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Links 29/06/2022: Russians Moving to GNU/Linux



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Applications

      • Its FOSSVim 9.0 is Here With a New Script Language Promising Performance Boost
        Vim, the terminal text editor is back with a major update.

        The Vim 9.0 release includes several tiny improvements along with a new script language (Vim9 script).

        Here, let me highlight the key changes.

      • Linux LinksBest Free and Open Source Alternatives to Autodesk 3ds Max

         Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software company that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, product design, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. It bills itself as a “… leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software”.

        The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, who was a joint developer of the first versions of AutoCAD, the company’s best known software application. Autodesk is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, it has over 11,000 employees, and is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.

        While Autodesk develops many high quality applications they are proprietary software. And the vast majority of their products are not available for Linux. This series looks at the best free and open source alternatives.

      • 9to5LinuxHP Linux Imaging and Printing Drivers Now Support Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Fedora 36

         HPLIP 3.22.6 is here exactly two months after the HPLIP 3.22.4 release, which only added support for the Manjaro Linux 21.2 distribution and several new printers, to add support for more recent distributions, including Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Fedora Linux 36, and MX Linux 21.1.

        This means that you can now use your HP printer or scanner device on any of these new Fedora, Ubuntu or MX Linux distributions if you install the HP Linux Imaging and Printing 3.22.6 version.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • uni TorontoWishing for a simple way to set up multi-interface symmetric routing on Linux

        Setting this up with Linux's policy based routing is straightforward and almost mechanical. However, the setup has a lot of moving parts and there's no current automation for it that I know of. You can build your own, of course, but then that means you're stuck maintaining and operating your own automation; at that point you (we) start asking if you (we) really need symmetric routing, or if it's just a nice to have thing.

      • Didier StevensQuickpost: Cracking PDF Owner Passwords

        I added code to John the Ripper to crack PDF owner passwords (JtR cracks PDF user passwords only).

      • TecMintHow to Change and Reset Forgotten Root Password in RHEL 9

        While installation of RHEL 9, the installer recommends we choose a complex password and while making the password complex enough, the chances of forgetting our password are quite high. And things get even more complex when your user is not even added to the wheel group (which allows a normal user to elevate root privileges for a small amount of time).

        This tutorial will guide you on how you can change your forgotten root password in 3 scenarios and we are quite sure that you’ll be able to recover your forgotten password at the end of this guide.

      • UNIX CopHow to install ntopng on Ubuntu 22.04?

        In this post, you will learn how to install ntopng in Ubuntu 22.04. This powerful network monitoring tool is a marvel that we can always install to take advantage of it.

      • TecAdminWhat is the /etc/aliases file – TecAdmin

        /etc/aliases is a text file used to store email aliases on a Linux system. Email aliases are basically nicknames for email addresses. They allow you to send emails to a group of people using a single address, or to redirect emails from one address to another.

        /etc/aliases are typically used to store aliases for the system’s mail server. However, it can also be used to store aliases for any other purpose.

        For example, you could use /etc/aliases to create an alias for your own email address. This file is stored in the /etc directory, which is the standard location for system-wide configuration files. /etc/aliases are usually managed by the system administrator. However, you can also edit /etc/aliases yourself if you need to add or change an alias.

      • ELinuxHow to Install LXC to Create Linux Containers on RHEL/CentOS/Rocky Linux

        In this article, I will take you through the steps to install LXC (Linux containers) on RHEL/CentOS/Rocky Linux but before that let’s understand the first LXD. It is a free and open source next-generation system container and virtual machine manager. LXD provides a template that contains images of almost all the major Linux distributions. These images can be used to create Linux containers using the LXC utility. This is a CLI-based client utility provided by LXD. When running a virtual machine, LXD uses the hardware of the host system, but the kernel is provided by the virtual machine. Therefore, virtual machines can be used to run, for example, a different operating system.

      • Its FOSSFinding Your Router’s IP Address (Default Gateway) in Ubuntu and Other Linux

        You probably already know how to get your system’s IP address in Linux.

        But how do you know the IP address of your router?

      • LinuxSecurityGuide to Web Application Penetration Testing

        Web application penetration testing is a technique that aims at evaluating web applications and gathering information concerning the possible vulnerabilities and security flaws in the system. The technique involves a series of steps that include identifying vulnerabilities and gathering detailed information on how these vulnerabilities could compromise the web application and impact business.

      • Linux HandbookHow to Cut, Copy and Paste Text in Nano editor?

        GNU Nano is an editor that has a minimal learning curve and hence is widely used for beginner-level guides.

        That doesn't mean that it is as easy to use for beginners as a graphical text editor. Why? because you still have to rely on the keyboard shortcuts to do the basic things such as save, undo, etc.

        How about cut, copy and paste in Nano? Does it require specific keyboard shortcuts too?

        Well, yes and no. You can use the mouse to copy-paste. There are also keyboard shortcuts for the same purpose. To cut, you must use shortcuts.

      • Trend OceansHow to Exclude Packages from Transactions using DNF in RHEL Linux

        While updating packages in your system, you might not want to allow specific packages from transactions, such as updates, for various reasons, such as bugs or instability in the latest release.

        Packages such as Kernel, PHP, MySql, Apache, Nginx, Python, etc., are regularly used on the running server. Updating them into unstable releases might lead to a catastrophe event.

    • Games

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Old VCROverbite Palm 0.2

      [...] This update includes Shawn Mulligan's Sony Clié key patch (thanks!) plus more aggressive memory management and menu compression, which should not only increase the number and length of documents that 68K Palms with their pathetic dynamic heaps can view but also cut down on the fatal Plua-generated "out of memory" errors that our memory heuristics failed to anticipate. [...]

    • Web Browsers

      • PC WorldThe one feature that finally let me switch from Chrome to Vivaldi

        Which brings me to Vivaldi, the hot young single new to town in my increasingly tortured metaphor. Vivaldi reminds me a lot of what Firefox was back when I was in college: a browser designed with power users in mind, includes a ton of tools and options for tweaking, and it doesn’t mind one bit if you feel like adding on some more. It’s far from perfect, especially when it comes to moving tabs around, but it’s well worth checking out. For a more in-depth look at switching from Chrome to Vivaldi, check out Mark Hachman’s great write-up on the topic.

        But I’m here to talk about that one particular tool I can’t live without. I’ve tried Vivaldi at least twice in the past, the most recent being about a year ago, at which point it still didn’t have that essential (for me, at least) shortcut tool. Or maybe it did, and I just didn’t dig around enough to find it: you have to right-click on the active tab, then click. Either way, it’s working, and I can replicate my meticulous collection of websites masquerading as individual apps. Huzzah!

    • Programming/Development

      • APNICIs zero trust living up to expectations?

        Zero trust has been on my radar for almost a decade, as it was part of the environment that enabled network virtualization to take off. We’ve told that story briefly in our SDN book — the rise of microsegmentation as a widespread use case was arguably the critical step that took network virtualization from a niche technology to the mainstream. The term goes back at least to 2009, when it was coined by Forrester analyst John Kindervag and it is possible to draw a line back from there to the principle of least privilege as framed by Saltzer and Schroeder in 1975. That principle states:

        “Every program and every user of the system should operate using the least set of privileges necessary to complete the job.”

      • Manuel MatuzovicAnalyzing pages in a particular state with Lighthouse

        Historically, Lighthouse has analyzed the cold pageload of a page only. Clicking the “Generate report” button reloads the page before Lighthouse runs its tests. This can be problematic when you want to run tests on parts of the UI that are only visible when the user interacts with it. For example, a fly-out navigation, a modal window, or the content in a disclosure widget.

        That has changed with Lighthouse v10. A new experimental feature in Chrome DevTools allows us now to analyze the page in a particular state. Here’s an example: [...]

      • Nolan LawsonSPAs: theory versus practice

        I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Single-Page Apps (SPAs) and Multi-Page Apps (MPAs). I’ve been thinking about how MPAs have improved over the years, and where SPAs still have an edge. I’ve been thinking about how complexity creeps into software, and why a developer may choose a more complex but powerful technology at the expense of a simpler but less capable technology.

        I think this core dilemma – complexity vs simplicity, capability vs maintainability – is at the heart of a lot of the debates about web app architecture. Unfortunately, these debates are so often tied up in other factors (a kind of web dev culture war, Twitter-stoked conflicts, maybe even a generational gap) that it can be hard to see clearly what the debate is even about.

      • HishamTurns out gcc has imperative argument handling

        Everything in it has a reason, of course, but the end result is that you get a weird mix where the order matters for some args and not for others PLUS there are imperative arguments: [...]

      • Matt RickardHistory of Version Control Systems: Part 2

        The second generation of version control systems introduced project-level concepts like repositories and new ways to collaborate – merging as an alternative to locking, branches, and networked file systems.

        Some of the most popular VCSs in the second generation were CVS, ClearCase, and Perforce.

      • Tim BraySmall Tables

        The problem €· As described in a (pretty short) previous episode of this Diary, Quamina matches Patterns to Events, which are flattened into field-name/value pairs for the purpose. We try to match field names and values from Events to those offered in a Pattern. Matching names is easy, they’re immutable strings both in Events and Patterns, and thus the following suffices.

  • Leftovers

    • Education

    • Hardware

      • James BrownReflecting on Photography Gear; Leaving Micro Four Thirds

        I did some research and played with some gear, and, well, where I've landed is Fujifilm, right back where I was from 2005 through 2008. I started off with an X100V a few months ago as a compact, carry-everywhere camera to take pictures of my son with9, and a few weeks ago I decided to trade in all of my m43 gear to the local camera shop10 and get an X-T4 as an interchangeable-lens "big camera"11. Something just clicked with me and the manual controls really make sense to me now — why would you ever want a PASM dial when you can just have an aperture ring with an A setting and a shutter dial with an A setting?

      • CNX SoftwareArm Immortalis-G715 GPU supports hardware-based ray tracing - CNX Software

        Arm has unveiled the new Immortalis family of flagship GPUs with support for hardware-based ray tracing starting with the Immortalis-G715 GPU, as well as two new premium Mali GPUs namely Arm Mali-G615 and Mali-G715.

        Software-based ray tracing was already implemented on Arm Mali G710 on SoC’s such as the MediaTek Dimensity 9000, but the hardware-based ray tracing in the Immortalis-G715 delivers over 300 percent performance improvements, and only uses 4% of the shader core area. This will be mostly used in games to generate realistic lighting and shadows as can be seen in the “before vs after” video demo below.

      • TechTargetNew HPE ProLiant servers with Arm target energy savings

        The new Arm-based HPE ProLiant RL300 Gen11 is a single-socket system that incorporates the Ampere Altra and Ampere Altra Max cloud-native processors. The new chip contains 128 cores and is designed to take advantage of the energy saving capabilities of the Arm processor, the company said during its HPE Discover conference this week.

      • The Next PlatformHPE Is The First Big OEM To Adopt Ampere Computing Arm Chips

        Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been an early and enthusiastic supporter of alternate processor architectures outside of the standard Xeon X86 CPUs that comprise the vast majority of its revenues and shipments, particularly with Arm server chips starting in 2011.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Proprietary

      • India TimesGoogle to shut down Hangouts, tell users to switch to Chat

        The company mentioned that users who wish to keep a copy of their Hangouts data to use Google Takeout -- to download their data before Hangouts is no longer available in November 2022.

      • The VergeGoogle Hangouts is shutting down in November

        As for users who use Hangouts in Gmail on the web, Google says it won’t start prompting users to make the switch to Chat until July. Hangouts will remain usable on its desktop site until November, and Google says it will warn users “at least one month” in advance before it starts pointing the Hangouts site to Chat.

    • Security

      • NeowinFabricScape: Microsoft patches Azure security flaw affecting only Linux workloads [Ed: Microsoft is now a prime source of anti-Linux FUD, serving to distract from vastly more urgent and critical (usually not even patched) holes in Windows]

        Like most cloud and local environments, Microsoft Azure also acts as an attack vector for malicious actors. Since a security flaw in Azure can potentially impact millions of consumers, it is essential that Microsoft patches such problems in a timely manner. Now, the company has revealed details about one such issue that it recently patched in Azure Service Fabric.

      • [Old] Terence EdenI've locked myself out of my digital life

        Imagine…

        Last night, lightning struck our house and burned it down. I escaped wearing only my nightclothes.

        In an instant, everything was vaporised. Laptop? Cinders. Phone? Ashes. Home server? A smouldering wreck. Yubikey? A charred chunk of gristle.

        This presents something of a problem.

        In order to recover my digital life, I need to be able to log in to things. This means I need to know my usernames (easy) and my passwords (hard). All my passwords are stored in a Password Manager. I can remember the password to that. But logging in to the manager also requires a 2FA code. Which is generated by my phone.

      • TechRadarMicrosoft promises official fix for Windows VPN issues, but you’ll have to wait

        The fixes for a number of VPN issues that have been plaguing some Windows versions since this month’s Patch Tuesday are coming. Microsoft has finally confirmed that last month’s Patch Tuesday introduced connectivity issues on servers with Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) enabled, noting that client endpoints could also struggle to connect to these servers, experiencing connection drops. The fixes will most probably be arriving as part of July’s Patch Tuesday, meaning affected users will need to exercise just a little more patience.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • EFFEFF to European Court: Keep Encryption Alive

          In Telegram Messenger LLP and Telegram Messenger Inc. v. Russia, the company behind the popular messaging app Telegram refused to hand over confidential private user information to the Russian Federal Security Service. A Russian court subsequently convicted, fined, and briefly blocked internet access to Telegram. Following those actions, Telegram asked the ECtHR to find violations of its right to free expression, right to fair trial, and right to adequate legal remedies.€ € 

          EFF and our partners filed an amicus brief before the ECtHR, asking the ECtHR to safeguard encrypted online communications. Electronic communications have long become one of the main avenues of seeking and receiving information, and participating in activities and discussions, including on issues of political and social importance. Free expression rights are at stake, both for the individuals that use encrypted electronic messaging applications, and the intermediaries that offer them.€ € 

          As the UN Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Opinion and Expression noted in his 2015 report, privacy is a “gateway for freedom of opinion and expression.” Encryption is key to free and safe communications, particularly for journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, activists, and dissidents. That is why we invited the ECtHR to consider the risks to Internet users in Ukraine, and activists in Russia, if their private communications or their identities were revealed to the Russian authorities in the course of the current conflict.

        • Democracy NowEncrypt, Obscure, Compartmentalize: Protecting Your Digital Privacy in a Post-Roe World

          Reproductive health advocates are urging Congress to pass the My Body, My Data Act, which will prevent consumer data that is related to reproductive health from being used as criminal evidence. Protecting how sensitive personal information is collected and stored online is critical to combating anti-abortion laws, says Daly Barnett, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Barnett also shares practical advice for securing your online privacy now, such as utilizing encryption and creating a culture of consent. “Privacy should just be a default for people,” says Barnett. “It shouldn’t be something that the end users have to fight for, especially when the data is potentially dangerous, that could be used as criminal evidence.”

        • New York Times‘An Invisible Cage’: How China Is Policing the Future

          While largely unproven, the new Chinese technologies, detailed in procurement and other documents reviewed by The New York Times, further extend the boundaries of social and political controls and integrate them ever deeper into people’s lives. At their most basic, they justify suffocating surveillance and violate privacy, while in the extreme they risk automating systemic discrimination and political repression.

        • New York TimesLost and Found: USB Sticks With Data on 460,000 People

          The final thing the technician was supposed to do after a shift last week was clear the USB sticks of their confidential information. Instead, once he had transferred the data, he dropped the tiny storage devices into his bag and headed to an izakaya. There, he spent about three hours drinking sake with three colleagues, then stumbled into the streets before eventually passing out.

          By the time he woke up around 3 a.m. last Wednesday, his bag — containing the two USB drives, one of them a backup device with the same information — was gone. So was his precise memory of what had happened.

          Also missing, embarrassed officials in Amagasaki, an industrial city northwest of Osaka, explained at a news conference, were the names, birthdays and ID numbers of about 460,000 people: the entire population of the city. Their home addresses and bank details were in the trove of data, too.

        • John GruberHow to Temporarily Disable Face ID or Touch ID, and Require a Passcode to Unlock Your iPhone or iPad

          I’ve written about this — e.g. here and here — but because I consider it one of the single most important things to know about iOS, I should write about it more often. Even if you’re not the sort of person who typically shares iPhone tips with your friends and relatives, this is one that you should spread the word about.

          The problem is this: if you use Face ID or Touch ID on your device (and you almost certainly should), what happens if law enforcement (or anyone else for that matter) takes your device and physically forces you to unlock it biometrically? There is some legal precedent supporting the notion that police can force you to do this, but can’t force you to provide them with a passcode or passphrase.

          Here are two essential things everyone should know.

        • Scribe“Magic links” can end up in Bing search results — rendering them useless.

          The only logical explanation was that Microsoft was sharing email data (links included) with Bing for indexing. We all know that these ESPs harvest our data, but surely they don’t index private email content…right?

        • Stacy on IoTLet’s ask a teen about Amazon’s really odd idea for Alexa

          In other words, they weren’t having any of it. Now, my child isn’t a representative sample of the population by any stretch. But the fact that a 15-year-old was so quickly able to pinpoint how creepy this example is and express their horror within just moments of hearing about it had me wondering what, exactly, the folks at Amazon were thinking.

        • TorTor is much slower latterly than it used to be
  • Defence/Aggression

    • ScheerpostRussian Exiles

      A century ago, the October Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War that followed it generated a vast wave of Russian exiles…

    • The NationIt Was a Coup, and Trump Fully Intended to Lead It

      That was the signal on January 6 from the man who, as Thompson said at the opening of these hearings, was at the center of a conspiracy to launch a coup against the United States. There will be more testimony from more Republicans with close ties to Trump that will detail the former president’s wrongdoing, but the proof and the evidence is accumulating for the Department of Justice to charge Trump and his top aides with seditious conspiracy to overturn the results of an election and illegitimately maintain Trump’s tenure as president. Hutchinson’s testimony may inspire more aides and allies of the former president to step up, as Thompson and Cheney urged them to do on Tuesday. But it is now clear that January 6th Committee member Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) was right when he said last week, “I think what we’re presenting before the American people certainly would rise to a level of criminal involvement by a president.”

      Kinzinger said that before Hutchinson testified. Now, Hutchinson has pulled the threads together.

    • India TodayHindu shopkeeper beheaded in Udaipur over social media post on Nupur Sharma, 2 held

      Reacting to the incident, BJP leader Amit Malviya said, “Two Muslim men behead Kanhaiya Lal, a Hindu shopkeeper, inside his shop in Udaipur. They then release a video of the act and another owning up the crime, brandishing machetes used and vow to kill Prime Minister Modi. Ashok Gehlot, however, has promised “thorough” investigation...”

    • ANF NewsErdoÄŸan repeats announcement of new invasion in northern Syria

      One can be confident that Turkey will use all its political, economic and military capabilities to achieve its goals for 2023 (100th foundation day of the republic) and realise the "vision for 2053" (600th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople), ErdoÄŸan said, referring to his dream of a Grand Turk-Islamist empire. He also said that the "operations to redeem" the border with Iraq from "terrorist attacks" - meaning Turkey's invasion of southern Kurdistan, which has been ongoing since mid-April - would continue successfully. The "new offensives" in Syria will be launched when all "weaknesses in the security corridor" have been eliminated, he stated.

    • ADFReport Details Scope, Illegal Practices Of China’s Fishing Fleet

      China commands the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet (DWF), has the world’s worst illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing record, and its crews are known to abuse foreign workers, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF).

      An EJF report released in March offers the first global analysis of China’s DWF. It was based on an analysis of China’s own limited fisheries data, which the nation made available in recent years. China’s fishing fleet has targeted African waters, especially the Gulf of Guinea, for decades.

    • Counter PunchMore Bloat For Bloated Defense Spending

      As of now, the top line defense budget figure is an astounding $847 billion, designed to counter inflation; the Russian invasion of Ukraine; and the Pentagon’s unwillingness to fund unneeded weapons systems.€  Russia’s official defense spending in 2021 amounted to less than $65 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which provides authoritative data and analysis on military spending and armed conflict.€  Russia’s pathetic military performance in Ukraine over the past four months argues against any increase in the Pentagon’s budget.

      The bipartisan frenzy for additional military spending was reflected in the remarks of Senate committee chairman Jack Reed (D/RI), who argued that the inflation demanded greater spending, and ranking member Jim Inhofe (R/OK), who said the defense bill was “everything I hoped for.”€  And why not?€  The entire global community spends about $2 trillion on defense, and the United States represents more than half of that figure when you add the military costs in the budgets of the intelligence community, the Veterans’ Administration, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Homeland Security.€  This year’s defense bill is even named for Inhofe, who is retiring at the end of the 117th Congress, following 30 years of boosting defense spending in the Senate.

    • Counter PunchA Cold War with China, Global Warming, and Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

      The basic story is that cold wars cost money, lots of it. If we spend large sums of money building up our military to meet the challenge of our Cold War adversary, we won’t have the money needed to address climate change. It’s sort of like if you spend your whole paycheck on gambling and alcohol, you won’t have money to pay the rent and for your kids’ college education.

      To get an idea of what is at stake, we are currently projected to spend an average of 3.0 percent of GDP on the military budget over the next decade. During Reagan’s Cold War buildup in the 1980s, military spending peaked at more than 6.0 percent of GDP. Spending went to over 9.0 percent of GDP when we had actually hot wars in Vietnam and Korea.

    • TruthOutJanuary 6 Panel Moved Up Hearing Over Fear That Meadows Aide Is in Danger
    • ScheerpostThousands Take to Streets Against Upcoming NATO Summit in Madrid, Spain

      Protesters claimed that NATO was responsible for various wars, from Yugoslavia to Libya, and is pushing for an arms race across the globe. They demanded that NATO be disbanded to ensure peace and s…

    • ScheerpostNATO To Increase High-Readiness Forces To Over 300,000 Troops

      NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg€ announced Monday€ that the alliance will increase its high-readiness…

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • BellingcatRussia’s Kremenchuk Claims Versus the Evidence

      Yet as with other claims made by Russia, such as in Bucha and Kramotorsk earlier in the war, these do not appear to be supported by the available open source evidence and videos from the scene.

  • Environment

    • [Old] uni MassachusettsRewriting the History Books: Why the Vikings Left Greenland

      They then analyzed that 2,000 year sample for two different markers: the first, a lipid, known as BrGDGT, can be used to reconstruct temperature. “If you have a complete enough record, you can directly link the changing structures of the lipids to changing temperature,” says Isla Castañeda, professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst and one of the paper’s co-authors.

      A second marker, derived from the waxy coating on plant leaves, can be used to determine the rates at which the grasses and other livestock-sustaining plants lost water due to evaporation. It is therefore an indicator of how dry conditions were.

    • Copenhagen Post300-year-old ship journals to help understand climate change

      The journals were written during voyages made around the world – with the oldest record dating back to 1675.

      The organisations will compare past weather events to predict weather events, helping us to understand climate change and what to expect in the future.

    • Energy

      • YLEElectricity firms agree plans for third line between Finland, Estonia

        Finnish and Estonian electricity grid operators, Fingrid and Elering, have signed a letter of intent to begin planning the construction of a third subsea cable connection between the countries, Fingrid announced in a statement on Tuesday.

        Once completed the EstLink 3 connection beneath the Gulf of Finland will have an estimated capacity of between 700 to 1,000 megawatts, according to the company.

    • Wildlife/Nature

      • Pro PublicaGrain Elevator Project Could Destroy African American Historical Sites, Preservation Agency Says

        The federal agency charged with overseeing historic preservation policy has expressed concern that a Louisiana industrial project could inflict harm on African American historic sites. The move follows a ProPublica investigation that found an archeological consulting firm had gutted a report to the Army Corps of Engineers that originally detailed that harm.

        In a letter sent last week to the Army Corps, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation said it is aware that the report commissioned by the developer of the project “has been challenged by the original author of the report.” It went on to state: “The ACHP requests that the Corps clarify how it will address this issue.” The Corps is considering a permit application from the project’s developer.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • India TimesTwitter India given ‘last chance’ to follow IT rules

      The Centre has granted Twitter India “one last opportunity” to comply with the country’s Information Technology Rules by July 4 or risk losing its immunity as an intermediary, people directly aware of the development told ET.

      The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s (MeitY) action follows Twitter’s “repeated failures to act on the content take-down notices sent under Section 69 A of the IT Act” as well as on “non-compliance notices issued for not taking the content down,” officials in the know told ET.

      In the notice sent on Monday—which has been reviewed by ET—the ministry pointed out that the microblogging platform failed to comply with notices sent on June 6 and June 9.

    • Jacobin MagazineBiden’s Campaign for “Digital Democracy” Is Really a Giveaway to Big Tech

      The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation — a think tank backed by Apple, Microsoft, and Uber — answers that democracies, unlike authoritarian states, would never abuse technology: “Authoritarian nations will use technology for authoritarian purposes. Democratic nations will use them for legitimate and civil-liberty-protecting purposes.”

      This kind of black-and-white thinking creates a self-reinforcing logic: when democratic states and their tech companies engage in surveillance, we can assume that it is for the cause of freedom, but when authoritarian states do it, it is for the purpose of social control. Was the NSA listening in on Angela Merkel’s phone calls a triumph of representative government? Are YouTube’s efforts to deplatform Palestinian activists justified by the will of the majority? Is Facebook facilitating genocide in Myanmar and Ethiopia “what democracy looks like”? Apparently so.

      In truth, spying on people and stealing their data is abhorrent regardless of the nature of the government performing or sanctioning that surveillance. Regrettably, surveillance capitalism has become a driving force in the global economy. Across the world’s democracies, republics, oligarchies, monarchies, theocracies, and dictatorships, accumulating data for profit has become the modus operandi of many companies.

    • Democracy NowInvestigation: Facebook Is Helping Anti-Abortion Clinics Collect Highly Sensitive Info on People

      We look at the fight for privacy rights in a post-Roe America amid concerns that anti-abortion activists could use identifying data from online platforms like Facebook to target abortion seekers. Investigative reporter Grace Oldham describes how this data is already being used by medically unlicensed “crisis pregnancy centers” that actively lure patients to discourage them from seeking abortions. These anti-abortion clinics put people who are considering an abortion at risk to misinformation on reproductive health, or worse, open them to criminal prosecution, says Oldham, whose recent report for Reveal is headlined “Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients.”

    • Foreign PolicyAmerica Is Losing Its Value Proposition

      The first of these legs was, of course, the country’s economic strength, which gave it the ability to accomplish astonishing feats. During World War II, this meant producing a staggering 122 aircraft carriers, as well as airplanes in correspondingly great quantities. Broad-shouldered efforts like these armed not only U.S. forces but also those of its allies, including the Soviet Union, helping to ensure the defeat of Japan and Germany. Once peace was won, American wealth famously underwrote recovery in Europe and Asia, including among its just-defeated principal adversaries.

    • The HillRussian-backed [crackers] target Lithuanian websites [iophk: Windows TCO]

      Lithuania’s acting director of the National Cyber Security Centre, Jonas Skardinskas, said the disruption was an ongoing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that targeted the country’s Secure National Data Transfer as well as other governmental institutions and private companies.

    • Silicon AngleRussian hacking group takes responsibility for DDoS attacks on Lithuania [iophk: Windows TCO]

      The cyberattacks follow a decision by Lithuania to restrict the transit of steel and ferrous metals to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea that can only be accessed by land through Lithuania or Poland. Lithuania restricted the goods because of European Union sanctions, but the decision enraged the Kremlin, who denounced the move as unprecedented and unlawful.

    • The Baltic TimesIT system disruptions cause passport issuance delays in Lithuania [iophk: Windows TCO]

      IT system disruptions have caused delays in passport issuance in Lithuania, Evelina Gudzinskaite, director of the Migration Department, confirmed to BNS on Monday.

      Some Lithuanian public agencies and companies have been the targets of cyber-attacks since last week.

      Gudzinskaite did not confirm to BNS that the disruption was due to an attack, but said that information about the incident had been sent to the Information Technology and Communications Department under the Interior Ministry.

    • The Gray ZoneRight-wing intelligence cabal seeks UK Home Secretary Priti Patel’s help to ‘neutralize’ environmentalist enemies
    • Misinformation/Disinformation

      • AxiosNobelist Maria Ressa: Social media is corroding U.S. democracy

        Why it matters: Ressa, a Filipino American co-founder of news organization Rappler, says the next wave of elections around the world, including the U.S. midterms in November, provides another opportunity for social media to spread disinformation, divide people against one another and incite violence.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • TechdirtChina Unveils New Regulations Requiring Sites To Pre-Censor All Comments

      Tech Review quotes people saying that it’s unlikely (for now) that Beijing will require everyone to pre-review every comment (recognizing that’s likely to be impossible), but that it will put pressure on sites to be much more proactive, and that it could force this “feature” to be used on highly controversial topics.

      It does seem that a straightforward reading of the law is that it requires sites to at least build out the functionality to pre-approve all comments if need be, even if it does not need to be on all the time.

      There are some other features in the new regulations, including granting more power to who can block comments, suggesting that content creators themselves will have more power to censor comments in response to their content (rather than relying on the service’s in-house censors to do so).

    • BBCUdaipur: India state on alert after murder over Prophet Muhammad row

      The victim, a tailor named Kanhaiya Lal, was killed in Udaipur district on Tuesday by two Muslim men, who filmed the act and posted it online.

      They claimed the act was in retaliation for the victim's support for controversial remarks made by a politician on the Prophet Muhammad.

    • The VergeFacebook and Instagram will remove posts offering abortion pills

      Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade on Friday, social media users have shared posts offering to mail abortion pills to people whose access to abortion has been stripped away or will be soon.

      But users are finding their offers quickly removed or restricted, as reported by Motherboard and the Associated Press. A test Facebook post by an AP reporter offering to mail abortion pills was removed within one minute. A test by a Verge reporter yielded similar results, with a post offering abortion pills being flagged within two minutes.

      The sale, gifting, and transfer of firearms and marijuana are also prohibited under the same section of Meta’s restricted goods policy that bans pharmaceuticals. Yet test posts by the AP that offered to mail guns and weed were not removed; a similar test by The Verge offering to mail cannabis wasn’t immediately removed by Facebook.

    • Hollywood ReporterInstagram Blames “Bug” After Posts About Abortion Are Hidden From Public View

      “We’re hearing that people around the world are seeing our ‘sensitivity screens’ on many different types of content when they shouldn’t be. We’re looking into this bug and working on a fix now,” the Instagram communications team tweeted.

    • BIA NetJournalists protest 'disinformation bill': 'Greatest censorship in Turkey's history'

      Members of 10 several journalism groups attended the demonstration organized by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DÄ°SK) Press Union in ÅžiÅŸhane in Ä°stanbul's BeyoÄŸlu district.

      They opened a banner that read, "No to the law of silencing, intimidation and incarceration! The press is free, it cannot be censored."

      The bill that passed the parliament's Justice Committee last week introduces prison sentences of up to three years for spreading disinformation. It also expands the authority of the Presidency Communications Directorate on news outlets.

    • CNNChinese censors scrub internet after senior party official gives speech on timeline of zero-Covid in Beijing

      Chinese censors scrambled to delete what appears to be a misleading quote by a senior Communist Party official published in state media Monday, which claimed the "zero-Covid" policy would remain in place in Beijing "for the next five years," in an effort to tame an online backlash.

    • LawfareThe EU’s Proposal on CSAM Is a Dangerous Misfire

      The EU proposal would undo 20 years of progress in securing communications, while employing a set of technologies unlikely to achieve its stated goals. Even worse, the solutions it proposes for handling CSAM would create national security risks by weakening the best tool available for securing communications, end-to-end encryption, and defining a mission without the technology to accomplish it.

    • TruthOutFacebook Is Helping Anti-Abortion Clinics Collect Highly Sensitive Personal Data
    • NPRInstagram and Facebook begin removing posts offering abortion pills

      Almost immediately, Facebook and Instagram began removing some of these posts, just as millions across the U.S. were searching for clarity around abortion access. General mentions of abortion pills, as well as posts mentioning specific versions such as mifepristone and misoprostol, suddenly spiked Friday morning across Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and TV broadcasts, according to an analysis by the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.

      By Sunday, Zignal had counted more than 250,000 such mentions.

    • The VergeMeet the Viking merchants of the internet

      Morningstar has also hit some bumps along the way, which further compounds her point about passion superseding all else. While she is able to earn money from her craft, her revenue streams are more limited than most. She no longer earns any income from YouTube or TikTok — her guess is that this is because of how she dresses — although still sees the platforms as valuable ways to advertise her other work streams like commercial smithing and modeling.

    • ANF News67-year-old receives ten months imprisonment for wearing a green-yellow-red scarf

      The Turkish state considers the wearing of the Kurdish national colours as "terror propaganda". This is proven once again by the prison sentence against 67-year-old Kurdish woman Menci Orman. Orman and her daughter Şahide Orman Özek were charged with "terror propaganda" for wearing green-yellow-red scarves at the Newroz celebrations in 2015 and 2022 respectively. The trial at the Third Hevay Penal Court in Hatay began with a demand for the defendants' acquittal. Her lawyer reported that Orman was questioned after her detention without a translator or lawyer, although she does not understand Turkish. The court nevertheless considered the fact that Orman held up a scarf in the Kurdish colours as "terror propaganda" and sentenced her to ten years in prison.

    • BangladeshOutrage as Hindu college principal is forced to wear garland of shoes in Bangladesh

      The incident took place in the wake of a Facebook post by a Hindu student who shared a photo of Indian BJP leader Nupur Sharma, who has been criticised for her remarks on Prophet Muhammad.

      According to locals, some Muslim students asked the Hindu student to delete the post after he went to the college.

      Tension mounted when rumours spread that acting Principal Swapan Kumar Biswas took the Hindu student's side. Angry Muslim locals and students set the motorcycles of the principal and two teachers on fire. The mob also clashed with police.

      A video of the incident showed the locals and students putting a garland of shoes around Swapan's neck, accusing him of belittling Islam.

    • ScheerpostA Football Coach’s Prayer is Not About Freedom. It’s About Coercion.

      In a decision riddled with lies, the Supreme Court rules that a football coach can, should they choose, become a dictator-priest.

  • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • TruthOutJustice Thomas Wants to Make It Easier for People to Sue Media Outlets for Libel
    • The Telegraph UKWas Jill Dando really murdered by mistake?

      When former BBC undercover journalist Lisa Brinkworth met with her lawyers in Paris last September, they revealed some quite startling news. The 55-year-old – who has spent the past two decades trying to expose allegations of rape and sexual abuse in the fashion industry – was informed that when Jill Dando was murdered in 1999, it may have been she who was the intended target.

    • France24Public-sector journalists protest Macron plans to end media tax over fears for independence

      Some FRANCE 24 programming will be disrupted on Tuesday due to a strike across France’s state broadcasting sector over President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to abolish the TV licence fee and fund public media broadcasters through general taxation. Media unions say Macron’s proposal will undermine the independence of public service media and could lead to budget cuts.

    • BIA NetJournalists in Ä°stanbul express solidarity with arrested Kurdish journalists

      "The ruling power, which is trying to reinforce its power through elections and warmongering, aims to intimidate the media that it cannot control," she said. "For these exact reasons, on June 8, a day that will go down in history as a shame and disgrace, 20 Kurdish laborers of the free press were detained. After eight days in detention, our 16 friends were arrested unfairly and unlawfully. As if it wasn't enough, the pro-government media targeted our friends with mise-en-scenes and fiction.

      "We won't explain that our friends are journalists, because they were arrested because they are journalists. The operation carried out with baseless claims and mise-en-scene is obvious. What is being targeted is not only our friends, it's not only their freedom and journalism, or journalism itself! It's much more than that!"

    • BIA NetJamal Khashoggi's fiancee protests bin Salman's visit to Turkey

      Prince Mohammed bin Salman, of Saudi Arabia, visited Turkey yesterday (June 22) for the first time since the murder of The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at the kingdom's consulate in Ä°stanbul.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Internet Freedom FoundationUps and downs in the journey towards net neutrality

      We recently wrote to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) about net neutrality. In our letter to TRAI, we expressed our sincere appreciation for actions taken to uphold net neutrality in India. In our letter to DoT, we conveyed our concerns with regard to the steps that still need to be taken to protect and uphold net neutrality.

  • Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Torrent FreakPiracy Domains Seized By US Because Verisign & GoDaddy Are American

        The Department of Justice and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have just announced the seizure of six music piracy domains. The seizures were straightforward due to Verisign and GoDaddy being American companies. However, additional facts regarding these seizures, including on whose behalf they were supposedly carried out, raise key issues that don't make much sense.

      • Torrent FreakPirate Site Blocking Expands to Kenya with Landmark Court Order

        In a landmark case, Kenya's High Court approved a permanent injunction that requires local ISPs to block 44 sports streaming sites. The case was filed by entertainment giant MultiChoice, which owns the broadcast rights to popular sports events. A proposal to repeal the applicable law was submitted in Parliament last year, but that ultimately failed.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Technical

      • Programming

        • Lambda, the Ultimate Copilot

          Coming up with languages like C++ and Delphi and Java, my mind was kinda blown when I first saw Scheme.

          You could just put (print "Hello word") in a file and that worked. That’s the start and end of it. Implicit name space declaration, return type, argument type, return values, main argument. No need for the Black Maria, goodbye to the Brixton sun.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.

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