Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 06/07/2022: Release of Oracle Linux 9, GamingOnLinux Turns 13



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Liliputing4th-gen KDE Slimbook is a Linux laptop with Ryzen 7 5700U - Liliputing

        The developers of the KDE suite of open source software and Spanish PC maker Slimbook have been collaborating on a line of Linux laptops since 2017. Now the latest version is here, and it’s a Linux laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor, KDE Neon software, and a starting price of €1000 (about $1025).

        Actually, it’s two laptops, because the 4th-gen KDE Slimbook is available with a choice of 14 or 15.6 inch displays.

      • uni TorontoWhy reproducible machines didn't used to be a priority (I think)

        When I wrote about why we care about being able to (efficiently) reproduce machines, I mentioned that this didn't used to be a priority in the sufficiently old days. By the sufficiently old days I mean broadly the 1990s, at least in more moderate sized environments like what used to be common at the university; I think by even the early 00s, people here were starting to care. Today it's time for my rambles about some reasons why I think we didn't used to care as much.

        First, back then it was often harder to keep machines running in the first place. Software was more primitive and hardware was sufficiently limited that we were pushing it much closer to the edge than we did later. If much of your time is spent fighting fires, everything else takes second place. This feeds into the other two reasons.

        (One area of software that was more primitive was the software for automatically managing machines.)

      • PurismBig Savings on Librem 14 and Mini Are Here!

        Based off of the success of the recent promotion, we are extending the $100 off on Librem 14, until stock runs out. We received an amazing response to the Summer Sale, and we’d like to thank our customers, community and supporters. In addition, we have decided to offer $60 off on Librem Mini, till the current inventory runs out. We can ship these in-stock products, within 10 business days for standard orders.

        Purism has designed each component in line with our belief in respecting your rights to privacy, security, and freedom.€  Librem 14 is the 14-inch laptop designed for those who value secure and respectful technology.€ Librem Mini has been our€ most accessible Librem product, and is highly requested by the community. Both Librem 14 and Mini can be fortified with PureOS, PureBoot (coreboot +Heads) and Librem Key support. If€ detecting tampering of laptops or other hardware on the way is of concern to you, do consider adding our custom Anti-Interdiction services.

    • Server

      • ForbesAmazon Brings EKS Anywhere To Bare Metal Servers

        Last week, Amazon Web Services announced the availability of the beta version of Amazon EKS Anywhere on bare metal servers. This extends the possibility of running production EKS Anywhere clusters on both vSphere and physical servers.

      • Ambassador Labs Adds HTTP/3 Support to Envoy-Based Platform - Container Journal

        Ambassador Labs has added HTTP/3 support for both its Ambassador Edge Stack control plane for Envoy proxy software deployed on Kubernetes clusters and the Emissary-ingress application programming interface (API) gateway it previously donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

    • Applications

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Trend OceansHow to Create and Configure 404 Error Page in NGINX

        When you host your website on the NGINX web server, it will handle the client request, but when the request is not fulfilled, it will return an error.

        This error will be displayed to a user via a basic HTML page with the error code (404, 403, 500, 503), as shown below.

      • Using sigstore-python to sign and verify your software release

        Sigstore allows software developers to quickly sign and verify the software they release. Many of the bigger projects use hardware-based OpenPGP keys to sign and release. But the steps used to make sure that the end-users are correctly verifying those signatures are long, and people make mistakes. Also, not every project has access to hardware smartcards, air-gapped private keys etc. Sigstore solves (or at least makes it way easier) these steps for most developers. It uses existing known (right now only 3) big OIDC providers using which one can sign and verify any data/software.

        For this blog post, I will use the python tool called sigstore-python.

      • Network WorldFinding files on Linux with the longest names

        File names on Linux systems can be as long as 255 characters. While determining which files in a directory have the longest names might not be the most exciting task at hand, doing this with a script poses some interesting challenges that invite equally interesting solutions.

      • LinuxOpSysHow to List Installed Packages on Fedora

        Occasionally, you may want to check the packages installed on your system. Learn how to list packages in Fedora using DNF and other package tools.

    • Games

      • GamingOnLinuxLast Call BBS, the final game from Zachtronics is out in Early Access

        With Zachtronics moving on from game development, their last game is now out in Early Access with Last Call BBS although it's actually not just one game.

      • GamingOnLinuxQuirky murder mystery adventure Lord Winklebottom Investigates releases July 28th

        Lord Winklebottom Investigates is an upcoming adventure from UK-based developer Cave Monsters, and they've recently confirmed it will release on July 28th. This game will be coming along with full Native Linux support too.

      • GamingOnLinuxDon't Starve Together big Curse of Moon Quay update out now

        Curse of Moon Quay is the latest major update for the Native Linux survival game Don't Starve Together and it sounds like a great one. They also updated it with Steam Deck support recently too!

      • GamingOnLinuxHumble Choice has Deep Rock Galactic this month

        Another month has arrived and so a fresh Humble Choice bundle is here and with it comes an absolutely fantastic game with Deep Rock Galactic.

      • GamingOnLinux13 years ago we appeared online, Happy Birthday to GamingOnLinux

        Can you believe it? GamingOnLinux is now officially 13 years old and that suddenly makes me feel quite old.

      • Running the Steam Deck’s OS in a virtual machine using QEMU | The world won't listen

        The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming computer that runs a Linux-based operating system called SteamOS. The machine comes with SteamOS 3 (code name “holo”), which is in turn based on Arch Linux.

        Although there is no SteamOS 3 installer for a generic PC (yet), it is very easy to install on a virtual machine using QEMU. This post explains how to do it.

        The goal of this VM is not to play games (you can already install Steam on your computer after all) but to use SteamOS in desktop mode. The Gamescope mode (the console-like interface you normally see when you use the machine) requires additional development to make it work with QEMU and will not work with these instructions.

        A SteamOS VM can be useful for debugging, development, and generally playing and tinkering with the OS without risking breaking the Steam Deck.

        Running the SteamOS desktop in a virtual machine only requires QEMU and the OVMF UEFI firmware and should work in any relatively recent distribution.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Make Use OfKDE Announces Powerful Slimbook 4 Linux Laptop
          The new AMD Ryzen-based laptop comes with KDE Neon preinstalled, but will juice the Linux hardware market?

          The KDE project has announced the availability of the Slimbook 4 laptop, in partnership with the Linux laptop manufacturer Slimbook. The new laptop features an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Announcing Oracle Linux 9 general availability

        Oracle is pleased to announce Oracle Linux 9 general availability for Intel-64/AMD-64 (x86_64) and Arm (aarch64). This release includes the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 7 (UEK R7), also generally available today, along with the Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK).

      • TechEconomy.ngHow Open Source is Changing the World

        Open source software has helped businesses across all industries develop and deploy innovative new services. It has broken down the siloes that inhibit innovation and allowed companies to share in their success.

        The open source way is also about more than just software – it’s a change in mindset. Through collaboration, meritocracy, transparency, and the support of a diverse community, open source developers are building a better world with better software.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Raspberry PiHow to run a webserver on Raspberry Pi Pico W

        This means that your Raspberry Pi Pico can now talk to the network, but also that the network can talk back to it; and you can run a webserver on your Pico W to allow you to control things remotely.

      • Chrome UboxedPopular Linux Distro Ubuntu spotted running on a Google Nest Hub

        We’ve already seen plenty of instances where gamers have run Google Stadia on the wildest devices – even on an Android Auto head unit. The level of modding and customization that fans of a piece of hardware will go to is truly inspiring. Today in my Google Discover feed, I happened upon a guy who got a popular version of Linux called Ubuntu running on a second-generation Nest Hub!

      • Stephen MarzRISC-V Is Getting MSIs!

        Message signaled interrupts or MSIs describe a way to signal an interrupt without a dedicated interrupt request pin (IRQ). One of the most prevalent uses for MSIs is the PCI bus, and the PCI specification defines the MSI and MSI-X standards. The potential benefits may include: (1) reduced number of direct wires from the device to the CPU or interrupt controller, (2) improve signaling performance–mainly by forcing in-band signals by design, and (3) improving guest/host signaling for virtualized environments.

      • Pine64 Working on RISC-V Hardware!
  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers

      • Chris HannahThe Early Internet is Breaking

        I just watched this great video on the early web - The early internet is breaking - here’s how the World Wide Web from the 90s on will be saved. It's relatively short, but it shows what the web looked like in the 1990s, and how prevalent personal website were. And also the measures that some people are taking to try to preserve early and current websites.

    • Content Management Systems (CMS)

      • Christine Lemmer-Webber: Site converted to Haunt

        Lo and behold, I've converted the last of the sites I've been managing for ages to Haunt.

        Haunt isn't well known. Apparently I am responsible for, er, many of the sites listed on awesome.haunt.page. But you know what? I've been making website things for a long time, and Haunt is honestly the only static site generator I've worked with (and I've worked with quite a few) that's actually truly customizable and programmable and pleasant to work with. And hackable!

        This site has seen quite a few iterations... some custom code when I first launched it some time ago, then I used Zine, then I used PyBlosxom, and for quite a few years everything was running on Pelican. But I never liked hacking on any of those... I always kind of begrudgingly opened up the codebase and regretted having to change anything. But Haunt? Haunt's a dream, it's all there and ready for you, and I've even gotten some patches upstream. (Actually I owe Dave a few more, heh.)

    • Programming/Development

      • [Old] Stephen MarzFive Tips to Writing RISC-V Assembly

        Writing assembly is itself an art. When C, C++, or any other language is compiled, the compiler determines the art of writing assembly. However, this time, we will some of the techniques and decisions we can make to write these ourselves.

        We will use RISC-V to see how to design logic, write up the logic, and translate the logic into assembly.

      • Trail Of Bitslibmagic: The Blathering

        The libmagic library is older than over half of the human population of Earth, yet it is still in active development and is in the 99.9th percentile of most frequently installed Ubuntu packages. The library’s ongoing development is not strictly limited to bug fixes and support for matching new file formats; the library frequently receives breaking changes that add new core features to its matching engine.

        libmagic has a custom domain specific language (DSL) for specifying file format patterns. Run `man 5 magic` to read its documentation. The program compiles its DSL database of file format patterns into a single definition file that is typically installed to /usr/share/file/magic.mgc. libmagic is written in C and includes several manually written parsers to identify various file types that would otherwise be difficult to represent in its DSL (for example, JSON and CSV). Unsurprisingly, these parsers have led to a number of memory safety bugs and numerous CVEs.

      • IAR Systems enable innovation in Automotive, providing full support for Renesas RH850 - TechNode Global

        The IAR Embedded Workbench for RH850 and IAR Build Tools for RH850 have been upgraded to the latest technology platforms, including the latest C/C++ language (library support for the C++17 language standard), which will allow developers to build far more advanced code to handle more complex tasks.

      • Passing an Object as a Parameter | Adam Young's Web Log

        I think there area couple of competing guidelines here: Don’t Repeat Yourself versus Let the Complexity Emerge. But let’s start with your previous article on Naive Implementations.

        The very first implementation should be Naive, changing as little code as possible. As such, the example at the start where you pull the initials out in the calling location is possibly the right one. It does, however, split the logic up to two places, so it might even be easier to pass the whole object in, and pull the initials out in the display code.

        This could get into a discussion of model-view-controller approach. Are the initials part of the model or part of the view? Here is where we let the complexity emerge. If it is only ever used in this one location, you can think of it as part of the view. If the initials get any wider use, they start migrating toward the model. Thus, I would need more context before I could say what the right design is for them.

      • Perl / Raku

      • Python

        • Paolo MelchiorreThe PyCon Italia 2022 multiplicity

          The common thread in all these years of participation was not so much the Python language as the people I met and the community of which I felt more and more part, which is why the 2022 edition of PyCon Italia was special because it allowed me to resume this tradition in the presence after two years of interruption.

          This year I experienced PyCon Italia from multiple points of view, from which I will try to tell you about my conference, I am sure that you will recognize yourself in one of them and that you will want to participate in a new role, and I hope you will participate in the next edition of PyCon Italia becoming part of the great Italian Python community.

        • [Release] Status of Python 3.11 release

          We may be pushing the final release until December if the stability of Python 3.11 doesn't improve.

  • Leftovers

    • New York TimesOur Flag Was Still There

      Clague, an associate professor of musicology and American culture at the University of Michigan, has produced a work so encyclopedic, its chapters can be read per your inclination — if you are most interested in, say, what the anthem has represented to African Americans, turn to Chapter 8, “The Anthem and Black Lives.” But I recommend reading them in order, because doing so also proves the book’s thesis: that, contrary to popular myth, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was not forced on Americans by some imperious authority, but chosen by us, en masse and over decades. When Congress proclaimed the song America’s official national anthem in 1931, almost 120 years after its composition, it was acknowledging a battle that had been won long before. The question, which this immensely interesting and readable history sets out to answer, is how that victory was earned.

    • Science

      • New York TimesFields Medals in Mathematics Won by Four Under Age 40

        Four mathematicians whose research covers areas like prime numbers and the packing of eight-dimensional spheres are the latest recipients of the Fields Medals, which are given out once every four years to some of the most accomplished mathematicians under the age of 40.

        At a ceremony in Helsinki on Tuesday, the International Mathematical Union, which administers the awards, bestowed the medals, made of 14-karat gold, to Hugo Duminil-Copin, 36, of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques just south of Paris; June Huh, 39, of Princeton University; James Maynard, 35, of the University of Oxford in England; and Maryna Viazovska, 37, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

      • NBCCERN scientists observe three 'exotic' particles for first time

        Now scientists at CERN say they have observed a new kind of “pentaquark” and the first-ever pair of “tetraquarks,” adding three members to the list of new hadrons found at the LHC.

    • Hardware

      • The Next PlatformThe Future Of System Memory Is Mostly CXL

        What is the most expensive component that hyperscalers and cloud builders put into their X86 servers? It is the GPU accelerator, correct. So let’s ask this question another way: What is the most expensive component in the more generic, non-accelerated servers that comprise the majority of their server fleets? Main memory, correct again.

        If you do the math on what things costs over time, about a decade ago the CPU used to comprise about half of the basic server cost in the datacenter for infrastructure workloads; HPC systems were a little more intense on cores and a little less intense on memory. Memory was about 15 percent of the system cost, the motherboard was about 10 percent, and local storage (which was a disk drive) was somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent, depending on how fat or fast you wanted that disk. The power supply, network interfaces, and chassis made up the rest, and in a lot of cases the network interface was on the motherboard already, so that cost was bundled in already except in cases where companies wanted a faster Ethernet or InfiniBand interface.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • WiredThe Secrets of Covid ‘Brain Fog’ Are Starting to Lift

        Many of these hard-to-define Covid-19 symptoms can persist over time—weeks, months, years. Now, new research in the journal Cell is shedding some light on the biological mechanisms of how Covid-19 affects the brain. Led by researchers Michelle Monje and Akiko Iwasaki, of Stanford and Yale Universities respectively, scientists determined that in mice with mild Covid-19 infections, the virus disrupted the normal activity of several brain cell populations and left behind signs of inflammation. They believe that these findings may help explain some of the cognitive disruption experienced by Covid-19 survivors and provide potential pathways for therapies.

      • Computer WorldShould you start going to business conferences again?

        Back in the 2010s, I averaged almost 100,000 miles a year on business travel. I went to endless Linux, open-source, and cloud conferences. When COVID-19 hit, I went from flying around the country and to Europe every few weeks to driving to the grocery store every few weeks. Now, I'm back on the road — and in the air — again. So far in 2022, I've been to Boston, Valencia, Spain, and Austin for work. I expect to finally make it to Dublin, Ireland, and numerous spots in the US before the year is over.

        So, do I recommend traveling for business again? Hell, no. It's not safe out there. It really isn't. It only seems safe.

        Public health services in many countries are simply no longer measuring cases accurately. It's like putting a blindfold on while you're driving down the road and believing that since you can't see the other cars, you're safe.

      • [Old] Indian ExpressWhat is digital amnesia? A doctor explains the growing concern among young generation

        Dr Mahajan warns that smartphone addiction could impair our brain’s ability to retain new information and form new memories. “Distraction is one of the key factors in this regard. When we are busy multitasking on our smartphones, we are only half-focused on learning a new skill. The information is unlikely to get stored in our long-term memory.”

      • VarietyAfter July 4th Mass Shooting, The Onion Depressingly Reprises ‘No Way to Prevent This’ Homepage Takeover

        The Onion’s latest article reads, “In the hours following a violent rampage in which a lone attacker killed at least six individuals and injured more than two dozen at a Fourth of July parade, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Monday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place.”

        The fake news story quotes the same fake interview subject as the prior articles in the grim series, who says in part, “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep shooters like this from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.”

    • Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

      • LWNAmazon's CodeWhisperer

        There has been a fair amount of concern recently about Microsoft's Copilot system, which many see as possibly putting its users in violation of free-software licenses. But, naturally, Copilot is not the only offering of this type; Amazon has put out a preview version of "CodeWhisperer", which is also a machine-learning-based coding tool that was trained on (unspecified) open-source code.

    • Security

      • Scoop News GroupCybersecurity experts question Microsoft's Ukraine report

        Microsoft President Brad Smith spent much of last Wednesday traveling across Washington to promote his company’s sweeping report on the current state of cyberwarfare and disinformation in the Russia-Ukraine war.

        He sat down with David Ignatius, foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Post, for a webcast on its findings. Afterwards, he headed to the Reagan Institute’s Center for Freedom and Democracy to give a 20-minute speech about the 27-page report called “Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War” before joining Senator Angus King (I-ME) for a panel discussion.

        The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, NPR and others covered the study as an accurate and revealing look at an otherwise opaque and confusing digital front in the Ukraine war.

      • QSB-082: Memory management issues in PV frontend drivers

        We have just published Qubes Security Bulletin (QSB) 082: Memory management issues in PV frontend drivers. The text of this QSB is reproduced below. This QSB and its accompanying signatures will always be available in the Qubes Security Pack (qubes-secpack).

      • XSAs released on 2022-07-05

        The Xen Project has released one or more Xen Security Advisories (XSAs). The security of Qubes OS is affected. Therefore, user action is required.

      • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • RevKA flaw in GDPR

          One of the aspects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, and UK GDPR) is that you can expect that the personal data an organisation holds on you to be accurate.

          Specifically, that if it is inaccurate, you have a right to rectification, and you can require them to correct it and make it accurate (even if the ICO don't quite understand that, it is the law).

        • India TimesUkraine lays out plan to be 'most digital' country

          "Digital services cannot be destroyed by missiles, especially if you store data on Amazon or Microsoft," Fedorov told a conference in Lugano.

          One of the main goals is the replacement of bureaucrats with smartphone apps.

          Ukrainians will be able to carry out all administrative tasks without visiting government offices or filling out paper forms.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • SalonIndictments are coming: At long last, criminal justice will catch up with Donald Trump

        The impending criminal charges to be filed against Donald Trump by the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, and the U.S. Department of Justice are both very different from the thousands of previous lawsuits in Trump's career. Those civil cases, both past and present, have always been about money. The soon-to-be criminal cases will be about Trump's personal freedom — and whether he will be wearing an orange jumpsuit for the next several years.

      • Barrons34 Killed In Two Jihadist Attacks In Burkina Faso

        Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in the world, has been grappling with a jihadist insurgency that swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

        The campaign, led mainly by groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, has claimed thousands of lives and forced some 1.9 million people to flee their homes.

        More than 40 percent of the country lies outside the control of the government, according to official figures.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Rolling StoneOver the last five years of his life, the rock icon had a clandestine correspondence with a former music journalist, spilling gossip, gripes, hopes, fears — and revealing himself like never before

        This isn’t just a fan talking. In a former life, I’d been a music journalist, including some time as an editor for Rolling Stone’s website. Back then, I got to interview everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Diddy. But now it’s 2015, and I’m more than a decade removed from my dream job. Today, as a market researcher for a health-insurance company, I stare at data tables till my eyes water and monitor my employer’s social media mentions, featuring angry posts about how only “fraudelent fucks” and “#scumbags” would work there.

        Sending emails like this has become something of a pastime, an exercise in nostalgia when the drudgery of my workday becomes too much to handle. Not long ago, I discovered that an old login I had to LexisNexis — a directory lawyers and journalists use that shows, among other things, a person’s criminal record, residences, phone numbers, and, yes, email addresses — had never been deactivated. After using it to look up a couple of exes, I’d turned to rock stars. On a lark, I’d reached out to who Nexis told me was Gene Simmons, Eddie Vedder, Stevie Nicks, and pretty much every member of the original Guns N’ Roses. But I’d gotten nary a response.

        So, I fire off the Michael Anthony email at close to 5 o’clock on Sunday, May 31, 2015, and figure that’ll be the beginning and end of it. But 51 minutes later: “You’ve Got Mail!” That response kicks off a five–plus-year correspondence that would change my life.

    • Environment

      • New York TimesAnother Step Toward Climate Apocalypse

        And partisanship is the central problem of climate policy. Yes, Joe Manchin stands in the way of advancing the Biden climate agenda. But if there were even a handful of Republican senators willing to support climate action, Manchin wouldn’t matter, and neither would the Supreme Court: Simple legislation could establish regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions and provide subsidies and maybe even impose taxes to encourage the transition to a green economy. So ultimately our paralysis in the face of what looks more and more like a looming apocalypse comes down to the G.O.P.’s adamant opposition to any kind of action.

        The question is, how did letting the planet burn become a key G.O.P. tenet?

        It wasn’t always thus. The Environmental Protection Agency, whose scope for action the court just moved to limit, was created by none other than Richard Nixon. As late as 2008 John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, ran on a promise to impose a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

      • Teen VogueSupreme Court EPA Decision Will Accelerate Climate Change

        In West Virginia v the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Supreme Court sided with fossil fuel executives over our communities and delivered a 6-3 ruling that severely limits the agency's power to fight the climate crisis. The ruling held that a section of the Clean Air Act can no longer be used to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal and gas fired power plants. The EPA cannot, without explicit congressional approval, establish nationwide standards to limit greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide, forcing utilities to switch to renewable energy sources.

      • Michael West MediaOut for the count: ‘Carbon Offsets’ are not actually carbon offsets

        Australia’s carbon offsets have received lots of negative publicity in recent months. Andrew Macintosh, the former chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, an advisory body to the federal government, blew the whistle on dodgy carbon credit schemes.

        Largely in response to these concerns, the new federal Labor government has established an Independent Review of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs). This will not only examine the methods to create the carbon credits but also look at legislative requirements to ensure good governance and confidence in scheme integrity.

        There are two key areas where the government can completely fail with regard to the integrity of ACCUs and carbon markets more generally.

      • Energy

        • The VergeThe GPU shortage is over

          Over the past six months, the street price of a modern GPU has been chopped in half. Almost every graphics card we track fell by more than 50 percent on eBay since January — 30 percent of that since April alone.

        • Mexico News DailyTraveler does the Baja Peninsula on an electric unicycle

          Why travel all this way with almost nothing on your back and just an electric unicycle under you? Ben explains on Instagram that he’s happiest when he’s pushing himself to the limits of his comfort zone and believes that when you do that you always find the best people, people that are happy to help you along the way. Long the destination of happy wanderers of all stripes, Baja California is the natural environment for a summer adventure, and will no doubt welcome this adventurer as it has the thousands of others that have graced its immense and wild landscape.

        • The EconomistHow the world depends on small cobalt miners

          To understand why, consider Congo’s Copperbelt, from which 60-70% of the world’s cobalt is extracted (see map). Most of Congo’s cobalt is a by-product of large copper mines which cannot quickly increase their output and have little incentive to do so unless copper prices also rise. The other big source of supply in Congo is so-called “artisanal” mining. Small-scale informal miners dig up about 15% of Congo’s cobalt. That is more than the entire output of Russia, the world’s second-largest producer (see chart).

          Artisanal miners are critical to global supply chains. They hand-dig higher grade ores than those produced by large mechanised mines and can act as swing producers, opting to mine cobalt or copper depending on their relative prices. Yet Congo’s small miners face immense obstacles, which prevent them from producing as much as they could or reaping the rewards of the clean-energy revolution.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • NBCScientists discover a new giant waterlily that was hiding in plain sight for 177 years

          The largest waterlily species in the world has been discovered after a case of mistaken identity that saw it hide in plain sight for 177 years.

          A team of scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London revealed the finding in a study published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science, with the species of the aquatic plant named as new to science.

      • Overpopulation

        • RTLDeadpool: US mega drought spells trouble at Hoover Dam

          Millions of gallons of Colorado River water hurtle through the Hoover Dam every day, generating electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes.

          But the mega drought affecting the western United States is sending reservoir levels plummeting towards deadpool -- the point at which the dam can no longer produce power.

    • Finance

      • Matt RickardDoes Financial Policy Matter?

        Does it matter if a firm is financed with debt, equity, or a digital token? Does a firm's financial policy create value?

        [...]

        But wait – none of these are true in the real world.

        The MM theorem is interesting because it gives us the base case that we can contrast with the real world to help us understand where the value in financial policy exists. That's why there's an optimal ratio of equity/debt for companies and why it's important to think about financial policy.

      • 7 Electoral Trusts got Rs 258Cr Corporate Donations in Lockdown Year; BJP got 82% Money: ADR | NewsClick

        Seven electoral trusts received a total amount of Rs 258.49 crore from corporates and individuals, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged more than 82%, poll rights body ADR said.

        Electoral trusts are non-profit organisation formed in India for orderly receiving of contributions from corporate entities and individuals to political parties. The trusts are aimed at improving transparency in the usage of funds for election-related expenses.

        The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), in a new report, said 16 out of the 23 electoral trusts submitted details of their contribution for the financial year 2020-21 to the Election Commission of India (ECI), of which only seven declared to have received donations.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Raw Story'That looks prerecorded!' Video shows Capitol [insurectionists] in denial after Trump told them to go home on Jan. 6

        A video posted on Tuesday by NBC News' Ryan Reilly shows that some supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 seemed reluctant to believe that he really wanted them to go home.

      • The HillBattle over Big Tech bills goes down to the wire

        Much of the lobbying in recent weeks has centered around the Senate’s limited floor time before lawmakers leave town next month. Congress isn’t expected to make much progress on major legislation after returning from their break, when lawmakers typically shift their attention to the November election.

        In an effort to run out the clock, the big four tech firms and their Washington allies are warning Senate Democrats that their voters expect progress on other pressing issues entering November’s elections.

      • The HillRising threats spark US scramble for cyber workers

        Kahangama said the shortage has been a top priority for his agency, which conducted a 60-day hiring sprint last summer to hire cybersecurity professionals. Out of 500 job offers DHS sent out, the department was able to hire nearly 300 new cyber workers.

        “It was the largest single hiring event we’ve had so far,” Kahangama told lawmakers on a House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and counterterrorism.

      • India TimesTwitter complies with Meity final notice

        Twitter complies with Meity final noticeSocial media platform Twitter has complied with the final notice issued by the Ministry of Electronics and IT on June 27, an official source said on Monday. The Ministry of Electronics and IT had set a deadline of July 4, failing which Twitter could have lost the intermediary status, which means it will be liable for all the comments posted on its platform.

        "Twitter has complied with the notice," an official source told PTI on the condition of anonymity.

      • BBCArabs believe economy is weak under democracy

        According to the EIU Democracy Index, the Middle East and North Africa is the lowest ranked of all regions covered in the index - Israel is classed as a "flawed democracy", Tunisia and Morocco are classed as "hybrid regimes", and the rest of the region is classed as "authoritarian".

        In seven countries and the Palestinian territories, more than half of respondents to the Arab Barometer survey agree with the statement that their country needs a leader who can "bend the rules" if necessary to get things done. Only in Morocco do fewer than half agree with that statement. However there is also a sizeable proportion of people disagreeing with the statement in the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and Sudan.

      • Misinformation/Disinformation

        • RTLCovid-19 misinformation bolsters anti-vaccine movement

          More parents are questioning the necessity of routine vaccinations for young children. Adults are skipping shots as well, even for vaccines with a long safety record.

          The trend comes amid a wave of misinformation and disinformation about Covid-19 and the vaccines that helped to stem pandemic deaths. Politicization of the Covid-19 shots has bolstered the anti-vaccine movement, contributing to the decline in routine immunizations for measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.

        • NPRElection deniers are spreading misinformation nationwide. Here are 4 things to know

          NPR's Investigations team used social media and news reports to track four key figures in the movement: MyPillow CEO and longtime Trump supporter Mike Lindell, former U.S. Army Captain Seth Keshel, former high school math and science teacher Douglas Frank, and former law professor David Clements. Here are four takeaways from that reporting.

          Misinformation has continued to spread widely after the Capitol insurrection

          Over the course of the 18 months since Jan. 6, 2021, the four election denialists NPR tracked have been slated to speak at at least 308 events in 45 states and the District of Columbia. The events were often small, held in restaurants and churches, backyards and community centers.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • NewsweekMacy Gray Says Changing 'Parts Doesn't Make You a Woman' in Trans Debate

        After Morgan warned Gray that she might get "attacked" and "abused" and face a "cancel culture mob," she doubled down: "But it's the truth, and I don't think you should be called transphobic just because you don't agree... There's a lot of judgment and throwing stones at people for just saying what it is."

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • VOA NewsSuspect Confesses to Killing Malta Journalist, Says Hit Was ‘Just Business’

        The man accused of detonating a car bomb that killed a prominent Maltese journalist has confessed to the crime in an interview with a Reuters reporter and says he will soon implicate others in plotting to assassinate her.

        Speaking from jail in his first comment on the case, George Degiorgio said if he had known more about Daphne Caruana Galizia — the journalist he and two others are accused of killing in 2017 — then he would have asked for more money to carry out the hit.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • JoinupMiguel Alvarez Rodriguez: The EIF will evolve to meet the needs of the new Interoperable Europe Policy

        Miguel Alvarez Miguel Alvarez Rodriguez is a programme manager at the Interoperable Europe Unit of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Informatics. He is the engine behind the National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO) and is responsible for the monitoring and reporting of the uptake of digital public transformation and interoperability in the EU public administrations. The promotion of the use and the adoption of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) has a central place in his work too. “I see myself as an EIF champion,” he says.

      • The VergeHow one senator’s broken hip puts net neutrality at risk

        The FCC has been deadlocked at 2-2 since President Biden’s inauguration, and once Sohn is confirmed, the FCC would be in a position to restore net neutrality rules with a majority vote — but it’s been slow going. As long as the fifth seat is empty, net neutrality will remain in limbo — and it now looks like it could be empty for a very long time.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

    • Monopolies

      • The VergeEU forces Amazon to make it easier to cancel Prime subscriptions in Europe

        Amazon has agreed to make the changes following a complaint by EU consumer groups including the Norwegian Consumer Council, which produced a lengthy report on Amazon’s opaque Prime cancellation process in January 2021. The report contains screenshots of the multiple pages users have to scroll through to cancel a subscription, which it said contains “manipulative design techniques” also known as “dark patterns.”

      • Cory DoctorowShovel-Ready: A half-to-three-quarters-baked idea to fix capitalism.

        The handful of companies that rule the nation didn’t drive their rivals into bankruptcy by selling better products and services. They didn’t compete their way to the top.

        They bought their victories.

        The top companies in every sector secured access to vast amounts of cash through the capital markets and/or debt instruments, then bought out their rivals, large and small, merging them into their operations. Our corporate behemoths aren’t the champions at making great things, they’re gold medalists in buying other companies.

      • [Old] ReutersMicrosoft settles suit with Mississippi for $100 million

        Under the terms of the Mississippi settlement, $40 million would be paid to the state within 40 days and up to $60 million would be divided between consumers, businesses, public school districts and government entities, according to a statement by Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood.

        If all vouchers were not claimed a further $8 million could go to the state, he said.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Stranger Things 4 was bad

        Like many people in summer 2016, I watched the original Stranger Things on Netflix after hearing positive reviews. Sure enough it was a captivating show with believable drama and decent horror with an adorable cast.

      • gochiusa



        People these days like to complain about things that are either immoral on the surface because of how most people percieved it, or too simple that people would think it'd be a waste of time to be bothered, and gochiusa fulfills both of these requirements, with people's impression on lolis and seemingly dumb stuff.

      • We need people not like me

        I've been on the small net for a while now, and I must say that it's like a breath of fresh air. Being 30, I'm not old enough to know the good 'ol days, but I vividly remember a different, a better web. Around 2008/2009, I could spent days pirating new games - only to find out that my computer couldn't run them -, teaching myself Photoshop, posting mesmerizingly bad art on DeviantArt, just learning, having fun.

        For me, those were the good days, when the only reason to have a Facebook account was to play FarmVille.

      • alright but tired

        in order to get some control of my mental health, i disabled all notifications on my phone except for essential

    • Politics

      • The Eaterateri vs Buzzfeed

        A group of Victorian gentlemen called the 'Eaterateri' wandered various Scottish restaurants, trying all they could. The now well-known Adam Smith and David Human regularly talked in the group about their ideas.

        I don't know if Hume felt bold enough to speak about Atheism, but Adam Smith may well have developed those ideas which he later published in *The Wealth of Nations*.

        I've always liked this idea of a small group, having an evolving conversation. People can consider ideas, see how they feel about them, then bring them up again later, adding addenda, or objections.

        These conversations we have with friends can evolve. Once someone mentions a point about wage disparity, we don't need to repeat the same point on the next meeting.

      • Political Wings are Stupid

        I once went out with a Serbian woman, and she asked me what 'right wing' means. After ten minutes of the most quintessential mansplaining lecture, I started a Youtube video, then asked "Is this guy left wing, or right wing?".

        "You stopped the video after one second!, he hasn't said anything yet", she protested.

        "Right, but he's an older man, salt-and-pepper hair, leaning over, patronizing stare, suit and tie. So we can tell his views on abortion, taxation, gun ownership, Marxism, Feminism, military history, and trans people".

        She gave me a look which suggested how stupid this all was, and she was right. It's really, stupid.

      • contradiction: individualism

        when you think about it, it's quite funny. we tell our kids "be like yourself" and "you can be anything in life". there is some truth to it, until social and cultural adjustment happens. to participate in western life, by that i mean go through some form of education, find a job, have family and some security across a longer lifespan and finally grow old and die; to participate in that an incredible amount of adaptation needs to happen.

    • Technical

      • Science

        • Gustaf EriksonOpting out from feeding machine learning

          There’s a lot of naive fascination with content generation via machine learning in nerd circles right now. Tools like GPT-3 and DALL-E are hailed as innovations, letting people create “content” using just a text box entry.

          Others are rightly worried what will happen when gigabytes of vaguely convincing text and images can be created at will, avoiding the uncanny valley of machine-generated dross that’s been the norm up until now.

      • Announcements

        • Religious Texts

          AuraGem now has a bunch of religious texts for Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. This almost completely covers the "Abrahamic" branch of religions. Other religions will be added in the near future, including Latter-Day Saints, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

      • Programming

        • Staring at My Watch



          The trains have been incredibly bad these past few weeks, a fact that makes me mourn even more the current loss of my bike, especially since the WiFi consistently isn't working meaning that there is very little for me to do except stare at my watch and sigh.

          To decrease my alarmingly upsetting levels of boredom and my apathy for bureaucracy and people in general, I began to play with my watch on my phone and ponder:

          At what Time(s) are the Minute hand and Hour hand exactly 180€°?


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



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