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Links 19/09/2022: pg_activity 3.0.0 Released, Microsoft Teams a Security Hole



  • GNU/Linux

    • 9to5Linux9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: September 18th, 2022

      This week has been slow in Linux news, most probably because of the various Linux and Open Source events that took place in Dublin, Irland, such as Open Source Summit, Linux Plumbers Conference, and Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit.

      Fans of the KDE Plasma desktop environment got a new KDE Frameworks release with more improvements for their favorite KDE apps and the chance to test drive the beta version of the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.26 release, Fedora Linux fans were able to take the beta version of Fedora Linux 37 for a spin to explore the new features, and EndeavourOS got a new ISO release.

      Below, you can enjoy these and much more in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for September 18th, 2022.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • ArtemiseverfreeAn X11 Apologist Tries Wayland

        I think it’s only fair to call me an X apologist. I get incredibly frustrated when people talk about dropping support for X11. I fight back against the notion that some day X11 will be dead and unmaintained, a curiosity of a time before. I’ve spoken to people in my circles at-length about the accessibility tools that Wayland simply hasn’t been capable of supporting that X11 has. A lot of times, I’ve ended this conversation with “Maybe 5 years from now it’ll be good”. Well it’s 5 years in since I first said those words, and you know what, I’m actually pleasantly surprised.

        I’ve been using sway for most of my testing, since I already had an i3 config handy. Basically all I had to do was copy my config to .cofig/sway/config, change some of the services it was launching to get rid of X11-specific stuff, and add some output configuration. It’s pretty great how painless it was (and the default configs are just fine too, but I’m particular).

      • LWNAn X11 Apologist Tries Wayland (artemis.sh)

        The artemis.sh blog has a detailed review of the state of Wayland compared to X.org.

    • Applications

      • Medevel13 Free and Open Source Webpage and HTML editors

        Web designers and developers often need a visual editor that aid them in visualizing and building HTML web pages.

        Well, that was the case years ago, now the process took a different turn. However, many web designers and developers are still using HTML and CSS editors to design their static pages.

        Nowadays, web designers require mockup, wireframing and prototyping tools, which we covered in several topics in this site. Many front-end designers use code editors and live-reload server for web design.

        However, this article is about the old school classical webpage HTML editors.

        In this article we offer you a list of the best open source free web page editors that you can install as standalone applications on your computer.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Tom's HardwareHow to Set Up a Raspberry Pi for the First Time

        So you've just gotten a new Raspberry Pi, perhaps even the Raspberry Pi 4 or Raspberry Pi 400, and taken it out of the box. Now what? There are a million things you can do with your mini computer, from using it as a web server to turning into a retro arcade, but first you need to set up the Raspberry Pi. Note that, if this is a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller, the setup process is completely different so see our article on how to set up Raspberry Pi Pico.

      • TecMint10 Most Dangerous Commands – You Should Never Execute on Linux

        The command-line interface is a powerful and handy utility for administering a Linux system. It provides a fast and versatile way of running the system, especially when managing headless systems which do not have a graphical interface.

        While useful in managing your system, the command line is fraught with risks. Running bad commands can cause harm and irrecoverable damage to your system. In this guide, we have compiled a list of some of the riskiest commands that you should not think of executing on your system.

      • Tom's HardwareHow To Use The New Arduino IDE 2.0

        Arduino IDE 2.0 brings a number of improvements to the original IDE. Most notably a refreshed user interface. Here are a few more end user improvements.

      • H2S MediaTop 10 popular Linux Distros in September 2022 - Linux Shout

        Along with macOS and Windows, Linux is one of the three largest operating systems. However, Linux is available in different versions, although the best version is not so easy to identify. It is because the associated developers do not distinguish their distributions clearly enough from each other. Often it comes down to a blind “trial and error” for users until they have found their favorite Linux where they can reside for a long time.

        The 10 most interesting Linux distributions and their main features listed here are sourced and ranked with help of Distrowatch.com. However, the data there is only partially representative. Because Linux distributions, unlike Windows, do not collect user data by default, no one knows how many and which Linux distributions are used by how many people. The ranking is therefore based on how often a particular distribution has been downloaded.

      • Chrome UboxedHow to tell Web apps and Android apps apart on your Chromebook

        ChromeOS is one of the few operating systems that allows you to install applications from other operating systems, as is the case with Linux and Android apps that run in their own separate containers. However, having a combination of web app shortcuts, PWAs, Android apps, and Linux apps running on the same device can sometimes cause confusion if you’re trying to figure out where the app came from.

      • Linux Shell TipsHow to Install and Use Docker on Alpine Linux

        Docker is a popular open-source containerization platform that makes it possible for developers to build, ship, and deploy their applications inside isolated environments called containers. Unlike virtual machines, containers are lightweight environments that ship with all the libraries, dependencies, and files required by an application to run.

        In this guide, we will demonstrate how to install Docker on Alpine Linux

      • Trend OceansHow to Limit the Number of Connections in NGINX

        A modern web application is a constant target of attackers with attacks like DDOS. However, you can mitigate this type of attack by limiting the number of requests on your server if you are using NGINX as a web server.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • DebugPointGNOME Files Introduces Most-Requested Feature: New File Menu

          No more tweaking in the backend. The most anticipated feature of creating a new document / new files via the context menu in Files (aka Nautilus) finally arrives.

          Developed as part of the Google Summer of Code 2022 (by Ignacy Kuchciński), the change was recently reviewed and merged into the main branch of Files.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Red Hat / IBM

      • Enterprisers ProjectIT jobs: 3 essential AI roles to hire now

        In almost every industry, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a “nice-to-have” technology but a mission-critical solution to address urgent business needs – allowing companies to remain agile, increase productivity, and fuel insights. But to achieve that and set your organization up for AI success, you need a solid team of technologists, data scientists, and product specialists as the foundation.

        Whether you’re building a team from scratch or growing an existing AI team – or simply want to improve workflows and cross-functional collaboration – this practical guide will break down some of the key components needed to bring together the right team.

      • Enterprisers ProjectUpdating your core banking strategy: 9 lessons

        The decision to update your core banking infrastructure isn’t always clear-cut – if it’s worked for decades, why change it?

        The problem is your competitors are offering faster, easier services. In addition, the skills needed to maintain your system will become increasingly obsolete, and eventually, your team will no longer have the legacy knowledge it needs to continue operations.

      • Red HatBest ways to learn about Linux from Red Hat Developer | Red Hat Developer

        Looking for tips and deep dives on Linux, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Red Hat Developer has a wide range of content for you. These are some of our favorite and most popular articles, cheat sheets, and lessons to help you get the most out of Linux, along with underlying tools like GCC and Linux-based platforms like Docker...

      • OpenSource.comI got my first pull request merged! [Ed: A "pull request" is usually Microsoft term (GitHub), i.e. an attack on Git itself]
    • Devices/Embedded

      • peppe8oPawns.app with Raspberry PI: passive income by sharing internet bandwidth

        Earning with your Raspberry PI running all day for other services is possible by sharing your internet bandwidth with service providers and granting IP proxies to other customers for works like marketing research and similar stuff. For your Raspberry PI, Pawns.app (previously IProyal) is one of the most famous and established providers in this perspective

        In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to install IProyal in your Raspberry PI in a way that assures your privacy with the help of Docker.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • CNX SoftwareOpenHarmony development board borrows BBC Micro:bit edge connector - CNX Software

        HopeRun’s HiHope development board features a HiSilicon Hi3861V100 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller compatible with OpenHarmony OS and looks very much like the BBC Micro:bit educational board notably with its edge connector.

        The board is also designed for youth education (in China) and comes with similar sensors, but there are some differences such as a 0.96-inch OLED instead of an LED matrix and support for offline voice recognition. There’s no wireless connectivity apart from NFC support.

      • CNX SoftwareOchin Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier board is made for drones and robots - CNX Software

        There are plenty of carrier boards for Raspberry Pi CM4, but the Ochin looks a bit different, as it is specifically designed for drones and robots, and the compact carrier board exposes most interfaces through low-profile GHS connectors instead of standard ports or headers.

        About the size of the Raspberry Pi CM4 itself, the board also comes with a USB Type-C port to flash the eMMC flash, two MIPI CSI connectors and four USB 2.0 GHS connectors to add cameras to your robotics projects, and supports LiPo batteries.

      • Linux GizmosGPS-RTK Raspberry Pi Hat offers high precision positioning in real-time

        SB-Components recently launched a Raspberry Pi Hat integrating the ZED-F9P module which is a GNSS receiver that can simultaneously measure signals from constellations such as GLONASS, GPS, Galileo and BeiDou with 0.2 meters accuracy.€ 

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

    • Content Management Systems (CMS)

      • Linux Links4 Best Free and Open Source Groovy Static Site Generators - LinuxLinks

        LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.

        While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.

        There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.

    • Programming/Development

      • Python

        • OpenSource.comPyLint: The good, the bad, and the ugly

          Hot take: PyLint is actually good!

          "PyLint can save your life" is an exaggeration, but not as much as you might think! PyLint can keep you from really really hard to find and complicated bugs. At worst, it can save you the time of a test run. At best, it can help you avoid complicated production mistakes.

  • Leftovers

    • Hardware

      • HackadayA Vacuum Pick Up Tool For Not A Lot

        When working with grain-of-dust surface-mount components, one of the tools which makes a huge difference is a vacuum pickup pen. Instead of trying to move the part with tweezers and succeeding only in flicking it into the middle distance, a tiny rubber suction cup with a vacuum feed allows you to pick it up and place it exactly where it is required. Unfortunately, good vacuum pickup tools come at a price, and very cheap ones aren’t worth the expenditure.

      • HackadayBanana Split Macropad Is Dessert For Your Desk
    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Common DreamsOpinion | The Stench of a Moocher Launched Into Yet Another Health Mess

        Over Labor Day weekend this year, I launched into yet another damned health mess. As soon as I woke violently ill in the wee hours of Saturday morning, I began worrying about money. It’s always the money. Of course I wondered about what it was this time making me sick. Yet I worried so much more about how much damage I would do this time to our finances. It was enough to turn my suicidal ideation into a full blown chorus of, "Whatever it is, please let me die before the bills rise and rise and rise." That's what being an insured American who has fought for her life through cancer three times, abdominal hernias, gastric bleeds, Covid-19, MRSA, sepsis, and beyond generates. It isn't conducive to much positive thinking or feeling even as people urge me to stay positive, focused on recovery, and allow time for healing.

      • HackadayLoad Cells To Get The Right Pet The Right Food

        If you have more than one pet, you may know how hard it is to tell how much each furry friend is eating. If you introduce prescription foods, then this minor annoyance can have a major impact on your pet’s health. Facing this dilemma, [tomasdiazwahl] set out to make a pet feeder that feeds his pets exactly what they need when they approach the feeder.

    • Linux Foundation

    • Security

      • HackadayRobot Opens Master Combination Locks In Less Than A Minute

        A common trope in bank heist B-movies is someone effortlessly bypassing a safe’s combination lock. Typically, the hero or villain will turn the dial while listening to the internal machinery, then deduce the combination based on sounds made by the lock. In real life, high-quality combination locks are not vulnerable to such simple attacks, but cheap ones can often be bypassed with a minimum of effort. Some are so simple that this process can even be automated, as [Mew463] has shown by building a machine that can open a Master combination lock in less than a minute.

      • Android PoliceMicrosoft Teams deemed unsafe to use by security researchers

        And it's really all Microsoft's own fault

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Environment

      • Energy

        • Silicon AngleWhite House releases framework for regulating digital assets

          The White House today released a regulatory framework designed to address risks in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, as well as support the development of new digital asset technologies.

          The release of the framework comes six months after President Joe Biden signed an executive order that directed the government to address the risks and harness the benefits of digital assets. As part of that effort, multiple government agencies have produced reports about the digital asset ecosystem. The agencies’ reports form the basis of the regulatory framework that the White House released today.

        • USAFACT SHEET: Climate and Energy Implications of [Cryptocurrency]-Assets in the United States

          [Cryptocurrency]-assets are digital assets that are implemented using cryptographic techniques. [Cryptocurrency]-assets can require considerable amounts of electricity usage, which can result in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as additional pollution, noise, and other local impacts to communities living near mining facilities. Depending on the energy intensity of the technology and the sources of electricity used, the rapid growth of [cryptocurrency]-assets could potentially hinder broader efforts to achieve U.S. climate commitments to reach net-zero carbon pollution.

        • ReutersEthereum blockchain slashes energy use with 'Merge' software upgrade

          The new system will use 99.95% less energy, according to the Ethereum Foundation. The upgrade, which changes how transactions occur and how ether tokens are created, could give Ethereum a major advantage as it seeks to surpass rival blockchain bitcoin.

    • Finance

      • Pro PublicaLake Charles Still Waits for Long-Term Disaster Aid

        She didn’t have the money to finish repairs on the home, which she couldn’t afford to insure. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had lent her the trailer as a temporary solution, but the deadline to return it was approaching, and she was facing the possibility of being forced to pay steep rent to keep living in it.

      • Common DreamsFirst Hit by Privatization, Puerto Rico in 'Total Blackout' as Fiona Makes Landfall

        Weather forecasters said the rainfall is likely to produce devastating landslides and severe flooding, with up to 25 inches (64 cm) expected in some areas. A Category 1 storm, with sustained winds of 85 mph, Fiona is nowhere near as powerful as Hurricane Maria which slammed the island in 2017, nearly five years to the day, as a Category 4 monster.

      • ScheerpostCorporate Media Is Trying to Convince People Student Debt Forgiveness Is Bad

        Luca Goldmansour critiques corporate media's narratives about student debt relief.

      • ScheerpostShift from Fossils to Renewables Will Save $12 Trillion by 2050

        Mitchell Beer summarizes a report that reveals a green transition comes with huge savings.

      • Counter PunchRoyal Money: Charles III and the Wealth Dimension

        In June 2022, accounts for the Sovereign Grant, which cover funds for the official monarch and the household’s official expenses, was €£86.3 million for the 2021-22 year.€  Official expenditure came in at greater than the Sovereign Grant and supplementary income earned – a net expenditure amount of €£102.4 million.€  This registered an increase of 17% from the previous year.€  Much of the inflation came from the reservicing of Buckingham Palace.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • YLEFirst lady to defend doctoral thesis

        Her thesis is entitled, "From the ideal of open dialogue to the reality of internal mobilisation—the strategic dimensions and dilemmas of parties' digital campaigns."

        Ã…bo Akademi political science professor Kim Strandberg, who will serve as Haukio's opponent, took to Twitter to share the news.

      • Counter PunchWhy Our Electricity Prices Can’t Be Left to Bogus ‘Free Markets’

        It was the Chilean model that Margaret Thatcher copied in the UK, which then the EU copied. The UK dismantled its Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) that ran its entire electricity infrastructure: generation, transmission, and bulk distribution. This move also helped the UK shift away from domestic coal for its thermal power plants, breaking the powerful coal miners’ union. These were also the Enron market ‘reforms’ in California, leading to the summer meltdown of its grid in 2000-2001.

      • Counter PunchUK: Fragmentation and Decline Under Conservative Rule

        She was voted in, in a country of around 69 million people, by 81,326 (57.4% of the total gaggle) Conservative members. A tiny group, overwhelmingly old, posh, white, male, anti-Europe, anti-immigrant, anti-environment – pro-fossil fuels, backward-looking nationalists. A crazy bunch operating within a dysfunctional system that, like much of the UK parliamentary structure and the primordial electoral model, desperately needs reforming.

      • Counter PunchChina is the World’s Largest Economy: Get Over It

        Here’s the picture.

      • Common DreamsAs Migrants Confirm They Were Misled, Calls for Prosecution of DeSantis and Abbott Grow

        Amid confirmed reports that many of the migrants sent to Martha's Vineyard last week by DeSantis had been misled by officials in Florida about the nature of their trip, immigration rights legal aides have said they intend to push for legal action to stop such abuses. As the New York Times reports:

      • Misinformation/Disinformation

        • New York TimesHow Russian [Astroturfers] Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step

          More than four million people around the United States had taken part, experts later estimated, placing it among the largest single-day protests in the nation’s history.

          But then something shifted, seemingly overnight. What she saw on Twitter that Monday was a torrent of focused grievance that targeted her. In 15 years as an activist, largely advocating for the rights of Muslims, she had faced pushback, but this was of a different magnitude. A question began to form in her mind: Do they really hate me that much?

          That morning, there were things going on that Ms. Sarsour could not imagine.

          More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

        • Counter PunchErasing QAnon Fascism: A Case Study in Black Comedy

          In sum, Trump has posted QAnon related content more than 150 times between 2020 and 2022, and across multiple social media venues. It strains credulity to argue that one can accidentally post QAnon content 150 times. These posts are deliberate, and Trump is clearly part of a political community that’s committed to normalizing the QAnon movement and its values.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Counter PunchBanned in the USA

        Most efforts to curtail access to books involves younger readers at schools and public libraries. There are recurrent themes to such challenges that result in the muting of voices from outside the so-called “mainstream” of American society. According to the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, the top ten most challenged books in recent years are by or about marginalized peoples, including BIPOC and LQBTQIA+ authors and characters; these books typically address complex, challenging issues such as sexuality, abuse, and violence; or they simply use profanity. Some of the books reference traumatic realities in people’s lives, others question the societal status quo on issues from police violence to heteronormativity or identity politics. Regardless, all are important works of literature, including many artistic and broadly appealing comics that have something to teach us, especially in educational settings. However, increasingly, parents and local community members around the country disagree.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • CoryDoctorow[Repost] Spotify steals from artists, a Spotify exclusive: More Chokepoint Capitalism stunt-publishing.

        You've probably heard about the pathetic sums that creators earn from the Spotify streaming, often blamed on the tech industry's unwillingness to pay creators what they're worth. Maybe you've also heard the rebuttal – that Spotify pays plenty to entertainment companies, but they intercept this money before it can get into creators' pockets.

        That right there is the false binary – either Spotify is cheap, or the Big Three record labels are greedy. But what if – and hear me out here – Spotify is cheap and the Big Three are greedy? What if Spotify and the labels are actually colluding to rip off the "talent"? What if neither kind of monopolist is good for artists, and no matter how much we love them, they'll never truly love us back?

      • [Old] Security Analysis of Remote Attestation [PDF]

        Remote attestation is a method by which a host (client) authenticates it’s hardware and software configuration to a remote host (server). The goal of remote attestation is to enable a remote system (challenger) to determine the level of trust in the integrity of platform of another system (attestator). The architecture for remote attestation consists of two major components: Integrity measurement architecture and remote attestation protocol.

        The remote attestation protocol proposed by IBM [3] is vulnerable to Man-In-The-Middle attack.

        We propose a modified version of the protocol that is secure. We have implemented a model of our proposed protocol on Murphi [7] to analyse the security properties of the protocol. This report describes the design of our protocol and it’s analysis using Murphi. We conclude that our proposed protocol is secure under certain assumptions of trust and can be used for remote attestation.

    • Monopolies

      • Cory DoctorowStructural Adjustment
      • [Old] Locus MagazineCory Doctorow: Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability

        The modern epidemic of tolerance for monopolies began 40 years ago, in the Reagan years, and every administration since has waved through blatantly anticompetitive mergers and turned a blind eye to grossly anticompetitive acts. The story of how this came to pass is tawdry and oft-told: it’s the tale of how switching competition law’s enforcement to focus on “consumer welfare” (low prices) destroyed labor markets, national resiliency, and the credibility of democratic institutions. It’s the story of how control over industries dwindled to a handful of powerful people who captured their regulators and got themselves deputized as arms of the government.

        That’s the story of how we got here. Now let’s talk about where we’re going.

      • TruthOutGoogle and Amazon Workers Demand End to Contract That Fuels Israeli Apartheid
      • Copyrights

        • [Old] Gizmodo20 Years Of Copyright Wars

          P2P users didn’t care. They just moved from “platforms” to “protocols”, switching to increasingly decentralized systems like Gnutella and BitTorrent – systems that, in turn, eliminated their own central points of failure in a relentless drive to trackerlessness.

          P2P users interpreted the law as damage and routed around it. What they didn’t do, for the most part, was develop a political consciousness. If “P2P users” were a political party, they could have elected a president. Instead, they steered clear of politics, committing the original sin of nerd hubris: “Our superior technology makes your inferior laws irrelevant.”

          P2P users may not have been interested in politics, but politics was interested in P2P users. The record industry sued 19,000 kids, singling out young P2P developers for special treatment. For example, there was the college Computer Science major who maintained a free software package called FlatLAN, that indexed the shared files on any local network. The labels offered him a settlement: if he changed majors and gave up programming computers, they wouldn’t seek $150,000 in statutory damages for each track in his MP3 collection.

        • Creative CommonsBetter Internet for a Decentralized Web: Conversations from Camp

          A few weeks ago, Catherine Stihler and I had the opportunity to attend DWeb Camp, a conference focused on the decentralized web that brings together a community of people around a set of collaboratively developed principles. The camp was a mix of conference and extracurricular sessions with extremely diverse and rigorous programming, balanced by free time to enjoy the outdoors.

        • Torrent FreakUnsealed Court Records Unveil Columbia Pictures' 'Timeless' Anti-Piracy Secrets

          In the wake of the Hotfile lawsuit, the Motion Picture Association asked the court to keep some anti-piracy information forever out of the public eye. That was too long for Judge Williams who, after a slight delay, unsealed the contested documents last week. Among other things, the information reveals that for infringing video content to be flagged, it must exceed a certain duration.

        • Torrent FreakPiracy Advertising Researchers Fall Victim to Ransomware Attacks

          New research shared by the entertainment industry-backed Digital Citizens Alliance finds that 12% of all ads on pirate streaming sites are linked to malware. The problem is so bad that the researchers fell prey to multiple ransomware attacks. Intriguingly, the findings also suggest that pirate sites are 'safer' than before, although that greatly depends on which studies you look at.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • A story about information and memory

        This is a story that I have encountered myself. I wrote about it in my journal, but for reasons that should be clear when reading this, the public version will be censored somewhat. However, it is not necessary to tell the story.

      • Frustrating weekend

        This weekend sucked. I had absolutely no reason to be at the dance performance on Saturday (i.e. it was a huge waste of my time), I’m dreading going to work because of my boss, and the cat dumped a glass of water on my laptop.

        My boss and I got off on the wrong foot, so I’ve been trying to compensate for the shite working relationship — it’s difficult to shrug it off when he berated me on my eighth day of employment for something that happened before I had signed an employment agreement. I’ll see what he has to say tomorrow, and if it’s more bulshytt● I’ll just roll my eyes.

        My boss and I got off on the wrong foot, so I’ve been trying to compensate for the shite working relationship — it’s difficult to shrug it off when he berated me on my eighth day of employment for something that happened before I had signed an employment agreement. I’ll see what he has to say tomorrow, and if it’s more bulshytt● I’ll just roll my eyes.

    • Technical

      • Science

        • HackadaySolar Flare Quiets A Quarter Of The Globe

          In the “old” days, people were used to the idea that radio communication isn’t always perfect. AM radio had cracks and pops and if you had to make a call with a radiophone, you expected it to be unreliable and maybe even impossible at a given time. Modern technology,€  satellites, and a host of other things have changed and now radio is usually super reliable and high-fidelity. Usually. However, a magnitude 7.9 solar flare this week reminded radio users in Africa and the Middle East that radio isn’t always going to get through. At least for about an hour.


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



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