Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 26/7/2021: Grml 2021.07 and DXVK 1.9.1



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: July 25th, 2021 - 9to5Linux

        This week has been great for Linux news as we got new security releases for Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and CentOS, and new bugfix releases for GNOME 40, HandBreak, VirtualBox, Plasma Mobile, LibreOffice, as well as the NVIDIA graphics driver.

        On top of that, this week marked the end of life of the Ubuntu 20.10 “Groovy Gorilla” operating system release, as well as of the Linux 5.12 kernel series, and GNOME’s GUADEC 2021 conference proved to be another success. You can enjoy these and much more in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for July 25th, 2021, below!

    • Server

      • July 2021 Web Server Survey

        The number of websites powered by Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) fell by 1.92 million to 51.6 million this month. These sites are spread across 13.5 million unique domains and use several different versions of IIS.

    • Kernel Space

      • XanMod, Liquorix Kernels Offer Some Advantages On AMD Ryzen 5 Notebook

        Motivated in part by the recent le9 kernel patches that are already carried by XanMod and not having benchmarked the XanMod or Liquorix Linux kernel downstreams in a while, here are some fresh benchmarks of Liquorix and XanMod against the recent upstream Linux kernel releases.

      • Graphics Stack

        • DXVK 1.9.1 is out for translating Direct3D 9/10/11 to Vulkan

          The DXVK project continues to mature its translation layer for Direct 3D 9 / 10 / 11 to Vulkan, something that can be used together with Wine and Proton (along with a few ports using it). If you don't know what Proton is, be sure to check out our dedicated page.

          DXVK 1.9.1 follows on from the big 1.9 release on June 15 that gave us some new features. As a point release, it mainly focuses on cleaning up some bits here and there.

        • DXVK 1.9.1 Released With Several Game Fixes

          DXVK 1.9.1 is out as the newest version of this key component to Steam Play / Proton for running Windows games on Linux with DXVK being responsible for translating Direct3D 9/10/11 calls to Vulkan.

        • SDL2 Lands Support For Client-Side Decorations On Wayland - Phoronix

          The SDL2 library that is commonly used by many cross-platform games landed several patches this weekend to improve its Wayland support.

          The main change from the Git activity this weekend in SDL2 is landing support for using client-side decorations on Wayland.

    • Applications

      • Firewalld 1.0: Red Hat modernizes firewall configuration on Linux

        Many 0.xx versions of Firewalld have accumulated over the years. With version 1.0 of the tool for network firewall configuration under Linux, Red Hat is now cutting old threads and reducing dependencies. The new version is no longer compatible with Python 2. In addition, the project declares Direct Interface and the PTables backend to be out of date. We have also said goodbye to the tftp client service.

        The upcoming release also raises intra-zone forwarding to the standard. By moving the NAT rules to the iNet family, the rule set is reduced. The default target is now similar to reject. ICMP blocks and block reversal are now only valid for input and not for forwarding. CleanupModulesOnExit is set to no by default and kernel modules are not unloaded.

      • Zathura: A Minimalist Document Viewer for Keyboard Shortcut Pros 0

        Every Linux distribution comes with a document viewer app that lets you read PDF and other documents.

        Most of the time, it is Evince from GNOME that is displayed as Document Viewer in Ubuntu and some other distributions. Evince is a handy tool and supports a wide variety of document formats.

        However, there are other applications for reading documents. Take Foliate for example. It’s an excellent application for reading ebooks on Linux.

        I recently came across another document viewer called Zathura.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How To Install DNSCrypt on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install DNSCrypt on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, DNSCrypt is a flexible DNS proxy, with support for modern encrypted DNS protocols such as DNSCrypt v2, DNS-over-HTTPS, Anonymized DNSCrypt, and ODoH (Oblivious DoH).

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the DNSCrypt on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • Getting DTS 5.1+ sound via S/PDIF or HDMI using PulseAudio – MichaÅ‚ Górny

        While PCs still usually provide a full set of analog jacks capable of outputting a 5.1 audio, other modern hardware (such as TVs) is usually limited to digital audio outputs (and sometimes analog outputs limited to stereo sound). These outputs are either S/PDIF (coaxial or optical) or HDMI. When the PC is connected to a TV, a pretty logical setup is to carry the sound via HDMI to the TV, and from there via S/PDIF or HDMI ARC to a 5.1 amplifier. However, it isn’t always as simple as it sounds.

        For a start, S/PDIF is a pretty antiquated interface originally designed to carry stereo PCM audio. The modern versions of the interface have sufficient bandwidth for up to 192 kHz sampling rate and up to 24 bit audio depth. However, in order to support more than two audio channels, the transmitted sound needs to be compressed. S/PDIF hardware usually supports MPEG, AC3 and DTS formats.

        HDMI is better there. HDMI 1.2 technically supports up to 8 channels of PCM audio, 2.0 up to 32 channels. However, not all hardware actually supports that. In particular, my TV seems to only support stereo PCM input, and ignores additional channels when passed 5.1 audio. Fortunately, additional audio channels work when compressed input is used. HDMI supports more audio formats, including DTS-HD MA and TrueHD.

        In this post, I’d like to shortly explore our options for making a PulseAudio-enabled Linux system output compressed 5.1 over S/PDIF or HDMI (apparently both are treated the same from ALSA/PulseAudio perspective).

      • How to set up ZFS ARC size on Ubuntu/Debian Linux - nixCraft

        hen working with Ubuntu, Debian Linux, and ZFS, you will run into ZFS cache size problems. You see, not all Ubuntu or Debian servers need aggressive file caching. Some servers act as a web server or run Linux container workloads or KVM guest VMs where you want those guest VMs to manage their own caching. Therefore, it would be best to have tons of ECC RAM for ZFS. Unfortunately, not all projects get that kind of extravagance in real life. This page explains how to set up ZFS arc size on Ubuntu/Debian or any Linux distro of your choice. So that, Linux kernel avoid running out of memory.

      • GNU Linux Debian – security-tracker.debian.org tracker status release stable – semi-manual system update method vs full automatic updates – apt can do https now: update /etc/apt/sources.list http -> https
      • How to dual-boot Windows 11 and Linux on your PC

        Microsoft is preparing to release Windows 11 later this year, and so far, it looks like a major improvement over Windows 10. It has a brand-new visual design that’s more consistent and attractive, and it includes some big new features like support for Android apps. As good as it may be though, it doesn’t necessarily fit every workload or preference. What if you prefer Linux or need it for certain tasks? In this guide, we’ll show how you to set up your PC so you can dual-boot into either Linux or Windows 11 whenever you want.

      • CSS: Avoid horizontal scrolling

        If you had told me last year that I’d write not one, but two blog posts about web design, I would not have believed you. Alas here we are, and I’m going to tell you about another pet peeve of mine and how to fix it.

        I view at least half the written content I consume via my mobile phone, which belongs to the class of phones with a slightly smaller than average screen. In fact, it’s width as reported by the Firefox and Chrome viewport simulators is 375 pixels wide, small but not tiny. And yet many websites I visit hinder my mobile viewing experience because of a rather simple issue: horizontal scrolling.

        There I am, happily reading a blog post or article from the front page of $NEWSAGGREGATOR. But suddenly I’m not scrolling down, but down-right and constantly have to scroll back to the left edge in order to read full sentences. My experience is even worse if the site for some reason has a minimum width larger than my screen is wide.

        Reading articles on those sites really cumbersome and more often than not I decide that it’s not worth the hassle to continue reading and move on to the next article. I find that quite sad, since the author invested time and effort to produce it, and the only reason I’m not reading is because of its subpar layouting.

      • Configure Postfix as a Send-Only SMTP Server on Ubuntu 20.04

        Postfix is an open-source Mail Transport Agent (MTA). An MTA is a component of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) responsible for transferring mail from one mail server to another.

        This tutorial describes how you can install and configure Postfix as a send-only SMTP server on Ubuntu 20.04. You can use this for sending notification emails to an external address when specific events occur on the server -- such as when a backup job succeeds or fails.

      • Get a list of all virtual hosts which are defined in all apache configuration files

        Have you ever looked in the apache config files to see where a website's virtual host is defined? The apache2ctl script has a useful option that could come in good here.

      • Command line quick tips: wc, sort, sed and tr - Fedora Magazine



        Linux distributions are great to use and they have some tricks under their sleeves which users may not be aware of. Let’s have a look at some command line utilities which really come in handy when you’re the guy that likes to stick with the terminal rather than using a GUI.

        We all know that using a terminal is more efficient to use the system. In case you are editing or playing with text files on a terminal then these tools will surely make your life easy.

        For this article let’s have a look at wc, sort, tr, and sed commands.

      • How to recover deleted Logical volume (LV) in LVM

        If you have accidentally removed a logical volume (LV) or LVM meta data got corrupted or damaged in some way, it can be easily restored without losing the data using the ‘vgcfgrestore’ command.

        In this guide, we’ll show you how to restore accidentally deleted a logical volume in Linux.

        By default, LVM automatically takes backup of it’s meta data whenever a configuration change occurs on all LVM devices using the ‘vgcfgbackup’ command.

      • How to use cron on Linux | Opensource.com

        The cron system is a method to automatically run commands on a schedule. A scheduled job is called a cronjob, and it’s created in a file called a crontab. It’s the easiest and oldest way for a computer user to automate their computer.

    • Games

      • Valve talks performance of the Steam Deck, Big Picture UI being replaced and Gamescope

        Need even more information on the upcoming Linux-powered Steam Deck from Valve? We've got some more that has trickled through to talk about.

        Firstly, in a newer IGN video the team at Valve went over the hardware and power of the Steam Deck and talked about what it's actually capable of. During the video Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais mentioned "We’ve been looking at various games over the past few years in the back catalogue but the real test for us was games that were coming out last year", he continued, "They just couldn’t really run very well on the previous types of prototypes and architectures we were testing and this is the first time we've achieved the level of performance that is required to run the latest generation of games without a problem. All the games that we wanted to be playable is the entire Steam library, we haven't really found something that we could throw at this device that it couldn't handle.".

      • CarX Drift Racing Online on Linux | Ubuntu 20.04 | Steam Play

        CarX Drift Racing Online running through Steam Play on Linux.

      • Alexis Kennedy of Weather Factory puts out open letter against Failbetter Games

        Around two years ago Alexis Kennedy, a founder of Failbetter Games, was accused of abuse by multiple women which Kennedy has always denied. Now, Kennedy of Weather Factory has put out an open letter and the situation gets a bit murky.

        The allegations didn't just involve Kennedy though, as his partner Lottie Bevan ended up having some allegations pressed against her too. The blog post is a long one and so we won't be going over all parts of it but it's worth a read. There's some pretty big key points though which we will go over.

        Previously, Kennedy didn't directly mention who and what company the allegations were coming to "cancel" them from but no punches are being pulled now. Kennedy is now claiming that it seems all of this was "an intentional attack on us by a larger competitor" and goes on to directly say it's Failbetter Games (the company he co-founded).

      • Hacking detective adventure Song of Farca is out now | GamingOnLinux

        Alawar Premium & Wooden Monkeys Studio have launched their hacking detective novel adventure Song of Farca with native Linux support included.

      • Manage your Linux gaming overlays with the latest release of Goverlay

        Another fresh upgrade is out for Goverlay the open source application designed to help you work with the likes of MangoHud, vkBasalt and ReplaySorcery.

      • Let's Play Aircraft Shooting Games on Ubuntu

        Ubuntu offers games, not only the educational ones, but also the purely fun and amusing ones like these aircraft shooting genre. You will find both 2D and 3D ones, Astro Menace and Chromium BSU, as examples beside the others. All of these games are libre software licensed and available on Ubuntu repository. This article offers short descriptions and instructions to install them. Let's see them all and play!

    • Distributions

      • Haiku R1 Beta 3 Released As Spiritual Successor To BeOS

        One year after Haiku R1 Beta 2, the third beta of this inaugural release of the open-source Haiku operating system is now available for testing. Haiku remains the open-source OS project going on two decades for advancing as the spiritual successor to BeOS.

        The Haiku Project this morning announced the release of Haiku R1 Beta 3. Haiku R1 Beta 3 includes work across the operating system stack with all of the changes made over the past year including around installation and storage, countless hardware driver improvements, various software application updates, greater POSIX compatibility, many bug fixes, translation updates, and much more.

      • New Releases

        • Grml - new stable release 2021.07 available

          This Grml release provides fresh software packages from Debian bullseye. As usual it also incorporates current hardware support and fixes known bugs from previous Grml releases.

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • Deactivating connect.opensuse.org

          Our community portal, reachable via https://connect.opensuse.org, accompanied our community now since 2010. A long, long time. Especially, if you compare it with Facebook (which started in 2006) or LinkedIn (who became an international company in 2010).

          While Facebook and LinkedIn are meanwhile multi-billion dollar markets, our community portal is meanwhile mainly used to organize the openSUSE members and being a “contact point” for members, who provide their profiles to help others to contact them.

          Over 20,000 actively registered users and 100 groups might give an idea about the diversity and agility of the openSUSE community. From artists to musicians over to local user groups and groups for all the different window managers and their lovers. Everyone found a place here in the openSUSE universe.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Get started with WildFly for Java web development | Opensource.com

          WildFly is a production-ready, cross-platform, flexible, lightweight, managed application runtime that provides all the necessary features to run a Java web application. It is also a Java EE 8 certified application server almost exclusively in Java, and it implements the Jakarta EE, which was the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) specifications. Therefore you can run it on any operating system.

          WildFly, formerly known as JBoss AS, is a fully implemented JEE container—application server, developed by JBoss, which became a part of Red Hat on June 5, 2006, and since then, WildFly became their product.

        • Open Data Hub 1.1.0 provides new JupyterHub capabilities and more | Red Hat Developer

          Open Data Hub is an end-to-end AI/ML platform that runs and installs on Red Hat OpenShift 4.x. It provides components for every phase of the end-to-end AI/ML process, including data ingestion, model development, and production model serving and monitoring.

          The Open Data Hub team recently released Open Data Hub 1.1.0. In this new release, the community focused on hardening JupyterHub deployment, providing a new and improved JupyterHub Spawner UI, integrating the Open Data Hub dashboard with OpenShift's OAuth server, and adding a Kubeflow 1.3 OpenShift distribution stack along with new components such as Trino and Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines. Open Data Hub 1.1.0 also comes with an Operator Level 4 verification indicating "Deep Insight" status after enabling more monitoring and logging.

        • Modernizing applications with Apache Camel, JavaScript, and Red Hat OpenShift | Red Hat Developer

          Apache Camel is used widely for message queue integration and notification. Its lightweight and simple coding structure makes it a good choice for developers. Camel is well suited for application modernization and integrates very well with Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift. You can use these technologies together for a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline and deployment.

          In this article, we'll introduce the elements of application modernization, give an overview of Camel's components and architecture, and demonstrate how to use Camel with JavaScript to deploy your applications to OpenShift. We'll go through a few application modernization examples and look at the performance gains from using Camel with OpenShift and JavaScript. We'll also introduce Camel K, a lightweight integration framework built from Apache Camel that is specifically designed for serverless and microservices architectures.

        • 13 essential skills sysadmins need to make a career move into management

          Some of us have witnessed firsthand when a great technician turned into a manager as a reward from the company for faithful and fantastic work. It could be the aspiration of the technical person to turn manager. Still, other factors such as the salary headroom for a previous role have been reached—only manager roles get the desired perks of bonus, company car, better healthcare, etc.

          However, by removing one of the sharpest tools in the shed, the company is running a considerable risk. The transformation from a great sysadmin to a good manager does not happen without support, requiring a lot of changes. If the transition does not go well, the company will have lost one of its best sysadmins and instead gained one of its worst managers. To avoid this situation for a sysadmin that aspires to become a manager, I have gathered some valuable tips that perhaps can guide you on your path to become a manager or to get comfortable in the manager role you just obtained.

      • Debian Family

        • Is Deepin Linux safe, or is it spyware?

          Deepin Linux is by far one of the most good-looking Linux distros out there. But as much as it’s praised for its good looks, it’s also infamous for collecting user data and sending it to Chinese servers.

          So what is the truth here? Is Deepin trying to lure in users with its stunning looks and then stealing their data? Or is it just Chinese paranoia that got blown out of proportion?

          In this read, we will give you an in-depth look at all the evidence and security claims surrounding Deepin OS. In addition, we will show you what started this whole “Deepin OS is Spyware” controversy and discuss the Linux distro’s current state.

          So without further ado, let’s get started...

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Linux for Starters: Your Guide to Linux – Getting Help – Part 11

          This is a series that offers a gentle introduction to Linux for newcomers.

          This article explains the main ways you can get help direct from your new Ubuntu system. This is best used in conjunction with help from other sources such as friends, colleagues, forums, and other sources of information.

          Most of the help facilities are already present on your Ubuntu system with the exception of tldr. But we’ll cover everything you need.

          Let’s first start with the Ubuntu Desktop Guide.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Jan-Erik Rediger: This Week in Glean: Shipping Glean with GeckoView

            The Glean SDK is Mozilla's telemetry library, used in most mobile products and now for Firefox Desktop as well. By now it has grown to a sizable code base with a lot of functionality beyond just storing some metric data. Since its first release as a Rust crate in 2019 we managed to move more and more logic from the language SDKs (previously also known as "language bindings") into the core Rust crate. This allows us to maintain business logic only once and can easily share that across different implementations and platforms. The Rust core is shipped precompiled for multiple target platforms, with the language SDK distributed through the respective package manager.

            [...]

            Consumers such as Fenix will depend on both GeckoView and Glean. At build time the Glean Gradle plugin will detect this and will ensure the glean-native package, and thus the Glean library, is not part of the build. Instead it assumes libxul from GeckoView will take that role.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • PGDay Austria 2021 - Full schedule out now!

          We are happy to announce that the full schedule for PGDay Austria is now out and available here: https://pgday.at/talks/

        • PostgreSQL Weekly News - July 25, 2021

          Austrian pgDay will take place September 17, 2021 at Schloss Schoenbrunn (Apothekertrakt) in Vienna. https://pgday.at/en/

        • MySQL vs. MariaDB: what you need to know | FOSS Linux

          Both MySQL and MariaDB databases have an undisputed commonality. They are the most sort after database management systems on a worldwide scale. To understand the need for MySQL vs. MariaDB truce, we need to slightly o back in time.

          Before MariaDB came into the picture, it was just MySQL ruling the database management systems universe. Its popularity remained unshaken for a long time. Its preference as a reliable DBMS by many is also because of its associated base programming language, C++.

          In 2008, the acquisition of MySQL AB, the Swedish company housing MySQL, by Sun Microsystems, then took place. Finally, in 2010, the Oracle company stepped up and acquired Sun Microsystems. Since then, Oracle continues to own, manage, and maintain MySQL.

          However, during the acquisition of this database management system by Oracle, its lead developers and engineers felt that Oracle Database Server (a commercial database) was creating a conflict of interest with MySQL. This event led to the creation of MariaDB as a fork of MySQL code.

      • Programming/Development

        • GSoC’21: Week 4-7 with Krita

          Hi reader! It’s been some time since I have posted a blog on my GSoC project. I am writing this blog to keep you updated with the development of Krita. To avoid duplicating code I have gone through relevant part of existing code in Krita (again). I must say it always amazes me as the first day as I explore through the code. Let’s talk a bit about ‘copying layers to clipboard’.

        • Pufferfish, please scale the site!

          We created Team Pufferfish about a year ago with a specific goal: to avert the MySQL apocalypse! The MySQL apocalypse would occur when so many students would work on quizzes simultaneously that even the largest MySQL database AWS has on offer would not be able to cope with the load, bringing the site to a halt.

          A little over a year ago, we forecasted our growth and load-tested MySQL to find out how much wiggle room we had. In the worst case (because we dislike apocalypses), or in the best case (because we like growing), we would have about a year’s time. This meant we needed to get going!

          Looking back on our work now, the most important lesson we learned was the importance of timely and precise feedback at every step of the way. At times we built short-lived tooling and process to support a particular step forward. This made us so much faster in the long run.

        • You don’t need React for building websites

          I don’t get it. Why would I need to use React if I am supposed to work on building websites? Are employers afraid that if you don’t know React that you wouldn’t be able to make a landing page? Would knowing React help you solve any problems when creating a new layout or template? I cannot think of any part of the website that would require React.

          All these questions made me realize that I don’t need frameworks for my everyday work.

        • Fish shell

          Fishing for a new shell? (Sorry.)

        • Perl/Raku

          • 2021.30 Third Sat In Summer – Rakudo Weekly News

            Oleksandr Kyriukhin has announced the release of Rakudo Compiler 2021.07, an implementation of the Raku Programming Language. With quite a few (small) efficiency improvements, some fixes, a few cool new features and one deprecation this time around. On top of that, a Windows MSI installer is now also available from the Rakudo Downloads page (thanks to Patrick Böker). And of course there are new Linux packages (by Claudio Ramirez)! Great to see more OSes being supported by binary installers!

  • Leftovers

    • Michigan Politicians, All Republicans, Pocket Thousands in Bonuses From Federal Covid Relief Funds

      Only after public outcry, a lawsuit and a statement from the county prosecutor calling their actions illegal, did the county commissioners agree to return all of the funds.

    • Health/Nutrition

    • Integrity/Availability

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Environment

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Pro-Israel PAC Has Spent Nearly $1 Million to Try to Sink Nina Turner's Campaign
      • 'Hello Somebody!' Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Campaigns for Nina Turner in Cleveland

        In a congressional primary race that's been framed as part of a broader battle for the future of the Democratic Party, Nina Turner has won not only an endorsement but on-the-ground support from one of the most high-profile progressives in the U.S. House of Representatives: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

        Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was in Cleveland on Saturday to campaign for Turner, a former member of the city's council as well as the Ohio state Senate. More recently, Turner served as a national co-chair for the 2020 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is also backing her bid to represent Ohio's 11th Congressional District.

      • End the 'National Security' Excuse for Racial and Religious Profiling

        As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it is past time to reckon with "war on terror" approaches that have cast too many Americans—from Muslims to racial justice protesters to Chinese scientists—as national security threats. Two decades of permissive rules for intelligence collection, coupled with weak protections for speech and against discrimination, have subverted legitimate counterterrorism aims. We must revisit those rules to ban invidious profiling under the guise of national security.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

      • Facebook users in Sri Lanka misrepresent image of Covid-19 victims in Myanmar

        An image of several bodies on a hospital floor has circulated in Facebook posts that claim it shows the aftermath of a protest staged by nurses in Sri Lanka in July 2021. But this claim is false: the photo is unrelated to the protest in Sri Lanka; it has in fact circulated in reports about Covid-19 fatalities in a town in Myanmar.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Terrorism Threat: Al-Qaeda Threatens France, Police Warn Public to be Vigilant (Video)

        On July 15, 2021, Islamic terrorist group, Al-Qaeda, released a 40-minute video threatening France and repeatedly targeting President Emmanuel Macron and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin by name. The video is Al-Qaeda’s response to Macon’s perceived insults to Islam, such as his support of Charlie Hebdo’s freedom of speech to release cartoons that mock Islam’s founder Muhammad.

      • Censorship Scholar On Book Bans And Critical Race Theory

        PRICE: I focus on what we call book challenges, so that's any attempt to remove, relocate, restrict a book in a public library, a school library and in a curriculum. And usually in the curriculum, that's in English classes, but not always. And so the current controversy over critical race theory really has been focused just in this past year. But it is part of what I would call kind of a cycle of anxiety in which book challengers are driven by concerns and fears about a changing world. And so whatever the issue of the day is, then that usually drives and pushes people to try to remove books.

      • The political history of dubbing in films

        In the early 20th century, much of Europe's film-going population had low literacy levels. Subtitles are useless if you can't read them (or read them fast enough). There's also the argument that subtitles ruin a film's images and keep the viewer's eyes glued to the bottom of the screen. However, perhaps the most important reason for dubbing's favour was political.

        Dubbing is a brilliant tool for film censorship. Sound films began to appear in the early 1930s, a time when many countries were falling under the sway of totalitarian regimes. In Europe, these included those of Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco and the Nazis. Censorship had been a feature of film production and distribution in Italy, Spain and Germany since before these dictatorships took power, but it increased markedly after they did so.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • Afghanistan's Media Freedom in Retreat as Taliban Advances

        The day the Taliban entered Balkh district, 20 km west of Mazar e Sharif, the capital of Balkh province last month, local radio station Nawbahar shuttered its doors and most of its journalists went into hiding.

        Within days the station started broadcasting again, but the programming was different. Rather than the regular line-up, Nawbahar was playing Islamist anthems and shows produced by the Taliban.

      • Afghanistan's press freedom is threatened. Meet the young journalists fighting for it

        Afghanistan is in the throes of a civil war, but no one can be conclusively blamed for it. Except maybe, ironically, the peace talks. Five human rights activists and six journalists have been killed in the months after the negotiations began in Doha last September. “The killings are a direct result of the peace talks,” Shahid says.

        Some victims received threats in advance. Many others were not offered a warning before being killed.

        Most attacks are carried out against journalists and activists. Heather Barr, former Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that the Taliban might be perpetrating them to shake people’s confidence or to go against people who they think perpetuate ‘western’ values.

      • Israeli spyware and summoning the gods: the week at the mañaneras

        In a plea for public transparency, a political foe of the United States gained AMLO’s backing. “Assange should be freed, because he is in prison unjustly,” he said, referring to Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, who is fighting extradition to the U.S. from London.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Monopolies



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
 
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day