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  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Some 5.14 development statistics

        The 5.14 kernel was released on August 29 after a nine-week development period. This cycle was not as active as its predecessor, which set a record for the number of developers involved, but there was still a lot going on and a number of long-awaited features were merged. Now that the release is out, the time has come for our traditional look at where the code in 5.14 came from and how it got there.

        To create 5.14, the kernel community applied 14,735 non-merge changesets from 1,912 developers; 261 of those developers made their first kernel contribution during this cycle. There were 861,000 lines of code added to the kernel and 321,000 lines removed, for a net growth of 540,000 lines.

      • Nftables reaches 1.0

        The Linux kernel is a fast-moving project, but change can still be surprisingly slow to come at times. The nftables project to replace the kernel's packet-filtering subsystem has its origins in 2008, but is still not being used by most (or perhaps even many) production firewalls. The transition may be getting closer, though, as highlighted by the release of nftables 1.0.0 on August 19. The first public nftables release was made by Patrick McHardy in early 2009. At that time, the kernel had a capable packet-filtering subsystem in the form of iptables, of course, that was in widespread use, but there were a number of problems driving a change. These include the fact that the kernel had (and still has) more than one packet-filtering mechanism: there is one for IPv4, another for IPv6, yet another for ARP, and so on. Each of those subsystems is mostly independent, with a lot of duplicated code. Beyond that, iptables contains an excessive amount of built-in protocol knowledge and suffers from a difficult API that, among other things, makes it impossible to update a single rule without replacing the entire set.

        The core idea behind nftables was to throw away all of that protocol-aware machinery and replace it with a simple virtual machine that could be programmed from user space. Administrators would still write rules referring to specific packet-header fields and such, but user-space tooling would translate those rules into low-level fetch and compare operations, then load the result into the kernel. That resulted in a smaller packet-filtering engine that was also far more flexible; it also had the potential to perform better. It looked like a win, overall, once the minor problem of transitioning a vast number of users had been overcome.

      • Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

        As a general rule, the kernel community is happy to merge working device drivers without much concern for the availability of any associated user-space code. What happens in user space is beyond the kernel's concern and unaffected by the kernel's license. There is an exception, though, in the form of drivers for graphical processors (GPUs), which cannot be merged in the absence of a working, freely-licensed user-space component. The question of which drivers are subject to that rule has come up a few times in recent years; that discussion has now come to a decision point with an effort to block some Habana Labs driver updates from entry into the 5.15 kernel.

        The GPU-driver rule is the result of a "line in the sand" drawn by direct-rendering (DRM) maintainer Dave Airlie in 2010. The kernel side of most GPU drivers is a simple conduit between user space and the device; it implements something similar to a network connection. The real complexity of these drivers is in the user-space component, which uses the kernel-provided channel to control the GPU via a (usually) proprietary protocol. The DRM maintainers have long taken the position that, without a working user-space implementation, they are unable to judge, maintain, or test the kernel portion of the driver. They have held firm for over a decade now, and feel that this policy is an important part of the progress that this subsystem has made over that time.

        At its core, a GPU is an accelerator that is optimized to perform certain types of processing much more quickly than even the fastest CPU can. Graphics was the first domain in which these accelerators found widespread use, but it is certainly not the last. More recently, there has been a developing market in accelerators intended to perform machine-learning tasks; one of those, the Habana Gaudi, is supported by the Linux kernel.

    • AMD

      • AMD PTDMA Driver Landing For Linux 5.15 After Two Years In The Works - Phoronix

        Going back to September 2019 was work on the AMD PTDMA driver for supporting this controller found on modern AMD processors for high bandwidth memory-to-memory and I/O copy operations. With the Linux 5.15 cycle the AMD PTDMA driver is finally being merged to the mainline kernel.

        AMD EPYC processors feature multiple PTDMA device instances. While the PTDMA controllers have been found in AMD processors already, the upstreaming process has taken two years and gone through more than ten rounds of code review to address outstanding items and other suggestions for improvements.

      • AMD Posts New "AMD-PSTATE" CPUFreq Driver Leveraging CPPC For Better Perf-Per-Watt - Phoronix

        At last! AMD has posted the Linux kernel driver patches for their new "AMD-PSTATE" driver! This driver with modern AMD Zen CPUs (initially limited to Zen 3) to achieve greater performance per Watt / power efficiency on Linux than the conventional ACPI CPUFreq driver.

        The new AMD-PSTATE driver is akin to Intel's P-State driver long used by Intel CPUs as better catering to their hardware than the generic ACPI CPUFreq driver. AMD-PSTATE leverages ACPI Collaborative Processor Performance Controls (CPPC) for making more informed performance state decisions.

      • AMDVLK 2021.Q3.6 Brings New Extensions, Valheim Shader Optimization - Phoronix

        AMDVLK 2021.Q3.6 enables the VK_EXT_load_store_op_none and VK_KHR_zero_initialize_workgroup_memory. VK_EXT_load_store_op_none is an optimization to avoid unnecessary synchronization in certain situations. VK_KHR_zero_initialize_workgroup_memory is used to zero initiative memory for running untrusted content to avoid possible memory-scraping attacks.

      • AMD Branch Sampling Support Being Worked On For Linux - Phoronix

        A new kernel patch series was posted this morning working on AMD Branch Sampling "BRS" support.

        AMD Family 19h "Zen" processors support this branch sampling feature for collecting details on branches taken during code execution. The latest AMD Zen 3 processors do contain improvements to BRS functionality. AMD BRS is detailed within their processor programming reference guides that are public but until now with this new patch series sent out by a Google engineer there hasn't been any Linux support/integration.

    • Applications

      • Best Command Line Text to Speech Apps for Linux

        This article will cover a list of useful text to speech (TTS) apps available for Linux. These apps can identify a piece of text, convert it to speech, and then speak words and sentences through the speakers of your Linux system. They convert text to speech using artificial intelligence algorithms and pretrained machine learning models. These apps usually provide a range of different voices having predefined tones, accent and way of speaking. Some of these apps allow you to configure voice parameters like tempo and pitch. It is common for text to speech apps to have robotic voices that don’t sound like real life voices. However, the technology is improving and more human sounding voices are coming off these text to speech apps.

      • plocate Is A Much Faster locate (Drop-In Replacement For mlocate)

        locate is a Unix tool used to find files by name on the filesystem, which uses a prebuilt database of generated files (created using updatedb). Using locate is faster than find, but it requires having the database updated to find newly added files.

        locate was created in 1982, with the BSD and GNU Findutils versions deriving from the original implementation.

        plocate is a newer (the first stable release was less than a year ago), much faster locate. It's based on posting lists, giving much faster searches on a much smaller index.

        The command-line tool is a drop-in replacement for mlocate (Merging Locate; a restricted-access database, only showing filenames accessible to the user) in nearly all aspects, including reusing the mlocate database (plocate creates its own index using plocate-build which reads the database made by updatedb), and is fast on SSDs and HDDs alike.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Why Nutch-based web spiders are now blocked here

        If you write a web crawler engine, you should make it very hard for people to not fill in all of the information for a proper user-agent string (such as a URL explaining the crawling). Apache Nutch, I'm looking at you, given UA's of eg "test search engine/Nutch-1.19-SNAPSHOT".

      • How do I reset a Password in Linux

        Linux allows users to change their passwords whenever they log in. Linux offers the “passwd” utility to change an existing or a new user account password. Any information that is related to the encrypted user’s password or the password-related details is stored in the “/etc/shadow” file of the Linux system. If you are a normal user, then you can only change the password for your account. But if you are a root user or user with sudo access, you can also change the other users’ password.

        Whenever you change the password, make sure that you use a strong and unique password that meets the standard criteria for a Linux password. Having a strong password is a smart move to protect your account from potential thefts and unauthorized access. A strong password should be 16 characters long, containing one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one special character. It is a good habit to update your password frequently to save it from hackers and other unwanted access.

      • How do I check the size of a Folder in Linux

        Linux offers you various amazing command-line commands that will help in performing various tasks. One of the major tasks performed from the command line of Linux is to check the size of the file or folder. It might be necessary to make space for the incoming file or transfer it to another location. Also, when you run some deployments, it tends to create a log file automatically, and the space will fill up with those log files. So we must track the space of the file or folder and make space on the disk for them accordingly.

        For this, you will need a Linux system, a command-line interface for running the command, and the right user access for checking the space on the Linux system. We will be looking at various ways to check the file or folder size available on the Linux system.

      • How to Connect to Wi-Fi on Kali Linux

        This tutorial explains how to connect to Wi-Fi with Kali Linux using both graphical and text modes. After reading this tutorial, you’ll know how to connect to your wireless network from your graphical environment and the console using both nmtui and mncli tools.

      • How do I List All Groups in Linux

        Linux systems may have several users that are divided into many groups. These groups are the collection of users with the same set of privileges like reading, writing, or executing permission for a particular file or resources shared among the users of that group. Linux allows you to add a new user or the existing user to the existing group for utilizing the privileges of that particular group that it will grant. We will learn about the various Linux groups and how to list all the members of the group.

      • How do I list Upgradable packages in Ubuntu

        In computing, updates of the packages or OS have a key role in bringing the new functionalities to the users. You may encounter several updates after a few days or weeks; these updates carry bug fixes and minor changes to any software or your operating system. The frequent updates do not necessarily mean that you will experience a new interface or experience every time: however, most updates are related to some bug fixes that are identified in the previous releases. Like other operating systems, Ubuntu also provides updates time by time, and you can get the packages that can be upgraded; you have the option to upgrade all the packages or can upgrade one by one. In this write-up, our focus is to print the upgradeable packages list in Ubuntu’s terminal. So, let’s start:

      • How do you Add a User to Linux

        Linux provides you the most commonly used command that is “useradd” or “adduser.” It allows you to add or create the user to the Linux system and some properties that may differ from another user. These users can access some files or directories, and some users may not depend on what access they have. Whenever a user is added or created, access is given to that user as per the requirement.

        The “useradd ” command may vary for various Linux distributions, so it is recommended that you read the documentation properly before you create a new user account in Linux. We highlight the methods on how you can add or create a new user within the Linux system.

      • How do You Create a New File in Linux

        If you are working on Linux, then you will get various utilities for creating files. It is considered the most frequent task in Linux as most of the work is completed via files and directories. You can either use the command-line interface commands or the desktop file manager to create the desired file. Consider this tutorial for creating files using various methods. Before creating a file, ensure that you have the required access to create the file in the parent directory; otherwise, you will get the permission denied error on the screen.

        For checking the files that are available within the directory, use the “ls” command. We will learn about various commands for creating files.

      • How to Change Debian Desktop Environment

        In Linux, a desktop environment refers to the bundle of components that provide the common graphical user interface (GUI) components on the screen, such as icons, wallpapers, toolbars, widgets, etc. Thanks to the desktop environment, it’s possible to use Linux with your mouse and keyboard like any other graphical operating system.

        There are numerous desktop environments available on Debian, each with its own perks and features. Interested in switching to a new desktop environment? In this guide, we’ll explore how to install and change the desktop environment on Debian.

      • How to Configure DNS Server on Debian

        DNS or Domain Name System is the system that translates the name of a domain into its corresponding IP address. For instance, when you type www.example.com in your browser, it maps to a particular web server’s IP address on the internet. This makes it easy for people to remember servers, applications, or any other devices connected to the internet without having to memorize their IP addresses.

        DNS is a hierarchical distributed database system. It has a tree-like structure with nodes that are arranged in layers called domains. Each domain points to the node of some level lower than itself. In DNS, these domains are defined as subdomains, and each one resides on its own DNS server, either Master DNS or Primary DNS, which contains the records for all the IP addresses and hostnames within its domain zone.

        There can be multiple Secondary DNS servers that contain an up-to-date copy of the information contained in their corresponding Master DNS servers. In addition to resolving queries using this mirrored data, secondary DNS servers also provide fault tolerance in case the primary master goes down by answering queries themselves while waiting for answers from the primary master.

      • How to Install Kali Linux In VMware Workstation Pro 16

        Kali Linux is a Debian-based operating system specially made for penetration testing. Kali Linux has all the required penetration testing tools installed by default. Even if something is not installed by default, it should be available in the official package repository of Kali Linux, and you should be able to install it easily from there. Kali Linux is any penetration tester’s best friend. To learn and do penetration testing, you may want to run Kali Linux as a virtual machine. This way, you can do everything in an isolated environment, take snapshots of your virtual machine and get back to an earlier state if anything goes wrong within a few seconds. It will give you a lot of flexibility that you will not get if you run it directly on your computer.

      • How to use the IP command in Ubuntu

        IP (Internet Protocol) acts as a unique identifier address over the network. This unique identifier helps to send information among different devices on the network. Internet services also work based on IP and differentiate between several devices such as routers, computers, etc. IP addresses consist of four separated integer strings, the range of each string may vary from 0 to 255 (0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255).

        IP commands in Ubuntu can be used for several purposes within a network, such as to assign, delete, set up an address, or configure parameters for network interfaces. One can say that it is an alternative to the ifconfig command of Ubuntu, but it is quite useful and commonly used nowadays because the ifconfig command has not been maintained for so long and, therefore, has been deprecated.

      • How To Install Laravel on Debian 11 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Laravel on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Laravel is an open-source PHP web framework, designed for the faster development of web applications. It is based on the Symfony framework. Laravel makes it easier to perform some common tasks such as authentication, routing, sessions and caching. It has several useful features including, Artisan, Object-relational mapping, Template Engine, and many more.

        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 through the step-by-step installation of the Laravel web framework on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

      • How to Install The Lounge IRC Client on Ubuntu 20.04

        The Lounge is a web-based IRC client written in Node.js and can be installed and then accessed from any modern browser for a native-like experience without having a dedicated application installed.

      • How to Install MariaDB 10.6 on Ubuntu 20.04 - LinuxCapable

        MariaDB is one of the most popular open-source databases next to its originator MySQL. The original creators of MySQL developed MariaDB in response to fears that MySQL would suddenly become a paid service due to Oracle acquiring it in 2010. With its history of doing similar tactics, the developers behind MariaDB have promised to keep it open source and free from such fears as what has happened to MySQL.

        MariaDB has become just as popular as MySQL with developers, with features such as advanced clustering with Galera Cluster 4, faster cache/indexes, storage engines, and features/extensions that you won’t find in MySQL.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install MariaDB 10.6 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

      • How to Backup WordPress Database via phpMyAdmin

        As a WordPress site admin, you have no choice but to adhere to the number one rule for successful website administration; always create regular data backups for your site. This rule should never be taken as a consideration but as a mandate.

      • How to upgrade OpenSUSE 15.2 to 15.3 using the CLI - nixCraft

        The most advanced OpenSUSE version is 15.3 and is an opportunity for both desktop and server users on the previous 15.2 release to update OpenSUSE Linux to get the newest software stack. It is easy to follow the procedure to upgrade OpenSUSE 15.2 to 15.3. In this tutorial, we will explain how to upgrade OpenSUSE 15.2 to 15.3.

      • Create event-based serverless functions with Python | Red Hat Developer

        In my previous article, I introduced the Red Hat OpenShift Serverless Functions Operator for creating serverless functions and led you through building and deploying an HTTP function written in Python. We ended up with a basic service that simply returned a "Hello world"-type string.

        In this article, we'll take it up a notch by developing a Python-based serverless function that sends an email in response to a CloudEvent. This is a very real-world type of application for serverless functions and Functions as a Service (FaaS).

      • Find files and directories on Linux with the find command | Opensource.com

        Regardless of how organized I resolve to be, it seems there are always times when I just can't locate a file. Sometimes it's because I can't remember the name of the file in the first place. Other times, I know the name, but I can't recall where I decided to save it. There are even times when I need a file that I didn't create in the first place. No matter what the quandary, though, I know that on a POSIX system, I always have the find command.

      • What are Bash Environment Variables

        In computing, variable is a term that can be used to assign it any value or to use the variable dynamically in accomplishing the specific task. For instance, programmers declare variables by any symbol (alphabetical letters mostly) and can be used to act as a different value in several programs. Our operating systems have a list of variables that are used to manipulate the programs or processes in a computer and are known as environment variables. These variables reside in every kind of OS and can be handled (create, edit, delete,) as like other variables in a PC. Like other operating systems, Linux also has environment variables, and these variables are used in several scripts and programs within the Linux environment. Contrary to these environment variables, a variable type named as shell variables also exists in Linux, but they are active in the current instance of the shell, once the shell environment is terminated the shell variable is also washed out. In this guide, we will briefly explain the bash environment variables: Before a deep insight let’s go through the basics of environment variables:

      • How to Install & Use ClamAV on AlmaLinux 8 - LinuxCapable

        ClamAV is an open-source and free antivirus software toolkit able to detect many types of malicious software, including viruses, trojans, malware, adware, rootkits, and other malicious threats. One of its main uses of ClamAV is on mail servers as a server-side email virus scanner or used on file hosting servers to periodically scan to make sure files are clean, especially if the public can upload to the server.

        ClamAV supports multiple file formats (documents, executables, or archives), utilizes multi-thread scanner features, and receives updates for its signature database daily to sometimes multiple times per day for the latest protection.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install and use ClamAV on AlmaLinux 8.

      • Sleeping and waiting on Linux | Network World

        The Linux sleep and wait commands allow you to run commands at a chosen pace or capture and display the exit status of a task after waiting for it to finish. Sleep simply inserts a timed pause between commands. Wait, on the other hand, waits until a process completes before notifying you that it has finished.

      • Can Prometheus Monitor Network Devices

        Most of the network devices support the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) protocol. You can use the Prometheus snmp_exporter to monitor SNMP-supported network devices with Prometheus and Grafana.

        In this article, I will show you how to monitor the network of a home router (TP-Link Archer C5 V4) with Prometheus and Grafana. So, let’s get started.

      • SSH Authorized Keys Example Usage

        SSH (Secure Shell) is a protocol used to remotely and safely (encrypted) access systems. The SSH server runs on the remote machine, and the SSH client on your working machine. Communication between client and server is typical via the command line. Now, there are several ways of authenticating the connection – password authentication, public/private key-based authentication (using the authorized_key file), and host-based authentication (using the known_host file).

      • Create a New DataFrame From an Existing DataFrame in Pandas?

        Sometimes, we need to copy the existing DataFrame with data and indices. However, copying the whole DataFrame is also another way for there to be a direct relationship created between the old DataFrame and the new DataFrame. If we make any changes in the old DataFrame, it will also affect the new DataFrame or vice-versa.

        In this article, we are going to see pandas.DataFrame.copy () method, which is used for copy () dataframe.

        If we want to create a new DataFrame from an existing DataFrame, then we can use the copy()method. So, in this article, we are going to see how we can use the Pandas DataFrame.copy() method to create another DataFrame from an existing DataFrame.

    • Games

      • Stellaris to get the free 3.1 'Lem' update on September 14 | GamingOnLinux

        Paradox Interactive announced today that the free 3.1 Lem update for Stellaris is going to release on September 14.

        The update is celebrating sci-fi author Stanisław Lem, who was born 100 years ago this month. It's also the first update released as part of Paradox's Custodian Team who are now responsible for all free updates to Stellaris going forwards.

      • Brutal Orchestra has a fantastic trailer, plus the game sounds both brutal and intriguing | GamingOnLinux

        Coming from the same designer behind Swallow the Sea and Perfect Vermin, two fantastically weird games we have their biggest yet with Brutal Orchestra and it's a little on the dark side once again.

      • The short and somewhat disturbing Swallow the Sea is now on Steam | GamingOnLinux

        Short on time and want to play a game? Swallow the Sea is a good choice and it's free so you've got nothing to lose for trying to except perhaps a little of your sanity.

        We briefly covered it back in 2020 when it was only available on itch.io but now it's also on Steam. You're in for quite a ride on this one. It only lasts about 10-15 minutes but it's wild and the design plus the sound work is absolutely brilliant.

      • Blasphemous: Wounds of Eventide free update arrives in December, sequel announced | GamingOnLinux

        Ready for more brutal action? There's some free content on the way for Blasphemous with the Blasphemous: Wounds of Eventide free update arriving on December 9 and a sequel was announced too.

        From what we've been told Wounds of Eventide will properly conclude "The Penitent One’s first journey and unlocks the game’s true ending". As for the sequel it's still in the early stages of production but it will be a "direct" follow-up to the multi-award winning action platformer that was funded via Kickstarter.

      • Humble has a new Team 17 Greatest Hits Bundle up with lots of good picks | GamingOnLinux

        If you need a fresh set of games for the weekend here's your latest chance. Plenty of quality games included in the new Team 17 Greatest Hits Bundle.

        [...]

        Don't forget there's also a new Humble Choice set of games for September too. There's also the Humble Humongous Back To School Bundle with tons of family/young children games.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • Ubuntu’s Yaru Theme Now Officially Supports Xfce

        Back when Ubuntu 20.04 was released, the Ubuntu team stunned everyone with the new Yaru theme’s beautiful visuals and simplicity. It keeps on getting better with each Ubuntu release. It has become the symbolism of Ubuntu now.

        However, the Yaru theme was not well supported for other desktop environments like Xfce.

        Fortunately, this is set to change with a recent pull request on the project’s GitHub page. Here, we will be looking at this change, as well as how to try out these changes for yourself.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • GNOME 41 Release Candidate Is Out with Last Minute Bug Fixes and Improvements

          GNOME 41 is the next major release of the acclaimed desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions, and it promises many new features, updated and new apps, as well as numerous improvements and bug fixes.

          The Release Candidate (RC) milestone comes hot on the heels of the beta release announced at the end of August, and fixes a bug in the new Calls app that prevented SIP from working when using multiple network interfaces and adds last minute touches around SIP account management and its UI.

    • Distributions

      • Everything you need to know about the ArcoLinux Desktop Trasher

        The ArcoLinux Desktop Trasher is created to give you the possibility to remove any desktop from your system. The ArcoLinux Tweak Tool will install it. The ArcoLinux Desktop Trasher will remove it. We added a switch not to touch your .config folder. That is activated by default.

      • My long-lived personal Linux installs

        I keep doing in-place upgrades rather than reinstalls not out of any principle but because it's the much easier way, at least at any given moment in time. If I upgrade in place I don't have to redo my customizations, remember all of the extra packages I've installed that I care about, slog through the Fedora install process, or worry about making sure my own data is untouched through the entire reinstall. People who were more organized would keep careful track of all of their customizations (perhaps in an automated system) and their important additional packages, and keep all of their own data on separate disks that can be entirely disconnected during a reinstall. These people would avoid my problems with layers and layers of what can politely be called historical artifacts on my systems (including historical packages), and would never have gotten into my Fedora 8 situation in the first place.

      • Review of ElementaryOS 6 (Odin)

        ElementaryOS is a linux distribution based on Ubuntu that also ship with a in-house developed desktop environment Pantheon and ecosystem apps. Since their 6th release named Odin, the development team made a bold choice of proposing software through the Flatpak package manager.

        I've been using this linux distribution on my powerful netbook (4 cores atom, 4 GB of memory) for some weeks, trying not to use the terminal and now this is my review.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • 8 Linux virsh subcommands for managing VMs on the command line | Enable Sysadmin

          The virtual shell, or virsh, is a flexible command-line utility for managing virtual machines (VMs) controlled by libvirt, which is a toolkit and API to manage virtualization platforms. It's the default management tool for Linux kernel-based virtual machines (KVMs), and it also supports Xen, VMware, and other platforms.

          The virsh command allows you to manage VMs interactively or in batch. It's also helpful for controlling VMs from the Linux shell and integrates with scripts or automation tools. By using virsh, you can quickly connect to a server using secure shell (SSH) and perform operations on your VMs without access to a graphical interface.

          When you run virsh without any options, it tries to connect to a local hypervisor. For Linux, the default connection points to a local QEMU system to manage local KVM machines. You can also connect to a remote hypervisor by using the option -c or --connect and specifying the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the remote hypervisor using libvirt's syntax. For more information, consult libvirt's URI specification.

          By default, virsh provides hundreds of subcommands and options that allow you to manage every aspect of your virtualization platform or VMs. In this article, I'll share the eight virsh subcommands I use most often. Due to the nature of daily work, most of these subcommands apply directly to VMs (or domains in libvirt terminology) but virsh also has commands to manage the platform itself, such as adding storage pools, networks, and more.

        • Change management: 3 strategies for staying power | The Enterprisers Project

          I once led a design organization where the relationships between colleagues were strong, politics were minimal, and the work was interesting and plentiful. But there was a problem: Everyone was so consumed with their own projects that they did not take the time to benefit from each other’s expertise and perspective. Everyone agreed that they needed a way to share work with one another.

          One of our senior team members proposed a solution that sounded promising: We would dedicate a wall in the workspace as a sharing space where people could post their work and others could comment freely. Everyone agreed it was a good idea. The champion of the idea even set it up and showed everyone how to use it.

          We had a solution with both buy-in and communication. Perfect, right?

          You’ve probably already guessed the answer. The first week, one person took the step of posting their work. A couple of people commented on it, and they were congratulated for opening collaboration. By the second week, though, the wall was empty. By the third, it was covered in comic strips and ironic notes.

        • Fedora Community Blog: Contribute at the Fedora Linux 35 Test Week for Kernel 5.14

          The kernel team is working on final integration for kernel 5.6. This version was just recently released, and will arrive soon in Fedora. As a result, the Fedora kernel and QA teams have organized a test week from Sunday, Sept 12, 2021 through Sunday, Sept 19, 2021. Refer to the wiki page for links to the test images you’ll need to participate. Read below for details.

        • Hey Linux user, let’s talk about Fedora 35 and GNOME 41 - itsfoss.net

          Fedora is one of the best known and most popular Linux distributions. This Fedora distro is developed by the community and has the support of the Red Hat company, which guarantees us excellent support and that we will always be up-to-date in terms of updates and patches. Although Fedora 35 default desktop is GNOME 41, we can find flavors with other preconfigured desktops thanks to its Spins. Like any other system, this distro is constantly evolving, adding new functions and features. And, as part of this evolution, today we can know what the new Fedora 35 will be like.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Another Batch of Important Linux Kernel Security Updates Arrives for Ubuntu Users, Patch Now

          The new Linux kernel security update comes one and a half months after the previous update and it’s available for the Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo), Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa), and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system series.

          Patched in these kernel updates are several security vulnerabilities affecting the KVM hypervisor for AMD processors on all Ubuntu releases. These include CVE-2021-3656 and CVE-2021-3653, both flaws allowing an attacker in a guest virtual machine to read or write to portions of the host’s physical memory, as well as CVE-2021-22543, a use-after-free vulnerability that could allow an attacker who could start and control a virtual machine to expose sensitive information or execute arbitrary code. These issues were discovered and reported by Maxim Levitsky and Paolo Bonzini.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Defining an Inkscape Contributor

        When Inkscape was started, it was a loose coalition of folks that met on the Internet. We weren’t really focused on things like governance, the governance was mostly who was an admin on SourceForge (it was better back then). We got some donated server time for a website and we had a few monetary donations that Bryce handled mostly with his personal banking. Probably one of our most valuable assets, our domain, was registered to and paid for by Mentalguy himself.

        Realizing that wasn’t going to last forever we started to look into ways to become a legal entity as well as a great graphics program. We decided to join the (then much smaller) Software Freedom Conservancy which has allowed us to take donations as a non-profit and connected us to legal and other services to ensure that all the details are taken care of behind the scenes. As part of joining The Conservancy we setup a project charter, and we needed some governance to go along with that. This is where we officially established what we call “The Inkscape Board” and The Conservancy calls the Project Leadership Committee. We needed a way to elect that board, for which we turned to the AUTHORS file in the Inkscape source code repository.

        Today it is clear that the AUTHORS file doesn’t represent all the contributors to Inkscape. It hasn’t for a long time and realistically didn’t when we established it. But it was easy. What makes Inkscape great isn’t that it is a bunch of programmers in the corner doing programmer stuff, but that it is a collaboration between people with a variety of skill sets bringing those perspectives together to make something they couldn’t build themselves.

        Who got left out? We chose a method that had a vocational bias, it preferred people who are inclined to and enjoy computer programming. As a result translators, designers, technical writers, article authors, moderators, and others were left out of our governance. And because of societal trends we picked up both a racial and gender bias in our governance. Our board has never been anything other than a group of white men.

        We are now taking specific actions to correct this in the Inkscape charter and starting to officially recognize the contributions that have been slighted by this oversight.

      • A guide to simplifying invoicing with this open source tool

        Many IT projects are late, over budget, and subject to dramatic changes during development. This makes invoicing for them one of the most taxing activities in IT. It's stressful—it involves dealing with ambiguities, conflicting interests, and human error. Worse, every single decision made during the project affects how much you can bill for. When a sales guy brags—incorrectly—that your software "includes this feature," you can't invoice for the time to build it. When a support guy admits something is a bug rather than an imprecise spec, you won't be able to charge money for it.

        This tutorial explains a methodology and a tool to streamline this process. Together, they help reduce frustration, improve customer relationships, and achieve a higher percentage of billable hours. The tool is free, open source, and can be applied to a wide range of organizations—from a self-employed IT guy to a multimillion-dollar software business.

      • Web Browsers

        • Alternative Linux Browsers for Linux

          Browsing the Internet is the most common use of computers these days. The Internet has become a part of our daily lives, and imagining a life without it does seem difficult. To browse the Internet, there are specially designed applications called “web browsers”. There are several web browsers such as Opera, Chrome, Firefox, etc., available. And, as is the case with all technology, some are better than others. For Linux Distros, Mozilla Firefox is built-in and available for use on installing the OS. Mozilla Firefox is considered to be an excellent web browser, and most users are satisfied with it. However, options are available for users who want to use or prefer using another web browser rather than Firefox.

          Consider Google Chrome, the outright most used web browser in the world. Being affiliated with Google makes Chrome an attractive and easy-to-use browser. Add to it the various plug-ins and add-ons; it does become the superior choice.

          In the case of Opera, some users prefer using it over others. Opera is also a user-friendly and easy-to-use web browser. Recently, Opera has introduced a VPN feature which has helped its prospects even further.

          So, if you are looking to find an alternative web browser for your Linux system, you have come to the right place as this article will be explaining the steps to install different web browsers and which browser is the best choice.

        • Mozilla

          • New Release: Tor Browser 10.5.6 (Windows, macOS, Linux)

            Tor Browser 10.5.6 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

            This version updates Firefox to 78.14.0esr. This version includes important security updates to Firefox.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • The Postgres REPL

          R0ml Lefkowitz’s The Image of Postgres evokes the Smalltalk experience: reach deeply into a running system, make small changes, see immediate results. There isn’t yet a fullblown IDE for the style of Postgres-based development I describe in this series, though I can envision a VSCode extension that would provide one. But there is certainly a REPL (read-eval-print loop), it’s called psql, and it delivers the kind of immediacy that all REPLs do. In our case there’s also Metabase; it offers a complementary REPL that enhances its power as a lightweight app server.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Announcement of LibreOffice 7.1.6 Community

          LibreOffice 7.1.6 Community, the sixth minor release of the LibreOffice 7.1 family, targeted to desktop productivity, is available for download from https://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

          End user support is provided by volunteers via email and online resources: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/community-support/. On the website and the wiki there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos. Donations help us to make all of these resources available.

        • LibreOffice 7.1.6 Community Office Suite Released with 44 Bug Fixes, Download Now

          Coming almost two months after LibreOffice 7.1.5, the LibreOffice 7.1.6 update is here to fix more bugs across all core components of the open-source software suite used by millions of users worldwide on GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms. A total of 44 bugs were squashed, according to the changelogs from RC1 and RC2.

          LibreOffice 7.2 is already here as the next major release of the popular and free office suite, but you are probably still using the LibreOffice 7.1 series on your GNU/Linux distribution, so I suggest you keep an eye on the stable software repositories for the 7.1.6 release and update as soon as it’s available.

      • CMS

        • 3 Best Free and Open Source CoffeeScript Static Site Generators

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

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

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

          Here’s some of the main ones...

        • WordPress 5.8.1 Security and Maintenance Release

          This security and maintenance release features 60 bug fixes in addition to 3 security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 5.4 have also been updated.

          WordPress 5.8.1 is a short-cycle security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.9.

          You can download WordPress 5.8.1 by downloading from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now.

          If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

            Discussions on ways to "modernize" the Emacs editor have come up in various guises over the past few years. Changes of that nature tend to be somewhat contentious in the Emacs community, pitting the "old guard" that values the existing features (and keybindings) against those who argue for changes to make Emacs more approachable (and aesthetically pleasing) to newcomers. Those discussions tend toward mega-thread status, so it should be no surprise that a query about possibly moving Emacs development to a "forge" (e.g. GitHub or GitLab) got similar treatment. As always in Emacs-land, there are multiple facets to the discussion, including the desirability of moving away from an email-based workflow, accommodating younger, forge-centric developers without forcing existing developers into that model, and—naturally—licensing.

            As a newcomer to the emacs-devel mailing list, Daniel Fleischer may not have expected the voluminous response he got to an August 26 post asking about the status of a "move to a new VC [version control] system, e.g. Gitlab". The somewhat provocative subject of the email, "Gitlab Migration", probably helped draw eyes (and responses) as well. There are no current plans to make a migration of that sort, of course, and a two-year-old feature request at GitLab shows a "pretty daunting" level of work needed, Dmitry Gutov said.

      • Programming/Development

        • The Joy Of Limitations: Writing an ARexx REPL in ARexx

          I like limited computers. Of course all computers are limited in some sense: there's finite amounts of memory, disk space and screen real estate on all machines. When I'm talking limited, I usually mean home computers made during the 1990s and 1980s, machines that are now far surpassed by even the cheapest system on a chip.

          There are several reasons for this. One is familiarity: they're the type of machines I started my computing career on. Having used them and the software they run for three decades means that sitting down in front of one feels like coming home.

          Another one is scale: simpler machines are, well, simpler. When resources are scarce, there's less room for overengineered bloat, telemetry collection, "trusted computing" and other frivolities. More importantly, simple things are easier to understand, learn and remember.

        • Porting NU-Prolog (c. 1995) from BSD Unix to modern Linux

          NU-Prolog is a Prolog variant designed by the members of the Machine Intelligence Project at the University of Melbourne, released circa 1986, with a version 1.6.9 released circa 1995.

          Recently, I sought to port some software written in NU-Prolog (written by one of its creators, Lee Naish). Due to NU-Prolog's unique features, not found in contemporary free Prolog implementations such as GNU Prolog or SWI-Prolog, this pointed to porting NU-Prolog to modern systems as the easiest approach.

        • C++ Programming examples

          C++ is one of the popular programming languages to develop different types of applications. The application developed by this language is portable, which means the C++ application developed in Windows operating can be executed in Linux operating system without any change. It supports both structured and object-oriented programming. This tutorial has designed for those learners who are new users of C++ programming and want to learn from the basics. 40 C++ easy examples have been shown in these tutorials.

        • Can You Make a Vector of Vectors in C++?

          Yes! Yes, you can make a vector of vectors in C++. The normal vector is a one-dimensional list data structure. A vector of vectors is a two-dimensional list data structure, from two normal vectors. A 2-dimensional list is a table, without a proper header row and without a proper header column. A vector of vectors is one vector nesting other vectors. The template argument for the outer vector, is a vector. And so, a vector of vectors can only be of one type, e.g., all integers or all characters.

        • Python

          • Python Is Integer

            This notebook explains how to check in Python if a number is a integer.

            There are multiple ways to check for integer in Python 2 and Python 3.

          • Cooperative package management for Python [LWN.net]

            A longstanding tug-of-war between system package managers and Python's own installation mechanisms (primarily pip, but there are others) looks on its way to being resolved—or at least regularized. PEP 668 ("Graceful cooperation between external and Python package managers") has been created to provide ways for the two types of package installation to work together, rather than at cross-purposes at times. Since many operating systems depend on Python tools, with package versions that may differ from those of users' Python applications, making them play together nicely should result in more stable systems.

            The root cause of the problem is that distribution package managers and Python package managers ("pip" is shorthand to refer to those throughout the rest of the article) often share the same "site‑packages" directory for storing installed packages. Updating a package, or, worse yet, removing one, may make perfect sense in the context of the specific package manager, but completely foul up the other.

        • Rust

        • Java and JavaScript

          • How the JVM uses and allocates memory | Red Hat Developer

            This is the second article in a series that explains garbage collection in Java and how to tweak it for optimal Java application performance. The previous article introduced the stages and levels of garbage collection (including generational garbage collection) and showed how to check garbage collection behavior in your applications. This article goes into more depth about memory use in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and how to control it.

          • Break and Continue statements in JavaScript

            Do you ever feel stuck at some point in life where you just want to get rid of a moment or an instance? When you just want to skip some moments and then go with the flow? That might not be possible in real life but it’s possible in programming languages like JavaScript by using break and continue statements.

            These statements are known as Loop Control Statements; We are going to explain the break as well as continue statements in this article. We will make sure that everything about both of the concepts is delivered properly and in a precise way.

          • JavaScript Event Handlers

            In JavaScript, an event is an action that occurs on a webpage inside the browser. This action can be typing in a field, clicking a button, or loading a page. The actions can either be initiated by the browser or the user; when any action occurs on a web page the browser notifies the system that an event has occurred. Developers can then respond to these events by writing functions that are known as event handlers.Event handlers are functions that listen for a specific type of event and when that event occurs they execute a block of code.

          • Data Types in JavaScript? – Explained for Beginners

            Every value is always distinct from each other, which categorizes them into various types. This categorization of various data is called Data Type. The reason for categorizing the data is to ensure how the data is being used within the program.

            Like any other programming language, JavaScript also consists of various data types. Data Type is dynamic in JavaScript, which means a single value can be stored in various ways.

          • How to write Comments in JavaScript code

            Comments are notes that a programmer leaves in their code to make it more understandable. Most senior devs focus on writing code which is efficient and can be easily read and interpreted by computers. However it is of equal importance to make the code easily readable for the people (who will be working with the code in future) as well. A programmer must know how to properly structure code to make it more understandable for humans.

          • How to read and write text into a file using JavaScript?

            In this article, we are going to talk about how to read or write text to a file in JavaScript. If you are a JavaScript developer you know that one cannot save a file locally as it can create massive security problems.

            Another method would be saving the file on our server. For this, we have to pass all the text data in our file to our server. After this, we have to use the server-related server-side language due to which we will be able to execute the written code in the file. Apart from this, we can also store the file on the client-side. An example would be using cookies to store the information.

  • Leftovers

    • I Wanna Be As Human as Possible…
    • What Do You Think This Is, Earth Prime?
    • Deserters Make Good Ancestors: Reflections on Robert E. Lee and Virgil Marion St. Clair

      Unlike Lee, Virgil Marion St. Clair wasn’t rich. Unlike Lee, Virgil wasn’t a slave owner. He lived in the Appalachian mountains, grinding out a hard living as a yeoman farmer.

      After secession, he volunteered, expecting to serve one year under George Patton’s grandfather. He fought in the battle of the law books in Kanawha (what they called and should have named West Virginia). Got wounded. Served as a nurse, like Walt Whitman, and later named his kids after poets, as his father had named him.

    • Ford poaches top tech executive Doug Field who helped lead Apple's top-secret car project

      Ford Motor said Tuesday it hired former Tesla and Apple executive Doug Field to lead its emerging technology efforts, a key focus for the automaker under its new Ford+ turnaround plan.

      Field — who led development of Tesla's Model 3 —most recently served as vice president of special projects at Apple, which reportedly included the tech giant's Titan car project.

    • Linode to triple data centre capacity in India to support growth in Asia

      The company expects a 200 per cent increase in capacity at Mumbai facilities, which will sustain its momentum around customer acquisition and new service launches through 2023.

    • Health/Nutrition

      • Some Anti-Maskers Present a Real Threat of Violence
      • Opinion | Medicare Advantage Is a For-Profit Scam. Time to End It.

        Over 100 Democratic lawmakers last week introduced legislation to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60. There is one small problem that needs fixing, though: so-called "Medicare Advantage."

      • Unvaxxed Quarterback Carson Wentz Wants Your Trust

        “Trust me.” That’s what 28-year-old Indianapolis Colts quarterback Carson Wentz kept saying, over and over, in his press conference last week. “Trust me.” He said it so often, one wondered if there was a used car for sale somewhere behind the podium.

      • 13 Staff at a Florida School District Have Died of COVID in Just 3 Weeks
      • Will COVID Become Australia's 9/11?

        Civil liberties in Australia are on the verge of extinction, thanks to the government's response to the COVID crisis. What has been heralded as a triumph of science and quick responses has drifted towards something far more totalitarian that imposes its will on the country's citizens, restricting them from living their lives, much less enjoying supposedly guaranteed liberties.

      • Excess Deaths

        It is difficult to comprehend how abject a failure the pandemic response in countries such as the US and the UK has been. Fortunately, The Economist has developed a model estimating excess deaths since the start of the pandemic. Unfortunately, it appears to be behind their paywall. So I have taken the liberty of screen-grabbing a few example graphs.

      • House Dems Urge DOJ to Prosecute 'Vigilantes' Enforcing 'Insidious' Anti-Choice Law in Texas

        Following U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland's pledge that the Justice Department would "explore all options" to challenge Texas' recently enacted anti-choice law, two dozen House Democrats on Tuesday urged the DOJ to prosecute "would-be vigilantes" seeking to enforce the draconian statute.

        "This ban is a clear violation of a woman's right to choose an abortion prior to fetal viability established nearly 50 years ago under Roe v. Wade."—House Democrats' letter

      • New Texas Abortion Law Likely To Unleash A Torrent Of Lawsuits Against Online Education, Advocacy And Other Speech

        In addition to the drastic restrictions it places on a woman’s reproductive and medical care rights,€ the new Texas abortion law,€ SB8, will have devastating effects on online speech.€ 

      • AOC Skewers Gov. Greg Abbott on CNN for Saying Texas Will "Eliminate Rape"
      • Opinion | This Battle for Access to Abortion Is a Fight for Basic Human Rights and Dignity

        Up the creaky wooden staircase, past the dried Indian corn, was where it was hung. It stuck out like a sore thumb, completely out of place. It was a thin barbed-wire hanger balanced on our antique doors—resting above the skeleton key and shocking our conservative neighbors.

      • Opinion | Trump, Texas, and the MAGA Drive for Power

        Donald Trump dispensed with even the pretense of paying tribute to workers on Labor Day. Instead his three word Labor Day Statement, blasted out to his supporters everywhere via the right-wing media machine, was blunt about his political priorities:

      • Texas Is the New Republican Template

        The Portland City Council will vote this week on an emergency resolution to bar city purchases of goods and services from Texas until the state overturns its draconian assault on abortion rights. Officials in the Oregon city are hoping the boycott spreads. “We urge other leaders and elected bodies around the nation to join us in condemning the actions of the Texas state government,” says Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler.

      • Ocasio-Cortez Slams Texas Governor's 'Disgusting' Defense of Abortion Ban

        Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday condemned Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's latest defense of his state's near-total ban on abortion as "disgusting" and said the Republican leader's ignorance on matters of basic biology is actively harming people across the nation.

        Questioned by reporters earlier Tuesday, Abbott argued that there is no need for a rape or incest exception to the new ban because the law "provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion"—a span of time that the governor characterized as sufficient for a person to discover they're pregnant, make the decision to terminate the pregnancy, and actually obtain an abortion under increasingly difficult circumstances.

      • Abortion Bounty Hunters in Texas Are Vigilantes Not ‘Whistleblowers’

        As a journalist and activist, I’ve worked with€ a range of genuine whistleblowers€ during the last several decades. Coming from diverse backgrounds, they ended up tangling with institutions ranging from the Pentagon and CIA to the National Security Agency and the Veterans Administration. Their personalities and outlooks varied greatly, but none of them were bullies. None of them wanted to threaten or harm powerless people in distress. On the contrary, the point of the whistleblowing was to hold powerful institutions accountable for violations of human rights.

        What the Texas vigilantes will be seeking to do is quite the opposite. The targets will be women who want abortions as well as their allies — people under duress — with pursuers seeing a bullseye on their backs.

      • Abortion Bounty Hunters in Texas Are Not ‘Whistleblowers’: They’re Cruel Vigilantes
    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Vivaldi Replaces Firefox as the Default Browser on Manjaro Linux Cinnamon - It's FOSS News

          Vivaldi is one of the best web browsers available for Linux.

          For all the good reasons, many Linux users have been switching to Vivaldi, especially after Vivaldi 4.0 release.

          Now, to take it up a notch, Vivaldi has managed to replace Firefox as the default browser on Arch-based Manjaro Linux (Cinnamon edition).

        • Manjaro Linux Cinnamon switches from Firefox to Vivaldi for default web browser

          Vivaldi may not be the most popular web browser when compared to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, for instance, but it is used by millions of people to surf the web every day -- that is still significant. Many of its users are privacy-focused and tech-savvy too. Best of all, the free Vivaldi web browser is available on all major desktop operating system platforms, including Windows, Mac, and Linux.

          Speaking of Linux, today, Vivaldi is making huge news in that community, and the folks over at Mozilla are not going to like it. You see, the developers of the Arch Linux-based Manjaro Cinnamon operating system have decided to ditch Firefox as the default web browser, instead opting for Vivaldi. Wow!

          "In our repos, Manjaro always provides the very latest version of Vivaldi, and thanks to direct developer contact we are now also able to include matching default themes for our editions To give Vivaldi more of the attention it deserves, I decided to include it as the default browser in our popular Cinnamon Community Edition. With its remarkable browsing speed, exceptional customizability, and especially the way it values user privacy, Vivaldi for me is a perfect match for Manjaro Linux," says Bernhard Landauer, Co-CEO of Manjaro.

        • Forget Firefox, Vivaldi Steals Default Browser Spot In Popular Linux Distro

          Arch-based Linux distribution Manjaro is no stranger to making bold decisions that may or may not ruffle the community’s collective feathers. In 2019 it disrupted the status quo by replacing LibreOffice with FreeOffice as the default office software (and then decided to give users a choice during OS installation). Today, Manjaro is orchestrating another upheaval: it’s replacing its default web browser.

          Firefox is out. Vivaldi is in.

          “In our repos, Manjaro always provides the very latest version of Vivaldi, and thanks to direct developer contact we are now also able to include matching default themes for our editions,” says Co-CEO of Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, Bernhard Landauer. “To give Vivaldi more of the attention it deserves, I decided to include it as the default browser in our popular Cinnamon Community Edition. With its remarkable browsing speed, exceptional customizability, and especially the way it values user privacy, Vivaldi for me is a perfect match for Manjaro Linux.”

        • Windows 11? Another wave of pollution | Stop at Zona-M

          To add insult to injury, this explosion of e-waste happens, as they said on Reddit, “in the middle of a chip shortage”. Talk about corporate responsibility.

          More details where I made the screenshot, that is at “Windows 11 To Create e-Waste Mountain”.

        • Why does Amazon want a branded TV?

          Amazon.com reportedly plans to market its own branded TVs in the U.S., possibly as soon as October.

          Citing sources familiar with the matter, Business Insider said the TV will be designed and manufactured by China-based TCL, range between 55 to 75 inches and have Alexa built in. Amazon Devices and Lab126, the R&D team behind the Kindle and Fire TV Stick, are collaborating on the project that’s been covertly in development for nearly two years.

        • Microsoft warns Azure customers of flaw that could have permitted [crackers] access to data

          In an earlier interview, Palo Alto researcher Ariel Zelivansky told Reuters his team had been able to break out of Azure's widely used system for so-called containers that store programs for users.

        • Microsoft: Attackers Exploiting Windows Zero-Day Flaw

          Microsoft Corp. warns that attackers are exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in Windows 10 and many Windows Server versions to seize control over PCs when users open a malicious document or visit a booby-trapped website. There is currently no official patch for the flaw, but Microsoft has released recommendations for mitigating the threat.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Openwashing

            • The Open Source Initiative names Stefano Maffulli as its first Executive Director

              Once upon a time, and it wasn't that long ago, developers didn't think about licenses. They assumed open-source licenses didn't matter. Oh, how wrong they were as one open-source lawsuit after another has shown. Just ask Oracle about its Google lawsuit. But, the organization, which has overseen open-source licensing since the beginning, the Open Source Initiative (OSI), has long been an amateur effort. That's changed. The OSI has finally named its first Executive Director, Stefano Maffulli.

        • Security

          • OpenSSL 3.0: A new FIPS module, new algorithms, support for Linux Kernel TLS, and more

            OpenSSL contain an open-source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols, which provide the ability to secure communications across networks.

            It is the default encryption engine for popular web, email and chat server software, VPNs, network appliances, and is used in many popular operating systems (MS WIndows, Linux, macOS, BSD, Android…) and client-side software.

            The vast extent of its use was revealed when the Heartbleed bug was discovered in it in 2014.

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

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • EFF to Council of Europe: Cross Border Police Surveillance Treaty Must Have Ironclad Safeguards to Protect Individual Rights and Users’ Data

              A global cybercrime treaty is set to reshape how cross-border police investigations are conducted. The treaty, referred to by the inauspicious moniker “Second Additional Protocol to the Council of Europe’s Budapest Convention on Cybercrime,” grants law enforcement intrusive new powers while adopting few safeguards for privacy and human rights.€ 

              Many elements of the Protocol are a law enforcement wish list—hardly surprising given that its drafting was largely driven by prosecutorial and law enforcement interests€ with minimal input from external stakeholders such as civil society groups and independent privacy regulators. As a result, EFF, European Digital Rights, the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic, and other civil society organizations have called on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which is currently reviewing the Protocol, to amend the text before its final approval in the fall.€ 

              International law enforcement investigations are becoming increasingly routine, with policing forces seeking access to digital evidence stored by service providers around the globe. But in the absence of detailed and readily enforceable international human rights standards, law enforcement authorities around the world are left to decide for themselves the conditions under which they can demand access to personal information. As a result, the lowest common denominator in terms of privacy and other protections will often prevail in cross-border investigations.

            • The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance - Mobile Correctional Facility Robots

              Human guards, of course, have pesky needs like work breaks and food. They’re entitled to paychecks and sick days. They possess flaws that can lead to outbursts of violence, racism, and sexual harassment.€ 

              “The ratio of prisoners to prison guards is too high,” wrote prison telecommunications company Securus in a recent patent application, and “a substantial amount of the total funds available to correctional facilities is spent on guards, leaving little money left over to pay for programs to reduce recidivism.”

              Securus, a company notorious for overcharging inmates for phone calls, but like its major competitor Global Tel*Link, it has been diversifying its offerings in the years since federal efforts to rein in prison phone costs.€ € 

            • Restrictive in cyberspace

              New German cybersecurity guidelines harbour even more surveillance and centralised powers

            • The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance: Exploring the Future of Incarceration Technology

              Securus and GTL have spent the last several years inventing new and improved ways to extract money from incarcerated people, violate human rights, and surveil not only prisoners but their families, and friends.

              Over the next two weeks we will be shedding light on some of the patents and technologies these companies have been working on, which either are already actively used or may soon be coming to prisons across the country.

              Our hope is that through this project we will expose some of the horrifying technologies that Securus and GTL are working on, exposing these ideas to the public and not allowing them to flourish in the obscurity of patent documents.

            • CCTVs in Delhi: Cause for concern or celebration? #SaveOurPrivacy

              On August 26, 2021, a Forbes India report claimed Delhi to be the most surveilled city in the world. Worried about the possible privacy and welfare concerns of such a project, we wrote to the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal and the PWD Minister, Satyender Jain.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • The War on Terror Is Still Alive and Well

        Assailed for the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, Joe Biden was unrepentant: “I was not going to extend this forever war.” And he promised, “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.”

      • Sápmi: Resisting Green Colonialism
      • Cops Killed Marcus Smith 3 Years Ago, Fueling Outrage Over Police Hog-Tying
      • What Ending a War Could Look Like

        Do you picture him blowing up families with missiles from robot airplanes, and committing to continuing those “strikes” while maintaining that such things don’t constitute continuing the war?

        Did you hope that if the wars for freedom ever ended we might get our freedoms back, our rights to demonstrate restored, the Patriot Act repealed, the local police rid of their tanks and war weapons, the landscaped stripped of all the cameras and metal detectors and bullet-proof glass that have grown up for two decades?

      • The Money That Never Arrives in Cuba

        On October 27, 2020, a week before the U.S. presidential elections took place on November 3, Trump issued his final sanction against the island. Trump included Cuban financial company Fincimex, Western Union’s main partner in the country, in the Cuban Restricted List. The pretext was that it belongs to the Cuban business corporation, Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A.

        This measure cut off the channels for sending remittances to Cuba, and Pupo’s elderly parents have not been able to receive any help amid the pandemic as a result of this move.

      • 9/11 and My Pariah Decade

        Plenty of stalwart defenders of liberty quickly found themselves banished from polite company.€  At the time of the 9/11 attacks, I had been bashing government policies for 20 years. Conservatives relished my battering of the Clinton administration in books such as Feeling Your Pain (St. Martin’s, 2000). But past writing provided no indemnity for subsequent sins.

        Regardless, nothing happened on 9/11 to make the government more trustworthy. Two years after the 9/11 attacks, St. Martin’s Press published my€  Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil, attacking the war on terror across the board.€  I scoffed, “The Patriot Act treats every citizen like a suspected terrorist and every federal agent like a proven angel.”€  When the Justice Department launched a Patriot Act propaganda website, http://www.lifeandliberty.gov, it included an attack on my writing. As one book publicist told me, I was in “the untouchable part of the intellectual caste system.” Luckily, some outlets did not go to the Dark Side, including the Mises Institute, the Future of Freedom Foundation, and Antiwar.com. Counterpunch never flinched from debunking official BS from the start of the War on Terror. My first CounterPunch article, “The Reagan Roadmap for an Antiterrorism Disaster,” was published in October 2003.

      • Opinion | We Wasted 20 Years Fighting the War on Terror Instead of Climate Change

        Twenty years into a€ nebulous "War on Terror," the United States is in the grips of a€ full-fledged climate crisis. Hurricane Ida, whose severity is a€ direct result of human-made climate change, flooded cities, cut off power to hundreds of thousands, killed at least 60 people, and left elderly people dying in their homes and in squalid evacuation facilities. This followed a€ summer of heat waves, wildfires and droughts—all forms of extreme weather that the Global South has borne the brunt of, but are now, undeniably, the new "normal" in the United€ States.

      • Noam Chomsky: The US-Led “War on Terror” Has Devastated Much of the World
      • Taliban’s New Acting Government Filled with Hard-Liners, No Women Is “Disappointing” as Protests Grow

        As the Taliban announces a new acting government in Kabul led by hard-liners from its previous stint in power and fight against U.S. occupation, Danish Afghan journalist Nagieb Khaja says the composition has been a “surprising outcome” as many observers expected the group to strike a more conciliatory tone. “It’s really been disappointing for the people who have been looking for a glimpse of hope,” Khaja says. This comes as protests grow nationwide, and aid organizations are warning of a looming humanitarian crisis.

      • From Vietnam to Afghanistan—and Back: An Offering

        When I was a child, my father used to buy me Mylar bags full of green and tan Army men. The green ones were the good guys, always fighting under the red-white-and-blue. The tan soldiers stood in for the enemy, fighting under foreign banners—Germany’s, Iraq’s, but most prominently in my memory, Vietnam’s. This taught me an important childhood lesson—that I was your enemy. I saw it in your Hollywood films, where Vietnamese stood in for an age-old “Yellow Peril”: as venal whores corrupting American youth, or as raped and murdered civilians reduced to set dressing, or invisible assailants waiting to take the only lives that seemed to matter—American ones.1

      • Gitmo’s Forgotten Ex-Detainees

        One afternoon in July, flanked by about 10 protesters in orange jumpsuits, the lawyer Gary Thompson stood outside the cultural attaché office of the United Arab Emirates in Washington, D.C. Speaking into a microphone, he called on the UAE to stop its apparent plan to send his client, a former Guantánamo detainee, back to Russia, where he would likely be jailed and tortured. Four and a half years ago, the United States released Ravil Mingazov, a Russian national and a Muslim Tatar, and put him on a flight to the UAE, where he expected to start a new life. But when he touched down, he was immediately imprisoned in an undisclosed location along with 18 Yemeni and four Afghan detainees. Reporting for this story was supported by a fellowship from the Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

      • CIA Torture Cover-Up Still Looms Over 9/11 Trials at Guantánamo

        U.S. war crimes in the so-called War on Terror were back in the spotlight Tuesday as pretrial hearings for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants resumed at Guantánamo Bay, with a lawyer for one of the men asserting that a "continuing cover-up" of CIA torture is the reason none of the suspects have been tried 15 years after their transfer to the extralegal prison.

        "Enter the Guantánamo Bay military commissions, purpose-built to launder the CIA torture program."—Alka Pradhan, human rights lawyer

      • Kabul on My Mind

        The fall of Kabul reminded me of the time, in late November 2001, that I had drinks with Ashraf Ghani. My ex-wife, Mary Weismantel and I were invited by the anthropologist Sidney Mintz to meet Ghani in a VIP suite at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Washington, D.C. When we arrived at about 5 pm, Ghani was seated in a high-backed chair beside his wife, Rula Saade. The future Afghan president wore formal, black, Pashtun clothes, and drank tea. Rula was also impeccably dressed in black. In those days, I affected worn tweed, the uniform of the male professor in early middle-age.

        Mary had first met the Ghani after a lecture a couple of years earlier at Johns Hopkins University, where both he and Mintz were professors. Ghani was famous for asking brilliant and annihilating questions after guest presentations, and Mary said he didn’t disappoint. I was the only non-anthropologist among us, but Sid liked me – we talked Marxism and told each other Jewish jokes – and so I was included.

      • Afghanistan and the US Corporate Media

        In contrast, very few people in the US political arena or the corporate-controlled US media express any skepticism about the US and its trustworthiness. It appears the possibility that the US is not trustworthy never crosses their minds. However, if it does, they realize that it is likely not to their political or professional advantage to raise this possibility with others.

        President Obama benefited from this lack of skepticism when he falsely touted the precision of the US drone program. When Obama claimed that few civilians were killed, the mainstream media generally accepted this claim until there was too much evidence of civilian deaths to be denied.

      • Crocodile Tears for Women's Rights in Afghanistan

        Oh?€ 

        Well, now let’s see. According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2001 to date exceed 70,000 people.€ 

      • Ezmerai Ahmadi: a Personal Update on Afghanistan

        Ezmerai Ahmadi, a dear dear Afghan friend and nine of his family members including some of his children, were killed Sunday, August 29, 2021 in a US drone attack near the airport in Kabul. While I lived in Afghanistan, Ezmerai was the man who made me feel the safest and the most free. He was my closest Afghan friend. He worked at my organization as a catch-all kind of guy, so that often meant he was my driver, my handy man, and the person I felt most comfortable practicing Dari with. He and his family were so gracious and generous to me. In fact, they hosted me in the very home where the drone exploded. Although there were so many formalities and cultural differences between us, he and I shared an intimate friendship that is one of my most valued treasures. My heart is broken at the loss of this Afghan family, who was also family to me. We laughed together and had inside jokes together, despite my bad Dari—his English was much better. I heard from him just last week and had hoped to help him get a P2 visa to leave Kabul. This man changed me—he taught me so much about life and people and Afghan culture, that I could have never learned without his steady friendship. He was a tender, beautiful, silly man who loved his family and worked hard to see them succeed. Ezmerai spent the last 10 years working to end malnutrition and hunger in Afghanistan, one of the most deadly killers in that beloved place.

        I want you all to know this tragedy that is a consequence of modern war. Someone far away that had never been to that area made the decision to send a rocket. He had just dropped off some of his colleagues after work and he was pulling into his house in his car, opening the gate. The kids ran out to greet him and welcome him home. He was a beloved and playful father and uncle. Those kids loved greeting him after work each day, they greeted me too when I came home for dinners with his family after work. The drone hit nearby and everyone who was outside greeting him as he came home in to the little compound died almost instantly. His wife and daughter survived him. The attack was meant to hit an ISIS target, instead it destroyed a family, a neighborhood. His friends, family, and employer—we are all united in the belief Ezmerai was completely innocent and had no involvement with ISIS or the Taliban and the world should know the truth.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Patriotic Snitch: Bob Hawke as US Informant

        In June, a rather unremarkable revelation was made that Hawke had been something of an errand boy for the US imperium, a spiller of the beans and something of what Australians would call a “dobber”.€  Cameron Coventry, in an article published that month, makes much of embassy and diplomatic cables covering the late Hawke between 1973 and 1979.€  “During this time, he divulged information [to the US] about the Whitlam government (1972-75), the Fraser government (1975-83), Labor, and the labour movement.”€  What is less than flattering for the Australian establishment is that snitching and informing on colleagues and their various circles was more than an errant pastime: it was entrenched practise.

        The image of Hawke as an eager informant for US officials had already attained form in the release of US state department cables by Wikileaks.€  During the turbulent times of the Labor government of Gough Whitlam, Hawke, according to embassy accounts, speaks of a party left in “bad financial shape” by their leader, one afflicted by “stupidity”.€  The acrimony between Prime Minister Whitlam and Hawke also registers with some frequency.€  This was of interest, given the very specific concerns from Washington that Whitlam was going wobbly on the alliance due to pressure from within his own party.€  His growing weakness was particularly troubling given “his basic moderation and support of US defence facilities and other US interests”, as one embassy cable notes in August 1974.

      • EFF to Court: FOIA Requires ICE to Release Arrest and Deportation Database Records With Privacy Protections

        The case, ACLU v. ICE, centers on a request by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to obtain data from ICE databases that show how ICE arrests, classifies, detains, and deports individual immigrants. The databases link this information to particular individuals based on a unique identifier, known as an “A-number,” that ICE assigns to people. An A-number connects the thread of records on each of ICE’s interactions with an individual, giving a look into how the agency is targeting and treating individuals over time. However, disclosing someone’s A-number to the public could invade their privacy by linking this immigration history to them.

        To get a better picture of ICE’s activities over time without disproportionately invading individuals’ privacy, ACLU requested that the agency replace each A-number with a new, unique identifier in the released records. A federal district court in New York denied ACLU's request, ruling that FOIA did not require ICE to substitute deidentified values for A-numbers.€ ACLU appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.€ 

        EFF’s brief argues that ACLU’s proposed solution “is a vital—and sometimes the only—way to protect legitimate privacy concerns while ensuring that FOIA remains a robust tool for transparency and accountability.” EFF’s brief explains that ACLU’s proposal is effectively a form of redaction because it removes the identifying information in each A-number while keeping the “relational information” that connects individual records in ICE’s database.

    • Environment

      • Extreme sea levels could soon become annual events

        Extreme sea levels are inevitable. Researchers now know more about their scale. Prepare for high tides almost every year.

      • The Future of Single-use Plastic

        While most of us were under “stay at home” orders during the pandemic, the air became cleaner and the fuel consumption delightfully dropped. However, single-use plastic consumption soared with increased production, overuse and waste.

      • Climate Change Threatens Recovery of Endangered Colorado River Fish

        In an effort to stop extinction in the Colorado River and chart a new course for this overburdened river, WildEarth Guardians and a coalition of groups€ submitted comments€ yesterday to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opposing its proposal to change the status of the razorback sucker from “endangered” to “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. This imperiled fish is one of four native Colorado River fish that still exists against all odds in this failing river.

        “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is celebrating a win when there is still lots of time left on the clock,” said Jen Pelz, the Wild Rivers Program Director at WildEarth Guardians. “The dangers to the Colorado River’s endangered fish are multiplying every day as climate change exposes the past century of unsustainable water use and management.”

      • Climate Groups Welcome Biden Solar Blueprint But Urge Quicker Energy Transition

        While welcoming the Biden administration's new blueprint showing how solar energy could produce nearly half of U.S. electricity by 2050, climate campaigners on Wednesday also pointed to damage from recent fires and floods as evidence of the need for more rapid and sweeping systemic reforms.

        The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) notably released the new Solar Futures Study (pdf) a day after President Joe Biden visited communities in New York and New Jersey devastated last week by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

      • Fossil Fuel Leaks, Spills, Flaring & Chemical Releases After Hurricane Ida May Be Worst Ever Recorded

        Oil and gas investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz says the extent of damage done after Hurricane Ida from the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry from leaks, spills, flaring, ruptures and chemical releases in the Gulf Coast could be among the worst of such events ever recorded. As half a million electricity customers continue to suffer without power, Juhasz also reports New Orleans faces excessively high durations and frequencies of power outages that mostly hit neighborhoods which are majority people of color and low income.

      • “Badly Damaged”: Environmental Activist in “Cancer Alley” Documents Oil Spills After Hurricane Ida

        As part of our ongoing coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, one of the strongest storms to ever hit the United States, we go to St. James Parish, Louisiana, to speak with Sharon Lavigne, the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize winner, who lives in the heart of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” home to more than 150 petrochemical facilities. She is now documenting oil spills in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida even as her home was badly damaged.

      • Energy

        • Campaigners Urge Dems to Exclude 'False Solutions' From US Clean Energy Standard

          As Democrats work to rapidly finalize the details of their $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, climate campaigners on Wednesday urged them to exclude fossil fuels and "false solutions" from a new clean energy program intended to cut down planet-heating emissions.

          "We need rapid and ambitious climate policy, not another polluter subsidy."—Sarah Lutz, Friends of the Earth

        • Fossil Fuel Leaks After Hurricane Ida May Be Worst Ever Recorded
        • Theresa May Slams Net Zero ‘Sceptics’ and ‘Pessimists’ – Though Ex-PM’s Climate Record is Mixed

          Former Prime Minister Theresa May has slammed climate “sceptics” and “pessimists” who oppose the UK’s net zero targets, arguing they have been proved wrong and are out of touch with public opinion.€ 

          In an apparent nod to libertarians in her party, she criticised “absolutists” who “dream of a marketplace entirely free from government intervention”, saying “those who actually risk their money understand that no such thing is possible, or even desirable.”

        • Indigenous Resistance Instrumental in Stopping High-Profile Fossil Fuel Projects, Says Report

          The efforts of Indigenous peoples in North America have helped block or delay a long list of major fossil fuel projects over the past decade, successfully leading to the avoidance of a massive amount of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report.

          “The numbers don’t lie. Indigenous peoples have long led the fight to protect Mother Earth and the only way forward is to center Indigenous knowledge and keep fossil fuels in the ground,” Dallas Goldtooth, a Keep It In The Ground organizer for Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), said in a statement. The report was coauthored by IEN and Oil Change International, a research and advocacy organization focused on transitioning away from fossil fuels.

      • Overpopulation

        • With 38 Million Facing Food Insecurity, Hunger in US Soared by Nearly 9% in 2020

          More than 38.2 million Americans struggled with food insecurity at some point last year, a roughly 9% surge in hunger compared with the 2019 level of 35.2 million, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

          "While hunger was already a massive, systemic problem in all 50 states before Covid-19 hit the U.S., domestic hunger surged during the pandemic."—Joel Berg, Hunger Free America

        • Record-Breaking Disasters Across World Have Root Cause in Common: Human Activity

          A slew of recent record-breaking disasters that took place in faraway places across the world shouldn't be seen in isolation but as interconnected events for which human activity is a major root cause, according to a United Nations report released Wednesday.

          The study (pdf), released by the UN University's Institute for Environment and Human Security, took a "deep dive" into 10 extreme events that occurred in 2020 and 2021 that "were not only disastrous for people and the environment but were also the symptoms of underlying processes ingrained in our society."

        • Reconciling human demands with planetary boundaries: a new approach to quantifying sustainability at the national and global levels

          Human population grows, Earth doesn’t. A certain environmental impact is needed to satisfy basic human needs. When multiplied by a huge population, even a small average individual impact can become high, overshooting planetary boundaries. Achieving both environmental sustainability and high human development is hence a challenge. Can we win this challenge without considering the population factor?

        • Overpopulation, saturation immigration will destroy Sydney

          This “rapacious period” of over-development was caused by one thing: mass immigration driven population growth.

          Sydney’s population ballooned by 1.1 million people in the 15 years to 2019, which necessarily required many thousands of high-rise apartments to be built very quickly.

        • The Nature and Overshoot Crisis: Reframing the Discussion of Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss

          Why does our casual observer overlook these other crises? Why did she ignore it as former IPBES chair Robert Watson pointed out?

          Because she grew up with climate change in the background all her life.

    • Finance

      • Worker Advocates Condemn Democrats' Refusal to Address Jobless Aid Crisis
      • Covering All Bases in the ER

        While I’m doing this my husband circles the grounds with a manual push mower. For him and a certain tiny subset of enthusiasts, it’s the only decent, rational way to mow the average lawn (usually he needs to be jumpstarted).

        Like homeowners everywhere presiding over tiny plots of grass for the last half century, our neighbors are mostly unaware there’s an alternative to power mowers. The wealthier among them hire lawn services: Three or four men arrive in a large flatbed truck, pull down the gangplank and unload one or two tractorlike vehicles which they methodically drive around till every blade of grass is cut. While this is being done the owners vacate the property—never actually witnessing the labor done on their behalf—treating their neighbors to the pollution and noise.

      • Anger Mounts Over Democrats' Refusal to Address Jobless Aid Crisis

        Worker justice advocates are growing increasingly furious over the national Democratic leadership's refusal to act after more than nine million people across the U.S. were thrown off unemployment insurance earlier this week, an unprecedented aid cut that took effect in the middle of a surging pandemic and persistent economic crisis.

        "Failure to do anything at this critical juncture is a betrayal of the workers who have suffered so badly over the course of this crisis."—Rebecca Dixon, National Employment Law Project

      • Nobel Economist to Biden: Ditch Fed Chair Powell If You Want to 'Build Back Better'

        If U.S. President Joe Biden wants to fulfill his "Build Back Better" agenda, he should not appoint Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to another four-year term, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said in an interview released Wednesday, joining a group of progressive lawmakers in advocating for fresh leadership at the nation's central bank.

        "People have given Powell a lot of kudos because he has supported the economy through the pandemic... On one hand I agree with that," Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University with previous roles as the chief economist of the World Bank and chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration, told€ Reuters.

      • Joseph Stiglitz: Ending Unemployment Benefits as Pandemic Rages Is Cruel & Hurts Economic Recovery

        As unemployment benefits for millions of U.S. workers expired on Labor Day, with many states suffering the worst surge of the pandemic, economist Joseph Stiglitz says it’s “disturbing” federal aid was allowed to lapse. “This is going to feed into the problems posed by the Delta variant.” Stiglitz also talks about whether Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell should stay in the job, saying he has done a “reasonable job” during the pandemic but has a tendency “to side with Wall Street and engage in deregulation.”

      • Treasury Finds Wealthiest 1 Percent Dodge Over $160 Billion in Taxes Yearly
      • WGAE Tensions Reflect an Age-Old Clash of Labor Visions

        The Writers Guild of America East has successfully organized digital journalism workers at numerous well-known outlets in the last several years, winning contract protections on things like requiring “just cause” for firing (WGAE, 1/7/19), diversity hiring (Deadline, 1/21/18) and editorial independence (FAIR.org, 6/18/19). Who could complain about this? Plenty of people, apparently.

      • Loan Forgiveness for Disabled Borrowers Was 10 Years in the Making

        More than a decade ago, a young reporter named Sasha Chavkin filed a story for ProPublica about the sort of bureaucratic indifference that makes people hate their government. Across the country, thousands of people who had suffered grievous injuries that prevented them from working were being hounded for student loans they had no chance of repaying. Many had been classified as disabled by the Social Security Administration and were already receiving government support. But the Department of Education, which handles loan forgiveness, insisted that borrowers jump through a separate set of hoops to prove they were unable to work. In some cases, the department was garnishing Social Security payments sent to people with disabilities who were in arrears on their loans.

        We published Sasha’s story on Feb. 13, 2011. It introduced readers to Tina Brooks, a former police officer who fractured a vertebra in her back and damaged three others in her neck when she plunged 15 feet down a steep quarry while training for bicycle patrol. Although five doctors and a judge from Social Security all agreed that she was fully disabled, Education Department officials continued to insist she pay off $43,000 in loans.

      • Exxon-Tied Manchin Is Again Holding $3.5T Bill Hostage Over Climate Proposals
      • Despite Manchin Roadblock, Schumer Vows 'Full Speed Ahead' on $3.5 Trillion Plan

        Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that his chamber is "moving full speed ahead" with Democrats' sweeping $3.5 trillion reconciliation package despite fresh reports that conservative Sen. Joe Manchin—a key swing vote—is only willing to accept up to $1.5 trillion in spending.

        "We're moving forward on this bill," Schumer (D-N.Y.) said during a press call that took place days after Manchin (D-W.Va.) publicly urged Congress to "hit a strategic pause" on the budget reconciliation process, which Democrats are using to advance their social spending and climate priorities without Republican support.

      • If reskilling is not quick enough, it's not COVID's fault

        In 2021, companies are starting to automate “an entire class of service jobs created when manufacturing began to deploy more automation”. So what?

        This is not news at all, of course, just something that was bound to happen as soon as technically possible, with or without pandemics.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Opinion | Can a Deadly Storm Again Spark Progress for Justice?

        "If you have already evacuated, do not return," declared Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Tuesday, instructing residents who fled coastal communities before Hurricane Ida's landfall. Edwards' advice seemed healthy for an area enveloped by flooding, a heat/humidity index exceeding 100 degrees, and no electricity to help stay cool or sustain fresh food.

      • Ocasio-Cortez to Kellyanne Conway: 'Don't Let the Fascist Victim Complex Hit You on the Way Out'

        Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined left-leaning politicians and pundits Wednesday who took swipes at Kellyanne Conway after the former senior adviser to ex-President Donald Trump said she would not comply with a Biden administration request to resign from the U.S. Air Force Academy's advisory board.

        "Clinging onto vestiges of power against the people's will is kind of your/Trump's/ the GOP's thing."—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

      • Is It Biden's Turn to be Boxed In?

        Obama’s memoir, “A Promised Land,” fails to fully credit Biden for his passionate and prophetic warnings.€  Biden was the administration’s only consistent dissenting voice on Afghanistan.€  His criticism of the military probably led him to appoint a four-star general, Lloyd Austin, as secretary of defense in order to mollify the Pentagon.

        It was known as early as 2006 that additional troops would not make a difference; that the Afghan government would collapse without U.S. support; and that the Afghan government was a criminal syndicate.€  In private meetings with Obama, Biden dismissed the intelligence community’s view of the Taliban as nothing more than a “new al Qaeda.” It wrongly predicted that the Taliban would project a “global jihadist ideology.”€  The fact that Biden was so right 12 years ago probably explains his stubbornness in standing up to the Pentagon, which was still arguing for a “conditions based withdrawal.”€  Biden was not going to allow the Pentagon to pursue its “forever war” any longer.

      • The Filibuster is Unconstitutional

        Senators whose votes have been blocked by a minority should have standing to take this issue to the Supreme Court. And the Court should abolish the filibuster as violating the U.S. Constitution.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

      • The Role Of Confirmation Bias In Spreading Misinformation

        We recently wrote about the need to start thinking differently about mis- and disinformation, as the discussions on it cover a bunch of different -- often unrelated -- concepts. And lumping them together creates problems (as it did with the term "fake news.") Last week (and over the weekend) a good example showed how this plays out in practice.

      • Rupert Murdoch Learns Why Intermediary Liability Protections Matter: Australia Says Media Orgs Can Be Sued Over Facebook Comments

        Ah, Australia. The country down under has always taken an upside down view on intermediary liability laws -- quite quick to blame an intermediary for 3rd party content. Two years ago we wrote about a problematic ruling in Australia based on the idea that media companies (not just social media companies) could be held liable for comments on Facebook about their stories. Any common sense thinking would immediately reveal how ridiculous this is: how can a media company be held liable for someone else's comments on someone else's website? Well, the judge noted, because they could hack Facebook and insert a filter to block comments on their stories with the 100 most common English words, as a form of pre-vetting every comment. I'm not kidding:

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Computer Repair Shop Owner Has To Pay Twitter's Legal Fees Over Bogus SLAPP Suit Regarding Hunter Biden's Laptop

        At the end of last year we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous SLAPP suit filed by John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of a computer repair shop whose name became somewhat famous after the NY Post ran a story regarding what was apparently Hunter Biden's laptop that had been abandoned at the shop, which eventually found its way to Rudy Giuliani. When the initial story broke, both Twitter and Facebook moved to limit the spread of the article as there were some initial concerns about the veracity of the story. In Twitter's case, it said that the story violated its policy on "hacked materials" (a policy that we've argued was problematic for journalism).

      • China's New Youth Online Gaming Restrictions Birth Underground Workaround Industry To Defeat It

        It will not be controversial to say that China has always been one of the leaders in the war on the internet and culture alike. Between the Great Firewall of China at the macro level, the almost hilariously Orwellian tactics like forbidding certain karaoke songs, and the full destruction of democracy in Hong Kong, it's clear that Beijing values control over everything else.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • Details of campaign that targeted Turkish journalists uncovered

        A team at security shop SentinelLABS has released detailed research about a threat actor it has dubbed EGoManiac, which operated between 2010 and 2016 and messed with Turkish TV journalists at OdaTV in order to place incriminating documents and malware on their devices.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • What Is Owed

        Reparations are having a moment. This march, Evanston, Ill., became the first government in the United States to attempt to address racial inequality by providing mortgage assistance and $25,000 homeownership and improvement grants to descendants of residents harmed by discriminatory housing policies in the city. Soon afterward, the US House of Representatives began hearings on HR 40, which would create a commission to study reparations for slavery and other forms of discrimination against Black people in the United States. President Biden expressed support for the study and reiterated that support at the commemoration of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Okla., in May. Meanwhile, California became the first state to initiate an official task force to study and develop a reparations plan for African Americans harmed by slavery and its legacies.

      • "They said they were vitamins": Inmates in Arkansas jail say they were unknowingly given ivermectin to treat COVID-19

        An Arkansas doctor under investigation for prescribing an anti-parasite drug called ivermectin to jail detainees with COVID-19, even though federal health officials specifically warn against it, has said that those patients took the drug willingly. But several inmates at the Washington County jail say that is not the case — that they were given the pills with no indication of what they really were.

      • Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 6: More fraud?

        Even this far into the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems that I can’t go more than three or four weeks (at most!) without revisiting the topic of ivermectin as a “miracle cure” for COVID-19. I’ve entitled this series Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine for the simple reason that it is, although, for all the HCQ conspiracy theories last year about its being the drug “they” don’t want you to know about, fraud and outright fraudulent studies were not as huge a component of the HCQ story as they have been for ivermectin In any event, ivermectin, as you might recall, is a drug commonly used in veterinary medicine to deworm livestock and pets, and it really irritates believers in the drug when you refer to ivermectin as a “horse dewormer” or “sheep dewormer,” even though it is. Ivermectin is also very useful in humans to treat diseases caused by parasitic roundworms, and its believers love to point out that the discoverers of ivermectin won the Nobel Prize in 2015, but just because they did does not mean that the drug has any usefulness against COVID-19. Rather, it’s nothing more than an explicit (and rather tiresomely obvious) rejoinder to referring to ivermectin as a livestock dewormer, which really, really gets under the skin of ivermectin promoters.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Biden Has Wasted A Year Failing To Fill Top Telecom Oversight Spots

        Consumer groups have grown increasingly annoyed at the Biden administration's failure to pick a third Democratic Commissioner and permanent FCC boss nearly eight months into his term. After the rushed Trump appointment of unqualified Trump BFF Nathan Simington to the agency (as part of that dumb and now deceased plan to have the FCC regulate social media), the agency now sits gridlocked at 2-2 commissioners under interim FCC head Jessica Rosenworcel.

      • Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet ‘Died’ Five Years Ago

        Dead-internet theory is a niche idea because it’s patently ridiculous, but it has been spreading. Caroline Busta, the Berlin-based founder of the media platform New Models, recently referenced it in her contribution to an online group show organized by the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. “Of course a lot of that post is paranoid fantasy,” she told me. But the “overarching idea” seems right to her. The theory has become fodder for dramatic YouTube explainers, including one that summarizes the original post in Spanish and has been viewed nearly 260,000 times. Speculation about the theory’s validity has started appearing in the widely read Hacker News forum and among fans of the massively popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips. In a Reddit forum about the paranormal, the theory is discussed as a possible explanation for why threads about UFOs seem to be “hijacked” by bots so often.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • Promising news for right to repair from Germany

        It seems that Germany wants smartphone makers to offer 7 years of software updates, and maybe spare parts too.

        The EU proposed a new law earlier this year that would force all smartphone OEMs to offer up to five years of security updates for their devices and deliver reasonably priced spare parts for the same duration.

        Although the EU’s new right to repair laws are yet to go into effect, the German Federal Government has now announced plans to extend the support timeline by two years, plus demanding OEMs to publish the spare part prices and not increase them over time.

    • Monopolies

      • India needs uniformity in online dispute resolution: sources [Ed: The typical lobbying tactic, bemoaning "uncertainty" (or similar) to basically say "I don't like how it is, please change"]

        IP counsel highlight the stark contrast in technology integration by district and high courts, and recommend areas for improvement

      • Law School Canons: It’s a Pain to Opine [Ed: This system has been hijacked by self-serving law firms, not science]

        My Civil Procedure I outline turned out to be the longest outline of my first law school semester. Personally, I was betting on joinder and class actions to contain the most notes throughout the semester. As it turned out, discovery took the “most notes” crown. That makes sense – there’s a lot to discover in a lawsuit! Upon review of my outline, some of these rules started to come back to me.

        [...]

        With Young’s testimony excluded entirely, clearly, that evidence could not come in. Many can speculate on what the outcome of this case would have been including Young’s testimony. No doubt that information from the inventor himself would be very relevant and accurate as to factual issues! However, one bullet point in my notes on expert witnesses lays out the base reasoning for this rule: “Essentially making sure experts are qualified and aren’t using ‘quack science.’”

      • Patents

        • “An Error of Principle and Approach” – Birss LJ clarifies the law on breadth of claim and uncertainty insufficiency

          In undoubtedly one of the most important decisions of the year so far, on 24 August 2021, the English Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in FibroGen v Akebia (FibroGen Inc v Akebia Therapeutics Inc [2021] EWCA Civ 1279), partially allowing FibroGen’s appeal, and so finding one of the ‘Family A’ patents, EP 823, valid and infringed. The judgment is of particular interest for its approach to insufficiency, with the very experienced patents judge, Arnold LJ being overturned on two separate grounds of insufficiency. The judgment aligns UK law on breadth of claim insufficiency with the decision of the German Supreme Court in Dipeptidyl-Peptidase-Inhibitoren from 2013 and is more favourable to patent holders than the first instance decision.

          FibroGen holds six patents that relate to the use of hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase (“HIF-PH”) inhibitors for the treatment of anaemia. These patents form two families; Family A (claiming an earliest priority date of 2001) relates to the treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD) anaemia, whilst Family B (claiming priority from 2004) relates to the treatment of anaemia of chronic disease (ACD). Both families contain broad claims to classes of compounds, and a narrow sub-claim to the same individual compound.

        • Partial victory for Alcon in eye surgery case

          Alcon and Johnson & Johnson are locked in a patent dispute for the growing market of eye laser technology in Germany, the UK and the US. The opponents are fighting over eight patent families. Four belong to Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary AMO (EP 1 835 861, EP 2 548 528, EP 2 772 234 B1, EP 3 466 379 B1). Four are owned by Alcon (EP 2 926 780, EP 2 240 108, EP 2 579 827, EP 2 826 436). All patents relate to laser technology for ophthalmic surgery.

          The technology is used, for example, in the treatment of cataracts. In an increasingly aging society, cataract surgery is an important field in medical technology. The British Journal of Opthalmology estimates around 10 million operations are performed worldwide every year. Therefore, the patents-in-suit are of great economic importance for both parties.

          Current proceedings are underway in Germany, the UK and the US. In a first decision in the case, Hamburg Regional Court found Alcon’s patent EP 2 926 780 to be infringed. As a result, the court issued an injunction and ordered AMO to pay damages, provide information and render accounts (case ID: 327O 321/20). However, this is only a first win in the cross-border dispute.

          [...]

          Nevertheless, the court saw no reason to stay the infringement suit pending a decision in the nullity case.

        • EPO and ARIPO launch major training programme [Ed: Is EPO trying to googlebomb away reports about its Ethiopia blunder?]

          In an online ceremony on 8 September, EPO President António Campinos together with the heads of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) and the national patent offices of Angola and Ethiopia launched the virtual Regional ARIPO Patent Examination Training programme (ARPET programme). This is the largest ever training programme undertaken by the EPO with offices outside Europe.

          More than 100 participants from ARIPO and the national offices of its 20 member states, as well as of Angola and Ethiopia, will participate in the 18-month ARPET programme, which provides a modular, competency-based training framework and curriculum. The participants will receive training from EPO and ARIPO experts on how to conduct high-quality and timely searches and examine local patent applications, incorporating the EPO's best practices in respect of second filings.

        • Applause as Australia Backs Covid Vaccine Patent Waiver

          "The British and German governments have no allies or excuses left. They must stop obstructing efforts to waive patents so that we can finally vaccinate the world."—Nick Dearden,€ Global Justice Now€ 

          "Australia's support for a waiver puts the WTO in a strong position to make progress at next week's TRIPS council meeting," said Nick Dearden, director of the organization.€ 

        • As Delta Surges, Other Variants Wait in the Wings. Biden Must Take Action.
        • “Will Corporate Greed Prolong the Pandemic?”: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz on Global Vaccine Equity

          Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says global vaccine inequity endangers everyone on the planet, including those in rich countries, and says the best way to solve the problem is to drastically increase production of COVID-19 vaccines. “As long as the disease is festering someplace in the world, there are going to be mutations,” Stiglitz says. “So it’s in our own self-interest that we get the disease controlled everywhere.”

      • Copyrights

        • New ABBA Album Tops 80K Pre-Orders, Breaks Universal UK Record

          The album release is being accompanied by a special Voyage tour in London. Tickets went on sale for the ABBA Voyage digital event today. Digital versions of the singers (not holograms) will perform alongside a 10-piece live band at London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The shows start May 27, 2022, and ABBA fans rushed to book their tickets.

          The digital ABBAtars of Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus will perform alongside the band. The group’s digital counterparts were created with the help of Industrial Light and Magic – the special effects company founded by George Lucas.

          Work on the concert series involved months of motion capture with the group and a team of more than 850 people. More than 160 cameras were used to film the band’s performance. ILM used archive footage of the band to develop the realistic digital performance.

        • The Publishers Association Ramps Up Site Blocking to Reduce Piracy

          The Publishers Association, a UK organization supporting members producing digital and print books, research journals, and educational resources, obtained its first pirate site blocking injunction in 2015. Six years later the group has now been granted an expansion in an effort to restrict access to domains that helped to circumvent the aims of the High Court order.

        • German Pirate Site Blocklist Gradually Expands with BS.to as Latest Target

          German Internet providers have started blocking access to the popular streaming portal BS.to. The anti-piracy measure is part of the country's voluntary blocking regime, which classified the site as structurally infringing. BS.to's operators, meanwhile, are showing users how to bypass the new restrictions.

        • Meet the CC Summit Presenter: Franny Gaede

          Based in: Eugene, Oregon, United States

        • Meet the CC Summit Presenter: Dr. Matthew Rimmer

          Based in: Brisbane, Australia (As the Men at Work song goes, “I come from a Land down under” )



Recent Techrights' Posts

Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
 
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
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Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries
Links 26/03/2024: Inflation Problems, Strikes in Finland
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Losing Children, Carbon Tax Discussed
Links for the day
Mark Shuttleworth resigns from Debian: volunteer suicide and Albania questions unanswered, mass resignations continue
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 26/03/2024: 6,000 Layoffs at Dell, Microsoft “XBox is in Real Trouble as a Hardware Manufacturer”
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Microsofters Still Trying to 'Extend' Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Look What IBM's Red Hat is Turning CentOS Into
For 17 years our site ran on CentOS. Thankfully we're done with that...
The Julian Paul Assange Verdict: The High Court Has Granted Assange Leave to Appeal Extradition to the United States, Decision Adjourned to May 20th Pending Assurances
The decision is out
The Microsoft and Apple Antitrust Issues Have Some But Not Many Commonalities
gist of the comparison to Microsoft
ZDNet, Sponsored by Microsoft for Paid-for Propaganda (in 'Article' Clothing), Has Added Pop-Up or Overlay to All Pages, Saying "813 Partners Will Store and Access Information on Your Device"
Avoiding ZDNet may become imperative given what it has turned into
Julian Assange Verdict 3 Hours Away
Their decision is due to be published at 1030 GMT
People Who Cover Suicide Aren't Suicidal
Assange didn't just "deteriorate". This deterioration was involuntary and very much imposed upon him.
Overworking Kills
The body usually (but not always) knows best
Former Red Hat Chief (CEO), Who Decided to Leave the Company Earlier This Month, Talks About "Cloud Company Red Hat" to CNBC
shows a lack of foresight and dependence on buzzwords
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 25, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 25, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Discord Does Not Make Money, It's Spying on People and Selling Data/Control (38% is Allegedly Controlled by the Communist Party of China)
a considerable share exists
In At Least Two Nations Windows is Now Measured at 2% "Market Share" (Microsoft Really Does Not Want People to Notice That)
Ignore the mindless "AI"-washing
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Still Has Hundreds of Thousands of Simultaneously-Online Unique Users
The scale of IRC