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Links 15/05/2022: Linux 5.18 RC7 and Calls for More Mass Surveillance



  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

      • Kubernetes 1.24: Volume Populators Graduate to Beta | Kubernetes

        The volume populators feature is now two releases old and entering beta! The AnyVolumeDataSouce feature gate defaults to enabled in Kubernetes v1.24, which means that users can specify any custom resource as the data source of a PVC.

        An earlier blog article detailed how the volume populators feature works. In short, a cluster administrator can install a CRD and associated populator controller in the cluster, and any user who can create instances of the CR can create pre-populated volumes by taking advantage of the populator.

        Multiple populators can be installed side by side for different purposes. The SIG storage community is already seeing some implementations in public, and more prototypes should appear soon.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Jupiter BroadcastingNVIDIA’s New View | LINUX Unplugged 458

        NVIDIA is open-sourcing their GPU drivers, but there are a few things you need to know. Plus, we get some exclusive insights into Tailscale from one of its co-founders.

        Special Guests: Avery Pennarun and Christian F.K. Schaller.

      • GNU World Order 460

        **kapidox** , **kapman** , **kapptemplate** , **karchive** , and **kate** from the **kde** software series of Slackware.

      • VideoSysteroid: Best Way To Set Linux Kernel Parameters - Invidious

        It's not often you need to mess with kernel parameters but when you do instead of using sysctl how about you try out systeroid instead

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux 5.18-rc7
        	
        From	Linus Torvalds 
        Date	Sun, 15 May 2022 18:15:42 -0700
        Subject	Linux 5.18-rc7
        share 0
        So things continue to be fairly calm, and as such this is likely the
        last rc before 5.18 unless something bad happens next week.
        
        

        All the stats here look normal, with the bulk of it being random driver updates (network drivers, gpu, usb, etc).

        There's a few filesystem fixes, some core networking, and some code kernel stuff. And some selftest updates.

        Sortlog appended, nothing really stands out (the most exciting thing last week was literally that Andrew has started using git, which will make my life easier, but that doesn't affect the *code*)

        Please give it one last week of testing, so that we'll have a nice solid 5.18 release.

        Linus

      • LWNKernel prepatch 5.18-rc7 [LWN.net]

        The 5.18-rc7 kernel prepatch has been released for testing. Linus says: "So things continue to be fairly calm, and as such this is likely the last rc before 5.18 unless something bad happens next week".

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Make Use Of5 Things to Do After Upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
      • How to Dual Boot Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Windows 11

        Hey guys, in this guide we will demonstrate how to configure a dual-boot setup of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) alongside Windows 11.

        For this to work, you need to have Windows 11 already installed on your PC.€  You will then need to create a separate partition on your hard drive on which Ubuntu 22.04 will be installed. We will go over all this, so don’t worry.

      • UNIX CopUsing SSH Keys

        SSH supports authenticating users with keys. Although they require more setup ahead of time, they’re generally more secure than typing in passwords. They’re also more convenient in the long run. In this article, I am going to cover using key-based authentication in OpenSSH.

      • UNIX CopHow To Install Anaconda on Ubuntu 22.04

        Anaconda is a distribution of the Python and R programming languages for scientific computing (data science, machine learning applications, large-scale data processing, predictive analytics, etc.), that aims to simplify package management and deployment. The distribution includes data-science packages suitable for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is developed and maintained by Anaconda, Inc.,

      • UNIX CopHow To Install Anaconda on Fedora 36

        Anaconda is a popular Python/R data science and machine learning platform, used for large-scale data processing, predictive analytics, and scientific computing.

        Anaconda distribution ships with 250 open-source data packages, and more than 7,500 additional packages can be installed from the Anaconda repositories. It also includes the conda command-line tool and a desktop graphical user interface called Anaconda Navigator.

      • UNIX CopHow to install Brave Web browser on CentOS 9 Stream

        Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to install Brave Web browser on CentOS 9 Stream. This is one of the best alternative web browsers you can use.

      • Install phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04 with Apache

        phpMyAdmin is a web-based application for interacting with MySQL database server. This tool provides you with a user interface to make MySQL operations so you don’t have to use the command line interface.

        In this guide you are going to learn how to install phpMyAdmin with Apache on Ubuntu 22.04 and secure it.

      • How to Install GNU Octave on Linux Mint 20

        Linux Mint is an ideal operating system for many kinds of users, such as enthusiasts and developers. That’s why it has become one of the most popular in all of Linux, thanks to its ease of use and robustness. In it, we can install all kinds of tools such as programming languages and thus be useful to professional developers. An example of this is that we can install GNU Octave on Linux Mint without too many problems. This is the aim of our post.

      • Linux HintFinding files in Ubuntu 22.04

        In computing, file placement is an important activity to perform as you may forget the file location. Ubuntu 22.04 supports various built-in commands to trace down your files. However, the graphical user interface may also be used to find files.

      • Linux HintHow to Convert SVG or PDF File to Base64?

        Apart from simple text, the image files or documents can also be converted to the Base64 format. These entities can then be stored securely anywhere you want. In this article, we would like to share the methods of converting the SVG files and PDF files to Base64 using the Python programming language in Ubuntu 20.04. First, we will introduce you briefly to these file formats, followed by the procedure of converting them to Base64.

      • Linux Made SimpleHow to install DataGrip 2022 on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install DataGrip 2022 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

      • Linux HintGDISK Command-Line Options

        The GDISK command in Linux is used to partition the drives of your system. Moreover, it can also be used to list down the existing partitions and display relevant information about them. In this guide, we will be talking about the different command-line options that are available with the GDISK command on a Linux Mint 20.3 system.

      • Linux HintMapfile Bash Linux Command

        The bash shell Mapfile command is often known as a reading array. The primary purpose is to read standard input lines and store them in an indexed array variable. Mapfile must also read from substitution (<<) rather than a pipe. In addition, as compared to a read loop, bash Mapfile is a much faster and more convenient solution. It returns 1 if the execution of the command gets successful and 0 in case it is not successful. If we don’t specify an array name, the bash Mapfile variable will be targeting the array variable by default. Thus, we have decided to cover some examples using the mapfile instruction on the bash.

      • Linux HintResolve Issue: Bash Bad Substitution

        You may have received the Bad substitution syntax problem while developing Bash scripts. After browsing through forums, you may discover that you are not alone; other individuals are encountering the same mistake. It’s a typographical fault that happens when you run your Shell script, and it can happen for a variety of reasons. The wrong use of instruction substitution and erroneous characters appended to the program are two major reasons for this.

        Let’s see how we can make our shell script cause this error and how to resolve it. Get started with the new bash file created with Ubuntu’s “touch” query and open it within the “GNU Nano” editor.

      • Linux HintResolve Issue: Bash Unary Operator Expected

        Errors have a diverse number of types and reasons when it comes to bash programming. One of those errors is the “unary operator expected” error in bash programming. When evaluating expressions in conditional declarations, you may run into the “unary operator expected” issue. The reasons for this error “bash unary operator expected” might be diverse. We’ll start by talking about what’s creating the problem. Following that, we’ll go over a couple of options for resolving this problem. Let’s get started with today’s article by creating a new bash file in Ubuntu 20.04 system. For this, we need to utilize the “touch” instruction within the shell terminal and name the file “unary.sh”.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • OMG UbuntuONLYOFFICE 7.1 is Out With New PDF Viewer, Slideshow Animations + More

        If you’re a fan of open source office software you’re in for a treat as a brand new version of ONLYOFFICE is now available to download.

        If you can look past the shouty name, ONLYOFFICE offers a highly-performant, well-featured, and fully-functional alternative to LibreOffice (which, though awesome, is a bit ‘old-school’ for some folks’ UI tastes). It’s also the next-best thing to that stalwart of the productivity software scene: Microsoft Office.

        ONLYOFFICE 7.1 inherits a swathe of improvements recently deposited in the cloud-side version of the suite, such as improved performance, better Microsoft Office compatibility, and a handy new new print preview mode in all of the suite’s respective components.

    • Programming/Development

      • The Unix Philosophy and Lagrange

        I wasn't initially going to wade into this discussion (since it's not really what I want this gemlog to be), but something is bugging me. Maybe I'm misreading Ainent's initial post but they seem to be arguing that Lagrange violates the Unix philosophy *because* it supports 6 different protocols (including file://). I think this assumes a stronger interpretation of "one thing" than is desirable.

      • [Old] Wiley“The Canary in the Coal Mine…” A cautionary tale from the decline of SourceForge

        This article tells the cautionary tale of the downfall of Allura/SourceForge. We identified both internal and external causes, both social and technical in nature. We also found evidence of sociotechnical and architectural problems in project archives. Project and community health metrics could have been used to predict and understand the downfall by tracking its early manifestations. The team reported to be aware of the technical debt in the project, yet this was insufficient to maintain the health of the project. Community managers should also measure and manage the mutual impacts of technical and social debt. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that a combination of managerial and technical flaws doomed this project: architectural flaws, power-distance, and measurable management mishaps eventually led to the forge's demise. Practitioners and maintainers of other software projects can benefit from this cautionary tale, for example, as indications of what not to do, in the scope of their community and architecture management infrastructure.

      • Dirk EddelbuettelDirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.11.1.1.0 on CRAN: Updates

        Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra and scientific computing. It aims towards a good balance between speed and ease of use, has syntax deliberately close to Matlab and is useful for algorithm development directly in C++, or quick conversion of research code into production environments. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 978 other packages on CRAN, downloaded over 24 million times (per the partial logs from the cloud mirrors of CRAN), and the CSDA paper (preprint / vignette) by Conrad and myself has been cited 469 times according to Google Scholar.

        This release brings a first new upstream fix in the new release series 11.*. In particular, treatment of ill-conditioned matrices is further strengthened. We once again tested this very rigorously via three different RC releases each of which got a full reverse-dependencies run (for which results are always logged here). A minor issue with old g++ compilers was found once 11.1.0 was tagged to this upstream release is now 11.1.1. Also fixed is an OpenMP setup issue where Justin Silverman noticed that we did not propagate the -fopenmp setting correctly.

      • Linux HintReversed Linked List (C++)

        When you reverse a linked list, the link path is reversed, and the head becomes the tail, and the tail becomes the head. By swapping the positions of the nodes, we can understand this quickly. In this swapping, we just change the positions of the nodes from left to right or vice-versa.

      • Linux HintGets Function in C

        Bound-checking is therefore not accomplished by the gets() method. It would not examine if the input data integrates inside the character array’s holding limit of bytes. A buffer overflow can occur when an entry exceeds the array limit. Through fgets, this restriction of the gets() method could be eliminated. The gets() method produces a string if it occurs. It reverts NULL if it starts to fail. It displays the EOF indicator on a string if an end-of-file situation generates the error. If another error triggers the failure, the error parameter is displayed on the string.

      • Linux HintGetting started with Node-Red on Raspberry Pi

        Node-Red is a visual programming tool that is used to connect APIs and hardware in a more prominent and exciting way. It has a web-based editor that will allow you to control and manage your Raspberry Pi device from a remote location. The graphical user interface of the editor is excellent and pretty simple which enables a beginner to handle it quite easily. The Node-Red can easily be installed on your Raspberry Pi device and once the installation is completed you will need to acquire a basic understanding of how to use this tool on a web editor to develop different projects.

        In this tutorial, we will provide you with an easy setup guide to get started with Node-Red on your Raspberry Pi and start developing your projects with ease.

      • Python

        • Linux HintStatistics Module in Python

          If you’re in the research world, statistics is of paramount importance! And Python offers many a module for statistics, but the one that we’ll be talking about today is called the statistics module. It’s a simple module, not really for advanced statistics but for those who just need a simple and quick computation. In this tutorial, we’ll be reviewing the statistics module in Python.

        • Linux HintEmulate the Do-While Loop in Python

          Most of the standard programming languages have three types of loops to iterate some statement multiple times. These are the while loop, for loop, and the do-while loop. The while and for loop are available in Python but Python has no do-while loop. The do-while loop can be implemented by using another loop. In the do-while loop, the condition is tested after inserting the loop. So, the statements of the do-loop execute at least once even if the condition may not be matched. The ways of emulating the do-while loop in Python have been shown in this tutorial.

      • Java

        • Linux HintException Handling in Java | Explained

          Java provides a concept of Exception Handling that makes it possible to handle the errors at run time, in this way, the normal follow of the program wouldn’t be affected. To handle the runtime exceptions Java provides multiple ways such as try-catch, finally, throw, throws. The normal flow can be preserved using any of these exception handling methods.

    • Standards/Consortia

      • RIPEImpact Analysis for UTF-8 in the RIPE Database

        The RIPE Database contains the names and addresses of organisations as well as administrative and technical contacts for resources and routing in the RIPE region. The Database currently supports the Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) character set, which can represent most characters in western European languages. However it cannot fully support characters used in other languages and alphabets that are commonly used in the RIPE service region and beyond. Currently, any unsupported characters must be transliterated into Latin-1 (or even ASCII in some cases, which is a subset of Latin-1), potentially corrupting the meaning. Switching the RIPE Database from Latin-1 to UTF-8 allows names and addresses to be properly represented for querying and display.

  • Leftovers

    • HackadayLight Whiskers From Soap Bubbles Is Real Science

      You might think that anything to do with a soap bubble is for kids. But it turns out that observing light scattering through a soap bubble produces unexpected results that may lead to insights into concepts as complex as space-time curvature. That’s what [stoppi] says in his latest experiment — generating “light whiskers” using a laser and a soap bubble. You can watch the video, below, but fair warning: if videos with only music annoy you, you might want to mute your speakers before you watch. On the other hand, it almost seems like a laser light show set to music.

    • HackadayVicious Little Desktop Shredder Pulverizes Plastic Waste

      We’ve all likely seen video of the enormous industrial shredders that eat engine blocks for lunch and spit out a stream of fine metal chips. The raw power of these metal-munching monsters is truly fearsome, and they appear to be the inspiration for SHREDII, the miniature plastic shredder for at-home recycling of plastic waste.

    • HackadayThe Explosive Art Of Detonographs

      The visual arts are a broad field, encompassing everything from the chiselling of marble sculptures to the creation of delicate landscapes in charcoal on paper. However, [Evelyn Rosenberg] has experimented with some altogether more radical techniques over the years, creating her explosively-formed detonographs.

    • Myths Adults Believe

      As mentioned in the post, we don't have five senses. We can sense gravity, so we know when we are upside down, so that's six. We can sense heat, and cold (two different senses, which can be activated both at once), and we can sense when we're hungry and thirsty.

      Once I read about this old myth (I never figured it out myself), I started writing out lists of senses. I think I got to about twelve, but I've heard others have got to 18 distinct senses. It's one of many myths I've believed in life, and every time I find one, I start wondering about how many others I've accepted.

    • riding the wave of agency

      Some self reflection has brought up interesting questions of late about the nature of agency as it applies to self-improvement, motivation, and those types of things.

    • Hardware

      • HackadayComputer Thing Might Be Garbage

        [Tech Time Traveller] has a lot of voices in his head this week, and most of them are worried about his wife’s reaction to him buying other people’s garbage. We don’t blame him, though. He bought it from an estate sale and it was billed as a TV typewriter. The device looked completely homebrewed from somewhere around the late 1970s to the early 1980s. It contains a mess of components obviously hand-built in a combination of neat construction and messy wiring.

      • HackadayUpcycling A Flat Bed Scanner

        [Piffpaffpoltrie] had a 20-year-old Acer flatbed scanner that they just couldn’t justify keeping. But it does seem a shame to throw away a working piece of gear. Instead, the old scanner became a light table. We’ll admit, as projects go, it isn’t the most technically sophisticated thing we’ve ever seen, but we do think it is a worthy way to upcycle something that would otherwise be filling up a landfill.

      • HackadayE-Paper Clock Displays Things In A Battery-Friendly Manner

        Clock builds are a hacker staple, and many overflow with power-thirsty LEDs and network features. This build from [mattwach] takes quite the opposite approach, sipping away at its batteries thanks to an e-paper based design.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • TruthOutPrivacy Experts Warn Data From Period-Tracking Apps May Soon Be Used Against You
        • Facial recognition in European cities – What you should know about biometric mass surveillance

          As an effort to promote privacy and human rights in the EU, we at Greens/EFA got together with a team of international experts to understand where biometric mass surveillance, like facial recognition, is put to use this very moment in different European cities and states.

          Keep reading to find out what we learned, and why must take action to ban the use of these technologies now – before it is too late.

        • Holistic privacy: How to remove the target on encryption's back

          Encryption, encryption, encryption. When it comes to the digital world, encryption is the number one tool we've got for protecting people's security and privacy. If you had to pick a singular cybersecurity thing which was the most important, it would be encryption. Without encryption, the entire internet would catch on fire and we'd be left with a pile of ashes containing everything from your texts to your grandma, to your bank password, or even top secret government memos.

          Losing—or weakening—encryption would be a catastrophe — and that's why so many good people fight tooth and nail to protect it. However, as the fiery debate over tech (and how to regulate it) rages on — the focus on encryption is starting to get really intense. And with that intensity, it's starting to feel like other aspects of security and privacy aren't getting the attention they deserve. Things like metadata, data storage, and digital identities also have enormous privacy and security implications, but they're often left out of the discussion when talking about regulation and technical designs.

          Instead, regulators focus their efforts on trying to weaken or ban encryption: it's all about backdoors, lawful access, and wanting access to things which are, well, impossible to provide access to (that's the whole point of end-to-end encryption, after all). When it's only about encryption, the conversation about tech—which is often extremely complex—loses nuance. Don't get me wrong, encryption has to be a core part of any discussion about privacy and security, it's just not the only thing that matters. The conversation about whether something is (or isn't) private does not begin and end with 'is it encrypted?'. Sure, if it's not encrypted, that's a big red flag. But if it is encrypted, does that immediately equal privacy?

        • When the EU wanted to own all computers

          The only way to prevent FOSS e2ee like Matrix or PGP or OMEMO is to own everyone’s uid zero.

          Owning everyone’s uid zero is not OK for a hundred ripple effects. Passwords, finance, love letters, computational resources…

          This is different from already external apps like Signal or iMessage or iCloud, apps which are like hiring someone to come over to your house to fix your broken sink. Any given plumbing company can introduce&advertise an idea like their plummers can wear a body cam to prevent assault, for example, and such cameras can be regulated or even mandated by the EU.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Ukraine: The New American Crusade

        The United States is synonymous with war yet does everything it possibly can to avoid such a connection. Its conflicts are always couched in the language of democracy, liberal values, freedom, and the like, despite swathes of evidence that show these wars produce precisely the opposite outcomes. The unfortunate reality is that bombs dropped in the name of freedom produce the same amount of death and destruction as those dropped by tyrants, and American policymakers actively work to hide this from voters.€ 

      • Common DreamsOpinion | The Downside Risks of Sweden and Finland Joining NATO
      • Task And PurposeRussian troops are proving that cell phones in war zones are a very bad idea

        When Russian troops cross into Ukraine, their cell phones emit a roaming signal that connects to Ukraine’s cellular network, allowing the Ukrainians to triangulate where the Russians are by using the closest three cell towers, said Artem Starosiek, CEO of Molfar, an open-source intelligence community based in Kyiv.

        “So, the Ukrainian special services automatically receive information with the ID number of the device, roaming number, and, of course, the location of the person,” Starosiek told Task & Purpose. “Fortunately, Russians are quite naive and ignorant about using mobile devices, so they often call home, turning on their phones and connecting to the Ukrainian stations.”

        The Russians have also given away their positions by stealing Ukrainian iPhones, which can be tracked using the Find My iPhone app, even when the phones are turned off, Starosiek said.

      • Common DreamsBuffalo Gunman's Racism Directly Tied to Mainstreaming of White Nationalism, Say Critics

        Amid the outpouring of grief and heartache following Saturday's massacre in Buffalo that left 10 people dead and three wounded, critical observers say the racial animus which evidence shows motivated the killer must be seen in the larger context of a white nationalist mindset that has increasingly broken into the mainstream of the right-wing political movement and Republican Party in recent years.

        Taken into custody at the scene of the mass shooting at the Tops Market and identified as Payton Gendron, the white 18-year-old male charged with the murders of the victims live-streamed his attack online where he also posted a detailed, 180-page document that has been described by those who have reviewed it—including journalists and law enforcement—as a white nationalist manifesto rife with anti-Black racism, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories about "white replacement."

      • VarietyGunman Kills 10 People in Buffalo, N.Y. Shooting While Livestreaming on Twitch

        Officials believe that the gunman streamed his actions through a camera attached to a tactical helmet. Reports indicate that the video depicts the shooter pulling up to the grocery store and pointing his assault rifle at people in the parking lot and opening fire. The gunman then walked into the store to shoot others.

        Twitch, the massively popular live-streaming website owned by Amazon, has since taken the gunman’s channel offline, citing a violation of Twitch’s “community guidelines and terms of service.” A spokesperson confirmed that the company removed the stream less than two minutes after the violence started.

      • Business InsiderThe Buffalo mass shooting gunman live-streamed the attack on Twitch

        Authorities also said the gunman live-streamed the attack using a camera that was attached to the tactical helmet he was wearing.

      • CNNLivestream of shooting shows gunman pulling up to supermarket and saying, "Just got to go for it"

        In a statement sent to CNN, Twitch confirmed the shooting was streamed and said the user "has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content."

      • BBCGermany shooting: 2,200 people watched on Twitch

        The company said the account that live-streamed the attack had been created two months before the incident. It had only attempted to live-stream once before.

        Twitch said it had shared a "hash" of the video with a group of tech companies including Microsoft and Facebook.

        A video hash is essentially a "fingerprint" of a video that helps platforms detect if the same footage has been uploaded on their service.

      • ABCSupermarket shooting: Accused shooter Payton Gendron livestreamed attack, authorities say

        "The social media platforms that profit from their existence need to be responsible for monitoring and having surveillance, knowing that they can be, in a sense, an accomplice to a crime like this. Perhaps not legally, but morally. They've created the platform for this hate to be spewed," said Hochul.

        Hochul also said there is "a feeding frenzy on social media platforms, where hate festers more hate."

      • MedforthFrance: Islamist imam sentenced to one year in prison for terrorist offences

        Bassam Ayachi, who is on trial for terrorist criminal organisation, is suspected of belonging to the Islamic nationalist group Ahrar Al-Sham and of ” plotting ” with Al-Nosra, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda. A video from 2015 shows him “entering Idlib like a warlord” and “giving orders” while “a banner of the Al-Nosra Front” can be seen in the background.

      • TruthOutPeople in US Don’t Support the Gaza Blockade. Why Won’t Congress Take Action?
      • Common DreamsOpinion | Can US Progressives Defeat Big Money and Trumpism?

        The authoritarian Right is rapidly cementing its institutional control of US politics. Last week's leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v Wade is just the latest brick in the wall.

      • TruthOutWhite Supremacist Massacre in Buffalo Shows Alt-Right Ideology Leads to Murder
    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • The Gray ZoneOperation Surprise: leaked emails expose secret intelligence coup to install Boris Johnson
      • CBSHow Bellingcat is using TikTok to investigate the war in Ukraine

        According to Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, information from the video sharing platform began amassing prior to Russia's February invasion, when civilians posted TikTok videos of tanks driving down Russian streets. These videos not only showed the buildup before the invasion, Higgins said, but they also identified the specific units and equipment the Russian military planned to use. In instances where Bellingcat suspects Russians deployed cluster munitions into Ukraine from rocket launchers fired from inside Russia, Bellingcat says they can identify the units likely responsible.

        "In some cases, it's actually possible to see these convoys through their entire journey from their base all the way to the border," Higgins said. "So all these bits of information give us additional evidence that we can use for accountability purposes in the future."

      • Foreign PolicyChinese TikTok Users Are in Love With ‘Daddy Putin’

        These videos, which paint a positive, misconstrued portrait of Putin, often rack up hundreds of thousands of likes and thousands of comments. Users feel he’s a sensitive leader who cares deeply for the Russian people.

        “Social media often represents the distorted reality of many users,” Iuliia Mendel, a former spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told Foreign Policy. “All in all, we are talking about attempts to create a positive image of Putin using social networks.”

        Fans of Putin have taken to the platform to confess their “fervent love” for the Kremlin’s longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin. Many users include heart or prayer emojis alongside “乌拉,” a transliteration of ura, the Russian word for “huzzah.” This Chinese word coincidentally shares the same first character as the Chinese word for Ukraine, “乌克兰.”

    • Finance

      • Capitalists are the real "consumers"

        Everywhere you pick up a book or a newspaper or watch a story, you'll see the same word: consumer. It's supposed to refer to us, ordinary people, who do the consuming, as opposed to the big important people who are presumably on the other side of the equation: producers, those people who own businesses and "provide jobs."

        This language is crazy for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that "consumer" is just a couple shades away from "useless eater," which gives you a good idea of how close the dominant discourse already is to straight up fascist thinking. But more importantly for my purposes here, I'd just like to point out the very obvious fact that the dominant way of thinking and speaking about all this is precisely backward. Straightforwardly backward. Capitalist society is full of these ideological reversals.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Neofascist Minority Rule by the GOP Is Laying Waste to the United States

        Minority rule is killing America. This is most obvious in our Senate and Supreme Court, although it’s also hurt the credibility of the presidency and is damaging many of our states.

      • India TimesUkraine's key IT sector booming despite Russian invasion

        When Russian bombing started, IT companies shut offices in the capital Kyiv and eastern city of Kharkiv and engineers found refuge in western Ukraine or Poland next door.

        Veselovskiy said there were already around 500 tech companies in Lviv before the war but now estimates that 80 percent of the sector is in the western city.

      • The EU Commission is planning automatic CSAM scanning of your private communication – or total surveillance in the name of child protection.

        This would be the worst surveillance mechanism ever established outside of China, and all in the pretext of protecting children.

        Cryptography professor Matthew Green said that the EU proposal "describes the most sophisticated mass surveillance machinery ever deployed outside of China and the USSR. Not an exaggeration."

      • Site36Encrypted communication: UK remains member of EU interception group

        Notwithstanding its exit from the European Union, the British police will remain a member of a Standing Heads of Lawful Interception Units based at Europol. The UK is represented there by the National Crime Agency. This was confirmed by the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, in her answer to a parlamentary question by the pirate Patrick Breyer. The UK is thus the only third country in the group, which otherwise consists exclusively of EU members and the Schengen states Norway, Switzerland and Iceland.

        The working group of the departments on telecommunications surveillance had once been founded as a strategic „5G Expert Group“ on the initiative of the German Federal Criminal Police Office. It was supposed to give the authorities access to the new telephone standard, which was actually tap-proof. After this was successfully pushed through in the European and international standardisation bodies ETSI and 3GPP, the group was given a new name and new tasks in October 2021. It is now to ensure that the needs of law enforcement agencies are taken into account when amending surveillance laws at EU level and in the member states.

      • Common Dreams'Still on Track to Win This Primary,' Says John Fetterman After Stroke

        John Fetterman, the Democratic Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania who is also running for the open U.S. Senate seat in the state, announced Sunday afternoon that he suffered a stroke over the weekend but was already feeling better after the medical condition was treated at a local hospital.

        "Our campaign isn't slowing down one bit, and we are still on track to win this primary on Tuesday, and flip this Senate seat in November."

      • Misinformation/Disinformation

        • Common DreamsOpinion | Corporate Media Ignore Left Critiques of Government's New 'Disinformation' Board

          Testifying in front of a House committee, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently announced DHS’s formation of a “Disinformation Governance Board.” The board’s stated mission would be to address “disinformation spread by foreign states such as Russia, China and Iran,” as well as “transnational criminal organizations and human-smuggling organizations.”

        • The EconomistRussia is swaying Twitter users outside the West to its side

          UKRAINE AND Russia are fighting mainly in eastern Ukraine, but they are courting allies around the globe. Ukraine needs other countries to abide by Western sanctions. That means winning hearts and minds in places like India and Turkey.

          To Western ears, Russia’s portrayal of Ukraine’s leaders as Nazis sounds absurd. But just as Ukraine’s military strength surprised the Kremlin, the effectiveness of Russian propaganda might also be underestimated. An analysis of recent Twitter posts suggests that Russia’s online information operations may be focused outside the West—and already bearing fruit.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Christian Student in Sokoto, Nigeria Stoned to Death

        A Christian student stoned to death at a college in northwest Nigeria on Thursday (May 12) was falsely accused of blaspheming the prophet of Islam because she had refused to date a Muslim, sources said.

        Deborah Emmanuel Yakubu, a 200-level student at Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, the capital of Sokoto state, was beaten, stoned to death and her body set on fire, area residents said; a video showing the attack reportedly appeared on social media on Thursday (May 12). In the video, an unidentified man reportedly rages in the Hausa language that he killed Yakubu and set her body on fire.

      • ICCNigeria is World’s Scariest Country to be a Christian

        Open Doors cited a report by SBM Intelligence, a Nigeria-based research firm, for the reported killings in the West African country. The attacks are blamed on Islamist extremist groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), militant Fulani herdsmen, bandits and violent gangs.

        Open Doors reported that there were increasing signs that these groups were working together and widening the impact of their violence. The organization alleged more Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than in the rest of the world combined.

      • Common Dreams'It's a Fight They'll Get': Defenders of Abortion Rights March Nationwide

        Marches and rallies took place in cities across the United States on Saturday as defenders of reproductive rights vowed to defend the country against a looming decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that would eviscerate protections enshrined in Roe v Wade for nearly half a century.

        Under the banner of "Bans Off Our Bodies," the demonstrations took place in cities large and small but with a shared message.

      • TruthOutLouisiana Bill Classifying Abortion as Homicide Receives Backlash From the Right
    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • smolZINE - Issue 26
      • what could have been

        I dunno if the small net is quite the place to went, but it's the only place I trust to not betray my privacy, so there goes.

      • "I ATEN'T DED"



        In the autumn I worked on rexmpp (an XMPP library) a bit more, made an Emacs interface, started using it as my primary XMPP client.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Japan: Problem of Japan’s patent linkage system comes to the surface by a set of IP High Court decisions [Ed: In a humane society, lives should always become before patents]

          The “patent linkage system” is in general a system wherein market approval of generic drugs is linked with the status of the originator drug’s patents, for the purpose of early resolution of patent disputes and ensuring the stable and consistent supply of generic drugs. Japan has not statutorily adopted the patent linkage system, but the system is said to have been adopted in the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW)’s notification level, under which marketing approval shall not be granted for a generic drug while the originator’s patent covering the active ingredient is existing. Also, among indications and dose and administrations approved for the originator’s drug, those covered by the originator’s patents shall be carved out from the marketing approval for a generic drug. However, there are some problems in the Japanese system, and one of them is that the process of determination of whether or not a generic drug is covered by the originator’s patents is not open to the public. Further, in practice, when the originator’s patent is invalidated through an invalidation trial at the JPO, marketing approval is sometimes granted for the generic drug or the previously carved-out indications or dose and administrations, “without” waiting for the invalidity decision to become final.

        • Only Humans are Inventors Under the Patents Act, But For How Long? [Ed: Patent extremists want computer-generated patent applications to be allowed. Insane!]

          Artificial Intelligence Systems or Devices cannot be “inventors” under the Australian Patents Act, the Full Federal Court has confirmed. The inventor of a patent must be a natural person. Does there need to be legislative change to address the role of Artificial Intelligence in the Australian patents scheme?

          An expanded five judge appeal bench of the Full Federal Court has recently handed down its judgment confirming that artificial intelligence (AI) systems or devices cannot be an “inventor” under the Patents Act 1990 (Commissioner of Patents v Thaler [2022] FCAFC 62), reversing the decision of Justice Beach at first instance and bringing Australia into line with the position taken in other jurisdictions including the US, UK and Europe.

          In his patent application, Dr Thaler named an AI device that he created, DABUS, as the inventor. The central question for the Full Court was whether AI can be an “inventor” pursuant to the Patents Act and the Patents Regulations 1991 (the Regulations). The Full Court held that the application filed by Dr Thaler did not comply with reg 3.2C(2)(aa) because it failed to identify a natural person as the inventor. The Full Court also held that section 15 of the Patents Act, which provides for circumstances where a person draws entitlement to the grant of a patent from an inventor, requires the inventor to be a natural person. It came to this view having regard to the statutory language, structure and history of the Patents Act and the policy objectives underlying the legislative scheme.

        • Mathys & Squire hires new partner from HGF [Ed: Typical marketing spam from Amy Sandys; when she does not disseminate disinformation she wants us to think one low-level worker changing job is actually important news.]
        • MondaqFederal Circuit Reverses PTAB Decision In Amgen Biosimilar-Related IPR Appeal [Ed: Patent maximalists like to cherry-pick cases where "obvious" (invalid) patents are upheld later; they try to 'scandalise' PTAB, still]

          On April 14, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB's determination in IPR2016-01542 that claims of Amgen's U.S. Patent No. 8,952,138 are obvious. The '138 patent claims are directed to methods of refolding proteins by "contacting the protein with a refolding buffer comprising a redox component comprising a final thiol-pair ratio" of a specified range and a certain redox buffer strength to form a refold mixture. Amgen appealed the Board's construction of "final thiol-pair ratio" and its obviousness determination based on the construction. Amgen argued that the plain language makes clear that the "redox component is a distinct volume from the refold buffer, and it is that redox component that comprised the claimed 'final thiol-pair ratio.'" The Federal Circuit agreed with Amgen, and found the PTAB's construction "inconsistent with the plain language of claim 1 and the specification." Under the correct construction, the Federal Circuit found that claims 1-24 of the '138 patent were not obvious over the prior art and reversed the PTAB's decision.

        • FOSS Patents: Ericsson insists on proving Apple's infringement of three 5G standard-essential patents Apple itself once elected to challenge in Eastern District of Texas

          Ericsson means business and just isn't going to be outmaneuvered by Apple. In a move that demonstrates the company's confidence in its 5G patents, Ericsson is opposing a motion by Apple to stay a second case in the Eastern District of Texas. The first case is about the parties' dueling FRAND claims and will proceed to trial in December. The second one is the part of Apple's countersuit that did not get consolidated into Ericsson's case. The remaining claims in that case stem from Apple's declaratory-judgment attack on three of Ericsson's 5G patents. Apple's DJ initiative left Ericsson with no other reasonable choice but to counterclaim that those patents (which Apple handpicked because it presumably thought it could easily prove them not to be standard-essential) are valid and indeed infringed by Apple's 5G products.

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent FreakPirate Bay’s Crypto ‘Token’ is Barely Alive After Just One Year

          One year ago, The Pirate Bay released its very own 'crypto' token out of the blue. There was no official whitepaper for this soft launch, but the torrent site envisioned the 'coin' being used to access VIP content or donate to uploaders. Thus far, nothing has come of it. People don't seem interested in the 'project' and the price continues to drop.



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