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Links 25/05/2022: Librem Tries Another Approach



  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

      • Contextual Logging in Kubernetes 1.24

        The Structured Logging Working Group has added new capabilities to the logging infrastructure in Kubernetes 1.24. This blog post explains how developers can take advantage of those to make log output more useful and how they can get involved with improving Kubernetes.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Create Sudo User in openSUSE Linux

        The sudo command allows a user to administer a Linux system with the security privileges of another user, by default, the superuser or root.

        In this guide, we will walk you through the process of creating a sudo user in openSUSE i.e create a user and grant them privileges to invoke the sudo command.

      • Document FoundationDraw Guide 7.3

        This 348 pages book covers the main features of Draw, the vector graphics component of LibreOffice. Using Draw, a wide variety of graphical images can be created.

        Vector graphics store and display a picture as simple geometric elements such as lines, circles, and polygons rather than as a collection of pixels (points on the screen). This permits simpler storage and supports precise scaling of the picture elements.

      • Linux Made SimpleHow to install RubyMine 2022 on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install RubyMine 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.

        Please take note that it comes with a 30-day free trial and afterward it is paid.

      • VituxHow to use apt Package Manager on Ubuntu Command Line

        When you start using the Ubuntu operating system, the graphical Ubuntu application manager is your first choice to install software. Although this collection contains a large number of applications, you will quickly notice that it lacks many powerful tools, especially those for the command line. Then it’s time to switch to apt-get, a more powerful software installation tool. With this tool, you can not only install software from the command line, but also to:Update the package repositoriesUpdate installed softwareSearch for available packagesGet the source code for an installed packageReinstall a software packageRemove a software from your system

        In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use the apt-get tool to complete the tasks indicated above.

      • Linux HintHow to install and use with Sublime Text on Ubuntu 22.04

        Sublime is a robust and extensively used source code editor that provides programmers and developers the platform to write and edit their codes in different languages. It is best known for its speed, user-friendly interface, and extensions making it an ideal choice for a beginner to use this editor.

        It includes several notable features like quick navigation to files, Python-based plugin API and more. Further, its functionality can be expanded by installing various plugins.

        This guide will demonstrate how to install and get started with Sublime on Ubuntu 22.04.

      • TecAdminHow to Install .NET Core (dotnet) on Ubuntu 22.04 [Ed: But this would help Microsoft, unless you move something away from Windows]

        Microsoft .NET Core is a free and open-source software framework designed with keeping Linux and macOS in mind. It is a cross-platform successor to .NET Framework available for Linux, macOS, and Windows systems. .NET Core 6 is an LTR release that will support for the next 3 years. It also supports hot reload and better git integration with Visual Studio 2022.

        The developers should install the .NET Core SDK on their system and the staging or production server needs the .NET Core runtime only.

      • Linux Shell TipsHow to Find and Remove Duplicate Lines in a Text File

        As a Linux administrator, superuser, or beginner learning the ropes of the operating system ecosystem, it is essential to learn the Linux command line tweaks on how to deal with duplicate lines in a text file.

        A common scenario that needs a quick and efficient approach to getting rid of these duplicate lines in a text file is when handling log files.

        Log files are key/important in improving the user experience of Linux users through their computer-generated data. Such data can be translated as usage operations, activities, and patterns associated with a server, device, application, or system.

      • Linux Shell TipsHow to Convert or Merge Multiple Images to PDF in Linux

        Images are an important aspect of everyone’s Linux operating system experience. They hold special information like screenshots of invaluable Linux commands implementation and execution, and also screen captures that are vital to your finished projects’ documentation.

        Saving your images to a single PDF file is an ingenious way of storing and managing them without having to worry about their whereabouts if some get misplaced.

        This article seeks to walk us through various approaches to converting or Merging multiple images into PDF in Linux.

      • MakeTech EasierPGP Encryption: How It Works and How You Can Get Started

        Don’t let the name “Pretty Good Privacy” mislead you. PGP encryption is the gold standard for encrypted communication and has been used by everyone from nuclear activists to criminals since its invention in 1991. While the execution is complex, the concept is simple: you can encrypt text, making it unreadable to anyone who doesn’t have the key to decode it.

      • FOSSLifeLinking Kubernetes Clusters

        In legacy IT, dynamic scaling usually meant that you had to start new virtual machines manually. Then, you had to integrate the application into an existing cluster and possibly reconfigure the load balancers. Kubernetes takes all of this work off your plate.

      • Encoding videos in AV1 with FFmpeg



        AV1 is implemented in libaom and svt-av1. Libaom is the reference codec, it produces smaller files than svt-av1 but it is slow. The svt-av1 encoder is optimized for speed and produces bigger files than libaom.

    • Games

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Reviews

      • Librem 5 USA Review

        After waiting for 2.5 years, I finally got my hands on my Librem 5! I have been daily-driving it for about 4 months now, and thought it might be fun to do a review. Reliability has improved substantially since I first got my hands on it.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • 9to5LinuxUbuntu Users Get New Kernel Security Updates, Three Vulnerabilities Patched

        The new Ubuntu kernel security update addresses CVE-2022-29581, a use-after-free vulnerability discovered by Kyle Zeng in the Network Queuing and Scheduling subsystem that could allow a local attacker to cause a denial of service (system crash) or execute arbitrary code.

        It also patches CVE-2022-30594, a security issue discovered by Jann Horn where the Linux kernel improperly enforces seccomp restrictions in some situations, thus allowing a local attacker to bypass seccomp sandbox restrictions.

      • The Register UKNew audio server Pipewire coming to next version of Ubuntu

        PipeWire also handles video streams so it does a little more than the outgoing PulseAudio, which as its name suggests only handles audio. To explain what this change means, let's clarify what an audio server is and does.

        The sound playback software system in Linux is a stack, and like the network stack, it has multiple layers that do different things. At the bottom are sound drivers, which are intimately connected with the Linux kernel. Above them sits a sound server, and above that, your apps playing sounds.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers

      • Ted Unangstthe trouble with q quotes

        Among the underutilized HTML elements is the q tag, for quotes. This should, depending on user agent, render with appropriate opening and closing quote marks, without needing to specify them by hand. This sounds really convenient, to avoid ambiguity when quotes are nested inside quotes inside quotes. I said, “Alex told Bobby, “according to Chris, “Danny said “No way am I the one who’s confused,” when asked,” direct quote,” yesterday morning,” emphatically. Lucky Danny.

        The browser might even somewhat intelligently choose pairs of quotes that alternate with each nesting. In practice, I’ve found they mostly pick double quotes for the outside, then single quotes for all inner quotes. Fortunately, we can add a custom style that defines a larger vocabulary of quote marks.

    • Programming/Development

      • Whitespace, part



        Now that it's a bit easier to write code, I can get more done, but it's still very hard to fix it when it's broken. So I'm having a go at a debugger. There's only one place in the interpreter that's affected much. Before executing an instruction, it has to tell the debugger what's going in. If the debugger doesn't return from that callback, it's a breakpoint.

      • Raspberry PiWhy we translate our free online projects for young people to learn coding

        All young people deserve meaningful opportunities to learn how to create with digital technologies. But according to UNESCO, as much as 40% of people around the world don’t have access to education in a language they speak or understand. At the Raspberry Pi Foundation, we offer more than 200 free online projects that people all over the world use to learn about computing, coding, and creating things with digital technologies. To make these projects more accessible, we’ve published over 1700 translated versions so far, in 32 different languages. You can check out these translated resources by visiting projects.raspberrypi.org and choosing your language from the drop-down menu.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • Arguments against the metric system

        Yes, I think that everybody in the US should switch to using the metric system. The reason is simple: everybody else uses it. If you’re measuring something, you should report that measurement in the way that most people will understand; I think it’s a good thing for people around the world to be able to understand each other.

        But I’m not actually a fan of the metric system, and I dislike many of the arguments people use to push for its broader adoption in the US.

    • Education

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • NPRWith food prices climbing, the U.N. is warning of crippling global shortages

        According to U.N. figures, the number of severely food-insecure people has doubled in the past two years, from 135 million pre-pandemic to 276 million today. Now, more than half a million people are experiencing famine conditions, according to the U.N., an increase of more than 500% since 2016.

    • Proprietary

      • MakeTech EasierDuckDuckGo Not Totally Private: It Allows Microsoft Trackers

        If you’re concerned about Internet privacy and started using the DuckDuckGo browser or search engine with no concerns that your data wasn’t private, you’ll want to read on. While many people eschewed Google and Microsoft, opting for the privacy provided by DuckDuckGo, they’re not really in the clear. DuckDuckGo gets its search results from Microsoft’s Bing search engine, and it’s now come to light that DuckDuckGo doesn’t block Microsoft’s trackers.

      • PC WorldRIP Internet Explorer: Microsoft's iconic browser is dying June 15 | PCWorld

        Microsoft said that it finally plans to end support for the standalone version of Internet Explorer in June 2022, though you'll have the option of enabling Internet Explorer Mode within Microsoft Edge.

      • India TimesFour in Five Data Breaches Attributed to Organized Crime [iophk: Windows TCO]

        The sharp spike in ransomware breaches is also concerning -- incidents stemming from ransomware have increased by 13 percent in a single year. The jump is greater than the combined percentage increase over the past five years combined. According to Verizon, while criminals look to leverage increasingly sophisticated forms of malware, it is ransomware that continues to prove particularly successful in exploiting and monetizing illegal access to private information.

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • EFFData Brokers and True the Vote are the Real Villains of "2000 Mules" Movie

          In its attempt to demonstrate widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, 2000 Mules presents the research of True the Vote (TTV). TTV reportedly purchased 10 trillion geolocation data points from an unnamed data broker with the goal of finding a pattern of so-called “mules” that stuffed ballot boxes. The researchers claim that of the hundreds of thousands of people described in the location data, they found thousands of people who were physically present near two kinds of places – ballot boxes and unnamed nonprofits – and that this shows they were “mules.”€ (The actual number of people whose data was purchased may be much larger—a report by TTV claims the organization collected data from over 500,000 phones near ballot boxes in Atlanta, which is just a fraction of the total data they acquired.)

          This business model of making extremely sensitive location data about the general public readily available for purchase must stop

          Putting aside the logical flaws of TTV’s voter fraud claims, the very fact that they were able to buy this much personal location data on hundreds of thousands of people’s lives, over a span of many months leading to election day, is appalling. But this is the data broker business model working as intended: by vacuuming up geolocation data from thousands of smartphone apps, data brokers package and sell huge quantities of highly revealing location data to anyone willing to buy it. And TTV is hardly the only customer: the U.S. military, federal agencies, and federal law enforcement are all customers to geolocation data brokers. Recently, one data broker was even found selling the location data of people seeking reproductive healthcare, which soon could provide states with draconian anti-abortion legislation new digital evidence to identify and prosecute people who seek or provide abortion.

        • La Quadature Du Netcollective complaint against the Technopolice

          Three years ago, La Quadrature du Net started an initiative called €«€ Technopolice€ €» to gather information relating to all technologies deployed by the police in our cities. Today, we have come to a point where the combination of these technologies creates a state of total surveillance in our streets:CCTV everywhere, enormous police databases, facial recognition and automated detection of behavior.

        • The Register UKClearview AI wants its facial-recognition tech in banks, schools, etc

          These images were downloaded without explicit permission from netizens or companies. Although Clearview has been sent numerous cease and desist letters from Twitter, YouTube, Google, Facebook and more, it continued to collect more images and grow its database. The demands to stop scraping public-facing webpages, however, were not legally binding, unlike the settlement agreement Clearview entered into to end its lawsuit against the American Civil Liberties Union.

        • [Old] The VergeHow to delete your Facebook account

          The company notes that it delays termination for a few days after it’s requested. If you log back in during that period, your deletion request will be canceled. So don’t sign on, or you’ll be forced to start the process over again. Certain things, like comments you’ve made on a friend’s post, may still appear even after you delete your account. Facebook also says that copies of certain items like log records will remain in its database, but it notes that those are disassociated with personal identifiers. Other things to be aware of: if you have an Oculus account, that data will also be deleted, as will any Facebook Pages you administer.

          If you’re really serious about quitting Facebook, remember that the company owns several other popular services as well, like Instagram and WhatsApp, so you should delete your accounts there, too.

        • The VergeDemocrats say Google must curb location tracking before Roe repeal

          A group of more than 40 Democratic members of Congress has asked Google to stop collecting and retaining “unnecessary” location data out of fear that it could be used to identify and prosecute people who have obtained abortions.

          The request was made in a letter sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday by members of the House and Senate, led by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and including well-known progressive representatives such as Ayanna Pressley, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

        • Open-source tests of web browser privacy. Updated 2022-05-16

          Tests ran at 2022-05-16 07:30:03 UTC. Source version: b5c180a3. Raw data in JSON.

        • New York TimesThe Era of Borderless Data Is Ending

          France, Austria, South Africa and more than 50 other countries are accelerating efforts to control the digital information produced by their citizens, government agencies and corporations. Driven by security and privacy concerns, as well as economic interests and authoritarian and nationalistic urges, governments are increasingly setting rules and standards about how data can and cannot move around the globe. The goal is to gain “digital sovereignty.”

        • NBCNew York City says goodbye to its last public payphone

          The effort to replace public pay telephones across the city kicked off in 2014 when the de Blasio administration solicited proposals to reimagine the offering, the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation said in a news release.

          Officials selected CityBridge to develop and operate LinkNYC kiosks, which offer services such as free phone calls, Wi-Fi and device charging. The city began removing street payphones in 2015 to replace them with the LinkNYC kiosks.

          There are nearly 2,000 kiosks across the city, according to a map from LinkNYC.

        • IT WireSims says Facebook must sign deals with SBS, The Conversation

          Former ACCC chair Rod Sims says under the terms of an ongoing Treasury review into the News Media Bargaining Code, social media giant Facebook should be forced to negotiate and strike content deals with outlets like SBS and The Conversation.

        • India TimesZoom raises full-year profit view on strong enterprise demand

          Over the past few quarters, demand for the company's platform had slowed as COVID-19 lockdowns eased and competition intensified from Microsoft's Teams and Cisco's WebEx and Google's Meet.

          Still, the San-Francisco-based firm reported first-quarter profit that beat expectations and forecast earnings for the current quarter above estimates.

        • NYPostThis horrifying iPhone secret could expose your texts

          To make a censored message legible again, take a screenshot and then open up the photo editor. [...]

        • PurismPurism Launches SIMple Plus for Data Privacy

          For those looking for a privacy-focused cellular service in the United States,€ Purism€ has launched another option in its suite of privacy-first cellular plans. With other big telecom providers, phone data does not stay private;€ it’s collected, linked with a person’s identity, and sold to advertisers. With Purism’s cellular services users can get peace of mind and protect their data privacy while on the go.

          The newly launched plan, “SIMple Plus”, provides subscribers with 4G high speed internet with a 3 GB monthly data limit and a $59/month price. Additionally, they can send texts globally to over 160 countries at no extra cost. The plan is designed especially for those who are interested in the SIMple plan, but would like a higher data cap.

          Founder and CEO of Purism, Todd Weaver elaborates on the need, “Due to the popularity of the€ Librem AweSIM€ service, where Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is not shared with any cellular carriers, fully protecting the privacy of the user from big telecom. We have added another pricing tier to maximize coverage of service offerings to the rapidly expanding user base.”

        • MakeTech Easier8 WhatsApp Alternatives That Respect Your Privacy

          When social media giant Facebook (now Meta) purchased everyone’s favorite mobile messaging app WhatsApp, users were promised their data would be private and that they wouldn’t be subject to the shady things that Mark Zuckerberg and crew are known for. As time has gone on, more and more privacy has been taken away from Whatsapp users in the name of “analytical data.”

        • TechdirtIndia’s Government Tells VPNs, Cloud Services They Can Get Screwed Or Get Out

          “You can remember it for us wholesale.” – the government of India, probably.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Site36German Bundeswehr: The Army does not want to be intercepted

        In order to communicate securely, land forces in NATO missions allegedly stop their tanks and arrange to talk „tower to tower“.

      • Democracy NowBiden Says U.S. Will Defend Taiwan as China Accuses U.S. of Forming “Indo-Pacific Version of NATO”

        President Biden is on his first trip to Asia as president to meet with other leaders from the “Quad” — Japan, India and Australia — as part of efforts to counter China’s growing power in the region. During the trip, Biden has contradicted longstanding U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan by vowing to defend it militarily if China attacks. “This idea that the United States is obligated to come to the defense of Taiwan if it [China] attacked, is simply not U.S. policy,” says Michael Swaine, director of the Quincy Institute’s East Asia program. Swaine says the official U.S.-China policy on Taiwan — which prioritizes peaceful unification over military force — has been subtly weakened by both sides, and “President Biden’s recent comment weakens it even further.”

      • Democracy NowDebt, Coups & Colonialism in Haiti: France & U.S. Urged to Pay Reparations for Destroying Nation

        We look in depth at “The Ransom,” a new series in The New York Times that details how France devastated Haiti’s economy by forcing Haiti to pay massive reparations for the loss of slave labor after enslaved Haitians rebelled, founding the world’s first Black republic in 1804. We speak with historians Westenley Alcenat and Gerald Horne on the story of Haiti’s finances and how Haitian demands for reparations have been repeatedly shut down. Alcenat says the series “exposes the rest of the world to a knowledge that actually has existed for over a hundred years,” and while he welcomes the series, he demands The New York Times apologize for publishing racist Haitian stereotypes in 2010 by columnist David Brooks. Horne also requests The New York Times make the revelatory documents that the series cites accessible to other historians. He says the series will “hopefully cause us to reexamine the history of this country and move away from the propaganda point that somehow the United States was an abolitionist republic when actually it was the foremost slaveholder’s republic.”

      • The HillAppeals court clears way for bid to disqualify Cawthorn as ‘insurrectionist’

        A federal appeals court in Richmond on Tuesday cleared the way for a legal effort that seeks to disqualify Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-N.C.) candidacy for office due to his alleged role in the Jan. 6 insurrection by supporters of former President Trump.

        The three-judge panel’s ruling reverses a lower court’s determination that an 1872 federal law that granted amnesty to nearly all former members of the Confederacy had immunized Cawthorn from the lawsuit brought under the 14th Amendment.

      • [Old] WiredUkraine’s Volunteer ‘IT Army’ Is Hacking in Uncharted Territory

        Ukraine has seen other volunteer-organized cyberdefense and attack efforts leading up to and early in the war effort. Separately hacktivists, including the hacking group Anonymous, have claimed DDoS attacks against Russian targets and taken data from Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr. But the development of the IT Army, a government-led volunteer unit that’s designed to operate in the middle of a fast-moving war zone, is without precedent.

      • The HillRussian diplomat warns against global ‘cyber confrontation’

        Nebenzia, who spoke on Monday at a U.N. Security Council briefing, said that the West is trying to shut down Russia’s “alternative views” and build “a cyber totalitarianism” against his country.

        “States that call themselves a ‘community of democracies’ in fact are building a cyber totalitarianism,” Nebenzia said.

      • BBCPutin weaponising Ukraine’s crops, says Polish PM

        Ukraine's inability to export its grain has led to global food prices soaring.

        It has also raised the prospect of famines in the countries which depend on its exports.

      • Dawn MediaTaliban to sign pact with UAE on running Afghan airports

        Qatar and Turkey had already sent temporary technical teams to help airport operations and security after the Taliban took over in August last year as foreign forces withdrew.

      • NPRThe election system shuddered in 2020. Now, there are fears of an attack within

        This year, for the first time, Roebuck is preparing his poll workers for the possibility that one of those among them could try to sabotage democracy — by interfering with an election.

        It's a scenario that seems more plausible than it did a few years ago, thanks in part to a video of Ryan Kelley, a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, that made headlines this year.

      • Eesti RahvusringhäälingNavy monitoring SIIL exercise with new mobile radars

        In the latest phase of the SIIL (HEDGEHOG) military training exercise, the Estonian navy was tasked with surveying the entire Kura Kurk (Irbe Strait) and port of Mõntu on Saaremaa, to secure the laying of minefields and detect the movement of opposing forces.

      • Taiwan NewsTaipei’s new VR arcade aimed to hone combat skills

        Taiwanese textile manufacturer Texray Industrial Co. and Shin Shin Department Store on Monday (May 23) announced a collaboration to establish the first virtual entertainment venue in the country to specialize in fighting games.

        Billed as the first metaverse combat training cener, it will incorporate AR/VR-enabled combat simulation that allows participants to engage in scenarios where they feel like using “real” firearms, per CNA.

      • Courage FoundNational call-in to Congress: Free Daniel Hale!
      • Common DreamsOpinion | US and Russia's Imperialist Wars Are Waging Global Devastation

        Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared that he wants Russia weakened. Of course he meant militarily weakened. Still, his words summoned an echo of Versailles in 1919, when the complete humiliation of Germany planted the seeds for the next world war. Unlike 1919, we inhabit a nuclear world, where humiliating other nuclear nations may be infinitely more dangerous.€ 

      • Common DreamsAt Least 19 Children, 2 Adults Killed in Texas Elementary School Shooting

        A South Texas town is reeling Tuesday after at least 21 people—including 19 students and two adults—were killed and an unknown number of others wounded in a mass shooting by a lone gunman at a local elementary school.

        "They fucking failed our kids again," Fred Guttenberg, father of Parkland school shooting victim Jaime Guttenberg, said during an MSNBC interview after Tuesday's massacre. "How many more times are we gonna sit back?... How many more times?"

    • Environment

      • RTLLiving at the expense of children and future generations

        Unicef's Innocenti Research Center studied 39 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) to determine how well they are doing in creating healthy, child-friendly environments and ensuring intact environments within and beyond their borders.

        Indicators examined include air pollution, pesticide exposure and lead concentration in children's blood, countries' contribution to climate change, resource consumption and e-waste production.

      • VOA NewsCameroonian Villagers Protest China Iron Ore Mining Deal

        Cameroonian authorities say Monday several hundred civilians took to the streets of Lolabe, a small coastal village on the banks of the Atlantic Ocean. The civilians said they were protesting the recent deal signed by the government for iron ore to be exported from their village and Lobe, the district where Lolabe is located.

        Earlier this month, the government announced the $676 million high-grade iron ore mining deal with Sinosteel Cam S.A., a Cameroonian subsidiary of the state-owned Chinese miner. Cameroon said the deal will develop the Lobe iron ore mine located in the south of the count

      • Teen VogueYouth Mental Health and Climate Disaster Have to Be Addressed By Legislation

        In middle school, the climate crisis solutions offered by my well-meaning teachers focused on the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions created by my individual actions, or my “carbon footprint.” It was later that I learned this phrase had been popularized by British Petroleum in 2004 with the unveiling of their carbon footprint calculator, a move seen by many climate activists as a way to deflect responsibility for the climate crisis onto the individual.

      • Energy

        • RTLFree public transport costs state €41 million per year

          Two years after the introduction of free public transport, Minister for Mobility François Bausch describes it as an "important social measure". "It is the icing on the cake in our overall strategy for a multimodal revolution", Bausch stated in his answer to a parliamentary question by MPs Carlo Weber and Dan Biancalana from the Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party (LSAP).

        • BBCCould hydrogen ease Germany's reliance on Russian gas?

          The nation currently buys around 25% of its oil and 40% of its gas from Russia, contributing billions of euros a year to Moscow's finances.

          Germany is moving "as fast as possible" to end that relationship, but it will take time, the country's finance minister recently said.

        • Dawn MediaCrypto exchange BitMEX co-founder gets 6 months house arrest for US charges

          Arthur Hayes, 36, will also pay a $10 million fine and serve two years of probation following his house arrest for failing to establish an anti-money laundering program at BitMEX, which he founded with Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed in 2014.

          Hayes was sentenced in federal court in Manhattan on Friday.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • ABCBad Kitty: German town grounds cats to save rare birds

          Authorities in the southwest German town of Walldorf have ordered some cat owners to keep their pets indoors until the end of August, to protect a rare bird during its breeding season.

          The decree is designed to help save the crested lark, which makes its nest on the ground and is therefore easy prey for feline hunters. The bird's population in Western Europe has declined sharply in recent decades.

          Authorities in Walldorf wrote that “among other things the survival of the species depends on every single chick.”

        • Mexico News DailyMonarch butterfly numbers were up 35% but still well under previous years

          The WWF and Conanp said in a report that the increase was mainly due to repopulation efforts in the southern United States.

          Jorge Rickards, general director of WWF México, said the increase was good news but highlighted that butterfly numbers were still well below those recorded three years ago.

      • Overpopulation

        • Dawn MediaKarachi’s water crisis

          Karachi’s water allocation was increased to 1,200 cusecs in the late 1980s to meet the carrying capacity of channels under the K-III project. However, unchecked population growth, besides transmission and distribution losses of 30 per cent to 35pc owing to the mushrooming of the ‘water mafia’, have compounded the woes of citizens. The K-IV project was designed to add 650 million gallons of water per day through a separate channel drawn from the Keenjhar reservoir. But to operate this, an additional 1,200 cusecs are required every day downstream Kotri.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • TruthOutHouse Ethics Committee Opens Investigation Into Madison Cawthorn
      • Common Dreams'Wholesale Fraud' in Michigan Governor Race Could Disqualify GOP Candidates

        After weeks of allegations that multiple Republicans running for governor in Michigan submitted fraudulent signatures to get on the ballot, the state Bureau of Elections on Monday confirmed what one journalist called "wholesale fraud" involving five GOP candidates.

        "I hope the Michigan Republican Party will live up to their big talk about integrity, respect our election laws, and hold their own accountable."

      • TruthOutIt’s Trump vs. Pence in Georgia, Though Neither Is on the Ballot
      • TruthOutTop Michigan GOP Governor Hopefuls Could Be Disqualified Over Forged Signatures
      • TechdirtCalifornia Assembly Unanimously Passes Blatantly Unconstitutional Bill To Allow Parents To Sue Websites Because Their Kids Are Depressed

        Have politicians all gone mad? On the Republican side, we have Texas and Florida trying to stop websites from moderating content, while on the Democratic side, we have New York and elsewhere trying to blame them for not moderating content. And then we have… California. Back in March we had warned about AB 2408, ostensibly a “bi-partisan” bill from Republican Assemblymember Jordan Cunninghan and Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. This bill shows that even when Democrats and Republicans team up to try to regulate the internet, they make an unconstitutional mess of things.

      • The HillActivists protest Amazon’s cloud conference over company’s work with police, immigration agencies

        A group of activists staged a protest at Amazon Web Services’s (AWS) summit Tuesday in an attempt to bring attention to the company’s work with immigration agencies and police departments.

      • Business InsiderRussia demands that the world 'demilitarize' the internet and accuses the West of 'cyber-totalitarianism'

        The diplomat denounced Ukraine for openly stating that it's built a volunteer "IT" army to fight Russian disinformation online and to target Russian and Belarusian facilities.

      • CBCCanada should rethink relationship with U.S. as democratic 'backsliding' worsens: security experts

        Canada's intelligence community will have to grapple with the growing influence of anti-democratic forces in the United States — including the threat posed by conservative media outlets like Fox News — says a new report from a task force of intelligence experts.

        "The United States is and will remain our closest ally, but it could also become a source of threat and instability," says a newly published report written by a task force of former national security advisers, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) directors, ex-deputy ministers, former ambassadors and academics.

      • The VergeConan O’Brien makes a $150 million podcast deal

        As top podcasters like Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper choose to maintain ownership of their brands and instead license their shows to streamers for eight or nine figure sums, O’Brien is an outlier. His deal is most reminiscent of Spotify’s 2020 acquisition of Bill Simmons’ The Ringer. Like The Ringer, Team Coco is a multi-podcast outfit that is still highly dependent on its main star. Spotify has managed to hold on to Simmons more than two years on, giving him additional responsibilities as the streamer grows its international sports programming. The Team Coco deal gives SiriusXM five years to figure out how to keep O’Brien, or expand the brand to the point it can stand without him.

      • Texas' controversial social media censorship law awaits fate with US Supreme Court

        H.B. 20 makes it illegal for any social media platform with more than 50 million active users per month (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to "block, ban, delete, remove, de-platform, demonetize, de-boost, regulate, restrict, inhibit the publication or reproduction of, deny equal access or visibility to expression." It also allows Texans to take legal action against these companies for filtering any content that expresses their point of view.

      • Misinformation/Disinformation

        • QAnon candidates are on the ballot in 26 states

          Grid reviewed public records and reporting, social media posts, and campaign materials and events to identify and confirm at least 78 QAnon-aligned candidates running for office in 26 states in 2022. They’re running for governorships, secretaries of state, seats in the Senate and House, and in state legislatures. They have raised over $20 million this cycle — and over $30 million since 2018.

          All but six of the QAnon-aligned candidates Grid examined are Republican. Over a dozen are incumbents: Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) serve in the House of Representatives, while another 14 serve at the state level, mostly legislatures. Most are running against fellow Republicans in primaries, which will take place throughout the spring and summer.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • TechdirtStop Saying Elon Musk ‘Supports Free Speech.’ He Appears To Be Actively Against That

        I’ve been trying to explain this in all sorts of ways: Elon Musk’s understanding of free speech does not have anything to do with actual free speech. And, for the most part, it seemed that people who understand this stuff got that. But I remain surprised at how many otherwise intelligent people seem to be extraordinarily confused by it, and continue to falsely insist that Musk “supports free speech.” I’ve seen it a few times now from people who I know for sure know better, and it leaves me perplexed that they’re misrepresenting it. In this case, I’m going to call out famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

      • TechdirtCopyright As Censorship: Abuse Of The DMCA To Try To Delete Online News Is Rampant

        The recipients of takedown notices are usually ordinary members of the public. They are unlikely to have any legal training, and yet must respond to a formal legal notification if they wish to make a counterclaim. In addition, their counterclaim must include contact information – probably the last thing that an individual wishes to hand over to a company threatening them. Finally, and most problematically, the counterclaim must include a statement “under penalty of perjury” that the material was taken down by mistake. This is in contrast to the much weaker “good faith belief” that the original takedown notice requires from the notifier. Many will quail at the thought that they risk being convicted of perjury. The end result is that most people will simply accept that their material is removed, even if it was legal, for example under fair use.

        This unbalanced nature of the system makes it ripe for fraud, whereby people falsely claim to be the owner of copyright material in order to get it removed from a Web site. Among the millions of removal requests stored on the Lumen database, Shreya Tewari – a Berkman Klein Center Research Fellow on the Lumen project – found nearly 34,000 takedown notices that “appear to be attempts to misuse the DMCA notice-and-takedown process”: [...]

      • Times Higher EducationUniversities must help academics targeted by trolls

        In this context, we can only expect the pressure on academics to produce and publicise impact to increase further. However, when research breaks out of the academic bubble and into society, including the dark realms of social media, the response from society can be brutal.

      • The CriticWhy I fear this censors’ charter

        The Online Safety Bill, which has already had its second reading in the House of Commons, is intended to make the UK the safest place in the world to go online. If you think “safest” is code for “most heavily regulated” you’re not far wrong.

        The Bill will empower Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, to fine social media companies up to 10 per cent of their global turnover if they fail to remove harmful content — and not just harmful to children, which is hard to argue with, but to adults as well.

        What does the Government mean by “harmful”? The only definition the Bill offers is in clause 150, where it sets out the details of a new Harmful Communications Offence, punishable by up to two years in jail: “‘harm’ means psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress.”

      • Why i don't use the terms ‘TERF’ or ‘SWERF’



        i don't use the acronyms ‘TERF’ and ‘SWERF’[a], acronyms for “Trans-Erasing Radical Feminist" and “Sex-Worker-Erasing Radical Feminist”, respectively. Instead, i use ‘radfem’[b].

        [...]

        i use the term ‘radfem’ rather than the full phrase ‘radical feminist’ because there can be, and often is, a (possibly significant) difference between a feminist whose politics are radical in some sense(s), and the ‘radical feminist’ strand of feminist thought. That is, one can be a ‘radical’ feminist without necessarily having radfem politics.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • The NationKeeping the March of the Living Alive

        Thousands of Jewish youth were originally slated to attend the 2022 International March of the Living in Poland—for many, their first in-person event since the start of the pandemic. The annual event, which took place this year in late April, brings together Jewish youth from around the world to visit the sites of former concentration camps, attend educational events, and explore the remnants of Jewish society in Poland.

      • Common DreamsTwo Years After George Floyd Murder, Biden to Issue Executive Order on Police Reform

        Exactly two years after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, President Joe Biden on Wednesday is expected to unveil an executive order aimed at reforming federal policing standards and pushing state and local law enforcement agencies to improve their policies as well.

        “We have seen jurisdictions with strong standards where officers still resort to the use of deadly force, so just having these words on paper will not be enough."

      • The NationThe Long History of Resistance That Birthed Black Lives Matter

        Donna Murch is one of the foremost historians of Black radical movements in the 20th century. Her first book, 2010’s Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, retold a seemingly familiar story with new insights drawn from oral histories and untapped archives. Murch saw the story of the Panthers as a product of the Great Migration and as a fight for, among other things, access to public resources, countering both conservative and liberal framings that saw the party as either a criminal enterprise or a project solely devoted to self-defense. In the process, she demonstrated that the group was far more complicated than had been recognized.

      • New York TimesWorkers at an Activision studio vote to unionize, a first for the gaming industry.

        The vote, which passed 19 to 3, affects 28 quality-assurance employees at Raven Software, the Wisconsin studio that helps to develop the popular Call of Duty game. The workers voted over the past several weeks, and the results were tallied by the National Labor Relations Board on Monday. Activision has one week to formally object if it finds grounds for complaint.

        The new union, the Game Workers Alliance, is the culmination of months of labor organizing at Activision, which has faced increasing pressure from employees to improve working conditions after a lawsuit accused the company of having a sexist culture in which women were routinely harassed.

      • The VergeKlarna used a prerecorded video message to lay off 10 percent of employees

        Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski delivered the news to employees in a prerecorded video message, citing “the war in Ukraine unfold, a shift in consumer sentiment, a steep increase in inflation, a highly volatile stock market and a likely recession” as the reasons behind the layoffs. Siemiatkowski explained that workers in Europe will receive an “associated compensation” but added that the severance process for employees in the US will “look different” depending on location.

        Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Klarna is looking to raise a new round of funding that would value the company at $30 billion, about one-third less than the $46 billion it was valued at nearly one year ago. Rival BNPL service Affirm has also seen a similar dip, with its share price sinking 75 percent this year.

      • NPRMale Afghan TV anchors cover faces in solidarity with women after a Taliban order

        The Taliban went a step further on Thursday by specifically ordering female TV news anchors to cover their faces while on air.

        The decree only affected a handful of women who work as television presenters in Afghanistan, but it triggered a large social media response.

        That was perhaps because the decree dealt a powerful blow to a visible, symbolic mark of progress Afghans had made in two decades of Western-backed rule: women on television, authoritatively presenting information.

      • Christian TodayIslamic State executes 20 Christians as warning to believers

        The BBC Monitoring service said the executioners were from the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) and that the captives came from Borno state in north-eastern Nigeria.

        IS called the executions a warning to "Christians around the world" and said that "jihadists will be at war with them ... till the end of times".

        The video shows the men divided into three groups and shot dead by four masked militants.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • The VergeWhy we need a public internet and how to get one

        For weeks, tech news has been dominated by billionaire Elon Musk’s attempts to buy (and subsequently avoid buying) Twitter. And since Musk announced his plans in April, people have debated whether it’s better for online social spaces like Twitter to remain publicly traded companies — where they’re under pressure from shareholders — or be owned by a single wealthy figure like Musk.

        But Ben Tarnoff, author of the upcoming book Internet for the People, believes there’s a better way. Tarnoff’s book outlines the history of the internet, starting with its early days as a government-run network, which was parceled out to private companies with little regard for users. It discusses common proposals like lessening the power of internet gatekeepers with antitrust reform, but it also argues that promoting competition isn’t enough: there should also be a political movement advocating for local, noncommercial spaces online. I spoke with Tarnoff about what that means — and why it’s not as simple as breaking up (or cloning) Twitter.

    • Monopolies

      • TechdirtJournalists: Stop Pretending The GOP Actually Cares About Regulating ‘Big Corporations’

        For more than forty years, the GOP (and to a more sporadic degree the DNC) mindlessly supported giant corporations, consolidation, and monopolization. The evidence is everywhere (banking, insurance, health, air travel, energy), but particularly obvious in telecom. The GOP has endlessly, ceaselessly, cheered on telecom monopolization, and all it usually entails (high prices, poor service, privacy issues).

      • Copyrights

        • The VergeMr. Boop, the psychosexual webcomic that is a scathing critique of copyright

          Book 3 has this whole meta-narrative about Betty Boop’s father enforcing her copyright and breaking up her marriage to Alec. And that’s a question I had from the start: writing a comic that incorporates so many very recognizable fictional characters, did you run into any actual copyright snafus?

          Maybe. I don’t know if I should talk. My answer is a winking “maybe.”

        • VarietyHow the Market Crash Is Forcing Hollywood Giants to Reassess Digital Strategies

          Indeed, the streaming bubble that boosted shares of media and entertainment companies in 2019 and 2020 has all but burst. Falling stock prices are coinciding with rising interest rates, inflation and heavier-than-usual debt loads at the largest conglomerates. The heightened pressure to deliver earnings and the need to pay more to service debt will inevitably force a pullback — at least in the short term — in the tidal wave of spending on content production, marketing and distribution.

        • Creative CommonsAnnouncing the winners of CC Open Culture Remix Art Contest 2022 #CCSharesCulture

          Participants were tasked with creating original artworks in line with this year’s theme of “Love Culture? Share Culture!” by remixing public domain or CC BY-licensed images, paintings, photographs, drawings, etc., digitized in open collections.€ 

        • Torrent FreakNew Copyright Lawsuit Targets Uploaders of 10-Minute Movie Edits

          The ordeal of three people, who edited major movies down to 10 minutes and then uploaded those summaries to YouTube, is not over yet. After being arrested and found guilty in a criminal court last year, they now face action in the civil courts. A total of 13 companies including Toei, Kadokawa, Nikkatsu, and Fuji, say they are entitled to at least $3.9 million in copyright damages.

        • TechdirtTechdirt Podcast Episode 321: There Are Both Smart & Dumb Ways To Improve Copyright

          The problems with copyright have been a subject of coverage here at Techdirt since the beginning, and for most of that time it has been largely a non-partisan subject. At the moment, however, that isn’t so much the case thanks to Josh Hawley’s war with Disney, which has created a situation where some copyright reform ideas that are conceptually good are mired in culture war issues, partisan politics, and unconstitutional nonsense. This week, we’re joined by the Niskanen Center’s Daniel Takash to discuss the problems with Hawley’s copyright bill and copyright law in general.

        • Torrent FreakTakedown Galore: 10 Years of Google DMCA Notice Transparency

          Ten years ago, Google expanded its transparency efforts by documenting all DMCA takedown notices received by the company. This was done to give the public more insight into where the "free flow of information" on the Internet is blocked. At the time Google spotted a massive increase in takedowns, but the real surge was yet to come.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Topics We Lacked Time to Cover
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