Canalys' North American smartphone market share numbers are out, and the big mover for Q2 2022 is once again Google, which is seeing huge growth numbers thanks to the Pixel 6. Last quarter, Canalys had Google up 380 percent year over year, and this quarter, the company is up 230 percent.
Flatpak apps are becoming increasingly popular as they offer many amazing advantages over traditional apps. They are super easy to install with literally single-click installations. They are always up to date with the latest features. They can run on any Linux distribution and they run without any issues because they don't need any external dependencies. So in this video, I bring to you 15 fantastic flatpak applications that you definitely need to HAVE installed on your system.
One of the most common pieces of (bad) advice is that you should use a hard-to-use Linux distro because you will "learn" Linux by using it. And it's not just Linux distros. I hear people make this sort of claim with other pieces of software...
What's up, guys!!! In this video, we cover an article on how Uber, the drive share company's internal network, was hacked. I thought this was an interesting article, so I thought I would share it.
Well, I updated three Linux systems and only one system properly applied security updates without adding a ton of unwanted, unnecessary changes. Also, Endeavour OS broke the whole system.
Bluefish is a feature-rich open source multiplatform webpage (HTML) editor for web developers.
It is designed to aid developers edit their website projects using its tabbed user interface.
Bluefish has been around for years, and it is used by many on Linux, Windows and macOS.
One of its important features is it can upload and edit remote files through FTP, SFTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, and WebDAV.
It also works with external programs especially on Linux systems as lint, make, weblint, xmllint, javac, awk, sort, sed, and more.
This article shows the best graphical Pacman frontends for quickly and easily installing, updating, and removing software on Arch Linux.
Arch Linux has long won advanced Linux users’ hearts due to the ultimate control it puts in their hands.
Furthermore, the distribution has one of the largest and most diverse software repositories in the Linux world. So, it is hard to find Linux software that isn’t already available in the distro’s official repository or the AUR.
As a heavily terminal-centric Linux distro, Arch expects software management to happen through the Pacman command-line tool. However, this is not always the easiest approach, especially for novice Linux users.
Fortunately, several graphical tools make this process much easier, so we’ve chosen the three best for you. With them, you can easily and quickly install, update, and remove the software from Arch Linux and other popular Arch-based distros like Manjaro, EndeavourOS, Garuda Linux, and so on.
this is the first Beta release for Authoritative Server 4.7.0, even though it is called beta2. (beta1 was never released because of bugs found during the release process).
4.7.0 brings support for Catalog Zones, developed by Kees Monshouwer. As part of that development, the freshness checks in the Primary code were reworked, reducing them from doing potentially thousands of SQL queries (if you have thousands of domains) to only a few. Installations with lots of domains will benefit greatly from this, even without using catalog zones.
I have created SFSs over the last few days. All that you need to do is click on the "sfs" icon to download and install. You get a choice to install to the main desktop or in a container -- I recommend the former, as these SFSs are configured to run the app as a non-root user, each app runs as its own user, which is fairly secure.
Note, you can do both, install on main desktop and container, if you wish to compare. It seems that openGL is only working with software rendering in containers, which will make apps slower -- but that is unconfirmed, as although the app reports cannot use hardware rendering, it may actually be using hardware rendering. In a container, the app has very limited capabilities, and may not be able to correctly probe how openGL is working.
OpenShot is available as an appimage, that I downloaded and extracted the files. I intend to develop a script 'appimage2sfs', but first need to learn more about how appimages are put together. Figured this one out manually and it was straight-forward, created the SFS.
As usual, click on the "sfs" icon to download. Can be installed to run on the main desktop or in a container. In the former case, runs as user 'openshot'.
Development projects can get very busy. They can also grow to massive proportions. When projects do expand (especially those of an open-source nature), they take on more and more developers. That’s great… until it’s not.
For example, what happens if a rogue developer hops onto a project and adds a commit that injects malicious software into the code? No project wants to have to deal with such an issue.
To that end, projects must be very careful who they allow in. But what happens if someone sneaks under the radar? Maybe a rogue developer gains access to your project and adds a commit that injects malicious code and does so under the guise of another developer. When you see that developer’s name associated with the commit, you let it pass, assuming the code is solid and there’s no need to worry.
I’ve been using Zsh on-and-off for a very long time (15+ years), but I still occasionally learn something new about it.
Confused by hierarchical namespaces in Kubernetes? In this Kubernetes tutorial we'll examine what hierarchical namespaces are, how to add them to a Kubernetes cluster and then how to use them.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you had to format your computer and manually reinstall all the programs you were using? Or did you change machines and have to go to the page of each of the software you use and download and run the installer one by one? Or even customize some mouse/keyboard settings?
This is a bit of work for everyone, but it’s even more work for devs. We have a series of environment configuration files, variables, binary configurations, and shells that need to be configured the way we want them to be so we can be as productive as possible!
Let’s understand how dotfiles will solve this problem and how you will be much more productive when you start versioning them using Git.
Kubernetes(K8s) is an open source system that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications such as microservices. It’s designed to make it easy to deploy applications to a wide range of virtual machines and cloud providers e.g Digital ocean, AWS. K8s is built on a foundation of open standards. It helps you manage the lifecycle of processes running in the container. This guide will walk you through how to automatically setup your microservices with k8s using Earthly. A complete microservice setup on Kubernetes requires both the configuration and deployment of your application. Each service will have its own unique functionality and operates independently of the other services, and can be deployed individually.
It's common to build Grafana dashboards with graph panels (including bar graphs) that have multiple things in them. Generally when you do this, you include a legend with labels. The legend labels come from the query or queries you make, as covered in the query options for Prometheus as a datasource (the same is true for Loki as a datasource).
If each separate thing on the panel comes from a separate query, it's easy to put the legend labels in any order that you want, because the legend order comes from the order of the queries, and Grafana lets you freely re-order them. You might have this if you're graphing various memory metrics from a Linux server, for example, because the Prometheus host agent exposes each different thing from /proc/meminfo as a separate metric (and some things aren't exposed directly anyway, such as the amount of swap space used; you get only 'total swap' and 'free swap').
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Inkscape on Linux Mint 21. For those of you who didn’t know, Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software that runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows desktop computers. Inkscape is great for anyone who wants to get creative with their artwork, as it has many features that bring any design to life. These features include scalability and the ability to import/export so the artwork can be used in any vector graphics program.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of an Inkscape vector graphics editor on Linux Mint 21 (Vanessa).
Recently the authors of Elements of Publishing shared an update. "After ten years in print, our publisher decided against further printings and has reverted the rights to us. We are publishing Elements of Programming in two forms: a free PDF and a no-markup paperback."
Tor, also referred to as The Onion Router, is open-source, free software that permits anonymous communication using online services like web surfing. The Tor network directs the web traffic through an accessible worldwide volunteer overlay network with over six thousand relays and continues to grow. Many users want to search out more ways to keep their information and activities anonymous or private online due to the increasing concerns over data and work snooping. However, users should be aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of using Tor before deciding whether or not it is the right tool for them.
While Tor provides a high degree of anonymity, it is not perfect. Due to the way the network routes traffic, it can be slow, making it impractical for some uses. In addition, because traffic is encrypted, some sites that use anti-Tor measures can block all traffic from the network, preventing users from accessing them. Despite these drawbacks, Tor remains a popular tool for those seeking a higher degree of anonymity online.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Tor Browser on AlmaLinux 9 workstation desktop using Flatpak third-party package manager or downloading the browser manually and how to install it manually with tips on registering the application icon.
This tutorial will explain how to enable two keyboard layouts on Ubuntu GNOME or KDE namely English (US) and Arabic (Buckwalter). The goal is to help you type Arabic on computer by using standard physical QWERTY keyboard without having an Arabic one. Now let's try it.
Do you want to know which version of Raspberry Pi OS is running on your hardware? Here is how to find the Raspberry Pi OS version including hardware details such as CPU, RAM and model using the command-line option.
Raspberry Pi OS is Linux based operating system and to see the currently running version type the cat /etc/os-release command at Linux prompt. Let us see all commands in detail. Please note that this tutorial focuses on Linux operating systems. Still, RPI can run other Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD, and some of the following commands will not work on different operating systems.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Erlang on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Erlang is a functional, concurrent programming language designed specifically for systems with high availability requirements. Erlang was originally developed to be used in several large telecommunication systems. But it has now slowly made its foray into diverse sectors like eCommerce, computer telephony, and banking sectors as well.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Erlang programming language on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
If you are familiar with programming languages, specifically Java, then you might be aware of JAR or WAR terms. However, many of you may not have heard of this term or will encounter it in the near future.
Today, you will learn what they are, why you should use them, and how to extract/decompress a WAR file in Linux.
A platform game (sometimes known as platformer or jump ‘n’ run games) is a video game genre and subgenre of action games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in a rendered environment.
Platform games are characterized by their level design featuring uneven terrain and suspended platforms of varying height that requires use of the player character’s abilities, such as jumping and climbing, to navigate the player’s environment and reach their goal.
Let’s explore the 10 games. For each game we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screen shot of the game in action together with links to relevant resources.
Tuesday night, I managed to break the screen of my laptop. This is particular annoying when you don’t have any external screen at home and need to work. Fortunately the scren wasn’t completely broken, and I managed to survice Wednesday, with half of the screen working.
From half of the screen working on Wednesday, the situation got worse on Tursday and I was forced to find another solution. My only other Linux powered devices at home were a PinePhone and my SteamDeck. Performance wise, the choice was easy and I choose to try to use my SteamDeck.
As previously announced, Akademy 2022 will be happening in Barcelona at the beginning of October.
On top of that, Akademy-es [the Spain spin-off of Akademy] is also happening in Barcelona the days before (29 and 30 of September). So if you're interested in KDE and understand Spanish a bit, please drop by https://www.kde-espana.org/akademy-es-2022 and register yourself at https://www.kde-espana.org/akademy-es2022/registro.php
Throughout this summer I've been working on making the New Documents feature discoverable in Nautilus, a file manager for GNOME as part of the GSoC project. This post is an overview with links of the work I did together with my mentor Antonio Fernandes.
September release fixes a bunch of issue, updated packages etc.
Since the last update we finally have all Frameworks build with Qt 6 and got one more platform covered on the CI. We are also only two weeks away from Akademy, which is where we’ll make important decisions on how to proceed.
FreeBSD CI
Besides Linux and Android we now also have FreeBSD CI coverage for the Qt 6 builds, thanks to Qt 6 having become available as FreeBSD packages. The roll-out is largely complete, and was remarkably painless. Pretty much everything built without needing additional fixes, and unit test results match the results with Qt 5.
That’s even more surprising given there is one crucial difference in the FreeBSD CI: it doesn’t use separate containers for the Qt 5 and Qt 6 builds. Instead both versions are built on the same system, with both Qt versions installed. This is of course something that eventually has to work, but that has caused various unintended version mixes in the beginning.
The last missing platform for full Qt 5 parity is now Windows. Work for creating a CI image for that is meanwhile under way as well.
So basically my system administration task turns into a software development task instead. And (in my opinion) there are much better tools available for this: source control systems such as git, test suites and Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines, and code review processes. These make it easier to keep track of and understand the changes, and reduce the possibility of making a catastrophic mistake.
One of the apps running on my FreedomBox that I use frequently is bepasty. bepasty is essentially a self-hosted, free software pastebin. It allows you to paste text, or upload any type of file. You can also set an expiration date for when the file or text will automatically be deleted. If you are uploading multiple related files, you can organize them into a list.
bepasty does not have user accounts. Instead, it has shared passwords, where each password is linked to a set of permissions. There are five permissions: Read, List, Create, Delete, and Admin. (The meanings are mostly straightforward, except for Admin, which means the ability to lock and unlock files.) This allows very fine-grained control. For example, if you want someone to be able to upload files to your bepasty, but not view or download anything, than you can generate a password with only the “Create” permission, and give this password to the person who will be uploading files.
FreedomBox is a Debian pure blend that reduces the effort needed to run and maintain a small personal server. Being a “pure blend” means that all of the software packages which are used in FreedomBox are included in Debian. Most of these packages are not specific to FreedomBox: they are common things such as Apache web server, firewalld, slapd (LDAP server), etc. But there are a few packages which are specific to FreedomBox: they are named freedombox, freedombox-doc-en, freedombox-doc-es, freedom-maker, fbx-all and fbx-tasks.
freedombox is the core package. You could say, if freedombox is installed, then your system is a FreedomBox (or a derivative). It has dependencies on all of the packages that are needed to get a FreedomBox up and running, such as the previously mentioned Apache, firewalld, and slapd. It also provides a web interface for the initial setup, configuration, and installing apps. (The web interface service is called “Plinth” and is written in Python using Django framework.) The source package of freedombox also builds freedombox-doc-en and freedombox-doc-es. These packages install the FreedomBox manuals for English and Spanish, respectively.
For Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 22.10, Fedora 36/37 & other Linux with GNOME 42/43, there’s a new extension to enable more useful gadgets into top panel.
It’s “Aylur’s Widgets” extension that adds Dash, Workspace dots, Media playback control, Battery bar, Power menu in top-bar. All of them have ON/OFF switches, position option (left, center, right) as well as other settings.
Dash is a trigger to quickly access frequently used system settings, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Settings, Shutdown Menu, Favorite Apps, Playback Control, Social Media websites, and have a glance at time & date, battery status, CPU usage, core temperature.
The button has configurable text and icon, and allows to replace the “Activities” button. With it enabled, user may also press Super + D on keyboard to trigger the menu. In case you use the shortcut key to show/hide desktop, you may assign another shortcut via Dconf Editor.
Vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells combine the benefits of battery-powered electric vehicles and internal combustion engines (ICEs). You get the environmental and performance benefits of electricity, with the same refueling convenience as you get with ICE vehicles. But for most of us, hydrogen fuel cells are still mysterious and unattainable. In reality, you can buy one right now. To demonstrate how practical they are, Alfonso Delgado Ollero built a miniature hydrogen fuel cell to power an RC truck.
Hydrogen combines with oxygen in the air to produce water. As it does, it also produces electricity and we can use that electricity to power devices and even vehicles. The only reasons hydrogen fuel cell vehicles aren’t common are that it takes a lot of energy to produce the hydrogen in the first place and the energy density is relatively low. Those practical concerns are relevant when talking about the future of the automotive industry, but they shouldn’t prevent makers from experimenting with hydrogen fuel cells. You can buy small hydrogen fuel cells, like the 12W unit used in this project, from online retailers for less than $700. You can also purchase cartridges of hydrogen or even make your own through electrolysis (read up on the safety precautions first).
We had some fun with our partners - Digi-Key, Analog Devices, Harting, and Würth Elektronik - to not only develop 10BASE-T1L SPE prototyping tools, but to also put together a helpful demo/use case. The video below provides a quick look at the new prototyping tools and then moves to the demo.
Caml is a general-purpose, powerful, high-level programming language with a large emphasis on speed and efficiency. A dialect of the ML programming language, it supports functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming styles. The OCaml system is the main implementation of the Caml language. It has a very strong type-checking system, offers a powerful module system, automatic memory management, first-class functions, and adds a full-fledged object-oriented layer.
Here’s our verdict on the best OCaml web frameworks. We only recommend free and open source software here.
Have you ever been so frustrated with something that you decided to take matters into your own hands and fix it? Golang or Go Language is a product of that frustration manifested with the talents of Rob Pike, Robert Griesemer, and Ken Thompson. It is a revolutionary language with versatile uses and plenty of Golang projects to work with.
The language itself was designed at Google and is open-source, platform-independent, statically, and strongly typed in nature. However, it has all the positives of C, C++, Java, and Python while it overlooks their flaws. So, how about we explore what you can do with Golang as a beginner in 2022? Stay tuned!
This contest aims to highlight the many great ways people transform and present data. Open source data science works better the more people contribute, and we particularly appreciate this community’s openness and generosity in sharing the code and methods you use to create beautiful, useful tables.
For fun, I wrote a raytracer in Zig yesterday. It’s a port of a project I did in 2013, in JavaScript. It’s the first time in a while I’ve made a project just for kicks.
Comma Separated Values (CSV) files are one of the most common formats for exported data. On Linux, we can read CSV files using Bash commands. But it can get very complicated, very quickly.
Java JOptionPane input example The best way to teach the concept of Java user input to new software developers is to have them use the extremely visual and highly user-friendly JOptionPane...
As you might know, I left Google in spring to try and make the concept of a professional Open Source maintainer a thing. I'm staying on as a maintainer of the Go cryptography standard library, and I am going to seek funding from companies that rely on it, want to ensure its security and reliability, and would like to get a direct line to the maintainers of their critical business infrastructure. (If this sounds like you, reply to this email!)
In the meantime, though, the Go development cycle progresses inexorably, with the Go 1.20 feature freeze coming at the beginning of November. Once the main Go tree freezes, I plan to work on x/crypto/ssh and age, but in the meantime I have a few things I am excited about for Go 1.20.
If your loved one died in hospital, check whether the morgue will keep them for a few days while you check with funeral homes in a 20-30 mile radius. Set a budget. Under no circumstances should you tell a funeral director, "Money is no object, she deserves the best."
A new system capable of reading lips with remarkable accuracy even when speakers are wearing face masks could help create a new generation of hearing aids.
An international team of engineers and computing scientists developed the technology, which pairs radio-frequency sensing with artificial intelligence for the first time to identify lip movements.
Engineers have created intelligent 3D printers that can quickly detect and correct errors, even in previously unseen designs, or unfamiliar materials like ketchup and mayonnaise, by learning from the experiences of other machines.
Scientists can use laser radiation to print tiny structures with high precision. This approach enables them to mimic the superpowers of animals and plants and makes them accessible for engineering applications.
To survive in extreme habitats, many animals and plants have developed brilliant abilities that we otherwise only know from superheroes in movies. In most cases, their abilities are based on the extraordinary properties of their surfaces. Mimicking these properties offers enormous potential in the engineering field for developing new products and solving technical problems. Research teams from Bochum and Kiel have succeeded in mimicking the structural colour of the famous blue Morpho butterflies using a high-precision 3D printing technology referred to as two-photon polymerization (2PP). The researchers present their newest findings in a paper published in the Journal of Optical Microsystems on 2 September 2022.
We all know a “COVID virgin,” or “Novid,” someone who has defied all logic in dodging the coronavirus. But beyond judicious caution, sheer luck, or a lack of friends, could the secret to these people’s immunity be found nestled in their genes? And could it hold the key to fighting the virus?
In the early days of the pandemic, a small, tight-knit community of scientists from around the world set up an international consortium, called the COVID Human Genetic Effort, whose goal was to search for a genetic explanation as to why some people were becoming severely sick with COVID while others got off with a mild case of the sniffles.
After a while, the group noticed that some people weren’t getting infected at all—despite repeated and intense exposures. The most intriguing cases were the partners of people who became really ill and ended up in intensive care. “We learned about a few spouses of those people that—despite taking care of their husband or wife, without having access to face masks—apparently did not contract infection,” says András Spaan, a clinical microbiologist at Rockefeller University in New York.
Researchers from Hyderabad have 3D-printed an artificial cornea and transplanted it into a rabbit’s eye.
A team of clinicians and scientists from the LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad, and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), have collaborated to develop the 3D-printed cornea from the human donor corneal tissue which would have otherwise been discarded for not meeting optical standards for clinical transportation.
The printed corneas need to undergo further clinical testing and development before they can be used in patients, which could take several years. The team is hopeful of a positive outcome.
The rules and game docs for Battlesnake are all open source.
Meta has announced that PyTorch, its open source framework for machine learning, will become part of the Linux Foundation and reorganise under a new PyTorch Foundation.
Whiting writes as follows…
This month, the open source community gathered in Dublin for the Open Source Summit Europe (OSS Europe), hosted by the Linux Foundation. Over 1,500 people joined in-person and another 800 virtually. As usual, there was lots of knowledge sharing on a broad range of open source topics and, of course, a reception at the Guinness Factory because, when in Dublin…
CISA adds six new vulnerabilities to its most-wanted list, including one that dates back to 2010
All paid extensions have been compromised, but the free version appears to be safe
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added half a dozen vulnerabilities to its catalog of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities and is ordering federal agencies to follow vendor’s instructions to fix them.
Of the six security flaws, only one was disclosed this year. It impacts Trend Micro’s Apex One platform for automated threat detection and response.
Malicious actors such as Kinsing are taking advantage of both recently disclosed and older security flaws in Oracle WebLogic Server to deliver cryptocurrency-mining malware.
The price stability that prevailed after Ethereum's shift to a more energy-efficient proof-of-stake network suddenly evaporated as ether slid 9.1%, its worst day since late August.
The failure to address zoning, taxation and transport issues are to blame for systematically high housing costs, not interest rate settings, the Reserve Bank of Australia says. RBA governor Philip Lowe said interest rates do drive cyclical changes in property prices but other forces were at play keeping house prices higher for longer.
Illinois Amendment 1, the “Workers Rights Amendment”, could undo police reform if the public votes to pass it.
Illinois voters are being asked to pass a constitutional amendment to “guarantee collective bargaining rights.
“Amendment 1”, or the “Workers Rights Amendment”, is said to “ban Right To Work zones” in Illinois, which are already banned under statutory law.
Right To Work laws allow workers to decide for themselves if they want to be in a labor union.
Illinois politicians are at the beck and call of corrupt mafia unions, mostly the ones that represent “public workers”.
However, if this dangerous amendment passes, it could also undo parts of the Safe-T Act that were meant to prevent police violence and deaths of prisoners in police custody.
See, the Safe-T Act, which is due to go into effect on January 1, 2023, bans chokeholds by the police, requires other officers to step in and prevent excessive use of force on detainees by police officers, and requires officers to stop and render first aid to detainees, including the use of CPR.
If you’re lucky, you end up being good at a few things. If you’re really lucky, those are also the things you like doing. I’m good at writing articles that get upvoted and discussed on Hacker News, or news.ycombinator.com. But I don’t like it.
Writing on the internet can be a two-way thing, a learning experience guided by iteration and feedback. I’ve learned some bad habits from Hacker News. I added Caveats sections to articles to make sure that nobody would take my points too broadly. I edited away asides and comments that were fun but would make articles less focused. I came to expect pedantic, judgmental feedback on everything I wrote, regardless of what it was.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, speaking at the Code Conference last week, suggested the tech company needed to become 20% more efficientââ¬â°—ââ¬â°a comment some in the industry took to mean headcount reductions could soon be on the table. Now, it seems that prediction may be coming true. TechCrunch has learned, and Google confirmed, the company is slashing projects at its in-house R&D division known as Area 120.
The company on Tuesday informed staff of a “reduction in force” that will see the incubator halved in size, as half the teams working on new product innovations heard their projects were being canceled. Previously, there were 14 projects housed in Area 120, and this has been cut down to just seven. Employees whose projects will not continue were told they’ll need to find a new job within Google by the end of January 2023, or they’ll be terminated. It’s not clear that everyone will be able to do so. [...] TechCrunch learned of the changes from a source with knowledge of the matter. Google confirmed the changes in a statement.
The first two posts of this series on Bill C-11 focused on the risks to user content and Canadian creators. This post picks up on the implications of the bill for consumer costs and choice. In short, at a time when political parties are focused on affordability and inflation, the Bill C-11 effect is likely to increase consumer costs and decrease choice. There is no magic solution that results in hundreds of millions of new money entering the system without someone paying for it. It is fairly clear that that someone will be Canadian consumers as streaming services either hike Canadian fees to account for their new costs or shun the market altogether. It should be noted that it doesn’t need to be that way: a bill that establishes thresholds to exclude smaller services would limit the negative effects on competition and a sufficiently flexible approach to Canadian contributions would recognize that the large streaming services already invest billions in Canada.
While some officials in Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez’s office have said their intent with the bill is to only cover the largest services with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the bill does not include any such thresholds. In fact, Liberal MPs rejected multiple amendment proposals to add a threshold to the bill. Moreover, Canadian Heritage own internal documentation acknowledges that the legislative plan for the legislation adopts a broad regulatory approach that targets podcast apps such as Stitcher and Pocket Casts, audiobook services such as Audible, home workout apps, pornographic sites, sports streaming services such as MLB.TV and DAZN, niche video services such as Britbox, and even broadcaster websites such as the BBC.
The first three posts in this series on Bill C-11 have focused on the risks of regulating user content, the risks to Canadian creators, and the risks of increased consumer costs and less competition. Today’s post identifies another risk with the bill: the prospect of a trade challenge under the CUSMA that could lead to billions on tariff retaliation that target some of Canada’s most important economic sectors. The possibility of a U.S. trade battle over the bill is no idle speculation even if downplayed this week by an official from Global Affairs. This summer, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai raised the issue directly with Canadian Minister of International Trade Mary Ng. While the Canadian readout of the meeting notably excluded any reference to the issue, it was cited in the U.S. readout of the meeting:
“Ambassador Tai expressed concern about Canada’s proposed digital service tax and pending legislation in the Canadian Parliament that could impact digital streaming services.”
The creation of a new trade irritant with Bill C-11 could prove extremely costly as it opens the door the possibility of hundreds of millions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs. Those tariffs can target any sector, meaning they could be levied on dairy, steel or other sensitive economic sectors. Canadian Heritage Minister Rodriguez has claimed that the bill could result in $1 billion in new revenues (a figure debunked by his own officials), but whatever the number, the CUSMA would allow the U.S. to levy tariffs of an equivalent commercial effect in the event of a violation of the treaty.
Days after Bill C-11 passed in the House of Commons, the CRTC released its decision involving Radio-Canada and the use of the N-word in a broadcast. The decision sparked an outcry in Quebec and raised concerns that the Commission did not feel constrained by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in its decision. Indeed, given that the majority of the Commission ignored the Charter and freedom of expression altogether, the decision signalled how Bill C-11 could be used to regulate Internet content the CRTC deems contrary to Broadcasting Act policy objectives. Two of the lingering questions with the case involved timing and who had been involved: the complaint had reached the CRTC in 2020, yet the decision was released nearly 18 months later only after Bill C-11 passed the House of Commons. I asked the CRTC for the full commission minutes to better understand who was involved in the case and when the issue was debated and decided. The Commission responded that all of this information was only available through the Access to Information Act. While I find this level of secrecy astonishing – there is no reason for the Commission to not publish who was involved in decisions and to make its minutes publicly available by default – I filed the request.
Yesterday, I received the answer (full ATIP can be accessed here). The complaint was filed with Commission in November 2020. The Full Commission first discussed the case in July 2021, choosing to defer its decision.
Yesterday at 4:45pm I got an email from my supervisor listing all the mistakes I made that he had to "suss out and fixing [sic]". I almost sent a reply, but I was off the clock by then so lmao; guess I'll fix it on Monday. This could have been avoided if I had some decent onboarding or documentation —€ or if they had told me it was my responsibility to generate documentation for the job — alas, now I have to go back and redo a bunchÃÂ shit. I took my work email accounts offline for the weekend; if someone wants to get in touch they'll have to wait until Monday.
I’m not an addict personality. That is, I’m not one who easily falls into addictions like substances or gambling. Nor computer games.
Games that reviewers or my friends have called addictive have always just seemed boring to me. I can only spend so many minutes on an MMO before feeling that staring at a wall is only slightly less entertaining. The moment someone mentions ”grinding” I tune out.
Games have a cost and a reward. Most of the time the cost is time, money, or both. The reward is often a dopamine kick, community, or leaderboards. The balance I require between these aspects is quite strict.
Well done, guys. Truly well done. And by "well done" I mean "you complete and utter muppets".
Starbucks sells coffee. How in the name of all that is holy can there be a data breach? I'm asking rhetorically, of course. Starbucks has a Rewards loyalty programme (why is there a rewards system for a poxy coffee shop? Don't know). Birth dates, addresses and mobile numbers have been accessed.
And the protocol, too, so we have gopher and http links in the list as well. And can we make the number a link to the issue? Sure we can, one line per link. And wouldn't it be nice, if we could somehow scrape the preceeding description into the result as well? It surely would.
The ESP32 powering this capsule has over a month (maybe even 1.5 months) of uptime. This is great!
Continuation of testing why comitium feed agregator have failed to handle geminispace.info backlinks (as I mentioned in [previous post at Sat 29 May 2021 08:36:05 PM CEST]).
The first part of answer is obvious because geminispace.info backlink page template consists in [root/serve/templates/fragments/footer.gmi] two variables. One of it is printed, and it is changing every time geminispace.info index is updated.
The second part of answer is still unclear for me. Because I have added two backlinks pages to my comitium installation. The first for szczezuja.flounder.online domain, and the second for szczezuja.space domain. And there must be some difference because, beside index update date, the pages are in different "days" on comitium feeds page.
I want to create a Gemini browser with gamepad support. I’m thinking in using Python and Textual.
Why use a gamepad? Gemini is the perfect system to interact in a TV. Simple structure, high contrast, and it should be easy to navigate.
Funny how that works. I bootstrapped nForth in 3 days (really two, but I had a really short day). Then yesterday I got almost nothing done, even though I worked hard at it.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.