03.14.23

GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • Neowin ☛ New Linux kernel patches introduce workaround for system stuttering on AMD systems

    Linux maintainers have pushed patches to Linux 6.1 and Linux 6.2 to address system stuttering on some AMD Ryzen hardware. These patches are just workarounds while AMD works on an actual solution.

• Applications

  • Linux Links ☛ 13 Best Free Linux Speech Recognition Tools

    There aren’t that many speech recognition toolkits available, and some of them are proprietary software. Fortunately, there are some very exciting open source speech recognition toolkits available. These toolkits are meant to be the foundation to build a speech recognition engine.

    This article highlights the best open source speech recognition software for Linux. The rating chart summarizes our verdict.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE ☛ KDE Plasma 5.27.3, Bugfix Release for March

      Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.27.3.

      Plasma 5.27 was released in February 2023 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

      This release adds two weeks’ worth of new translations and fixes from KDE’s contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include…

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Linux Magazine ☛ GNOME 44 Release Candidate Now Available

      GNOME 44 is upon us. Many GNOME fans have tested the beta version and found it to be the perfect next step for the open-source desktop environment. And with the projected release of March 22, 2023, this release candidate arrives at the perfect time.

      Surprisingly, however, the development team has added a few changes to the desktop. No, these are not new features but more bug fixes and cleanups.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Linuxiac ☛ openSUSE Gains Momentum: A Look at its Growing Popularity

    openSUSE is a popular Linux distribution known for its stability, versatility, and ease of use. Developed and maintained by the openSUSE community, the distribution offers comprehensive features, including a powerful package management system, an intuitive installer, and robust security features.

    With its strong focus on user experience and flexibility, openSUSE has gained a loyal following among Linux enthusiasts, developers, and businesses. However, the distribution does not come under the spotlight as often as other company-backed ones, such as Canonical’s Ubuntu or Red Hat’s Fedora.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu News ☛ Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 778

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 778 for the week of March 5 – 11, 2023.

  • Ubuntu Fridge ☛ The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 778

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 778 for the week of March 5 – 11, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

• Devices/Embedded

  • CNX Software ☛ Banana Pi BPI-R3 Mini – A low-profile 2.5GbE router board powered by MediaTek Filogic 830 SoC

    The new board should be software compatible with the larger BPI-R3 router board with Banana Pi providing OpenWrt 21.02, Ubuntu 22.04, and Debian 10/11 images. Banana Pi is famous for providing incorrect specifications and subpart OS images, so proper software support would likely have to come from the community, and the BPI-R3 Mini hardware may warrant that.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • 9to5Google ☛ Google Play will now machine translate Android apps for free

  • HowTo Geek ☛ How to Print Text Messages From Android

  • The Sun ☛ Google reveals important Android setting billions should turn on or face restrictions – it could even save your life | The US Sun

  • BGR ☛ Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: The best Android can get | BGR

  • Digital Trends ☛ I’ve used Android phones for 10 years, I hate these the most | Digital Trends

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Funding

  • Data Swamp ☛ Launching on Patreon

    Why would you do that in the first place? Well, this would allow me to take time off my job, and spend it either writing on the blog, or by contributing to open source projects, mainly OpenBSD or a bit of nixpkgs.

• Programming/Development

  • Python

    • DebugPoint ☛ Input Function in Python: Concepts and Examples

      Python is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and it is widely used in various applications. One of the basic concepts in Python is the Input() function, which allows users to interact with the program by providing input values.

      Let’s find out the input function, how it works, and how you can use it effectively in your Python programs.

Leftovers

• New construction regulation in İstanbul for earthquake resistance

  A new regulation is being introduced that will forbid mezzanine floors in buildings, and require basement floors to be constructed in all buildings that have more than two floors if adopted by the municipality council.

• Erdoğan once again asks for people’s ‘forgiveness’ over earthquakes

  The president addressed a crowd in Hatay, a heavily hit province by the earthquakes.

• New York Times ☛ With Fingerprints, DNA and Photos, Turkey Seeks Families of the Missing

  More than a thousand earthquake victims are still unaccounted for. Some families waited for days by ruined buildings, hoping to see bodies that never surfaced.

• Hackaday ☛ Hacking Skis, Rules, And Friendships

  The American Birkebeiner is the second largest cross-country skiing race in the world and is quite a big deal within that sport. At 55 kilometers it’s not a short event, either, requiring a significant amount of training to even complete, let alone perform well enough to be competitive. Around a decade ago, friends [Joe] and [Chris] ran afoul of the rules when [Joe] accidentally won the race wearing [Chris]’s assigned entry number, a technicality that resulted in both being banned from the race for two years. Now they’re back, having learned their lesson, and are strictly adhering to those rules this time using these tandem cross-country skis.

• Vice Media Group ☛ The Worst Transit Project in the U.S. Is Officially Dead

  The LaGuardia AirTrain, which would have cost more than $2 billion to make getting to the airport worse for everyone, will not be built because its main booster got kicked out of office.

• Vice Media Group ☛ Jordan Peterson Very Concerned by Milking Porn Factory

  After the internet celebrity psychologist tweeted a fetish porn clip and called it “CCP hell,” the phrase “Chinese dick sucking factory” went viral.

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ The Curious Etymology Of The Elements

    It’s not often that the worlds of lexicography and technology collide, but in a video by the etymologist [RobWords] we may have found a rare example. In a fascinating 16-minute video he takes us through the origins of the names you’ll find in the periodic table. Here’s a word video you don’t have to be on the staff of a dictionary to appreciate!

  • Techdirt ☛ Can A Robot Lawyer Defend Itself Against Class Action Lawsuit For Unauthorized Practice Of Law

    We were already expecting a lawsuit to be filed against DoNotPay, the massively hyped up company that promises an “AI lawyer” despite all evidence suggesting it’s nothing of the sort. Investigator and paralegal (and Techdirt guest author and podcast guest) Kathryn Tewson had already filed for pre-action discovery in New York, in the expectation of filing a consumer rights case against the company.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ The Nixie Clock From Outer Space

    Nixie clocks are nothing new. But [CuriousMarc] has one with a unique pedigree: the Apollo Program. While restoring the Apollo’s Central Timing Equipment box, [Marc] decided to throw together a nixie-based clock. The avionics unit in question sent timing pulses and a mission elapsed time signal to the rest of the spacecraft. Oddly enough, while it had an internal oscillator, it was only used during failures. It normally synched to the guidance computer’s onboard clock.

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Former US natsec advisor: destroy Taiwan semiconductor factories if China invades

  • Hackaday ☛ Supercon 2022: Irak Mayer Builds Self-Sustainable Outdoor IoT Devices

    [Irak Mayer] has been exploring IoT applications for use with remote monitoring of irrigation control systems. As you would expect, the biggest challenges for moving data from the middle of a field to the home or office are with connectivity and power. Obviously, the further away from urbanization you get, the sparser both these aspects become, and the greater the challenge.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Common Dreams ☛ 100+ Groups Detail Demands for Dioxin Testing After Toxic Train Derailment

    While welcoming a federal order that Norfolk Southern test for dioxins near a derailed train that was carrying hazardous materials through East Palestine, Ohio, over 100 groups on Monday shared “recommendations on how this testing should be conducted to improve transparency, rebuild public trust, and comprehensively address possible releases.”

  • TruthOut ☛ East Palestine Disaster a Direct Result of Reliance on Fossil Fuels and Plastic

  • TruthOut ☛ Plastic Waste That Gets Dumped on Poor Countries Is Massively Underestimated

  • Vice Media Group ☛ A Plastic Surgeon Accused of Vaccine Fraud Has Become a Hero to Republicans and Anti-Vaxxers

    A doctor in the “health freedom” movement pushed an anti-vax law and, prosecutors say, sold fake vaccine cards. Supporters compare him to Oskar Schindler and say this is just the beginning of what the movement can do.

  • uni Michigan ☛ Francis Medal recipient says nations must learn from pandemic [Ed: Learn what? To abolish the patents on this? No? Why not? Who does he shill for here?]

    WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recipient of U-M’s Thomas Francis Jr. Medal in Global Public Health, said nations must learn from the mistakes made throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • uni Michigan ☛ Loneliness, isolation down but still high among older adults

    After three years of pandemic living, loneliness, isolation and lack of social contact have finally started to decline among older adults, U-M’s National Poll on Healthy Aging shows.

  • uni Michigan ☛ RNA Center Symposium to explore future of RNA therapeutics

    The U-M Center for RNA Biomedicine will explore what biomedical applications might result from RNA research March 24 at its seventh annual symposium, “From Molecules to Medicines.”

  • New York Times ☛ Russia Says It Is Willing to Extend Grain Deal With Ukraine

    The city of Bakhmut has been the main focus of Russia’s assault, but Moscow is also targeting other areas of eastern Ukraine. Here’s what we are covering:

  • TruthOut ☛ The US Government Helped Mitigate Hunger During the Pandemic. Why Stop Now?

  • Hackaday ☛ Building A Communications Grid With LoRaType

    Almost all of modern society is built around various infrastructure, whether that’s for electricity, water and sewer, transportation, or even communication. These vast networks aren’t immune from failure though, and at least as far as communication goes, plenty will reach for a radio of some sort to communicate when Internet or phone services are lacking. It turns out that certain LoRa devices are excellent for local communication as well, and this system known as LoraType looks to create off-grid text-based communications networks wherever they might be needed.

  • TruthOut ☛ Fearing Backlash, Republicans Backpedal on Social Security and Medicare Cuts

• Security

  • APNIC ☛ Are large-scale prefix de-aggregation attacks possible?

    Guest Post: Can we hit the Internet with millions of distributed IPv6 announcements?

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • WhichUK ☛ Browser privacy: should you switch from Chrome? [Ed: Use Falkon. DuckDuckGo is a Microsoft scam.]

      We pit Google Chrome against web browser alternatives, such as Brave and DuckDuckGo, in our tests. Find out which can block ads, make websites load quicker and increase your online privacy

    • New York Times ☛ Which Stores Are Scanning Your Face? No One Knows.

      Our reporter took a five-mile walk around Manhattan to find businesses that are using facial recognition technology.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Counter Punch ☛ The International Media War for the Truth About Who Sabotaged the Nord Stream Pipeline

  • CNN ☛ Mexico is safer than the US, Mexico’s president says

    Mexico is a safer country than the United States, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador argued on Monday, weeks after the high-profile kidnapping of four Americans drew global attention to the country’s security crisis.

  • CNN ☛ A Saudi-Iran reconciliation may ripple across the region. Here’s why

    Saudi Arabia and Iran have given each other just two months to prove they are serious about Friday’s surprise agreement to normalize ties.

  • CNN ☛ Xi Jinping vows to make China’s military a ‘great wall of steel’ in first speech of new presidential term

    China’s leader Xi Jinping on Monday vowed to bolster national security and build the military into a “great wall of steel,” in the first speech of his precedent-breaking third term as president.

  • CNN ☛ Taiwan says soldier who went missing has been found in China

    A Taiwanese soldier who went missing last week from an island near the Chinese coast has been found in mainland China, a Taiwan official said on Monday, raising the possibility of a highly unusual defection amid heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

  • CNN ☛ ICC to open war crimes cases over Russia’s invasion, reports say

    The International Criminal Court (ICC) is planning to open two war crimes cases tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and issue arrest warrants against “several people,” according to the New York Times (NYT) and Reuters, citing current and former officials with knowledge of the decision who were not authorized to speak publicly.

  • New York Times ☛ War in Ukraine Puts Centuries of Swiss Neutrality to the Test

    The Alpine state makes arms that Western allies want to send to Kyiv. Swiss law bans this, driving a national debate about whether its concept of neutrality should change.

  • Ankara court sentences ‘Turkey province Emir” of ISIS to 30 years

    The court sentenced Kasım Güler to a total of 30 years of imprisonment for leading an armed terrorist organization and for keeping guns.

  • New York Times ☛ Zelensky names a soldier whose death was captured on video a Hero of Ukraine.

  • New York Times ☛ North Korea Launches Cruise Missiles From Submarine

    The missile test, the first of its kind carried out by the North, took place as South Korea and the United States were about to begin joint military exercises.

  • New York Times ☛ Biden to Announce Nuclear-Powered Submarine Deal with Australia and Britain

    The arrangement is part of a broader effort to counter China’s military development and assertive territorial claims across Asia.

  • Mint Press News ☛ Even Kissinger Wants Compromise: How Ukraine Became a Winner-Take-All Proposition

    When the likes of Kissinger are accused of being compromisers, we can be certain that the political discourse on the war has reached a degree of extremism unprecedented in decades.

  • The Nation ☛ Twenty Years Ago, the United States Was Putin

    Who remembers anymore that, in 2003, we were Vladimir Putin? Today, our cable and social-media news feeds are blanketed with denunciations of the president of the Russian Federation for his lawless and brutal invasion of Ukraine. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken met briefly with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in New Delhi on March 2nd, he told him in no uncertain terms, “End this war of aggression.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ US Increases Dominance as World’s Top Arms Exporter

    A Sweden-based research institute published a report Monday showing that the United States accounted for 40% of the world’s weapons exports in the years 2018-22, selling armaments to more than 100 countries while increasing its dominance of the global arms trade.

  • Meduza ☛ Russia had no successful prison escapes in 2022, according to federal authorities — Meduza

    In 2022, for the first time in modern Russia’s history, not a single person successfully escaped from a Russian prison, Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) Director Arkady Gostev said on Monday.

  • Meduza ☛ Verkhovna Rada deputies submit draft declaration defining Russia’s current political system as ‘Ruscism’ — Meduza

    A draft declaration that defines the “existing political system in Russia” as “Ruscism” (a portmanteau of “Russian” “and “fascism”) and condemns its “ideological foundations and social practices” as “totalitarian and hateful” has been submitted to Ukraine’s Verkhovka Rada.

  • Site36 ☛ German government coins extremist police narrative of a „thin blue line“

  • The Nation ☛ Disable Guns

  • Techdirt ☛ Los Angeles Police Union Decides Maybe It’s Better If Cops Aren’t Asked To Be First Responders

    For the most part, police unions are a net negative for both the police and the policed. They tend to excuse the worst behavior of their members while showing genuine disdain for anyone who dares to question an officer’s actions. Police unions have actively contributed to the mess US policing is and not a single one has stepped up to acknowledge the harm caused to the communities these agencies are supposed to be serving.

• Environment

  • Techdirt ☛ Utility Busted Using Fake Consumer Group To Scuttle Eugene, Oregon’s Environmental Reforms

    Back in 2016, we noted how Florida utilities had resorted to creating fake consumer groups to try and scuttle legislation aimed at ramping up solar competition and adoption in the state. The tactic is generally used to create the illusion of support for shitty, anti-competitive policies, and it’s been a common tactic in the U.S. broadband industry for as long as I can remember.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Counter Punch ☛ The Willow Oil Project Isn’t a Betrayal, Biden Was Never on Our Side

      Yesterday, the Biden administration approved ConocoPhillip’s enormous $8 billion Willow oil project on federally-owned land in Alaska. If the drilling plan is able to overcome forthcoming legal challenges, the massive oil development could produce 180,000 barrels of crude per day over 30 years. In other words, more CO2 to come. Lots of it.

      “Approving the Willow Project is an unacceptable departure from President Biden’s promises to the American people on climate and environmental justice,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action.

    • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Biden Has No Excuse’: Green Groups Blast Approval of Willow Oil Project

      U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday greenlighted a massive oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska, eliciting outrage from climate advocates who say the administration’s accompanying restrictions on oil and gas leasing in the region cannot make up for the destruction set to be unleashed by the approved Willow project.

    • TruthOut ☛ “Another Massive Climate Disappointment”: Biden Slammed for Oil Project Approval

    • Hackaday ☛ Low Power Challenge: LCD Solar Creatures Live On Sunlight, Sleep At Night

      With all those e-paper based projects doing the rounds these days, including in our Low Power Challenge, you’d almost forget that monochrome LCDs were the original ultra-low-power display. Without them, we wouldn’t have had watches, calculators and handheld games operating off button cell batteries or tiny solar panels back in the ’80s and ’90s. [Gabor] decided to build a set of gadgets with a 1990s LCD aesthetic, called LCD Solar Creatures. These cute little beasts live on nothing but solar power and provide some amusing animations on a classic seven-segment LCD screen.

• Finance

  • Counter Punch ☛ SVB Was Donald Trump’s Bailout

    There are two key points that people should recognize about the decision to guarantee all the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB):

    The first point is straightforward. We gave a government guarantee of great value to people who had not paid for it.

  • Common Dreams ☛ This Big Bank Bailout Brought to You by Donald J. Trump

    There are two key points that people should recognize about the decision to guarantee all the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)…

  • TruthOut ☛ We Must Recognize That the Eviction Crisis Is Also a Public Health Crisis

  • The Nation ☛ Reports of the Death of Biden’s Student Debt Cancellation Program Are Premature

    The Supreme Court hadn’t even finished the hearing about President Biden’s student debt cancellation policy when mainstream media outlets began ringing the funeral bells for its impending demise. True, the conservative justices had been quibbling over the program’s merits. But was a death knell really warranted? This Supreme Court has hardly distinguished itself as an ally for mass liberation. Even the president didn’t seem to think his program would survive SCOTUS’s assault—despite his belief in its legality.

  • Kılıçdaroğlu promises to reduce pet food prices in Instagram post featuring party’s cat

    To drew attention to the increase in pet food prices, the opposition’s presidential candidate released his photographs with Şero, a cat living in his party’s headquarters.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • TruthOut ☛ Following Bank Collapses, Sanders Calls for Repeal of Trump-Era Deregulation

  • Counter Punch ☛ Protests Assist Israeli State Propaganda

    Benjamin Netanyahu, in collaboration with Kahanist Itamar Ben-Gvir and a cohort of other fascists, has been executing a judicial coup which guts so-called Israeli democratic institutions and threatens liberal reforms.

    Many Israelis are infuriated. They’ve always viewed Israel as either part of Europe or the United States’ 51st state. “The only democracy in the Middle East”, a “villa in the jungle” with its fancy boutiques, exquisite espresso bars, glitzy shopping malls, wild/sexy nightlife and world-class wineries and restaurants. Most liberal Zionists see themselves closer to “civilized” white Christian Europeans rather than their “primitive” Brown Muslim Arab neighbors.

  • Scheerpost ☛ On The Brink: Jenin’s Rising Resistance

    By Mondoweiss On January 26, 2023 the Israeli army conducted a deadly invasion into the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. In the span of a few hours, the army shot and killed 9 Palestinians. A 10th Palestinian succumbed days later to wounds sustained during the raid.

  • Scheerpost ☛ 3D Analysis Shows How Israeli Troops Fired Into Group of Civilians

    According to The Washington Post’s reconstruction of the raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli military fired repeatedly into a group of civilians taking shelter between a mosque and a clinic, killing two and wounding three others.

  • Counter Punch ☛ The United States and Human Rights: a History of Hypocrisy

    The United States is a human rights hypocrite.  No country has been more aggressive in lecturing others about human rights and no country has been less willing to take part in international efforts to halt crimes against the peace or even genocide.  The United States has been one of the major obstacles in the creation of an international military force under the auspices of the United Nations to prevent “crimes against the peace.”

    Thanks to Charlie Savage’s excellent reporting in the New York Times, we currently find the Pentagon blocking the efforts of the United States to share intelligence with the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding Russian war crimes in Ukraine.  The Departments of State and Justice as well as the intelligence community support providing the ICC with compelling evidence that has been collected by the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence organizations.  The Department of Defense, however, is resisting the sharing of such intelligence, citing the danger of a precedent that could be used by the ICC to prosecute American soldiers.  Unlike former presidents, President Joe Biden should stand up to the Pentagon and permit the sharing of our intelligence.

  • TruthOut ☛ Pence Slams Trump for Jan. 6 in Untelevised Speech But Refuses to Testify to DOJ

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ Making Deepfakes Gets Cheaper and Easier Thanks to A.I.

      Meme-makers and misinformation peddlers are embracing artificial intelligence tools to create convincing fake videos on the cheap.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Arrests over social media posts about quakes rise to 43

    The police identified over 1,100 social media users and took legal action against 730 of them.

  • Quartz ☛ How the BBC got ensnarled in its own culture war over the UK’s refugee policy

    The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has had a tough week.

  • New York Times ☛ Gary Lineker to Return to BBC Soccer Show ‘Match of the Day’

    The move calmed a crisis at the publicly funded broadcaster after Gary Lineker, a former soccer star, was removed from a flagship show because of a tweet about immigration policy.

  • Press Gazette ☛ BBC to review social media rules for all staff in bid to resolve Gary Lineker row

    The BBC came to an agreement with Lineker on Monday morning following a weekend of sports chaos.

  • Press Gazette ☛ BBC Gary Lineker row: How do other publishers control social media use?

    The BBC is one of many news media organisations that has written social media rules for s

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Oscar-winning ‘Navalny’ documentary is packed with misinformation

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • TruthOut ☛ Texas Judge Sought to Hide Abortion Pill Hearing From Public to Prevent Protests

  • EFF ☛ This Texas Bill Would Systematically Silence Anyone Who Dares to Talk About Abortion Pills

    House Bill (HB) 2690 seeks to prevent the sale and distribution of abortion pills like Mifepristone and misoprostol, but it doesn’t stop there. By restricting access to certain information online, the bill seeks to prevent people from learning about abortion drugs, or even being aware of their existence. It would also systematically incentivize people and companies to silence anyone who wants to speak about abortion pills.  

    If passed, HB2690 would make it illegal to “provide information on how to obtain an abortion-inducing drug.” This includes stopping people from making or maintaining websites or creating and distributing applications on the topic.

    On top of going after online speakers who create and post content, the bill also targets internet service providers (ISPs)—companies like AT&T and Spectrum that provide access to the internet. HB 2690 would require ISPs to “make every reasonable and technologically feasible effort to block Internet access to information or material intended to assist or facilitate efforts to obtain an elective abortion or an abortion-inducing drug.”

  • Scheerpost ☛ Employers Want to Bring Child Labor to Some of the Most Dangerous Jobs in the Country

    Rather than offering wages attractive to adults, there is an unconscionable push to bring back child labor.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Los Angeles Sheriff’s Second-In-Command Has Alleged Gang Tattoo

    Undersheriff April Tardy says her ankle imprint shows allegiance to her former station. Deputies say it represents a deputy gang.

  • Scheerpost ☛ These Men Fought White Supremacists and Got Sentenced to Over 200 Years

    How the criminal legal system slammed two Black men for standing up to white supremacist guards in an Indiana prison.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Uh Oh

  • Scheerpost ☛ Fueled by Family Experiences with Incarceration, Black Girls Rising Seeks to Close Youth Prisons in Louisiana

    After seeing firsthand how the juvenile justice system affected their relatives, advocates are pushing for alternatives to youth incarceration and working to raise awareness.Growing up, Tamia Cenance could not fully understand the reason behind her father’s absence from her life. His contact with the juvenile legal system at a young age had sparked a cycle of incarceration spanning from adolescence into his adult years — something she would realize as she got older. Now 17, Cenance wanted to advocate for incarcerated youth after becoming aware of the juvenile legal system’s long-term effects on the trajectory of her father’s life. She became a leader with Black Girls Rising (BGR), working alongside other girls and young women in Louisiana to end youth incarceration. While they advocate for incarcerated young people broadly, they have an emphasis on young Black women and girls in detention.

  • Scheerpost ☛ New Federal Proposal Could Seize 75% of Commissary Funds Sent to Prisoners

    The Bureau of Prisons proposal would automatically deduct three quarters of money sent to prisoners—today is the last day to submit a public comment opposing this measure.

  • TruthOut ☛ Bill Could Disenfranchise Descendants of Enslaved Africans on Island in Georgia

  • TruthOut ☛ Illinois Governor Signs Bill Guaranteeing Workers Paid Leave

  • TruthOut ☛ Black Student Sues School After Teacher Assaulted Her for Not Reciting Pledge

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Event Wrap: OARC 40

    Joao Damas presented on DNS centrality at OARC 40, held in Atlanta, USA on 16 and 17 February 2023.

• Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Marvel Wants Reddit to Expose Mods Suspected of Ant-Man 3 Leak

      In January, a month before Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was released in theaters, a link to a leaked script was posted on the Marvel Studios Spoilers subreddit. Last Friday, a Marvel Studios affiliate filed DMCA subpoena applications to compel Reddit and Google to expose the leakers. One named user account is shared among the subreddit’s moderator team. Court documents indicate the plan is to force Reddit to expose them all.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Nearly Every Person in Iraq is an Illegal Streaming Pirate, Sources Say

      Every year, copyright holders nominate countries with significant intellectual property challenges for a mention on the US Trade Representative’s ‘Special 301′ watchlist. Heard at the highest diplomatic levels, allegations can carry significant weight, including one statement that 90% of the Iraqi population pirate sports content and other media.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • A Little Vacation

    These last few months have not been pleasant for me. Too much work, too many obligations, and generally so many different tasks that ended up with me not taking care of myself. Fortunately, I had a two-week vacation planned and so I’m going to catch up on sleep, get some swimming done, and work on those “big ticket” items that need time to concentrate to move forward.

  • Moose Gazing 2023-03-14 Morning (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

    I tried to do some stargazing early this morning before work, as there were several indications that conditions would be good. After a comedy of errors and difficulties, that plan didn’t really work out. But, I did have one interesting experience. When I went barreling out the apartment door this morning to get the SUV started, I nearly ran headlong into a cow moose.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: AINOSXU Wordo: SYNCH

  • Extraterrestrial Signals

    One high-tech endeavor of humanity is the search for life on other planets, especially intelligent life. We’ve built vast radio telescopes, such as the Low Frequency Array in the Netherlands and the Allen Telescope Array in California, for just this purpose.

    Our own radio communications have evolved in the last several decades. We began with fully analog systems transmitting audio data in the clear: any device capable of receiving signals at the given frequency could hear everything. That soon changed to analog encoding of digital signals–already indecipherable to living organisms but perfectly understandable to a computer.

  • The steep slippery slope of ‘internalised X’

    The concept of ‘internalised X’, e.g. ‘internalised queerphobia’, can be a useful tool. But there’s a steep slippery slope from there to using it for totalitarian-style ‘thought reform’[a].

    It can be a useful tool for encouraging self-reflection on the whether at least some of one’s beliefs and behaviours might actually be rooted in social prejudices and structures. For example: “Perhaps you’re hostile towards other gay men being ‘too effeminate’ because of internalised queerphobia?”

    Problems arise, however, when it becomes less of a tool for trying to disentangle oneself from the various components of the kyriarchy, and more about declaring a given thing to _objectively_ be ‘internalised X’.

  • Commonplace

    I have some longer-form pieces in the works, but in the meantime, am trying to do smaller posts in the meantime as well.

    Organization has been an ongoing struggle for me, as I tend to take on too many things at any given time. This is further exacerbated by an innate curiosity: I want to find out about all the things, even if I don’t go deep into anything specific.

    In addition to collecting information, I tend to collect online identities. It’s a problem of over-specializing, mostly, and also conflicting desires for anonymity and wanting to share at least some of what I do with others. As usual, this resulted in more than a little decision paralysis as I tried to figure out what kinds of stuff I was going to do where, and what each of these identities would deal with/talk about. I’ve decided that, at least for now, is to focus on the name you see on this page, which is the one that I keep anonymous. If nothing else, I’m trying to become less dependent on electronic communication with people I know in real life.

  • Releasing control

    Two days ago, I thought I’d be in Pittsburgh right now, jumping from museum to park to aviary, taking in all that the Steel City has to offer. My entire break from school was about as planned out as my life usually is, with various events planned, calendar entries created, and reservations booked. And then I ate one tiny snack.

    An anaphylactic reaction and ER visit later, and all of that has changed. And the freedom I feel is astounding. I’m blessed to have a support system around me at the moment, and thankful that this happened in my hometown rather than at school, but nonetheless I haven’t been physically forced to release control in this way for years. Even other times when I’ve been ill I never fully stopped trying to be productive or get things done, but coming off the epinephrine, even my muscles won’t engage fully no matter how much I ask them to (I can move fine enough, but I have yet to summon enough grip strength to open a bottle).

  • The gnat hitch

    I had trouble sleeping a few nights ago. This happens to me from
    time to time. I know that looking at a screen when you’re trying
    to sleep is a terrible idea, and if I have a paper book on the
    go sometimes I’m good and I’ll get up for a bit and read that.
    But often I end up cruising around the small internet instead.
    Lettuce’s gemlog, after all, is best visited between 1am and 6am
    local time. Says so right on the landing page[1].

• Politics

  • Why i don’t use the terms ‘TERF’ or ‘SWERF’

    i don’t use the acronyms ‘TERF’ and ‘SWERF’[a], acronyms for “Trans-Erasing Radical Feminist” and “Sex-Worker-Erasing Radical Feminist”, respectively. Instead, i use ‘radfem’[b].

• Technical

  • Guix: Listing Operating System Services

    The ‘operating-system’ is a Guile record defined in ‘gnu/system.scm’ of a guix checkout, and likewise ‘service’ is defined in gnu/services.scm. See the ‘exports’ of each of these files to find record accessors.

  • Mirrors for Minetest & Mineclone2

    Minetest and mineclone2 are important projects to me. I’ve been contributing a bit to mineclone2 code and resources over the months and play on it alot. I thought it would be a fun excercise to make some unofficial gemini mirrors for them.

    There used to be a gemini mirror of minetest (gemini://gemini.minetest.land/) but it seems to be quite dead and has been for months, no cached archive either. so I decided to make my own for both the minetest engine and mineclone2 game. I got the thumbs up from the mcl2 project maintainers for this.

  • Trying Regicide (The Game)

    The game is a refreshingly original take on what kind of games can be played with a standard deck. Your hand acts as both your health and your attack options, creating interesting tactical decisions between what you want to discard when you take damage versus what you need to keep to complete the battle.

    The value on each card acts as an attack value, and it’s suit provides an extra power when it’s played. Each boss gets progressively more difficult as you advance through the game. At first it can seem like a lot to learn. But it doesn’t take long to get the hang of. At that point it’s easy to keep it all in your head and the pace of the game flows quick and smooth.

    I’ve played three times so far, each solo. The creators did a good job balancing for solo play, and I believe it would scale well to the decided 4 players. Something I rarely see in games.

  • Static website using Grav

    Grav is a very good and fast CMS system. It´s minimalistic with no database and is based on markdown.

  • Science/Sci-Fi

    • Extraterrestrial Signals

      Radio signals are a recent phenomena; the “Great Oxidation Event” may have been notable somewhere around 2 billion years ago, if someone had been looking and knew what to look for and could detect the change at however far the light has gone since.

    • Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein – my biased thoughts on the book

      I finally read Starship Troopers, one of the sci-fi classics and subject of much criticism and political discussion, and these are my (biased) thoughts on it.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • internet blog for design & stuff

      Long time no see. I’ve been considering starting an internet blog for design & stuff… idk if I should. I haven’t kept up with this gemlog very well, but maybe it’d be different. I’d be able to switch my online store to it if I did Squarespace. It’d be nice to branch out.

    • Christina’s 5 questions

      2. Most unusual way I’ve made a friend?

      Hard to say. Met most friends in unusual circ-
      umstances. Saw Kara writing on a pad in the
      Square when I was 17 and asked for her auto-
      graph. “What are you doing in a body?” She
      asked, shocked, when she looked up.

      Asked bugz to lay on my tools when I was doing
      something extremely illegal and the police-FBI
      joint patrols got too close. She did. We went
      on to move rice in the Haitian earthquake and
      a million other things over two decades.

      Met Etta when she let me, Alison, and Thaddeus
      stay in the abandoned house next to hers when
      we passed through town and cooked us breakfast.

    • activity pub

      I was looking into how Questions are supposed to be done.
      The example I grabbed from having a mastodon account send one to my inbox
      showed that a question as being used as an object inside of a create
      activity.

  • Programming

    • “The Pragmatic Programmer” book notes

      These are my personal takeaways after reading “The Pragmatic Programmer” by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt. Note that the book contains much more knowledge and pearls of wisdom and that the following notes only contain points I personally found worth writing down. This is mainly for my own use, but you might find it helpful too.

    • awk

      I came across awk this morning, and not knowing anything about it, I’m hitting the books now to learn what I can. I should learn how to use sed and grep after that. I just need to find the time to study.

    • Emacs undo and me

      Maybe I’ll switch over to one of them one of these days (and knowing how I usually work, probably right after writing an essay like this where I’ve just been like “oh I for sure don’t use any of those packages” and then three seconds later I get roped in (by myself if nothing else) to switching to one of them) but right now I use the same default way it works and has worked for twenty-five years.

      In some weirdo chain my brain don’t fully understand but my fingers seem to know how to work. I can undo in one “direction” but then if I do anything else (just move the cursor or set the mark) it switches direction because the undos themselves are getting undone. It’s a mess but it somehow works, even for undos really far back.

      But I would be dishonest if I didn’t also mention the other thing I do which sort of saves that messy system from being unusable: “save states”. I just save the file, usually with the default command, C-x C-s, but I also have mapped C-c A which saves a copy (to a standard location, always using the same name, it doesn’t prompt) without saving the local buffer at all, and C-c r which reverts the file, and if I revert by mistake I can still undo the revert. Usually.

    • Grawlix

      There is some semantic drift about whether or not ASCII only means the original 7 bit wide subset of what later became UTF-8. Like Thrig, I grew up with having to be constantly aware of what encoding system was used since ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 were fundamentally incompatible while also being hard for machines to tell apart.

    • Escape hatches

      By now, y’all should know about the Alternate Hard and Soft Layers pattern. It’s the idea of designing a system with some rules carved in granite (like Emacs’ C primitives) and some loosy-goosy (like Emacs’ Lisp extensions).

      “In a cloud, bones of steel” as Charles Reznikoff put it. But what supercharges this design pattern for hackers is if you don’t make the boundaries between the layers too strict, if you provide ways to fall back through the patterns.

      This “make the abstractions intentionally leaky” is a design decision that everytime I implement it, I get rewarded many times over (like how call-tables gives you easy, convenient access to the underlying hash-tables; I wasn’t sure if I was ever gonna use that but I’ve ended up using that again and again in many unforseen ways), and each time I forget to do it, I end up with a library that’s languishing from disuse and “What was I thinking?” and I don’t even use it myself.