03.20.23

GNU/Linux

• Desktop/Laptop

  • Unix Pioneer Ken Thompson Announces He’s Switching From Mac To Linux – Slashdot

• Server

  • The Register UK ☛ AWS delivers delayed major release of its homebrew Linux • The Register

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) has delivered a major release of its home-spun Linux distribution – albeit rather later than it first promised.

    Amazon Linux debuted in 2010 and was promoted as optimized for AWS’s infrastructure. Seven years later, the cloud colossus delivered Amazon Linux 2.

    A successor dubbed AL 2022 was announced in November 2021, along with a promise of a major release every other year, plus quarterly tweaks.

  • Neowin ☛ Amazon Linux 2023, a cloud-optimized Linux distro, is now available

    Earlier this week, Amazon announced the availability of Amazon Linux 2023, its third-generation Linux distribution. With this distribution, Amazon is promising three benefits: a high-security standard, a predictable lifecycle, and deterministic updates.

    On the security front, Amazon says that its latest operating system comes with preconfigured security policies to help you set your system up to meet various common industry guidelines. The company says that these can be set during launch time or run time. Amazon Linux 2023 also comes with a hardened Linux kernel by default for added security.

  • Slashdot ☛ 2023-03-18Amazon’s AWS Releases Fedora-Based, Cloud-Optimized ‘Amazon Linux 2023′

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Open Source Security (Audio Show) ☛ Episode 367 – Open source will never be the same

    Josh and Kurt talk about GitHub enforcing sanctions against an open source developer and Docker changing how their registry works. There’s a lot to unpack in this one. There’s a lot of happenings going on in the world of open source. We are seeing governments paying attention to open source like never before, change is coming and everything is going to change.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux mailing lists ☛ Linux 6.3-rc3

    So rc3 is fairly big, but that's not hugely usual: it's when a lot of
    the fixes tick up as it takes a while before people find and start
    reporting issues.
    
    And nothing here looks hugely worrisome. The diffstat looks a bit
    unusual in that there are relatively big changes to the scripts and
    selftest directories, but that's mainly due to the git-ignore script
    removal and some kvm selftest cleanups respectively. Nothing scary.
    
    If you ignore those parts, it's a fairly standard "two thirds drivers,
    one third rest" thing. The drivers are all over, but networking, gpu
    and sound are the usual big ones, with the fbdev code showing up
    mainly just because of a coding style fixup to the logo conversion
    scripting (mainly to use proper tab indentation). The qcom
    interconnect driver also shows up for major cleanup and fixes.
    
    Outside of those areas, it's a random collection of fixes: the usual
    arch updates (much - but not all - of it being kvm), some filesystem
    fixes (mainly cifs), core networking, tracing, and some core mm fixes.
    
    Anyway, it's early days still, but nothing here looks particularly odd.
    
    Please test and report any issues you find,
    
                       Linus
    
    

  • LWN ☛ Kernel prepatch 6.3-rc3 [LWN.net]

    The 6.3-rc3 kernel prepatch is out for testing. “”So rc3 is fairly big, but that’s not hugely usual: it’s when a lot of the fixes tick up as it takes a while before people find and start reporting issues.””

• Instructionals/Technical

  • University of Toronto ☛ Easily adjusting the minimum interval on panels in Grafana dashboards

    All of this is great and works fine right up until you do what I did, which is lengthen the scrape period and thus the necessary minimum query step for one set of metrics from our Prometheus data source. Since this is only one set of metrics, not all of them, I can’t just set a larger minimum interval for the datasource as a whole (and generally you can’t do this with Prometheus; in many configurations you’ll have different scrape speeds for different exporters). This required me to go through all of the panels and change ’30s’ to ’60s’, which was just as tedious as you’d expect in a GUI.

  • How to install NextCloud on Almalinux 9 | Rocky Linux 9

    In this article, we learn how to install and configure NextCloud on Almalinux 9 or Rocky Linux 9 for setting up your cloud.

    What Is NextCloud?

    Well, those yet don’t know NextCloud is a fork of popular OwnCloud but become more popular than that. It is also a free and open-source personal cloud solution with Enterprise solutions as well. The key benefit of using such open source software suite is it lets users store their data securely in the cloud but on a server owned by them physically or virtually. Hence, from the privacy point of view, it is an excellent alternative to proprietary cloud solutions like Dropbox or Google Drive because users have full control over their data.

  • SlashGear ☛ Install Epic Games Store On Chromebook Easily With This App

    Though Chromebooks are best used for cloud gaming, it is possible to access the Epic Games Launcher on Chrome OS using a simple and free Linux app.

  • How To Perform Disk Check? [Mac, Windows - Linux] – Tech4Gamers

    We explain how to perform a disk check so you can keep your disk safe from various errors that can corrupt it.

  • Make Use Of ☛ View Your Webcam Feed in the Linux Terminal With asciicam

    Want a webcam app that displays your camera feed inside the Linux terminal? asciicam is what you need.

  • Make Use Of ☛ How to Comment Out Lines in Linux Text Files

    Commenting out lines in configuration files affect how a Linux app or your system behaves. Learn how you can comment and uncomment lines on Linux.

  • How to Fix Error 522 in LibreOffice and OpenOffice

    LibreOffice is one of the most popular software applications used for data analysis, financial modelling, and reporting. It has some basic errors which are pre-defined. They are meant to tell you the reason for the error.

    This guide will see how to fix Error 522 (or Err:522) in LibreOffice.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Reviews

  • Distro Watch ☛ Review: Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, and Gentoo Live

    To me, this all sounds like a similar to design to NixOS, with perhaps a few improvements. I was curious to learn more about Boulder and Moss. Boulder appears to be the distribution’s build system for packages. Something more geared toward the developers and people wishing to make new packages for Serpent OS. Moss, on the other hand, seems to be the package manager (or system manager) end-users will run to perform software management. The Serpent OS website describes Moss as follows…

    I will admit, when I pictured a Gentoo-based live desktop I was picturing something more bare bones, something that might require configuration or at least launching Plasma from a command line to use. Gentoo has a well earned reputation for manual, hands-on work and configuration. The live media though is quite the opposite – polished, automatic, and effortless to use. I was impressed with this demo of Gentoo’s capabilities.

• New Releases

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-14Development Release: Fedora 38 Beta

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-15Distribution Release: Qubes OS 4.1.2

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-16Distribution Release: Murena 1.9

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1603/13 Bluestar 6.2.5

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1803/18 EasyOS 5.1

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1603/11 EndeavourOS 03-2023

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1603/14 Fedora 38-beta

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1803/18 FreeBSD 13.2-RC3

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1603/11 GParted 1.5.0-2

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1603/11 helloSystem 0.8.1

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1903/13 Kali 2023.1

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1903/16 Manjaro 22.0.5

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1903/14 Qubes 4.1.2

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1903/14 Regata 22.1.3

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1903/15 siduction 22.1.2

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1903/16 Slackel 7.6-beta2

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1903/15 Snal 1.26

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1903/17 Whonix 16.0.9.8

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1903/16 XeroLinux 2023.03

  • Distro Watch ☛ 2023-03-1703/13 Zevenet 5.13.1

• BSD

  • Undeadly ☛ (Even more) Aggressive randomisation of stack location

    In a late-stage addition prior to the release of OpenBSD 7.3, Mark Kettenis (kettenis@) has committed [more] aggressive randomisation of the stack location for all 64-bit architectures except alpha: [...]

• Devices/Embedded

  • Hackaday ☛ RP2040 Runs Linux Through RISC-V Emulation | Hackaday

    We’re used to running Linux on CPUs where it belongs, and the consensus is that RP2040 just isn’t up for the task – no memory controller, and nowhere near enough RAM, to boot. At least, that’s what you might believe until you see [tvlad1234]’s Linux-on-RP2040 project, reminding us there’s more than one way to boot Linux on a CPU like this! Just like with the “Linux on AVR” project in 2012 that emulated an ARM processor, the pico-rv32ima project emulates a RISC-V core – keeping up with the times.

    Initially, the aforementioned “Linux on AVR through ARM” project was picked as a base – then, a newer development, [cnlohr]’s RISC-V emulator, presented itself and was too good to pass up on. Lack of RAM was fully negated by adding an SD card into the equation – coupled with a small caching layer, this is a crucial part for the project’s not-so-secret sauce. A fair amount of debugging and optimization later, [tvlad1234] got Linux to run, achieving boot times in 10-15 minutes’ ballpark – considering the emulation layer’s presence, this is no mean feat.

  • Real-time Analytics News for Week Ending March 18

    Canonical announced it is teaming up with MediaTek to optimize Ubuntu for IoT innovation. The first Ubuntu images are optimized for MediaTek’s Genio 1200 System on Chip (SoC). The solution enhances AI innovation for enterprises, startups, emerging brands, and leading ODMs in diverse markets. In other Canonical news, the company announced that its Ubuntu Core OS is now compatible with Arm’s SystemReady IR system specification. In addition, the OS has achieved PSA Certified Level 1.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Tom’s Guide ☛ 7 Android camera features that will make you a better photographer | Tom’s Guide

  • Android Auto lower screen portion freezing after Coolwalk update

  • Opinion: Google Pixel is just a regular phone in markets without exclusive features

  • Business Insider ☛ Google I/O 2023 – Pixel 7a, Pixel Fold, Pixel Tablet, Android 14, and everything we expect to see | Business Insider India

  • Phone Arena ☛ 15 Galaxy devices will not receive Android 14/One UI 6.0 – PhoneArena

  • Gadgets Now ☛ YouTube Music will now auto-download recently played songs on Android

  • BGR ☛ Beats Fit Pro tips and tricks for iOS and Android users | BGR

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Norbert Preining ☛ TeX Live 2023 released

  Another interesting change is the inclusion of luametatex, a new engine which is used for ConTeXt. Development is fast in this area, so I expect that the binary will soon be out-of-date.

• OpenBSD ☛ rpki-client 8.3 has just been released

  rpki-client is a FREE, easy-to-use implementation of the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) for Relying Parties (RP) to facilitate validation of BGP announcements. The program queries the global RPKI repository system and validates untrusted network inputs. The program outputs validated ROA payloads, BGPsec Router keys, and ASPA payloads in configuration formats suitable for OpenBGPD and BIRD, and supports emitting CSV and JSON for consumption by other routing stacks.

  See RFC 6480 and RFC 6811 for a description of how RPKI and BGP Prefix Origin Validation help secure the global Internet routing system.

• Undeadly ☛ rpki-client 8.3 released

  One small but significant step for routing security on the Internet happened Sunday 19th of March 2023 with the release of version 8.3 of rpki-client.

• FSF

  • LWN ☛ The FSF’s Free Software Awards

    The Free Software Foundation has announced the recipients of this year’s Free Software Awards:

    – Eli Zaretskii (advancement of free software)
    – Tad (SkewedZeppelin) (outstanding new free software contributor)
    – GNU Jami (project of social benefit)

• Programming/Development

  • LWN ☛ LLVM 16.0.0 released [LWN.net]

    Version 16.0.0 of the LLVM compiler suite has been released. As usual, the list of changes is long; see the specific release notes for LLVM, Clang, Libc++, and others linked from the announcement.

  • Rlang ☛ Simple code for the probability weighting function according to prospect theory

    Prospect theory made its debut back in 1979 and was one of the first major attempts to address empirical deviations from expected utility theory. One of the key ingredients in operationalizing prospect theory involve conversion of probabilities to “weighted probabilities”.

    It should be noted that while there are more advanced libraries which are designed to implement prospect theoretic models (like the pt library ), my objective here was to write a function which takes a vector of probabilities and converts them into a list of weights.

  • Jan Schaumann ☛ Open sourcing code into a separate git repository

    Suppose you have a code repository that you want to open source. You go ahead and add all your license, contributor agreement, README, and any other files, but you also have a few changes that you know will remain internal. That is, you know that your open source’d code will not be the authoritative copy, but a fork of your closed copy that you will have to track separately.

    Now git is supposed to help you with this, and you know you want a local branch as well as a second remote repository, but git is notoriously unintuitive at times, so here’s the quick set up for this scenario: [...]

  • 2023-03-17Rust Firebird Client updated to v0.23.0 with a few features

  • 2023-03-16The Servo Blog: Making it easier to contribute to Servo

  • 2023-03-18My experience taking part in Season of KDE

  • Perl / Raku

    • Perl ☛ 2023-03-15Template Toolkit’s DEFAULT is not too useful

    • Perl ☛ 2023-03-14Quiq – Weekly Travelling in CPAN

    • Perl ☛ 2023-03-18The first line of Perl_CGI script, env perl vs perl only, how different?

    • Perl ☛ 2023-03-15Perl Weekly Challenge 208: Minimum Index Sum and Duplicate and Missing

  • Python

    • Glyph ☛ Building And Distributing A macOS Application Written in Python

      So, it makes sense for me to write my applications in Python to achieve this sort of portability, even though on each platform it’s going to be a little bit more of a hassle to get it all built and shipped since the default tools don’t account for the use of Python.

      But how much more is “a little bit” more of a hassle? I’ve been slowly learning about the pipeline to ship independently-distributed1 macOS applications for the last few years, and I’ve encountered a ton of annoying roadblocks.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Open Source For U ☛ Google Launches A New Open Source Effort For Healthcare Welfare

    The Check Up with Google Health 2023 event was presented by Google yesterday on YouTube and featured some of the company’s key personalities, including Dr. Karen DeSalvo, chief health officer. The new Open Health Stack programme was one of the topics covered by the participants. With the use of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards, it intends to enable developers to create health-related applications. It is the most recent HL7 standard for creating cutting-edge, patient-focused healthcare applications.

  • Ghacks ☛ Google takes on healthcare with new open-source initiative

    Yesterday, Google held “The Check Up with Google Health 2023″ event on YouTube, featuring some of the important faces of the company, including the chief health officer, Dr. Karen DeSalvo. The participants went through multiple subjects, one of them being the new Open Health Stack program. It aims to let developers build health-related apps centered around the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards. It is the latest version of the HL7 standard for building modern patient-centered healthcare applications.

Leftovers

• Glyn Moody ☛ 2023-03-172023 Bilbao

• Connor Tumbleson ☛ Written by a Human

  From the ones I selected here – you can quickly see how content to consume will get more and more difficult to discern human generated vs machine. Imagine a company or business that writes a new post/blog weekly to stay relevant on searches. I’m guessing with a simple prompt of that week’s content – the entire post may be generated.

  This may not be a terrible thing as these tools continue to evolve, but I’m also nervous that much like SPAM dominates the amount of emails we get – that AI generated content will dominate our media consumption.

• Hardware

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Why are they called du Pont connectors?

    You know those tiny header connectors that computers use to attach power buttons and speakers to motherboards? I’ve always known them as du Pont connectors. I never really thought why, though I assumed it was for the same reason they’re called Molex connectors.

  • [Old] Matt Millman ☛ Why do we call these “DuPont” connectors?

    The company we have to start with is Berg Electronics, originally based in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. It was them who introduced the Mini-PV connector in the 1950s which looks very similar the connectors we call “DuPont” connectors, and is the first type of its kind. But they’re not the same. This page details the differences.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • NPR ☛ Opioids are devastating Cherokee families. The tribe has a $100 million plan to heal

    Many of the families around Tahlequah tell stories of how prescription pills wrecked their lives and damaged their children.

    Brenda Barnett, a Cherokee citizen, was pregnant with her son, Ryan, in the 1990s when the reservation was first flooded with opioids.

  • NPR ☛ California enters a contract to make its own affordable insulin

    The state-label insulins will cost no more than $30 per 10 milliliter vial, and no more than $55 for a box of five pre-filled pen cartridges — for both insured and uninsured patients. The medicines will be available nationwide, the governor’s office said.

    “This is a big deal, folks,” the governor said. “This is not happening anywhere else in the United States.”

    A 10 milliliter vial of insulin can cost as much as $300, Newsom said. Under the new contract, patients who pay out of pocket for insulin could save up to $4,000 per year. The federal government this year put a $35 monthly cap on out-of-pocket costs on insulin for certain Medicare enrollees, including senior citizens.

• Proprietary

  • Unmitigated Risk ☛ The Growing Security Concerns of Modern Firmware and the Need for Change.

    Today’s firmware is larger and more complex than ever before. In 1981, the IBM PC BIOS was a mere 8 KB, but now UEFI, even without considering machines with BMCs, can be 32 MB or even larger! To illustrate the magnitude of the problem, Intel will soon release its next-generation SoCs with support for 128 MB of firmware!

    Essentially, UEFI has become a real-time OS with over 6 million lines of code and is still growing. This is larger than most modern operating systems. Furthermore, the various boot phases and hardware layers create significant complexity for defenders. Increased surface area leads to more vulnerabilities.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • RTL ☛ Musk says code for recommending tweets will be public

      The code used for recommending the posts suggested to users will become “open source” at the end of March, Musk said in a tweet of his own.

• Security

  • ABC ☛ Skin cancer survey hack may have ‘compromised’ personal details, Medicare numbers of participants

    Australia’s biggest skin cancer study has been hit by an unpublicised data breach, with the personal details of more than 1,000 people feared to have been accessed by hackers.

  • Data Breaches ☛ What is the cost of not purging data or moving it offline, Sunday edition

    Maybe one day, a law or regulation will require entities to purge old data that is no longer needed or requires it to be disconnected from the internet. If anyone needs a fresh example of why we need that type of law or regulation, here it is:

    Richard T. Miller, DMD, PC, d/b/a Great Neck/Mid Island Dental (“Great Neck Dental”) acquired the assets of another dental practice back in 2015. The law firm of Cooperman Lester Miller Carus LLP (“CLMC”) was hired to assist with the transaction and was provided with certain patient information.

  • Data Breaches ☛ MONTI ransomware gang leaks Donut Leaks
    

    The listing then provides the login credentials to what is allegedly Donut Leaks’ admin cpanel.

    When tested on _D#NUT:ch, however, the login credentials did not work. Perhaps D#NUT Leaks spotted the post and changed their login.

  • Data Breaches ☛ Was there a rush to arrest Pompompurin, the owner of BreachForums? If so, why?

    Bloomberg Law broke the news Friday that Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, aka “Pompompurin,” was arrested Wednesday, and a search warrant was executed at his family’s home in Peekskill. The affidavit of FBI Special Agent John Longmire claims that Fitzpatrick admitted to being “Pompompurin” and the owner and administrator of BreachForums. He allegedly made those admissions voluntarily after being advised of his Miranda rights.

  • BREAKING: Largest Crypto ATM manufacturer hacked over security hitch- Over $1.5 bitcoin (BTC) Stolen
    

    The week before saw a handful of traditional banks take a massive hit in the United States. This time, crypto seems to have been hit with its own fair share of pushbacks, as a leading global cryptocurrency ATM manufacturer recently got exploited by hackers.

    General Bytes, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency automated teller machine (ATM) manufacturers, experienced a security breach on the 17th and 18th of March.

  • Information Security Media Group, Corporation ☛ Hitachi Energy Latest Victim of Clop GoAnywhere Attacks

    Hitachi Energy joined the ranks of victims hit by the Clop ransomware group, which has exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Fortra’s widely used managed file transfer software, GoAnywhere MFT. Clop claimed responsibility for the hack, which compromised networks used by 130 different organizations.

  • Website intrusion attempt: Department of Health seeks help from Chot-In Pipa News

    India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CHOT-IN) has been asked to investigate the alleged hacking of the Health Department’s website by a Russian group The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CHOT-IN) has been asked to investigate the alleged hacking of the Health Department’s website by a Russian team. . CloudSEK, a cyber security company, said that the Russian hacking group ‘Phoenix’ has hacked into the website of the Central Health Department and stolen the information of hospitals and doctors working in them. It is said that this infiltration attempt has been made after the information that the G20 federation is likely to impose economic sanctions on Russia due to the war in Ukraine. In this case, an official of the Union Health Department said, “In relation to the alleged intrusion of the website, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Committee, which is operating under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has been consulted. The committee will investigate the matter and submit a report soon,” he said. The ‘Phoenix’ penetration team has been operational since January last year. Before this, the company has carried out infiltration operations on the websites of hospitals in countries such as Japan, Britain, and the United States.

  • Lansing Community College students, staff left in the dark due to cyberattack

    The school is working with the FBI, a cyber insurance response team, and the Michigan Cyber Command Center to solve the problem.

    LCC posted on social media Thursday that classes will not be in session Friday, but in-person classes will resume as normal on Saturday. LCC has not released the source of the cyberthreat, which started Wednesday afternoon.

    Students and faculty are still confused and concerned about what is happening on campus. Students were completely cut off from college websites following the threat. Student Jordan Clarkson said that it’s affecting his studies.

  • The Brussels Times ☛ Hospitals risk becoming major targets for cyberattacks following Saint-Pierre hacking

    Hospitals are increasingly finding themselves the target of cyber-attacks, affecting service and causing unease over sensitive data being stolen among both hospitals and patients. There are several pathways hackers use to access hospital computer systems.

    Last week, the Saint-Pierre Hospital in Brussels was the victim of a cyber-attack. With computer operations blocked and servers slow, the attack caused a widespread outage throughout the hospital which led to major delays in operations and an emergency room being shut down for a few hours.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hindustan Times ☛ ‘Show your LinkedIn profile’: Bengaluru landlord’s demand for a tenant

      The tweet received multiple responses from the tenant community in the tech capital. A user said, “This is happening quite a lot in Bengaluru, I know a couple of my friends who are ready to pay a good amount for rent but they’re asked a lot of questions and then the rent is quoted again with an increased price… They’re still hunting for a house.”

    • The Conversation ☛ 2023-03-14TikTok bans: what the evidence says about security and privacy concerns

  • Confidentiality

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Key Management and preparing for the Crypto Apocalypse

      Today, keeping sensitive information secure is more critical than ever. Although I’m not overly concerned about the looming threat of quantum computers breaking cryptography, I do worry about our approach to key management, which significantly impacts how we will ultimately migrate to new algorithms if necessary.

      Traditional key management systems are often just simple encrypted key-value stores with access controls that release keys to applications. Although this approach has served us well in the past, moving away from bearer tokens to asymmetric key-based authentication and, ultimately, the era of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) demands a different approach.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ 2023-03-15UN nuclear watchdog says 2.5 tons of uranium missing from Libyan site

  • The Hill ☛ Chinese [crackers] are getting more sophisticated with their attacks, report says

    This comes as tensions between the U.S. and China mount over a myriad of issues, including security concerns over TikTok, cyber espionage, election security, spy balloons and recent export control restrictions.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Chris Hedges: The Lord of Chaos

    The politicians and shills in the media who orchestrated 20 years of military debacles in the Middle East, and who seek a world dominated by U.S. power, must be held accountable for their crimes.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • New York Times ☛ 20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade?

    It’s not even the war’s consequences, which are broadly understood to include, at a minimum, plunging Iraq into civil war, giving rise to a new generation of jihadism and, for a time, chastening American interventionism.

    Rather, it’s question that would seem to be far simpler: Why did the United States invade at all?

  • Scheerpost ☛ War Made Easy: Will US Media Finally Admit Its Craven Complicity in Iraq War?

    This clip is adapted from the critically acclaimed documentary “War Made Easy,” produced in 2007 by the Media Education Foundation at the height of the Iraq war. “War Made Easy” takes a blistering look at how U.S. media outlets from Fox News to MSNBC enthusiastically disseminated Bush administration propaganda and helped sell a war that would kill thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, most of them innocent civilians.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Reagan Allies Schemed to Delay U.S. Hostages’ Freedom to Sabotage Carter, Alleged Witness Says

    While several of the players who could corroborate Barnes account have died — including Connally and Casey — Barnes named four people whom he had confided in about the meetings. All four — Mark K. Updegrove, president of the L.B.J. Foundation; Tom Johnson, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson (no relation) who later became publisher of the Los Angeles Times and president of CNN; Larry Temple, a former aide to Connally and Lyndon Johnson; and H.W. Brands, a University of Texas historian — confirmed with The Times that Barnes had shared his story with them.

  • New York Times ☛ A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election

    Mr. Connally did not figure in those investigations. His involvement, as described by Mr. Barnes, adds a new understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal election year. With Mr. Carter now 98 and in hospice care, Mr. Barnes said he felt compelled to come forward to correct the record.

• Environment

  • ABC ☛ Millions of dead fish wash up amid heat wave in Australia

    Millions of fish have washed up dead in southeastern Australia in a die-off that authorities and scientists say is caused by depleted oxygen levels in the river after recent floods and hot weather

  • Gannett ☛ Global warming driving more extreme droughts and floods, NASA satellites show

    Warmer air causes more evaporation during droughts and increases the amount of water available in thunderstorms and other precipitation during wet events.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • 2023-03-14Immensely stupid fragility, March 2023 [Ed: "The collapse of SVB may HELP dealing with climate change"]

• Finance

  • NL Times ☛ 2023-03-17Children more likely to break out of poverty when they catch up on language deficits

  • Terence Eden ☛ Who can tell you what to do with your money?

    In the story, the heartless bank refused to refund the fraud victim due to an absurd technicality – the money was sent to a foreign account rather than a UK account. Once again, big business bending the rules in order to protect their profits from a defenceless pensioner. Only after protests did they reimburse him. What a disgrace!

    Except, of course, that’s not what happened.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Warren Demands Probe Into Bank Failures, Urges Biden to Fire Powell

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren this weekend called on federal officials to investigate the causes of recent bank failures and urged President Joe Biden to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whom she has criticized for intensifying financial deregulation and imposing job- and wage-destroying interest rate hikes.

  • France24 ☛ 2023-03-16‘Moment of truth’ as Macron’s contested pension reform heads to final votes

  • 2023-03-15Standard Life Making False Promises About Cracking Down on Pension Fraud and Embezzlement

  • 2023-03-16NOW: Pensions Won’t Let Me Have My Money, Fails to Apologise for Months of Lying

  • 2023-03-17Speaking to NOW: Pensions About a Corrupt Employer

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Engadget ☛ 2023-03-16UK bans TikTok from government devices with immediate effect

  • Engadget ☛ 2023-03-16Twitter’s bookmark counter is a new way to convince yourself tweeting is worth your time

  • New York Times ☛ Inside the Payoff to a Porn Star That Could Lead to Trump’s Indictment

    The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has signaled he is preparing to seek felony charges against Mr. Trump; Mr. Bragg is expected to accuse him of concealing a $130,000 hush-money payment that Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s lawyer and fixer, made to Ms. Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Manhattan DA: Trump’s Intimidation Efforts Won’t Be Tolerated

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Saturday that former President Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine his prosecutorial authority won’t be tolerated.

  • Computer World ☛ Tech layoffs in 2023: A timeline

    Though technology companies announced massive layoffs last year, 2023 is looking much worse, as tech giants including Facebook parent company Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, SAP, and Salesforce — as well as many smaller tech companies — announce sweeping jobs cuts.

  • Broadband Breakfast ☛ Children’s Online Safety Bills Criticized for Compliance Burden, Plus Speech and Privacy Risks

    In addition to those two core directions, many of the state proposals have their own unique twists, Czerniawski said. For example, the Utah legislation prohibits any design choice that “causes a minor to have an addiction to the company’s social media platform.” While the bill has not yet been signed, Gov. Spencer Cox has previously indicated his intent to do so.

  • IT Wire ☛ Rapid7 Appoints Jaya Baloo as Chief Security Officer

    Jaya Baloo has also been a faculty member of Singularity University since 2017, where she regularly lectures. She serves on the audit committee of TIIN capital, a cybersecurity fund, and is also a board member of the RvT of the Dutch Broadcasting station, the NOS.

  • India Times ☛ Russia and West accuse each other of cyber attacks [iophk: Windows TCO]

    A Russian diplomat said the West has unleashed a full-scale campaign against Russia since the start of Moscow’s war against Kyiv, with the intention to test the strength of the country’s economy, financial and energy sectors, as well as its main industries.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • NPR ☛ A Florida professor says his contract was terminated for teaching about racial justice

    Students and alumni have condemned the discipline measure, arguing that the school is going against its own values of unity and academic freedom. A petition demanding the renewal of Joeckel’s contract received over 2,000 signatures as of Saturday afternoon.

    In an accompanied open letter to the university president Debra Schwinn, supporters wrote: “Restricting much needed conversations around race is — at its core — racism and discrimination itself.”

    Joeckel said racial justice has been part of his course for 12 years, calling it a “perfect topic” to teach at a Christian school.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • India Times ☛ US justice department investigating TikTok’s owner for ‘spying’ on journos: report

    The justice department is investigating the surveillance of American citizens, including several journalists who cover the tech industry, by the Chinese company that owns TikTok, according to three people familiar with the matter.

    The investigation, which began late last year, appears to be tied to the admission in December by the company, ByteDance, that its employees had inappropriately obtained the data of American TikTok users, including that of two reporters and a few of their associates.

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-17Angolan outlet Camunda News suspends operations indefinitely after police harassment

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-16Authorities detain journalists throughout Belarus, 5 remain in custody

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-17Belarusian journalist Maryna Zolatava sentenced to 12 years in prison, Valeryia Kastsiuhova to 10 years

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-14China should improve overseas media accreditation, access following restrictive political meetings

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-16CPJ calls on Uzbek authorities to ensure Karakalpak journalists are not imprisoned for their work

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-15CPJ reiterates call for Rwanda to investigate John Williams Ntwali’s death

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-14DRC defense minister files, withdraws false news complaint against reporter Stanis Bujekera

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-14Georgian authorities deny entry to Russian journalist Aleksandra Shvedchenko

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-17Indian journalist Sanjay Rana arrested in Uttar Pradesh

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-14Italian police investigate Domani newspaper in criminal defamation case

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-14Journalist Hosein Naderi revealed to have died in bombing at Afghan press event

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-17Maldives journalist Hussain Juman arrested, assaulted by police while covering opposition rally

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-17Tajik journalist Khurshed Fozilov detained on extremism charges

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-17Togolese journalists Ferdinand Ayité and Isidore Kouwonou sentenced to 3 years in prison

  • CPJ ☛ 2023-03-17Zimbabwe journalist Garikai Mafirakureva charged with publishing false information

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • France24 ☛ 2023-03-18Greece sacks police chief after clashes over deadly train disaster

  • UN ☛ Global Bottled Water Industry: A Review of Impacts and Trends

    Withdrawals for bottled water can contribute to groundwater resource depletion in areas of bottled water procurement, although case studies that illustrate this are rare. However, even if such withdrawals are small in absolute terms globally or compared to larger water consumers like irrigated agriculture, local impacts on water resources may be significant. The lack of data available on water volumes extracted by the bottled water industry is largely due to the lack of transparency and a legal foundation that would have forced bottling companies to publicly disclose extracted water volumes and assess the environmental consequences of their activities. The Global South, where safe drinking tap water is not always available, represents potential future markets for bottled water. Lack of national policies for water management may promote uncontrolled groundwater withdrawals for bottled water procurement with little or no contribution to a sustainable long-term drinking water supply.

  • NBC ☛ Navajo Nation’s long quest for water — and for the federal government to keep its promises — ends up at Supreme Court

    As part of the tribe’s efforts to assert control over its long-term future, it filed a long-shot lawsuit in 2003 arguing that the U.S. government has a duty to assess the nation’s water needs and ensure it has enough. After lengthy litigation, that case is now before the Supreme Court, which hears oral arguments on Monday.

    For the tribe, the case is about more than what rivers it can draw water from — the Navajo say it’s about ending nearly two centuries of injustice perpetuated by the federal government, which has failed to keep promises and left them to suffer on the arid lands where their ancestors settled.

  • India Times ☛ Google stops paying remaining maternity, medical leave for sacked workers: Report

    Over 100 former employees have formed a group called “Laid off on Leave”.

    They are requesting that executives compensate them for the weeks and months they were authorised to take off prior to the January job cuts.

  • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Women have historically been equal to men in Estonia

    Merili Metsvahi, associate professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu, said on Radio 2′s “Pulse” program that Estonian women were not as repressed historically as is commonly believed. The patriarchy was first acknowledged in Estonia during the second part of the 19th century. The eldest son, who also inherited the land, would become the family’s most influential member. “Truth and Justice” by Tammsaare, for example, echoes this development.

• Monopolies

  • Patents

    • 2023-03-17Our attempt at e-EQE Paper C 2023 – Road racing pedal [Ed: EQE is actually a fraud for a whole bunch of reasons. It's amazing that EQE isn't blasted in the media for it.]

    • 2023-03-16Our Paper C 2023 blog will open for comments after the end of the exam

    • IP Kat ☛ 2023-03-16EPO tries to have its cake and eat it on claim interpretation (T 0169/20) [Ed: EPO completely disregards the law. It is a dictatorship.]

  • Copyrights

    • IP Kat ☛ 2023-03-16Generative Artificial Intelligence: US Copyright Office denies registration

    • RTL ☛ How AI ‘revolution’ is shaking up journalism

      The German publishing behemoth Axel Springer, owner of Politico and German tabloid Bild among other titles, has been less coy.

      “Artificial intelligence has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was –- or simply replace it,” the group’s boss Mathias Doepfner told staff last month.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • You just can’t win on the internet

    I listen to this fairly popular podcast, Blocked and Reported with Jessie Singal and Katie Herzog. Both of the hosts have gotten in their fair share of controversy and cancellations over pieces of journalism they have published on the transgender youth subject, with Jessie receiving the majority out of the two due to his incessant responses on twitter, trying to respond to people as if they are rational actors. Well following a recent twitter blow-up, Jessie decided to deactivate his twitter, which naturally got a huge response because the twitter trans activists viewed this as a victory over one of their favorite enemies. Jessie and Katie were discussing this on their most recent subscriber-only episode when the two came to a point of disagreement. Jessie viewed his departure from twitter as a ultimately insignificant and personal decision that would have no real impact on his career. His reasoning was that no matter how careful he was about what he said or what actions he took, it would always be used, twisted, or fabricated to paint him in the worst light possible. He admits that he has a negative relationship with how he uses twitter and compulsively tries to defend himself and others from the drivel in the form of arguments that spurs from the toxic environment of twitter. I, as a fan of both his journalism and his show, can attest that this man should have left twitter a long time ago because it poisons his mind. Katie disagreed and said that Jessie was doing exactly what his detractors wanted him to do, to back down, shut up, and let them get the last word. She said that his presence on twitter was at least somewhat beneficial as an archive showing exactly which tweets and replies got twisted and amplified through a cruel game of telephone that resulted in false rumors being spread about him online. Furthermore she said that with a large percentage of journalists and editors being active twitter users that it in fact could hurt his career by not being brought into the spotlight every few months in the form of another twitter pile-on.

  • on hrt and dysphoria

    I am a cis woman. However, when I grew up, I never felt woman enough, girly enough. I personally feel like my autism made me come off boy-ish when I opened my mouth or in my mannerisms (and still kind of does), but even more importantly, I felt terrible about my body.

    It was decidedly different than feeling like you’re not pretty enough as a girl, wanting to turn heads or feel beautiful. I simply did not feel like the outside matched the inside. The other people around me usually confirmed this. Girls didn’t want anything to do with me past kindergarten and I was treated like one of the boys by the boys. In the changing rooms after school sports, the girls noticed my intense hair growth over my body and laughed and told me to shave. When I was 12, people in my grade used “it” pronouns for me to make fun of me and drive home that I am not a girl. But I wanted to be a girl so bad. I wanted to be like all the other girls. Their mannerisms, their look, the way they dress, their interests. It was more than just wanting to fit in, I fit in well with the boys already and only had male friends. This wasn’t about trying to reach an unattainable girl standard. I just felt like no one was seeing what I truly am and wanted to be, and I hated my body and how it developed, that it wasn’t feminine enough. No, this wasn’t about tomboy acceptance, I didn’t wanna be a tomboy, I wanted to be a girly girl.

• Technical

  • Programming

    • aliases

      For something more advanced, you can have an alias call a script to check a conditition before allowing the command to run. This is helpful in my git sandbox where the index.html file is sometimes a dummy file, since it faces the internet. I don’t want to check that in by accident – I want to swap the dummy for the real one before git ever executes anything.