Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 31/07/2023: Release of MX Linux 23 “Libretto”



  • GNU/Linux

    • XDAWhat is Linux? What you need to know about distros, kernels, and more

      Linux is something you've probably heard a lot about, but might not know exactly what it is. It's hard to define because there are so many things around us that make use of Linux in some way, like your Android smartphone. Most websites use servers that run on Linux too. In other words, Linux is everywhere.

      Linux has been around since the 1990s, with the first release of the Linux kernel arriving on Sept. 17, 1991, courtesy of Linus Torvalds. Linux is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems that all make use of the Linux kernel at their core. There's more to Linux than just a kernel, though.

    • 9to5Linux9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: July 30th, 2023

      This week we got a few good news for fans of the GNOME desktop environment as the GNOME devs have held the annual GUADEC conference, announcing some exciting new features to come like a brand-new window management system for GNOME Shell.

      On top of that, Canonical announced Ubuntu RT for Intel CPUs, Mesa 23.2 graphics stack arrived for Linux gamers, Arch Linux’s installer got a major release with more new features and many improvements, and UBports released the second Ubuntu Touch update based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Reviews

      • Distro WatchReview: Solus 4.4

        Most of my experiences with Solus 4.4 were positive ones. The installer was pretty easy to get through, the live environment was nice. I like the look of Budgie and it's fairly easy to navigate. The desktop was responsive and stable, which is always a nice combination. I especially like the Budgie-specific settings panel as it's clearly organized and doesn't overwhelm the user with choices.

        Solus ships with a pretty nice collection of default software and I like the software centre. The way it handles third-party software is a little unusual and I was hoping the software centre would support Flatpak, but this doesn't appear to be the case at this time.

        There were some problems. As I mentioned above, the theme and application style are not consistent and I think the shared password approach is likely a bug as there isn't a good reason for separate accounts to share a non-root admin password. I also feel as though having two settings panels (with similar names) is likely to cause more confusion than assistance. The biggest problem though was highly unusual: my laptop's sound card not being detected. It is very rare for me to run a Linux distribution which doesn't have working sound. Some systems mute sound or don't offer a mixer control. Solus has the volume turned up, it just can't detect my sound output device on physical hardware. Inside a virtual machine audio worked without any issues.

        I was hoping that Solus would introduce some reliability features. The distribution is a rolling release and would benefit from using technologies such as Btrfs and Timeshift to allow users to rollback packages. However, Solus defaults to ext4 for the filesystem and doesn't appear to offer any graphical tools which would help us create or rollback snapshots.

        In short, Solus does a lot of things well and often looks really nice and polished with a great collection of applications. But then there are other times when components of the distribution offer a surprisingly jarring contrast or experience - themes not matching, sound not working. There were times when I would find myself considering Solus as being one of the smoother experiences I've had so far in 2023 and the next minute I'd be fuming as I tried to figure out by what logic a user should know to right-click to the right of the file manager top bar in order to open a hidden menu to find preferences that have seemingly already been changed in the settings panel. It was a weird experience and Solus's polish in some areas meant I was repeatedly caught off guard when I ran into problems or inconsistencies in other areas.

        I don't know if Solus is here to stay now, or if this is the distribution's swan song after a valiant rescue attempt earlier in the year. I'm hoping it sticks around. I think the project is doing some things well, but it feels as though it just doesn't have the development power behind it yet to make a more consistent, complete experience.

    • New Releases

      • DebugPointOld Hardware, New Possibilities: 4MLinux 43.0 STABLE Released

        Discover how 4MLinux's latest release is the perfect solution for rejuvenating your old PC or laptop. Learn about the impressive updates to XMMS, the extended language support, and the exciting range of downloadable extensions that take your computing experience to the next level.

      • 9to5LinuxMX Linux 23 “Libretto” Is Out with Linux Kernel 6.4, Based on Debian Bookworm

        Derived from the latest and greatest Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” operating system series, MX Linux 23 comes with the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel series by default for all three editions supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

        However, MX Linux’s AHS (Advanced Hardware Support) editions are powered by the latest Linux 6.4 kernel series for those who need its new features and the extra hardware support where the Linux 6.1-powered images fail to detect your hardware.

    • BSD

      • Ruben SchadeWhats the worst advice you’ve received?

        But if you’re able to spend the time building a system optimised for it, and you understand it well, you reap the rewards. Unlike me, who had to spend his Saturday fixing iptables rules for someone because I gave them Debian a few years ago for something for which FreeBSD would have been perfect.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Naman SoodGetting your SD card to detect on a Nintendo 2DS/3DS

        Note that this doesn’t just mean your partition should be formatted as FAT32. It should be formatted as FAT32, and also there’s a “partition type” byte inside your MBR that should be changed to FAT32. On a Linux system with fdisk, this is how you’d do that: [...]

      • Linux GizmosAdvantech and MOV.AI Collaborate to Simplify Mobile Robot Development

        Advantech recently announced its partnership with the robotics software solutions provider MOV.AI to simplify the development of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). One of the new Advantech PCs compatible with MOV.AI’s Robotic Platform is the UNO-238-V2 built on various Alder Lake processors.

      • Linux GizmosNanoS3 is a tiny module based on the ESP32-S3 SoC

        The NanoS3 is described as the “world’s smallest, fully-featured ESP32-S3 module”. The open-source device is packed with diverse features including LiPo battery support and it’s compatible with programming platforms such as Arduino, MicroPython, etc.

      • Linux GizmosAAEON’s New SBCs Utilize Alder Lake-N Processors

        This week, AAEON revealed a new Single Board Computer based on the Intel Processor N-Series platform. The UP 7000 still maintains the credit-card form factor as its predecessors, but now supports LPPR5 system memory along with various peripherals

      • HackadayAn Open-Source, Free Circuit Simulator

        The original circuit simulation software, called the Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis, or SPICE as it is more commonly known, was originally developed at the University of Califorina Berkeley in the 1970s with an open-source license. That’s the reason for the vast versions of SPICE available now decades after the original was released, not all of which are as open or free as we might like. LTspice is a popular choice but as far as a truly free and open-source circuit simulator goes you might want to try out QucsStudio.

      • HackadayA New Educational Robotics Platform

        When looking for electronics projects to use in educational settings, there is no shortage of simple, lightweight, and easily-accessible systems to choose from. From robotic arms, drones, walking robots, and wheeled robots, there is a vast array of options. But as technology marches on, the robotics platforms need to keep up as well. This turtle-style wheeled robot called the Trundlebot uses the latest in affordable microcontrollers on a relatively simple, expandable platform for the most up-to-date educational experience.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Undeadlyrpki-client 8.5 released

      Version 8.5 of rpki-client, OpenBSD's implementation of the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) for Relying Parties (RP), has been released.

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer)WordPress in SeaMonkey, Firefox Troubles in Fedora, “GoogleWeb”, American Decline, and Matthew Garrett “Collaborator” and “Conference Pervert”

        So I had to get 10 whole RPMs downloaded and unpacked because Mozilla is bumping the version number uselessly and Fedora keeps shitting out one patch releases where the patch itself is quite broken and then they go back and patch it three more times.

        So I finally yanked it out with dnf remove firefox and installed Firefox 115 ESR from the Mozilla tarball and set it up with their instructions for a systemwide install and then unpacked a firefox.desktop from a Fedora RPM that sits in my taskbar with extras like “New Private Window”.

        Then I sat down and turned off and hid the DRM and spyware (like “Firefox Suggest”) all over again, and installed my add-ons. Hopefully, I get less update churn this way.

      • Mozilla

        • DebugPointWaterfox Browser Cuts Ties with System1, Embarks on a New Journey

          In a major announcement, Waterfox, the privacy-centric web browser, has reclaimed its independence, marking a significant turning point in its journey. On July 3, 2023, Alex Kontos, the creator and lead developer of Waterfox, revealed that the browser has parted ways with System1, once again becoming a fully independent project.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • Fernando BorrettiYou Need More Constraints

        In general you should enforce every invariant you can tractably enforce. Most of these you can come up with while designing the database, and following a checklist (such as this post) can help. Some of them you will only come up with after the fact, looking at the data, and often wonder why you didn’t think of them.

        In either case, adding a constraint is not too time consuming, it’s just a matter of creating a migration and writing the DDL. The only tedious part is the verbosity of SQL, but GitHub Copilot is really good at this. You can write a comment explaining what you want and it usually gets the constraint right.

        You should start with the strictest possible data model, because it’s trivial to go from strict to lax: you just drop the constraints. But it is very, very hard to go from lax to strict, often it involves days or weeks or months of planning and schema migrations and data migrations.

    • FSFE

    • Programming/Development

      • Carl SchwanDebugging the keyboard navigation in your QML application

        A neat trick to debug the keyboard navigation in your QML application is to put the following code snippet in your main.qml: [...]

      • Adolfo OchagavíaLow latency logging in Rust

        Note: this blog post was not written by me. It was posted as a comment on r/rust by user matthieum, who gave me permission to repost it here. Everything below this paragraph has been taken verbatim from there.

      • RlangQuantum Entanglement

        Welcome back to our quantum journey! Today, we’re delving into a phenomenon that lies at the heart of quantum computing’s unique power – entanglement. At a high level, quantum entanglement is the deep and mysterious link that can exist between two qubits, no matter the distance that separates them. This powerful feature allows quantum computers to process a massive number of possibilities at once and solve certain problems much faster than classical computers.

        But how do we get there? We’ll start by exploring two-qubit gates, the essential quantum operations that can bring about entanglement. The most common of these gates, such as the CNOT gate, can modify the state of one qubit based on the state of another, creating a correlation between the two.

      • Nicolas FränkelSystem architecture: move authentication to the API Gateway

        When exposing an application to the outside world, consider a Reverse-Proxy or an API Gateway to protect it from attacks. Rate Limiting comes to mind first, but it shouldn’t stop there. We can factor many features in the API Gateway and should be bold in moving them from our apps. In this post, I’ll show how to implement authentication at the Gateway API stage.

      • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

        • Mark DominusThe shell and its crappy handling of whitespace

          I think what bugs me most about this problem in the shell is that it's so uncharacteristic if the Bell Labs people to have made such an unforced error. They got so many things right, why not this? It's not even a hard choice! 99% of the time you don't want your strings implicitly split on spaces, why would you? And the shell doesn't have this behavior for any other sort of special character. If you have a file named foo|bar and a variable z='foo|bar' then ls $z doesn't try to pipe the output of ls foo into the bar command, it just tries to list the file foo|bar like you wanted. But if z='foo bar' then ls $z wants to list files foo and bar. How did the Bell Labs wizards get everything right except the spaces?

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • YLEFinnish stargazers discover completely new Northern Lights phenomenon

        The society awarded the Stella Arcti prize to Heidi Rikala from Ikaalinen and Eero Karvinen from Nurmes, as well as past winners Emma Bruus from Nurmijärvi and Lauri Kangas from Espoo.

        According to a press release from Ursa, the group discovered a new phenomenon where a red arc appears in the sky in connection with bright Northern Lights.

    • Hardware

      • Bunnie HuangName that Wäre, July 2023
      • HackadayTurning A Window Air Conditioning Unit Into Whole-House AC

        Although air conditioning units are generally subdivided into a number of categories, including window, split and whole house/building units, they still work the same, with the compressor, condenser and expansion stages. In the case of widely available window AC units you can indeed use them as designed in a window, or as [Lou] is in the process of demonstrating, as a whole-house AC unit. The main thing to keep an eye out for here is the rated capacity of the window AC unit (in British Thermal Units, square meters/feet). In this case [Lou] used a pretty beefy $600, 24,000 BTU window unit that should be good for about 1200 sqf (~111 m2) .

      • HackadayVacuum Chamber Gets Automation

        [Nick Poole] does a lot of custom work with vacuum tubes — so much so that he builds his own vacuum tubes of various shapes, sizes, and functions right on his own workbench. While the theory of vacuum tubes is pretty straightforward, at least to those of us who haven’t only been exposed to semiconductors, producing them requires some specialized equipment. A simple vacuum won’t get you all the way there, and the complexity of the setup that’s needed certainly calls for some automation.

      • HackadayHarvesting Mechanical Energy From Falling Rain

        Collecting energy from various small mechanical processes has always been something that’s been technically possible, but never done on a large scale due to issues with cost and scalability. It’s much easier to generate electricity in bulk via traditional methods, whether that’s with fossil fuels or other proven processes like solar panels. That might be about to change, though, as a breakthrough that researchers at Georgia Tech found allows for the direct harvesting of mechanical energy at a rate much higher than previous techniques allowed.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Defence WebSANDF PPE scandal brought to light

        Department of Defence officials are being investigated for apparently manipulating dozens of Covid-19 personal protective equipment (PPE) tenders, in the latest such scandal to emerge. The Sunday Times reported that officials allegedly awarded contracts worth millions of rands to legitimate companies on condition they “ceded” them to pre-selected middlemen.

      • Omicron LimitedGet the 'forever chemicals' out of our drinking water

        Last month, researchers at the University of Southern California began a new study on the health effects of PFAS contamination in drinking water in Los Angeles County, focusing on the predominantly Latino communities in the east and southeast that are overburdened with environmental pollution. The multidisciplinary study, which involves researchers from USC's medical and engineering schools, aims to develop prevention strategies and large-scale, sustainable remediation solutions that can be implemented in a cost-effective manner.

      • New York TimesWhat ‘Oppenheimer’ Doesn’t Tell You About the Trinity Test

        July is a hard month for a lot of us here in New Mexico, where thousands of people’s lives were upended by the test of the world’s first nuclear bomb. The events of July 16, 1945, weigh heavily on us. And why wouldn’t they? They changed everything. The people of New Mexico were the first human test subjects of the world’s most powerful weapon.

      • NDTVTikToker Hospitalised After Drinking Too Much Water For '75 Hard' Fitness Challenge

        Extreme sodium deficiencies, or hyponatremia, can be life-threatening if left untreated, according to Mayo Clinic.

      • Deutsche WelleAlcohol in Iran: The deadly cost of prohibition

        "Unfortunately, in recent years we have seen an increase of about 20-30% annually in the number of people who were poisoned or developed [adverse] side effects from drinking methyl alcohol," Mohammad Kazem Attari, a US-based Iranian physician and researcher, told DW.

        "As alcohol poisoning was very widespread in the cities at the same time, there is doubt that it was intentional, or rather a mistake by a local producer who added impurities to drinks during production," Attari said, comparing it to the recent wave of suspected deliberate mass poisonings of Iranian school girls.

      • ScheerpostTwo Republican Lawmakers Are Blocking Food From Reaching Palestinian Refugees

        Senator Jim Risch (R-ID) and Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) are blocking about $75 million in food assistance from reaching Palestinian refugees

    • Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

      • Tom's HardwareSecurity Hole in Minecraft Mods Lets Hackers Execute Code Remotely

        Minecraft players and those who run Minecraft servers face a new and dangerous security vulnerability which could allow bad actors to run remote code on their computers. Dubbed 'BleedingPipe,' by a user group called MMPA (Minecraft Malware Prevention Alliance), the exploit uses Java deserialization to infect servers or clients that have one of many popular mods installed. If you don't play Minecraft on a server that has one of the mods and don't use the mods, you can't be infected.

      • Tom's HardwareAI Usage Fees Up to 15x Cheaper for English Than Other Languages

        The language you're using for a Large Language Model (LLM) can have a huge effect on its cost and create an AI divide between English speakers and the rest of the world. A recent study shows that, due to the way services like OpenAI, measure and bill for server costs, English-language inputs and outputs are much cheaper than those in other languages with Simplified Chinese costing about twice as much, Spanishing costing 1.5x the price and Shan language going for 15 times more.

      • Windows TCO

        • The Register UKUS senator victim-blames Microsoft for Chinese [breach]

          Infosec in brief US senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) thinks it's Microsoft's fault that Chinese hackers broke into Exchange Online, and he wants three separate government agencies to launch investigations and "hold Microsoft responsible for its negligent cyber security practices."

          In a letter [PDF] sent to the Department of Justice, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Federal Trade Commission Thursday, Wyden argued that Microsoft enabled the attack through four distinct security failures.

    • Security

      • Gallivan notifies University of Guelph students of Fortra breach 4 months later

        The provider of health, dental, and wellness benefits at the University of Guelph (U of G) has begun notifying students of a data breach which included access to personal information.

        A post on the Central Student Association’s website says Gallivan, the provider of those plans, began sending notifications via email this week.

        CTV News Kitchener was provided an email sent by Gallivan to U of G students on Wednesday morning informing them of the breach.

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

        • Weekly Security News Round-up For Threats and Vulnerabilities: July 23rd to 29th

          This week’s Threat and Vulnerability Roundup is here! Cyber Writes pride ourselves in delivering a weekly roundup of the most up-to-date cybersecurity news.

          Our goal is to bring attention to noteworthy vulnerabilities and exploits, innovative attack methodologies, and essential software patches.

        • BeebomOver 40% Ubuntu Systems Impacted by Severe Vulnerability; Check If You’re Affected

          As per the latest discovery by Security Researchers S. Tzadik and S. Tamari at Wiz, two new privilege escalation vulnerabilities, codenamed “GameOver(Lay)” in the popular Filesystem OverlayFS, affect a whopping 40% Ubuntu users across the globe. Check out the details for both of these vulnerabilities, along with the steps to check if your Ubuntu system is vulnerable or not.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • The HinduStaff nurse examination to capture biometrics of candidates

          The Medical and Health Services Recruitment Board (MHSRB) has asked the candidates appearing for the staff nurse examination on August 2 to report to the examination centre at the designated reporting time, as the registration procedure will involve capturing biometric data this time.

        • Data BreachesCyberattacks And Compromise of Attorney Client Confidences

          In an underappreciated ruling, District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the multinational law firm Covington & Burling must comply with an SEC subpoena requiring the firm to give up the names of clients, publicly-traded corporations, in order for the SEC to investigate whether there was any trading on non-public information. This didn’t arise because of suspicious trades or other red flags on the corporate side of the ledger, but because [crackers] working for China launched a successful cyber attack on Microsoft which ultimately gave them access to the firm’s internal records.

        • Cyberattacks And Compromise of Attorney Client Confidences

          When Covington became aware of the [breach], it notified its clients in order to address its significance. What happened there is between Covington and its clients. But the SEC’s concern wasn’t about the poor client, but that the possibility that the attack put non-public information into the hands of Chinese attackers, essentially insider trading, which the SEC frowns upon. The dual problem was that while the attack gave rise to the possibility that such trading occurred, the SEC had no evidence to suggest it had, in fact, happened, but merely wanted to investigate because it might have happened and it wanted to find out whether it did or not.

        • HackadayThe British Government Is Coming For Your Privacy

          The list of bad legislation relating to the topic of encryption and privacy is long and inglorious. Usually, these legislative stinkers only affect those unfortunate enough to live in the country that passed them. Still, one upcoming law from the British government should have us all concerned. The Online Safety Bill started as the usual think-of-the-children stuff, but as the EFF notes, some of its proposed powers have the potential to undermine encryption worldwide.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Engadget2023-07-24 [Older] The new Mercedes-Benz E-Class puts TikTok on the road
      • RFAActivist says he’ll continue to struggle for democracy in Vietnam

        He was arrested in 2019, hours after he arrived in Vietnam and met with a fellow pro-democracy activist. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “terrorism aimed at toppling the people’s administration.”

        Kham was a member of Viet Tan, a pro-democracy group with members inside Vietnam and abroad. It has been described by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as a moderate activist group advocating for democratic reform. Hanoi claims it is a terrorist organization that aims to topple the government.

      • VoxThe dangerous and confusingly popular borax challenge, explained

        Borax is a chemical compound containing boron that’s sold as a laundry detergent or cleaning agent. Ingesting it can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Drinking it or bathing in it can cause skin rashes. Take borax for long enough and you could end up with anemia, according to the National Capital Poison Center. But in several online enclaves, borax is one of many dubious substances in the medicine cabinet of misinformation, touted as a cure for everything from arthritis to cancer. Drinking borax is not a new phenomenon. But on TikTok, it became a trend.

        The #boraxchallenge has more than 34 million views and counting on TikTok. Click on the hashtag and it’s not difficult to find videos of people sharing their “journey” of ingesting laundry detergent. And if you spend enough time looking at these videos, TikTok will feed you even more.

      • NPRAs living memories of the Korean War fade, its consequences become clearer

        Wiedhahn said it might not have been clear at the time, but it sure is now. South Korea is democratic and among the world's leading economies, while the North is an impoverished, brutal dictatorship. Wiedhahn just wishes the United Nations force, led by the U.S., had held on to more of the Korean peninsula before the cease-fire. At a certain point they had driven North Korean forces all the way to the Chinese border before being pushed south again.

        "Now don't get me wrong. The [cease-fire] was welcomed because that meant that the Marines and soldiers were not getting killed anymore. But to me, to us who had fought in the beginning, it was kind of an anti-climactic," he said.

        At 94, Wiedhahn is president of the Chosin Few, a group of vets who fought at Chosin Reservior, a freezing 17-day battle with the Chinese army.

      • Dawn MediaAt least 35 killed, 200 injured in blast at JUI-F convention in KP’s Bajaur district

        “I strongly condemn the blast and want to give a message to the people behind it that this is not jihad but terrorism,” the JUI-F leader said while speaking to Geo News

      • New York TimesAt Least 43 Killed in Blast at Political Rally in Pakistan

        A video from the rally recorded before the explosion shows hundreds of men sitting outside beneath a cloth canopy as party officials addressed the crowd. As one district leader took to the stage, enthusiastic party workers stood up, chanting, “Allah is great,” according to one rally-goer, Sharifullah Mamond, 19. Then an explosion rocked the crowd.

      • VoxNiger’s coup and the international community’s opposition, explained

        On Sunday, ECOWAS leaders met in an extraordinary summit and gave Tchiani and the other coup leaders seven days to step down and reinstate civilian President Mohamed Bazoum, with the threat of force should they not comply in the timeframe. In the immediate term, ECOWAS closed the borders between Niger and ECOWAS countries, instituted a no-fly zone for commercial flights in and out of the country, froze the country’s assets in ECOWAS central banks and commercial banks, and instituted a travel ban and asset freeze for those involved in the coups and their families, among other actions.

      • GreeceElpidophoros laments Hagia Sophia’s conversion into mosque

        He said that “obviously there was no need to convert the holy symbol of Orthodoxy, a monument of world cultural heritage, from a museum to a mosque, as there is an abundance of mosques in modern Istanbul.”

        This decision, the Archbishop said, was made “to exploit the religious sentiment for purely political reasons.” Three years later, “we continue to hope and strive for the revision of this decision and for the re-opening of the monument, at least as a museum, so that this incomparable miracle of the Byzantine craftsmanship can once again be offered to the world community.”

      • ScheerpostHouse Progressives Introduce Bill to End ‘Moral Catastrophe’ of Solitary Confinement

        “Experts have condemned solitary as psychological torture—and that’s exactly what it is,” said Rep. Cori Bush.

      • RFERLPakistan Blast Kills At Least 44 At Political Gathering

        A suicide bomber blew himself up at a political rally in a former stronghold of militants in northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan on July 30, killing at least 44 people and wounding nearly 200 in an attack that a senior leader said was meant to weaken Pakistani Islamists.

      • The Gray ZoneHow Ron Desantis puts Israel first and assaults the speech rights of American citizens
      • ScheerpostCaitlin Johnstone: More Warmongers Elevated In The Biden€ Administration

        The Biden administration looks set to become even more warlike than it already was if you can imagine, with virulent Russia hawk Victoria Nuland and virulent China hawk Charles Q Brown now being el…

      • War in Ukraine

    • Environment

      • New York TimesA Climate Warning from the Cradle of Civilization

        You don’t have to go back to biblical times to find a more verdant Iraq. Well into the 20th century, the southern city of Basra was known as the “Venice of the East” for its canals, plied by gondola-like boats that threaded through residential neighborhoods.

        Indeed, for much of its history, the Fertile Crescent — often defined as including areas of modern-day Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza — did not lack for water, inspiring centuries of artists and writers who depicted the region as a lush ancient land. Spring floods were common, and rice, one of the most water-intensive crops in the world, was grown for more than 2,000 years.

        But now nearly 40 percent of Iraq, an area roughly the size of Florida, has been overtaken by blowing desert sands that claim tens of thousands of acres of arable land every year.

      • France24How the tiger mosquito invaded France and what can be done to stop it

        Its spread in France “was not exponential”, says Pierre Tattevin, head of the infectious diseases department at Rennes University Hospital, “but it was continuous”. He says that since its arrival, “there have been about four or five new départments affected each year” and that the mosquito can now be spotted close to the English Channel, all the way north in Brittany.

        Without globalisation, France wouldn’t be home to the tiger mosquito today. “Human activity allowed for the spread of this mosquito,” says Failloux, noting that it only spread rapidly throughout Europe after arriving in Italy, since Italy had greater exchange with other countries than Albania at the time.

      • Michael West MediaPush for lawmakers to weigh up climate impacts on kids

        Young people could be put front and centre in federal government decision-making on coal and gas projects, if a push to impose a duty of care is successful.

        ACT independent senator David Pocock will seek to add two conditions to existing laws covering the financing and approval of large fossil fuel developments.

      • Energy/Transportation

        • Michael West MediaOrigin of the gas gouge

          Great to see Australia’s East Coast gas customers helping Origin Energy offset a decline in gas exports (not). It’s terrific to know our record energy bills are helping Origin executive bonuses (not). What’s the scam?

          The scam is that Origin has just handed down its 4th quarter results which confirm energy policy is a complete failure. Although prices for LNG exports fell 16%, Aussie consumers rode to the rescue, helping domestic gas prices up by 10% – and let’s not forget Origin executive bonuses too.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • The AtlanticHumans Love Fireflies. Maybe Too Much.

          Just going to see fireflies poses less obvious risk to them. But scientists have amassed some alarming reports. In Thailand, for example, where boats ferry tourists past mangrove-swamp forests pulsing with synchronous fireflies, scientists have documented shorelines eroding, gas leaking into the water, and camera flashes disturbing firefly courtship. At one popular Thai site, scientists have estimated that the population of one synchronizing-firefly species is down 80 percent since tourism began.

          In a rural town in Mexico’s Tlaxcala state, where a new synchronizing-firefly species was formally recognized in 2012, tourism has since ballooned to some 120,000 visitors a year. And in North America, too, firefly tourism is on the rise. In Faust’s beloved Great Smokies, even after years of trying to throttle crowds—the National Park Service has instituted an online lottery to limit the number of visitors—some guests still head off into the forests and lie on the ground.

          Tourism is far from the only threat to fireflies. As with many insects, data on lightning-bug populations are spotty, outside of a general, anecdotal sense that they’re blinking out. But insects overall are in crisis. Numerous studies suggest that within many insect groups, abundance is dwindling by 1 to 2 percent each year. An International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) group found in 2020 that fireflies face three primary threats.

    • Finance

      • Michael West MediaMorrison rejects robodebt royal commission findings

        Former prime minister Scott Morrison has defended his role in overseeing the unlawful robodebt scheme, rejecting findings from the royal commission.

        In his first in-person comments since the release of the royal commission’s report, Mr Morrison said the findings against him were “disproportionate, wrong and unsubstantiated”.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • JURISTUS federal judge temporarily blocks Arkansas law banning libraries from providing ‘harmful materials’ to minors

        US District Judge Timothy L. Brooks blocked Arkansas on Saturday from enforcing Act 372, a law that penalizes librarians for “furnishing harmful item[s] to minors.” The case is in the US District Court for the Western District of Fayetteville Division. Judge Brooks ruled that the law is unconstitutional because it is overbroad and vague.

      • NPRAn Arkansas judge has blocked a law targetting librarians over 'harmful' books

        U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which also would have created a new process to challenge library materials and request that they be relocated to areas not accessible by kids. The measure, signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders earlier this year, was set to take effect Aug. 1.

      • US News And World ReportDenmark to Look for 'Legal Tool' to Prevent Koran Burnings

        Denmark and Sweden have found themselves in the international spotlight in recent weeks following anti-Islam protests where the Koran, the Muslim holy book, has been damaged or burned, offending Muslims around the world.

        Both countries have said they deplore the burning of the Koran but cannot prevent it under rules protecting free speech.

      • Deutsche WelleDenmark studying 'legal' options to stop Quran burnings

        Rasmussen stressed that any measure taken would fall "within the framework of the constitutionally protected freedom of expression and in a manner that does not change the fact that freedom of expression in Denmark has [a] very broad scope."

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • GNUSpeculations about WEI

        If you haven't heard about WEI, please take a look at [1], and the explainer/proposal document[2].

        I wonder what would be google's strategy to adopt it and how it will play out. The more informed we are, the better prepared we are at defending user freedom against it.

    • Monopolies



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