9 This week was quite busy with lots of great announcements, starting with the ability of Linux kernel 6.1 on Ubuntu and the new wallpaper competition for the upcoming Lunar Lobster release, the end of life of the Linux 6.0 kernel series, and a new flavor of the upcoming Unity 7.7 desktop environment with Wayland support.
On top of that, System76 teased us with a beefed-up Pangolin Linux laptop, Canonical released more kernel security updates for all supported Ubuntu releases, and MX Linux 21 users finally received the Xfce 4.18 desktop environment. Below, you can enjoy these and much more in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for January 15th, 2023.
Since the system is now very mature, the changes and innovations are more likely to be found under the hood, between the release of Kodi 19 in February 2021 the community has nearly 4,000 commits submitted to the developers. On Wiki for newcomers can be found here. alternatives? There are sure to be some. Including Plex or Jellyfin. And if you’re on the go with the Apple TV, you can also take a look at Infuse.
It's Time! We are pleased to present the latest release of Kodi, v20 "Nexus".
With over 4,600 commits since v19 "Matrix" was released on February 19th, 2021, this has been a huge effort. Thanks go out to our team members, and everyone in our community who sent a pull request, tested and gave feedback, or provided support to users on the forum. We appreciate your contribution to making Kodi better.
Kodi is a cross-platform open-source media player developed by the Kodi Foundation that offers a plethora of features.
Its previous major release was Kodi 19 'Matrix' which came almost two years ago.
Now, an improved release is here, called Kodi 'Nexus'. It promises several new features and improvements.
Let's take a look at those.
KODI is a free and open-source media player software application. It allows users to play and view most streaming media, such as videos, music, podcasts, and videos from the internet, as well as all standard digital media files from local and network storage media.
A new version of Kodi arrives, code-named Kodi 20.0 "Nexus", bringing modern AV1 media streaming support and more.
While Autodesk develops many high quality applications they are proprietary software. And the vast majority of their products are not available for Linux. This series looks at the best free and open source alternatives.
MotionBuilder is 3D character animation software. The software is designed for virtual cinematography, motion capture, and traditional keyframe animation. Capture, edit, and play back complex animations.
MotionBuilder is available for Linux but it’s proprietary software. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives.
There have been attempts to overcome these shortcomings of string templating systems via adding features like autoescaping. However, these features have the shortcoming that often the kind of escaping needed is context-dependent. For example, the escaping required in an HTML attribute value is different from the escaping required in an HTML element body, which is in itself different from the escaping required for a query string parameter value inside an URL inside an HTML attribute value. Thus, all autoescaping systems are forced to choose between two possible approaches: [...]
Before laying out my question, let me put it into context. It seems that lately attackers are more successful by targeting administrators or developers than attacking the actual deployments and servers. Meanwhile some attacks social engineer employees into credential theft or reset, other attacks go after operational credentials that are used in semi-automated operations or development scripts.
To be clear, I don't want to focus on the issue of secure online credential management (I hope we all use some form of password manager), or the security of online authentication protocols (even OAuth seems to be lacking), or the security of MFAs, not even the security of cloud API keys that are actively used by unattended running services (if the attacker has compromised the actual server he most likely already has access to all the sensitive data he wants).
What I want to focus on is those credentials that are used mainly for semi-automated operational or development scripts. Like for example AWS secret keys used to deploy or to gain access to the underlying buckets or backups; or passwords used to access the SQL database for maintenance; or other such secrets that are used outside the browser or specialized applications like SSH.
Also, let's assume we are speaking in the context of a small company with at most 10 employees. Large companies probably have 10 people on the security team tasked only with this topic, thus perhaps this problem is solved in more complex ways.
Using a french keyboard, it can be complicated having to type in US layout through the VNC connections of Cloud VM providers or a virtualisation software console.
Here’re a couple of shell commands that permit installing Slackware Linux using the SSH daemon that ships on the installer image.
The git rebase command allows you to adjust the history of your Git repository. It's a useful feature, but of course, mistakes can be made. As is usually the case with Git, you can repair your error and restore your repository to a former state. To recover from an unsuccessful rebase, use the git reflog command.
In a previous article, I described how JMeter has built-in support for HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, and other common protocols and has a plug-in extension mechanism.
Through plug-ins, you can support much more than just what's built-in, including MQTT.
MQTT is a mainstream protocol in the IoT world. Although it is not a protocol type that comes with JMeter, it is extremely common in IoT testing scenarios. In order to support the load testing of the MQTT protocol, EMQ developed a JMeter-based open source testing plug-in for the MQTT protocol.
This article introduces how to use the MQTT plug-in in JMeter.
Transferring text from Ubuntu to Android using a Bash script is a powerful and efficient way to automate the process of transferring text between devices. Bash scripts are a powerful tool that can be used to automate repetitive tasks, and can be used to create simple and complex programs.
Swap the kubectl command for OpenShift's oc tool to speed up daily tasks and testing in Kubernetes.
Is your computer is getting tired from running multiple kind clusters? Learn how to run remote clusters as if they were local.
Nvidia graphics drivers allow Linux users to enjoy an unparalleled experience running graphical applications and games on their systems. For instance, they provide a stable environment for Nvidia GPUs and keep up with the necessary changes by including support for the newest releases of OpenGL and CUDA. To ensure Linux users can take full advantage of what’s available, this guide walks you through installing such drivers on Rocky Linux 9 or Rocky Linux 8. Whether you’re a gamer who needs better frame rates or a professional designer who relies on computing power, having up-to-date Nvidia drivers will always give you the best experience.
If you’re working on a Rocky Linux system, you may need to install missing Linux kernel headers to build and install specific software. This guide demonstrates installing the missing kernel headers on Rocky Linux 9 and Rocky Linux 8 distributions.
As a system administrator, you may want to look for various information on your workstation or server system, such as how long the system has been running.
This way, you can keep track of the system resources and optimize based on your usage. Unfortunately, the uptime command used to get this information only returns information for the current session.
Surprisingly, you have an external tuptime command-line tool that can offer you historical and statistical uptime information for your Linux system.
Valve released a fresh build of Proton Experimental on January 13th which€ include a few notable improvements across various games for Steam Deck and Linux desktop.
Story-based games are always people’s favorite gaming genre as they offer a captivating and immersive gaming experience that keeps players engaged for hours. These games combine engaging storylines with challenging gameplay and engaging characters, that’s just perfect for players who love a good narrative gaming story. You are probably on the right track if you are interested in learning about the best story games for Android. Today, we’ll talk about exactly this genre so that you can be introduced to some exciting games to try.
The Atari 2600 was an extremely popular yet very simple game console back in the 1970s. They sold, apparently, over 30 million of them, and, of course, these things broke. We’d get calls from friends and — remember, back then normal people weren’t computer savvy — nine times out of ten, we’d ask them to swap the controllers to show them it was a bad controller, and problem solved. But if you did have to open one up, it was surprising how little there was inside, as [Steve] notes in his recent teardown.
In just a few days time, Google’s Stadia game streaming service will finally shut down for good. But not for any technical reason, mind you. Microsoft has managed to demonstrate that streaming modern games over home and even mobile Internet connections is viable with their immensely popular Game Pass Ultimate service, and NVIDIA is making similar inroads with GeForce Now. No, like so many of Google’s failed experiments, they’ve simply decided they don’t want to play anymore and are taking their proverbial ball home back with them.
Logging out and back in again, and subsequent reboots from this point, and everything seemed fine. However, I noticed the shadows around windows were no longer present. I had some subtle wobbly windows effects turned on before as well, and these types of effects have stopped as well.
MX Linux 21.3 “Wildflower” has been released over the weekend bringing bug fixes, kernel, and application updates. Notably, MX Linux is now based on the latest Debian 11.6 base and comes with Xfce 4.18 which was released in December. As a point release, MX-21 users needn’t bother reinstalling MX Linux to get this update, instead, you can just apply all the available updates.
For those just hearing about MX Linux, it’s rated first on Distrowatch’s page hit rankings, meaning it’s one of the most looked-into distros by Linux users. It offers Xfce, KDE, and Fluxbox editions and aims to offer a good feature set while not bogging the computer’s resources down. Its Debian base also makes it a very stable choice.
On the tech@ mailing list, Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) has issued a request for testing of patch(es) for execute-only (xonly) binaries on amd64. The message is quite long, but well worth reading in its entirety for those interested. Selected highlights include: [...]
If you’ve had the occasion to visit a museum, you might have used a touchscreen monitor with useful information and insights of the items on display. Or if you’ve attended a public library, you might have used a workstation with a browser or a software aimed to the consultation of the book’s catalog. Or even in public places like train stations or public squares, you might have spotted big screens or televisions where you can see advertisement videos, or interacted with them in order to obtain information and services. These devices are kiosks. They are locked down environments, generally running a full screen application.
Under the hood there is usually a small PC (maybe a fan-less device or a so called industrial PC, capable of staying powered on without issues for long periods of time) or perhaps a Raspberry Pi. Many times they are powered by Linux!
If you have a large collection of eBooks, you probably use Calibre - it's simply the best bit of cross-platform software for managing your library. It runs rock-solid on Linux.
In case you thought IBM AIX had a future, IBM's legacy proprietary Unix, IBM apparently doesn't. The Register reported Friday that IBM has moved the entire AIX development group to IBM India, apparently their Bangalore office, and placing 80 US-based developers into "redeployment." That's a fairly craven way of replacing layoffs with musical chairs, requiring the displaced developers to either find a new position within the company (possibly relocating as well) within some unspecified period, or retire. About a third of IBM's global staff is on the Indian subcontinent. IBM didn't publicly announce this move and while it's undoubtedly good news for IBM India it seems bad news for AIX's prospects: the technologies IBM thinks are up and coming IBM tends to spend money on, and so an obvious cost-cutting move suggests IBM doesn't think AIX is one of those things.
SRE (site reliability engineering) is a field defined by its constant evolution – from Google’s in-house secret recipe to the hottest new practice for the biggest enterprises to a diverse and holistic mentality practiced by companies of all sizes.
In our State of SRE survey, we predicted that the skillsets and responsibilities of people in the SRE position would become more diverse in 2022. Indeed, we’ve seen SREs fill more roles beyond development and operations, with some SREs focusing entirely on process, strategy, or culture. This expansion of SRE has led to an even more significant potential for what the field can accomplish. We’re excited to speculate on what 2023 will bring for SRE.
Cloud optimisation enables organisations to significantly lower their cloud spending while ensuring the desired performance and necessary compliance. It’s a process that every business should adopt when choosing cloud infrastructure as a foundation for their applications. It’s been proven that applying cloud optimisation best practices leads to a total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction of two-thirds under certain circumstances.€
But let’s step back for a second. How exactly does cloud optimisation help you avoid high costs? What exactly does it involve? And finally, why should you care about your cloud spending at all? These are all critical questions. Questions that deserve good answers. Let’s answer them as best as we can.
“Canonical’s solution was a third of the price of the other proposals we’d received. The solution is also proving to be highly cost-effective, both from CAPEX and OPEX perspectives.”
The enclosure support wall mounting, but Aetina also offers a DIN rail mounting kit upon request. All four models of the embedded system look to be identical with just different NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX or Orin Nano modules. There’s no mention of the OS used, but we can safely assume the embedded computer will run Ubuntu 20.04-based NVIDIA JetPack, and the company also tells us their AIE platforms support their EdgeEye platform for real-time remote monitoring of edge devices.
Aetina says the Jetson Orin NX-based systems should become available in February 2023, while the Jetson Orin Nano embedded computers will be available in March. More details may be found on the product page, and the press release also includes additional information about other larger Jetson Orin Nano and Orin NX systems with an extra M.2 B-Key for LTE/5G function expansion.
This month, Vecow introduced the ECX-3000 which is a Workstation-grade fanless embedded system compatible with 13th/12th Gen Intel processors and Intel 600 Series Chipset. This rugged embedded system is equipped with up to 8x 2.5GbE LAN ports with 4x PoE, 5G connectivity, Wi-Fi6 and extensive storage support.
The first thing I did was research to see what is out there. I wanted to know what other ââ¬Å½people have tried or if there are commercially available products that can do this sort of ââ¬Å½thing. I came across a video on the Lock Picking Lawyer YouTube channel. He ââ¬Å½demonstrated a safe combination auto dialer that appeared to be a commercial product, ââ¬Å½but if you look closely at the chuck, you’ll see some 3D-printed parts. I did some ââ¬Å½digging and found a similar device with a price tag of $6k for sale! I really liked the ââ¬Å½simplicity of this design but, Levy isn’t going to fork over that kind of cash to open his ââ¬Å½safe. My plan is to replicate the design and features of this commercial product. I will ââ¬Å½also publish the CAD, code, and other design files as open source if others want to ââ¬Å½build their own and improve on my prototype.
As expected, Sipeed has now launched the Sipeed M0S IoT module based on Bouffalo Lab BL616 RISC-V microcontroller with 2.4 GHz WiFi 6, BLE 5.2, and Zigbee connectivity along with the “Sipeed M0S Dock” development board.
The M0S is a tiny module (11Ãâ10 mm) with a 320 MHz wireless MCU, a ceramic antenna, and castellated holes for I/Os, and the Sipeed M0S Dock places the module on an easy-to-use board with a USB Type-C port, a BOOT button, and a 12-pin 2.54mm pitch header.
We’ve seen our share of custom PCBs here on Hackaday, but they aren’t always pretty. If you want to bring your PCB aesthetics up a notch, [Ian Dunn] has put together a guide for those wanting to get into PCB art.
I have really enjoyed experimenting with the gopher protocol—and bending Jekyll to my will to actually serve up my phlog—but in the move to managed hosting for my personal website, gopher simply didn't make the cut. If Cloudflare ever decides to support non-HTTP protocols in their Pages product, then I may come back to it some day. But for now... it's time to say farewell.
As I reported during the beta stage, Mozilla Firefox 109 implements a new Unified Extensions button in the toolbar that acts as a container for all your installed (and enabled) add-ons, making your toolbar tidier and easier to manage add-ons from one place.
All the add-ons that are listed in the new Unified Extensions button will have a settings icon next to them so you can more easily access their options, pin them on the toolbar, remove or report them, as well as to manage them in the built-in Add-Ons Manager.
On December 2022, the faculty of engineering from the University of Entre Rios, represented by the dean Diego Campana and the head of the school of Public Health, Fernando Sassetti, formalized the agreement with the president of the Lejeune foundation in Argentina, Luz Morano.
Sure, that may not happen anytime soon. But it does not hurt to be optimistic about supporting new projects.
[...]
Now, I have stumbled upon another editor, "ecode". The project's author mentions that it takes inspiration from editors like Lite XL.
The field of automation AI is rapidly growing and there are several popular programming languages that are used to develop AI and machine learning applications. These languages include Python, Java, C++, R, and JavaScript. Each language has its own strengths and weaknesses and is suitable for different types of AI projects.
The trend that I particularly see over the next years is the increasing integration of programming languages, such as the introduction of C++ in R, or using Java or Python through R for the past years, and integrating packages from other languages (such as Rust) in R rather than writing everything in R.
Description: R users sometimes hear about the fabulous advantages of Python for advanced data science and modelling. While these claims are regularly exaggerated, it never hurts to be able to use more tools. This workshop will teach you to use Python together with R in the same project. That way, you can keep using the data science tool chain you already know and like in R (e.g., data processing and plotting), while employing tools from the Python world where needed, for example, for modelling. The workshop will include unsupervised machine learning with scikit-learn and BERTopic. We use the excellent reticulate package in a quarto+RStudio workflow to accomplish this, yet the knowledge is transferable to other tools.
I would know, because I re-implemented it on my own feed here recently, and have had a few emails from people claiming it broke their readers! In the case of a few parsers, the title for the entire channel was overwritten with the title of that textInput block, suggesting they’re incorrectly parsing any title in a channel header.
Local publication Vlast reported on January 16 that the restaurant chain Delicious, Full Stop, which replaced McDonaldüs in Russia, had applied for the registration of its trademarks in Kazakhstan. This, according to the Ministry of Justice.
What better way to ring in the new year than with [iSax Laboratories]’ charming little project that replaces a doorbell with a Maneki-Neko cat figurine to ring a physical bell?
Thanks to Home Assistant, automating the various systems that run your home is easier than ever. But you still need to make a connection between those systems and your Home Assistant setup, which can be tricky if the manufacturer didn’t have this use case in mind. When [Simon] wanted to automate his home heating system, he discovered that most Home Assistant-enabled thermostats that he could find didn’t support his two separate heating zones connected to a single boiler. The easiest solution turned out to be to design his own.
Baroness Beeban Kidron, who has campaigned for social media reform, said the Telegraph investigation showed that “social media platforms were wilfully disregarding harms to children”.
“These platforms have fuelled anxiety and depression among a staggering number of young people, and in some cases cost them their lives”, she added.
A 9.8 severity vulnerability in Control Web Panel, previously known as CentOS Web Panel, allows an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary shell commands through a very simple mechanism. Although readily patched, security organizations are reporting it is under active exploit.
That last action was their undoing. This is what gets me about these sorts of attacks: they’re always brought down by greed. Once you tell enough people about a scheme, word of it will make its way to the top. They would have earned less keeping the number of cabbies who knew about it to a minimum, but they may have continued to get away with it for years.
If you're keen to keep your online activities to yourself then Tor is a great option and well worth adding to your privacy toolkit.
Tor is a custom browser, which comes complete with clever open-source technology that uses some very smart tricks to protect your web anonymity.
The film director discusses his documentary “MLK / FBI” on J. Edgar Hoover’s sickening surveillance of the civil rights hero.
He was questioned under section nine of the Terrorism Act 2006, which created an offence “of making or possessing a radioactive device or possessing radioactive material with the intention of using it” in the commission or preparation of an act of terrorism.
The use of the section is incredibly rare.
Operations by armed groups, violent extremists and criminal networks forced the closure of more than 10 000 schools, with millions of children affected, and some 7 000 health centres.
These non-state groups are fighting among themselves for supremacy and control of resources, she said, which is pushing States to the margin and causing untold misery to millions who have fled elsewhere to safety.
War is a language of lies. Cold and callous, it emanates from dull, technocratic minds, draining life of color. It is an institutional offense to the human spirit. The Pentagon speaks the language of war. The President and the Congress speak the language of war. Corporations speak the language of war. They sap us of outrage and courage and the appreciation of beauty. They commit a carnage of the soul.
Take for example the recent report issued by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) entitled “The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan.” This “Think Tank” conducted 24 iterations of wargames whereby China invades Taiwan. The U.S. and its allies respond. The result each time: No one wins. Not really.
Small bands of protesters, or no antiwar protesters are like poison to a war resister. When the recent€ New York Times€ obituary of Dr. Willard Gaylin€ appeared, there was absolutely no mention of his landmark work (War Resisters in Prison, 1970) with war resisters during the Vietnam War. Singer-songwriters who wrote anthems to antiwar protest go silent about today’s wars or nearly choke on€ questions about the meaning of an old song measured against today’s endless wars. Banners hung from telephone polls in communities depicting soldiers from past wars also tell part of the story of militarism. Where are the banners hoisted to teachers, social workers, and the average Jane or Joe trying to survive through hard work? The death threats against protesters who assembled in front of the federal building in Providence, Rhode Island at the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 are yet another reminder, as were the nightly segments on local news programs about soldiers who had died since the beginning of that war. Tributes to those who died in war is not negative, but measured against power structures in the US that refused to accept the Taliban’s offer to turn Bin Laden over to the US, casts the entire war in a different light. The composition of the forces that answered the 2001 attacks was the subject of much debate regarding its socio-economic nature. No historical context for the US role in Afghanistan was ever€ presented in the mass media.
The disappearance of antiwar protest during Barack Obama’s so-called troop surge in Afghanistan is yet another of the endless reminders of unbridled militarism. The list is endless, but points to the mass acceptance of war and the preparations for war, a phenomenon that Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke eloquently about in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in 1967. Recall what the€ late historian Howard Zinn said about Barack Obama and militarism:€ “I wish President Obama would listen carefully to Martin Luther King.”€ It is all familiar and war has become normalized with the trillion dollar outlays for war in the Biden administration and the disappearance of criticisms of war in the mass media about the war in Ukraine.
It was the guacamole’s fault!
That’s the guy’s defense, anyway — that plus his right to carry four handguns, an AR-15 and a 12-guage shotgun into a supermarket in Atlanta. Oh yeah, and he was wearing body armor. This was in March 2021, barely a week after an actual mass shooting at several massage parlors in Atlanta, in which eight people were killed. And it was only two days after a mass shooting at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, where 10 people were killed.
A year to the day before his assassination, Martin Luther King publicly and decisively denounced not only the US war in Vietnam but the militarism that enabled the war and undermined American society. King’s€ Beyond Vietnam€ sermon, delivered on April 4, 1967, at New York’s Riverside Church, was as predictive as it was powerful and prophetic. Its meaning and value exist today as much as they did nearly 55 years ago.
King rightfully tied together the overarching and commanding militarism of the US with the economic, societal and cultural demons plaguing America. Much as President Dwight Eisenhower had done in his€ farewell€ address six years earlier, King set about to make clear the insidious nature of the reality of that militarism through not only overseas warfare and a controlling military-industrial complex but the demeaning and diminishing effects it had on the American people. King understood and communicated the war in Vietnam as “a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” The shameful and hideous deaths it brought overseas were the substance of America’s wreckage. He summarized his purposes in opposing the war in Vietnam as an attempt to save America’s soul.
The MLK tributes are sure to pour on the anniversary of the civil rights hero's death, but don't expect them to acknowledge his anti-militarist ideals.
Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has created the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. While millions of Ukrainian refugees have since returned home, almost 2.9 million moved to Russia, according to October 2022 figures, and roughly 7.9 million were registered across Europe between February and December 27, 2022. Besides Russia, Poland (1.5 million), Germany (1 million), and the Czech Republic (474,731) have welcomed the largest numbers of Ukrainian refugees, while Italy, Spain, France, Romania, and the UK have also accepted more than 100,000 each.
There is little reason to suggest many Ukrainian refugees will return home soon. A June survey by polling group Rating, for example, found that 24 percent of Ukrainian refugees wanted to return but were waiting for a certain time, 48 percent said they would return after the end of the war, and 8 percent said they would not go back to Ukraine. A German government-backed survey from December 2022, meanwhile, found that around 37 percent of Ukrainian refugees wanted to settle in the country permanently or at least for the next few years.
The furore over Prince Harry’s much-criticised remarks about his role as a helicopter pilot in the war in Afghanistan in 2012 reveals more about his critics than they do about him. Much of the abuse is hysterical or attention-grabbing, but it stems also from British amnesia about the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In his book, Harry writes that “Afghanistan was a war of mistakes, a war of enormous collateral damage – thousands of innocents killed and maimed and that always haunted us”’
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he considers the dynamics that have developed in the combat zone in Ukraine to be “positive,” according to an interview the president gave to journalist Pavel Zarubin, for the “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” program on network Russia 1. Putin’s words were a response to Zarubin’s observation that “there’s news from Soledar.”
Three people have been killed and 16 wounded, according to the latest tally, by ammunition detonating at a Russian base at the Tonenkoye farm, in the Korochansky district of the Belgorod region. Interfax reports, citing emergency services, that an additional eight people are missing.
Russian and Belarusian air force units have begun joint exercises on Belarus’s territory, the Belarusian Defense Ministry reported on Monday.
“This is a betrayal of present and future generations... Germany is one of the biggest polluters in the world and needs to be held accountable,” Thunberg said on a podium, after she marched with a cardboard sign saying in German “Lützi stays,” using a shortened name of the village.
First things first, I’ll explain why any of this would make any sense. You cannot just rent a field, fill it with solar panels (assuming the farmer lets you, and planning permission is granted), and make a pile of money. Its not that simple. (And trust me: none of that is simple). The main problem you face is the grid connection. Basically solar farms go in fields, so we are already limited to relatively rural locations. This means that the land is large enough, and also its not going to upset too many people. Our site is surrounded by fields and hills and generally…nothing, so there were zero objections. This is all good news.
Alexander Brazhnikov, executive director of the Russian Association of Cryptoindustry and Blockchain told Vedomosti that the Central Bank of Iran is considering the creation of a stablecoin with the Russian Federation as a means of payment in foreign trade transactions.
Part 1: The context of extreme financial devaluations
The World Economic Forum is meeting in Davos this week. The gathering of many of the wealthiest corporate elites and state leaders compels consideration of directions global capitalist chaos may take us in 2023. What lessons did we learn from the devaluation of so many economic assets – including the lead plutocrats’ own wealth – in 2022, amidst so much geopolitical, environmental and socio-economic suffering?
I’m fortunate to be able to attend this week of public programming, alongside Brigitte Vézina, CC’s Director of Policy and Open Culture. We recognize the privilege of representing CC, and look forward to a week of learning, listening, and partnership. While we are in Davos, CC’s CEO Catherine Stihler is participating in this year’s launch event of the Morgridge Acceleration Program, for which she is one of twelve selected mentors.
UPDATE It is astonishing how many people are incapable of comprehending the following phrase from the article below...
There are few contemporary novelists who have explored the dark undercurrents of American society with more insight and pathos than Russell Banks, who died earlier this month.
The same day, Redmond-based Microsoft confirmed reports that it won’t renew its lease at the 26-story City Center Plaza in Bellevue when that lease ends in June 2024.
The announcements come as the continued popularity of remote work and a tech slowdown with massive layoffs have both cut into demand for office space in Seattle and elsewhere.
As the tech sector goes through ‘soft market’ changes in the office leasing space, major companies such as Facebook parent Meta and Microsoft are separately vacating their buildings in Seattle and Bellevue in Washington, according to the Seattle Times.
A soft market is a phase in the economic cycle characterised by more sellers than buyers and low prices.
The Seattle Times said on the same day, Redmond-based Microsoft confirmed reports that it won't renew its lease at the 26-story City Center Plaza in Bellevue when that lease ends in June 2024.
The ongoing work-from-home and layoffs have cut into demand for office space in Seattle and other tech cities in the US.
According to the report, the announcements by the two tech giants has brought more bad news to the office market in Seattle which is already struggling due to sluggish return of remote office workers. In downtown Seattle, the total office vacancy now stands at a low 25 per cent. The non-vacant offices are half empty because of remote work. Since last summer, the area has only seen 40 per cent of the workers present before the pandemic, a cellphone location data from Placer.ai by the Downtown Seattle Association stated.
To quickly recap the site’s journey from unknown startup to breakout among “alt-tech” apps: Rumble debuted in 2013, with founder and CEO Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian tech entrepreneur, envisioning it as a refuge for small-time creators left in the dust as YouTube prioritized its most successful influencers. For about seven years the site hosted innocuous viral fodder and aggregated news. Today, the landing page maintains sections for both cute animal videos and conventional broadcast reports, though barely anyone watches the clips shared from One America News Network, Newsmax, and Breitbart, let alone Reuters. Viewers are more drawn to stuff like conservative comedian Jeff Ahern making fat jokes about lingerie models in a segment titled “How Victoria’s Secret’s Push To Become Woke Made It A Joke.”
The Ukrainian parliament on June 19 passed a bill to ban Russian-language music as lawmakers pushed through a number of bills aimed at protecting Ukrainian culture and the country’s information space from Russian influence.
From the Dept. of Horrible Chutzpah
During the fight over the new House Speaker election, Congress member Chip Roy (R-TX), who voted against the anti-lynching act last March, had the immoral temerity to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He did so as he explained how he was positioning himself to the hardliner right of rightwing Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
I love MLK Day but hate when politicians parrot Dr. King’s prose while doing their damnest to keep his dream unrealized. His family knows and deals with this best.
Over the holiday break, I rewatched the ’60 Minutes’ interview with Coretta Scott King from Christmas Eve 1968. Mrs. King opened her home to Mike Wallace and the world only eight months after her husband’s assassination. She inspired millions, using her grief to grow the movement by letting people mourn with her.
Rebecca Gordon reminds us that this country does remain all too exceptional, even if in ways that couldn’t be more unnerving.
In his daily video address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky switched to Russian to speak to Russian citizens about the missile strike that destroyed a residential building in Dnipro on Saturday.
During its daily briefing, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that Russian troops hit Ukrainian military command and energy targets during a massive strike on the country on January 14.
Mixed martial arts fighter Georgiy Gagloev, from Beslan in the North Caucasus, was found dead in a train en route from Vladikavkaz to Moscow. TASS reports, citing sources from the sports world, that Gagloev was found during a stop in Rostov-on-Don.
One country gaining notice for how it is strengthening its digital defenses is Ghana. It is one of a handful of African countries with a national cybersecurity strategy able to track and respond to digital threats, including disinformation. The West African country jumped 40 places in the Global Cybersecurity Index in just three years, ahead of Ireland and New Zealand.
The strength of Ghana’s approach is a commitment to civic unity and freedom of expression – democratic principles that face rigorous challenges around the world as countries come to grips with the free flow of information via social media. In Ghana, cybersecurity policy is under civilian leadership and oversight. Businesses and the banking sector participate in monitoring and responding to threats. Judges and prosecutors have been specially trained to assess digital evidence.
Nigerian authorities are struggling to stem rising violence in the north and central regions where armed groups target rural communities, killing thousands and abducting people to ransom. Security forces are often outnumbered and outgunned and suspects are seldom detained, residents said.
The attacks sometimes target religious figures such as clerics. In July last year, Rev. John Mark Chietnum was killed after he was kidnapped in the northwestern Kaduna state.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed into law a controversial bill that expands the government's power to control the media, endangering press freedom and media pluralism in the country. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins its Ukrainian affiliates, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) and the Independent Media Trade Union of Ukraine (IMTUU), in calling on the government to revise the new legislation and to start a broad inclusive dialogue with journalists’ unions and the media sector.
The law expands the authority of Ukraine's state broadcasting council, meaning that it will be able to regulate all media in Ukraine. Under previous legislation, enacted in 2019 under the Zelensky government, the council has the power to issue licenses, conduct inspections, and impose sanctions on television and radio companies, Ukra News reported.
Both the European Federation of Journalists and the€ Committee to Protect Journalists have opposed the measure, and in September Ukraine’s own National Union of Journalists called the law “the biggest threat to press freedom in (Ukraine’s) independent history.”
Earlier in July, the European Federation of Journalists denounced the law, writing that “it proposes to give arbitrary and disproportionate regulatory powers to the national regulator, the National Council of Broadcasting, which would have authority not only over audiovisual media, but also over print and digital media.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and other state Democrats at a Bronx rally Saturday, just days ahead of what is sure to be a contentious confirmation hearing in which progressive lawmakers opposed to LaSalle’s appointment to lead the state Court of Appeals could be decided.
After publishing the first two editions of the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man trilogy, I was invited to speak at global summits. I met with heads of state and their top advisors from many countries. Two particularly significant venues were conferences in the summer of 2017 in Russia and Kazakhstan, where I joined an array of speakers that included major corporate CEOs, government and NGO heads such as UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and (before he invaded Ukraine) Russian President Vladimir Putin. I was asked to speak on the need to end an unsustainable economic system that’s consuming and polluting itself into extinction — a Death Economy — and replace it with a regenerative one that was beginning to evolve — a Life Economy.
The German Federal Constitutional Court has published a decision today confirming that the EPO’s appeal system provides independent and effective judicial relief, as required by the German constitution for courts of international organisations.
Pirate streaming app PikaShow made powerful enemies in 2022, including Disney, Star India, and the MPA. PikaShow's response was to sponsor the Afghan national cricket team and advertise itself on broadcast TV. According to police in India, a college student was arrested last week on suspicion of monetizing pirated TV streams via the PikaShow app.
Pirate sites are increasingly hard to find in search engines. Google has taken a series of steps to demote or remove problematic domains and it doesn't appear to be alone. Several of the most visited pirate sites have virtually no results in Bing either. According to the search engine, this isn't the result of an 'editorial decision'.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.