Katherine Druckman, Doc Searls, and Petros Koutoupis talk to Don Marti about Permission Slip, the new data privacy app from Consumer Reports.
Alex has major Proxmox problems. What happened, and the fix for now. Plus, the real downside to Wifi cameras and the batch of network gear on the way.
I Hate Pipe Caps
Those of you who saw me at XDC will recall that I talked about my hatred for Gallium’s pipe caps.
I still hate them.
But mostly I hate a specific type of pipe cap: the pipe cap that gates performance.
My Driver’s Perf: Why Is It Bad?
In a nutshell:
Data mining is the process of analyzing large amounts of data to obtain useful information. It has incredibly diverse applications in the fields of academic research and business. Researchers use data mining to infer new solutions to computational research problems, while corporations depend on it to gain the upper hand in business revenues.
Gaia Sky is a real-time 3D universe program. It's developed within the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart > 1 billion stars.
Zstandard v1.5.4 was just released, and it promises to decompress and compress files even faster than previous versions.
How to check SSL certificate expiration date command line? In this guide, you will learn how to check SSL certificate expiry date from the certificate file itself. SSL (Secure Socket Layer)/TLS (Transport Layer Security) certificates, are used to encrypt data exchanged between a website and its users.
OMG, I did it, day 100! 4 months and 16 days ago I published the first post and then I wrote another post every workday for 138 days straight without missing a single day. In this final post, I want to do a quick recap and give an outlook for what's coming next.
Nesting in CSS is coming soon! For me personally not the killer feature, at least compared to cascade layers or container queries, but still exciting. Let’s see how it works.
Lucky for us there exists an awesome new-ish CSS API called dynamic viewport-percentage units: dvh & dvw. They are defined as follows: [...]
This leaves a lot of things that systemd-resolved is not for. Here is my current list, as of Fedora's systemd 250 and 251.
Portable Document Files (PDF) are the backbone of modern document distribution. With it, you can easilyformat any documentand expect it to be readable on various devices.
The PDF standard also includes the ability to secure your documents through simple password-based encryption. However, this approach relies on you to keep track of every password for every PDF file that you have encrypted. This can be a problem if you want to maintain an archive of PDFs for a project or bookkeeping.
Disk usage, in short du, is a standard Linux command that helps to get system disk usage information quickly. Although the output of the
Download a step-by-step guide for configuring SSL on AlmaLinux. Installing an SSL Certificate on AlmaLinux You will learn how to install a valid SSL Certificate on an AlmaLinux server running the Nginx web server.
Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform developed by Microsoft that allows organizations to connect and communicate with ease.
QElectroTech is a powerful, open-source software designed specifically for electrical engineers, technicians, and electricians. It provides a comprehensive solution for creating and managing electrical diagrams, schematics, and plans.
Google Chrome is a free web browser that was first released in 2008 by Google. In the years since its release, Chrome has grown to become the world's most popular web browser, with a market share of over 60%.
ONLYOFFICE desktop app is an open-source office suite pack that comprises editors for text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, as well as form creator and PDF viewer. In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to compile ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors from source code on Ubuntu using build_tools.
Introduction If you’re looking for an easy way to get started with programming in a language that offers versatile features and performance, then look no further than Go! Developed by Google.
Introduction RabbitMQ is a popular open-source message broker software that implements the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP). It is used for exchanging messages between applications and ensuring that messages are delivered even if one of the applications is temporarily unavailable.
If you want to know how to remove E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1), which is printed at the bottom, whenever you try to update, install, or remove it, read this guide. E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1).
The “find” command in Linux is a powerful tool that can be used to search for files based on various criteria, such as name, type, size, and timestamp.
If you're already a Linux user and maybe even a system admin for single systems, this article is for you. We're gonna lay out the architecture of this operating system.
Ubuntu Linux is one of the most popular Linux operating systems.
Do you have an interest in exploring the Linux environment but are uncertain about the time and resources required to become proficient in it? This article is the solution to your worries.
That, as far as I know, concludes our tour of artistic Zork maps.
There are of course countless line-and-box maps to be found in adventure game cheat files and hint books. (Kim Schuette's Book of Adventure Games, 1984, is dear to my heart.) I'm not going to try to catalog those.
I am also omitting large-scale maps of Quendor. Infocom and Activision drew several of these as the Zork universe expanded, trying to put the various games into context. However, these have little connection to original Zork, beyond maybe showing "Frigid River" as a squiggly line. So I don't find them very interesting.
If I've missed any maps, please let me know!
 The last Steam Client stable update enabled the new Big Picture Mode, the one that resembles the Steam Deck UI, by default. Today’s update improves keyboard navigation by adding the F11 hotkey to let you toggle between windowed and full-screen modes, as well as the Alt+Enter hotkey to exit the Big Picture Mode.
The Big Picture Mode also received support for fast jumping by letter to the Big Picture Mode library, a new option to set up the initial location to show the keyboard on the desktop and in Steam overlay, a new option to enable and disable UI sounds, and support for the Virtual Keyboard in the Overlay to remember its last position.
Plasma 5.27 LTS will be released in just a few days. And so far it’s on track to be the least-buggy version in memory! At the time of writing there are only three known regressions, down from the dozen or more we usually ship with. A focus on stability pays off!
As part of that effort, you might have heard we did a major push to fix multi-monitor issues for this release, and so far it looks to have worked: tons of people are reporting that their longstanding issues are fixed in the beta! But there are sure to be a few more. When you do encounter an issue, I’d encourage you to read this blog post by Marco Martin before submitting a bug report. In it, you’ll learn how best to submit a bug report for multi-monitor issues and what data to gather, so that it has the best chance of being actionable.
But that’s not all! We landed some great new features for Plasma 6 and made good progress on the 15-minute bugs, too!
Coming less than two months after EndeavourOS Cassini, the EndeavourOS Cassini Neo release is here to bump the kernel version from the now deprecated Linux 6.0 series to the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS to offer you the best possible hardware support, especially for 12th Gen Intel Arc machines, which should now boot the live ISO image and the installed system.
This release also comes with an improved Calamares graphical installer that now supports encryption when choosing the “Replace a partition” option in the Partitions screen and should no longer crash when not selecting any of the options in the Bootloader screen. The development version of the upcoming Calamares 3.3 release is used in EndeavourOS Cassini Neo.
For a decade, AnsibleFest has become the world’s leading IT automation technology event for the Ansible community. It began with just hundreds of automators gathering at a day-long conference, and has expanded into a multi-day experience for thousands of attendees to join in on major innovations in Ansible automation, from mainstage announcements to interactive labs and topical sessions. It even pivoted to a virtual experience to bring automation aficionados together, at home.
Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced an updated Red Hat Training and Certification exam retake policy that offers candidates an opportunity to retake individual and preliminary exams at no additional cost, helping organizations fill skill gaps from Red Hat’s growing community of qualified certified professionals. New certification candidates or those who have purchased individual or preliminary exams and have not taken them yet are eligible for a retake of the exam at no additional cost if they are unsuccessful in their first attempt. Red Hat Learning Subscription (RHLS) standard, premium and developer subscribers will now receive conditional retakes for each of the exams provided by their respective subscriptions.
It’s been a good week for Red Hat, and by extension IBM, the company that owns it. That’s because Red Hat signed two partnership agreements this week, one with Oracle and the other with SAP. Those are some big players, and if it results in more deployments for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it could be a big win for IBM.
Let’s start with Oracle, which frankly is a bit of a case of strange bedfellows. But the customer wants what the customer wants. Oracle might have been giving into customer demand, says Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research, who says the deal is a win for both companies.
Back in August, we shared a preview of the enhancements to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system role for Microsoft SQL Server that allow it to support Always On availability groups. Microsoft’s Amit Khandelwal followed up with a blog post on how to use the role to configure availability groups in Azure.
With RHEL 8.7 and RHEL 9.1 now generally available, these features are jointly supported by Red Hat and Microsoft as part of the latest RHEL distributions and through the Ansible Automation Hub. The previous blogs gave you an idea of the scope of the functionality we’ve delivered, this one will cover how to use the functionality.
Flatpak apps now have a verified badge icon, only on the beta portal for now.
Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!
Doing the hard work is a Raspberry Pi Pico, building on the Picostation project. To that it brings a drive-shaped board, as well as a series of daughterboards for the various different revisions of the Sony motherboard. The games meanwhile are loaded from a micro-SD card.
As single board computers have become ever faster, it’s no surprise that one would be able to emulate a ’90s CD mechanism with ease. What this does raise though is the interesting prospect that the Picostation might be adapted for other less-popular CD-based platforms. For those of us for whom games consoles in the CD era were both work and play, we hope that other consoles will receive this benefit.
Kickstarter recently featured the Computer Blade which is an scalable ARM-based server designed to work 24/7. This device is compatible with the Raspberry Pi CM4 and it includes peripherals such as 1x GbE LAN port, 1x HDMI, NVMe SSD support, TPM 2.0 and many other features.
Today we’re sharing an Astro Pi Mission Zero codealong video to help even more young people send their code into space.
It was both cheaper and more cheerful than IBM's PC machines, but it was also a machine intended very much for home use and playing games. Hard drives, for example, were prohibitively expensive, costing nearly as much as the computer itself even in very modest sizes.
Hence, people worked from floppy disks. This wasn't quite as terrible as it sounds today, for several reasons. The major one was of course that scarcely any home user knew just how smooth things were with a hard drive: everyone was used to the speed of the floppy drive and its soothing churn when reading or writing to disk. Programs were typically much smaller than they are today and, with a bit of axle grease and a shoehorn, you could fit quite a few of them on a single disk. If you were running a big, resource hungry program, you usually didn't have enough memory left for doing any meaningful multitasking anyway - especially not when working with music or graphics.
Going through my box of microcontroller boards I figured this would be an ideal project to finally try out the Raspberry Pi Pico, I’ve got several of them but not had a project to apply them to yet. I also decided that I wanted a colour OLED display, this had to be large enough to show an image, but small enough that it wouldn’t be too much stress for a microcontroller. I decided on a SSD1351 based display. It is 1.5 inches in size with a 128Ãâ128 resolution supporting 65535 colours (in RGB565 format).
Shunning the fins found on many a model rocket, Scout F is built around the concept of thrust vector control (TVC). “Landing a rocket requires some type of attitude control at slow speed and fins only work when the rocket is moving fast. Right when the rocket is about to touch down you need a way to keep it pointed upright, so thrust vector control seemed like a straightforward way to solve that problem.”
To this end, Joe created a thrust vectoring mount from machined aluminium to fit around the rocket motor, rotated by servos to control the direction of thrust. He also ended up designing a custom flight controller board, Signal R2 (available from his BPS.Space website).
The VC-20 was the West German version of the VIC-20, owing to the amusing meaning of the latter in German. Unlike the Japanese VIC-1001 that included Hiragana in lieu of PETSCII graphics, the badges are all that distinguish this machine from other VIC-20s. I’m fascinated by rebrands; check out my IBM WorkPad PDA post for another example. I’m thrilled that I have another curiosity like this.
Sfera Labs has developed two Strato Pi CM devices, essential IoT modules that are compatible with multiple Raspberry Pi Computer Modules.
Rainbow Six is a series of tactical shooter video games dating back to 1998.
The Raspberry Pi Pico W board was launched with a WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.2 module based on the Infineon CYW43439 wireless chip in June 2022, and I wrote a tutorial showing how to connect to WiFi a few days after the launch, but nothing about Bluetooth.
If you are having questions like, “Why does Thunderbird look so old, and why does it take so long to change?” The answer to these questions lies in the following article:
Having a composite index is faster, but how much faster than the two individual indexes? Let’s do the napkin math, and then test it in PostgreSQL and MySQL.
What I discovered was all of the problems were with three forms that were supposed to be redirecting to the page that shows a user: login, sign up, and edit profile. Each of these forms were just HTML requests, but Turbo Drive takes over and submits all of these forms as the format TURBO_STREAM. In this case I had two views for the users/show page: show.html.erb and show.turbo_stream.erb. At some point in those aforementioned upgrades to Rails/Turbo had become more strict and no longer understood these basic form-redirects as HTML formats. TURBO_STREAM in, TURBO_STREAM out.
The first step was to rediscover how to write browser tests. This is because my past self incessantly reminds me to find bugs once.
I realized that I didn’t understand exactly how it worked. I mean, I know floating point calculations are inexact, and I know that you can’t exactly represent 0.1 in binary, but: there’s a floating point number that’s closer to 0.3 than 0.30000000000000004! So why do we get the answer 0.30000000000000004?
In this post I will walk through how we can use Prodfiler to unearth areas for optimisation in K2 (paper, video), an optimising compiler for eBPF. K2 is entirely CPU bound and uses a guided search technique that relies on the ability to create and check candidate solutions at high speed. With Prodfiler we can easily discover which components of K2 consume the most CPU cycles, allowing us to optimise them accordingly. The end result is a version of K2 that is 1.4x-1.9x faster, meaning it can explore a significantly larger search space given the same resources.
On Thursday,Aaronnoted an idea for a service that would, given a URL, return the profile photo associated with the h-card on that URL. I found the idea intriguing, noting my interest in building it. I agreed that it would be great to have an API to call to retrieve a photo, similar to Gravatar but using h-cards.
The git versioning system has two really nice features you might already heard about. One of them i sgit-worktree and the other are bare git repositories. This makes my life a lot easier working on Samba as often I have several feature branches I’m working on. Some features often take several month to finish. I don’t want to compile them again and again every time I switch branches. So the solution for this are worktrees.
Python is an increasingly popular programming language that offers a high degree of flexibility and power.
Once you have the C API, though, you can do all sorts of fun things, such as using Python's ctypes module. It takes a bit of typing and drudgery, but eventually you can create a "dependencyless" Python wrapper. With it you can do this to create an empty PDF file: [...]
TL;DR: extract exec.Command into an interface and create a mock implementation for testing. Implement it for your SSH client too, if needed. See example code here.
The code below assumes it is executed in a unix-like operating system where sh shell is available. This simplifies the whole enterprise quite a bit, but also brings some limitations.
Linux is one of the most popular operating systems. It has a powerful command-line interface that allows various commands to be passed as instructions to be executed by the computer. The echo command is one of the most commonly used Linux commands.
This tutorial will introduce you to the Linux echo command, go over its options and their usage, and show you how you can use it.
The 3G shutdowns will be postponed in eastern and northern areas.
Every day I interact with ODF, SVG, RSS, OPML, Atom, RDF, FOAF, XSLT, and/or (sigh) [redacted]. Even if that all sounds like alphabet soup, you probably use or benefit from it without even realising.
For those of us who have spent entire careers working with structured data, it comes as something of a surprise to be reminded that XML is now 25 years old. You probably missed the XML standard on the 10th of February 1998, but it’s almost certain that XML has touched your life in many ways even if you remain unaware of it.
A large number of British nationals who face having to leave Denmark after missing a deadline to renew residence permits after Brexit could have their cases reassessed.
British citizen Gregory was deported from Sweden to the UK last year because he was not eligible for post-Brexit residency. He tells The Local about the "cruel" process behind his departure and how his mental health suffered dramatically.
You need to hear only a few bars of a Bacharach song to sense his singular gift.
In a new era of rage, dining out has become downright volatile — with both customers and servers aggrieved.
Five years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company.
For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. None of them earned more than a few hundred dollars per month in revenue, and they all had negative profits.
Halfway through my third year, I created a device called TinyPilot. It allows users to control their computers remotely without installing any software. The product quickly caught on, and it’s been my main focus ever since.
In 2022, TinyPilot generated $812k in revenue, a 76% increase from 2021.
In this post, I’ll share what I’ve learned about being a bootstrapped founder from my fifth year at it.
Two different slices of the industry mean two completely different things by edge.
Oftentimes people conflate it with serverless (which had its own misconceptions).
In this article, I’ll explain what the edge is, and why you should care.
Records are made to be broken.
Especially if the record is one you never want to hear again.€ It used to be great fun every so often to snap a vinyl LP that you loathed.€ I can still remember the joy of taking a ball-peen hammer to Kenny G’s debut album of 1982, Kenny G. A final jagged complaint of protest was the most pleasing sound that that disc ever made.
The UNHCR is now focusing on the provision of shelter and relief items to ensure that the centers for the displaced have adequate facilities, such as tents, plastic sheeting, thermal blankets, sleeping mats and winter clothing.
The Treasury Department's latest decision is a copy of previous documents that only seek to create a false impression by stipulating alleged exemptions for humanitarian purposes.
Four days on from the catastrophic earthquake that killed more than 22,000 people in southern Turkey and Syria, funerals for the victims are taking place in the ravaged city of Gaziantep. The loss of life is such that one ceremony closely follows another.
The United Nations rights chief called Friday for an immediate ceasefire in Syria to help facilitate bringing aid to all victims of the region's devastating earthquakes. The death toll from Monday's catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey and Syria surpassed 23,000 on Friday.
The Turkish Bar Association called Thursday for any evidence of negligence to be preserved as earthquake debris is removed. In an open call to the Ministry of Justice, the lawyers said, “It is the primary duty of the state to take the necessary measures to prevent such disasters from happening again and to fight impunity.
As I had written earlier, Christmas 2022 was very special for our family, especially that my youngest grandson Shadi, was with us, after€ he had€ spent€ over a month in an Israeli detention center and€ under difficult conditions.€ € Furthermore, my oldest grandson Omar, who is a designer, was with us also this Christmas after spending sometime in the UK and the USA.€ We missed him last Christmas as he always put up a very original Christmas tree with bare leaves but beautifully decorated.€ So, this Christmas, instead of putting it in a pot, he used a hook that was in the ceiling to hang it upside down.€ He got my approval as I told him that it will certainly be in style with everything else being upside down these days.€ Be it logic, morals, values, politics, religion, or whatever.
The moment I mentioned “upside down,” I recalled that many years ago, and in the early days of “Sabeel,” the Palestinian Liberation Theology movement, Rev. Naim Ateek led us in reading “The Upside Kingdom” by Donald Kraybill.
Controversy about Charles Austin Beard began in 1913 when he published An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. He turned thirty-nine that year. Until then, his books had appeared to widespread praise within the profession and to the benign neglect of the general reading public. A highly successful teacher at Columbia University and a prolific author and reviewer of books on English and American history, he advanced swiftly in the profession. As a sign of his professional promise, the top journal in his field early sought him out to serve on its board of editors.
The normal professional ascent of a talented, energetic and ambitious academic suddenly shifted its trajectory in 1913. It did so sharply in two directions. Socialists and progressive liberals hailed Beard for his realistic analysis of the Constitutional Convention as the birthplace of a national government intended from the beginning to serve as the political adjutant of the country’s economic elites. For the left, Beard became and remained a heroic figure and an avatar for the way critical history should be written. Conservatives, however, never would forgive Beard for his portrayal of the Founding Fathers as an assembly of politicians—however brilliant and learned–acting of necessity in the aggrandizement of the elites who had sent them to Philadelphia in 1787, more or less setting the pattern of American politics ever afterward. For making such an argument and documenting it, he became the most famous and influential historian in the country, but also the most notorious and controversial.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) calls for the immediate lifting of sanctions on Syria to allow for more humanitarian aid and disaster relief following the horrific 7.8 magnitude earthquake that has left tens of thousands injured or dead. Current U.S. sanctions severely restrict aid assistance to millions of Syrians.
Dutch police said on Friday they were investigating the projection of an anti-Semitic laser message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam -- an incident the prime minister condemned as "reprehensible".
A court has issued arrest warrants for two buying managers and a toy supplier who are wanted by Hong Kong’s anti-graft body for allegedly accepting and offering bribes totalling over US$900,000 (over HK$7 million). Zsolt Gergely Kovacs, 46, and Ladislav Gajdos, 43, were buying managers for supermarket chain Tesco in the UK and its local […]
After Monday's devastating natural disaster, people in Turkey are living in tents and the mayor of one city is running his office out of a van. Hundreds of thousands of people are just trying to cope. Meanwhile, President Erdoßan is facing critical questions as a result of the massive crisis.
A baby rescued from the earthquake’s rubble was named Aya, meaning “a sign of God’s existence.” But what is the life ahead of her?
A first-person account from Serbest Salih, a twenty-eight-year-old photographer in a border city.
Ministry of Family and Social Services announced that 162 unattended children are now being treated in hospitals, and 101 more were placed in ministry institutions after their treatment in hospitals following the Feb. 6 earthquakes. 18 children have been handed over to their families after their family bonds were confirmed.
The miners used a method that is also used in the mines to rescue the young woman from 8 meters below in the wreckage.
Many mornings, Dani Clode wakes up, straps a robotic thumb to one of her hands, and gets to work, poring through reams of neuroscience data, sketching ideas for new prosthetic devices, and thinking about ways to augment the human body.
Curse that First Amendment! What were the Founding Fathers thinking?
On the first day of Black History month, the College Board stripped down AP African American History, removing references to elements of Black history that some called “politicizing” or “woke indoctrination.” This is a part of a national wave to erase and rewrite Black history--which is, by the way, American history. Proposed state legislation in Missouri, as well as laws passed in Iowa and Florida, uses phrases like “parents’ rights” to justify the banning of books and erasing images, stories and history of Black life from the k-12 curriculum. But I would suggest that what we need is more, not less, education on structural racism and Black history.
With 22 million children out of school in Pakistan alone – and 222 million crisis-impacted children in need of education support worldwide – the time is now to fund education for the world’s most vulnerable children.
About ten years, I found myself literally losing the ability to write with a pen and paper. It was a skill that was atrophying from lack of use. I bought myself a pack of Moleskine Cahier pocket notebooks and I have not looked back. I now have filled about 30 volumes and it’s a pleasure to see that output (of notes, thoughts, ideas, drawings) in a tangible form. There’s just something about it that digital media cannot replace.
If you work with something where it’s fairly easy for you to construct artificial scenarios that allow you to validate your skill, please do. Even if it’s not as serious as this case, the world needs more knowledge and less bullshit.
Tuesday was the official publication date of A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back. It broke into the 2000s on the Amazon best-seller list.
Vecow ECX-3200 is an expandable, fanless embedded system powered by Intel 13th generation Core i9/i7/i5/i3 Raptor Lake-S processor or 12th generation Alder Lake-S processor designed for rugged Machine Vision, AMR, Rolling Stock, Smart Retail and Edge AI applications.
To follow up on yesterday’s post about word processors, here’s a new entry for keyboard enthusiasts: The Cube Keyboard. It’s a keyboard that’s… a cube.
E-ink displays are great, but working with them can still be a bit tricky if you aren’t an OEM. [Jasper Devreker] got his hands on three e-ink shelf displays to reverse engineer.
The original Polaroid cameras were a huge hit not just for their instant delivery, but for the convenient size of the permanent images they delivered. It’s something that digital cameras haven’t been able to replicate, which drew [Cameron] to produce a modern alternative. In the place of the chemical film of the original, it uses a removable e-paper display in a frame. The image is stored in the pixels of the e-paper, which can be kept as a digital version of the photograph until reattached and replaced with another freshly taken picture.
When you think of driving up or down an embankment, do you ever wonder how much foam you’re currently driving on? Probably not, because it hardly seems like a suitable building material. But as explained by [Practical Engineering] in the video below the break, using an expanded material to backfill an embankment isn’t as dense as it sounds.
An “Infinite Impedance Detector” might sound a little like something that [Zaphod Beeblebrox] would use to zip around the galaxy. It’s not, of course, but it is an interesting and useful demodulator for AM radio signals, as [Sebastian Westerhold] over at Baltic Labs explains in the brief but well-done video below.
If you use supports for FDM 3D printing, you might find that some designs are more amenable than others to automatically-generated supports. [Slant 3D] , for example, shows a cool-looking eagle with a downward-curved beak that comes to a point. Using traditional supports would allow the print to succeed, but didn’t allow the beak to form correctly. To combat this, he uses something called a “thumbtack” in the design. There are several flavors, as you can see in the video below, and it widens out the small part yet has a tiny contact with the actual part so you can easily remove it.
Health authorities in Denmark have decided that all regions will close any remaining Covid-19 test centres by the end of March.
Sales in 2022 were 50 million litres less than they were ten years ago.
Over just a few days last week, over 7,700 people signed up – surpassing the total number of donor enrollments for all of 2022
The story begins 100 years ago in 1923, with homemaker and farmer Cecile Steele of Ocean View, Delaware. Steele, like many other rural Americans in her time, kept a small flock of chickens that she raised for eggs and waited to slaughter them for meat once their productivity waned. But one day by accident the local chick hatchery delivered 500 birds, 10 times more than the 50 Steele had ordered.
Five hundred hens was a lot — bigger farms at the time had only 300. Returns weren’t really an option in these pre-Amazon days, so she kept them anyway, feeding and watering the chicks by hand in a barn the size of a studio apartment — 256 square feet — that was heated by a coal stove. Four and a half months later, over 100 of the original 500 chicks had died, but she still made a sizable profit off the 2-pound survivors — almost $11 per pound in today’s dollars, adjusted for inflation — and began to ramp up her operations.
Since President Joe Biden accused them of wanting to cut Medicare in his nationally televised State of the Union address earlier this week, congressional Republicans have attempted to posture as the program's true defenders by touting their support for privately run plans that are riddled with fraud and abuse.
Whenever any Republican says that fraudster George Santos doesn’t belong in Congress, that he’s some kind of aberration, I have to laugh. I mean, of course he doesn’t belong in Congress. Neither do most members of the House GOP caucus. But his lies are not unusual in his party; they’re just more outrageous. On the GOP’s continuum of liars, he’s surely one of the most brazen.
In an in-depth interview with longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader, we look at Republican-led efforts to gut Medicare and Social Security amid debt limit talks, backed by some Democrats, and other proposed cuts to the social safety net, as well as corporate greed and watchdog journalism. Nader also discusses his newly launched newspaper, the Capitol Hill Citizen. “It’s all about Congress, and Congress has to be captured by the people instead of being controlled by 1,500 corporations who swarm the corridors,” says Nader.
Freshman U.S. Senator John Fetterman was under medical observation overnight Wednesday and into Thursday after saying he felt "lightheaded," according to his staff.
Northern Portugal is believed to contain the largest lithium reserves in Europe. These resources have attracted the attention of some of the world's largest mining companies. London-based firm Savannah Resources wants to open the continent's biggest open-cast lithium mine in the village of Covas do Barroso by 2026.€ Supporters of the project say this would give Europe an invaluable supply of lithium for producing electric car batteries, helping the EU reach its carbon-zero target by 2050.
India has discovered reserves of 5.9 million tonnes of lithium, a metal used in the production of rechargeable batteries.
Like many English people I have a weakness for underdogs and lost causes.
Veteran campaigner says authorities retaliated by jailing her elderly mother and cutting off her pension.
A group of exiled Iranian opposition figures on February 10 pleaded for unity and an end to infighting to help recent nationwide protests in Iran against the country's Islamic theocracy.
Uzbekistan's Anti-Corruption Agency said on February 10 that the chief of the State Pharmacy Agency, Sardor Kariev, and several of his subordinates have been arrested over the deaths of 20 children in December allegedly caused by a medicine imported from India.
This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. How worried should we be about bird flu?
Researchers find that small sacks inside lymph nodes contain low proteolytic activity and act as safe havens for antigens.
Like the rest of the West, Utah has a water problem. But megadrought and overconsumption aren't just threats to wildlife, agriculture and industry here. A disappearing Great Salt Lake could poison the lungs of more than 2.5 million people.
The echoes still linger from that national sigh of relief last month when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, slammed into cardiac arrest during a game on January 2, was declared out of danger. It was a justified sigh. A vibrant young life had been spared.
The Friday morning edition of The Washington Post's Health 202 newsletter featured coverage of the intensifying back-and-forth between the Biden administration and congressional Republicans over Medicare, with each side accusing the other of wanting to cut the program.
Find out where you can still buy Windows 10 for less than Microsoft was selling
it, plus what to do if your computer is running an old operating system
Microsoft Corp. has reportedly cut jobs at the business units responsible for developing its Surface device lineup, Xbox video game console and metaverse products.
Bloomberg reported the development today, citing sources familiar with the matter. The layoffs are said to have been made on Thursday.
What I learned from this was that there is a valuable business in writing prompts for Large Language Models like ChatGPT (many more are coming). I was stunned that it only required adding the words “in the style of Bob Cringely” to clone me. Until then I thought personalizing LLMs cost thousands, maybe millions (ChatGPT reportedly cost $2.25 million to train).
So where Google long ago trained us how to write queries, these Large Language Models will soon train us to write prompts to achieve our AI goals. In these cases we’re asking ChatGPT or Google’s Bard or Baidu’s Ernie or whatever LLM to temporarily forget about something, but that’s unlikely to give the LLMs better overall judgement.
Part of the problem with prompt-engineering is it is completely at the spell-casting / magical incantation phase: no one really understands the underlying general principles behind what makes a good prompt for getting a given kind of answer – work here is very preliminary and will probably vary greatly from LLM to LLM.
To get back to my theory: the people who’d love to have a touchscreen Mac are people who prefer having the iPad and iPhone as primary devices for work and leisure. It’s the iPad-first guys who on the one hand are frustrated by the still mediocre multitasking and still limited functionality Apple is providing on the iPad, and on the other hand realise the sheer versatility and multitasking dexterity the Mac still has in spades despite the general worsening of Mac OS over the past few years. In short, they say they’d love a touchscreen Mac, but what they mean is that they’d love a hybrid iPad/Mac device that could offer the best of both worlds.
Single sign-on and request smuggling to the fore in another stellar year for web security research
No response or patch yet forthcoming from providers of vulnerable document management systems
The U.S. and the U.K. have sanctioned seven Russian nationals for their alleged involvement in running the infamous TrickBot botnet. TrickBot dates back to 2016 and has a network of more than 1 million machines. Initially used to target banking credentials with malware of the same name, TrickBot evolved several times over the years.
Original release date: February 10, 2023
CISA has added three new vulnerabilities to itsKnown Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise.Note: To view the newly added vulnerabilities in the catalog, click on the arrow in the "Date Added to Catalog" column, which will sort by descending dates.
No user data was exposed, Reddit says, but the company encourages people to strengthen security by implementing two-factor authentication.
The City of Oakland has learned that it was recently subject to a ransomware attack that began on Wednesday night. The Information Technology Department is coordinating with law enforcement and actively investigating the scope and severity of the issue. Our core functions are intact. 911, financial data, and fire and emergency resources are not impacted.
The latest notable incident in December saw a Facebook user claim that personal information of nearly 13 million Malaysians had been leaked from Maybank, Astro and the Election Commission’s websites.
The security flaw, now tracked as CVE-2023-0669, enables attackers to gain remote code execution on unpatched GoAnywhere MFT instances with their administrative console exposed to Internet access.
A New Jersey public school district’s data breach in December exposed personal data of employees — but those affected were not notified until the end of January.
The breach occurred in the Bridgewater-Raritan Regional School District between Dec. 10 and 12 and exposed the names and Social Security numbers of district employees and others who are in the district’s insurance plan, according to a media release obtained by MyCentralJersey.com.
Modesto Police officers are temporarily ditching computers for radios, pen, and paper while patrolling the city.
At the height of the pandemic, one of Minnesota’s largest school districts fell victim to cyber fraud and nearly lost half a million dollars in the process. The previously unreported crime targeted Minneapolis Public Schools in April 2020, when schools and administration offices were vacant due to COVID-19.
Dallas County Chief Appraiser Ken Nolan told reporters that it was likely that the attack managed to infiltrate the organisation after an employee was tricked by a phishing email.
The Center for Autism and Related Disorders (“CARD”) has locations throughout the U.S. On January 24, it experienced a reportable breach when “as part of a recent update to its patient billing systems, the third-party vendor responsible for generating patient invoices incorrectly made a computer error which resulted in certain caregivers receiving an invoice for services for an unrelated patient.”
In August last year, security researchers warned that MOTW was not applied to OneNote attachments, meaning that unsigned executables or macro-enabled documents could be used to bypass existing protections.
According to WithSecure, however, Microsoft last month silently patched the ability to bypass MOTW for OneNote attachments, which decreases the potential for abuse, but does not completely eliminate it, allowing threat actors to embed files in OneNote documents and lure users into executing them.
A new Linux version of Royal ransomware is targeting VMware ESXi virtual machines. Learn more about this security threat and how to protect from it.
In our original 2018 report, we described a campaign targeting thousands of Lebanese citizens with several different malware families, including a brand new mobile remote access trojan we named Pallas and a Windows remote access trojan called Bandook. Through our research we were able to shut down the malware campaign and notify a number of the victims. Our Operation Manul report established that the actors behind the campaign were working with the governments of Lebanon and Kazakhstan. The variety of targets and the apparent involvement of multiple governments throughout the campaigns lead us to believe that Dark Caracal is a cyber-mercenary or hack-for-hire group.
Since our original Dark Caracal report, there have been multiple reports on their continued activities. Checkpoint Research wrote about a campaign in 2020 and we have continued to follow the activities of Dark Caracal with our most recent report, also in 2020.€ Most recently, ESET wrote about Dark Caracal activities in Latin America in their report Bandidos at Large.
Dark Caracal is far from the only malware group currently targeting Latin America. The Quantum malware group targeted the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Agriculture in 2022. The Dominican Republic is also a reported customer of NSO group.
Russian authorities plan to install facial recognition systems at nine border checkpoints before the end of 2023, the independent Russian outlet Polygon Media reported on Thursday, citing an 830-million-ruble ($11.4 million) tender posted on the site of a Transportation Ministry agency.
Anonymized numbers of bug discoveries swiftly deleted after pushback
The center’s main tool for tracking politically undesirable online content is the Unified Automated Information System, also known as the “Unified Register.” MRFC staff look for “forbidden” content and compile links based on court decisions and queries from the Prosecutor General’s Office. The product of this research is a registration card noting a violation in the Unified Register, which then becomes the basis for prosecution. The author of the offending Web page or post then receives a letter demanding the removal of illegal content. In the event the cease-and-desist letter is not satisfied, the censor blocks the page or the entire website.
The across-the-pond Chris Wray analogues are still at work trying to undermine encryption for the sole purpose of greasing exceedingly squeaky law enforcement wheels. Friction is unacceptable, UK officials appear to believe, as they move forward with efforts meant to undermine this essential protection.
A Texas state senator announced a slate of bills this week that aim to better prepare schools and law enforcement for mass casualty events, including one that seeks to improve emergency medical response.
Flanked by several family members of victims of the Uvalde massacre and of the 2018 Santa Fe, Texas, shooting, Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a San Antonio Democrat, on Tuesday called for more robust training to improve coordination among public safety agencies. The proposed measures include establishing a clearer chain of command and better preparing emergency medical responders so that they can minimize casualties.
Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kamià âski announced Thursday that the Bobrowniki border crossing to Belarus will be closed indefinitely beginning Friday due to national security concerns.
Igor Strelkov’s associate Evgeny Skripnik has announced that 21 military widows from the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” had received fur coats, supposedly as a charitable gift from the Moscow furrier Alexander Boryak. Strelkov’s wife Miroslava Reginskaya delivered the coats herself.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Brussels today to address the European Union Parliament. The visit comes after he made surprise trips to Paris and London where he urged European nations to begin providing Ukraine with fighter jets and long-range weapons. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has repeated his call for the war to end. For more on the war’s prognosis, our guest is Alexey Kovalev, investigative editor of Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet recently banned by the Russian government, which designated it an “undesirable organization.”
Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz reported Friday that Russian air defenses had “repelled another attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces” by shooting down a drone in the region. There were no casualties, the governor said.
Six U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday to terminate a pair of longstanding authorizations for past wars on Iraq, reviving an ongoing effort to reaffirm Congress' role in deciding whether to approve the use of military force.
Vladimir Putin will give his belated annual address to Russia’s Federal Assembly on or around February 21, and will participate in a large-scale concert and rally event at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium the following day, RBC reported on Friday, citing “three sources familiar with the discussion” of the Kremlin’s plans. According to RBC, the rally is expected to be a “continuation” of Putin’s address.
The security situation between North and South Korea remains tense after North Korea sent five drones across South Korean territory on 26 December 2022. South Korea immediately reacted to the incursion and scrambled its fighter aircraft and attack helicopters to shoot down them down.
The war-weary people of Casamance are desperate for peace, but timber and cannabis trafficking continue to fuel conflict. An agreement signed in August 2022 between a factional leader of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) and Senegal brought some hope that the 40-year conflict might be nearing an end.
Humanitarian mine action in Sudan is seen by the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) as one part of peacebuilding in troubled Sudan with the Japanese government now providing just on a million US to assist in mitigating the threat posed by unexploded improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Mercenaries have been a fixture in Africa since the second half of the 20th century. They have been used to protect incumbent leaders or install new ones in conflict zones. Their offering – guns for hire – has remained essentially the same for decades.
A U.S. fighter jet on Friday shot down over Alaska a high-altitude object that was the size of a small car, on the order of President Joe Biden, the White House said on Friday.
A U.S. military fighter jet shot down an unknown object flying off the remote northern coast of Alaska on Friday on orders from President Joe Biden, White House officials said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for possible updates...
For over a week, US corporate media have been captivated by a so-called “Chinese spy balloon,” raising the specter of espionage.
The incident comes less than a week after a U.S. fighter jet brought down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic during a diplomatic crisis.
Beijing has accused the United States of waging “information and public opinion warfare.” But analysts say a lack of credible messaging from China is not helping.
The action to cut off five Chinese companies and a research institute from American parts and technologies is part of the Biden administration’s response to the balloon it shot down last week.
Ukraine’s wartime leader Volodymyr Zelensky has now been bestowed with France’s highest medal of honour. But there’s a problem: Russian President Vladimir Putin has the same medal.
Russia is seeking to destroy all Ukrainian cities and towns, regardless of their geographical location, Bucha Mayor Anatoli Fedoruk said in Vilnius on Friday, amid reports of a fresh wave of drone and missile strikes.
As Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership stalls due to objections by Turkey, it can embolden “potential enemies”, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told a Swedish daily.
Erkin Tuniyaz is widely regarded by Uyghur activists as a traitor and puppet of Beijing.
The group says it controls all of Thantlang except for a hill where the military is stationed.
Biden orders the object shot down “out of an abundance of caution.”
Apology follows a court order that Seoul compensate the survivor of a mass killing during the conflict.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine began one year ago. But how might the war end? Russia seems further from victory than ever, but a Ukrainian triumph is also far from a foregone conclusion. What are the possible scenarios for an end to the conflict?
Hidden deep in northern Denmark's Rold Forest, a sprawling top secret nuclear bunker is opening to the public for the first time, shedding light on daily life during the Cold War.
Sweden's former defence minister has called for Sweden to push for the Russian mercenary group Wagner to be classed as a terror organisation during its presidency of the EU.
Finland's parliament looks set to push ahead with a vote on Nato membership before the country's April election, despite fears that this could increase the risk of the country joining the alliance without Sweden.
The actor’s attorney said it is unconstitutionally based on a law passed after the shooting on the set of the film Rust.
An unexploded bomb has blown up unexpectedly in the English town of Great Yarmouth.
The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group said in a rare interview made public on Friday that Russian forces must capture...
The White House announced Friday that President Joe Biden ordered the military to down what it described as a "high-altitude object" hovering over Alaska earlier in the day.
Retired US Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton shares what he believes to be different between the "high-altitude object" that was shot down in Alaska and the suspected Chinese spy balloon.
CNN's Frederik Pleitgen talks to two convicts in Ukrainian custody who were recruited by Wagner to fight for Russia as the mercenary group says they are done recruiting prisoners to join the invasion in Ukraine.
The remains of more than 200 German soldiers who were buried alive in a tunnel in northeastern France during the World War I will not be recovered.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the divisions in his country were no worse than the political split in the United States, in an exclusive CNN interview Friday ahead of his meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House.
U.S. officials are revealing what they’ve learned about China’s espionage aims and its use of seemingly low-tech balloon surveillance.
The announced return of U.S. military forces to the Philippines comes at a time of rising U.S.-China tensions. Will it ease the risk of war?
Mozambique’s Islamic extremist insurgency, which started in October 2017, is blamed for the deaths of more than 3,000 people and for displacing an estimated 900,000 people. In March 2021 the rebel violence forced the France-based firm TotalEnergies to put on hold its $20 billion liquified natural gas project in the north of the province. TotalEnergies invoked force majeure after the insurgents attacked the town of Palma, very near the gas project.
This same media that the following day hides the fact that in Gerona, another Islamist terrorist was arrested; the same ones who are silent over the terror cell broken up in Almeria. These are the same means they use to deny and whitewash reality.
And the reality is raw. In the last 20 years, 1,000 Islamist terrorists have been arrested in our country. This is the reality, and this is the situation that we have to face, and to which VOX will dedicate in body and soul from every institution, and without any doubt, when the Spanish people find it appropriate, from the nation’s government.
In a wide-ranging discussion, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist ponders why other journalists were hesitant to report on the notorious My Lai case.
To be sure, SWAT operations are pulled off flawlessly around the nation every day. The right addresses are hit. The right windows are smashed. The right doors are destroyed. The correct perps are arrested. The proper people are filled with bullets if needed, etc.
Today, we published an essay by Anna Momigliano on the strange cultural touchstone that those on the Italian far right have adored from Mussolini’s time to the present: the medieval poet Dante, whom they see as the father of Italian identity. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s new prime minister, is carrying on the legacy of exploiting Dante’s words to further a political agenda.
As the rate of climate-fueled disasters intensifies, we speak with author and organizer Saket Soni about the workers who are hired by corporations to clean up after hurricanes, floods, blizzards and wildfires. Soni’s new book, “The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America,” focuses on hundreds of Indian workers who were brought to the United States with false promises and subjected to grueling working conditions at a shipyard in Mississippi. When one of those workers called Soni in 2006 for help, it set off an extraordinary chain of events that led to their escape from the work camp and eventually focused national attention on the plight of the workers. “As disasters have grown, this workforce has grown. And these workers do all this without legal protections, without legal status,” says Soni, a longtime labor organizer and the director of Resilience Force, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrant workers who help rebuild communities after climate disasters.
A group of activist investors sued Shell's board of directors on Wednesday for failing to "deliver the reduction in emissions that is needed to keep global climate goals within reach."
Between Human Culture and Civilization There is no doubt that long before the development of technology and globalization, a man lived with certain cultures in the world for a long time.
“Once again, these megapolluters are making clear that they are the problem and will never be part of climate solutions. Big Oil companies’ much-touted climate pledges were never serious commitments — they were lies intended to provide PR cover for how these companies are driving us toward climate catastrophe. Instead of using their record profits to speed the clean energy transition, Big Oil is doing the opposite, doubling down on business plans that will continue to fuel the climate crisis. It’s more important than ever that public officials take action to hold them accountable.”
Anybody who closely follows global warming knows that the Arctic has been clobbered 2-3 times beyond the impact on the planet. And knowledgeable sources also know that what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. After all, for millennia Arctic ice steadfastly served as the planet’s numero uno biggest reflector of solar radiation by reflecting 80%-90% of sunlight back to outer space.
But what if the ice is gone?
A complex and highly consequentialweather phenomenais slated to take place next week, as air temperatures about 100,000 feet above the surface, skyrocket and swirling winds around the Arctic slow or even reverse direction.
According to Microsoft Mexico CEO Rafael Sánchez Loza, the project seeks to catalyze “a substantial transformation in Mexico.”
Nearly 1,900 scams involving cryptocurrency were reported in the first 10 months of last year.
When apartheid ended, the African National Congress promised reliable electricity and economic growth as dividends of democracy. Its failure to provide either makes the party vulnerable at the polls.
Competition, government incentives and falling raw material prices are making battery-powered cars more affordable sooner than expected.
An activist group is going after Shell’s board members in court. The suit could make life unpleasant for the people who oversee big polluters.
The morning of June 7, 2021, Sheriff’s Deputy Chuck Nelson of Beltrami County, Minnesota, bought water and refreshments, packed his gear, and prepared for what would be, in his own words, “a long day.” For over six months, Indigenous-led opponents of the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline had been participating in acts of civil disobedience to disrupt its construction, arguing that it would pollute water, exacerbate the climate crisis, and violate treaties with the Anishinaabe people. Officers like Nelson were stuck in the middle of a conflict, sworn to protect the rights of both Enbridge, Inc., the giant multinational company expanding the pipeline across northern Minnesota, and its opponents.
To put the size of the deposit in perspective, the lithium from this discovery alone means India now has the fifth-largest lithium reserves in the world, just ahead of the United States. However, refining lithium ore into a mineral that can be used to make batteries is a complex process, meaning India will have to rely on imports for at least a few more years.
Ford Motor Co. appears poised to announce it will build a massive electric vehicle factory with a Chinese partner on 1,900 acres of mostly farmland in Marshall.
Around 1.5 million English households use wood-burning heaters, stoves and fireplaces, and many of those homeowners could face fines and criminal charges under new rules adopted by the government.
Janine Jackson interviewed the Energy and Policy Institute’s Shelby Green and the Center for Biological Diversity’s Selah Goodson Bell about utility shutoffs and profiteering for the February 3, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Animal activists in US raised the issue of dog meat farms operating in the area the students are from.
Authorities in Hong Kong have raided a shop suspected of selling dog and cat meat as food -- more than 70 years after the trade was outlawed.
Johnny Manlugay, a Philippine construction worker, used to hunt the beaches for turtle eggs to trade or eat them. Now, he is using his skills to protect them. “I’ve learned to love this work,” said Mr. Manlugay.
Republicans on the House Budget Committee offered a preview Wednesday of the programs they're looking to cut or overhaul as part of any agreement to lift the debt ceiling, a target list that includes food aid for low-income families, climate justice and electric vehicle funding, student debt relief, and Affordable Care Act subsidies.
In his third State of the Union address, President Joe Biden renewed his call for a billionaire minimum income tax, demanding Congress take action on a broken tax system that rewards wealth over work.
We explain how you can go about rescuing those all-important savings
The steadfastness of India’s economy attests to the size and seeming strength of the country’s broader business landscape.
It could become the single largest order by any airline.
Letter delivery services could be extinct in five years after Australia Post losses entered freefall. The assessment follows the government-owned enterprise’s announcement this week of its first full-year loss since 2015, with chief executive Paul Graham proclaiming letters are in an “unstoppable decline”.
Last year, I was in conversation with a male peer of mine about our professional careers after college. About halfway through the conversation, he stopped me abruptly and said, “You know, you really are lucky.” I shot him a confused look and he continued, “You have the safety net of marriage after college.
Britain and the United States on February 10 announced sanctions on eight Bulgarian politicians who have served as members of parliament and held top government jobs in a coordinated action targeting corruption in the NATO and EU-member country.
The unemployment rate in January was just shy of the record-low 4.9 percent observed in June and July 2022, Statistics Canada said.
Consumer prices in January were 7.7 percent higher than a year prior, according to new data. The inflation figure is one percentage point lower than in December.
The report commissionedby the Ministry of the Environment explores the trends in homelessness and means by which homelessness can be eradicated. RapporteurJuha Kaakinenurges to continue the work in line with the Housing First principle and to further develop this so that support is readily available and serves homelessness that may be due to varying reasons in diverse ways. A key focus should be on groups that need services and support the most.
Citizens are taking to the streets to protest a dual economic and political meltdown.
Retrenchments linked to need to adjust to changing business environment.
The digitalisation of shops is also part of the government’s aspiration to build the largest digital economy in South-east Asia.
Finland had a national debt of about 144 billion at the end of January, which Finance Minister Annika Saarikko (Cen) says is the responsibility of all political parties.
The Finns Party criticised the government in strong terms over its spending policies.
The new agreement affects more than 30,000 employees in the technology industry.
Hunger is expected to soar across the United States next month when more than 30 million people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program see their food benefits slashed significantly.
Problems with the City's payroll system started last spring, when a newly-installed system experienced several technical glitches.
The Dark Side of Sports Stadiums
Billionaires have found one more way to funnel our tax dollars into their bank accounts: sports stadiums. And if we don’t play ball, they’ll take our favorite teams away.
Ever notice how there never seems to be enough money to build public infrastructure like mass transit lines and better schools? And yet, when a multi-billion-dollar sports team demands a new stadium, our local governments are happy to oblige.
As Apple looks beyond China to secure crucial supply chains strained by Covid lockdowns and threatened by rising geopolitical tension, India has emerged as an attractive potential alternative to the world's second largest economy.
A stringent requirement is either harmful to taxpayers or superfluous.
The National Retail Federation reported $94.5 billion in inventory losses last year, and now some retailers are using more locked display cases to prevent shoplifting. But the practice can feel discriminatory, especially for people of color, critics say.
The Legislature approved a bill that restricts the autonomy of Florida’s largest private employer over a fight involving the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Why are economists experiencing such big mood swings?
Back in 2015, you might recall how the Russian Government was caught hacking into the DNC. It wasn’t particularly subtle; a Russian intelligence officer pretending to be a Romanian hacker made the dumb mistake of forgetting to turn on his VPN, revealing his Russian intelligence agency IP address to the world. The data he obtained concerning ongoing squabbling within the DNC was later leaked to the press to influence the 2016 election, and the rest is well documented history.
I have a confession. While yesterday the House Oversight Committee took up six hours (sorta, as there was a big power outage in the middle) wasting everyone’s time with a hearing on “Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story,” I chose not to watch it in real-time. Instead, afterwards I went back and watched the video at 3x speed (and skipped over the giant power outage part), meaning I was able to watch the whole thing in less than two hours. If you, too, wish to subject yourself to this abject nonsense, I highly recommend doing something similar. Though, a better option would be just not to waste your time.
So, we already noted that Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee’s grandstanding hearing about Twitter revealed how Trump’s White House asked Twitter to remove a tweet from Chrissy Teigen that mocked the then president by calling him a “pussy ass bitch.” Apparently Trump’s fragile ego couldn’t handle that level of insult, and so he had to ask for it to be taken down.
The former Khabarovsk governor Sergey Furgal, sentenced to 22 years in a high-security prison on contract killing charges disputed by Furgal himself and his legal team, condemned the Moscow court for the verdict it issued today.
A court in Irkutsk has sentenced three former penal colony employees to five years in prison, in connection with a torture case.
Chechnya’s parliament has adopted a constitutional amendment that officially defines the Chechen-language title of the republic’s leader as “Mehk-Da,” according to Magomed Daudov, Chechnya’s parliamentary speaker.
Ecology in America barely exists. Business as usual capitalism is so entrenched, it acts like a religion. It has its hierarchies of billionaires, and armies of economists and political (and other social) “scientists” preaching its dogmas. The countless faithful are willing to transfer even more of the national wealth to the billionaires, lest they, too, become servants of the elect. Their church is about monopolies and national and global control.
Plus: Missouri's "Don't Say Gay" bill, exempting parents from income tax, and more...
Since the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Fortune 500 companies and industry trade groups have given over $36 million to Republican members of Congress—the so-called "Sedition Caucus"—who attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, an analysis published Friday by the watchdog group Accountable.US revealed.
Trump’s no longer president, but he and his racism could still be responsible for millions more American deaths from a new pandemic disease. How and why? I’ll explain in just a moment, but first let’s look at the disease itself.
No other institutions consistently Rule over as Much in the World as the Giant Global Corporations – not governments, not armies, not religions and certainly not trade unions. These fictional corporate entities have largely achieved transcendent imperial status, as they amass coordinated control over capital, labor, technology and governments because […]
Let's start by doing away with the idea that officers are engaged in a war for our streets rather than involved in a civilian operation that requires community support and trust.
From democracy to the environment to UN Security Council reform, here are the big takeaways from Lula's big day in Washington.
Later this November, the United States will mark the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Cut down in his prime, the martyred president has continued to haunt the nation he governed. In the ensuing decades since his demise, there has been no shortage of politicians who have tried to turn stylistic resemblances (a youthful gait, tousled hair, a love of rhetorical flourishes) into a claim to be JFK’s heir. Countless politicians of both major American political parties have played this game: Gary Hart, Dan Quayle, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, among others.
Ahead of his first White House meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met Friday with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, who said topics of discussion included the far-right threat, combatting the climate and environmental emergencies, and supporting workers.
Civil rights advocates on Friday condemned the Republican-led Florida Legislature for passing another voter suppression bill that far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely GOP presidential candidate for 2024, is expected to sign into law.
The Democratic-led Minnesota House of Representatives voted Thursday night in favor of legislation to provide free school meals for all students, a move meant to alleviate childhood hunger in a state where 1 in 6 children don't have enough to eat.
Surfing on special ties and the war in Ukraine, Italy and Algeria have undoubtedly spotted an opportunity to further strengthen their economic and geopolitical relationship.
Moldova’s Security and Intelligence Service (SIS) Thursday confirmed efforts in the country to “undermine” its integrity and to “destabilize and violate public order.”
Prominent Tibetan Buddhist monk Geshe Phende Gyaltsen died in Chinese prison on January 26, according to Thursday reports from Radio Free Asia. Chinese authorities arrested Geshe Phende in March 2022. The Chinese Communist Party exercises predominant authority over Tibetan areas.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has vowed to slash jobs after a sharp drop in second-quarter earnings. The media conglomerate reported on Friday a 64 per cent decline in income in the quarter ending December 31, down to $US94 million ($A135 million) from $US262 million ($A376 million) the year prior.
News UK owns The Sun, Times, Sunday Times and TalkTV.
News Corp’s UK arm has indicated it will “limit recruitment” of new employees as Rupert Murdoch’s international media group seeks to cut 5% of its workforce.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications has called for comments on a draft Government Decree on discretionary government grants for communications and news media in 2023. The decree is scheduled to take effect in April. Total funding of EUR 7 million is proposed.
According to a recent study ‘Members of Parliament on Twitter 2022' by the media monitoring software company Meltwater, the Twitter influence of the Chairwoman of The Finns party, Riikka Purra, was the highest of all MPs with more than 1.15 million reactions. SDP leader and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin alone had a higher Twitter impact than the rest of the party's parliamentary group.
February 11, 2023 11:01 AM
Forecasters have warned the island's residents to prepare for “destructive winds” and a deluge of rain.
The chat application's hijacking came to light on Thursday, after the minister's assistant asked whether he had sent a message in his name.
Updates on the stolen and mishandled documents investigations.
In Dan "Milkshake" Scott's statement of offense, Roger Stone is described having as much influence in preparing Milkshake for the attack on the Capitol as Joe Biggs had.
Aides to former Vice President Mike Pence agreed to the search after discussions with the Justice Department.
It was not immediately clear under what circumstances the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, appeared, but he has had a key role in the case examining Mr. Trump’s handling of government documents.
SOCAN, a leading Canadian music copyright collective, has launched a misinformation campaign seeking to convince the government to reject a Bill C-11 Senate-backed amendment designed to ensure that the bill covers sound recordings but excludes user content from CRTC regulation. SOCAN has written to all MPs arguing that the amendment should be rejected on the grounds that it could hamper the regulation of “future online services, whose model for delivery of content is not yet known.” In other words, its primary argument is not that the amendment harms its interests today, but rather it is possible that it might restrict some unknown future application. Given its inability to identify a current problem with the amendment, the SOCAN campaign actually serves to confirm that it is consistent with the government’s objectives.
Hoo boy. This week a vengeful GOP House - puffed up with power and paranoia, led by "jock asshole" Gym Jordan, screechy "Taliban Barbie" and "Tonya Harding in a fur coat" - thrashed through lots of grievance-laden claptrap on corruption, collusion and the "weaponization" of government in a grim exercise of projection as they toiled to prove Dems commit the same abuses of power they do. It was a circus of "chutzpah on top of audacity on top of delusion." It was not pretty.
A proposal in the Lithuanian parliament sees introducing criminal liability for disinformation spread by so-called troll or bot farms.
The outcome of a case in federal court could help decide whether the First Amendment is a barrier to virtually any government efforts to stifle disinformation.
People in the United States have grown accustomed to endless pharmaceutical ads when watching TV. The industry is the fourth-biggest spender on TV advertising in the country—one of only two in the world (along with New Zealand) that allows such direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs.
The panic over Russian disinformation that followed the election of Donald Trump often relied on a source now known to have been fraudulent, Hamilton 68.
In the Russian-language subtitles of the Harry Potter video game Hogwarts Legacy, the character Nora Treadwell refers to her wife, Priya, as her “friend,” Russian journalist Nikita Likhachev noted on Twitter.
A rogues’ gallery of institutions that anybody with an independent mind should skip.
Authorities in Ethiopia must immediately reinstate full access to social media platforms across the entire country, and put an end to censorship.
There’s a school of thought among some who believe that the sole reason why Elon Musk bought Twitter was because of a gaping void in his soul and a deep-seeded need to be loved and adored by everyone, with the belief that he could do that better if he ran Twitter, and without the fear of having any of his tweets — or my goodness — his entire account suspended. A friend of mine has sometimes referred to this phenomenon as “cancelled man syndrome,” which is a condition in which extremely powerful people are so afraid that they might, at some point, face some consequences for their actions, that they build this entire fantasy world around “cancel culture” and “woke ideologues” coming to get them.
Farhad Meysami was released from prison on Friday, according to the Iranian pro-reform outlet Shargh Daily. News of his release came as France announced that the French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah had also been released from Evin.
Meysami was jailed in 2018 after voicing his support for women protesting the compulsory hijab law. He was charged with “assembly and collusion to act against national security” and of “propaganda against the regime.” according to a group focused on Iran, Human Rights Activists (HRANA).
That's the debate surrounding a viral TikTok posted by a Michigan mom after school officials complained that her 11-year-old daughter's drawing was obscene.
A video, titled ”I can’t make this up,” has accumulated more than 800,000 views and features Sierra Carter, 37, of Jackson, explaining how officials at her fifth grade daughter’s school deemed her drawing of a pig wearing a bow tie “inappropriate.”.
Across cultures and across centuries, I’ve found, blasphemy laws have emerged to serve the ruling authorities by silencing political dissent. From medieval times to the present, these laws have helped alliances between religious leaders and governments consolidate power.
Russia’s Justice Ministry has added the singer Zemfira to its list of “foreign agents.” The Ministry says the singer “openly supported Ukraine, and also received support from foreign sources.”
Scientists and government oversight watchdogs are expressing alarm over new language in the White House's "scientific integrity" framework, which one group said amounts to a "gag rule" that would harm federal researchers' ability to study issues including the climate emergency and public health threats.
In April 2019, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was booted from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrested by UK authorities on behalf of the US to face criminal charges related to CIA leaks provided by Chelsea Manning.
Marina Ovsyannikova, the Russian journalist known for storming a prime-time news broadcast on state television to protest against the war in Ukraine, has released an autobiographical book describing the media "propaganda factory" in Moscow.
Fair and transparent trials of all those accused in connection with Zogo’s murder need to be guaranteed and these recent arrests demonstrate that maybe, with all the public glare, the government will live up to its responsibility and genuinely seek justice. But the progress on Zogo’s case comes amid increasing danger for journalists. On February 2, Jean Jacques Ola Bebe, an Orthodox priest and radio host, was found dead in Yaoundé. According to media, Ola Bebe, who had called for justice for Zogo, told Cameroon's Galaxy FM Radio he was receiving regular death threats that he suspected were from authorities. The UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed deep concern after Ola Bebe’s body was discovered.
RFE/RL President and CEO Jamie Fly met with Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov during a visit to Bishkek as part of his efforts to advocate for RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, known locally as Azattyk, which the Kyrgyz authorities have threatened to shut down.
Murat ðnceoßlu, bianet's new editor-in-chief says, "I had to say "Hello" to you from bianet during such a difficult time. Bianet, the first internet news portal of Türkiye, is an old and first love for all of us. This is a new and important period for me. We will bring bianet to where it deserves together with all our friends."
The leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision helped everyone. It helped people who supported the overturning of Roe v. Wade consolidate their power so they could effectively punish people for trying to escape unwanted pregnancies. It helped supporters of abortion rights prepare for the coming wave of anti-abortion legislation, much of it containing Dobbs-dependent triggers.
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau on Wednesday announced her city is cutting ties with Israel and ending its symbolic 25-year-old "twin cities" relationship with Tel Aviv over the Israeli government's violent anti-Palestinian policies.
After working more than 1,000 days without a contract, more than 200 unionized NBC NewsDigitalworkers on Thursday launched a 24-hour walkout to protest the media giant's ongoing "unfair labor practices," including the recent firing of seven union journalists.
Abortion rights advocates are "watching and hoping that evidence-based care will prevail" in a federal court case in Texas, said one physician this week as a judge appointed by former President Donald Trump is expected to rule as soon as Friday on the Food and Drug Administration's authority to approve one of two drugs commonly used for medication abortions.
Law students at the St. Petersburg State Prosecutors’ University have produced a stage adaptation of the Nuremberg trials, based on historic transcripts. Students and professional prosecutors took part in the play featuring the Hermann Göring testimony and other key moments of the historic process.
At their meeting on Thursday, the Undergraduate Senate addressed a recent incident involving police on campus and shared survey results surrounding the resurrection of a Stanford tradition.
A librarian was terminated after promoting programs for LGBTQ teens. The state says the district violated civil rights laws.
The president promised to veto a national abortion ban if Congress passed one in his first State of the Union address since the Supreme Court’s June ruling that left the legality of abortion up to the states.
Access to abortion has been decimated in the United States since June when the Supreme Court overturnedRoe v. Wadeand took away our right to control our own bodies. Laws banning abortion are now in effect in more than a dozen states, denying more than 20 million people of reproductive age access to essential health care. And as hideous as this is, we know that is only the latest step in their plan to ban abortion and other essential health care nationwide.
Ethiopia’s Human Rights Commission Friday called out injustices perpetrated against defectors from the country’s Orthodox Tewahedo church. They termed the force used against defectors as disproportionate and said the ongoing conflict could be solved in a way that promotes freedom of religion.
Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins Thursday unveiled a new code of conduct for parliamentarians and staffers to improve workplace culture in the Australian Parliament.
The Russian Interior Ministry on February 10 added Aleksandra Garmazhapova, a noted Kremlin critic and the founder of the foundation A Free Buryatia, to its wanted list on unspecified charges.
Government health workers, who might have mitigated the crisis, have been intimidated and even driven out of the area by miners who took over health facilities and airstrips, Junior Hekurari Yanomami, president of the Urihi Yanomami Association, told CNN.
The administration has also shut off strikers’ health insurance benefits, a move some TUGSA members only learned of when they tried to fill prescriptions at pharmacies. Such retaliation in a higher education strike is far from the norm: while other administrations have threatened to withhold benefits like health insurance to strikers, none have gone as far as Temple.
A Muslim who is feeling sexually deprived pays an imam to perform a “pleasure marriage” between himself and a child or young woman in return for a cut of the fee.
Over a dozen Imams and Muslim “religious” leaders in Sweden were recently caught carrying out “temporary” Islamic marriages, also known as “pleasure marriages” for Muslim men. Temporary marriage is a euphemism for Islamic religiously sanctioned prostitution.
Authorities claimed to have been shocked to learn the Imam are pimping “vulnerable women” to Muslim men. Yet, these egregious exploitative practices are commonplace among third-world Muslim migrant cultures and are now a systemic problem in Sweden and other Western nations.
"I think it's bizarre that FIFA has looked to have a Visit Saudi sponsorship for the Women's World Cup when I, myself, Alex Morgan, would not even be supported and accepted in that country," she said. "I just don't understand it."
Women’s World Cup co-hosts Australia and New Zealand have written to FIFA seeking urgent clarification after reports that Saudi Arabia’s tourism authority has signed a sponsorship deal for the global soccer showpiece.
Argentina immigration authorities in Buenos Aires have denied entry to several pregnant Russian tourists, writes Sirena, citing the husband of one of the women who flew to Argentina but couldn’t cross the border.
California has fined GEO Group over $100,000 for “willful and serious” health and safety violations.
The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has put Alexandra Garmazhapova, human rights activist and founder of the Free Buryatia Foundation, on the federal wanted list. Garmazhapova reported the information herself to Mediazona.
A few days ago we wrote about some bills in the Utah legislature that were promoted as “protecting kids” by demanding age verification for all internet services, and then barring some kids from using them, while also giving parents access to kids’ accounts. These bills are almost certainly going to pass. They seem to have tremendous momentum, because “protect the children” nonsense grandstanding moral panic bills tend to get that kind of momentum.
Liquid faced another fiber break this morning that resulted in a nationwide internet outage. Instead of the internet coming to a dead stop, it instead just got quite slow. This is the worst really as I prefer a total blackout than to have to endure slow internet.
To be clear: despite a lot of media coverage claiming otherwise, the GOP (and much of the DNC) was never actually serious about antitrust reform. The GOP in particular has a forty year track record of supporting unchecked monopolization and consolidation with no meaningful government oversight across virtually every industry (telecom, banking, energy, and transportation in particular).
Over a year ago, as the world was still largely reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, we wrote about the trend beginning to form for consolidation in the video game industry. Industry consolidation is very typical in times of economic strife and it appears the video game industry is not immune to it. We heard about several studio and publisher acquisitions, not the least of which was Microsoft’s announced acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a whopping $68 billion. Almost immediately after that announcement was made, the public began making noise about what this would mean for several game franchises if they went exclusive to Xbox/PC, especially Call of Duty.
Techdirt has been writing about evergreening — making small changes to a drug, often about to come off patent, in order to gain a new patent that extends its manufacturer’s control over it — for ten years now. The evergreening approach betrays the implicit bargain that lies at the heart of patents — that a company is granted a government-backed monopoly for a limited period, in return for allowing competitors to produce their own version when the patent term ends. The idea is that once a patent expires, competition will kick in, leading to significant price reductions and wider use of the previously patented invention.
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This case is still pending before the Federal Circuit, but I found it interesting enough for a preview.
United Cannabisholds a broad marijuana patent – US9730911 – with claims directed to a liquid cannabinoid having 95% of either THC or CBD.
5. A liquid cannabinoid formulation, wherein at least 95% of the total cannabinoids is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
With the Big Game just three days away, the TTAB released its decision in an appeal from the USPTO's refusal to registerTOUCHDOWN TIMEOUTfor "entertainment services, namely, ongoing digital television show dealing with sports." The Office found confusion likely with the registered markTIME OUTfor "organising, producing and conducting events, music events, comedy events, entertainment, competitions, contests, festivals, carnivals, pageants, displays, shows, fashion shows, exhibitions, film screenings, programmes and performances and radio and TV broadcasts and programmes and performances; production of films, recordings . . . " Applicant Deborah Whitcas argued that "TOUCHDOWN" is the dominant element in her mark, since it appears as the first word in the mark. How do you think this came out?
According to the lawyer behind a new class-action suit, every image that a generative tool produces “is an infringing, derivative work.”
After targeting Ubatcha in 2022 and following up against other leakers in early 2023, Genshin Impact publisher Cognosphere has another high-profile target in its crosshairs. A DMCA subpoena application filed at a court in the U.S. claims that Genshin Impact leaker @merlin_impact infringed Cognosphere's copyrights. The details are somewhat interesting.
DNS-resolver Quad9 continues to fight back against Sony Music's demands for pirate site blocking measures to be deployed at the DNS level. The non-profit foundation argues that blocking injunctions shouldn't apply to DNS resolvers as that would create a chilling effect on the free and open Internet. Quad9's defense is supported by an expert report from Prof. Dr. Ruth Janal.
A former employee of Bill Omar Carrasquillo, aka Omi in a Hellcat, has been sentenced to 14 months in prison in the United States. Michael Barone worked at Carrasquillo's pirate IPTV service Gears TV, initially in a customer service role and later as an administrator. Compared to Carrasquillo, Barone played a relatively minor role, but was still important to the platform's operations.
GitHub and digital rights group EFF have filed briefs supporting stream-ripping site Yout.com in its legal battle with the RIAA. GitHub warns that the lower court's decision threatens to criminalize the work of many other developers. The EFF, meanwhile, stresses that an incorrect interpretation of the DMCA harms people who use stream-rippers lawfully.
You could also argue that publishers need a better source of traffic than Google – and we do, but most users have been trained to treat search as their first stop on the Internet. Back in 1997, people would go to Yahoo, browse through a directory of websites, find ones that matched their interests, bookmark them and come back again. This was a lot like the audience model for TV networks, magazines and newspapers as most people had a few preferred sources of information that they would rely on regularly.
But most Internet users have been trained to go to distribution platforms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter and navigate the web from there. You can like and trust a publisher, but you often get to that publisher’s website by finding it on Google or Bing, which you can reach directly from your browser’s address bar. It will be difficult for any publisher or even group of publishers to change this deeply ingrained behavior.
More importantly, if you are a consumer of information, you are being treated like a bot, expected to imbibe information without caring about where it came from or whether you can trust it. That’s not a good user experience.
Valley Forge-headquartered Vanguard just recently identified its increased Warner Music Group stake in a 13G/A form. The 48-year-old firm previously owned about 8.54 million WMG shares (or around seven percent of the company), per Fintel, and the SEC filing shows that the holding has grown to 10,421,289 shares.
I am really not sure if this could work. See, at the moment I'm struggling with some depression and especially with consistency and accountability - namely if I want to achieve my goals, I need to stay persistent and show up everyday, and this is an action at which I failed so many times before. So my current idea is to simply write a daily journal which is focused on this goal, or is at least contextualised as such: composition, music production. Composer-programmer Journal.
I try not to read other reviews and opinions before going in to albums I don't know so that I can listen without any bias. I gave up when 'Breaking the Law' came on, and made me laugh out loud. It seems this album is the tipping point between a harder Judas Priest and a bid for the mainstream. Those bids for the mainstream are so dated now that the better tracks have already faded from my mind.
This post will probably contain some spoilers. It's just too hard writing about stuff like this without spilling a few beans.
Today I took the train into Seoul with my six year-old daughter to see a Korean adaptation of the Matilda musical. It was actually very good, much better than I expected it to be. I had seen the film version of this musical, which came out somewhat recently, and while it is enjoyable in its own unique way (with some special qualities I will soon mention), I didn't exactly fall in love with it. It is a nice movie, and the deviations from the original story are interesting, but perhaps I am just too attached to the original film adaptation which came out when I was a child. Anyway, seeing it live was such a wonderful experience. I'd like to say some things about it, and share some thoughts about the film version and about Matilda in general.
I'm going to start with some background on my position. My SO is a dispatcher for the sherriff's office in a semi-rural county in a midwestern state of the USA. I realize that our experience doesn't align on all fronts with the experience of a minority in a large city, fully acknowledge that, and have spent a lot of time thinking about the ramifications of what that means, and yet I still am bothered by a lot of attitudes.
[...]
Now I'm going to try to be fair in my portrayal here and say that the sherriff's office wasn't always a shining beacon. Sherriff is an elected position, for whatever reason, and the previous sherriff left things a mess. Frankly there was rampant corruption. I couldn't begin to guess whether the sherriff was part of it or just bad at his job, but in any event the turnover in the current sherriff's first year in office was illuminating as he savagely weeded the ranks. I believe he's a good man. I don't agree with all of his politics, but from what I can see his politics are not his driving factor, which is as it should be. We're probably very lucky.
Going further, I would characterize the highway patrol as a bunch of assholes who exist only to write traffic citations, and the interactions that the deputies have had with some of the city cops that I have heard about don't paint a great picture of their level of training or professionalism.
Your dog was obviously a close family member, and from the sounds of it, you were closer to your dog than you were to your grandparents. No shame in that. So you're obviously going to feel that loss a lot more keenly. I've been through the grieving process a few times, and one thing I've noted is that grieving isn't primarily about the person who is gone. It's about the person who remains, and the loss that they feel.
“How consoling in the depths of affliction!” was Lincoln’s reaction to the old Persian proverb “this too shall pass” (also found in Solomon folklore as a ÃâÃâôÃ⢠seal, which makes the Marx quote “all that is solid melts into air” an unintentional pun since without the gershayim mark, it would mean “gaseous”). His take was that when things are good, it’s chastening because it can get worse. If things are bad, it’s consoling because it can get better.
A couple of months back my employer wrote a blog post where they interviewed me to ask me some quick questions. It is actually part of a series of such posts, with several of my colleagues featured in the own post with the idea being to help our users get to know us better.
I've started realizing that my view of the direction tech is heading has been getting pretty pessimistic lately. There's just lots to be worried about it seems. Over-centralization, needless complexity, reckless AI adoption, government overreach... shall I go on?
I love tech, I just need to find more ways to keep it exciting for myself. I was talking about this on Mastodon when Akseli showed me Hackaday which features cool little hardware projects. It's things like that that remind me how fun and exciting tech really is.
This is a precursor to a longer post about a project I've been working on - but I'd just like to say Nim is the only programming language of the last twenty years I have nothing but good things to say about. The best way I can describe it is Modula-3 cosplaying as Python, and that is a good thing to be.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.