Fortunately there is a solution: you can use a "proper" camera, of the sort you associate with earnest tourists, as a webcam. In particular, most modern mirrorless cameras from the last few years can do an excellent job if you know what you're doing.
To give you an idea of the difference, here's the output of the most widely used webcam, the Logitech C920, and the Fujifilm X-S10 I use as a webcam: [...]
If you say that the filesystem is an API, I feel that you're saying about as much as if you said that the web (as an idea and a general thing) is an API (which is true but in a very broad, architecture astronaut way). The filesystem being an API is pretty much the idea that you can use a commonly agreed on hierarchical namespace to communicate between programs, and between people and programs.
One place where this matters is if people aspire for other, more concrete APIs to become as broadly adopted and available as the filesystem "API". I feel that that would require people transforming those more concrete APIs into something more or less as broad, encompassing, and general as the idea of filesystems. For many things that people want to be broad APIs, I tend to not see any obvious path for that to happen because there doesn't seem to be a level between a broad idea and a concrete API.
Docker packages software applications into containers making them easy to build, test, and ship (deploy). In this post we will look into some useful docker commands you should know about with real-life examples. Let’s get rolling!
A Live USB is a Linux USB with no persistent storage typically used to replace the previous operating system on the hard disk (either Linux or Windows) with a newer version of the Linux operating system. With a Live USB, you may boot up a computer and do tasks such as installing programs, storing data, and changing settings. However, if you restart your computer, all the changes you made using the Live USB will be lost.
What if you need to continue working and pick up where you left off on a Linux Mint Live USB drive? Introducing the Linux Mint Live USB with persistent storage.
The term MAC Address is a derived abbreviation for Media Access Control Address. The network interface controller (NIC) uses the MAC address as its assigned unique identifier within an existing network segment.
To practically relate to or understand what a MAC address is, think of it as the postal or physical address to a house. The house in this case is the network interface controller (NIC).
Graylog is an industry-leading opensource log management solution for collecting, storing, indexing, and analyzing real-time data from applications and a myriad of devices in IT infrastructures such as servers, routers, and firewalls.
Graylog helps you gain more insights into the data collected by combining multiple searches for detailed analysis and reporting. It also detects threats and possible nefarious activity by conducting a deep analysis of the logs from remote sources.
This tutorial explains how to boot into rescue mode or emergency mode in Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04 and 18.04 LTS editions.
As you might already know, Runlevels are replaced with Systemd targets in many Linux distributions such as RHEL 7 / RHEL 8 and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and newer versions. For more details about runlevels and systemd target, refer to this guide.
This guide is specifically written for Ubuntu, however the steps given below should work on most Linux distributions that use Systemd as the default service manager.
Before getting into the topic, let us have a brief understanding about what is rescue mode and emergency mode and what is the purpose of these both modes.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Mate Desktop on Manjaro 21. For those of you who didn’t know, MATE is a free and open-source desktop environment that is compatible with a variety of Linux distributions. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. MATE is a successor to GNOME 2 and an alternative to GNOME 3 shell.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Mate desktop environment on a Manjaro 21.
Log files and journals are important to a system administrator's work. They reveal a great deal of information about a system and are instrumental during troubleshooting and auditing.
Log files contain events and messages generated by the kernel, applications, and users that log into the system.
Recently I started playing the game Core Keeper on my laptop, which is an early access game on Steam. As a testament to how good of a game it is, I ended up playing it a lot more than I was expecting to, so now who knows how much time I've wasted on it.
The Partaker H2 is a kind of Protectli FW6D clone on steroids ; at least when it comes to the 11th Gen Intel CPU. The overall systems are quite similar according to the sheet specs. And the Partaker runs OpenBSD really nicely.
The Apollo missions to the Moon required complex hardware to communicate between Earth and the spacecraft, sending radio signals over hundreds of thousands of miles. The premodulation processor was a key component of this system, combining voice, scientific data, TV, and telemetry for transmission to Earth.1 It was built from components that were welded together and tightly packed into a 14.5-pound box.2 In this blog post, I look inside the premodulation processor, examine its construction, and describe how each module worked.
Another choice in OpenPOWER distros, but with another choice for old-school 32-bit PowerPC, too. AOSC/OS (short for "Anthon Open Source Community") is an Debian (formerly OpenSUSE) derivative claiming to have a wide variety of packages and good port parity at the cost of larger space and a generally manual installation process. The desktop experience is KDE, though a server version is also available. Support for POWER8 and up is listed as "experimental" but is available for download, and most packages appear available to ppc64le.
While I like the idea of a third-party service offering this logic, I am more interested in seeing how I could do it on my website.
I don’t believe that the Web is the best solution for having feed readers and blogging clients everywhere. It is for sure the easiest, as long as the device you’re using has modern web browser, you’re good to go. I’ve never used a Web interface that was better than a good native interface. Of course there are crap native apps that compare poorly to well-crafted Web applications, I’m not saying that all native apps are better than Web apps, I’m saying that given both a very good Web interface and a very good native interface, that I usually prefer the native one.
So, we can't omit the favicon, and we can't use an arbitrary character... what can we do?
After a little bit of digging, I came across a concept that most web developers are fairly familiar with: Data URLs.
Now that I recently upgraded my internet connection to 25 Gbit/s, I was curious how hard or easy it is to download files via HTTP and HTTPS over a 25 Gbit/s link. I don’t have another 25 Gbit/s connected machine other than my router, so I decided to build a little lab for tests like these ðŸ§âââ¬ÂðŸâ¬
This is the first in a series of articles about building and deploying software as a service (SaaS) applications, which will focus on software and deployment architectures. The topics the series will cover can be used as the basis for a checklist for SaaS architecture.
[...]
From the end users' perspective, the defining characteristic of a SaaS application is that it's on-demand software typically delivered through the web, so the users only need a browser or mobile device to access it. The provider of the SaaS application manages all the software and infrastructure needed to deliver the application service to the consumers of the application.
SaaS applications are economically attractive because the development, infrastructure, and support costs are shared by multiple customers of the service. Consumers can start using the application without capital expenditures or waiting for the software to be installed. Subscription-based pricing lowers the risk for consumers, which results in shortened sales cycles for SaaS providers. The recurring revenue stream from subscriptions can be invested into the application to grow market share.
It seems like SQLite has shown up in more places everywhere you look.
SQLite is an implementation of a SQL database engine as a C-language library. That means SQLite can be embedded into binaries, run in the browser, on edge devices, or anywhere else.
It was at this conference that Richard Stallman first publicly and explicitly stated the idea that all software should be free, and makes it clear that "free" refers to freedom, not price, by saying that software should be freely accessible to everyone. This was probably the first time he made that distinction to the public.
Stallman continues by explaining why it is wrong to agree to accept a program on condition of not sharing it with others. So what can one say about a business based on developing nonfree software and luring others into accepting that condition? Such things are bad for society and shouldn't be done at all. (In later years he used stronger condemnation.)
Our success relies on us rapidly shipping new features to customers. This tight feedback loop helps us quickly validate our ideas. We can double down on the ideas that are working, and fail fast if we need to.
To achieve this rapid release cadence, we’ve optimised our engineering culture, tooling, and architecture to make the path from idea to production as frictionless as possible, all without sacrificing safety. We believe our approach gets us the best of both worlds: less friction encourages smaller changes, and smaller changes are less risky.
A couple of weeks ago I was looking around for different CSS frameworks to play around with, and came across Semantic HTML (not to be confused with Semantic UI) and I’m hooked! There are several “classless CSS frameworks” that are implemented under the ideology of Semantic HTML: styling of elements (e.g. height and colour) is applied to the HTML tags rather than classes, meaning that the HTML is less of a sea of
and tags with 6 or 7 classes, and more of a wider range of HTML tags that better explain what is contained in the web page.
Programs today are often a Frankenstein combination of different open-source libraries. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to manage all of the dependencies (see Reflections on 10,000 Hours of Programming). How code gets used and reused should be important for developer productivity optimizers.
Some layers I think about when thinking about sharing code.
Since I am also a tool maintainer AND my tool works with nREPL, I thought I share my ideas here.
Conventionally we communicate programming ideas with talks, papers, and blog posts. But we can also communicate ideas with entire codebases. If someone finds a security exploit, she’ll sometimes publish a proof of concept to prove the exploit isn’t just theoretical.
Now let’s say the exploit PoC comes with a ton of command-line flags: verbose mode, configuration options, output formats, the whole works. Now the writer is communicating something subtly different: not just that the exploit exists, but she wants you to experiment with it. She’s making it as easy as possible for you to play with the exploit yourself and come up with variations and consequences.
This makes codebases like any other kind of communication medium. There are different styles you can use to say subtly different things. There are also different “genres”, or overt things you use the codebase to say. Some examples: [...]
We want to walk a tree in parallel. We don’t know how big or deep it is. We will discover new nodes of unknown branchiness as we go. As we progress, we will end up performing two types of work. Sometimes we find a directory and recurse deeper. Sometimes we find a file and have to count the lines.
Given an undirected tree with N nodes numbered from 1 to N and an array A[] where A[i] denotes the value assigned to (i+1)th node. The connections between the nodes are provided in a 2-dimensional array edges[]. The task is to find the maximum path sum between any two nodes. (Both the nodes can be the same also).
The reason why none of this works, is that although you can make an HTTP/2 connection with AWS’s API Gateway, the API Gateway won’t call the lambda over HTTP/2, it will use HTTP/1.1. It seems like this should be easy to overcome, but my understanding is that GRPC is heavily integrated with HTTP/2.
What you’d need is a different wire protocol than GRPC if you wanted to work over HTTP/1.1 and this protocol does exists. It’s called GRPC-Web. Unfortunately, the GRPC-Web clients seems to be limited to JavaScript and TypeScript. There is a Golang client but the “IMPLEMENTATION IS LACKING”. So, unless I missed something, its not possible to run a GRPC service on an AWS Lambda. GRPCWeb is a good compromise if you clients are going to written in JavaScript or if more GRPCWeb clients start appearing. Otherwise you’re probably going to end up with REST or not using Lambdas.
If you are not familiar, pair programming (pairing) is the practice of collaborating directly with another person to work on a problem. You’ll often hear it in development contexts, but I've also encountered it with design.
In the Before Times, we paired by walking over to a coworker's computer, sitting next to them, and talking through the problem as they worked on it. Nowadays, it is (hopefully) remote screen sharing.
Why generics? €· Quamina is all about building and running finite automata. To do this you need a table-like data structure that represents states and the transitions between them. Quamina uses both deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata, DFAs and NFAs for short. The only real difference is that a transition from a DFA state is always to one other state; in an NFA you can have transitions to multiple others, in practice to a list of states.
Rellic is a framework for analyzing and decompiling LLVM modules into C code, implementing the concepts described in the original paper presenting the Dream decompiler and its successor, Dream++. It recently made an appearance on this blog when I presented rellic-headergen, a tool for extracting debug metadata from LLVM modules and turning them into compilable C header files. In this post, I am presenting a tool I developed for exploring the relationship between the original LLVM module and its decompiled C version: rellic-xref.
As more organizations rely on a cloud-native approach, they need to take the appropriate steps to secure the software delivery lifecycle. DevSecOps creates a culture of security across the entire organization to better address security vulnerabilities – and there’s no better time to adopt this approach than now. In the first quarter of 2022, data breaches increased 14 percent compared to the first quarter of 2021.
One reason I reach for the filter approach is if I have a certain amount of logic that's most easily expressed in a shell script, for example selecting what disks to report SMART data on and then iterating over them. Shell scripts make expanding file name glob patterns very easy; Python requires more work for this. I have to admit that how the idea evolved also plays a role; if I started out thinking I had a simple job of reformatting output that could be done entirely in a shell script, I'm most likely to write the Python as a filter that drops into it, rather than throw the shell script away and write a Python wrapper. Things that start out clearly complex from the start are more likely to be a Python wrapper instead of a filter used by a shell script.
There’s a revolution happening in color. Craig wrote about its coming years ago on the Iconfactory blog. He pointed out how, thanks to innovations like the Retina Display, screens could no longer improve by getting denser. Our biology as humans became the limiting factor because pixel density beyond a certain point can’t be perceived by our eyes and therefore provides no additional value. Therefore the only way for display makers to improve screens (and gain a competitive advantage) is to make them “deeper” by showing a wider range of color. Enter the new color gamuts we’re seeing like Display P3. Here’s Craig: [...]
If the channel is not maintained, try checking the project’s homepage for their IRC presence. It’s usually under the “Community” section.
We always enjoy [The History Guy] videos, although many of them aren’t much about technology. However, when he does cover tech topics, he does it well and his recent video on how ham radio operators assisted in operation Deep Freeze is a great example. You can watch the video, below.
Measuring voltages is fairly straightforward most of the time. Simply grab any old cheap multimeter, hook up the probes, and read off the answer. If, however, you need to measure very tiny voltages, the problem gets more complex. [Jaromir-Sukuba] designed a nanovoltmeter specifically to deal with this difficult case.
If we knew how much math goes into writing a video game, we might have paid more attention in math class. If you need a refresher, [Fletcher Dunn] and [Ian Parbery] have their book “3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development” available free online. The book was originally a paper book from 2011 with a 2002 first edition but those are out of print now. However, math is math, so regardless of the age of the book, it is worth a look. For now, the online version is a bunch of web pages, but we hear a PDF or E-reader version is forthcoming.
In this session, you pair up an engineer with a candidate for an hour and a half and give them a project to work on together. This isn't an exercise where the candidate is forced to write code on a whiteboard while the engineer evaluates them, but instead one where they actually work on the solution together on a real live computer.
The following is a loose, unordered collection of thoughts that come up when I look back on the past 10 years. Things I’ve learned, things I’ve unlearned, things I’ve changed my opinion on, things I never thought I’d believe in and now do.
Back in the days before the widespread adoption of smartphones, Palm was the market leader in PDAs. If you had one of those you’ll probably remember taking notes by writing those funky “Graffiti” characters and tapping your stylus onto, usually, a green monochrome screen. Some models even came with a battery-hungry backlight, but for the ultimate display experience you had to buy the Palm IIIc that came with a backlit full-colour display.
It used to be that when we featured one of [Frank Olson]’s DIY ribbon microphone builds, it was natural to focus on the fact that he was building them almost exclusively from wood. But despite how counterintuitive it may seem, and for as many comments as we get that his microphones shouldn’t work without metal in the ribbon motors, microphones like this wooden RCA Model 77 reproduction both look and sound great.
Last month, not long after Florida federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the transportation mask mandate was illegal, I flew from New York City to Miami. Videos of airplane passengers in midflight ripping off their masks and cheering with joy had already gone viral following the judge’s ruling.
Lately I've grown concerned with how social media affects me. In particular, modern social media, where the content you see is determined algorithmically, has become worrisome to me. I've come to believe it's a drag on my mental, emotional, and intellectual health...
Yep, that’s right. I got rid of them after 24 hours. After jotting down my first impressions, I was on the fence about them, especially since they cost nearly €£200.
They seemed okay overall, but for €£200, I was expecting more.
First observed in June 2021, Hive is an affiliate-based ransomware variant used by cybercriminals to conduct ransomware attacks against healthcare facilities, nonprofits, retailers, energy providers, and other sectors worldwide. Hive is built for distribution in a Ransomware-as-a-service model that enables affiliates to utilize it as desired.
A Hive ransomware affiliate has been deploying multiple backdoors, including the Cobalt Strike beacon, on Microsoft Exchange servers that are vulnerable to ProxyShell security issues.
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…
But corporations are moving forward with their own software-enhanced surveillance. While private-sector workers may not be subjected to the rigors of a 136-page clearance form, private companies help build these “continuous vetting” technologies for the federal government, said Lindy Kyzer of ClearanceJobs. Then, she adds, “Any solution would have private-sector applications.”
The part you should find disturbing: “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]€ has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time. In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has — without any judicial, legislative or public oversight — reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S.”
The part you shouldn’t find surprising: “ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time. In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has — without any judicial, legislative or public oversight — reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S.”
Pegasus spyware, the fiendishly effective creation of Israel’s unscrupulous NSO Group, has become something of a regular in the news cycles on cyber security.€ Created in 2010, it was the brainchild of three engineers who had cut their teeth working for the cyber outfit Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defence Forces: Niv Carmi, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie.
NSO found itself at the vanguard of an Israeli charm offensive, regularly hosting officials from Mossad at its headquarters in Herzliya in the company of delegations from African and Arab countries.€ Cyber capabilities would be one way of getting into their good books.
At a ceremony, 35 students of a religious school dressed in white recited the Quran at the UNESCO World Heritage Site which was converted into an Islamic Mosque.
The teacher was arrested in 2014. Among other things, he was accused of planning attacks, spreading propaganda and being a member of IS. In 2016, the Federal Criminal Court sentenced him to 4 years and 8 months in prison for membership of a criminal organisation. The Federal Police ordered his deportation, combined with an indefinite ban on entering Switzerland. Nevertheless, this Iraqi remains in Switzerland, as he could face torture and death in his home country. […]
Back in 2006 the Commission on Human Rights, which had been established in 1946, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and numerous human rights treaties, and established the system of rapporteurs, was abolished. At the time I was surprised by rationale of the General Assembly, because the reason adduced was the “politicization” of the Commission. The US unsuccessfully lobbied for the creation of a smaller commission composed only of countries that observed human rights and could pass judgment over the rest.€ As it turned out, the GA established a new body of 47 member States, the Human Rights Council, which, as any observer will confirm, iseven more politicized and less objective than its maligned predecessor.
The special session of the HR Council held in Geneva on 12 May on the Ukraine war was a particularly painful event, marred by xenophobic statements in violation of article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Speakers employed a mean tone in demonizing Russia and Putin, while ignoring the war crimes committed by Ukraine since 2014, the Odessa massacre, the 8 year Ukrainian bombardment on the civilian population of Donetsk and Lugansk, etc..
Rand Paul has never thought clearly about economics, and the relation between his morality and his partisan politics is not the subject of this column. No one needs a reminder that Rand Paul is an Ayn Randian “libertarian.” That is deadbeat and misses the crucial point in this timeline of events. Entirely. The brute fact remains that Rand at least raised the question of public accounting of a vast war budget. When there was a bipartisan stampede to approve the recent 40 billion dollar Ukraine war budget, his dissent was crucial in delaying automatic approval.
The more pointed and timely question is why Bernie Sanders went AWOL, along with the entire Progressive Caucus in Congress. Whether any of them belong in any school of Marxism whatsoever is a side issue. What matters most is whether they pursue a practical policy of peace. Do they raise the ground floor of social democracy across public policies such as health care, housing, and education? Bipartisan war budgets that expand from year to year have the sure consequence of strip-mining public funds away from basic social goods and services.
The ongoing, seemingly inescapable gun violence crisis in the United States, most recently manifested in Saturday’s horrific massacre in Buffalo, poses a dire threat to our fragile democracy. And our government’s lack of response to it constitutes a major crisis in itself.
So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit.
Taking refugees into one's home is indeed a noble act, but there's still rent to pay, laundry to wash, shopping to do, and cleaning to keep up with. Some individuals have started fundraising campaigns to finance the long-term housing of refugees because their expenses have skyrocketed. Meanwhile, in the UK, Poland, and Slovakia, state aid is available for those who are taking in Ukrainian refugees.
France is in possession of the ball when something strange happens. A sudden fog descends upon the play. The fans stand up to see what’s happening on the court. They try to clear away the fog with their hands, but to no avail.
When the fog finally clears a few frustrating minutes later, the game appears to be over. Players from both sides lie on the court, injured, some of them badly.
Mercifully, according to the young science of “heat death,” air moisture is as important as temperature for triggering human mortality, and when thermometers hit 115 degrees Fahrenheit in India and 120 in Pakistan in April, the humidity was quite low. But even so, in parts of India, humidity was still high enough that if the day’s peak moisture had coincided with its peak heat, the combination would have produced “wet-bulb temperatures” — which integrate measures of both into a single figure — already at or past the limit for human survivability. Birds fell dead from the sky.
A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change
Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a new report.
Just 100 of all the hundreds of thousands of companies in the world have been responsible for 71% of the global GHG emissions that cause global warming since 1998, according to The Carbon Majors Database, a report recently published by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), throwing light on the role companies and investors play in tackling climate change.
CDP is a non-profit organization dedicated to global disclosure of information to aid governments, companies and investors with managing their environmental impact. According to the study, since 1988, the year in which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed, over half of the world’s industrial emissions can be traced back to just 25 state companies and entities.
This edition of the Greenhouse 100 ranks companies by C02-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions (including CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases, but not biogenic CO2) directly released by large facilities in the US in 2019.
This is why the individual-versus-the-system action question is a false binary. We don’t need to do everything perfectly now. Many experts say to not let perfect be the enemy of good when it comes to climate action, or to obsess over their “environmental sins.” But system change and individual change do go hand in hand. “In the end, this is going to require decisions and changes in behavior of all of us, at every level of society,” Leiserowitz says. “Not just individuals—they can’t do it by themselves—but it’s also not just at the system level because, in the end, this is still a free society where people get to choose how they’re going to spend their money and their lives.”
The results showed that nearly two-thirds of the major industrial greenhouse gas emissions (from fossil fuel use, methane leaks, and cement manufacture) originated in just 90 companies around the world, which either emitted the carbon themselves or supplied carbon ultimately released by consumers and industry. As Heede told The Guardian newspaper, you could take all the decision-makers and CEOs of these companies and fit them on a couple Greyhound buses.
White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy is reportedly preparing to step down from her position coordinating the Biden’s administration’s climate agenda sometime in the coming months. President Joe Biden tapped McCarthy, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, to serve in the cabinet-level position in 2020, hoping that his pick for the first-ever national climate adviser would reflect the urgency of the climate crisis. Though no official decision has been made, McCarthy’s deputy, Ali Zaidi, is widely expected to replace her.
Rachel Carson was a passionate and poetic writer, but she was not a particularly subtle one. When she set out to write a book, it did not end until the mountains had crumpled into the sea, all organisms dead or alive had vanished therein, and the form of life itself on Earth had been radically altered. Before Carson wrote her most influential book, Silent Spring, she wrote three thrilling books on the ocean’s creative power over all of life’s forms, each of them ending just this way.
Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó finally named the price of Hungary’s approval of the EU’s sixth sanctions package against Russia (which includes the ban of Russian oil and gas imports): 15-18 billion Euros. What is this sum about and what does it cover?
As it is, cryptocurrencies play almost no role in economic transactions other than speculation in crypto markets themselves. And if your answer is “give it time,” you should bear in mind that Bitcoin has been around since 2009, which makes it ancient by tech standards; Apple introduced the iPad in 2010. If crypto was going to replace conventional money as a medium of exchange — a means of payment — surely we should have seen some signs of that happening by now. Just try paying for your groceries or other everyday goods using Bitcoin. It’s nearly impossible.
Coal, oil, and natural gas received $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020 — or roughly $11 million every minute — according to a new analysis from the International Monetary Fund.
Explicit subsidies accounted for only 8 percent of the total. The remaining 92 percent were implicit subsidies, which took the form of tax breaks or, to a much larger degree, health and environmental damages that were not priced into the cost of fossil fuels, according to the analysis.
the first time i ever read the word God was on a piece of money
John D. Rockefeller ruled the Standard Oil Company monopoly until the trust busters from Washington broke up its giant price-fixing and predatory practices into several companies.
Andrew Carnegie was the ruler of the giant€ Carnegie Steel Company€ (which became€ U.S. Steel Corporation). Carnegie violently broke up strikes, such as the 1892 Homestead strike, before he left the company to be a major philanthropist building libraries and universities.
The only reason there’s still any “debate” over encryption is because law enforcement refuses to let it drop. For over a quarter of a century, they’ve constantly insisted on the primacy of their interests. They demand to be centered in every discussion about encryption. They frame encryption as a danger to public safety and position themselves as having a monopoly on protecting public safety. They’ve insisted that all other considerations – cybersecurity, privacy, free expression, personal safety – must be made subordinate to their priorities. They expect everyone else to make trade-offs in the name of their interests but refuse to make trade-offs themselves. Nothing trumps the investigation of crime.
[...] We find that donations result in an 8 to 11 percentage point increase in the probability that the targeted politician engages in legislative activities related to the bills lobbied by the donating firm. The estimated effects are large, increase over time, and are particularly pronounced for committee-related activities.
But voting with your dollars has some obvious deficits. The first one is that you can't shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. If you don't like how Walmart's predatory pricing and fat tax breaks let it drive every business in town out of business, you're stuck. After all, every other business in town went bust, and you still need stuff.
The next one is that dollars are not evenly distributed. In a country where most Americans can't afford a $400 medical emergency, the flow of dollars to a business is no marker of democratic legitimacy. A million normies can boycott a business but if a billionaire shops there, their "votes" are washed away.
There's another defect, though, that's a little less obvious. When you stop voting with your ballots and start voting with your dollars, then the companies that get your dollars can capture your political representatives (this is even easier if the company has a monopoly). Once the political system is on the company's side, you lose the ability to vote with your dollars, too.
Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, continued creating confusion around his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on Tuesday, even as the social media company tried to keep the deal on course. Early in the morning, the billionaire tweeted that “this deal cannot move forward” until he got more details about the volume of spam and fake accounts on the platform.
The extreme barbarism of the Russian invasion has led to greater Western military support for Ukraine as well as decreased focus on ending the fighting, enforcing a cease-fire, and arranging security guarantees for Russian and Ukraine. The international community is increasingly convinced that the United States is more interested in inflicting long-term damage on Russia than in securing a diplomatic resolution to the war.€ While the Russian Army is preoccupied with tactical operations against a courageous Ukrainian military, Putin has had to deal with the prospect of war with the West, stemming from a Russian-American proxy war.
The prospect of an expanded war demands greater caution on the part of Russian and American decision makers.€ Before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agrees to admit two additional members—Sweden and Finland—perhaps NATO should consider the long-term consequences of such a decision.€ One way to get a handle on traditional Russian thinking is to examine Russian parables over the years, which point to Russian feelings of victimhood and a willingness to make sacrifices to defend the interests of the motherland.€ The U.S. campaign of sanctions against Russia has seemingly had no impact on Putin’s thinking because he knows that Russians will respond valiantly and make sacrifices when faced with challenges.
But what if we choose to view him through a different prism? What if we said that the war cannot end without Putin’s participation in some solution? What if we envision some form of negotiation with him, remembering how International Committee of the Red Cross President Peter Maurer was criticized for meeting with and publicly shaking hands with Russian Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov in Moscow as if the Russian diplomat was a Covid-19 superspreader.
Maurer was doing his job as the head of a neutral, independent organization. He must talk to all sides in a conflict; that’s his humanitarian role
The latest developments, including: – Turkey moves to normalize with Assad government in Syria – Why Turkey needs Syria – The Kurdish question and the US – Turkey selling drones to Kazakhstan – The Russia-China-Turkey dynamic in Kazakhstan – Erdogan the opportunist – Turkey offers to evacuate wounded Ukrainian soldiers from Mariupol
He was referring to real physical trip wires attached to giant roadside bombs which made South Armagh the most dangerous place for British soldiers in the whole of Northern Ireland. This era has long gone and the 300-mile-long land border that snakes between the North and the Republic has ceased over the past 20 years to be a place of bombs and fortifications.
But issues relating to the Irish border, the partition of Ireland, the Irish Sea trade border so disliked by unionists, are still political trip wires capable of detonating a small or large crises. Yet Conservative Party politicians have been extraordinarily cavalier about the way they deal with the Irish border, careless when Brexit in 2016 reopened the question of Irish Partition and uncaring again when Boris Johnson persuaded a credulous Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) that he would never allow a new sea border in the Irish Sea.
Bribing members of Congress is generally thought of as a bad thing. That’s why there was widespread support for the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which contained a provision specifically designed to crack down on corruption. The act set a cap on the amount of money a member of Congress can collect from special-interest donors to pay off personal debates that were accumulated while running for office.
McConnell managed to provide The votes to toss old Roe aside. Yes, Mitch knows how to play the game. It helps a lot to have no shame.
In the wake of the SCOTUS draft leak of a decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, plenty of tech companies have begun scrambling to get public and internal messaging out. We recently discussed how game studio Bungie had put out a statement disagreeing with the draft ruling and committing to its own staff to give them the support it can on these matters of health. This approach is being mirrored all over the tech industry, and elsewhere, but it’s notable that Bungie is set to become a subsidiary of Sony’s in the very near future as a result of an acquisition. The reason that’s notable is because PlayStation chief Jim Ryan recently addressed his own internal staff on the SCOTUS leak and it’s… a something.
The reaction followed immediately – in the form of a series of apologies: Both the school management, the North-Rhine Westphalia Ministry of Education and the Cornelsen publishing house, publisher of the textbook, apologised for the “violation of freedom from discrimination”. The textbook publisher promised that the offensive task would no longer appear like this in the new edition. The Ministry of Education of North Rhine-Westphalia agreed to a proposal by the publisher in which the topic of forced marriage would no longer appear at all. But the authors of the book resisted and saw the open discourse about very real conflicts existing in society in danger.
In the Borno episode, SaharaReporters learnt that the police had taken Naomi Goni into custody over the death threats by the Jihadists.
Writing partly in Hausa, Tanko Izge said, “A message to Government of Borno State. Akwai wata yarinya me suna Naomi Goni wanda tayi batanci ga manzo Allah wanda hakan a musulunci kisa ne hukunci Ko da soho ne koda musulmi ne ya kafurta. Dan haka muna kira ga gwamnatin Borno tayi gaggawan daukan mataki inhar ba haka ba kuma mu musulmai baza muyi bacci ba kuma zamu dauka da kanmu (There is a girl named Naomi Goni who insulted the Messenger of Allah (saw) and in Islam it is a death sentence even if it is a Muslim. We therefore call on the Borno State Government to take immediate action or else we Muslims will not sleep and we will take action).”
He made the post on his Facebook as seen by SaharaReporters.
The brutal killing of Ms. Yakubu is not an isolated incident. Many Muslims and non-Muslims adjudged to have insulted Islam or its prophet have suffered a similar fate in the region. In 2007, some Muslim students in Gombe lynched their female Christian teacher for desecrating the Quran. There have been other violent attacks and murders of alleged blasphemers in Muslim-dominated areas in Kano, Niger, and other parts of Islamic Northern Nigeria. Persons accused of blasphemy have been sentenced to death by sharia courts in Kano. Others like Nigerian Humanist, Mubarak Bala, have been given long prison sentences. Muslim clerics and state officials have openly and publicly endorsed the execution of blasphemers.
It’s no secret that Elon Musk’s statements about his plans for Twitter have been confused to say the least. It has become abundantly clear that he doesn’t know much at all about how a service like Twitter operates, especially when it comes to content moderation, and doesn’t seem to have much interest in learning. On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Renee DiResta from the Stanford Internet Observatory to discuss just how little Elon Musk understands the platform he’s supposedly planning to buy.
Of these 1,568 challenges, 282 were submitted in February 2022 by a couple whose child attends an elementary school in McKinney Independent School District (ISD) in Texas. For each of the books they were challenging, the parents recorded the€ same exact complaint: “Contains 1 or more of the following: Marxism, incest, sexual explicit material—in written form and/or visual pictures, pornography, CRT, immoral activities, rebelliousness against parents, and the material contradicts the ISD’s student handbook.”€ Copy and paste. Two hundred and eighty-two times. Hit send.
The parents€ reported€ that they found all the books they challenged in the “Krause List.” The mother claimed that they read them all. She described it as being an “unpleasant task” yet they were willing to do it to protect their child, as well as the 23,000 kids in McKinney ISD.
Section 230 isn’t just some unearned privilege enjoyed by tech companies to shield them from angry, incoherent lawsuits filed by banned white nationalists. It’s also for the little people, as Eric Goldman points out while bringing us this recent decision by the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Several years ago you might recall that a bunch of eBay executives were busted waging a bizarre harassment campaign against a blogging couple who had been critical of the company.
Well, this is awkward. Yesterday I wrote about how there was a strong argument that Twitch’s removal of the mass murderer in Buffalo’s livestream of his murder spree violated Texas’s ridiculous social media law. The main saving grace for Twitch would be that it was possible (though it’s unclear) its userbase was just under the 50 million US average monthly users required to trigger the law. However, even if the law didn’t reach Twitch, it definitely reaches Facebook and Twitter, two other platforms that have been trying (and not always succeeding) to remove the video.
I was was reading the recent discussion on deep conversation in Gemini Space. This reminded me of something I noted recently on my last trip to the US. I hadn't been to the US in over five years while I was living in Iran. For the past decade or so the general attitude I held was the the United States seems to lack some kind of cohesion has a society, that in some way rather than living in a society were were just a bunch of people that happened to be living in the same location, but the basis of our lives was not human connection, but rather our jobs or something like that. (Material possessions, and so on.)
[...]
Judging by this aspect alone, it's tempting to come to the conclusion that maybe the US is socially healthier than the other places I lived, but I have enough experience to know that this is clearly not the case. I don't have an explanation for why Americans seem so open or eager to connect with other people. Is it actually a sign of some deeper societal dysfunction? Are Americans too lonely? Are these interpersonal interactions limited to the realm of superficiality and are a symptom of a lack of meaningful or satisfying relationships in one's private life? I don't know.
i myself don't seek the _elimination_ of all smalltalk, and i'm certainly willing to continue make the effort to engage in it for prosocial reasons, but given that i find it gets in the way of _really_ connecting with people, i prefer to minimise its presence in my life.
If a shackled suspect asks to speak to a lawyer and this request is ignored, is that a violation of their rights? Cops — especially the ones in this case — would likely say “No.” Cops don’t consider themselves legal experts because having any legal expertise makes it more difficult to hassle people over imagined criminal acts.
Americans are afraid of many threats to their lives – serial killers, crazed gunmen, gang bangers, and above all terrorists – but these threats are surprisingly unlikely.[1] Approximately three-quarters of all homicide victims in America are killed by someone they know.[2] And the real threat from strangers is quite different from what most fear: one-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police.
When Daniel Gill was 9 years old, he was invited to a birthday party in his apartment building in Manhattan's Washington Heights. He brought his best friend, Archie, and they rang the bell, holding wrapped presents.
The mom opened the door, and her gaze fell on Archie, who is Black.
"We have no more chairs," she said.
The Taliban earlier this month issued a decree urging women to stay home and ordering those who have to go out to cover their faces with a burqa. But a few brave Afghan women have vowed to defy the restrictive edict.
I have replaced my Wordpress site, pretty as it was, with a Gemini capsule.
If you're reading this on a standard web browser through HTTPS, you're actually seeing my Gemini capsule. The server I chose, twins, automatically serves HTTPS on the same port it accepts Gemini requests. Then I just have to direct nginx as a proxy, and bam. Static website for free with my capsule.
The Tech Learning Collective offers a series of excellent free foundation courses/lessons in basic Linux sysadminning. The very first lesson is a magickal ritual designed to enchant your device with a vision of a better technological future.
Today I tried to add Titan support to the Gemini server I'm using, Twins. It seemed like a great project to pick up. "Oh," I said to myself, "Oh the protocols for Gemini and Titan are so siiimple! I can totally do this without too much trouble, and maybe even learn something along the way."
Last last month, a post from the relatively obscure Good e-Reader claimed that Amazon would€ finally allow the Kindle to read EPUB files. The story was picked up by all the major tech sites, and for a time, there was much rejoicing. After all, it was a feature that owners have been asking for since the Kindle was first released in 2007. But rather than supporting the open eBook format, Amazon had always insisted in coming up with their own proprietary formats to use on their readers. Accordingly, many users have turned to third party programs which can reliably convert their personal libraries over to whatever Amazon format their particular Kindle is most compatible with.
Tech journalism is evolving, including how it reports on and critiques tech companies.€ At the same time, tech journalists should still serve as bullshit detectors and hype slayers.€ The following tips are intended to help navigate the terrain.
“Child pornography is great,” the man said enthusiastically. “Politicians do not understand file sharing, but they understand child pornography, and they want to filter that to score points with the public. Once we get them to filter child pornography, we can get them to extend the block to file sharing.”