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Links 28/7/2021: PulseAudio 15.0 Released, World’s Slowest Raytracer



  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

      • 8 Best Ways To Secure Linux Server (Linux Hardening Guide 2021)

        Linux/Unix powers almost everything on the internet. Nearly all the websites that you visit on the internet are hosted on a server that is running Linux. These servers host critical and confidential data. This could include apps and websites that are very popular. In this Linux server hardening guide, you will learn the 8 best ways to secure your Linux server and protect it from Hackers. The process of security should always be simple and straightforward. Hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities that they exploit in order to get access to your server.

        Security is not a one-time setting. You must constantly monitor any suspicious activities going on your server. There are many downsides of being hacked and the amount of damage that it can do to your company is crazy. Below we will be sharing with you best practices to securing production environment servers.

      • Container Technology Complexity Drives Kubernetes as a Service | IT Pro

        The complexity of container management prompted an emerging aspect of digital transformation – Kubernetes as a Service (also known as managed Kubernetes).

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • PulseAudio 15.0 Released with Support for LDAC and AptX Codecs, Improved Hardware Support

        Highlights of the PulseAudio 15.0 release include support for the LDAC and AptX Bluetooth codecs for A2DP, support for the high-quality SBC XQ configuration variants, native support for HFP Bluetooth profiles, as well as support for Bluetooth A2DP AVRCP Absolute Volume to control the volume of the connected A2DP device.

        This major release also improves hardware support by adding support for the SteelSeries Arctis 9 USB gaming headsets, HP Thunderbolt Dock 120W G2 dock, OnePlus Type-C Bullets USB-C headset device, and Sennheiser GSX 1000 and 1200 PRO USB DACs for gaming.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Peter Hutterer: It's templates all the way down - part 4

          After getting thouroughly nerd-sniped a few weeks back, we now have FreeBSD support through qemu in the freedesktop.org ci-templates.

          [...]

          Now, there's a bit to unpack but with the comments above it should be fairly obvious what is happening. We start the VM, copy our working directory over and then run a command on the VM before cleaning up. The reason we use touch .success is simple: it allows us to copy things out and clean up before actually failing the job. Obviously, if you want to build any other distribution you just swap the freebsd out for fedora or whatever - the process is the same. libinput has been using fedora qemu images for ages now.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Install PrestaShop on Ubuntu 20.04 with Apache

        PrestaShop is an open-source e-commerce application. It is written in PHP and offers many built-in themes. The application offers a fully responsive design to the end-user. Translated in many languages, and supports all the major payment services.

        PrestaShop is highly customizable and provides many built-in add-ons to help the sellers customize their online shops.

        There are two distinct ways to set up PrestaShop. You can host it yourself on your server and have full access to the data and configuration files, or open an online account at the official website.

      • Fedora Magazine: Getting started with Maxima in Fedora Linux

        Maxima is an open source computer algebra system (CAS) with powerful symbolic, numerical, and graphical capabilities. You can perform matrix operations, differentiation, integration, solve ordinary differential equations as well as plot functions and data in two and three dimensions. As such, it is helpful for anyone interested in science and math. This article goes through installing and using Maxima in Fedora Linux.

      • 20 Basic Linux Commands for Beginners Explained with Examples

        Are you new to Linux? Here all the list of basic Linux commands contains all the common commands you’ll need to know to get you started.

        When dealing with Linux, you need to use a shell – an interface that gives you access to the operating system. The commands are required as inputs to inform or direct a computer program to perform a specific operation. While most Linux distributions are user-friendly and come with an easy to use graphical interface, knowing how to use the command line can be very useful.

        So let’s learn the must know basic Linux commands with examples.

      • How to set up Enpass on Linux

        Enpass is a secure password vault for Linux, Mac, Windows, as well as mobile. It is intended to keep your passwords safe and remember them so that you don’t have to. In this guide, we’ll go over how to set up Enpass on Linux.

      • How to use Fedora Media Writer to create a Fedora install USB

        Fedora Media Writer is an easy-to-use application that allows users on any operating system to download and set up a Fedora installer on a USB stick. In this guide, we’ll show you how to set it up.

      • Top 25 Hacking Terms For Learners

        These are some of the hacking terminologies or hacking terms that are important to know for an ethical hacking learner. I will be using these hacking terms throughout future articles of series "Hacking with Kali Linux".

    • Games

      • Bas Nieuwenhuizen: World’s Slowest Raytracer

        I have not talked about raytracing in RADV for a while, but after some procrastination being focused on some other things I recently got back to it and achieved my next milestone.

        In particular I have been hacking away at CTS and got to a point where CTS on dEQP-VK.ray_tracing.* runs to completion without crashes or hangs. Furthermore, I got the passrate to 90% of non-skiped tests. So we’re finally getting somewhere close to usable.

        As further show that it is usable my fixes for CTS also fixed the corruption issues in Quake 2 RTX (Github version), delivering this image:

      • RADV Ray-Tracing Now Rendering Quake II RTX Correctly But Very Slowly - Phoronix

        The open-source Mesa RADV driver for independent Radeon Vulkan driver support on Linux has been working towards supporting ray-tracing for months. Progress is being made with the latest being more test cases passes and even the Quake II RTX game rendering correctly, but the performance is far short of being satisfactory yet.

        Prominent RADV developer Bas Nieuwenhuizen has been working on the ray-tracing support for the RADV Vulkan driver for some time and making good progress even without AMD's official open-source AMDVLK driver supporting ray-tracing (only their closed-source Vulkan driver currently exposes the Vulkan RT extensions).

      • Everything you need to know about Linux Proton on the Steam Deck

        The Steam Deck is Valve’s venture into portable gaming. In terms of hardware, the Steam Deck is nothing but impressive. But more importantly, the system has everything a portable gaming device needs, including a 7-inch touchscreen, dual thumbsticks, and a trackpad. While the Steam Deck may look like its mobile gaming counterparts, it performs nothing like them.

      • A Total War Saga: Troy Linux port dropped because Valve's Proton means 'less demand for native titles'

        Feral Interactive is a studio that specializes in porting games to MacOS and other platforms. Earlier today, following the announcement of the Mythos DLC for A Total War Saga: Troy, it announced on Twitter that it is bringing both the base game and the DLC to MacOS on Steam after the Windows release. At the same time, however, it also said that work on a previously-announced Linux port will not be resumed, because Valve has effectively killed the market for it.

        "The Linux port was put on hold while Troy was exclusive to Epic, and we are not resuming development for the Steam release," the studio explained. "We will continue to assess the feasibility of porting games to Linux, but there is generally less demand for native titles since Valve’s launch of Proton."

    • Distributions

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Challenging Forbes' 2020 World's Best Employers List

          In a world of "big data" maybe we should consider accepting that we live in a world of "uncomfortable data" too—especially when the "big data" points in two different directions. When it does, maybe a human being should get involved?

          [...]

          IBM has had an employee stock purchase plan since 1958. In 1990, Tom Watson Jr. wrote in Father, Son & Co. that “the model corporation of the future should be largely owned by the people who work for it.” He wrote of the challenges he faced getting individuals to buy into the corporation.

          ​One friend told me how excited he would get when the percentage he contributed from his every paycheck to the stock purchase plan would finally buy a single share of IBM stock.

          He found forever memorable those intermittent purchases of a single stock which only happened once or twice a year. He was a dedicated employee-owner. He was a believer in the company. Yet, one has to feel that if Tom Watson Jr. were alive today, he would be saddened by the current lack of employee ownership in his corporation.

          IBM’s employees have been showing a decreasing enthusiasm to take advantage of their corporation’s employee stock purchase plan. In fact, the number of shares purchased by employees in 2018, 2019 and 2020 hasn’t been so low since the early ’70s—a half century ago. And this was a time when salaries were significantly lower, and the share price was—as a proportion of salaries—exorbitantly higher: $402.00 a share at the end of 1972.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Lilbits: Nothing introduces something, first look at the JingPad A1 Linux tablet

        A startup called Nothing has generated way more buzz this year than you’d expect from a company that’s never released a product yet. But Nothing was founded by Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus, a company that knows a thing or two about generating press (not always good press, but at least people were talking).

        Now Nothing has finally announced something… and it’s a set of true wireless earbuds with an unusual design that incorporates transparent elements, what seems like a decent set of features, and a competitive $99 price tag.

        [...]

        This is one of the first third-party looks at the JingPad A1 Linux tablet looks at the pre-release hardware and JingOS 0.91 software experience with some basic testing of app installation, the keyboard, camera, and more. The tablet is up for pre-order for $549 and up through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, with an estimated ship date of October, 2021.

      • Hands-on with the JingPad A1 Linux tablet [TechHut/YouTube]
      • ESP32-H2 Bluetooth LE & 802.15.4 RISC-V SoC shows up in ESP-IDF source code - CNX Software

        Espressif Systems is working on yet another RISC-V chip with ESP32-H2 SoC offering Bluetooth LE and 802.15.4 connectivity showing up in the ESP-IDF framework source code.

        A code comparison shows ESP32-H2 is very similar to ESP32-C3 with a single RISC-V core, albeit clocked at up to 96 MHz, and the first Espressif SoC without WiFi, as the WiFi radio is replaced with an 802.15.4 radio for Thread, Zigbee, etc… that can be used for the development of Home Automation, Smart Lighting, and wireless sensor network applications.

      • Celebrating the community: Laura
      • Open Hardware/Modding

        • Pomodor-glow! Improve your study session with this colorful countdown timer | Arduino Blog

          Studying without getting distracted can pose a significant challenge to students, which is why having small productivity hacks could be beneficial. Alexandra Charland — who goes by alch_emist on Instructables — wanted to try out the popular Pomodoro technique, which involves working for 25 minutes uninterrupted and then taking a break for five minutes after. To make this approach a bit more appealing, Charland created a countdown box that can light up in different colors.

          Charland’s device is comprised of an Arduino Nano 33 IoT that runs a timer for the 25- and five-minute intervals. On the front of the enclosure is a pair of seven-segment displays that show the time remaining on the main timer, and even though these require 10 pins, a shift register can easily be added in the future. The side of the box has a large red arcade pushbutton that when pressed starts or stops the timer.

  • Leftovers

    • Some Workers Are Choosing Their Pets Over Their Jobs as Offices Reopen, But Will Animal-Friendly Workplaces Catch On?

      As the economy recovers, employers nationwide are struggling to retain and recruit good workers, according to human-resources and labor experts as well as a handful of company executives interviewed by TIME. That’s giving millions of employees more bargaining power to “call the shots,” says Rue Dooley, an adviser with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), a national trade group. “All the planets have aligned in such a way that employers now are fighting for the best talent,” Dooley says.

      Among the top worker demands are pet-friendly policies, whether lenient work-from-home rules or permission to bring pets into the office.

      Some 12.6 million U.S. households got a new pet after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic in March 2020, according to the American Pet Products Association. A tally by the nonprofit Shelter Animals Count found that at least 269,000 pets were adopted from rescue groups alone in 2020, some 36,000 more than the year before.

    • Hardware

    • Health/Nutrition

      • CDC to Recommend Masks Again, Even for the Vaccinated, in US Hot Spot Areas
      • Outbreaks of Untreatable, Drug-Resistant Fungus Spread in 2 Cities

        A deadly, hard-to-treat fungal infection that has been spreading through nursing homes and hospitals across the United States is becoming even more dangerous, according to researchers, who for the first time have identified several cases in which the fungus, Candida auris, was completely impervious to all existing medication.

        The finding, released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is an alarming development in the evolution of C. auris, a tenacious yeast infection discovered in Japan in 2009 that has since spread across much of the world.

      • [Old] Killing Cyclists Is As American As Mass Shootings

        On the face of it, these laws should apply pretty much every time a driver kills a cyclist in a situation where the driver is at fault. If you’re in control of a 2,000-pound hunk of steel moving 55 miles per hour or more on a road equally open to cyclists—which is to say, most roads in the United States—and you make a sudden left turn without first ensuring there isn’t a rider in the way, then you have clearly put others at extreme risk in precisely the same way as somebody who drops a bathtub off a tall building without first looking at the sidewalk below. Or, to paraphrase the language of the California laws, you have created such an extreme risk of injury or death to others that you have indeed displayed gross disregard for human life.

        In practice, though, these laws almost never apply, because police officers and district attorneys have to decide whether to press charges. Those decisions require judgment calls about what terms like “reckless” and “negligent” and “reasonable person” actually mean. As it happens, cops and DAs frequently decide that speeding, running red lights, swerving onto road shoulders at 55 miles per hour, or making left turns without first checking for cyclists is merely the behavior of a perfectly reasonable person.

      • [Old] Cars Have Killed Almost 700 Bicyclists In 2020

        Outside magazine also points to higher speed limits and increased rates of distracted driving for the rise in deaths, which definitely tracks. But there’s also a lot to be said for how our garbage infrastructure doesn’t value anyone not inside a car. Take the Bronx in NY, for example: Four cyclists were fatally struck in a three-month time frame over the summer. Did the borough decide to add robustly protected bike lanes? Nope! From Streetsblog:

        After four cyclist fatalities in the Bronx in just three months — and months of steadily rising bike injuries — the Department of Transportation is refusing to commit to providing the beleaguered borough with anything like a robust, protected bike-lane network. Instead, DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg is doubling down on throwing cops at the problem, even though a four-week enforcement blitz earlier this summer did nothing to bring down the soaring number of bike injuries and crashes, according to NYPD Chief of Transportation Nilda Hofmann.

      • [Old] Drivers killed the most pedestrians and bicyclists in almost 30 years

        Cyclists are faring even worse: 857 were killed in 2018, an increase of 6.3 percent. Female cyclists are especially at risk: the number of women killed while cycling shot up 29.2 percent in 2018, compared to just 3.2 percent for men.

      • The 20 Most Dangerous U.S. Cities for Cyclists [+Death Totals]

        In this article, we look at 77 cities to find the 20 most dangerous U.S. cities for cyclists. The genesis for this article started with two simple questions: Which cities were most dangerous for cyclists and why?

        Increases in fatal bicycle accidents have occurred alongside increases in bike-share programs and the number of cyclists commuting to work. In 2017, there were nearly 800,000 commuters nationwide who rode their bicycles to work, representing 0.5% of all commuters. While the share of bike commuters has remained steady in recent years, the fatality rate per 100,000 bike commuters is at a ten-year high.

      • Statement in Response to Cyclist Killed by USPS Driver on the Upper West Side

        esterday evening, the driver of a massive USPS truck struck and killed a 71-year-old cyclist at the intersection of Central Park West and 86th Street. This is a notoriously dangerous intersection where turning vehicles regularly cause conflict with vulnerable street users like cyclists.

        Citywide, 126 people have been killed in crashes since the start of 2021, approximately 40 percent more than 2020 and the highest number by this point in the year since Mayor de Blasio took office.

      • Fatal cycle: the rising toll of rider deaths

        Cyclist deaths have risen by nearly 50 per cent since the introduction of road laws aimed at increasing their safety. Morry Bailes questions what’s gone wrong.

        It is not just greater publicity that has contributed to the seeming rise in cycling deaths, it’s real. The statistics make for grim reading.

        South Australia has the second highest cycling deaths per capita of any state or territory after the Northern Territory.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Workers at a repair facility used by Apple compare conditions to sweatshops

          In the report, which is worth reading in its entirety, employees also reportedly say there aren’t enough bathrooms or parking spots for the number of workers, and that they’re not allowed to use their phones while working, even in the case of family or personal emergencies. One employee told Insider that she got off work to discover that her son had been taken to the hospital after being burned.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

        • Security

          • Crypto malware LemonDuck targeting Windows, Linux devices [Ed: Still mindlessly pushing Microsoft talking points, despite a history of lying, cover-up, and deflection.]

            LemonDuck was first discovered in China in 2019 as a cryptocurrency botnet that used affected systems for Monero mining.

          • LemonDuck Shows Malware Can Evolve, Putting Linux and Microsoft at Risk [Ed: Helping Microsoft Googlebomb "Linux" with FUD]
          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • EFF Sues U.S. Postal Service For Records About Covert Social Media Spying Program

              For the complaint:https://www.eff.org/document/eff-v-usps-complaint

              For more on this case:https://www.eff.org/cases/eff-v-usps-social-media-monitoring-icop

              For more on social media surveillance:https://www.eff.org/issues/social-media-surveilance

            • Twitter hires the team behind news summary app Brief

              The Brief acquihire continues Twitter’s recent trend of acquisitions and talent pickups for news features. The company bought Scroll, a subscription service that removes ads from news sites, in May, and said at the time the service would become “a meaningful addition to our subscriptions work.” That hasn’t materialized just yet, though; the Twitter Blue subscription product launched in June in Canada and Australia, and while it had a reader mode to help you more easily read threads, a Scroll-like feature isn’t part of the product right now. Twitter also bought newsletter service Revue in January.

            • Aron Solomon: The New Horizon of Drones and Your Privacy

              Drone usage started small and is getting big. Back in 2016, there were bold predictions that drone usage would triple by 2020. The reality has exceeded that number. A report from June shows that the commercial drone market is growing fairly rapidly with no signs it will slow down:

              “The drone manufacturing industry is maturing – and so are drone customers. As the capabilities of drones increase, they are used for more sophisticated and specific applications.”

            • Facebook eyes a future beyond social media

              How can a firm with such political baggage be so successful? The answer is two sides of the same coin. With more than 2.7bn daily global users, Facebook’s main offerings—its flagship social network (known internally as Blue), photo-sharing on Instagram and messaging on WhatsApp and Messenger—are a digital magnifying glass of human nature. This glass amplifies the good (neighbourly help amid the pandemic) as well as the bad (conspiracy theories and quack cures). It also serves as a remarkable lens for advertisers to focus in on the world’s consumers. And the two-facedness is likely to become more pronounced should Facebook succeed with its biggest project yet: creating a “metaverse” that would combine a 3D digital world with the 3D physical one.

            • Facebook to Restrict Ads Targeting Teens

              While the new policy might be a win for advocacy groups who said targeting teens posed potential dangers, Facebook said it was going ahead with a plan to create an Instagram for kids.

              Attorneys general from 40 states have asked Facebook to scrap the idea.

            • The Insecurity Industry

              In technology as in public health, to protect anyone, we must protect everyone. The first step in this direction—at least the first digital step—must be to ban the commercial trade in intrusion software. We do not permit a market in biological infections-as-a-service, and the same must be true for digital infections. Eliminating the profit motive reduces the risks of proliferation while protecting progress, leaving room for publicly-minded research and inherently governmental work.

              While removing intrusion software from the commercial market doesn’t also take it away from states, it does ensure that reckless drug dealers and sex-criminal Hollywood producers who can dig a few million out of their couch cushions won’t be able to infect any or every iPhone on the planet, endangering the latte-class’ shiny slabs of status.

              Such a moratorium, however, is mere triage: it only buys us time. Following a ban, the next step is liability. It is crucial to understand that neither the scale of the NSO Group’s business, nor the consequences it has inflicted on global society, would have been possible without access to global capital from amoral firms like Novalpina Capital (Europe) and Francisco Partners (US). The slogan is simple: if companies are not divested, the owners should be arrested. The exclusive product of this industry is intentional, foreseeable harm, and these companies are witting accomplices. Further, when, a business is discovered to be engaging in such activities at the direction of a state, liability should move beyond more pedestrian civil and criminal codes to invoke a coordinated international response.

            • [Old] Dan Geer’s 10 Cybersecurity Best Practices

              Require software liability: Software should be covered by product liability, Geer says. Software companies should make their product code open-source, so customers can tweak bits they don’t want to use, or else they must assume liability for any damages it causes.

            • [Old] Improving Cybersecurity Means Taking More Care with What We Digitize

              Second, liability for cybersecurity flaws must be made clear, and software makers whose code causes glitches must be held to account, just like producers of other consumer or industrial products. Today, most penalties for cybersecurity defects relate to either failures in reporting after breaches or to misrepresentations in a product’s the terms of service. Neither contributes to safer code.

              Reporting mandates, for example, only penalize organizations that fail to disclose breaches once they’ve occurred. And relying on the terms of service between a software company and an end user ignores the fact that users have zero bargaining power when licensing software — they can only accept the terms offered or do without. This is why it’s so rare that any one organization is held liable when software proves insecure. Clarifying what constitutes minimum cybersecurity requirements, much like California did in a new law last year, and standardizing liability when these benchmarks are broken, will help remove shoddy software from the market, making us all safer in the process.

            • Twitter is testing notices that tell you if your account is suspended or locked

              The new notices spell out your status and provide some additional guidance for those who are locked or suspended. If you’ve been permanently suspended, you can submit an appeal, according to one notice, and if your account has been locked, that notice says most accounts get full access back in a week.

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Environment

      • Scientists who Issued ‘Climate Emergency’ Declaration in 2019 Now say Earth’s Vital Signs are Worsening

        From devastating wildfires to rising methane emissions, Earth’s vital signs are continuing to deteriorate, scientists warn. An urgent global phaseout of fossil fuels is needed, they say, reiterating calls for “transformative change,” which is “needed now more than ever to protect life on Earth and remain within as many planetary boundaries as possible.”

        The warning comes roughly a year and a half after a global coalition of 11,000 climate scientists declared a climate emergency, warning that global action was needed to avoid “untold suffering due to the climate crisis.” The new paper examining Earth’s vital signs, published in the journal BioScience, is authored by some of the same scientists who helped spearhead the climate emergency declaration.

        Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts

      • The West is burning. Climate change is making it worse.

        It’s just one of several massive fires, supercharged by climate change and extreme drought conditions, that are currently burning across the American West, and it comes as other parts of the world confront their own climate disasters while US climate action hangs in balance in the Senate.

        On Thursday, the Dixie Fire became the second fire to reach “megafire” status — burning at least 100,000 acres — in California this year. California’s Sugar Fire was the first to clear that threshold earlier this month, though it’s now 98 percent contained.

        In October last year, the August Complex Fire became the first recorded “gigafire” in California history, burning more than 1 million acres.

      • Energy

        • Valmet Automotive to start EV production in Uusikaupunki, Finland

          Valmet Automotive has signed a letter of intent for manufacturing Lightyear One, an electric vehicle powered partly by integrated solar cells designed by the Netherland’s Lightyear.

          The Finnish automotive maker is set to commence manufacturing the electric vehicles in the first half of next year at its assembly plant in Uusikaupunki, Southern Finland. The contract manufacturing agreement outlined in the letter of intent is to be finalised by the end of August.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Roskomnadzor orders YouTube to block channels belonging to Navalny’s associates

        Russia’s federal censor, Roskomnadzor, has sent a letter to YouTube’s parent company (Google) ordering the video platform to block channels belonging to three Russian opposition figures associated with Alexey Navalny: Leonid Volkov, Vladimir Milov, and Georgy Alburov.

      • Russia’s federal censor uses ‘Internet isolation’ hardware to block mirror sites to Alexey Navalny’s domain

        Though it instituted the system supposedly to guard against foreign cyber-threats, the Russian government has reportedly started using new equipment to block mirror sites created to maintain access to Alexey Navalny’s main website, which officials blocked earlier this week.

      • Techdirt Podcast Episode 291: Free Speech, Elections, Vaccines, And Social Media

        Freedom of speech sits at the intersection of so many of the topics we write about here on Techdirt, and some of our favorite podcast guests are true experts on the subject. One such guest is UCI Law Professor and former UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye, who joins us again for this week's episode and a wide-ranging discussion about some of the most pressing and current free speech issues.

      • Supreme Court Asked To Firmly Establish A First Amendment Right To Record Police Officers

        Earlier this year, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals awarded qualified immunity to officers who grabbed a tablet from Levi Frasier and tried to delete his recording of them. Frasier happened across these officers applying force during an arrest and decided to record it. The officer didn't like this so they took away his device and tried to find the video to delete it. Apparently unable to locate it, the officer yelled back to his partner that he couldn't find the recording, to which his partner replied, "As long as there's no video, it's ok."

      • How Cancel Culture Became Politicized — Just Like Political Correctness

        Jon Ronson has been studying that transition for a decade and wrote about the way private individuals have been disproportionately punished for minor transgressions on social media in his 2015 book So You've Been Publicly Shamed. He thinks the issue with cancel culture is not so much one of right versus left, but with the idea that private individuals should be judged in the same way as public figures.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • They All Scream Over Ben & Jerry’s Not Selling Ice Cream on the West Bank

        Ben & Jerry’s decision to halt its operations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Jerusalem has pro-Israel editors working overtime.

      • Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI

        The document is what’s known as a Frye motion—a request for a judge to examine and rule on whether a particular forensic method is scientifically valid enough to be entered as evidence. Rather than defend ShotSpotter’s technology and its employees' actions in a Frye hearing, the prosecutors withdrew all ShotSpotter evidence against Williams.

        The case isn’t an anomaly, and the pattern it represents could have huge ramifications for ShotSpotter in Chicago, where the technology generates an average of 21,000 alerts each year. The technology is also currently in use in more than 100 cities.

        Motherboard’s review of court documents from the Williams case and other trials in Chicago and New York State, including testimony from ShotSpotter’s favored expert witness, suggests that the company’s analysts frequently modify alerts at the request of police departments—some of which appear to be grasping for evidence that supports their narrative of events.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • AT&T Gets Loyal Lawmakers To Push A Broadband Tax For 'Big Tech'

        Hoping to capitalize on legitimate animosity against "big tech," AT&T lobbyists and policy makers have been busy recirculating a fifteen-year-old talking point. Namely, that big tech companies should throw billions of dollars at big telecom companies to subsidize their broadband deployments. The argument that AT&T has been pushing since 2004 or so is that since big tech companies get a "free ride" on telecom networks (which has never been true), they should pay telecom giants billions of additional dollars... just because.

    • Monopolies

      • The F.T.C. asks for an extension to refile its Facebook antitrust suit.

        The Federal Trade Commission on Friday asked a federal judge to give it more time to refile an antitrust suit against Facebook that is the agency’s biggest test in reining in the power of big tech.

        In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the agency asked for a three-week extension, or until Aug. 19, to amend a lawsuit that the court dismissed last month. The F.T.C. said in its request that it had reached an agreement with Facebook over the proposed extension.

      • Patents

      • Trademarks

        • Splunk Can't Sue Deutsche Telekom In USA Over Magenta Trademark Bullying Occurring In Germany

          If you were to simply input the word "magenta" into the search bar at the top of Techdirt, you will note that two company names seem to keep coming up in the articles: T-Mobile and its parent company Deutsche Telekom. This is because those two companies have been incredibly annoying at with their nonstop bullying of other companies, often in entirely unrelated industries, for daring to use the color magenta in their branding. While some will want to argue that very specific colors can definitely be trademarked, this misunderstands how T-Mobile and DT operate, which is to threaten plenty of companies that use a similar purple color and those that use magenta but in different marketplaces. Notably for the purposes of this post, much of this trademark bullying has occurred in Europe, though not all of it. The point is that DT is a trademark bully when it comes to the color magenta and everyone knows it.

      • Copyrights

        • YouTube Rippers Refuse to Log Data and Back Out of U.S. Piracy Lawsuit

          Tofig Kurbanov, the Russian operator of YouTube-rippers FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com, will no longer take part in the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by several record labels. The decision comes after a Virginia District Court ordered Kurbanov to keep extensive logs of the sites' user activity and hand these over to the major record labels.

        • Upload Filters: 23 EU Member States Face Legal Action Over Copyright Law Delays

          The European Commission has taken the first step towards taking almost two dozen EU member states to the bloc's highest court due to their failure to write new copyright rules into local law. The countries failed to meet a June 7 deadline to deal with matters including controversial upload filters designed to detect infringing content and prevent it from being re-uploaded.



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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