5GbE and GbE networking, one USB4 port, several USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs, plus some COM ports and a terminal block for GPIOs.
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AAEON UP Xtreme i12 Edge supports Windows 10 Enterprise 2021 LTSC, Ubuntu 22.04, and the Yocto Project 4.0, and ships with a SATA cable and a SATA power cable.
The first ToF sensor I used was an STMicro VL53L0X ranging sensor that could measure distances accurately and quickly up to 2 meters away, then the company started to launch multi-zone ToF ranging sensors such as the VL53 that enabled new features such as touch-to-focus, multiple-target identification, flash dimming, or video tracking assistance, and one variant used for human detection. But the 832Ãâ600 resolution of Hyrdra3D+ brings even more interesting use cases with the ability to create 3D maps in real-time.
Hi everyone! We've just released Chrome Beta 110 (110.0.5481.40) for Android. It's now available on Google Play.
You can see a partial list of the changes in the Git log. For details on new features, check out the Chromium blog, and for details on web platform updates, check here.
The Chrome team is excited to announce the promotion of Chrome 110 to the Beta channel for Windows, Mac and Linux. Chrome 110.0.5481.38 contains our usual under-the-hood performance and stability tweaks, but there are also some cool new features to explore - please head to the Chromium blog to learn more!
Value range propagation (VRP) is an optimization tool used in compilers. The article Value range propagation in GCC with Project Ranger describes how this optimization works and how the GCC team implements it for C and C++ programs. This article will explain how we expand VRP beyond integers and pointers to other data types, particularly floating-point numbers.
In conclusion, Richard Stallman is a pioneering figure in the world of software development. His ideas about free software and open-source software have had a significant impact on the way that software is developed and distributed. The Free Software Movement and the GNU Project, which he founded, have led to the creation of many popular software programs and have influenced the way that software is developed in the private sector. Stallman’s work continues to inspire others in the field of software development and his legacy will continue to shape the future of technology.
The IT industry, like every other industry we suppose, is in a constant state of dealing with the next bottleneck. It is a perpetual game of Whac-a-Mole – a pessimist might say Sisyphusian at its core, an optimist probably tries not to think about it too hard and deal with the system problem at hand. But what do you do with the hammer when all of the moles pop their heads up at the same time?
Or, to be more literal, as the title above suggests, what do we do when processors and their SRAM as well as main memory stop getting cheaper as they have for many decades? How do system architects and those building and buying datacenter infrastructure not get depressed in this Post-Moore’s Law era?
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization focused on fostering innovation through open source, has established the formation of the Open Metaverse Foundation (OMF) with a mission to provide a collaboration space for diverse industries to work on developing open source software and standards for an inclusive, global, vendor-neutral and scalable Metaverse.
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the full schedule for Cassandra Summit, a 2-day conference focused on Apache Cassandra€®, the massively scalable open source NoSQL distributed database. The event is taking place March 13-14 in San Jose, CA and virtually.
Security updates have been issued by Fedora (awstats), Oracle (dpdk, libxml2, postgresql:10, systemd, and virt:ol and virt-devel:rhel), Red Hat (kernel), Slackware (git, httpd, libXpm, and mozilla), SUSE (libzypp-plugin-appdata), and Ubuntu (git, libxpm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-oem-5.14, and ruby2.3).
Mozilla has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in Firefox ESR and Firefox. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.
WordPress, the most popular CMS, runs on MySQL, the most popular database out there. Spending some time to ensure your MySQL installation and WordPress database configuration installation is adequately hardened against common attack vectors can help you reduce risks. This is especially true if you are managing your MySQL server yourself.
GhostSec alleged that it was able to compromise a remote terminal unit in Belarus, a major ally of Russia, and while files were encrypted as a result of the intrusion, no ransom has been demanded. However, SynSaber noted that attacks against the targeted device, a Teleofis RTU968, which runs on the popular Linux OS OpenWrt, have been done before.
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GhostSec was also discovered by researcher Joe Slowik not to have encrypted all files within the device during the attack, with in-use files unencrypted.
"The requirements and implications of true industrial ransomware at the RTU or PLC level make this a very unlikely domain for criminals to operate in," said Slowik.
Cryptocurrency isn’t exactly at the peak of its powers at the moment, admittedly, for lots of good reasons. There has been at least one unmitigated financial disaster involving a crypto exchange in recent months, and anyone who held onto their NFTs after, say, June, did not find that to be a wise decision. Tedium isn’t really a crypto publication, but it does like writing about unusual things, and on the currency front, there’s a lot that’s unusual about currency that doesn’t come in the form of coins, dollar bills, or even cryptocurrency. Today’s Tedium talks about types of currency that aren’t really designed for your wallet
Access Now, ALQST for Human Rights, ARTICLE 19, Global Voices (GV), the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) and IFEX call for the immediate release of two Saudi doctors and internet activists arrested in 2020 for their online activism. One of them, Osama Khalid, has been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison.
Osama Khalid and Ziad Al-Sufyani, two young doctors known for their contribution to Wikipedia posts in Arabic, have been sentenced to prison in Saudi Arabia. Both have contributed to the online encyclopaedia, which is maintained and managed by volunteers, over the last decade, and had edited articles about woman human rights defender Loujain Al-Hathloul. They were arrested in the summer of 2020 while Saudi Arabia was under Covid-19 lockdown and initially sentenced to five and eight years’ imprisonment respectively, before Khalid’s sentence was increased to 32 years upon his appeal. Few details are known about either case.
The news of Khalid’s imprisonment and prison sentence was first reported by ALQST in September 2022. The news was shared along with news of another case of lengthy sentences being handed down to tribal activists Abdulilah Al-Huwaiti and Abdullah Dukhail Al-Huwaiti, who both received 50-year prison terms for opposing their forced displacement from their land to make way for the building of the fantasy city NEOM.
On January 17, 2023, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has proposed yet another amendment to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules, 2021). These amendments dated 17.01.2023 to the IT Rules, 2021 (Proposed Amendments) seek to introduce a new category for the take down of social media content and news media content, i.e. any information that has been identified as ‘fake’ or ‘false’ by the Press Information Bureau (PIB), or any other agency of the Union Government, to which the news story relates. This will heavily impact the freedom of speech, expression and information online, and will make the Union Government the final arbiter of what news may be published and what must be removed.
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The IT Rules, 2021 were issued jointly by MeitY and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) to increase government oversight over India’s internet usage. Part II of the Rules deals with the regulation of intermediaries, including social media intermediaries. Social media intermediaries include messaging-related intermediaries, such as WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, and media-related intermediaries, such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This part is administered by MeitY. Part III deals with the regulation of digital news media and OTT platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+Hotstar. Part III is administered by the MIB.
The IT Rules, 2021, whose legality is contentious, undermines the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression and privacy for millions of internet users in India. The IT Rules, 2021 have been unequivocally criticised by experts, civil society, digital rights groups, industry bodies, technology companies, technical groups, members of the press, and even by Special Rapporteurs from the United Nations who called these rules incompatible with “international law and standards related to the right to privacy and to freedom of opinion and expression” and sought their withdrawal.
At least 17 Petitioners have challenged the constitutionality of the IT Rules, 2021, including LiveLaw Media Pvt. Ltd. before the Kerala High Court and Mr. T.M. Krishna before the Madras High Court. The Kerala provided interim protection to LiveLaw against coercive orders by the State under these Rules, and the Madras High Court has stayed Rules 9(1) and 9(3) of the IT Rules, 2021 while observing that the oversight mechanism in the Rules may “rob the media of its independence”.
Today, Public Knowledge filed an amicus curiae brief in the case Gonzalez v. Google. The brief argues that content recommendations are shielded by Section 230, and that only Congress should update the law in a way that furthers its goals of free expression and competition, while limiting the spread of online harms.
The following may be attributed to John Bergmayer, Legal Director of Public Knowledge:
“The question before the Court is not whether YouTube did the right thing by publishing terrorist videos. It did not, and this case—as well as many others—shows that policy responses are needed to address the spread of harmful, extremist, and hateful content online.
“But any such responses (and there is no one silver bullet) must come from Congress, not the courts. Section 230 of the Communications Act says that platforms like YouTube cannot be held liable for publishing user-uploaded material. As our brief explains, content recommendations that present videos to users meet even the narrow, common law conception of ‘publishing,’ and are squarely shielded by Section 230. Creative lawyering that describes the same set of facts in different terms does not get around this.
For over a century, sanctions regimes have been a preferred foreign policy tool for states seeking to punish those who jeopardize peace, wage war, or infringe human rights. But in the digital age, implementing sanctions can inadvertently curtail millions of ordinary people’s fundamental rights. Despite this, countries continue to careen recklessly down Sanctions Boulevard, brandishing outdated protocols better suited to the Cold War of the previous century. To prevent further harm to fundamental rights and to ensure modern sanctions regimes are fit-for-purpose, authorities, companies, and civil society must all step up.
In November, I wrote about the opportunity for Congress to find common ground on transparency issues, including bringing greater transparency...
Over on his Experimental History blog, which he describes as “cognitive sneezing and interior design for your head“, Adam Mastroianni has two great posts about peer review in science. Wikipedia defines peer review as “the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field.”
Mastroianni explains that although ubiquitous today, peer review is a relatively new phenomenon. After World War II governments poured huge amounts of money into research; peer review was supposed to make sure the money was well spent. But as Mastroianni documents, peer review has failed on just about every metric.
Research productivity has been flat or declining for decades; reviewers consistently miss major flaws in submitted papers; fraudulent work is published all the time. Peer review often encourages bad research because of unhelpful comments; and scientists themselves don’t care about peer review: they actively seek to circumvent it, and ignore it in their own reading.
These manuscript illustrations from the 1400s raise a historically vexing question: did men and women really duel to settle judicial disputes?
This year my big fitness goal is to change how I walk and stand. This sounds extreme but hear me out.
I have naturally fallen arches in my feet which has lead to the rest of my body compensating for the lack of support. My knees are a bit wonky, my posture is slouched and many of my stabilizer muscles are extremely weak.
Over the last few years I've methodically worked on improving many of my weaknesses. I've fixed my posture significantly and I've greatly improved my core strength.
This year I'm targeting everything from the hips down. I've started working with an incredible trainer who has shown me exercises that pinpoint my weaknesses and it's been game-changing. I actually _have_ arches now and I haven't used my insoles in weeks!
I'm seeing tremendous results already and I'm eager to continue making progress over the next few months. I've got a gym membership now and access to weights and machines that I'll be using to further strengthen my legs. I've also learned a number of resistance-band exercises that really make me feel the burn.
Yesterday evening the skies cleared up unexpectedly, so I started a stargazing session about 8:30pm AKST at the Chena Pump rd boat launch. I decided to take a gamble this time and bring the PowerSeeker 127EQ telescope, instead of my familiar 60AZ-M. The 127 still lacks a working targeting scope, so I just stole the one off the 60AZ-M.
I started off with the 25mm eyepiece, and I was blown away by how much brighter the stars were in the 127 vs the 60AZ-M, and how many more stars I could see. I didn't imagine there would so much difference. Patches of sky which used to look like a few dim stars suddenly became bright clusters of dozens of stars. M42, for example, previously just looked like a little glow of light, but now I could see definite shapes of nebula cloud.
Back when this came out, it was *everywhere*, which a younger me reacted to by ignoring it as far as possible. The best defence I can come up with is that it really makes a difference to how I listen to an album, and the expectations i have going in. But that's just a way of justifying dumb behaviour.
As humans, we should take responsibility for our actions and strive to act deliberately and with forethought in all things that we do. Practically, this is impossible, but in conditioning ourselves to behave rationally, when we are in high stress situations, we have a better chance of remaining in control of ourselves and avoiding inadvertent harm (to others or ourselves) and making poor choices.
The People's Republic of China is the third-largest country in the world by total land area, after Russia and Canada, and it has the largest population of any country in the world. These facts are well-known to most people. What many people don't know, however, is that China can be split into two strikingly-different parts along population lines.
This split is referred to as the Heihe-Tengchong Line^, named after the two cities through which the line is traditionally drawn. The area east of the line, while only comprising 43% of China's total land area, is home to 94% of the country's total population; the other 57% of land contains only 6% of the population.
Everything is working as expected after some tweaking: X11, power management, acpi -including the backlight-, the touchpad, suspend, audio, camera and all of my applications are working fine with the (almost) same configuration as I had in my previous Arch Linux system.
After a week working with NixOS, still is "a stranger" distro to me because there are something "weird things" like non-standard directories (and everything is "packed") in the /nix path and there are some "concepts" around the configuration, which can be splited into more files and also some concepts like flakes and home-manager configurations, which makes sense to me if you want to perform post configurations into your dotfiles and declare all the custom parameters for your tool chain.
OpenBSD's relayd is probably intended to be used with at least three systems: a backend, the relay host, and a client interacting with a backend by way of the relay host. This is at least two systems too many. However, running relayd and a backend and client code all on a single system can be a bit tricky to setup.
Why convert the source to Markdown instead of all the way to gemtext? For these projects, yes I'm taking amazing content that is slowly rotting in the web available to gemini, but I'm also trying to preserve that content in a more portable form. So I need a good canonical "content-at-rest" format for the source material I'm converting.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.