Blocking in the kernel's random-number generator (RNG)—causing a process to wait for "enough" entropy to generate strong random numbers—has always been controversial. It has also led to various kinds of problems over the years, from timeouts and delays caused by misuse in user-space programs to deadlocks and other problems in the boot process. That behavior has undergone a number of changes over the last few years and it looks possible that the last vestige of the difference between merely "good" and "cryptographic-strength" random numbers may go away in some upcoming kernel version.
Like most components in the computing landscape, networking hardware has grown steadily faster over time. Indeed, today's high-end network interfaces can often move data more quickly than the systems they are attached to can handle. The networking developers have been working for years to increase the scalability of their subsystem; one of the current projects is the BIG TCP patch set from Eric Dumazet and Coco Li. BIG TCP isn't for everybody, but it has the potential to significantly improve networking performance in some settings.
Imagine, for a second, that you are trying to keep up with a 100Gb/s network adapter. As networking developer Jesper Brouer described back in 2015, if one is using the longstanding maximum packet size of 1,538 bytes, running the interface at full speed means coping with over eight-million packets per second. At that rate, CPU has all of about 120ns to do whatever is required to handle each packet, which is not a lot of time; a single cache miss can ruin the entire processing-time budget.
The situation gets better, though, if the number of packets is reduced, and that can be achieved by making packets larger. So it is unsurprising that high-performance networking installations, especially local-area networks where everything is managed as a single unit, use larger packet sizes. With proper configuration, packet sizes up to 64KB can be used, improving the situation considerably. But, in settings where data is being moved in units of megabytes or gigabytes (or more — cat videos are getting larger all the time), that still leaves the system with a lot of packets to handle.
Packet counts hurt in a number of ways. There is a significant fixed overhead associated with every packet transiting a system. Each packet must find its way through the network stack, from the upper protocol layers down to the device driver for the interface (or back). More packets means more interrupts from the network adapter. The sk_buff structure ("SKB") used to represent packets within the kernel is a large beast, since it must be able to support just about any networking feature that may be in use; that leads to significant per-packet memory use and memory-management costs. So there are good reasons to wish for the ability to move data in fewer, larger packets, at least for some types of applications.
Sometimes, a kernel-patch series comes with an exciting, sexy title. Other times, the mailing lists are full of patches with titles like "remote per-cpu lists drain support". For many, the patches associated with that title will be just as dry as the title itself. But, for those who are interested in such things — a group that includes many LWN readers — this short patch series from Nicolas Saenz Julienne gives some insight into just what is required to make the kernel's page allocator as fast — and as robust — as developers can make it.
Digital asset management (DAM) allows organization to obtain greater value from creative digital assets like images and videos by making them easy to organize, access, catalogue, find, retrieve and distribute. Quick to deploy and easy-to-use, a centralized DAM system provides peers, employees, clients, contractors and other key stakeholders controlled access to their entire digital content library—including images, photos, creative files, video, audio, presentations, documents, and more. A DAM system streamlines and manages the content lifecycle — from creation to preservation.
This software adds metadata to each content and searches for digital files easy. It can deliver content on multiple devices in various formats. It can integrate with other external tools and platforms to provide services like sending bulk data to external partners in a secure way.
Linux Candy is a series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We only feature open source software in this series.
Some of the programs in this series are purely cosmetic, frivolous pieces of fun. Candy at their finest. But we also include some programs that aren’t purely decorative.
There’s a diverse range of programs included in this series. Programs such as eDEX-UI and Variety are actually highly practical programs. ASCIIQuarium has soothing and relaxing qualities for your desktop. Other programs included in this series (such as lolcat, cacafire) are included purely for their decorative qualities. And then there’s some really fun software that just raises a smile or two.
LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.
While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.
There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.
Most likely, you are looking for a solution to auto-mount disk storage whenever the system gets power on instead of doing it manually. Of course, it is not feasible to mount a location every time, and what if your application or program crashes because of a missing location?
So, to avoid this type of conflict, we can leverage /etc/fstab file to automount the disk, but the question is, it asks for a UUID.
This is good news, Jason (plinej in the forum) is getting BluePup to work in MX Linux...
A near-future release of OpenSSH will switch scp(1) from using the legacy scp/rcp protocol to using SFTP by default.
Legacy scp/rcp performs wildcard expansion of remote filenames (e.g. "scp host:* .") through the remote shell. This has the side effect of requiring double quoting of shell meta-characters in file names included on scp(1) command-lines, otherwise they could be interpreted as shell commands on the remote side.
This creates one area of potential incompatibility: scp(1) when using the SFTP protocol no longer requires this finicky and brittle quoting, and attempts to use it may cause transfers to fail. We consider the removal of the need for double-quoting shell characters in file names to be a benefit and do not intend to introduce bug-compatibility for legacy scp/rcp in scp(1) when using the SFTP protocol.
Another area of potential incompatibility relates to the use of remote paths relative to other user's home directories, for example - "scp host:~user/file /tmp". The SFTP protocol has no native way to expand a ~user path. However, sftp-server(8) in OpenSSH 8.7 and later support a protocol extension "expand-path@openssh.com" to support this.
...she served as commercial director at Microsoft Indonesia...
The Debian project is known for its commitment to free software, the effort that it puts into ensuring that its distribution is compliant with the licenses of the software it ships, and the energy it puts into discussions around that work. A recent (and ongoing) discussion started with a query about a relatively obscure aspect of the process by which new packages enter the distribution, but ended up questioning the project's approach toward licensing and copyright issues. While no real conclusions were reached, it seems likely that the themes heard in this discussion, which relate to Debian's role in the free-software community in general, will play a prominent part in future debates.
Some background
The Debian project does not hand out the right to place packages into the distribution lightly. Prospective packagers must first become Debian developers via a lengthy process that involves working with a mentor and convincing that person that the candidate firmly understands Debian's philosophy and policies. A considerable amount of time may elapse between the initial application and the eventual invitation to throw their key into the keyring and become a proper Debian developer.
Even then, though, there is an obstacle to overcome in the form of the "NEW queue". Any new package added to the distribution — a package for a program that Debian has not previously distributed, for example — will be placed in the NEW queue for manual review prior to being accepted into the Debian repository. The review process checks that the package complies with Debian's policies in general, that it plays well with existing packages in the repository, and that it is something that Debian can legally distribute. It is, in a sense, the final quality-control step imposed by Debian before a new package can enter the repository.
With Ubuntu 22.04 LTS just around the corner, we are all waiting eagerly to experience the list of features in Ubuntu 22.04 being introduced.
Without a full-fledged hands-on with Ubuntu 22.04, I can’t say for certain if it is impressive. But, I do have some thoughts on the things I want to see in Ubuntu 22.04.
It’s probably a bit too late to make some requests for changes, but I’d like to hope for the best!
We’re covered DIN-Rail industrial computers powered by Raspberry Pi CM4 module, but Kristech’s Pigeon RB700 automation controller may be the one with the most features so far thanks to two RS-485 ports, two Ethernet ports, CAN FD, 1-WIRE, RS-232, 12 digital inputs (8 optoisolated, 4 dry contacts), and 8 digital outputs.
That’s for the common features present in all variants including RB700 Essense. The RB700 Standard model adds UPS, HDMI, analog I/Os, and TPM, while the RB700 Advance is further equipped with two M.2 sockets (for SSD and/or cellular modem) and two additional RS-232 ports.
We’ve heard from the folks at Open Source 101, who told us the date for the single-day conference has been set, some of the speakers have already been named, and that this year’s event has been cleared for blast off on Tuesday, March 29.
The bad news for folks who like their conferences up close and personal is that even though the folks behind the conference were able to present the three-day All Things Open event in October before a live and in-person audience, the current situation with the omicron variant of Covid-19 means Open Source 101 will be an online only event.
One of the types of software that’s important for a web developer is the web framework. A framework “is a code library that makes a developer’s life easier when building reliable, scalable, and maintainable web applications” by providing reusable code or extensions for common operations. By saving development time, developers can concentrate on application logic rather than mundane elements.
A web framework offers the developer a choice about how to solve a specific problem. By using a framework, a developer lets the framework control portions of their application. While it’s perfectly possible to code a web application without using a framework, it’s more practical to use one.
There is an saying that “you can take the boy out of the valley, but you cannot the valley out of the boy” so for those of us who spent a decade or two in finance and on trading floors, having “some” market price information available becomes second nature. And/or sometimes it is just good fun to program this.
A good while back Josh posted a gist on a simple-yet-robust while loop. It (very cleverly) uses his quantmod package to access the SP500 in “real-time”. (I use quotes here because at the end of retail broadband one is not at the same market action as someone co-located in a New Jersey data center. It is however not delayed: as an index, it is not immediately tradeable as a stock, etf, or derivative may be all of which are only disseminated as delayed price information, usually by ten minutes.) I quite enjoyed the gist and used it and started tinkering with it. For example, it collects data but only saves (i.e. “persists”) it after market close. If for whatever reason one needs to restart recent history is gone. In any event, I used his code and generalized it a little and published this about a year ago as function intradayMarketMonitor() in my dang package. (See this blog post announcing it.) The chart of the left shows this in action, the chart is a snapshot from a couple of days ago when the vignettes (more on them below) were written.
Most writers are content to write a book once; others, after publishing a first version, go back and rewrite it over and over again. Sometimes they do so out of aesthetic dissatisfaction. But there is another type of writer (let’s call them “translinguals”) who returns to a book time and again in order to rewrite it in a different language. In a way, translingual writers might be seen as their own translators, although the term doesn’t quite fit because these writers don’t simply render their original work into another language; they rewrite it in a peculiar way, creating another original. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, they inhabit—or, better, are inhabited by—different iterations of who they are; each version of their book represents a different self.
The World Health Organization on Wednesday announced it is expanding its mRNA technology transfer efforts to five additional countries as it works to bolster coronavirus vaccine manufacturing in the Global South, an initiative that seeks to overcome persistent obstruction from the pharmaceutical industry and rich nations.
Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Serbia, and Vietnam will be the newest recipients of mRNA vaccine technology from the WHO's hub in Cape Town, South Africa, which has succeeded in creating an mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine modeled after Moderna's shot—the sequence of which was reverse-engineered by Stanford University scientists and published online last year.
The other day, I wrote about a breathtakingly awful “study” by John Ioannidis, prepandemic science superstar turned booster of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) and unrelenting foe of anything resembling “lockdowns.” Given that my post was long even by Orac standards, I will try not to rehash (much) of it, other than to mention that my key criticism of Ioannidis’ “study” (such as it was) was that it suffered from a fatal flaw: Its author apparently didn’t realize that the “Kardashian index” that he used to portray signatories of the John Snow Memorandum (JSM), an answer to the GBD criticizing its premises and recommendations, as “science Kardashians” had always been intended as a satirical means of mocking certain scientists’ obsession with scientific publication citation metrics. Even worse, even the peer reviewers (whose reviews were published, albeit belatedly, per BMJ Open Access policy) apparently also never recognized that very same fatal flaw in the Kardashian index, thus leading me to wonder whether Ioannidis’ paper was satire like the Kardashian index, only some sort of satire too subtle for me or the peer reviewers to have recognized as satire. That’s one reason why I rather sarcastically suggested that perhaps there’s no better example of the accuracy of the satire intended by the Kardashian index than Ioannidis’ paper.
That’s where the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) comes in. The project was formed jointly by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) union to help non-unionized workers organize amid the life-threatening conditions of the pandemic — and beyond. Over the past two years, EWOC has helped workers across industries win through collective action in the workplace.
“We’re not enforcing vaccination requirements as a condition of employment for US office workers at this time,” Google spokesperson Lora Lee Erickson said in a statement to The Verge after we first published this article. “We’re continuing to implement our vaccination policy requiring COVID-19 vaccinations or approved accommodations for any individuals accessing our sites, because it’s one of the most important ways we can keep our workforce safe and keep our services running.” In addition, only employees at Google’s Santa Clara County facilities will have to wear masks in the office, Erickson says.
As Google prepares to bring workers back to its offices, the company is relaxing some of its Covid-19 workplace policies, including a rule requiring U.S. employees to be vaccinated. But workers will still have to be vaccinated if they plan to use the company’s offices.
In an email to San Francisco Bay Area employees last week, Google said it was easing some of its pandemic restrictions. It will no longer require employees to be tested weekly to enter its U.S. offices. Also, it will not require staff to wear masks in the office, with the exception of Santa Clara County — home to Google’s main Mountain View headquarters.
Google also said it planned to restore many of its famed office amenities, such as fitness centers, cafeterias, massage services and commuter shuttles. CNBC reported the change in policies earlier.
Faced with a class-action suit filed on behalf of customers who claim they were tricked into paying to file their taxes, TurboTax-maker Intuit knocked the case down. The company insisted its customers had agreed to forego their right to take their grievances to court and were required to use the private arbitration system instead.
But even as Intuit was winning in the class-action case, that very arbitration system was being weaponized against the Silicon Valley company.
Put these three sets of claims together, and other than some confusion around timing of these self-designed 5G chips (this year or next), you see a company that is pressing forward with creating manufacturing partnerships to provide its own modems — and is prepping for any subsequent litigation with Qualcomm.
Well-maintained free-software projects usually make a point of quickly fixing known security problems, and the Samba project, which provides interoperability between Windows and Unix systems, is no exception. So it is natural to wonder why the fix for CVE-2021-20316, a symbolic-link vulnerability, was well over two years in coming. Sometimes, a security bug can be fixed with a simple tweak to the code. Other times, the fix requires a massive rewrite of much of a projects's internal code. This particular vulnerability fell firmly into the latter category, necessitating a public rewrite of Samba's virtual filesystem (VFS) layer to address a non-disclosed vulnerability.
The story starts with a bug report from Michael Hanselmann in May 2019. When an SMB client instructs the server to create a new directory, the server must carry out a number of checks to ensure that the client is entitled to do that. Among other things, the server makes sure that the requested directory actually lies within the exported SMB share rather than being at some arbitrary location elsewhere in the server's filesystem. Unfortunately, there is inevitably a window between when the server performs the check and when it actually creates the directory. If a malicious user is able to replace a component in the path for the new directory with a symbolic link during that window, Samba will happily follow the link and make the directory in the wrong place, with results that are generally seen as distasteful by anybody but an attacker.
This is a classic time-of-check/time-of-use (TOCTOU) vulnerability, of the sort that symbolic links have become notorious for. It is also a hard one to fix, especially for a system like Samba, where portability is an important concern. There is no easy, cross-platform way to query the attributes of a path in the filesystem and safely act on the result, secure in the knowledge that a malicious actor cannot change things in the middle. Still, something clearly needed to be done, so Samba developer Jeremy Allison jumped in to write a fix. The CVE number CVE-2019-10151 was duly assigned to this problem.
I recently started to consider changing the grading criteria on Security Headers which isn't something that happens very often. I wanted to make a change that would result in more sites achieving the highest possible grade of A+ and involved removing the penalty for use of 'unsafe-inline' in the style-src directive. To fully appreciate the impact of the change, I reached out to the community and did a little research myself to see what the risks of inline styles might be.
Clearview AI -- the facial recognition tech company so sketchy other facial recognition tech companies don't want to be associated with it -- is about to get a whole lot sketchier. Its database, which supposedly contains 10 billion images scraped from the internet, continues to expand. And, despite being sued multiple times in the US and declared actually illegal abroad, the company has expansion plans that go far beyond the government agencies it once promised to limit its sales to.
Brussels, Feb 23, 2022 -With companies reaping increasing amounts of data from consumers and firms, the EU is looking at wrestling back access to that digital information under a Data Act proposed Wednesday by the European Commission.
Most browsers come with a private browsing mode that promises to safeguard your privacy. Chrome calls this feature “Incognito Mode.” But just how private is this feature? How does it work and how does it protect you? In what situations does it not protect you?
More than thirty years later, Vladimir Putin sent his tanks and soldiers into the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, enclaves whose independence he recognised, provoking a furious response and threats of retaliation from NATO states.
Putin’s actions may not provoke a wider war in the short term. Most immediately, this will depend on whether or not Russian forces press beyond the present front line and seek to expand the territory controlled by the separatist republics.
“This is not going to be a war of Ukraine and Russia. This is going to be a European war, a full-fledged war.” So spoke Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky just days after berating the U.S. for beating the drums of war.
It is not hard to imagine how Zelensky’s words must have fallen on those European ears that were attentive.€ His warning surely conjured up images of World War II when tens of millions of Europeans and Russians perished.
In recent days, media coverage of a possible summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin has taken on almost wistful qualities, as though the horsemen of the apocalypse are already out of the barn.
Fatalism is easy for the laptop warriors and blow-dried studio pundits who keep insisting on the need to get tough with “the Russians,” by which they mean the Russian government. Actual people who suffer and die in war easily become faraway abstractions. “And you never ask questions / When God’s on your side.”
Reuters reports that Biden, at the urging of French president Emmanuel Macron, is willing “in principle” to hold a summit with Putin. “We are always ready for diplomacy,” says White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
Unfortunately, it’s US “diplomacy” which brought the US, Russia, Ukraine, and NATO to the current standoff.
Nothing is more counter-intuitive than the effort to isolate, cripple and strangulate the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.€ For all the talk about terrorism and concerns about failing regimes, the Biden Administration is doing every bit to make this regime fail and encourage the outcome it decries. Along the way, a humanitarian catastrophe is in the making.
Prior to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021, foreign aid constituted a mainstay of the economy, covering roughly three-quarters of public spending.€ After August 15, an almost immediate cessation of funding took place, led by the United States, and those less than noble institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.€ But it did not stop there.€ Billions of dollars in Afghanistan’s own funds were frozen.€ (For the US alone, this amounted to $9.4 billion.)
Addressing the nation in another televised speech early on Thursday morning, Moscow time, Vladimir Putin announced the start of a “special military operation” in eastern Ukraine. The Russian president said that his administration has no plans to occupy Ukraine, though he also ordered Ukrainian soldiers in the Donbas to lay down their weapons.
A renowned organization comprised of U.S. and Russian physicians warned late Tuesday that a military conflict involving the two powers in Ukraine risks a nuclear "catastrophe" that could have horrific effects on all of Europe—and potentially the entire planet.
In a new statement, nuclear energy specialists joined members of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)—a coalition of medical groups that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for its non-proliferation work—in noting that while Ukraine does not possess nuclear weapons, it does maintain more than a dozen nuclear power reactors that could be in the line of fire should the current situation descend into all-out war.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers and a coalition of anti-war groups reminded President Joe Biden on Tuesday that he is legally required to seek authorization from Congress before involving U.S. troops in any military conflict with Russia, which began moving forces of its own into eastern Ukraine earlier this week.
"Americans are fed up with risking U.S. troops' lives and spending taxpayer dollars on endless overseas wars."
If President John Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev hadn't acted against the hardline advice of their political and military advisers during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, "nearly all then-living humans might have died, and few if any now alive would have ever existed."
On Tuesday, Germany's socialist Chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, suspended the permitting process for the Nord Stream 2 methane gas pipeline that had been built to bring Siberian gas to Germany, over Russia's declaration that two Ukrainian provinces were independent states. The $11 billion pipeline has already been constructed, but was awaiting German government permits to begin operating. It may well now be an $11 billion boondoggle.
The de facto leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” have appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin for help “repelling aggression” from Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Wednesday, February 23.
For the people of Ukraine and Russia, Vladimir Putin’s decision to send troops into two breakaway republics in Ukraine’s far-eastern Donbas region will bring nothing but pain and suffering. Aside from any deaths and injuries that will occur—especially if Putin extends its invasion beyond the borders of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics—the move will result in severe hardship for most ordinary Russians as harsh Western sanctions take effect and considerable suffering throughout the region as energy prices mount. For the arms dealers and military hawks in Washington, however, it is a time to celebrate: Not only is the White House about to submit a record-breaking defense budget for 2023, but Democrats and Republicans in Congress—united as never before—are determined to add tens of billions of dollars for additional weapons on top of whatever astronomical figure Biden sends them.
The Biden administration continues to signal that it has no intention to involve United States forces in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Yet, as the threat of a European war escalates rapidly, so too does the risk of a chaotic turn of events that could make the dispute into much more than a fight between Russia and its embattled neighbor. Now, more than ever, said Erik Sperling, the executive director of the anti-war group Just Foreign Policy, it is vital for Congress to reaffirm its authority over any decisions regarding military action in the region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to order troops into the separatist-controlled areas of Ukraine has triggered a new wave of sanctions against Russia, amid fears the situation could spiral into an all-out war. We speak with Dr. Ira Helfand, former president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, who warns a war could lead to the use of nuclear weapons that would annihilate millions and cause total collapse of world ecosystems. “We have found it almost impossible to imagine, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, that there could be a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, but the crisis in Ukraine is putting exactly that possibility on the table again,” says Helfand.
War is the enemy of freedom. As long as America’s politicians continue to involve us in wars that bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse, “we the people” will find ourselves in a perpetual state of tyranny.
When the corporate media push for war, one of their main weapons is propaganda by omission.
In any case, Islam, though it has contributed to numerous civilizations, isn't itself a civilization but a religion. It is the French who, in their universities and such places as the Louvre Museum, bring dozens of different civilizations, cultures and arts under the "Islamic" label. That, in turn, legitimizes those, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Khomeinists, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda and ISIS among others, who reduce Islam to a political ideology or even a slogan under which they pursue their quest for power.
For decades, that pursuit has also benefited from the French state's financial, political and prestige support. It was the Interior Ministry under Nicolas Sarkozy that created the French "Church" of Islam, granting its leadership to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hassan al-Banna's grandson Tariq Ramadan was "Islamic affairs adviser" to several French governments.
Though the current state of the climate is a "code red for humanity," President Joe Biden "has the tools to lead a tectonic shift" in the U.S. response to the global crisis.
"This report demonstrates that the issue is not whether President Biden can make substantial progress on climate; the question is will he do so."
Progressive lawmakers and environmentalists voiced outrage Wednesday after the U.S. Postal Service—led by Trump megadonor Louis DeJoy—finalized its plan to purchase a fleet of largely gas-powered delivery trucks, a move that flouts President Joe Biden's proposed transition to zero-emission government vehicles.
"DeJoy's environmental review is rickety, founded on suspect calculations, and fails to meet the standards of the law."
After the Biden administration’s€ bipartisan infrastructure law was passed, the administration€ hailed the bill’s $4.7 billion package€ to€ cap orphaned oil and gas wells as a€ move to tackle€ “super-polluting methane emissions,” saying it will combat the climate crisis and create jobs. But it is possible that, without tight rules, these public funds could be spent in ways that contradict those goals — and go to the very entities that enabled these environmental messes in the first place.€
Though the administration claims it will establish safeguards, currently there are no rules to compel state oil and gas regulators to use the federal funds in a way that prioritizes plugging the inactive and supposedly ownerless wells that are emitting the most methane, or even any methane at all. The law’s current implementation also offers no assurances that the new jobs promised for oil and gas industry workers will materialize, although it is a stated goal of the law.€
Late last year, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) announced his retirement from Oregon’s 4th District, opening up a seat that he held for more than three decades. He’s earned a reputation in Congress as a champion of transportation and climate policy: He was one of the original cosponsors of the Green New Deal in 2019, and most recently, he helped craft the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was signed into law last year, and also helped shepherd President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda through the House of Representatives, before it ran aground in the Senate.
Within hours of DeFazio making his retirement public, Val Hoyle announced her intention to seek his seat. He quickly endorsed her. Hoyle served as a representative in Oregon’s legislature from 2009 to 2017 and is currently the state Labor Commissioner. She quickly consolidated the backing of powerful Democrats, with U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) endorsing her in late January.
The proportion of fully electric vehicles is expected to rise to 17 per cent and that of plug-in hybrids to 23 per cent of first registrations this year. The registrations of fully electric vehicles are expected to increase particularly, making up roughly one-third of first registrations in 2025 and almost two-thirds in 2030.
The Finnish vehicle stock is forecast to consist of some 740,000 plug-in passenger vehicles by the end of the decade, signalling a nearly 25-per-cent increase from the 600,000 forecast last year. The slow turnover cycle of the stock – about 22 years – means that the stock will continue to include about 2.2 million combustion-engine cars in 2030.
Wildfires are projected to rise 30% by 2050 and 50% by the end of the century due to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency and land-use change, and governments worldwide are not ready, according to a new United Nations-backed report that calls for overhauling public spending, with a focus on improving prevention and preparedness.
"While the situation is certainly extreme, it is not yet hopeless."
Unfortunately, it seems that no one other than Douthat is given the opportunity by major news outlets to argue that policy, rather than inevitable processes like globalization or technology, is responsible for the relative deterioration in the situation of people who do manual labor. To be clear, there are prominent columnists like, Paul Krugman at the NYT and E.J. Dionne at the WaPo, who argue for welfare state policies to reverse this deterioration, but you won’t see any pieces saying that the deterioration itself was the result of deliberate policy.
This absence is striking, given how the major news outlets are perfectly comfortable giving large amounts of space to pieces based on little evidence, or that sometimes even fly in the face of the evidence that does exist. The NYT gave us an example of this with the Sunday magazine’s cover piece proclaiming “The Age of Anti-Ambition.”
“US Economy Grew 1.7% in Fourth Quarter, Capping a Strong Year,” The New York Times reported. “US Economy Grew 5.7% in 2021, Fastest Full-Year Clip,” The Washington Post added. Reuters, Voice of America, The Financial Times, CNN, Market Watch and many others all concurred. But if that is the case, why then is US President Joe Biden’s approval rating at an all time low? And why are many Americans literally going hungry?
In a national opinion poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos and published on February 3, only 41% of US adults approved of Biden’s performance in office. A whopping 56% disapproved. The numbers were not a complete shock as the downward trajectory of the Biden presidency has been in effect soon after he moved to the White House over a year ago.
Congress passed that law – the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, also known as the STOCK Act – in 2012 to fight insider trading among lawmakers with increased transparency. But a chorus of legislators and governance watchdogs argue that it didn’t go far enough and isn’t working.
All this raises two important questions: What exactly is insider trading and what’s the big deal?
New polling results released Wednesday show that nearly two-thirds of Jefferson County, Alabama residents support Amazon workers forming a union.
"Even in the heart of the 'right-to-work' U.S. South, there is amazing potential for an energized and revitalized labor movement to score major victories."
Americans love freedom…and who doesn’t? To be happy, most of us need a sense of agency and abhor the thought of Big Brother looking over our shoulder.
In his 1944 State of the Union Address, President Franklin Roosevelt articulated popular American hopes and aspirations by calling for a Second Bill of Rights—an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans.
This month, former Stockton, Calif., Mayor Michael Tubbs launched a campaign as bold as it is straightforward: End Poverty in California (EPIC).
The Debt Collective is planning an action on April 4 at the Department of Education to urge the Biden administration to fulfill a campaign promise to cancel student debt before federal student loan payments restart in May. Debt cancellation would give relief to some 45 million borrowers who owe nearly $1.8 trillion in student debt. Education should be treated as a human right and not as a commodity, says Astra Taylor, co-director of the Debt Collective. Not only has Biden failed on his campaign promises, but he has made it easier for lenders to prey on student borrowers, adds Braxton Brewington, press secretary with the Debt Collective.
Republicans are gerrymandering themselves into entrenched minority power, unless we stop them now.
Longtime workers at a Hershey's plant in Stuart's Draft, Virginia are leading a union drive to ensure newer employees are afforded the same benefits and working conditions they had before the candy company changed its policies in recent years—resulting in what one worker compared to prison-like conditions with little time off for many workers.
"It's known as the Hershey prison, and we get home release," employee James Gibson told More Perfect Union, a non-profit media outlet focused on labor issues, last week.
For the 12th year in a row, Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project has conducted and recently released its€ Conservation in the West Report. As noted in their press release: “The survey polled registered voters in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Voters responded to questions concerning conservation of public lands, energy, water, wildlife, wildfire, and other pressing challenges in the Mountain West.” Unlike many polls intended to benefit one political party or the other, this one is conducted by both right-leaning and left-leaning polling firms that sought opinions across the political spectrum.
Over the eight states the overwhelming majority —€ 69% —€ expressed serious and “pessimistic” concerns for the future well-being of the natural amenities — land, air, water, and wildlife —€ which so many in the West have long taken for granted.
Dozens of top companies across various industries that have pledged to cut their planet-heating emissions are collectively pouring millions into electing GOP officials standing the way of climate action, an analysis revealed Wednesday.
"This report should serve as an important reminder to corporations to reassess their political contribution policies."
As former President Donald Trump signals his intention to run for reelection in 2024, people across the United States expressed alarm Wednesday after two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney's probe of his business practices suddenly resigned.
"When prosecutors resign rather than go along with a new district attorney that is a sign of severe disarray internally."
I’ve got it! I just remembered. It’s because both mainstream parties are owned by corporate America, stand for the same shit, and they haven’t actually been face-to-face with a regular blue-collar human being since they fathered the first of their 14 children and the surrogate mother happened to bring her boyfriend to the birth (or as the rich call it, “the human baby transfer to its rightful owners”).
And sure enough, a new survey verifies that most Americans are not happy with the false choice between two political parties. The€ new poll from NBC News€ found that the Democrats and Republicans are about as popular as the horseback hemorrhoid clinic located near where I live.
On November 4, 2020, a county clerk in rural northwestern Michigan inadvertently launched one of former President Donald J. Trump’s Big Lies. Six weeks later, it was embedded in a proposal that the U.S. Department of Defense seize voting machines across the country. The lie remains a central talking point in Trump’s assault on democracy.
Unsurprisingly, alleged serial rapist and career criminal Donald Trump has come out in support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.€
Last summer, I believe we were among the first to highlight that the various antitrust bills proposed by mainly Democratic elected officials in DC included an incredibly dangerous trojan horse that would aid Republicans in their "playing the victim" desire to force websites to host their disinformation and propaganda. The key issue is that many of the bills included a bar on self-preferencing a large company's own services against competitors. The supporters of these bills claimed it was to prevent, say, an Apple from blocking a competing mapping service while promoting Apple Maps, or Google from blocking a competing shopping service, while pushing Google's local search results.
Roughly a year ago, we discussed a wildly silly lawsuit brought against Apple by a company called Cub Club and an individual, Katrina Parrott. At issue were "diverse emojis", which by now are so ubiquitous as to be commonplace. Parrott had created some emojis featuring more diverse and expansive color/skin tones. And, hey, that's pretty cool. The problem is that, after she had a meeting with Apple about her business, Apple decided to simply incorporate diverse skin tones into its existing emojis. The traditional yellow thumbs up hand suddenly came with different coloration options. Cub Club and Parrott sued, claiming both copyright and trademark infringements.
The Cowboy Junkies are a Canadian alt-country band, who released their first album back in 1986. They are most known for their 1988 album “The Trinity Session,” which featured their cover of TheVelvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.” The lo-fi classic album was recorded in a church for under $250, and it ended up selling over a million copies.While the Cowboy Junkies aren’t necessarily a political band, they have delved into socially conscious material on several occasions. For example, in 2005 they released the anti-war protest album “21st Century Blues,” which features mostly covers, along with a couple of originals. Their 2018 album All That Reckoning” also explored political themes.The band recently released their version of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” which appears on theirupcoming covers album “Songs of the Recollection.” It is due out on March 25.Bowie’s version appeared on his 1972 album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders fromMars.” The song depicts an impending apocalyptic disaster that will destroy the earth within five years.For example, the lyric, “News guy wept and told us. Earth was really dying,” may be even more relevant today.The Cowboy Junkies produced a video, complete with visuals that contemplate the band’s mournful rendering. Earth may not literally have five years left, but their rendition is a reminder that if climate change and other social ills continue to go unchecked, time will eventually run out.
My appeal against imprisonment for contempt of court is to be held in Edinburgh High Court at 10.30am today. The gallery will be closed and the public excluded. Here however is the full text of the written arguments we have submitted as the basis for today’s hearing.
Way back in the 1970s, during the first season of Saturday Night Live, Chevy Chase played a newscaster who, week after week, breathlessly announced, “The top story of the night: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!” Reminders of Franco’s demise unfailingly elicited laughter. But not all Americans were delighted to see the fascist dictator reduced to the butt of a recurring joke.1
The election committee found that it was unlawful for the Fidesz candidate to hand out laptops at a high school in her district, which were purchased within a state programme. Even though she did this within the campaign period, she was not fined, but simply told to refrain from further infringements. Translation by Andrea Horváth Kávai.
Texas will hold the first primary elections of the season on March 1, providing an early look at how progressives and their policy platforms may fare in a particularly tough midterm cycle. Democrats are bracing for a possible bloodbath, with House Democrats retiring in droves as the party prepares to defend fragile majorities in both chambers. But the Democratic exodus—and the general backlash to President Biden’s first-year performance—could also open a window for a more progressive slate of candidates competing in safe blue districts.
Alas for the charlatan BoJo, Vladimir Putin must be taking this in with a cynical smile.
The UK has been running a “Golden Visa” scheme for wealthy foreign investors since 2008. The programme was launched by the Labour government to raise investment after the global financial crisis. A €£2m/$2.7m investment in active and trading UK registered companies (and having a UK bank account) allowed an application within 5 years, decreasing to 3 years with €£5m/$6.8m, or to 2 years with €£10m/$13.6m.
According to Milena Ansari, International Advocacy Officer of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, “In military courts, where the judges and the prosecutors are all military officers and where the laws adopted are Israeli military orders, there is no hope of any kind of justice for Palestinians. Hence their boycott of military courts and refusal to participate in its procedures highlights the lack of trust in any judicial process.”
Administrative detention is an official Israeli policy, codified into law, whereby Palestinians can be arrested without a charge for so-called “security reasons.”€ Detainees are held without trial and without being told about the evidence against them.€ In most cases, they are simply informed that there is ‘secret evidence’ which neither they nor their lawyer can see. They are often interrogated and tortured after arrest. There is no clear or defined sentence, and all administrative detention orders are renewable indefinitely every six months. The periodic review of administrative detention orders takes place at closed hearings that do not allow the public or family members of the detainee to be present.€ Often an administrative detainee is released and on their way home when an order renewing the detention is issued and they are cruelly returned to prison
As Russian troops and armored vehicles begin moving into Ukrainian territory, social media accounts sharing images and videos from the eastern Donbas and Luhansk regions have been a crucial source of information, sharing footage of Russian helicopters heading toward Crimea or tank divisions moving to the border.
But as the conflict intensifies, many researchers sharing this primary material taken from social media — commonly known as open-source intelligence or OSINT — have found their Twitter accounts unexpectedly suspended.
On the night of February 22nd, OSINT researcher Kyle Glen was locked out of his account for 12 hours, according to tweets from Glen and a post shared by another OSINT organization. Security analyst Oliver Alexander also claimed to have been locked out of his account twice in 24 hours. Outside of the Anglosphere, the French-language OSINT account Neurone Intelligence, Spanish-language account Mundo en Conflicto, and Brazilian OSINT account Notícias e Guerras were also affected.
The federation, which represents commercial media outlets, argued that [YLE] effectively publishes an online newspaper every day, thereby eating into the commercial news market. The complaint called on the commission to decide whether [YLE]'s text content complied with EU state funding rules.
Finland's government therefore proposed making amendments to the Yleisradio Act in 2020, which centred around [YLE] only being allowed to publish text content if it is linked to audio or video material. The transport and communications committee has now endorsed these proposals.
The alleged wrongdoing regards Jihadi propaganda that the man alleged promoted during a spell in jail in Alessandria for a drug-related felony between the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2021. (ANSA).
Telecoms firm Telia Eesti has opted to terminate its cooperation with the local franchisee of Russian-language TV channels PBK Estonia, REN TV Estonia, NTV Mir Estonia and several other channels broadcast in Estonia. Telia competitor Elisa is doing the same.
Due to the termination of the agreement, Telia TV will no longer broadcast TV channels carried by Nord Print OÃÅ, the local franchisee for the Russian-language channels, as of April 25, the company announced.
Real change takes time. "People don't just cut off the king's head," Gal Beckerman begins "The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Rise of Radical Ideas." Released this month by Crown, Beckerman's new book notes that while the public is riveted by images of a newly ignited social movement — "the adrenaline, the tear gas… a man standing up to a tank" — that's only the third act in a much longer play, most of which has already taken place offstage.
Throughout history, movements that have transformed societies, overthrown governments and beheaded kings, Beckerman writes, started with a lot of talk. It just was not the sort of talk we have today.
Despite promising to fight climate misinformation, Facebook is failing to flag over half of the misleading articles shared by prominent climate change deniers, according to a new analysis€ out Wednesday.
"Big Tech has friended Big Oil and does its dirty work of enabling the spread of disinformation about climate science."
The minister for migration and integration, Anders Ygeman, told broadcaster TV4 that “lies must be met with facts.” Ygeman said Muslims and imams in Sweden had distanced themselves “from this propaganda and disinformation.”
Sweden has launched a new agency dedicated to defending the country against disinformation, propaganda and psychological warfare in the latest part of its efforts to bring military and civil defence back towards Cold War levels.
The official opening of the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency came on the same day that Finland's President Sauli Niinistö accused Russia of "challenging the sovereignty of several EU member states, including Sweden and Finland" by demanding security guarantees ruling out “Nato’s further movement eastward”.
The agency will aim to boost the country’s “ability to identify and counter foreign malign information influence, disinformation and other dissemination of misleading information directed at Sweden,” Hjort said.
The agency will not battle those spreading false information within Sweden, instead aiming “its sole focus on foreign threat actors,” Hjort said. “Russia and China often resort to information influence activities, but we can also see new actors engaging in these activities.”
A conspiracy theory being propagated by right-wing sources claims that the age-specific markers for childhood development — activities like rolling, walking, and a baby's first words — have been quietly pushed back because of the pandemic's deleterious effect on children. Yet although these developmental checklists were indeed updated for the first time since 2004 to make them more comprehensive, conspiracy theories that the update arose due to the pandemic constitute yet another example of social media's ability to rapidly propagate misinformation.
Some thought the accounts were suspended due to Russian bots mass reporting the tweets, but Twitter’s head of site integrity disputed those claims.
Judging from the rocky launch, it’s hard to imagine Facebook and Twitter are particularly worried about the competition. But while Trump’s new app is capitalizing on grievances with the big platforms, its real goal is to supplement them rather than replace them. Like talk radio or Fox News before it, the new crop of conservative-focused social networks are trying to build an alternative, not a replacement — which makes the platform’s success both easier to reach and harder to measure.
With the launch of Donald Trump's ridiculous Truth Social offering, we've already noted that he's so heavily relying on Section 230's protections to moderate that he's written Section 230 directly into his terms of service. However, at the same time, Trump is still fighting his monstrously stupid lawsuits against Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for banning him in the wake of January 6th.
Facebook has been accused of colluding with OnlyFans to blacklist rival adult websites in a lawsuit filed in the US.
This week, BBC News revealed that OnlyFans was being sued over claims it directed a social media company to disable accounts of adult entertainers by placing their content on a terrorism database.
It all started with Hertz being less than helpful when a man was falsely accused of murder. Michigan resident Herbert Alford was arrested and convicted for a murder he didn't commit. He maintained his innocence, claiming he was at the airport in Lansing, Michigan during the time the murder occurred. And he could have proven it, too, if he had just been able to produce the receipt showing he had been renting a car at Hertz twenty minutes away from the crime scene.
In this present period, when the United States is once again retreating from the path to racial and economic justice by blocking voting rights and preventing working people from realizing their desires to form unions, it is fortifying to contemplate King’s words of optimism, sacrifice, and morality.
King, as well as other Civil Rights Movement leaders, were deeply concerned about economic justice. In the book, The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of the Civil Rights, William P. Jones documents the considerable labor movement connections of many Civil Rights leaders. In a 1961 address to the labor organization, the AFL-CIO, King clarified what his American dream is:
The last mildly liberal president was Lyndon Johnson whose Great Society was pissed away during the murder of millions of people in several contries of Southeast Asia.
The now-famous AOC “electrifies crowds” in Texas, according to the€ Guardian€ (February 20, 2022). Here, however, in the Northeast, it seems that many traffic lights in metropolitan areas have at least one, and often more than one person, begging for money close€ by. This, begging, in the wealthiest nation state in the world that has plenty of socialism for the power elite, and in particular for military interests and the military itself. In 2007-2008, under Bush then Obama, financial interests made out like bandits while ordinary people lost out and often lost out big on big-ticket items like their homes.
Minneapolis, Minn.—The red brick plaza surrounding the Hennepin County Government Center is no stranger to protest. When former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter was convicted of manslaughter in December, days before Christmas, the plaza was filled with activists who cried and hugged and celebrated. “Ain’t no power like the power of the people,” local activist DJ Hooker shouted into a megaphone.
As Starbucks workers across the United States join a unionization wave, Sen. Bernie Sanders planned a Wednesday night town hall to speak with organizers at the iconic coffee chain.
Sanders (I-Vt.), who supported the nation's first successful Starbucks union drive in New York state late last year, will host a livestream beginning at 8:00 pm ET at live.berniesanders.com and on his social media pages.
We go to Georgia, where a jury has found the three white men who hunted and fatally shot unarmed Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery guilty of committing federal hate crimes, acknowledging the racial animus behind the killing. It marks the first time in Georgia’s history that there has been a conviction for a federal hate crime. Today is the anniversary of Arbery’s murder, now marked as Ahmaud Arbery Day in Georgia. We speak with Anoa Changa, editor at NewsOne and retired federal government attorney. The verdict feels like a victory for proponents of racial justice, but “it isn’t the end-all be-all that a lot of people think it is,” says Changa. “Prosecutorial misconduct and prosecutorial accountability continue to be something that organizers around the state are working on.”
Paola Schietekat longs to return to the Middle East, where she loved working — until a dream job in Qatar was followed by a nightmarish ordeal that made her flee the country.
The non-denominational organization based in the Netherlands, a country in northwestern Europe, last month presented its 2022 World Watch List (WWL) which ranks the top 50 countries where Christians experience the worst persecution for their faith.
Released at the beginning of each year, the survey, covering a period from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2021, revealed that persecution against believers in Christ, continues to rise especially in Asian and African countries and that the Coronavirus pandemic has further exacerbated discrimination.
“The severity of persecution in countries on the list, demonstrated by the total points scored, has increased by more than 20% since 2014. This signifies an increased pressure in all areas of life for persecuted Christians,” the report says.
A California woman says she was mistaken for a person by the same name and then held in jail for 13 days, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Tuesday.
It was only 2009 that AT&T heralded its cutting edge 3G network as it unveiled the launch of the iPhone (which subsequently crashed AT&T's cutting edge 3G network). Fast forward a little more than a decade and AT&T is preparing to shut that 3G network down, largely so it can repurpose the spectrum it utilizes for fifth-generation (5G) wireless deployments. While the number of actual wireless phone users still using this network is minimal, the network is still being heavily used as a connectivity option for some older medical devices and home alarm systems.
Peloton hasn't been having a great run lately. While business boomed during the pandemic, things have taken a sour turn of late on a bizarre host of fronts. In just the last month or two the company has seen an historic drop in company valuation, fired 20 percent of its workforce, shaken up its executive management team, been forced to pause treadmill and bike production due to plummeting demand, been the subject of several TV shows featuring people having heart attacks, and now has been caught up in a new scandal for trying to cover up a rust problem to avoid a recall.
Apple Inc. and other tech giants are opting to pay fines rather than comply with orders they don't like, the European Union's antitrust chief warned.
"Some gatekeepers may be tempted to play for time or try to circumvent the rules," Margrethe Vestager said in an online speech at a US awards ceremony.
The grisly 17-second clip was recorded by videographer Adam Ward on Aug. 26, 2015, as he and Parker were fatally shot by a disgruntled former colleague while reporting near Roanoke. Broadcast live, the horrifying footage quickly went viral, viewed millions of times on Facebook, YouTube and other sites. Six years later, it still gets tens of thousands of views, despite the efforts by Parker’s father, Andy, to eliminate the clips from the Internet.
Now, Andy Parker has transformed the clip of the killings into an NFT, or non-fungible token, in a complex and potentially futile bid to claim ownership over the videos — a tactic to use copyright to force Big Tech’s hand.
In 2017, Bell Canada, TVA, Videotron, and Rogers teamed up in a lawsuit against the operator of TVAddons, the largest repository of Kodi add-ons. The legal action proved extremely controversial but now, after many twists and turns, the matter is now over. As part of a consent judgment, TVAddons' founder has admitted liability and agreed to pay a cool US$14.5 million in damages.
Reddit's latest transparency report reveals that during 2021, Reddit removed 665,898 pieces of content following copyright infringement complaints, up 104% on the previous year. Actions against "excessive" copyright infringers also increased significantly, with Reddit permanently banning 2,813 users and 2,625 subreddits.
