The large number of forks relative to bash are due to fish’s insanely expensive default prompt, which is unchanged in my version. If we switch to a prompt comparable to bash’s (lame) default, the forks drop to 16 with trunk, 4 after our changes.
Metasploit is the world’s most used penetration testing framework. It helps security teams verify vulnerabilities, manage security assessments, and improve security awareness. Metasploit 6.2.0 is now available. It includes 138 new modules, 148 enhancements and features, improvements, and 156 bug fixes.
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CVE-2022-21999 SpoolFool Privesc by Oliver Lyak and Shelby Pace, which exploits CVE-2022-21999: A local privilege escalation targeting the spool service on Windows 10 or Server builds 18362 or earlier.
Dirty Pipe Local Privilege Escalation via CVE-2022-0847 by Max Kellermann and timwr, which exploits CVE-2022-0847: A module targeting a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux kernel starting with version 5.8. The module leverages the vulnerability to overwrite a SUID binary in order to gain privileges as the root user.
Install Secure File Transfer Protocol SFTPGO on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish server or desktop to get HTTP, WebDAV, and FTP/S support.
Transferring files is one of the most important tasks in the administration of a server or a web space. Of course, there are many different tools and protocols available for these – one of them is the Secure File Transport (SFTP). Compared to other methods such as the frequently used File Transport Protocol (FTP) or the Server Message Block or Common Internet File System (SMB/CIFS, Samba), it has specific advantages and disadvantages that do not share with any other standard.
In this guide, we will show you how to install and use sysdig on Ubuntu systems.
Sysdig is an open-source, system-level exploration application that capture, save, filter, and examine the real-time events of Linux systems. In a nutshell, it’s a robust performance analysis meth. You can integrate Sysdig with ansible, puppet, and logstash to extend the functionality.
In this guide, we will learn how to install and configure Elasticsearch on Ubuntu 22.04
Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. Elasticsearch has quickly become the most popular search engine and is commonly used for log analytics, full-text search, security intelligence, business analytics, and operational intelligence use cases.
In this guide, we will show you how to install OBS Studio in Ubuntu 22.04
OBS Studio is Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming.
OBS Studio (formerly Open Broadcaster Software or OBS, for short) is a free, open-source, and cross-platform screencasting and streaming app. It is available for Windows, macOS, Linux distributions, and BSD. OBS Project raises funds on Open Collective and Patreon
MariaDB is a free and open-source Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) that is a fork of MySQL. It’s a widely used database server and a household name among developer circles. From novices to intermediate and advanced database administrators, MariaDB has stamped its authority as one of the leading SQL databases in the industry.
In this guide, we will demonstrate how to install MariaDB on RHEL 9. We will install the community version which is free to download and use.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to install and configure Kong in Ubuntu 20.04. Kong is one of the most important API tools we can find in the world.
MySQL first appeared in 1995 as an open-source project and was later acquired by Sun microsystems. Finally, Oracle acquired sun, leading to MySQL becoming an Oracle product. Many of the biggest names in the industry, like Facebook, Github, etc., use MySQL for their day-to-day operations. MySQL provides a comprehensive SQL shell that can even interpret Python and Javascript. In addition, MySQL supports JSON as table fields and allows users to query based on JSON keys.
It provides a secure authentication layer with support for very granular field-level controls for reading and writing. MySQL supports table encryption as well as binary log encryption. Development processes in MySQL are more closed when compared to MariaDB and the issue trackers refer to many oracle internal sources that are closed for the public.
In this series of articles, we’ll be looking at the various configuration options that we can tweak in order to improve performance in Nginx. Since there can be a lot to talk about regarding performance, I won’t be covering everything in just one article.
Nginx has been one of the most widely deployed web servers today. However, at its core it is merely just a reverse proxy. It can only serve static pages, and all of the dynamic content needs to be handled by other processes. In this article, we’re going to look into setting up our web server so that we can also serve PHP web pages. Whenever nginx receives a request for a PHP file, it should pass it to another process. In the case of PHP, it is commonly the php-fpm program. We can do this using a number of different protocols. However, the most commonly used one turns out to be FastCGI. FastCGI is a binary protocol created for interfacing dynamic applications with a web server. It improves upon the earlier Common Gateway Interface (CGI) protocol with better performance.
This is almost an historic moment for the Steam Deck! Square Enix has had a worldwide series of announcements to make yesterday (16th of June) as they were celebrating the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII (man, that long ago already!) and lo and behold they announced the availability of Final Fantasy VII Remake on Steam for the 17th of June, along with the fact that it will work from the get go on the Steam Deck!
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Overall great exposure for the Steam Deck, and we should expect more publishers to follow suit as the Steam Deck gains popularity and expands in unit sales.
The openSUSE Leap and Enterprise may get replaced by the Adatable Linux Platform (ALP) and Leap may get discontinued.
The Fedora Linux 36 election cycle has concluded. Here are the results for each election. Congratulations to the winning candidates, and thank you all candidates for running in this election!
Many scrum masters have an obsession with quickly turning their teams into what they want them to be. Once their expectations are not met within some arbitrary time limit, or someone resists their ideas, then the fight begins.
But the fight takes energy, time, and resources, and most of the time it doesn't solve the problem. In fact, most of the time it worsens the problem. When this happens, it's time for some reflection about the role of the scrum master.
The pandemic has forever changed the workplace, causing many in the tech industry to now question the traditional five-day workweek. One proposed solution is a four-day workweek, which some believe promises to redefine workplace productivity and employee happiness. Research shows those working four days per week report higher well-being, less burnout, and improved productivity.
But the four-day workweek is not a one-size-fits-all model, and adopting one could be detrimental to teams that overlook underlying issues in their workplace culture. In cases where teams experience high friction in their development processes, compressing the workweek and removing flexibility may exacerbate burnout.
For instance, when software developers spend significant time in meetings – upwards of ten hours per week on average – a four-day workweek may actually lead to longer, more stressful days as developers struggle to find time to code.
The impact of friction on development teams is measurable. Recent data from more than 250,000 developers reveals developers code about 52 minutes per day – about 4 hours and 21 minutes during the workweek. A four-day workweek may have the unintended consequence of further reducing that average.
More of us are working remotely or hybrid than ever before, and the benefits are clear: better work-life balance, less travel and a smaller carbon footprint, and more flexibility, to name just a few.
There are days, however, when hybrid workers can feel disconnected. They see their teammates’ faces on the screen but miss the energy and culture they once experienced daily at the office.
Here are four things my team and I do to keep our connection strong, wherever we are working:
Yes, a hacking attempt made this possible.
A cybersecurity professional, Frédéric Basse, broke the secure boot on Google Nest Hub (2nd gen) and managed to run Ubuntu.
Of course, Google Nest Hub does not officially support booting a custom OS. But, a security vulnerability allowed Fred to use an exploit and run Ubuntu.
While this is fun, it is also a severe problem for an always-connected smart home display by Google.
Ubuntu is one of the most popular and widely used Linux distributions in the world, thanks to its user-friendliness, elegant and simple UI, and a large online community that provides support and solutions to common user problems. As a result, over the years, Ubuntu has become one of the most recommended Linux distributions for beginners.
Ubuntu Linux derives its name from ‘Ubuntu’, a South African word that means ‘I am because you are’. This is a translation to mean that we become who we are through other people and denotes the spirit of togetherness.
Ubuntu was the first Linux distribution to have scheduled releases on a predictable cycle. Starting October 2004, a new release of Ubuntu is typically released every 6 months.
In 2006, Ubuntu made a slight adjustment to its release cadence. The fourth release, which would be made after every two years would receive long-term support (LTS) for production and large scale-deployments. This is the genesis of the acronym LTS.
Two years ago, we reviewed CrowPi 2 Raspberry Pi 4 laptop designed for STEM education with embedded electronics modules and Letscode software with step-by-step tutorials to learn Scratch and Python programming.
I found it quite good, but many people were mostly interested in having a Raspberry Pi 4 laptop, and the price tag was a bit high at the time. That’s probably why Elecrow has now designed for CrowPi L laptop shell for Raspberry Pi 4 based on the CrowPi 2 but without all the electronics modules, and with a built-in battery to operate more like an actual laptop.
The CrowPi L is a small laptop computer shell designed to be powered by a Raspberry Pi. It has a display, keyboard, battery, and other components… but it’s the Raspberry PI you stuff inside that will serve as the actual brains of the computer.
Made by the same folks who delivered the CrowPi and CrowPi 2, the new model is again aimed at the education space and comes with 96 courses on programming for beginners. But unlike earlier models, you don’t need to back a crowdfunding campaign this time – the CrowPi L is up for pre-order from the Elecrow website for just over $200, and it’s expected to begin shipping June 30, 2022.
We’re not in the habit of recommending Kickstarter projects here at Hackaday, but when prototype hardware shows up on our desk, we just can’t help but play with it and write it up for the readers. And that is exactly where we find ourselves with the Turing Pi 2. You may be familiar with the original Turing Pi, the carrier board that runs seven Raspberry Pi Compute boards at once. That one supports the Compute versions 1 and 3, but a new design was clearly needed for the Compute Module 4. Not content with just supporting the CM4, the developers at Turing Machines have designed a 4-slot carrier board based on the NVIDIA Jetson pinout. The entire line of Jetson devices are supported, and a simple adapter makes the CM4 work. There’s even a brand new module planned around the RK3588, which should be quite impressive.
Walking a tightrope does take skill and natural balance, but it is really a matter of inertia. This is why you see acrobats carrying long poles on the high wire — the weight and length of the pole creates inertia that gravity must overcome in order to topple the performer. But those poles are unwieldy. To find out if he could achieve the same thing in a more compact package, James Bruton built this strange Arduino-controlled balancing backpack.
Bruton has something of a fascination with self-balancing robots. His experience in that arena carried over here, because the backpack works a lot like a self-balancing robot. A weighted reaction wheel spins either clockwise or counter-clockwise, which will create rotational inertia to compensate for roll (left or right tilt). But instead of keeping a robot upright, this inertial mechanism sits on a backpack that Bruton can wear to stay upright as he attempts to walk along a beam.
Hello Tor community,
On behalf of the team, I am thrilled to share with you the Tor Project's latest Annual Report!
I've been using sbuild for a while to build my Debian packages, mainly because it's what is used by the Debian autobuilders, but also because it's pretty powerful and efficient. Configuring it just right, however, can be a challenge. In my quick Debian development guide, I had a few pointers on how to configure sbuild with the normal schroot setup, but today I finished a qemu based configuration.
I just got a fancy new camera: Ricoh GR IIIx. It's pretty great, and I strongly recommend it to anyone that wants a truly pocketable camera with fantastic image quality and full manual controls. One annoyance is the connectivity. It does have both Bluetooth and 802.11, but the only official method of using them is some dinky closed phone app. This is silly. I just did some reverse-engineering, and I now have a functional shell script to download the last few images via 802.11. This is more convenient than plugging in a wire or pulling out the memory card. Fortunately, Ricoh didn't bend over backwards to make the reversing difficult, so to figure it out I didn't even need to download the phone app, and sniff the traffic.
When you turn on the 802.11 on the camera, it says stuff about essid and password, so clearly the camera runs its own access point. Not ideal, but it's good-enough. I connected, and ran nmap to find hosts and open ports: only port 80 on 192.168.0.1 is open. Pointing curl at it yields some error, so I need to figure out the valid endpoints. I downloaded the firmware binary, and tried to figure out what's in it:
File::stat overrides the core stat() and lstat() functions. Instead of arrays, the new functions return an object having methods corresponding to the elements of the arrays returned by the original functions. This module has been in core since Perl 5.004.
In Laudato Si: Our care for our common home (2015), Pope Francis most assuredly rejects the idea that God as Creator has vanished from human consciousness throughout the world. One might say, to over-simplify, that two forms of human consciousness co-exist in tension in our world: secular and religious. This article focuses on chapter two, “The gospel of creation.” Francis begins by raising the question of why a document addressed to “all people of good will” should include a “chapter dealing with the convictions of believers?” (p. 50). He observes that there are those who “firmly reject” the idea of a Creator as irrelevant in areas of politics and philosophy or dismiss as irrational the “rich contribution which religions can make toward an integral ecology and the full development of humanity.” However, Pope Francis insists that “science” and “religion” can “enter into an intense dialogue fruitful for both” (ibid.).
One possible entry-point for a secular person might be to choose to enter into the “religious imaginary;” then consider the created world “as if” a creator had fashioned it. This is a kind of “spiritual thought-experiment” that acknowledges that we, as human beings, have an interior and spiritual life. This interior subjectivity is awakened, if you will, by the “cultural riches of different peoples, their art and poetry …” (ibid.). These riches include the sacred scriptures of numerous faith-communities. Pope Francis reminds us, rightly, that the resolution of the ecological crisis requires various branches of the sciences and other forms of wisdom, including religious and poetic languages. But Francis’ fundamental purpose in Laudato Si is to “show how faith convictions can offer Christians, and some other believers as well, ample motivation to care for nature and for the most vulnerable of their brothers and sisters” (p. 51). He is not taking us through the intricate maze of “theologies of creation.”
Yes, I’ve known bomb-makers and rebels with guns and dynamite, but I’ve never known anyone like John Crawley, an American citizen who joined the Marines, learned about weapons and how to use them, and then crossed the Atlantic and gave all he could give to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the organization that sought the liberation of Ireland from British rule and the British empire.
Crawley tells much of his story in€ The Yank, (Melville House; $28.99), though surely not all of his history. To do so would jeopardize the freedom of former comrades.€ The Irish called Crawley “The Yank” because he was an American citizen, though he didn’t like the label. So why did he borrow their word for the title of his book? He doesn’t say.€ Yank€ is a cautionary tale. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine anyone reading this memoir€ and deciding to take up arms and deliver blows to any empire, or authoritarian regime. Crawley failed at the missions that he undertook, including gun smuggling and a crazy plot to blow up an electrical grid in England and bring the London economy to a halt. Call him delusional. He was arrested twice and served long prison terms, which he describes in a cursory way.
When it comes to the development and testing of performance suspension, it’s helpful to have a test apparatus that lets you recreate certain conditions reliably. This LEGO suspension dyno does just that, and it’s clearly a big help for those doing R&D on minifig motorcycle suspension.
Many robot builders and RC enthusiasts find themselves turning to 3D printed tires. The benefit is you can make them in any size and style you want, and they’re as readily available for as long as your home printer is still working. [Michael Rechtin] printed some up and decided to see how long they’d actually last in use.
The first dance of a newly married couple at the wedding reception is both a sentimental and memorable event, so why not make it even more so with something a bit special? Hackaday alumnus [Brett Haddoak] and his wife [Rachelle] certainly achieved that, with 1200 addressable LEDs turning her wedding dress into a real-life reproduction of Princess Aurora’s color changing dress from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.
Blinds are great for blocking out the sun, but having to get up to open and close them grows tiresome in this computationally-advanced age. [The Hook Up] decided to automate his home blinds instead, hooking them up to the Internet of Things with some common off-the-shelf parts.
President of Hungary Katalin Novak awarded Jordan B. Peterson with the Order of Merit.“In recognition of his distinguished scientific work in the field of clinical psychology and his exceptional commitment to protecting the freedom of creativity and education of young people”.
The Canadian psychologist and writer gave a lecture at the office of Novak this week. The President praised the conservative figure on her Facebook: “Jordan B. Peterson, a world-renowned thinker, and clinical psychologist gave an exciting lecture in our midst today. The Sándor Palace is more than an office. It is a symbolic place that also provides space for thinking. And building a broad-minded community that understands each other.”
In April of 2021, Cecelia Lewis had just returned to Maryland from a house-hunting trip in Georgia when she received the first red flag about her new job.
The trip itself had gone well. Lewis and her husband had settled on a rental home in Woodstock, a small city with a charming downtown and a regular presence on best places to live lists. It was a short drive to her soon-to-be office at the Cherokee County School District and less than a half hour to her husband’s new corporate assignment. While the north Georgia county was new to the couple, the Atlanta area was not. They’d visited several times in recent years to see their son, who attended Georgia Tech.
From the moment Amara Harris was accused of stealing another student’s AirPods at Naperville North High School, she has insisted that it was a mix-up, not a theft.
She told a school dean that she thought the AirPods were her own, having picked them up a few days earlier in the school’s learning commons, where she said she thought she had left her own set. Her mother repeatedly told officers that her daughter hadn’t stolen the wireless earbuds, records show.
A press is a useful thing to have, whether you like destroying stuff or you simply want to properly install some bearings. [Retsetman] decided to build one from scratch, eschewing the typical hydraulic method for a geared design instead.
The Commodore 64 is a much-loved 8-bit retro computer that first appeared in 1982 and finally faded away around a decade later. The Commodore company started by [Jack Tramiel] went on to make the Amiga, and eventually ceased trading some time in the late 1990s. All history, now kept alive only by enthusiasts, right? Well, not quite, as the C64 has been the subject of a number of revivals both miniature and full-sized over the years. The latest came in the form of a Kickstarter for the C64x, a seemingly legitimately-branded Commodore 64-shaped PC, but it seems that has now been paused due to a complaint from an Italian company claiming to be the real heirs of Commodore. So will the real Commodore please stand up?
I’d like to believe we’ve learned a lesson about our species-wide vulnerability, our planetary connectedness. But in fact, we seem more atomized and arrogant than ever. The pandemic arrived just as technology was driving us collectively mad and pushing us further into our black mirrors.
Researching and writing a book about the science and politics of the pandemic, I lived with it up close and personal. € But my book’s last page wasn’t the conclusion for me — or anyone else. Here I offer my personal Covid tale, organized in three acts only because my storyteller instinct demands a beginning, middle, and end… when in truth, there is no end, not yet anyway.
There are quite a few reasons why explaining why small farms are dying has been a problem, and a little poke-around into those reasons may be interesting. What we seem to have here is—so far—a failure to communicate, to use an expression we all understand. To use an expression that conveys the miscommunication that buzzes ceaselessly in our lives.
Since I’ve discovered a well-connected historical dinosaur—not exactly invisible—that’s lived by a multimillennial addiction to its founding diseases (diseases Arnold J. Toynbee diagnosed after a lifelong study of civilization’s family history, including its medical records), I’ve also learned that pointing it out is received with well-conditioned skepticism. Why? Because its history is to be grasped from the bottom up this time, not from the top down. And we’ve been well-trained in top down.
On New Years’ Eve 2019, Americans celebrated the advent of the roaring ’20s with fireworks and champagne, amid ominous news alerts from China. Surely that virus would stay on the other side of the planet. I cringe at how entitled we felt then. Covid-19 has now wiped out more than a million of us (by far the worst record on Earth when it comes to wealthy countries). Up to a third of all survivors suffer the sometimes disabling effects of long Covid, with implications for society that will outlast the pandemic—if it ever ends.
While applauding the Biden administration's new "baby steps" to address "forever chemicals" in drinking water, green groups this week also emphasized that far more sweeping action is needed to protect people and the planet.
"The EPA needs to go much further by implementing strong, enforceable regulations on the entire class of PFAS chemicals."
We’ve already discussed how the expected overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court may impact the debate on encryption, but it has a likelihood of impacting lots of other important tech debates as well. Senator Ron Wyden has written a thoughtful piece over at Slate, explaining how important Section 230 is in a post-Roe world as well. As he notes, for all the nonsense claims from Republicans about how they’re supporting free speech, their actions show the exact opposite.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday called on the U.S. Senate to protect Americans' "most private information" by banning data brokers from selling people's health and location data, which is constantly collected and stored by tech companies.
Introducing the Health and Location Data Protection Act as the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to soon overturn Roe v. Wade and take away the right to abortion care for millions of Americans, the Massachusetts Democrat said "it is more crucial than ever for Congress toprotect consumers' sensitive data."
Several months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the global discussion about the war has divided into two opposing camps. In Ukraine and across the West, as well as in Russia’s own antiwar movement, the dominant view is that Vladimir Putin’s regime started the conflict in order to expand Moscow’s power and reclaim lost imperial territories. According to this theory, Russia seeks to subjugate or even destroy Ukraine but won’t stop there. The other camp blames the “Collective West” for provoking the war by ignoring Russia’s objective interests. Historian and journalist Yaroslav Shimov says the war is the result of the Putin regime’s peculiarities as a “mafia state” and the failure in Europe and the United States to understand their counterparts in Moscow.
Forty years ago, 1 million people gathered in Central Park demanding an end to the nuclear arms race. It was not only the largest antinuclear demonstration, but also the largest political demonstration in American history.
Since March 2022, group chats between neighbors in Mariupol have been full of messages about victims of the war whose neighbors buried them —€ sans funerals — in the courtyards next to their apartment buildings. Russia’s invasion has turned the city into a giant cemetery among the ruins. Journalist Kirill Rukov tells the story of three of Mariupol’s countless fresh graves.
Alexey Navalny has been moved from a medium-security prison in Pokrov to a high-security penal colony in the town of Melekhovo in Russia’s Vladimir region. This was confirmed to Meduza by one of Navalny’s lawyers. On June 15, Navalny said in a Telegram post that he was being transferred to Melekhovo’s IK-6 prison, writing, “Hello from a high security zone!”
The U.S. has announced another $1 billion in military equipment to Ukraine, adding to billions in military aid to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion. Support for a “military-first approach” to Ukraine is fueled by the mainstream media and not only undermines ceasefire talks but also funnels profits directly into the pockets of weapons manufacturers, says William Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “The United States is a major player here, and its only policy shouldn’t be sending weapons without some sort of diplomatic strategy to go with it.”
A Blagoveshchensk resident named Vladislav Nikitenko has become the first person charged with “discrediting” the Russian armed forces —€ a new felony offense that was created after the war began. For years, Nikitenko has been submitting official complaints to Russian courts for a wide variety of reasons; in his own words, he “genuinely loves the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, despite the fact that they were signed by Putin.” He’s been under house arrest since late May.
"Just imagine for once if we led the world in funding peace and not wars."
Lviv, Ukraine—Here in the cultural capital of Ukraine, the statues have been wrapped in plastic. The windows and facades of the neoclassical buildings that have led many a writer to describe this city as a “jewel box” have also been covered. This may be enough to protect them from the shrapnel from Russian bombs and shells, but it won’t be enough to shield them from a direct hit. Taken as a metaphor, these veiled figures convey a message: Art and culture are under wraps, at least until the invasion of Ukraine is over.1Anna Ivanova contributed reporting and translation.
In opposing the application of Finland and Sweden, Erdogan has disrupted the military alliance’s effort to further provoke Russia with even more expansion.
Thursday's public hearing of the House January 6 committee focused largely on former President Donald Trump's futile attempt to convince Mike Pence, his vice president, to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
"There was no basis in the Constitution or laws of the United States at all, for the theory espoused by Mr. Eastman."
Sentencing came on June 9, 2022, at the end of what has been dismissed by observers in the West as a “show trial” involving the three – two British citizens and a Moroccan national in Ukraine fighting alongside the country’s troops.
In many ways, proceedings like those the three were subjected to were inevitable. Indeed, in an earlier article questioning the wisdom of Ukraine’s conducting its own war crimes trials of Russian prisoners of war during ongoing hostilities, I suggested that it might incentivize the Russians to do likewise. And now the Russians have responded in kind, but with a cynical twist I hadn’t then contemplated: outsourcing the dirty work.
Congress has appropriated $54 billion for the Ukraine war – $13.6 billion in March and $40.1 billion on May 19 – of which $31.3 is for military purposes.€ The May vote was 368-57 in the House and 86-11 in the Senate.€ All Democrats and all Massachusetts Representatives and Senators voted for the war funding, while a substantial number of Trumpist Republicans voted no.
Previously antiwar Democrats like Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Barbara Lee, Pramila Jayapal, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ed Markey, have uncritically embraced the Administration’s escalating proxy war against Russia.€ They have said little to explain their actions; only Cori Bush€ released a statement€ questioning the level of military aid, even while voting for it.
More than a thousand miles away the breaking news just before our class started, “17 Dead in School Shooting,” was unavoidable. As a class we pivoted to the current event, we shared stories, and I did my best to make a teachable moment out of the horror.
I shared with students about my experiences with gun violence. In 2017 I watched a live stream as a gunman opened fire onto a Las Vegas concert crowd. Friends at the concert were in harm’s way, two of the nicest people I know were hit and luckily survived, and with the sometimes horrifying miracles of modern technology I was watching it in real time.
The struggle for a genuinely multipolar world, aligned only with the world’s people, not military blocs, has peace and disarmament at its heart: this is as true now as it was 60 years ago when the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was founded. As well as opposition to colonization and economic subjection, those founding the movement championed self-determination and equality in states’ relations, and they also agreed on their opposition to military blocs, their commitment to world peace, and a very strong advocacy of global nuclear disarmament. That thread has remained a constant ever since, and today we continue to see the countries of the Global South leading global disarmament initiatives.
Virtually the entire Global South is self-organized into internationally recognized nuclear-weapons-free zones, originating in the 1960s. In 1968, a nuclear-weapons-free zone was established by 20 countries in Latin America, renouncing the acquisition and siting of nuclear weapons on their territories. Signatories to this treaty, the Treaty of Tlatelolco, also agreed to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) jurisdiction over their nuclear power facilities. In return, nuclear weapons states agreed not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against any of the signatory states. The Treaty of Rarotonga was signed in 1985, and prohibited nuclear explosive devices in the South Pacific, as well as banning the testing and use of nuclear explosive technologies. The African nuclear-weapons-free zone was formalized in 1996 by the signing of the Treaty of Pelindaba, following the disarmament by South Africa of its apartheid-era nuclear weapons.
Somewhere at a theater near you, Top Gun: Maverick is serving up a feel-good drama about a plucky U.S. Navy pilot who dispatches some unnamed bad guys before he gets the girl.
The United States is moving fast on climate change—in the wrong direction. The Energy Information Agency forecasts that by 2023, the nation will set a new annual record for oil extraction: 4.6 billion barrels. Plans to build more than 200 new natural gas power plants are in the works. More than 130 new oil and gas pipelines now under development will carry enough fuel to increase national emissions by 10 percent—560 million metric tons per year.€ €
With gas prices surging to unprecedented levels across the United States, President Joe Biden on Thursday faced fresh calls to use his authority to temporarily halt crude oil exports that—in addition to damaging the climate—have contributed significantly to rising costs at the pump.
In 2015, the Republican-controlled Congress crammed into an omnibus spending bill a provision that ended the four-decade ban on U.S. crude oil exports, a decision backed by the oil and gas industry. Democratic President Barack Obama signed the measure into law despite pushback from climate advocates.
Ahead of a global summit next week, a global coalition of conservationists Thursday called on world leaders and policymakers to forge a concrete and meaningful agreement to urgently address the crisis of biodiversity and species loss that is rapidly "unraveling the fabric of life" on planet Earth.
In a letter addressed to parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity—set to kick off its next round of talks on June 21 in Nairobi, Kenya—the more than 100 groups say the "global community is living through an unprecedented biodiversity crisis" that must be urgently addressed.
The Federal Reserve's decision Wednesday to hike interest rates by 75 basis points—the largest increase since 1994—heightened fears among economists that the central bank's attempt to tame inflation risks plunging the U.S. economy into recession and inflicting more pain on vulnerable workers.
The Fed's move came on the heels of worse-than-expected federal data showing that inflation jumped 8.6% in May compared to a year earlier, prompting central bank officials to pursue more aggressive federal-funds rate increases, the Fed's blunt tool to rein in consumer prices.
The Federal Reserve just raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, the biggest single increase in interest rates since 1994. It’s another move in the Fed’s effort to tackle the fastest inflation in four decades.
A KHN and NPR analysis discovers the picture of health debt in the U.S. is bleak.
A conversation with Jamie Martin about the imperial origins of the world’s economic governance, imagining an alternative to these institutions, and his new book, The Meddlers.
At the end of May, as I was waiting to board a flight from Newark to Geneva, I overheard a high-decibel monologue being delivered by an older American businessman to a fellow passenger of undetermined nationality. The topic of the monologue was the coronavirus, which the American's daughter—a nurse in New York—had just contracted for the first time since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
Progressive advocacy groups on Thursday intensified calls for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign or face impeachment after new reporting revealed that his wife, right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, corresponded with former President Donald Trump's attorney in the weeks between the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Washington Post revealed that the House committee investigating the insurrection has received emails between Thomas and John Eastman that were sent around the time that the attorney pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to block or delay the certification of the election results.
On Monday, the January 6 Select Committee revealed that former president of the United States Donald J. Trump may have committed wire and mail fraud, to the tune of $250 million. The committee alleged that Trump and his campaign sent out fundraising letters asking people to donate to the “Official Election Defense Fund.” But, as the committee’s chief investigative counsel, Amanda Wick, said in video testimony, “no such fund existed.” The money Trump raised was instead funneled to a Trump leadership PAC and other Trump-adjacent organizations, the committee claimed.
“While nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, nothing is more difficult than to understand him”—so goes a famous aphorism often attributed to Dostoyevsky. The figure of the evildoer seems to cry out for either condemnation or interpretation. We can’t just let an evildoer be; we can’t just turn our eyes away from him until we’ve managed to satisfy ourselves that he is different from us. Murderers, having indulged in the greatest evil, exercise this magnetism to the greatest degree.
According to the statistics, women in Hungary achieve a higher average level of education than men, yet they have a lower employment rate. Overall, they assume lower-ranking positions and earn less in comparison as well. But the problem is much more complex than the pay gap. Invisible labor, old age, working after childbirth, caring for elderly family members – the causes of this glaring inequality are manifold, but with the proper measures, awareness, and actual willpower, they could be gradually reduced.
“I’ve been forced to live in a world where his murderers have not only gone unpunished but have also been rewarded,” lamented Hatice Cengiz.
Citing the "enormous potential" of Cuban Covid-19 vaccines to tackle enduring global inequities, a group of 26 House Democrats on Thursday urged President Joe Biden to review U.S. policy toward the long-embargoed nation to ensure that sanctions do not impede its international vaccination campaign.
"We ask that you review U.S. policy towards Cuba in order to facilitate greater global vaccine equity."
The most chilling revelation from the first public hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol was the reaction of President Donald Trump to news reports that the insurrectionist mob he had incited was proposing to execute his vice president.
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol has now completed its second two-hour hearing, with its third hearing Thursday. The Committee has clearly done much important work, and its presentation of its findings is off to a good start. At the same time, unless the Committee finds ways to communicate more broadly and deeply, so that its hearings and findings become politically actionable, there is a danger that its important task of public enlightenment and activation will fail. In that event American democracy itself, such as it is, will be placed in even greater danger.
In late March, a video surfaced online that appeared to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian prisoners of war in the legs. Western journalists quickly sought to verify the footage and managed to pinpoint the Ukrainian town where it was filmed. In turn, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said that Kyiv would punish those responsible if an investigation confirmed the alleged abuse of prisoners of war. Nina, who lives in a small town in Russia’s Omsk region, first saw the footage in early April — and she immediately recognized one of the prisoners as her 20-year-old son Ivan Kudryavtsev. According to Nina, Ivan was conscripted into the Russian military in October 2021 and allegedly signed an enlistment contract after less than two months of service. But whether Ivan actually enlisted as a professional soldier remains unclear — the Russian Defense Ministry has only confirmed that he is considered missing.
No Israeli police officers will be punished, despite brutally assaulting mourners at last month's funeral procession for slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a leading newspaper in Israel reported Thursday.
"We all know what happened, and we demand accountability for Israel's murder of Shireen Abu Akleh."
Punch for punch, the debasement of Attorney General Merrick Garland is without historical correlate. The self-defeating adherence to ideological centrism (often indistinguishable from passivity in the face of elite resistance), paired with his masochistic devotion to the status quo, represents the kind of Blue Dog/New Dem totem that could have only emerged from a lab. Corporatist Democrats believed during the Obama years, as they do now, that through the ritual sacrifice of their Democratic ideals, they could resurrect the corpse of a forgotten age when left and right joined hands to strangle the everyday citizen. That union never happened after the GOP realized they could simply steamroll Democrats like Garland who refuse to open their eyes to the Conservative onslaught, even when it was punching them in the face.
Field drug tests are notoriously unreliable. False positives abound. But law enforcement agencies still use them. First and foremost, they use them because no court, policy, or legislation has told them they can’t.
Well, this is ugly. Lots of states and cities have considered bail reform in recent years, given the system’s propensity for punishing the poorest people while allowing the more fortunate to buy their way out of jail.
With the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority expected to overturn Roe v. Wade any day now, criminal defense attorneys are preparing to defend a flood of clients facing abortion-related charges—and warning about the looming decision's likely consequences.
"We're not talking about just fines like a traffic ticket."
Seven asylum seekers were due to be deported to Kigali on Tuesday night before the flight was canceled after a day of last-minute legal challenges and critical direct action protests
In 1913, Irma Lombardi, a silk weaver in a Paterson, N.J., joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). She wanted a living wage as well as recognition for her labor, and she saw in the IWW an organization that connected the two: “work, good wages, and respect. That’s what they wanted for the workers. To be people, not nobodies.” Lombardi is one of 16 members of the IWW interviewed in the recently rereleased documentary Wobblies (the 1979 film directed by Deborah Shaffer and Stewart Bird had been available for free online, but since its rerelease by Kino Lorber is available on proprietary streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime). The film recounts the union’s philosophy, culture, and strategies during the 15 years between its founding and its suppression, a time when gross inequality was the rule and several decades of negotiation and legal reform had failed to improve the position of most workers. Composed of documentary footage, songs from the IWW’s Little Red Songbook performed by folk singer Utah Philips, interviews, and narration by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) founder Robert Baldwin, Wobblies is an important correction to the conventional wisdom that the IWW was a failure—as well as a reminder that its successes were the result of its willingness to take radical positions.
With the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court expected to overturn Roe v. Wade as soon as this month, President Joe Biden is reportedly weighing a number of executive orders to protect abortion rights at the federal level—including declaration of a national public health emergency—as progressive lawmakers and rights groups push him to act.
The New York Times, citing unnamed administration officials, reported Thursday that "some of the ideas under consideration include declaring a national public health emergency, readying the Justice Department to fight any attempt by states to criminalize travel for the purpose of obtaining an abortion, and asserting that Food and Drug Administration regulations granting approval to abortion medications preempt any state bans."
“Socialism” can mean a couple of different things, thanks to the life-changing magic of semantics.
In one meaning, it is about different ways workers can control the means of production (for example, through cooperatives) instead of being hired by an owner class. Opinion differs on where to draw the line between personal property vs private property, the former being defined as like the sweater on your body or the pillow under your head, the latter as factories or fields where people are working. The idea is to bring about economic democracy, having a say in how your workplace is run and how to distribute its gains. This type of socialism is to address capitalism’s exploitation problem.
Taken a little bit more broadly, it’s a general view of a society where people help each other, a more broadly diminished or abolished owner class. “Socialized medicine”, like most countries do have (get with it, United States), is an example. We used to have socialized postal services here in Sweden, too. Until some corrupt politicians sold it off and pocketed the profits (in the name of “liberty”). Frustratingly, these institutions have been just as hierarchical and exploitation-prone as most private corporations. This type of socialism is to address capitalism’s inequality problem.
Nintendo’s war on its own fans’ love of Nintendo game music continues. The company has certainly made headlines over the past few years (with a big ramp up recently) by going on DMCA and threat blitzes for YouTube videos and channels that have uploaded what are essentially just the music from various Nintendo games. The blitzes started by taking down 3-figure numbers of videos, then reached the thousands by 2022. Notably, this has pissed off tons of Nintendo fans, many of whom pointed out that Nintendo was disappearing all of this music that was almost entirely unavailable through legit means.