03.16.23

Skyfall for Sirius ‘Open Source’: A Second Pension Provider Starts to Investigate Serious (Sirius) Abuses

Posted in Deception, Fraud, Free/Libre Software at 9:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 9dcf3def0c8beb1a166c52b5ded8b299
Chatting to the Pension Boss About Sirius
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Further to yesterday's update on Sirius ‘Open Source’ and its “Pensiongate” we can gladly report some progress following escalation to management; this is about tech and “Open Source” employees facing abuse at work, even subjected to crimes

THE Sirius series isn’t quite over and we expect a lot more to be published about the pensions. Expect this to spill over to April as well.

When I started the series in December I didn’t know how deep the rabbit hole would go; it pains me to know that myself and my colleagues got robbed.

Our solid plan to publish some EPO documents (earlier today) have thus been delayed somewhat; today we’ve instead devoted a lot of time to Sirius coverage.

Skyfall's upload imageThe gist of the video above is (it mended up a bit like a podcast of the pension fund’s manager and myself), they now reckon they failed to provide a good service, they recognise the severity of the matter, and things will — or at least should — be progressing a lot faster from now on.

The saddest thing in all this is (there is a lot), it took me almost 3 hours on the phone (I pay for these calls) to finally get to the boss and we’ve already lost about 3 months while Sirius was hiding itself and hiding what’s left of it. This really should have progressed months ago, but NOW: Pensions was uncooperative and unattentive. Since January it kept lying to me and to my wife, who has a plan there too. █

NOW: Pensions Lying, Obstructing and Gaslighting Clients After Months of Lies, Delays, and Cover-up (Amid Pension Fraud)

Posted in Deception, Finance, Fraud, Free/Libre Software at 2:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum f78431fd89771a7ee494f43d13e16fb5
34 Minutes With Now Pensions (NOW: Pensions)
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The “Pensiongate” of Sirius ‘Open Source’ (the company which embezzled/robbed many workers for years) helps reveal the awful state of British pension providers, which are in effect enabling the embezzlement to carry on while lying to their clients

THE video above shows how in the company NOW: Pensions “customer” “support” staff is basically just a ‘shield’, making it virtually impossible to speak to people who can progress/resolve things. In a very Kafkaesque fashion they try to pass me from one person to another person without actually making any real progress. No apologies, no information, no reaction.

“The recording above was made only after months of frustration and a waste of money, not just time.”As it turns out this week, it can be more or less the same in the United States, so it seems like a global issue, a universal pattern.

The recording above was made only after months of frustration and a waste of money, not just time. NOW: Pensions lied to me repeatedly; they already have a history of misconduct and judging by the quality of their service (or disservice) they might go under again — as they did before (until some other company bought them). As per British law, there are cases where pensions can be redeemed early, with up to 55% tax in case of ‘unauthorised withdrawals’ (before age 55). But advisors are spreading misinformation for their own benefit/interests. It also seems clear that redeeming depositors’ money is made incredibly hard. That’s a design flaw, an intentional barrier. █

Links 16/03/2023: War Escalations and More

Posted in News Roundup at 2:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • 9to5Linux ☛ System76’s Meerkat Mini Linux PC Now Ships with 12th Gen Intel Core i CPUs

        Yes, System76 even sells a mini PC and the latest variant can be configured with 10th, 11th, or 12th Gen Intel Core i Series processors with up to 12 cores and 16 threads and up to Intel Iris Xe graphics on the 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1260P CPU, which also offers up to 4.7 GHz clock speeds.

        Other 12th Gen Intel Core i Series processors include the Intel Core i3-1220P with 10 cores and 12 threads and up to 4.4 GHz clock speeds, as well as Intel Core i5-1240P with 12 cores and 16 threads and up to 4.4 GHz clock speeds. However, only the i5-1240P and i7-1260P CPUs have Intel Iris Xe graphics as the i3-1220P CPU feature Intel UHD graphics.

    • Applications

      • Linux Links ☛ 13 Best Free and Open Source Linux Hex Editors

        Hex editors are often used for debugging and reverse engineering binary communication protocols. They can also review files with an unknown file format, reviewing program memory dumps, and hex comparison. Hex editors can help you remove watermarks or other data that is hidden within a file. Hex editors are a favorite tool of game modding communities.

        If you use a text editor to open a binary file, you will see large amounts of incomprehensible information, seemingly random accented characters, and long lines overflowing with text. Editing or saving a binary file in a text editor will corrupt the file.

        We feature our recommended hex editors. They are all free and open source software.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Events

      • Unicorn Media ☛ Despite What You’ve Heard, Open Source 101 Isn’t Just for Newbies

        If you live within driving distance of Charlotte, North Carolina and don’t have any plans for next Thursday (that’s March 23), you might want to make plans to attend Open Source 101 2023. It’s a single day conference, meaning that if you’re coming from Raleigh, Greensboro, or Asheville you won’t have to stay away from home overnight.

        Don’t let the fact that it’s being billed as an “introduction to open source” event keep you away. By my way of thinking, if you’re like most of us, there are probably plenty of aspects to open source that are not generally in your everyday wheelhouse. Here’s your chance to do some catching up in these areas, without needing to have a whole lot of knowledge when walking in the door.

  • Leftovers

    • Hackaday ☛ Voice Without Sound

      Voice recognition is becoming more and more common, but anyone who’s ever used a smart device can attest that they aren’t exactly fool-proof. They can activate seemingly at random, don’t activate when called or, most annoyingly, completely fail to understand the voice commands. Thankfully, researchers from the University of Tokyo are looking to improve the performance of devices like these by attempting to use them without any spoken voice at all.

    • Hackaday ☛ Retrotechtacular: Military Graphics In The 1960s

      While you might think the military doesn’t have a sense of humor with names. Take the AN/MSQ-19 “automated tactical operations central” for example. (Video, embedded below.) But then, when you find out that the truck-sized computer at the heart of it was MOBIDIC — yes, that’s pronounced Moby Dick — you know someone had a good chuckle somewhere. The video below was a promotional video from the early 1960s, and although it shows the unit in operation, it was most likely a mockup and not fully functional.

    • Education

    • Hardware

      • Hackaday ☛ Spin Up To Speed With This Stroboscope

        A stroboscope is not the most common tool, and while they can be purchased fairly inexpensively from various online stores, they are straightforward enough tools that plenty of us could build our own mostly from parts laying around. The basic idea is to shine a flashing light on a spinning object, and when it appears stationary the stroboscope will indicate the rotational speed. There are a few specialty parts that might not be in everyone’s parts drawers, though, and [John] shows us the ins-and-outs of his own DIY stroboscope.

      • Hackaday ☛ Wooden ITX PC Case Smacks Of Sophistication

        Computer cases have come a long way from the ugly beige boxes of the early 2000s. Still, if it was going to sit on his desk, [MXC Builds] wanted something with a little more class. His custom Ironbark ITX PC seems to fit the aesthetic nicely.

      • Hackaday ☛ E-Paper Wall Paper

        Just like the clock clock of old, there’s something magical about a giant wall of smaller pieces working together to make a larger version of that thing. The E-Paper Wall 2.0 by [Aaron Christophel] is no exception as it has now upgraded from 2.9″ to 7.4″ screens.

      • Hackaday ☛ Unconventional Computing Laboratory Grows Its Own Electronics

        While some might say we’re living in a cyberpunk future already, one technology that’s conspicuously absent is wetware. The Unconventional Computing Laboratory is working to change that.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Counter Punch ☛ How It Feels to Be Hungry

        My long-dead father used to say, “Every human being deserves to taste a piece of cake.” Though at the time his words meant little to me, as I grew older I realized both what they meant, symbolically speaking, and the grim reality they disguised so charmingly. That saying of his arose from a basic reality of our lives then — the eternal scarcity of food in our household, just as in so many other homes in New York City’s South Bronx where I grew up. This was during the 1940s and 1950s, but hunger still haunts millions of American households more than three-quarters of a century later.

        In our South Bronx apartment, given the lack of food, there was no breakfast. It was simply a missing meal, so my sisters, brother, and I never expected it. Lunch was usually a sandwich and sometimes a can of juice, though none of us used the whole can. We knew enough to just put a little juice in our glass and then fill it with water. Dinner, which one of my sisters called the “real food,” would invariably be cheap and starchy servings meant to fill us. There wasn’t any cooked fish, salad, or fresh fruit. Rarely was anything left over. Most of our neighbors faced similar food scarcity and many suffered physical problems at relatively young ages: dizziness, fatigue, loss of strength, and other maladies, including asthma and diabetes.

      • Common Dreams ☛ ‘The Last Thing We Need’: Critics Decry US Government’s OK of $31 Billion Railroad Merger

        U.S. federal regulators on Wednesday approved the first major railroad merger in more than two decades, a move that follows the East Palestine rail disaster and that critics warned would reduce competition, raise prices, cost jobs, and threaten safety.

      • Meduza ☛ ‘Take the pills you’re given’ How Russia’s prison system prevents inmates with HIV from getting the treatment they need to survive — Meduza
      • Project Censored ☛ Feral Hogs Threaten Agriculture and Human Health – Validated Independent News

        In addition to causing an estimated $2.5 billion in damage to agriculture crops, livestock, pastures, and forests each year, National Geographic reported, feral swine also carry diseases that “could potentially spread to people,” including leptospirosis, toxoplasmosis, brucellosis, swine influenza, salmonella, hepatitis, and pathogenic E. coli. These pathogens can have serious impacts on human health. Leptospirosis, for example, can cause kidney damage, meningitis, liver failure, respiratory distress, and death if left untreated, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

      • The Nation ☛ Everyone Has the Right to Food

        My long-dead father used to say, “Every human being deserves to taste a piece of cake.” Though at the time his words meant little to me, as I grew older I realized both what they meant, symbolically speaking, and the grim reality they disguised so charmingly. That saying of his arose from a basic reality of our lives then—the eternal scarcity of food in our household, just as in so many other homes in New York City’s South Bronx where I grew up. This was during the 1940s and 1950s, but hunger still haunts millions of American households more than three-quarters of a century later.

    • Security

      • Krebs On Security ☛ Microsoft Patch Tuesday, March 2023 Edition

        Microsoft on Tuesday released updates to quash at least 74 security bugs in its Windows operating systems and software. Two of those flaws are already being actively attacked, including an especially severe weakness in Microsoft Outlook that can be exploited without any user interaction.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Techdirt ☛ Texas Deputy Sued For Privacy Violations After Live Streaming A Traffic Stop On TikTok

          I don’t know, maybe don’t do this?

        • Techdirt ☛ WhatsApp Tells UK Government It’s Still Not Willing To Undermine Its Encryption

          The UK government is entertaining even more plans to undermine (or actually outlaw) end-to-end encryption. And it’s not gaining any support from the multiple services (and multiple people) these efforts would harm.

        • Papers Please ☛ TSA confirms plans to mandate mug shots for domestic air travel

          In an on-stage interview yesterday at South By Southwest by a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, the head of the US Transportation Security Administration made explicit that the TSA plans to make collection of biometric data  mandatory for airline travel:

          According to a report in today’s edition of the newspaper by Alexandra Skores on the statements by TSA Administrator David Pekoske:

          Mandatory mugshots for all airline passengers have been part of the TSA’s road map since at least 2018, despite objections such as those raised by the ACLU and the Identity Project.

        • EFF ☛ Tell the UK’s House of Lords: Protect End-to-End Encryption in the Online Safety Bill

          End-to-end encryption ensures that governments, tech companies, social media platforms, and other groups cannot view or access our private messages, the pictures we share with family and friends, or our bank account details. This is a universal right, and one that is a particularly vital protection for the most vulnerable in society—such as children or human rights defenders who rely on private messaging to do their jobs in hostile environments.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Counter Punch ☛ War: Still Not Healthy for Children

        If you’re old enough to remember the slogan “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things,” then you’re old enough to remember that activists for peace can end a war. The phrase was popular during the Vietnam war, and a massive antiwar movement compelled the United States to negotiate an end. Fifty years later, the world needs antiwar activists more than ever: due to the aggravations of global climate change coupled with an increasing threat of nuclear missiles, a future war could easily become an extinction level event.

        The Vietnam-era peace movement used nonviolent tactics, and demonstrations were large. On October 15, 1969, an estimated two million people joined peace demonstrations around the United States. More people participated on November 15, 1969, when half-a-million demonstrators flooded Washington, D.C., while simultaneously more than a quarter million gathered in San Francisco and millions more protested around the world. If enough people work together for the cause of peace, they can be successful, and the world is in desperate need of another success now.

      • Common Dreams ☛ The Selling of the Iraq War Involved Mass Gullibility Atop Mass Hysteria

        Twenty years after the United States under the administration of George W. Bush invaded Iraq, it is undeniable that the war was one of the biggest blunders in the history of U.S. foreign policy. The war was entirely one of choice; Iraq was not posing any significant threat to the United States and U.S. interests. The costs were huge. Estimates by academic experts of the war’s long-term monetary cost to the United States —covering everything from bullets to medical care for disabled veterans — are on the order of two to three trillion dollars.

      • Site36 ☛ The Bundeswehr flies the world’s largest drones over the Black Sea. When will the first one crash?

        Germany is the largest contributor to five Nato „Global Hawk“ drones in Sicily. The military alliance has been using them to monitor its „eastern flank“ for two years.

      • Scheerpost ☛ Cop City Protestor Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Terán’s Independent Autopsy Finds His Hands Were Raised at Time of Death

        The family of Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Esteban Paez Terán held a press conference Monday morning outside the Historic DeKalb Courthouse to release the full autopsy of Tortuguita and to discuss the lawsuit the family filed this week against the City of Atlanta under the Georgia Open Records […]

      • Counter Punch ☛ Silent in Ukraine: Weapons Perpetuate, Do Not End Wars

        As is the case of long wars, the warring parties and their affiliated media in the Russia-Ukraine conflict have painted each other using uncompromising language, making it nearly impossible to offer an unbiased view of the ongoing tragedy that has killed, wounded and expelled millions.

        While it is understandable that wars of such horror and near complete disregard of the most basic human rights often heighten our sense of what we consider to be moral and just, parties involved and invested in such conflicts often manipulate morality for political and geopolitical reasons.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Uranium Weapons Residues in UK Air Samples Have Been Measured Since the Ukraine War, Why is Google Suppressing the Evidence?

        Since Fukushima in 2011 there has been a revolution in the scientific understanding of the relation between radiation exposures and subsequent cancer and leukemia. But you would be hard put to find anything about this on Google, which has, over the same period of time as it has increasingly excluded any real news about what is going on in the real world, systematically erased, excluded, airbrushed and spun the news in a way that was common the Soviet Union from Stalin to Brezhnev. This is the era of “fake news”. Much of the work on the radiation risk model has been carried out by me and my colleagues in the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR).

        By 2023, last year, my increasing personal scientific credibility had enabled me to publish in the scientific peer-review literature 5 papers which showed clearly that the legally defined exposure levels, based on the risk model of the International Commission of Radiological Protection (ICRP) was in error by a factor of upwards of 10,000-fold. In the latest 2023 paper this means that owing to the power of the nuclear military complex more than 300 million people have died from  cancer caused by the fallout from the 1960s atmospheric testing. This is the cancer epidemic which began in the 1980s, and which every one of you reading this article will have experienced. You might have thought that this was news, since it was based on scientific peer-reviewed publications.

      • Meduza ☛ Polish authorities arrest six people for alleged spying in connection with cameras found at key railway junctions — Meduza

        Polish security agents have arrested six people on suspicion of spying for Russian, the Polish radio station RMF FM reported on Thursday.

      • Craig Murray ☛ Sweet Rockall

        A recurring row has broken out over the island of Rockall, an uninhabited rock in the Atlantic whose ownership is disputed between the UK and Ireland. The Scottish government, under whose jurisdiction Rockall falls, has banned Irish vessels which traditionally fish there from doing so.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Is a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Imminent?

        Is China really on the verge of invading the island of Taiwan, as so many top American officials seem to believe? If the answer is “yes” and the U.S. intervenes on Taiwan’s side — as President Biden has sworn it would — we could find ourselves in a major-power conflict, possibly even a nuclear one, in the not-too-distant future. Even if confined to Asia and fought with conventional weaponry alone — no sure thing — such a conflict would still result in human and economic damage on a far greater scale than observed in Ukraine today.

        But what if the answer is “no,” which seems at least as likely? Wouldn’t that pave the way for the U.S. to work with its friends and allies, no less than with China itself, to reduce tensions in the region and possibly open a space for the launching of peaceful negotiations between Taiwan and the mainland? If nothing else, it would eliminate the need to boost the Pentagon budget by many billions of dollars annually, as now advocated by China hawks in Congress.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Blood Does Not Wash Away Blood

        The extraordinary March 10, 2023 announcement that China’s top diplomat, Mr. Wang Yi, helped broker a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran suggests that major powers can benefit from believing that, as Albert Camus once put it, “words are more powerful than munitions.”

        This concept was also acknowledged by General Mark Milley, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff who said on January 20th, 2023, that he believes Russia’s war in Ukraine will conclude with negotiations rather than on the battlefield. In November of 2022, asked about prospects for diplomacy in Ukraine, Milley noted that the early refusal to negotiate in World War One compounded human suffering and led to millions more casualties.

      • Common Dreams ☛ After Brutal Assault, Yanis Varoufakis Urges Progressives to Focus on ‘What Really Matters’

        Recovering from a brutal assault that left him with a broken nose and cheekbone, leftist Greek lawmaker Yanis Varoufakis on Tuesday urged progressives “not get distracted” from the railway accident that killed 57 people last month or the neoliberal “privatize everything doctrine” he blames for the disaster.

      • Common Dreams ☛ The Not-So-Winding Road from Iraq to Ukraine

        March 19th marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. This seminal event in the short history of the 21st century not only continues to plague Iraqi society to this day, but it also looms large over the current crisis in Ukraine, making it impossible for most of the Global South to see the war in Ukraine through the same prism as U.S. and Western politicians.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Okinawa Governor Meets AOC and Others in DC Over Burden of US Military Bases

        Denny Tamaki, the recently re-elected Governor of Okinawa, traveled to DC for a weeklong trip to lobby lawmakers and officials to reduce the disproportionate burden of US military bases in Okinawa, which hosts over 70% of US military presence in Japan. The Governor met with leading US officials including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers and aides, as well as government officials, diplomats, and academics, to discuss the critical issues pertaining to the US bases and stress the need for diplomacy to ease tensions with China.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Iraq War Costs Could Hit Nearly $3 Trillion by 2050: Report

        As the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq approaches, a leading research institute on Wednesday said that “the total costs of the war in Iraq and Syria are expected to exceed half a million human lives and $2.89 trillion” by 2050.

      • Common Dreams ☛ War Reparations Demanded 20 Years After US Invasion of Iraq

        Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the George W. Bush administration’s illegal invasion of Iraq this weekend, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights on Wednesday renewed its call for reparations “for those harmed as a result of the U.S.’s unlawful act of aggression in its cruel, senseless, and baseless war-for-profit.”

      • Scheerpost ☛ Dennis Kucinich: Iraq Plus 20 – Lies as Weapons of Mass Destruction

        Part One: The Script for the Lead-Up to War

      • Scheerpost ☛ US and NATO Allies Were Responsible for Nearly 65% of Global Arms Exports in 2018-22

        The US share in global arms exports increased from 33% to 40% in 2018-22, and its ally France, the third-largest exporter of weapons, was also a significant beneficiary, with its share increasing from roughly 7.1% to 11%.

      • Meduza ☛ Regional conscription officials send out summonses ‘to check data’ on draft-eligible men — Meduza

        Conscription officials in at least three Russian regions — Lipetsk, Penza, and Voronezh — have started mailing summonses to local draft-eligible men. This has been confirmed by the regional authorities.

      • Meduza ☛ Russian comedian Danila Poperechny says Uzbek authorities turned off his mic whenever he spoke about Ukraine or Putin at Tashkent show — Meduza

        Russian standup comedian Danila Poperechny said that the organizers of a show he performed in Tashkent on Tuesday censored his set by turning off the microphone “when the joke or the topic even tangentially touched on the current agenda,” referring to the war in Ukraine and other issues that are politically sensitive in Russia.

      • Michael West Media ☛ Because the U.S. says so – $368 Billion for subs!
      • Scheerpost ☛ US, UK, Australia Unveil AUKUS Nuclear-Powered Submarine Deal

        Monday, the US, Britain, and Australia unveiled their plans to develop nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS, a military pact the three countries signed in September 2021 to coordinate on advanced military technology against China.

      • TruthOut ☛ Russia-US Drone Encounter Is “an Incendiary Development,” Says Jeremy Scahill
      • Democracy Now ☛ The Nord Stream Bombing: Jeremy Scahill on Why U.S. Remains Most Likely Culprit in Pipeline Sabotage

        Questions continue to swirl about who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in September. Last month, the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported the sabotage was carried out by the U.S. Navy with remotely triggered explosives during NATO exercises. The U.S. has denied the claim. We speak to The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill about his latest article, “Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot.”

      • Democracy Now ☛ Jeremy Scahill on Growing Proxy War Between U.S. and Russia & Downing of U.S. Drone in Black Sea

        A U.S. drone crashed in international waters Tuesday after being intercepted by Russian fighter jets over the Black Sea. According to U.S. officials, one of the Russian warplanes collided with the MQ-9 Reaper drone and damaged its propeller, but Russia denies the aircraft made contact. The incident occurred about 75 miles southwest of Crimea and marks another blow to relations between the two nuclear-armed powers. Jeremy Scahill, senior correspondent for The Intercept, describes the drone encounter as “an incendiary development” in the U.S. proxy war against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. “This is a vehicle of war, and it doesn’t have to have missiles on it to be part of a system that makes the U.S. a combatant in this war,” says Scahill.

      • TruthOut ☛ Asked About Regime Change in Russia, Trump Calls for One in the US Instead
      • The Dissenter ☛ March To Iraq War, 20 Years Later: March 15, 2003
      • Meduza ☛ Former Yekaterinburg Mayor Evgeny Roizman arrested on charges of disseminating extremist material — Meduza

        Yekaterinburg police have arrested the city’s former mayor, Evgeny Roizman, on charges of disseminating extremist material, the Telegram channel It’s My City reported on Thursday, citing Roizman’s ex-wife, Yulia Kruteeva, and his lawyer, Vladislav Idamzhapov.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Mexico’s Missing: 100,000+ Cases Unsolved as Leaked Military Docs Shed New Light on Ayotzinapa 43

        As news of missing Americans in Mexico dominates headlines, tens of thousands of Mexicans remain missing in cases that have gone unsolved — some of them for decades. This includes the 2014 case of 43 young men from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college who were attacked and forcibly disappeared. Senior analyst at the National Security Archive Kate Doyle joins us with new details about what happened in Ayotzinapa, drawn from the 4 million emails and records stolen from the Mexican Defense Ministry by an anonymous collective of hackers known as “Guacamaya.” Doyle co-produced the After Ayotzinapa podcast with Reveal as part of the NSA’s ongoing work on this case.

      • Meduza ☛ Pipeline operator Transneft reports finding explosive devices near a pumping station on the Druzhba pipeline — Meduza

        Two explosive devices were discovered in the Bryansk region, at a pumping station on the Druzhba oil pipeline, Igor Demin, a spokesperson for the pipeline operator Transneft, told TASS.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Environment

      • Project Censored ☛ New College Textbooks Include Less About Climate Change Than in Previous Editions – Validated Independent News

        The study, conducted by faculty and student researchers at North Carolina State, examined 57 college biology textbooks published between 1970 and 2019. The amount of content devoted to climate change increased until the 2010s when it began to drop to an average of three pages per book. According to the study, “The number of research publications between 1970 and 2019 has grown exponentially, but the proportion of textbook coverage has decreased from one textbook sentence per 200 scientific publications to one textbook sentence per 1,100 scientific publications.”

      • DeSmog ☛ Indigenous Group Fighting Emissions Cap Quietly Supported by Top Canadian Oil Company

        A national Indigenous group is fighting a proposed federal limit on oil and gas sector emissions by arguing it will harm First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities. 

        But the group has a powerful non-Indigenous ally, according to corporate documents from Canada’s second-largest oil and gas producer. 

      • Energy/Transportation

        • TruthOut ☛ Groups Sue to Block Biden-Approved Willow Oil Project in Alaska
        • The Nation ☛ Sacred Native American Indian Territory
        • The Nation ☛ The Obscene Invention of California Capitalism

          When gold was found in the American River in 1848, a brand-new world was born—one that thrust Northern California into the perpetual spotlight, and one in which the market’s insatiable appetite for “innovation” solidified, however ironically, the region’s loyalty to draconian conceptions of racial order. The miners are, in effect, still here—their wash pans have just become iPhones—and still doing their part to uphold a long-standing tradition of the American West: overpromising and under-delivering, all while devouring obscene amounts of global assets in the process. In Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, journalist Malcolm Harris sets out to identify the origins of Silicon Valley’s doctrine of abundance and rigorously traces its technocratic lineage all the way back to the Golden State’s early opportunists.1

        • Counter Punch ☛ Willow Project: A Carbon Bomb is Exploding in the Arctic of Alaska

          Karlin Nageak Itchoak, senior director for Alaska at the non-profit Wilderness Society, is very much against the $ 8 billion petroleum extraction Willow Project. The Willow Project is in a 25-million acre-park of largely pristine wilderness in the Arctic of Alaska. The official name of this beautiful land is the National Petroleum Reserve. Imagine giving such a name to this planetary paradise of wildlife and indigenous societies!

          The Willow Project is supposed to produce 180,000 barrels of petroleum per day, which represents 1.5 percent of all US oil production. Building the transportation and mining infrastructure for extracting petroleum from this vast territory will do irreparable damage to ecosystems and wildlife in Alaska. It will also inflict deleterious harm on the planet by telling the world the United States will continue its petroleum business as usual. Besides, an active Willow Project will nullify all the promises President Joe Biden made for fighting climate change. Biden will then look no better than Donald Trump or other presidents in the pocket of the petrochemical industry.

        • Common Dreams ☛ Green Groups Sue to Fight Biden Approval of ‘Illegal’ Willow Project

          Environmental groups filed two separate lawsuits on Tuesday and Wednesday to fight the Biden administration’s decision to approve a massive fossil fuel drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, a step that opened the door to hundreds of millions of tons of additional planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions.

        • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Promise Breakers’: Report Exposes Rich Nations Failing to End Fossil Fuel Financing

          A report released Wednesday by Oil Change International reveals that while the Glasgow Statement is already shifting billions of dollars from fossil fuels to clean energy around the world, some rich nations are still failing to live up to promises made under the 2021 agreement.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Counter Punch ☛ The Destiny of Humans, Nature and Grizzlies are Linked

          Enos Mills first called for protection of grizzly bears in his 1919 book “The Grizzly,” as he watched them being exterminated for Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and California.

          Not until 1973 would the U.S. pass the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In 1975, with less than a thousand grizzlies remaining mostly around Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks, the lower 48 grizzlies were listed as protected under the ESA.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Common Dreams ☛ When the Book-Burners Come to Your Town

        Not so long ago, book burnings were considered a festive group activity by assorted right-wing zealots. Today, though, burning seems so old-fashioned and, well… crude.

      • Techdirt ☛ Techdirt Podcast Episode 347: Why Is Congress So Wrong About Section 230?

        Misunderstandings (honest or otherwise) about Section 230 abound — across the political spectrum and, of course, in Congress. Each side believes weakening or eliminating the law will achieve its own distinct goals, and both sides are wrong. Following the most recent (but far from the first) very frustrating congressional hearing about Section 230, this week we’re joined by TechFreedom’s Free Speech Counsel Ari Cohn for a discussion about why and how congress constantly gets Section 230 so wrong.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Meduza ☛ Prosecution petitions Moscow court to arrest former Meduza publisher in absentia — Meduza

        The prosecution has petitioned a Moscow court to arrest the former Meduza publisher Ilya Krasilshchik in absentia. The media executive has been charged with “spreading fakes” about the Russian army under the new Russian law against military disinformation.

      • Don’t Extradite Assange ☛ Stella Assange in Rome and Bologna, Italy

        The Faculty of Political Science of the Sapienza University of Rome was packed with students addressed by Stella Assange, MEP Sabrina Pignedoli, Prof. Maria Cristina Marchetti and Prof. Alessandro Guerra.

      • Don’t Extradite Assange ☛ Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and Athens Ithaka screening with Stella Assange

        The screening of “Ithaca – The battle for the release of Julian Assange” kicked off at the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival ini crowded room, including the Secretary of MeRA25 Yanis Varoufakis.

      • Project Censored ☛ March 2023 Newsletter – Censored Notebook

        On March 7th, the Censored Press celebrated the publication of Kevin Gosztola’s Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange. You can listen to Gosztola’s book launch conversation with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, guest hosted by Mickey Huff, at The Dissenter, and you can watch Mickey’s interview with Kevin about Guilty of Journalism on The Project Censored Show by visiting the Project’s YouTube channel.

      • EFF ☛ The Aftermath of Ola Bini’s Unanimous Acquittal by Ecuadorian Court

        But more than a month after the ruling, we continue to see the pattern of delays surrounding the case again. The oral sentence stated in January’s hearing has yet to be published in written form, and the precautionary measures against Bini remain in force. Despite his acquittal, the security expert still can’t leave Ecuador, use his bank accounts, or get back any of several of his devices seized in 2019. In the meantime, the Prosecutor’s Office and Ecuador’s National Telecommunications Corporation (CNT) have already shown their intention to appeal once they receive the formal notification of the sentence.

        Bini himself has stressed the precursory nature of the ruling. He said it was the first time an Ecuadorian court had analyzed the issue of access to a computer system and, more importantly, resisted setting a broad interpretation of unauthorized access that would seriously endanger the beneficial work of security researchers and the vital role they play for our privacy and security across information systems.

        The court didn’t fall for the prosecutor’s flawed claims that merely connecting to a server that asks for a username could entail an access without authorization to such a system. Conversely, the three-judge tribunal unanimously agreed that there was no evidence that Ola Bini had committed any crime.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • TruthOut ☛ Honduran Activists Are Protesting “State of Emergency” That Suspends Civil Rights
      • Common Dreams ☛ Nearly 400 Rights Groups Demand Biden Permanently End Family Detention

        Nearly 400 immigration justice and other advocacy groups on Wednesday added their voices to the call for President Joe Biden to reject family detention, amid reports that the White House is considering a revival of the practice that was used by the Trump and Obama administrations—despite the fact that it subjected thousands of families to numerous abuses and trauma.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Labor Celebrates as Michigan Senate Votes to Overturn ‘Right-to-Work’ Law
      • Pro Publica ☛ Museums and Universities Pledge to Return Native American Remains

        Until this year, the University of Kentucky’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology had never returned any of the more than 4,500 Native American human remains in its collections.

        That is about to change.

      • TruthOut ☛ ACLU Sues US for Using Military-Grade Helicopters to Quell George Floyd Protests
      • Meduza ☛ Polish activist convicted for providing abortion pills — Meduza

        A Warsaw court sentenced activist Justyna Wydrzynska to eight months of community service on Tuesday for allegedly abetting an illegal abortion, the first time such a case has gone to court in Poland, according to BBC News Russian.

      • Site36 ☛ Report in Germany accuses police of „direct brutality“ at protest in Lützerath

        The police actions around Lützerath two months ago violated the freedom of assembly on several levels, write 14 observers from the Constitutional Rights Committee in a detailed report on the eviction of the brown coal village. They see a fundamental problem in the police monopoly on the use of force.

      • Democracy Now ☛ “Catastrophic”: Trump-Appointed Judge in Texas May Restrict Abortion Pill Mifepristone Nationwide

        We look at today’s hearing by a federal judge in Texas who could restrict medication abortions throughout the United States and revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone, the abortion medication used in a majority of pregnancy terminations across the country. The Trump-appointed judge has ruled against the Biden administration in numerous cases and is widely expected to favor the anti-abortion side in the case, though an appeal of any ruling is all but certain. Amy Littlefield, The Nation’s abortion access correspondent, says that while medication abortions are still possible without mifepristone, it can be less effective and more painful. “We’re talking about imposing suffering on medication abortion patients across the country,” Littlefield says.

      • Project Censored ☛ “Cyber Misogyny” on the Rise During COVID-19 Pandemic – Validated Independent News

        In a 2015, Nicole Etherington, then an advanced PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario, coined the term cyber misogyny to describe “the various forms of gendered hatred, harassment, and abusive behavior targeted at women and girls via the internet.” Etherington’s 2015 brief defining the topic described the internet as a “new frontier for misogynistic hate, harassment, and abuse” and detailed some of its real-world consequences, including psychological distress, public humiliation, identity theft, job loss, and suicide. (Dr. Etherington is now a Senior Research Associate in the Clinical Epidemiology Program at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.)

      • The Nation ☛ Protecting Survivors of Human Trafficking in New York

        At an undisclosed location in Flushing, Queens, sits the windowless office of the Garden of Hope, an abuse treatment center tending to a largely Chinese-speaking community of women. It counts survivors of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and teenage dating violence among its attendees, many of them immigrants. Four counselors form the Garden’s human trafficking division, which looks after victims of the underground networks of New York City.

      • Shadowproof ☛ Protest Song Of The Week: ‘We Were Here’ By Aysanabee

        Originally published at Ongoing History of Protest MusicBorn Evan Pang, Aysanabee is a Canadian Indigenous multi-instrumentalist, producer, and singer-songwriter. He is Oji-Cree and began creating music under his mother’s maiden name in order to reclaim his family name. Aysanabee’s mother gave him the last name Pang because she felt that a non-Indigenous name would make it easier to find employment.

        His 2022 debut album “Watin” was named after his grandfather. His grandfather was renamed from Watin to “Walter” by the McIntosh Residential School in northwestern Ontario that he was forced to attend.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Techdirt ☛ Congress Lets The FCC’s Spectrum Auction Authority Lapse For No Good Reason

        Last week, Congress failed to shake off corruption and buckled to a telecom industry’ smear campaign to scuttle the nomination of Gigi Sohn to the FCC. This week, the government body shifted from corruption to ordinary incompetence, after it failed to renew the FCC’s Spectrum Auction authority for no coherent reason.

    • Monopolies

      • TruthOut ☛ Sanders Says “Much More” Must Be Done After Insulin Maker Announces Price Cuts
      • Techdirt ☛ Microsoft Inks 2 More CoD Multiplatform Deals With Game Streaming Services

        Microsoft continues to make moves to get its purchase of Activision Blizzard past the various regulatory bodies that have voiced their concerns. While there are plenty of signs that the EU regulators are getting ready to approve the deal, there is still the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the States to get past. Microsoft’s strategy for getting over those hurdles has been very clear: ink as many decade-long deals to put the Call of Duty franchise on as many platforms as possible to show regulators that they aren’t planning on bringing games to exclusivity. Microsoft already has a deal in place for this with Nintendo and a proposed deal for it with Sony, which has been the main private objector to this purchase to begin with.

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Authorities Arrested ‘Leaders’ of Prolific Piracy Release Group EVO

          EVO, a P2P release group responsible for many high-profile movie screener leaks, mysteriously disappeared late last year. Anti-piracy coalition ACE now confirms that it identified the leaders of the EVO group around the same time. Several people were arrested and ACE is now collaborating with Portuguese authorities in an ongoing investigation.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Operation 404: 11 Arrests, Hundreds of Pirate Sites, Apps & Domains Blocked

          Brazilian authorities are reporting a new wave of action as part of anti-piracy initiative ‘Operation 404′. With support from the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, MPA Latin America, and the Entertainment Software Association, 200 illegal streaming and gaming sites,128 domains and 63 music apps are reported blocked. Raids on locations across Brazil led to 11 arrests.

        • Creative Commons ☛ Calling All Copyright Advocates: CC Copyright Platform Now Accepting Funding Proposals

          The Creative Commons Copyright Platform is a collaborative space for people who are interested in copyright policy issues. We work in a transparent, professional, ethical and public manner to undertake projects and activities aimed at fulfilling agreed-upon, collaboratively developed goals and principles. 

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Crazy CDDA Moment

        Bridges are a tricky thing to wire up aright, so sometimes you’ll see “bridges to nowhere” in Cataclysm: Daring Driving Ahead, as in real life…presumably the procgen has less pork. As it turns out you can drive over the gap if you don’t mind some damage to the vehicle. I suck at driving and managed to hit one more set of guard rails than was necessary; good thing I don’t know how to drive in real life?

      • Right think, different think?

        I am writing this today because of something that’s been heavily on my mind lately. Beliefs can divide and kill. Having “correct” doctrines is not necessarily an indicator of life transformed by the Holy Spirit.

        As I observe the Christian world of the United States today, it’s quite fascinating to think about some Christians’ willingness to choose LGBTQ+ issues as the hill they’re going to die on, just as they chose issues such as the defense of segregation and slavery in the past. As in the past, denominations and churches engage in acrimonious fights over matters such as ordinations of LGBTQ+ ministers and whether to include non-binary and trans persons into the life of the church.

    • Technical

      • Downloading Demos with steamctl

        steamctl is a neat tool to download Steam games on platforms that don’t have their own steam client, like OpenBSD. Usually, you download games you own this way…

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

Links 16/03/2023: OpenSSH 9.3 Released and WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 2, Lapdock News

Posted in News Roundup at 9:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

      • Ubuntubuzz ☛ SimulIDE – The Free Electronic Workbench Software

        Simulide is a free/open source electronic workbench software, that is, a real-time circuit simulator with PIC, AVR and Arduino simulation. It is suitable for hobbyist and student in electronic engineering. It is available for GNU/Linux, Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) and MacOS. It reached version 1.0.0 release candidate III on Wednesday, 12 October 2022. Here at Ubuntu Buzz we want to convey the message to all to try, use and, if you can, join the development. Happy studying!

      • Android Police ☛ The best open source alternatives to Google Calendar

        If you’re worried about your digital privacy, you probably know that using Google apps is not ideal. Although the tech giant has taken steps to give people more choices about the data they share, it still has a lot of work to do. Fortunately, open source apps can help you keep your data secure, as none of your data within the app can be tracked or shared without your knowledge.

        Google Calendar is an excellent calendar app. Still, there are plenty of open source alternatives available for Android. If you’re willing to sacrifice some functionality, these apps should fulfill most of your calendar needs. If you’ve just picked up a new Android phone, install one immediately to keep your data secure.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Peter Czanik: Syslog-ng 101, part 11: Enriching log messages

        This is the eleventh part of my syslog-ng tutorial. Last time, we learned about message parsing using syslog-ng. Today, we learn about enriching log messages.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ How to Enable BBR on CentOS Stream 9?

        Hello, friends. We already know that many home servers are deployed with CentOS 9. So by enabling BBR you will be able to get better bandwidth usage and thus improve their speed. Let’s get started. What is BBR? BBR (Bottleneck Bandwidth and RTT) is a congestion control algorithm written by Google software engineers.

      • Trend Oceans ☛ How to Manually Install GNOME Extensions From a ZIP File on Any GNOME

        Not able to install or use GNOME Shell Integration on your browser? Then don’t dwell too much because you can also manually install extensions from a zip file using the following steps: After installing a fresh distribution/operating system, we all customize the system according to our preferences.

      • Trend Oceans ☛ How to Install and Use WhatsApp Client in Linux

        Looking for a WhatsApp client application similar to the Signal desktop client? Then you should try “WhatsApp for Linux,” which is not an official client but does all the most important things to connect with users.

      • Net2 ☛ How to fix Bluetooth connection issues on Ubuntu 22.04

        In this guide, we will walk you through the steps to solve Bluetooth connectivity on Ubuntu 22.04 issues step by step. Whether you’re struggling to pair your devices, experiencing problems connecting, or dealing with annoying disconnections, we’ll share some troubleshooting techniques that will help you fix common Bluetooth issues on your Ubuntu system.

      • Red Hat ☛ A tutorial on Middleware Automation Collections

        Getting up to speed with Ansible Middleware Collections is easy, and installing the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform only requires a few steps. This tutorial demonstrates six steps to configure a WildFly instance using Ansible by preparing a local machine with the necessary tooling and then deploying an instance of WildFly using the WildFly collection provided by the Ansible Middleware.

        Step 1: Install Ansible Automation Platform

        First, let’s get Ansible Automation Platforminstalled on the control node. A control node is a machine from which we will push the configurations to the managed nodes/hosts. Managed nodes are the ones we would like to configure and they can be defined under inventory. You can install AnsibleAutomation Platform using your preferred method. Refer to the installing Ansible documentation for details.

      • How To Reset Kali Linux Password in 2023 (The Easiest Way)

        As you already know Kali is an open-source, Debian-based Linux distribution that was previously known as BackTrack. It aims for advanced penetration testing and security auditing. If you have forgotten your root password and want to reset Kali Linux password this is the best tutorial.

      • Linux Handbook ☛ Ping Sweep Using nmap on Linux

        Ping sweep is the ability to ping multiple devices at once. This can be a lifesaver when looking at which devices are up from the stack of machines while troubleshooting.

      • Linux Cloud VPS ☛ Sign up for a LinuxCloudVPS today

        In this tutorial, we will explain how to install Grafana on AlmaLinux 9 OS.

      • Linux Cloud VPS ☛ Sign up for a LinuxCloudVPS today

        Moodle is an open-source platform for online learning. It is a Learning Management System used by educational institutions that enable them to create online courses, training, learning and assignments. Originally, Moodle was known as an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Moodle on AlmaLinux 9.

      • TecMint ☛ How to Install Firefox on RHEL and Debian Systems

        In most modern Linux distributions, the latest version of Firefox has been already installed from the default distribution package manager and configured as the default browser.

        In this article, we will explain other ways of installing the latest version of Firefox on RHEL-based distributions such as CentOS Stream, Fedora, Rocky, and AlmaLinux and Debian-based distributions such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint.Table of Contents11. Install Firefox Using Package Manager2. Install Firefox Using Flatpak3. Install Firefox Using Snap4. Install Firefox from Source in LinuxUninstall Firefox from Linux System

    • Games

      • Positech Games ☛ Speeding up my game from 59fps to 228 fps.

        I recently saw a comment online that the ‘polls’ screen in Democracy 4 was horribly slow for a particular player. This worried me, because I pride myself in writing fast code, and optimizing to a low min spec. The last thing I want to hear is that my game seems to be performing badly for someone. I thus went to work on improving it. This involved about 15 mins looking at the code, about an hour musing, while trying to sleep, and about 20 mins coding the next day, plus an hour or more of testing, and profiling. Here is what I did, and how I did it.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ The frantic Unrailed! gets a big free underwater update

        Trains underwater? It’s happening. The frantic and hilarious Unrailed! just got a big free content upgrade.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Proton Experimental fixes up Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, BloodRayne, Prototype

        Valve have put out a fresh update for Proton Experimental for Steam Deck and Linux Desktop, bringing more compatibility for Windows games. Here’s all the latest and how to switch to it.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Steam Deck OS 3.4.6 out now with DOOM Eternal Ray Tracing

        Valve has now promoted the recent Steam Deck OS Preview to Stable, giving all Steam Deck owners an updated graphics driver that brings Ray Tracing for DOOM Eternal.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Sci-fi submarine sim Barotrauma floats out of Early Access

        Barotrauma, a game that’s about exploring the ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa, where many horrors wait below the surface of the water. A game that can go from gentle hums to chaos at any moment, it certainly something if you manage to gather a few people together. It does also have a single-player mode too.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Lancer Tactics announced adapting the tabletop roleplaying game

        Love your mechs? Lancer Tactics was announced recently, as a video game adaption of the popular crowdfunded tabletop roleplaying game.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Marble It Up! gets Native Linux support in Beta

        Up for a challenge? Marble-rolling platformer Marble It Up! just recently gained Native Linux support in a Beta.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • New Releases

      • IPFire Official Blog ☛ IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 174 is available for testing

        The next Core Update is ready for testing: IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 174. It is a traditional spring clean release which updates major parts of the core system and comes with a large number of bug fixes throughout.

        This update also comes with a number of security patches in Apache, cURL and more, but none of them have been assessed as being exploitable on IPFire. Nevertheless, we intend to bring those updates to all of our users as soon as possible, and encourage speedy installation of Core Update 174 after its testing phase has been completed successfully.

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Beta News ☛ Fedora Linux 38 Beta ready for testing

        Fedora 38 is finally available for download… in Beta. Yes, the pre-release version of the Linux-based operating system can be installed now, but keep in mind, it is mostly intended for testing. Remember, folks, it is never wise to run an early version of a Linux distribution on your main machine due to bugs and potential data loss.

        If you understand the risks and decide to give the operating system a go, you will be treated to some exciting things, such as the GNOME 44 desktop environment and improvements to the rpm package manager. A full changelog can be seen here.

      • OMG! Linux ☛ Fedora 38 Beta is Now Available to Download

        Fedora 38 beta is available to download ahead of a planned stable release in late April.

      • It’s Ubuntu ☛ Fedora Linux 38 Beta Released

        The beta version of the upcoming Fedora Linux 38 operating system is now available for download. Fedora Linux 38 Beta is powered by the latest Linux 6.2 kernel and it features  GNOME 44 Release Candidate desktop environment.

      • What Is Fedora Linux Good For?

        Fedora won “Most Memorable Booth” at the So Cal Linux Expo 20x. I’ve had multiple people ask me why and if we had some kind of gimmick. To be fair, we did have excellent swag this year and a great crew of people at the booth, but in my opinion, it was our enthusiastic community of users who made it truly exceptional.

        This year, instead of asking overly generic questions like “Do you use Fedora?” and “Have you tried Kinoite or Silverblue yet?”, I decided to ask “What’s something fun or interesting you’re doing with Fedora these days?” and the answers very much did not disappoint.

      • Marcin Juszkiewicz ☛ Another Apple product at home

        Laptop boots to U-Boot. Then Grub is loaded and then it was Fedora Linux 37 system with custom kernel and some modifications. So far there is no installer support — mostly due to Apple partitioning and how boot selection is done.

        I will not go with what works and what does not as it is work in progress all the time. Asahi Linux project has “Feature Support” wiki page for it.

        Spent some time on customizing system to have encrypted /home partition, boot progress instead of kernel output etc. Then copied some settings and data.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • It’s FOSS ☛ 9 Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) Features We Spotted So Far

        Ubuntu 23.04 is due for release next month.

        It is not a Long-Term Support version. So, not everyone needs this upgrade.

        Whether you want to upgrade or not, it is always exciting to check out the upcoming features, right? Let us take a look at them.

      • Ubuntu ☛ The Lunar Lobster has landed ahead of Ubuntu 23.04

        The legacy Ubuntu Desktop installer is beginning its descent this year to be replaced by Subiquity, a new installer that aligns the desktop and server codebases alongside a refined first time user experience. Finally, the desktop environment will soon complete its transition to GNOME 44 to ensure good health and usability improvements for all users.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Linux Gizmos ☛ ROCK3 Model C board starts at $39.00

        The Rock 3 Model C is another single board computer powered by the Rockchip RK3566 with 0.8 TOPs NPU. Radxa’s new SBC supports up to 8GB RAM, 128GB eMMC and it can be powered with PoE HATs.

        [...]

        The ethernet port supports PoE (Power-over-Ethernet), with an additional PoE HAT. Radxa also mentions that this board is mechanically compatible with “many of the existing Raspberry Pi 4 accessories”.

        The Getting Started page indicates that the Rock 3 Model C can boot up from the eMMC module or from a microSD card. The Downloads page currently lists images (Pre-release) for Debian Bullseye and Ubuntu Server 20.04.

      • CNX Software ☛ ROCK 3C SBC – A $39+ Raspberry Pi 3 lookalike with Rockchip RK3566 AI SoC, M.2 NVMe SSD support

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Purism ☛ Desktop Apps on the Lapdock

        The Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA is our pocket-sized computer running nearly the exact software as our Librem 14 Laptop. Some desktop applications don’t yet adapt to the Librem 5 screen, but with a Lapdock Kit you can run a full suite of desktop applications like on the Librem 14. Let’s look at some of the full-sized desktop software you can run today on the Librem 5 attached to a Lapdock or external monitor.

        For visual artists

        Visual artists will be happy to find helpful tools tucked away in our software repos. For instance, Krita and GIMP are both powerful painting and image manipulation programs.

      • Make Use Of ☛ Can You Daily Drive a Purism Librem 5: Is Mobile Linux Ready?

        The Librem 5 by Purism is a smartphone powered by the Linux kernel. Is it good enough to replace Android or iOS as a daily driver smartphone?

        Is Purism’s Librem 5 usable as your daily phone? If you’ve grown accustomed to the apps available in the Play Store or Apple App Store, then the answer is no. Purism’s device simply doesn’t offer that type of experience.

        But there are many people looking for something different. They’re not asking if the Librem 5 can beat Android or iOS at being Android or iOS. They’re asking whether the Librem 5 is actually usable as a phone, period. And, well, yes, but also no. It depends.

      • Ken Shirriff ☛ Reverse-engineering the multiplication algorithm in the Intel 8086 processor

        In this blog post, I explain the multiplication process inside the 8086, analyze the microcode that it used, and discuss the hardware circuitry that helped it out.3 My analysis is based on reverse-engineering the 8086 from die photos. The die photo below shows the chip under a microscope. I’ve labeled the key functional blocks; the ones that are important to this post are darker. At the left, the ALU (Arithmetic/Logic Unit) performs the arithmetic operations at the heart of multiplication: addition and shifts. Multiplication also uses a few other hardware features: the X register, the F1 flag, and a loop counter. The microcode ROM at the lower right controls the process.

      • Raspberry Pi ☛ How was your Pi Day?

        Greetings. I trust you had a splendid March 14th or, if you’re one of us, Pi Day, yesterday. Yes, we know it doesn’t really work unless you use the American date format, but for one day a year, we’re glad our friends across the pond put the day and the month the wrong way round. Just for the one day.

      • Arduino ☛ James Bruton’s robot centipede of many legs

        Bruton built this centipede robot as a scaled-down prototype, as he plans to construct a ridable version sometime in the future. This robot, which is still quite large, let him test the unusual walking mechanisms. The robot has five segments, each of which contains two pairs of legs. The mathematicians among you will have deduced that that equals 20 individual legs. But the legs don’t operate independently. In fact, all 20 of those legs are connected mechanically. Each segment has a drive shaft that moves its legs through gears and linkages, and universal joints connect the drive shafts between segments.

      • Arduino ☛ Smart bedside mat won’t let you snooze your alarm

        This is a small mat designed to sit by the user’s bed. When the alarm goes off in the morning, the user must get out of bed and stand on that mat for five to 10 seconds. Until they do so, the alarm will continue blaring. Snooze is not an option here and the simple act of getting out of bed and standing up should be enough for most people to shake the sleep off, ensuring that they won’t fall back asleep. Best of all, this is affordable and easy to build.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Linuxiac ☛ MoonRay: DreamWorks’ Open-Source Gift to the Animation Community

      Animation has become an increasingly popular and important medium in the entertainment industry and other fields, such as education and marketing. As technology advances, so does the complexity and sophistication of animation software.

      DreamWorks Animation is a name that needs no further introduction. Founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, the company has created some animation masterpieces, including Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, etc.

      Today, however, will be remembered as a more special day in the memories of all animation artists. Why? Because DreamWorks Animation, a major player in the industry, has made a significant move by releasing its in-house developed animation software, MoonRay, available to the public as an open-source project.

    • OpenSSH ☛ OpenSSH 9.3 was released on 2023-03-15.

      This release contains fixes for a security problem and a memory safety problem. The memory safety problem is not believed to be exploitable, but we report most network-reachable memory faults as security bugs.

    • OpenSSH ☛ Announce: OpenSSH 9.3 released

      New features

      * ssh-keygen(1), ssh-keyscan(1): accept -Ohashalg=sha1|sha256 when outputting SSHFP fingerprints to allow algorithm selection. bz3493

      * sshd(8): add a `sshd -G` option that parses and prints the effective configuration without attempting to load private keys and perform other checks. This allows usage of the option before keys have been generated and for configuration evaluation and verification by unprivileged users.

    • OpenSource.com ☛ How I returned to open source after facing grief

      Returning to the open source community after a period of grief can be challenging. It’s also an opportunity to reconnect with something you are passionate about and make a positive impact in the world. In time, you’ll find that you’re able to pick up where you left off, and re-engage with the community once again.

      Initially, it may take some time to get back to the rhythm of contributing. It helps to schedule some time in your calendar for open source work. It can be weekly/bi-weekly, depending on your availability. Remember, every contribution counts, and that is the beauty of the open source world. This trick will help you to get into a regular routine.

    • Medevel ☛ Benefits of Using Open Source Knowledge Base + Top Tools

      Want to build an open source knowledge base? Learn everything about this solution, its pros and cons, including tools to use with our article.

    • Alex Ellis ☛ Docker is deleting Open Source organisations – what you need to know

      Why is this a problem?

      Paid team plans cost 420USD per year (paid monthly)

      Many open source projects including ones I maintain have published images to the Docker Hub for years

      Docker’s Open Source program is hostile and out of touch

    • Ruben Schade ☛ This is my first post backed up to Codeberg

      If you’re reading this, it means my blog source (mmm, sauce) backup has successfully migrated to Codeberg. I’ll update my source namespace references and other links in the coming days.

    • Content Management Systems (CMS)

      • WordPress ☛ WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 2

        WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 2 is now available for download and testing.

        This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC2 on a test server and site.

    • Education

      • Paolo Melchiorre ☛ PyCon Italia 2023 PyCon Italia 2023 logo

        Keeping in mind the Pythonic principle that “simple is better than complex” we’ll see how to create a web map with the Python based web framework Django using its GeoDjango module, storing geographic data in your local database on which to run geospatial queries.

      • Pierre Equoy ☛ Quick tests using the Python interpreter

        One thing I love about Python is how it can be used to very quickly prototype or try stuff thanks to its interactive interpreter, also often called REPL.1 In this article, I’ll show you how I use it to run quick tests and verify assumptions.

    • Programming/Development

      • Daniel Lemire ☛ Runtime asserts are not free

        One might object that you can choose to only enable assertions for the debug version of your binary… but this choice is subject to debate. Compilers like GCC or clang (LLVM) do not deactivate asserts when compiling with optimizations. Some package maintainers require all asserts to remain in the release binary.

      • Abin Simon ☛ Splitting and joining using tree-sitter

        You can use this to split/join arguments in a function definition or call into multiple lines or split/join items in a json doc.

        You might think it is a simple job that a “split by comma” can do, but you would be wrong. What if you have a , in a string argument or if one of the arguments is a function that has arguments inside it or a list within a list. What if the user just puts a lot of empty newlines in between? The package function deals with all of this by letting things built by smarter people (tree-sitter) deal with it. We just ask it to get us the list of arguments which we arrange how it supposed to be.

      • Container Journal ☛ Software Architecture in a Cloud-Native World

        What exactly do software architects do? When you think of a software architect, you think of a primarily technical position within the development organization. In many people’s minds, a software architect is just a title applied to the most senior developers working on a project. After all, if you are

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • Hans-Dieter Hiep ☛ Correctness of Two Sorting Algorithms

        We had a look at two sorting algorithms: gnome sort and bozosort. The purpose of a sorting algorithm is to operate on an array and rearrange its elements in order. The two algorithms presented are not the most efficient sorting algorithms, but that is not of our concern: instead, we will look at them from the perspective of their correctness.

        The main questions answered in this article are:

        What is the (intuitive) argument of correctness of these algorithms?

        How to write down a proof outline for these algorithms?

    • Education

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Proprietary

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Patrick Breyer ☛ e-ID: Decentralised storage and right to anonymity are additional Pirate successes in final trilogue mandate

          On Thursday, the European Parliament is expected to formally adopt its final position on the European Electronic Identity (e-ID), before going into trilogue negotiations with the Council of the European Union. In addition to privacy successes in the leading industry Committee, Pirate Party MEPs were able to implement additional data protection safeguards into the final text via the Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE). Most importantly the content of a user’s identity wallet, which may include sensitive medical data, payment data or criminal records, would be stored on the user’s device only unless they explicitly choose that an external cloud copy should be kept. The text also protects the right to use digital services anonymously by providing that digital services should be provided without electronic identification or authentication where reasonably possible.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • The Strategist ☛ Policy, Guns and Money: Diving into the AUKUS submarine announcement

        After the long-awaited AUKUS submarine announcement, ASPI director Bec Shrimpton and senior analyst Malcolm Davis give their views on the decisions unveiled in San Diego this week.

      • AntiWar ☛ The Urbanity of Evil: 20 Years After the Invasion of Iraq

        Vast quantities of lies from top US government officials led up to the Iraq invasion. Now, marking its 20th anniversary, the same media outlets that eagerly boosted those lies are offering retrospectives.

      • AntiWar ☛ Is a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Imminent?

        Originally posted at TomDispatch. News flash! Ten thousand Marines and other U.S. troops recently invaded southern California and captured Twentynine Palms in the Mojave Desert — 1,200 square miles of desert seized! Oh, wait, my mistake!

      • The Strategist ☛ Australian SSNs will open up opportunities for advanced undersea operations

        The announcement of the agreed pathway for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) under the AUKUS deal provides clarity about how and when Australia will have this important capability.

      • The Strategist ☛ Advances in detection technology could render AUKUS submarines useless by 2050

        Speaking at a summit in San Diego on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a decades-long strategy to deliver the most costly defence project in Australia’s history.

      • Atlantic Council ☛ What’s next for the US-UK-Australia submarine partnership?

        Dive into the details of the AUKUS submarine partnership just announced in San Diego by US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

      • JURIST ☛ US claims military drone downed by Russian fighter over Black Sea was legally flying in international airspace

        The US military Tuesday announced a Russian fighter jet collided with and downed a US drone over the Black Sea. The US claims Russia downed the drone in international airspace while it was acting in accordance with international law.

      • Defence Web ☛ France provides VAB armoured vehicles to Benin

        France has delivered a first batch of VAB armoured vehicles to the Beninese Armed Forces, which will use them for counter-terrorism and other security tasks. The eight ex-French vehicles were handed over in Cotonou on 20 January by Marc Vizy, the Ambassador of France to Benin.

      • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Lesseps, The Suez Canal And Some Takeaways

        Anyone could be forgiven for not having heard of Ferdinand de Lesseps — a French engineer, he was obsessed with shortening travel distances to enhance commerce, among other things.  But a case can be made that he extended British rule in India by nearly a century.  Is this a wild exaggeration?  Judge for yourself.

      • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Debates about Islamic reform loom larger as Ramadan approaches

        Reform of Islamic jurisprudence was the elephant in the room when two prominent Saudi clerics recently clashed publicly on whether apostasy was punishable with death under Islamic law. The debate’s timing on a Saudi state-controlled, artsy entertainment channel, Rotana Khalijiya, suggested as much.

      • Modern Diplomacy ☛ RAND Corp. report: “U.S. Policy and the trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine conflict”

        Analysts in the United States are saying increasingly that the ‘conflict in Ukraine should be resolved through negotiations.’ Nevertheless, RAND is issuing another report calling for a settlement. They understand that the Ukrainian side, with all the support of the West, began to lose heavily.

      • France24 ☛ FRANCE 24 concludes audit of four journalists from its Arabic language service

        Following the audit that authenticated the posts, FRANCE 24 notified the production company which employs Joëlle Maroun in Lebanon that the channel is ending all collaboration with this journalist because of the intolerant messages posted on her personal accounts, which are the antithesis of the values defended by the international channel and are criminally reprehensible. FRANCE 24 will also file a complaint against her for the damage done to the channel’s reputation and to the professionalism of its newsroom.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Environment

      • New Hampshire Public Radio ☛ Why a cookie recipe made this NH Girl Scout go rogue

        “So, palm oil causes 2 percent of major deforestation and climate change,” Sophia said, reciting from memory what she found through online research and books. “Because of palm oil, 1,000 to 5,000 orangutans are killed every year. There are also ties to child labor, human trafficking, and slavery in the harvesting of palm fruit.”

      • Vice Media Group ☛ East Palestine Derailment ‘Foreseeable and Preventable,’ Ohio Attorney General Lawsuit Alleges

        Freight rail workers across the industry have been sounding the alarm for years that safety practices have become secondary to profits, as Motherboard has previously reported. Car inspections which could detect mechanical malfunctions that cause derailments have been reduced to save time and money. After company notices started prioritizing efficiency, speed, and reduced dwell time ahead of safety, some Norfolk Southern workers adopted a new mock slogan for the company: “Safety Fourth.”

      • uni Stanford ☛ White House Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi calls for optimism amid Willow Project approval [Ed: Criminal calls for "optimism" after robbing the bank. So why rob the bank?]

        President Biden’s National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi joined former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in a conversation on job growth, the administration’s goals and approval of the Willow Project at Stanford on Monday.

      • Science Alert ☛ First Footage of Giant London-Sized Iceberg Reveals Its Breathtaking Scale

        And it’s even bigger underneath.

    • Finance

      • Reason ☛ Bailouts Should Not Be the Norm

        During the pandemic, the U.S. mortgage market avoided collapse without any bailouts. Here’s how.

      • Quartz ☛ UK workers are going head to head with the government

        UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will announce his spring budget on Wednesday (March 15), delivering a speech amid a week of strikes across Britain’s health, education, and transport sectors.

      • Quartz ☛ These are the countries with the biggest gender wage gaps

        The Covid-19 pandemic set back decades of progress towards gender equality, according to a report by the International Labour Organization. On average, the report says, women are currently paid 20% less than men globally.

      • Quartz ☛ A California court voted to uphold Proposition 22 in a win for Uber and Lyft

        A California appeals court ruled on Monday (March 13) that companies like Uber, Lyft, and Doordash can classify their gig workers as independent contractors under Proposition 22, a ballot initiative state voters passed in 2020.

      • Quartz ☛ Salary transparency alone won’t close the pay gap

        A growing number of US states and localities have laws mandating pay transparency, with requirements varying from state to state. Beginning in 2021, Colorado required all companies to include a salary range and benefits on their job listings.

      • Quartz ☛ Inflation slowed in February⁠—another reason for the Fed to slow rate hikes

        US consumer prices rose by 0.4% from January to February, while the year-on-year rise in prices dropped from 6.4% in January to 6% in February, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

      • Reason ☛ Inflation Isn’t Going Away

        Prices rose by 0.4 percent in February and core inflation was up 0.5 percent, the third consecutive month that it has increased.

      • NYPost ☛ Chuck Schumer gives donations linked to Silicon Valley Bank to charity

        Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has rid himself of political contributions tied to the failed Silicon Valley Bank, giving the campaign funds to charity, according to multiple reports on Tuesday.

      • New York Times ☛ Stripe Raises New Funding That Values It at $50 Billion

        The start-up, which provides payment processing software to companies including Amazon, raised $6.5 billion in its new financing from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Thrive Capital. Stripe, which said it didn’t need the money to run its business, plans to use the funding to help employees sell their company shares and cover the taxes related to their stock compensation.

      • NPR ☛ For 40 years, Silicon Valley Bank was a tech industry icon. It collapsed in just days

        The bank’s collapse has had a unique impact on the area, said San José State University Assistant Professor Matthew Faulkner. The school is roughly 10 miles from the bank’s headquarters in Santa Clara.

      • Johan Halse ☛ Ha ha

        I’d never heard of Silicon Valley Bank before it exploded in a shower of pretty sparks last week. Amazingly, upon just hearing the name my brain made a bunch of associations that proved to be mostly correct ‒ it WAS indeed a nasty cross-section of Wall Street and Sand Hill Road, thoroughly infested with both their money and their questionable politics. The whole fracas is obviously going to shake out badly for me and my programmer brethren in the trenches, these things always do, but that’s for my dreary future: now is a time for drinking, giggling, and gloating.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Covid-19: China lifts sweeping visa curbs on foreigners in place for 3 years

        China will once again start issuing a range of visas to foreigners as of Wednesday, the country’s foreign ministry said, in a major easing of travel restrictions in place since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The move marks the latest step towards reopening China to the outside world, as Beijing breaks with the strict […]

      • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ EU criticism of Chow Hang-tung conviction sparks condemnation from Hong Kong and Beijing

        A European Union spokesperson’s criticism of the conviction of three Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil activists has “scandalised” the city’s judicial system, the Hong Kong government and the Commissioner’s Office of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong have said.

      • Digital Music News ☛ Meta Queues Up 10,000 More Layoffs, Dropping NFTs As Focus

        Meta has announced an additional round of 10,000 layoffs and a pivot away from NFTs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote the move is one to streamline the company in terms of efficiency.

      • Silicon Angle ☛ Meta to let go 10,000 employees in new round of job cuts
        Four months after laying off 13% of its workforce, Meta Platforms Inc. today announced plans to let go 10,000 more employees and scrap 5,000 job postings. The layoffs will be carried out in phases. In the first phase, which will begin later this week, Meta plans make job cuts at its recruiting organization.

      • Quartz ☛ Meta announced another 10,000 layoffs as part of its “year of efficiency”

        Meta announced another round of layoffs affecting about 10,000 employees, or about 13% of its global workforce, on Tuesday (March 14). CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the downsizing in an update to the company’s “year of efficiency” plan, a blueprint for making Meta more profitable amid a squeeze in the tech industry.

      • Quartz ☛ Meta’s “year of efficiency” means job cuts, less metaverse, and more generative AI

        Mark Zuckerberg has started delivering on his promise to make 2023 a “year of efficiency.”

      • AntiWar ☛ House Democrats Attack Messengers in ‘Politicization of Government’ Hearing

        I often joke that I survived Washington because I had low expectations, but last week’s hearing of the House Weaponization of the Federal Government subcommittee would have tested the lowest of my low expectations.

      • Tom’s Hardware ☛ China’s Loongson Faces Overwhelming Obstacles Due to U.S. Restrictions

        Unlike some other Chinese companies that use Arm and x86 instruction set architectures controlled by Western companies, Loongson’s CPUs rely on the company’s proprietary LoongArch ISA, which is backwards compatible with the MIPS architecture. As a result, it is impossible for the U.S. government to cut Loongson’s access to the latest CPU technologies. But Loongson uses American electronic design automation (EDA) software to develop its processors, whereas its manufacturing partner SMIC uses wafer fab equipment that originates in the U.S.

      • Security Week ☛ Rapid7 Buys Anti-Ransomware Firm Minerva Labs for $38 Million

        The Boston-based Rapid7 said it spent $38 million in cash [sic] and stock to snap up Minerva Labs, an early-stage startup that raised $7.5 million venture capital funding.

      • CoryDoctorow ☛ Learning from Silicon Valley Bank’s apologists

        Here’s a terrible reason to support the SVB bailout: because if we let all the tech companies who did business with it fail, you might not be able to get into your house anymore after your smart-lock fails because the cloud service it depends on cuts off the startup that made it because their bank account went up in a puff of smoke:

        https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-fallout/

        Look, if you think the fact that my Internet of Shit door-lock failed because the company that designed it made no plan to let me into my house if they went out of business would make me sympathetic to that company, you are out of your fucking mind. If that happened to me, it would make me want to tear the lock out of my door, hunt down the CEO of the company that made it, set the lock on fire, and throw it through their front window.

      • The Wall Street Journal ☛ U.S. Threatens Ban if TikTok’s Chinese Owners Don’t Sell Stakes

        The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius—a multiagency federal task force that oversees national security risks in cross-border investments—made the sale demand recently, the people said.

        TikTok executives have said that 60% of ByteDance shares are owned by global investors, 20% by employees and 20% by its founders, though the founders’ shares carry outsize voting rights, as is common with tech companies. The company was founded in Beijing in 2012 by Zhang Yiming, ByteDance Chief Executive Liang Rubo and others.

      • Vice Media Group ☛ ‘Nobody is Safe’: In Wild Hacking Spree, [Crackers] Accessed Federal Law Enforcement Database

        Ceraolo previously provided Motherboard with details on the underground SIM swapping community, where hackers hijack phone numbers to steal victims’ cryptocurrency or their valuable social media handles. One 2020 article focused on how SIM swappers phished telecom company employees to access internal tools; another showed that SIM swappers had escalated from bribing employees to using remote desktop software to gain direct access to T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint tools.

      • India Times ☛ UAE spy chief’s firm buys into ByteDance at $220-billion value

        ByteDance Ltd. was valued at around $220 billion in a recent private-market investment by Abu Dhabi AI firm G42, a significant discount to the $300 billion that TikTok’s owner set during a recent share buyback program.

        G42, controlled by United Arab Emirates royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, acquired a $100 million-plus stake from existing investors in recent months through its 42XFund, people with knowledge of the deal said. Another fund bought into ByteDance at $225 billion shortly after, one of the people said, asking not to be identified describing non-public information.

      • EDRI ☛ Who does the EU legislator listen to, if it isn’t the experts?

        Take, for example, the proposal of the European Commission on how to combat child sexual abuse. There are inherent risks in the proposal; not only will the proposed measures be barely effective, they will also have very harmful side-effects. They will also undermine the privacy of everyone’s communications, which is harmful for everyone, including the children and youngsters that lawmakers want to protect in the first place.

        But if these aren’t the right measures, then what are? Because sexual abuse of children and youngsters is a serious problem. This calls even more urgently for measures that are proven effective and legally sound, preferably without any negative side-effects. We are not experts in fighting child sexual abuse. Thankfully, we don’t have to be. There are plenty of experts out there, including in the Netherlands. We should listen to these experts if we want to know what needs to be done.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • EDRI ☛ Iran: Digital spaces of protest and control

        The report illustrates how digitally-mediated assemblies can be controlled, surveilled, or banned in an environment of censorship, for example through abusing content moderation, VPN blocking and detention of journalists.

      • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Lawmaker Regina Ip says Instagram memes were ‘embarrassing, careless mistake’

        A series of four “Hell No Hong Kong” memes posted to lawmaker Regina Ip’s Instagram account were shared in error, she has told HKFP. The now-deleted graphics showed cut-outs of the Executive Council convenor in floral settings, in an apparent parody of the city’s “Hello Hong Kong” tourism reboot campaign.

      • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong activist to face trial over unauthorised display of posters at street booth

        A member of the League of Social Democrats – one of Hong Kong’s last remaining active pro-democracy groups – will face trial with two others in July for allegedly displaying posters without government permission last May.

      • Off Guardian ☛ The Censorship Industrial Complex

        CJ Hopkins I think something is seriously wrong with my brain. Yesterday, I hallucinated that Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives about the Censorship Industrial Complex, i.e., the US arm of the global official propaganda and disinformation apparatus that has been waging an all-out war…

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • JURIST ☛ UN concerned about human rights violations committed through use of counter-terrorism technologies

        The UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in Counter-Terrorism, Fionnuala Aoláin, Tuesday expressed concern that digital technologies used to combat terrorism contribute to human rights violations around the world.

      • PHR ☛ Even Before Earthquake, Sexual and Reproductive Health Access in Syria Marred by Conflict: Report

        As we mark 12 years of the Syrian conflict, a new report documents how targeted violence against health care personnel and infrastructure has impeded vital sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care, resulting in far-reaching tolls on the health and wellbeing of women, girls, and health care professionals. T

      • Counter Punch ☛ Andrew Jackson’s Face is a Meme for White Supremacy

        Andrew Jackson’s 256th birthday is March 15, 2023. In recognition, we are posting this excerpt from Clarence Lusane’s new book, Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and Democracy. In the book, Lusane argues that not only should Harriet Tubman’s face replace Jackson’s on the front of the US $20, her vision of abolitionist democracy should replace Jackson’s racist patriarchal model.

        Negro Fort was a garrison that was abandoned by the British during the War of 1812 and subsequently became a refuge for people who escaped slavery, Native Americans, and free blacks. Located near what is now Sumatra, Florida, at the time it was an area that was outside the United States and became one of many autonomous maroon territories. Negro Fort—originally called Fort Magazine by the British—was left fully armed when the British fled in 1815. People on the run from their white enslavers came from as far away as Virginia, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Andrew Jackson’s role in the brutal seizure of the fort in July 1816 would be one of the signature campaigns that built his military fame and ultimately propelled him to the White House.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • PC World ☛ HP printers still block third-party ink. These models have a workaround

        HP doesn’t make clear which printers use the dynamic security feature, which is what Reddit users became infuriated about — HP apparently had permitted the use of third-party ink on the OfficeJet 7740 and the OfficeJet Pro 6970, then cracked down. But HP does list some printers which can be upgraded via a firmware update to eliminate the block on third-party ink.

      • TechSpot ☛ HP keeps updating its printers to block third-party ink cartridges

        New, official ink cartridges are expensive, so introducing a feature that prevents HP printer owners from buying discounted third-party ink isn’t going earn the company a lot of goodwill. HP has already paid out millions in settlement fees after class-action lawsuits were brought by consumer groups and users accusing the firm of “underhanded” tactics and anti-competitive behavior. The most recent of these was a $1.35 million payout to customers in four European countries.

      • Ghacks ☛ HP is preventing printer users from using third-party ink

        The release notes for a firmware update for HP Officejet 6950, 6960, Pro 6960, Pro 6970 and another one HP DeskJet/Ink Advantage 2700, both mention that the software enables Dynamic Security on the printers. So it is possible this problem began then. A way to prevent this issue would be unplugging the printer from the internet to prevent automatic firmware updates. Of course, this would not be possible if you have a HP+ printer, since the cloud-based service also requires an HP account to be logged in to use the printer.

      • LifeSavvy Media ☛ HP Blocks Affordable Ink Cartridges to Make a Quick Buck

        Modern HP printers use something called “dynamic security” to detect and block unofficial ink carts. Third-party manufacturers often find ways to get around this DRM, and as a result, many HP customers grow accustomed to unofficial ink.

        But HP can update a printer’s dynamic security to patch workarounds. And this is where the problem lies—customers will spend months or years using unofficial ink carts, only to turn on their printer one day and see “Non-HP Chip Detected.” HP’s website mentions that this may occur, though customers are never warned ahead of time.

    • Monopolies

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • 🔤SpellBinding: ELMXPTN Wordo: SMILE
      • I am spent

        About over-extending, Spain and the wonders of stack machines.

        This place has been quiet. I am completely and utterly spent. Haven’t been this tired in years. I took a break from working on my self hosting setup now that it is mostly functional — not complete! — and mostly stable. I also haven’t really worked on getting myself off the cloud in two weeks. I believe I have cleared and deleted two google accounts since I last spoke about it here and certainly I have requested deletion of a bunch more online accounts. But there is more to do. I’ll pick this up again once we’re back from our vacation.

      • Winter Birch & Spruce Scenery 2013-03-15 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

        There is a little recreational road near my work, which leads to the river. During my lunch break, I took a little walk and snapped a few photos of the scenery, particularly focusing on the birch trees. Well, to be honest, I’m rather new to the study of trees, so I wasn’t really 100% certain what kind of trees those ones are. But at present the only trees I know anything about are paper birch, spruce, balsam poplar (cottonwood), alder, and aspen, and they didn’t fit what I know about the other four, so I figured they must be birch. It was not convenient, due to the snow, to get a closer look at the bark and branches.

    • Politics

      • Able (wo)man’s burden

        The answer from the site’s mostly left-leaning, mostly millenial male audience surprised me. These folks are typically quite enthusiastic of arguments in favor of public transport. But here, the response were of two kinds:

        1. We should move women like her into communal living.
        2. A person with dementia shouldn’t be allowed to walk alone, because they could get lost and die.

    • Technical

      • Following Indie Games – OpenBSD Edition

        I want to share some of my methods that help me to accomplish my goal to not miss out on interesting new indie games that can run on OpenBSD.

        There are several components to this that I am going to elaborate more on in the rest of the text. First of all, in order to know what’s new, I need to be well aware of what is not new (“Keeping Track of What Is Already Known”). Then I need sources that inform me regularly of upcoming or newly released games. Related, but not exactly the same is the goal of closing gaps in my awareness of games that have already been released. I need ways to get more information about the games’ engine information to screen if there is even a potential of running it on OpenBSD. Last, but not least, I need a way to keep an eye on games of interest until I can more definitely evaluate if they may be runnable on OpenBSD.

      • Programming

        • A bank for useful BASH scripts

          I made a repo for useful bash scripts that can come handy in daily usage or for learning purposes.
          I will continue to push more scripts as I write more.
          I hope that others will contribute their own clever scripts and maybe in the future this repo becomes a bank of shell scripts in one place.

        • ChatGPT gets very confused when you give it something similar to monty hall

          I show you three closed doors, two of which have a car behind them and one of which has a donkey. You pick a door and I open a different door revealing a donkey. I then give you the option to change your decision. If you want to win a car, should you switch doors?

          Yes, you should switch doors. The probability of winning a car by initially choosing one of the three doors is 1/3. After one of the doors with a donkey behind it is revealed, the probability of winning the car by switching to the other closed door is 2/3, which is twice as likely as the initial probability of 1/3. This is because, when you first made your choice, the car was behind one of the doors you didn’t pick, and the host revealed one of those doors. So, by switching to the other unopened door, you have a higher chance of winning the car. This probability paradox is known as the Monty Hall problem, and switching doors is the optimal strategy to increase your chances of winning the car.
          Alex Wennerberg
          Are you sure that your probabilities are correct?

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IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 15, 2023

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Links 16/03/2023: OpenSSL 3.1 Released, 10,000 More Staff Cut in Facebook, and Windows Loses 10% in Speed

Posted in News Roundup at 1:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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