Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 31/07/2023: Release of MX Linux 23 “Libretto”



  • GNU/Linux

    • XDA ☛ What is Linux? What you need to know about distros, kernels, and more

      Linux is something you've probably heard a lot about, but might not know exactly what it is. It's hard to define because there are so many things around us that make use of Linux in some way, like your Android smartphone. Most websites use servers that run on Linux too. In other words, Linux is everywhere.

      Linux has been around since the 1990s, with the first release of the Linux kernel arriving on Sept. 17, 1991, courtesy of Linus Torvalds. Linux is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems that all make use of the Linux kernel at their core. There's more to Linux than just a kernel, though.

    • 9to5Linux ☛ 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: July 30th, 2023

      This week we got a few good news for fans of the GNOME desktop environment as the GNOME devs have held the annual GUADEC conference, announcing some exciting new features to come like a brand-new window management system for GNOME Shell.

      On top of that, Canonical announced Ubuntu RT for Intel CPUs, Mesa 23.2 graphics stack arrived for Linux gamers, Arch Linux’s installer got a major release with more new features and many improvements, and UBports released the second Ubuntu Touch update based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Reviews

      • Distro Watch ☛ Review: Solus 4.4

        Most of my experiences with Solus 4.4 were positive ones. The installer was pretty easy to get through, the live environment was nice. I like the look of Budgie and it's fairly easy to navigate. The desktop was responsive and stable, which is always a nice combination. I especially like the Budgie-specific settings panel as it's clearly organized and doesn't overwhelm the user with choices.

        Solus ships with a pretty nice collection of default software and I like the software centre. The way it handles third-party software is a little unusual and I was hoping the software centre would support Flatpak, but this doesn't appear to be the case at this time.

        There were some problems. As I mentioned above, the theme and application style are not consistent and I think the shared password approach is likely a bug as there isn't a good reason for separate accounts to share a non-root admin password. I also feel as though having two settings panels (with similar names) is likely to cause more confusion than assistance. The biggest problem though was highly unusual: my laptop's sound card not being detected. It is very rare for me to run a Linux distribution which doesn't have working sound. Some systems mute sound or don't offer a mixer control. Solus has the volume turned up, it just can't detect my sound output device on physical hardware. Inside a virtual machine audio worked without any issues.

        I was hoping that Solus would introduce some reliability features. The distribution is a rolling release and would benefit from using technologies such as Btrfs and Timeshift to allow users to rollback packages. However, Solus defaults to ext4 for the filesystem and doesn't appear to offer any graphical tools which would help us create or rollback snapshots.

        In short, Solus does a lot of things well and often looks really nice and polished with a great collection of applications. But then there are other times when components of the distribution offer a surprisingly jarring contrast or experience - themes not matching, sound not working. There were times when I would find myself considering Solus as being one of the smoother experiences I've had so far in 2023 and the next minute I'd be fuming as I tried to figure out by what logic a user should know to right-click to the right of the file manager top bar in order to open a hidden menu to find preferences that have seemingly already been changed in the settings panel. It was a weird experience and Solus's polish in some areas meant I was repeatedly caught off guard when I ran into problems or inconsistencies in other areas.

        I don't know if Solus is here to stay now, or if this is the distribution's swan song after a valiant rescue attempt earlier in the year. I'm hoping it sticks around. I think the project is doing some things well, but it feels as though it just doesn't have the development power behind it yet to make a more consistent, complete experience.

    • New Releases

      • DebugPoint ☛ Old Hardware, New Possibilities: 4MLinux 43.0 STABLE Released

        Discover how 4MLinux's latest release is the perfect solution for rejuvenating your old PC or laptop. Learn about the impressive updates to XMMS, the extended language support, and the exciting range of downloadable extensions that take your computing experience to the next level.

      • 9to5Linux ☛ MX Linux 23 “Libretto” Is Out with Linux Kernel 6.4, Based on Debian Bookworm

        Derived from the latest and greatest Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” operating system series, MX Linux 23 comes with the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel series by default for all three editions supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

        However, MX Linux’s AHS (Advanced Hardware Support) editions are powered by the latest Linux 6.4 kernel series for those who need its new features and the extra hardware support where the Linux 6.1-powered images fail to detect your hardware.

    • BSD

      • Ruben Schade ☛ Whats the worst advice you’ve received?

        But if you’re able to spend the time building a system optimised for it, and you understand it well, you reap the rewards. Unlike me, who had to spend his Saturday fixing iptables rules for someone because I gave them Debian a few years ago for something for which FreeBSD would have been perfect.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Naman Sood ☛ Getting your SD card to detect on a Nintendo 2DS/3DS

        Note that this doesn’t just mean your partition should be formatted as FAT32. It should be formatted as FAT32, and also there’s a “partition type” byte inside your MBR that should be changed to FAT32. On a Linux system with fdisk, this is how you’d do that: [...]

      • Linux Gizmos ☛ Advantech and MOV.AI Collaborate to Simplify Mobile Robot Development

        Advantech recently announced its partnership with the robotics software solutions provider MOV.AI to simplify the development of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). One of the new Advantech PCs compatible with MOV.AI’s Robotic Platform is the UNO-238-V2 built on various Alder Lake processors.

      • Linux Gizmos ☛ NanoS3 is a tiny module based on the ESP32-S3 SoC

        The NanoS3 is described as the “world’s smallest, fully-featured ESP32-S3 module”. The open-source device is packed with diverse features including LiPo battery support and it’s compatible with programming platforms such as Arduino, MicroPython, etc.

      • Linux Gizmos ☛ AAEON’s New SBCs Utilize Alder Lake-N Processors

        This week, AAEON revealed a new Single Board Computer based on the Intel Processor N-Series platform. The UP 7000 still maintains the credit-card form factor as its predecessors, but now supports LPPR5 system memory along with various peripherals

      • Hackaday ☛ An Open-Source, Free Circuit Simulator

        The original circuit simulation software, called the Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis, or SPICE as it is more commonly known, was originally developed at the University of Califorina Berkeley in the 1970s with an open-source license. That’s the reason for the vast versions of SPICE available now decades after the original was released, not all of which are as open or free as we might like. LTspice is a popular choice but as far as a truly free and open-source circuit simulator goes you might want to try out QucsStudio.

      • Hackaday ☛ A New Educational Robotics Platform

        When looking for electronics projects to use in educational settings, there is no shortage of simple, lightweight, and easily-accessible systems to choose from. From robotic arms, drones, walking robots, and wheeled robots, there is a vast array of options. But as technology marches on, the robotics platforms need to keep up as well. This turtle-style wheeled robot called the Trundlebot uses the latest in affordable microcontrollers on a relatively simple, expandable platform for the most up-to-date educational experience.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Undeadly ☛ rpki-client 8.5 released

      Version 8.5 of rpki-client, OpenBSD's implementation of the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) for Relying Parties (RP), has been released.

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ WordPress in SeaMonkey, Firefox Troubles in Fedora, “GoogleWeb”, American Decline, and Matthew Garrett “Collaborator” and “Conference Pervert”

        So I had to get 10 whole RPMs downloaded and unpacked because Mozilla is bumping the version number uselessly and Fedora keeps shitting out one patch releases where the patch itself is quite broken and then they go back and patch it three more times.

        So I finally yanked it out with dnf remove firefox and installed Firefox 115 ESR from the Mozilla tarball and set it up with their instructions for a systemwide install and then unpacked a firefox.desktop from a Fedora RPM that sits in my taskbar with extras like “New Private Window”.

        Then I sat down and turned off and hid the DRM and spyware (like “Firefox Suggest”) all over again, and installed my add-ons. Hopefully, I get less update churn this way.

      • Mozilla

        • DebugPoint ☛ Waterfox Browser Cuts Ties with System1, Embarks on a New Journey

          In a major announcement, Waterfox, the privacy-centric web browser, has reclaimed its independence, marking a significant turning point in its journey. On July 3, 2023, Alex Kontos, the creator and lead developer of Waterfox, revealed that the browser has parted ways with System1, once again becoming a fully independent project.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • Fernando Borretti ☛ You Need More Constraints

        In general you should enforce every invariant you can tractably enforce. Most of these you can come up with while designing the database, and following a checklist (such as this post) can help. Some of them you will only come up with after the fact, looking at the data, and often wonder why you didn’t think of them.

        In either case, adding a constraint is not too time consuming, it’s just a matter of creating a migration and writing the DDL. The only tedious part is the verbosity of SQL, but GitHub Copilot is really good at this. You can write a comment explaining what you want and it usually gets the constraint right.

        You should start with the strictest possible data model, because it’s trivial to go from strict to lax: you just drop the constraints. But it is very, very hard to go from lax to strict, often it involves days or weeks or months of planning and schema migrations and data migrations.

    • FSFE

    • Programming/Development

      • Carl Schwan ☛ Debugging the keyboard navigation in your QML application

        A neat trick to debug the keyboard navigation in your QML application is to put the following code snippet in your main.qml: [...]

      • Adolfo Ochagavía ☛ Low latency logging in Rust

        Note: this blog post was not written by me. It was posted as a comment on r/rust by user matthieum, who gave me permission to repost it here. Everything below this paragraph has been taken verbatim from there.

      • Rlang ☛ Quantum Entanglement

        Welcome back to our quantum journey! Today, we’re delving into a phenomenon that lies at the heart of quantum computing’s unique power – entanglement. At a high level, quantum entanglement is the deep and mysterious link that can exist between two qubits, no matter the distance that separates them. This powerful feature allows quantum computers to process a massive number of possibilities at once and solve certain problems much faster than classical computers.

        But how do we get there? We’ll start by exploring two-qubit gates, the essential quantum operations that can bring about entanglement. The most common of these gates, such as the CNOT gate, can modify the state of one qubit based on the state of another, creating a correlation between the two.

      • Nicolas Fränkel ☛ System architecture: move authentication to the API Gateway

        When exposing an application to the outside world, consider a Reverse-Proxy or an API Gateway to protect it from attacks. Rate Limiting comes to mind first, but it shouldn’t stop there. We can factor many features in the API Gateway and should be bold in moving them from our apps. In this post, I’ll show how to implement authentication at the Gateway API stage.

      • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

        • Mark Dominus ☛ The shell and its crappy handling of whitespace

          I think what bugs me most about this problem in the shell is that it's so uncharacteristic if the Bell Labs people to have made such an unforced error. They got so many things right, why not this? It's not even a hard choice! 99% of the time you don't want your strings implicitly split on spaces, why would you? And the shell doesn't have this behavior for any other sort of special character. If you have a file named foo|bar and a variable z='foo|bar' then ls $z doesn't try to pipe the output of ls foo into the bar command, it just tries to list the file foo|bar like you wanted. But if z='foo bar' then ls $z wants to list files foo and bar. How did the Bell Labs wizards get everything right except the spaces?

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • YLE ☛ Finnish stargazers discover completely new Northern Lights phenomenon

        The society awarded the Stella Arcti prize to Heidi Rikala from Ikaalinen and Eero Karvinen from Nurmes, as well as past winners Emma Bruus from Nurmijärvi and Lauri Kangas from Espoo.

        According to a press release from Ursa, the group discovered a new phenomenon where a red arc appears in the sky in connection with bright Northern Lights.

    • Hardware

      • Bunnie Huang ☛ Name that Wäre, July 2023
      • Hackaday ☛ Turning A Window Air Conditioning Unit Into Whole-House AC

        Although air conditioning units are generally subdivided into a number of categories, including window, split and whole house/building units, they still work the same, with the compressor, condenser and expansion stages. In the case of widely available window AC units you can indeed use them as designed in a window, or as [Lou] is in the process of demonstrating, as a whole-house AC unit. The main thing to keep an eye out for here is the rated capacity of the window AC unit (in British Thermal Units, square meters/feet). In this case [Lou] used a pretty beefy $600, 24,000 BTU window unit that should be good for about 1200 sqf (~111 m2) .

      • Hackaday ☛ Vacuum Chamber Gets Automation

        [Nick Poole] does a lot of custom work with vacuum tubes — so much so that he builds his own vacuum tubes of various shapes, sizes, and functions right on his own workbench. While the theory of vacuum tubes is pretty straightforward, at least to those of us who haven’t only been exposed to semiconductors, producing them requires some specialized equipment. A simple vacuum won’t get you all the way there, and the complexity of the setup that’s needed certainly calls for some automation.

      • Hackaday ☛ Harvesting Mechanical Energy From Falling Rain

        Collecting energy from various small mechanical processes has always been something that’s been technically possible, but never done on a large scale due to issues with cost and scalability. It’s much easier to generate electricity in bulk via traditional methods, whether that’s with fossil fuels or other proven processes like solar panels. That might be about to change, though, as a breakthrough that researchers at Georgia Tech found allows for the direct harvesting of mechanical energy at a rate much higher than previous techniques allowed.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Defence Web ☛ SANDF PPE scandal brought to light

        Department of Defence officials are being investigated for apparently manipulating dozens of Covid-19 personal protective equipment (PPE) tenders, in the latest such scandal to emerge. The Sunday Times reported that officials allegedly awarded contracts worth millions of rands to legitimate companies on condition they “ceded” them to pre-selected middlemen.

      • Omicron Limited ☛ Get the 'forever chemicals' out of our drinking water

        Last month, researchers at the University of Southern California began a new study on the health effects of PFAS contamination in drinking water in Los Angeles County, focusing on the predominantly Latino communities in the east and southeast that are overburdened with environmental pollution. The multidisciplinary study, which involves researchers from USC's medical and engineering schools, aims to develop prevention strategies and large-scale, sustainable remediation solutions that can be implemented in a cost-effective manner.

      • New York Times ☛ What ‘Oppenheimer’ Doesn’t Tell You About the Trinity Test

        July is a hard month for a lot of us here in New Mexico, where thousands of people’s lives were upended by the test of the world’s first nuclear bomb. The events of July 16, 1945, weigh heavily on us. And why wouldn’t they? They changed everything. The people of New Mexico were the first human test subjects of the world’s most powerful weapon.

      • NDTV ☛ TikToker Hospitalised After Drinking Too Much Water For '75 Hard' Fitness Challenge

        Extreme sodium deficiencies, or hyponatremia, can be life-threatening if left untreated, according to Mayo Clinic.

      • Deutsche Welle ☛ Alcohol in Iran: The deadly cost of prohibition

        "Unfortunately, in recent years we have seen an increase of about 20-30% annually in the number of people who were poisoned or developed [adverse] side effects from drinking methyl alcohol," Mohammad Kazem Attari, a US-based Iranian physician and researcher, told DW.

        "As alcohol poisoning was very widespread in the cities at the same time, there is doubt that it was intentional, or rather a mistake by a local producer who added impurities to drinks during production," Attari said, comparing it to the recent wave of suspected deliberate mass poisonings of Iranian school girls.

      • Scheerpost ☛ Two Republican Lawmakers Are Blocking Food From Reaching Palestinian Refugees

        Senator Jim Risch (R-ID) and Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) are blocking about $75 million in food assistance from reaching Palestinian refugees

    • Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

      • Tom's Hardware ☛ Security Hole in Minecraft Mods Lets Hackers Execute Code Remotely

        Minecraft players and those who run Minecraft servers face a new and dangerous security vulnerability which could allow bad actors to run remote code on their computers. Dubbed 'BleedingPipe,' by a user group called MMPA (Minecraft Malware Prevention Alliance), the exploit uses Java deserialization to infect servers or clients that have one of many popular mods installed. If you don't play Minecraft on a server that has one of the mods and don't use the mods, you can't be infected.

      • Tom's Hardware ☛ AI Usage Fees Up to 15x Cheaper for English Than Other Languages

        The language you're using for a Large Language Model (LLM) can have a huge effect on its cost and create an AI divide between English speakers and the rest of the world. A recent study shows that, due to the way services like OpenAI, measure and bill for server costs, English-language inputs and outputs are much cheaper than those in other languages with Simplified Chinese costing about twice as much, Spanishing costing 1.5x the price and Shan language going for 15 times more.

      • Windows TCO

        • The Register UK ☛ US senator victim-blames Microsoft for Chinese [breach]

          Infosec in brief US senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) thinks it's Microsoft's fault that Chinese hackers broke into Exchange Online, and he wants three separate government agencies to launch investigations and "hold Microsoft responsible for its negligent cyber security practices."

          In a letter [PDF] sent to the Department of Justice, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Federal Trade Commission Thursday, Wyden argued that Microsoft enabled the attack through four distinct security failures.

    • Security

      • Gallivan notifies University of Guelph students of Fortra breach 4 months later

        The provider of health, dental, and wellness benefits at the University of Guelph (U of G) has begun notifying students of a data breach which included access to personal information.

        A post on the Central Student Association’s website says Gallivan, the provider of those plans, began sending notifications via email this week.

        CTV News Kitchener was provided an email sent by Gallivan to U of G students on Wednesday morning informing them of the breach.

      • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

        • Weekly Security News Round-up For Threats and Vulnerabilities: July 23rd to 29th

          This week’s Threat and Vulnerability Roundup is here! Cyber Writes pride ourselves in delivering a weekly roundup of the most up-to-date cybersecurity news.

          Our goal is to bring attention to noteworthy vulnerabilities and exploits, innovative attack methodologies, and essential software patches.

        • Beebom ☛ Over 40% Ubuntu Systems Impacted by Severe Vulnerability; Check If You’re Affected

          As per the latest discovery by Security Researchers S. Tzadik and S. Tamari at Wiz, two new privilege escalation vulnerabilities, codenamed “GameOver(Lay)” in the popular Filesystem OverlayFS, affect a whopping 40% Ubuntu users across the globe. Check out the details for both of these vulnerabilities, along with the steps to check if your Ubuntu system is vulnerable or not.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • The Hindu ☛ Staff nurse examination to capture biometrics of candidates

          The Medical and Health Services Recruitment Board (MHSRB) has asked the candidates appearing for the staff nurse examination on August 2 to report to the examination centre at the designated reporting time, as the registration procedure will involve capturing biometric data this time.

        • Data Breaches ☛ Cyberattacks And Compromise of Attorney Client Confidences

          In an underappreciated ruling, District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the multinational law firm Covington & Burling must comply with an SEC subpoena requiring the firm to give up the names of clients, publicly-traded corporations, in order for the SEC to investigate whether there was any trading on non-public information. This didn’t arise because of suspicious trades or other red flags on the corporate side of the ledger, but because [crackers] working for China launched a successful cyber attack on Microsoft which ultimately gave them access to the firm’s internal records.

        • Cyberattacks And Compromise of Attorney Client Confidences

          When Covington became aware of the [breach], it notified its clients in order to address its significance. What happened there is between Covington and its clients. But the SEC’s concern wasn’t about the poor client, but that the possibility that the attack put non-public information into the hands of Chinese attackers, essentially insider trading, which the SEC frowns upon. The dual problem was that while the attack gave rise to the possibility that such trading occurred, the SEC had no evidence to suggest it had, in fact, happened, but merely wanted to investigate because it might have happened and it wanted to find out whether it did or not.

        • Hackaday ☛ The British Government Is Coming For Your Privacy

          The list of bad legislation relating to the topic of encryption and privacy is long and inglorious. Usually, these legislative stinkers only affect those unfortunate enough to live in the country that passed them. Still, one upcoming law from the British government should have us all concerned. The Online Safety Bill started as the usual think-of-the-children stuff, but as the EFF notes, some of its proposed powers have the potential to undermine encryption worldwide.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Engadget ☛ 2023-07-24 [Older] The new Mercedes-Benz E-Class puts TikTok on the road
      • RFA ☛ Activist says he’ll continue to struggle for democracy in Vietnam

        He was arrested in 2019, hours after he arrived in Vietnam and met with a fellow pro-democracy activist. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “terrorism aimed at toppling the people’s administration.”

        Kham was a member of Viet Tan, a pro-democracy group with members inside Vietnam and abroad. It has been described by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as a moderate activist group advocating for democratic reform. Hanoi claims it is a terrorist organization that aims to topple the government.

      • Vox ☛ The dangerous and confusingly popular borax challenge, explained

        Borax is a chemical compound containing boron that’s sold as a laundry detergent or cleaning agent. Ingesting it can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Drinking it or bathing in it can cause skin rashes. Take borax for long enough and you could end up with anemia, according to the National Capital Poison Center. But in several online enclaves, borax is one of many dubious substances in the medicine cabinet of misinformation, touted as a cure for everything from arthritis to cancer. Drinking borax is not a new phenomenon. But on TikTok, it became a trend.

        The #boraxchallenge has more than 34 million views and counting on TikTok. Click on the hashtag and it’s not difficult to find videos of people sharing their “journey” of ingesting laundry detergent. And if you spend enough time looking at these videos, TikTok will feed you even more.

      • NPR ☛ As living memories of the Korean War fade, its consequences become clearer

        Wiedhahn said it might not have been clear at the time, but it sure is now. South Korea is democratic and among the world's leading economies, while the North is an impoverished, brutal dictatorship. Wiedhahn just wishes the United Nations force, led by the U.S., had held on to more of the Korean peninsula before the cease-fire. At a certain point they had driven North Korean forces all the way to the Chinese border before being pushed south again.

        "Now don't get me wrong. The [cease-fire] was welcomed because that meant that the Marines and soldiers were not getting killed anymore. But to me, to us who had fought in the beginning, it was kind of an anti-climactic," he said.

        At 94, Wiedhahn is president of the Chosin Few, a group of vets who fought at Chosin Reservior, a freezing 17-day battle with the Chinese army.

      • Dawn Media ☛ At least 35 killed, 200 injured in blast at JUI-F convention in KP’s Bajaur district

        “I strongly condemn the blast and want to give a message to the people behind it that this is not jihad but terrorism,” the JUI-F leader said while speaking to Geo News

      • New York Times ☛ At Least 43 Killed in Blast at Political Rally in Pakistan

        A video from the rally recorded before the explosion shows hundreds of men sitting outside beneath a cloth canopy as party officials addressed the crowd. As one district leader took to the stage, enthusiastic party workers stood up, chanting, “Allah is great,” according to one rally-goer, Sharifullah Mamond, 19. Then an explosion rocked the crowd.

      • Vox ☛ Niger’s coup and the international community’s opposition, explained

        On Sunday, ECOWAS leaders met in an extraordinary summit and gave Tchiani and the other coup leaders seven days to step down and reinstate civilian President Mohamed Bazoum, with the threat of force should they not comply in the timeframe. In the immediate term, ECOWAS closed the borders between Niger and ECOWAS countries, instituted a no-fly zone for commercial flights in and out of the country, froze the country’s assets in ECOWAS central banks and commercial banks, and instituted a travel ban and asset freeze for those involved in the coups and their families, among other actions.

      • Greece ☛ Elpidophoros laments Hagia Sophia’s conversion into mosque

        He said that “obviously there was no need to convert the holy symbol of Orthodoxy, a monument of world cultural heritage, from a museum to a mosque, as there is an abundance of mosques in modern Istanbul.”

        This decision, the Archbishop said, was made “to exploit the religious sentiment for purely political reasons.” Three years later, “we continue to hope and strive for the revision of this decision and for the re-opening of the monument, at least as a museum, so that this incomparable miracle of the Byzantine craftsmanship can once again be offered to the world community.”

      • Scheerpost ☛ House Progressives Introduce Bill to End ‘Moral Catastrophe’ of Solitary Confinement

        “Experts have condemned solitary as psychological torture—and that’s exactly what it is,” said Rep. Cori Bush.

      • RFERL ☛ Pakistan Blast Kills At Least 44 At Political Gathering

        A suicide bomber blew himself up at a political rally in a former stronghold of militants in northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan on July 30, killing at least 44 people and wounding nearly 200 in an attack that a senior leader said was meant to weaken Pakistani Islamists.

      • The Gray Zone ☛ How Ron Desantis puts Israel first and assaults the speech rights of American citizens
      • Scheerpost ☛ Caitlin Johnstone: More Warmongers Elevated In The Biden€ Administration

        The Biden administration looks set to become even more warlike than it already was if you can imagine, with virulent Russia hawk Victoria Nuland and virulent China hawk Charles Q Brown now being el…

      • War in Ukraine

    • Environment

      • New York Times ☛ A Climate Warning from the Cradle of Civilization

        You don’t have to go back to biblical times to find a more verdant Iraq. Well into the 20th century, the southern city of Basra was known as the “Venice of the East” for its canals, plied by gondola-like boats that threaded through residential neighborhoods.

        Indeed, for much of its history, the Fertile Crescent — often defined as including areas of modern-day Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza — did not lack for water, inspiring centuries of artists and writers who depicted the region as a lush ancient land. Spring floods were common, and rice, one of the most water-intensive crops in the world, was grown for more than 2,000 years.

        But now nearly 40 percent of Iraq, an area roughly the size of Florida, has been overtaken by blowing desert sands that claim tens of thousands of acres of arable land every year.

      • France24 ☛ How the tiger mosquito invaded France and what can be done to stop it

        Its spread in France “was not exponential”, says Pierre Tattevin, head of the infectious diseases department at Rennes University Hospital, “but it was continuous”. He says that since its arrival, “there have been about four or five new départments affected each year” and that the mosquito can now be spotted close to the English Channel, all the way north in Brittany.

        Without globalisation, France wouldn’t be home to the tiger mosquito today. “Human activity allowed for the spread of this mosquito,” says Failloux, noting that it only spread rapidly throughout Europe after arriving in Italy, since Italy had greater exchange with other countries than Albania at the time.

      • Michael West Media ☛ Push for lawmakers to weigh up climate impacts on kids

        Young people could be put front and centre in federal government decision-making on coal and gas projects, if a push to impose a duty of care is successful.

        ACT independent senator David Pocock will seek to add two conditions to existing laws covering the financing and approval of large fossil fuel developments.

      • Energy/Transportation

        • Michael West Media ☛ Origin of the gas gouge

          Great to see Australia’s East Coast gas customers helping Origin Energy offset a decline in gas exports (not). It’s terrific to know our record energy bills are helping Origin executive bonuses (not). What’s the scam?

          The scam is that Origin has just handed down its 4th quarter results which confirm energy policy is a complete failure. Although prices for LNG exports fell 16%, Aussie consumers rode to the rescue, helping domestic gas prices up by 10% – and let’s not forget Origin executive bonuses too.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • The Atlantic ☛ Humans Love Fireflies. Maybe Too Much.

          Just going to see fireflies poses less obvious risk to them. But scientists have amassed some alarming reports. In Thailand, for example, where boats ferry tourists past mangrove-swamp forests pulsing with synchronous fireflies, scientists have documented shorelines eroding, gas leaking into the water, and camera flashes disturbing firefly courtship. At one popular Thai site, scientists have estimated that the population of one synchronizing-firefly species is down 80 percent since tourism began.

          In a rural town in Mexico’s Tlaxcala state, where a new synchronizing-firefly species was formally recognized in 2012, tourism has since ballooned to some 120,000 visitors a year. And in North America, too, firefly tourism is on the rise. In Faust’s beloved Great Smokies, even after years of trying to throttle crowds—the National Park Service has instituted an online lottery to limit the number of visitors—some guests still head off into the forests and lie on the ground.

          Tourism is far from the only threat to fireflies. As with many insects, data on lightning-bug populations are spotty, outside of a general, anecdotal sense that they’re blinking out. But insects overall are in crisis. Numerous studies suggest that within many insect groups, abundance is dwindling by 1 to 2 percent each year. An International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) group found in 2020 that fireflies face three primary threats.

    • Finance

      • Michael West Media ☛ Morrison rejects robodebt royal commission findings

        Former prime minister Scott Morrison has defended his role in overseeing the unlawful robodebt scheme, rejecting findings from the royal commission.

        In his first in-person comments since the release of the royal commission’s report, Mr Morrison said the findings against him were “disproportionate, wrong and unsubstantiated”.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • JURIST ☛ US federal judge temporarily blocks Arkansas law banning libraries from providing ‘harmful materials’ to minors

        US District Judge Timothy L. Brooks blocked Arkansas on Saturday from enforcing Act 372, a law that penalizes librarians for “furnishing harmful item[s] to minors.” The case is in the US District Court for the Western District of Fayetteville Division. Judge Brooks ruled that the law is unconstitutional because it is overbroad and vague.

      • NPR ☛ An Arkansas judge has blocked a law targetting librarians over 'harmful' books

        U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which also would have created a new process to challenge library materials and request that they be relocated to areas not accessible by kids. The measure, signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders earlier this year, was set to take effect Aug. 1.

      • US News And World Report ☛ Denmark to Look for 'Legal Tool' to Prevent Koran Burnings

        Denmark and Sweden have found themselves in the international spotlight in recent weeks following anti-Islam protests where the Koran, the Muslim holy book, has been damaged or burned, offending Muslims around the world.

        Both countries have said they deplore the burning of the Koran but cannot prevent it under rules protecting free speech.

      • Deutsche Welle ☛ Denmark studying 'legal' options to stop Quran burnings

        Rasmussen stressed that any measure taken would fall "within the framework of the constitutionally protected freedom of expression and in a manner that does not change the fact that freedom of expression in Denmark has [a] very broad scope."

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • GNU ☛ Speculations about WEI

        If you haven't heard about WEI, please take a look at [1], and the explainer/proposal document[2].

        I wonder what would be google's strategy to adopt it and how it will play out. The more informed we are, the better prepared we are at defending user freedom against it.

    • Monopolies



Recent Techrights' Posts

EPO Union Bemoans Lack of Social Dialogue as Dictator Wishes to Govern Forever (No Elections, No Rivals), Hide the Many Issues
"Exchange of open letters"
IBM Cannot Hide the Layoffs Forever
we welcome whistleblower to tell us more and send us documents related to that
What is a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA)? When Law Firms Become the Litigants.
And the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) needs to be more serious about tackling this
Brigading Against Women - Part XX - Attempts by Lozza to Deplatform Techrights and Tux Machines Only Days After I Sued Garrett and My Wife Also Sued Garrett (Shortly Before the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Joined)
in 2024
Links 06/10/2026: A Year Since "NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner Released From Prison", World Tries to Deal With El Niño
Links for the day
 
Microsoft Hiring Only on the Cheap
Much of the same can be said about GAFAM and IBM
Gemini Links 06/10/2026: Nightfall Express, Shorthanding, and Raspberry Pi Desktop Gets a Debian Trixie Refresh
Links for the day
20th Anniversary Next Month
We are currently trying to agree on a plan for next month's celebrations
Taking Photos With Richard Stallman (RMS)
What's the point?
GAFAM Attack on FreeDesktop
Now they push lots of LLM slop into Linux
GNU/Linux Has Risen in France Since the Order to Adopt GNU/Linux (in Public Services)
We can expect the same in countries like Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and The Netherlands
On Microsoft Hiring Freeze or No Permanent Jobs at Microsoft Anymore (Amid Many Silent Layoffs)
Microsoft has changed what it can offer workers
EPO's Central Staff Committee Asking The Council to Get Rid of Corrupt Campinos
We'll be covering EPO scandals around the time of that meeting
Gemini Links 06/10/2026: EU Kids Act, Practicality of Gemini, and Games
Links for the day
Links 06/10/2026: Data Breaches Epidemic and Turkey Blocking Journalists
Links for the day
The Whole Point of Computing is That Computers Are Deterministic (Speed With Predictable Accuracy)
Unlike stochastic parrots that stochastically utter out lies
It's Not a Linux Back Door If It's an Unpatched Device
"Linux Backdoor" is a glaring misfit, a possibly 'obscene' term
"SIRIUS CORPORATION LIMITED" as Evidence of the Financial Shell Games in the UK
Rianne and I still have some fond memories of the time the ex-wife of the CEO treated us like human beings
Lots of Silent Layoffs at IBM Last Week, Employees Explain Patterns of Those Impacted
It wasn't just gossip, it actually happened even if the media chose to look the other way (as usual)
Gemini Links 06/10/2026: Fighting for Purpose, Gemlogs, and Gemtext
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 05, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, October 05, 2026
Red Hat is Phased Out of Existence This Month Onwards
Within a few years we'll probably not see many redhat.com addresses anymore; many became ibm.* last week
Finland's GNU/Linux Share Measured at 12%
Last month GNU/Linux was measured at about 10% in Finland
UK Layoffs and Closures by Microsoft. In Expected Blow, Microsoft Likely Shuts Down Another Studio.
Microsoft's layoffs are never-ending, they just try to keep them all secret.
NVIDIA Buys the Media With Companies It Sponsors to Pretend to be Customers (Circular Funding Scheme)
The media crisis worsens
Discussion About Potential Sale of EPO Buildings and Enshittification of Europe's Largest Patent Office
It's noteworthy that only one hour (or 70 minutes) was devoted to so many topics
Brigading Against Women - Part IXX - Overreaction From Young Female Professional After Invalid Threats Made and Sent From an Incel in Another Continent
Cowards who send threats after committing crimes online
Stonewalling by Bots
We'll now turn our attention back to EPO and other matters
Gemini Links 05/10/2026: "Posthumanism", Cardputer, and More
Links for the day
Links 05/10/2026: “I’m Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry” and Slop Scammers "Lobbying the Vatican"
Links for the day
SIRIUS OPEN SOURCE LTD Officially Insolvent, Is Reform UK Next?
Sirius no more
Links 05/10/2026: "Congress Must Investigate War Profiteers Once Again" and Update on Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence
Links for the day
libera.chat is an Agenda-Peddling Platform Run by Agenda-Peddling Individuals
The volunteers of libera.chat ("staff") aren't working for free, they work towards an agenda
Nobel Season is Plutocracy Week
Later this week the billionaires will give a fake "Nobel" (in "Economics") to someone who parrots their preferred narrative and those same billionaires will use "Nobel" to bless the promoter of their latest pyramid scheme/buzzword
GNU/Linux Market Share in North America 13% This Past Weekend
It is perhaps not shocking that adoption of GNU/Linux is very high there
When Did Europe Begin to Side With White-Collar Criminals (or Participate in Suppressing People Who Oppose Them)?
How much corruption can we tolerate before the European Union becomes another Russian Federation?
Libera Chat's "Level of Control Might Make Sense for a Corporate Platform"
IRC is not centralised
Brigading Against Women - Part XVIII - Turning Censorship Attempts (Articles About Matthew Garrett) Into Mild Redactions
What Lozza did two years ago
Greenland Needs Digital Sovereignty
the large icy island isn't moving to GNU/Linux as quickly as the rest of Europe
Tracker of Internet Relay Chat Networks Out of Service (But Not Down) Since Thursday
We should note that the number of unique networks they track has grown since we last checked
Gemini Links 05/10/2026: NixOS, Guix, Codeberg Banning Slop, and "Gopher Apps on Android"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 04, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, October 04, 2026
Secret Microsoft Layoffs and Maybe Another "Voluntary Exit Program at Microsoft in October"
there's a morale crisis at Microsoft
MIT Technology Review (MTR) Reinforces MIT's Role in Promoting Slop (Pyramid Scheme) in Exchange for Money
MIT is a poster boy (or child) of institutional corruption, perverts, and corporate takeover
Many Topics to Cover
Drops in a big ocean
Proving Wrong Those Slop Maximalists and Boosters, GAFAM Says Slop is a Nuisance and Bans/Hides the Slop Submissions
People who say slop in projects is inevitable or even desirable are usually cheaters with self-guilt
Links 04/10/2026: “AI Torture Chamber” and "Aggressive Push to Integrate Hey Hi (AI) Slop Into Schools Is Turning Into a Disaster"
Links for the day
How Microsoft Hides Massive Layoffs From the Media (as Explained by Microsofters)
"rewards" are not exactly rewarding
Brigading Against Women - Part XVII - The Appeal
more to be known towards the end of the year
Gemini Links 04/10/2026: Peace in Outage, Pen Pals, and deGoogling
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2026: Fires Rage in Borneo and Mass Layoffs at Disney
Links for the day
Garrett's Litigation Partner is Unemployed Again
losing one's job
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 03, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, October 03, 2026