 We’ve recently reviewed two terminal-based image viewers, viu and timg, that support the Kitty Graphics Protocol. These image viewers let you view high resolution images direct in a terminal.
This review looks at a third terminal-based image viewer that supports the Kitty Graphics Protocol. It’s named Chafa, shorthand for Character Art Facsimile. This is an image-to-text converter. It’s free and open source software written in the C programming language.
Chafa lets you view images as well as animated GIFs. Its core functionality is provided with a C library.
 Rocket.Chat is making headlines this year, and for all the good reasons.
To start with, they collaborated with Nextcloud to offer an open-source Microsoft 365 alternative, then joined forces with Matrix, and now they have announced another partnership to tackle the likes of “Skype for Business” and Microsoft Teams.
So, what is it about? Let us get to know more here.
 Synced with the Debian Sid repository as of June 12th, 2022, the Clonezilla Live 3.0.1 release is the first minor update to the Clonezilla Live 3.0 series launched at the end of May 2022 with APFS and LUKS support, as well as numerous other improvements.
Clonezilla Live 3.0.1 is powered by the latest and greatest Linux 5.18.5 kernel to provide users with better hardware support, and introduces several new packages to the live system.
 Compulab IOT-GATE-IMX8PLUS is a new Arm Linux IoT gateway powered by NXP i.MX 8M Plus SoC with up to 8GB RAM, 128GB storage, and plenty of connectivity options with dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 LE, and 4G LTE connectivity, as well as GNNS support and RS485/RS232 interfaces.
The new IoT gateway builds upon theArm SystemReady IR certified IOT-GATE-IMX8 industrial gateway, but offers more RAM and storage, a 2.8 TOPS AI accelerator (in the NXP processor), improved connectivity, as well as a DVI-D port for video output.
After the log mentioning my playing with CGI scripts, Acidus was nice enough to send me an email with some helpful tips. The jist of it was renaming the script files extention to .cgi and running the command 'chmod 755 script.cgi' to make it executible. I tried the chmod thing but didn't know about the 755 part. Its simple things to mess up that are easily avoided once you know about them.
Have you ever received a parcel or bought an item to realise, once unpacked, that the room was mostly full of packaging? Holding the item in your hand, you thought : "all this crap only for this thing in my hand". Isn’t that feeling similar to reading most modern webpage?
After releasing Offpunk 1.0 and announcing it on my blog, I started to fear having released it with a huge bug that would prevent first-time users to even start the software. Breaking my disconnection rule, I started to watch my inbox several times during that day.
There was two crashes reported but also a few strange feedback from people which were obviously not Gemininauts. Intrigued, Iââ¬Â¯connected my laptop and did a Google search for "offpunk gemini". Iââ¬Â¯don’t like Google but I know it has a recency bias which allow spotting very recent webpages.
The dwimmiest sort of all time!
– Toots and the Maytals
I went to a planning board meeting last night. Since we shed the reeking regional incinerator that occupied downtown for nearly 30 years, the city’s political class has been giddy over the wave of gentrification and sprawl that’s ensued. Concerns about working farm and forest land are easily swept aside in pursuit of “development.” The policy is often justified by a lack of housing that’s “affordable.”
Will there be a spark initiating a cascade, a rebellion, a realignment?€ Will it even matter?€ A Fluxus of purgation? Can weak minded pseudo- lefties ever get it straight? Can right winglets out to blindly wreck the world in their own image, with the sauce of your apathy, make it a better place? You won’t stop them with puny little protests in the streets (not to say you shouldn’t try, but that’s not the half of what’s required) You won’t stop them with litters to the editor You won’t stop them with shouts and incantations or especially, even better ideas They have guns.€ They will use them. Bullshit gerrymandered politicians elected by€ misled fearful masses will be ready to roll over you and you and you and all you love and all the order you think you love BTW, cops won’t be there to save you.€ They will be too busy bustin’ heads, like they’re programmed to do, all according to your governments business model
How can a house built to be divided stand?
There was a time when a cheap 3D printer meant an extremely dubious “Prusa i3” clone as a kit of parts, with the cheapest possible components which, when assembled, would deliver a distinctly underwhelming experience. Most hackerspaces have one of these cheap printers gathering dust somewhere, usually with a rats-nest of wires hanging out of one side of it. But those awful kits have been displaced by sub-$200 printers that are now rather good, so what’s the current lowest end of the market? The answer lies in printers such as the sub-$100 Easythreed X1, which All3DP have given a review. We’ve been curious about this printer for a while, but $100 is a bit much to spend on a toy, so€ it’s interesting to see their take on it.
When you want a couple copies of a thing, you can 3D print ’em. When you want a ton of them, you might consider making a mold. If those are the shoes you’re in, you should check out this video from [Robert Tolone] (embedded below). Or heck, just check out all of his videos.
While high-fidelity audio has come a long way in the past several decades, a lot of modern stereo equipment is still missing out on some of the old analog meters that were common on amplifiers and receivers of the 60s through the 80s. Things like VU meters don’t tend to be common anymore, but it is possible to build them back in to your sound system with the help of some microcontrollers. [Mark] shows us exactly how to reclaim some of the old-school functionality with this twin audio visualizer display.
If you’ve ever thought about 3D printing shoes, you’ll enjoy watching the video below about a Portland-based company that creates shoes on demand using an HP MJF 5200 3D printer. Granted, this isn’t a printer you likely have in your basement. The one-ton printer costs up to a half-million dollars but watching it do its thing is pretty interesting.
As microcontroller prices drop, they appear in more things. Today you will find microcontrollers in your car, your household appliances, and even kid’s toys. But you don’t see them often embedded in things that are either super cheap or have to flex, such as for example a bandage. Part of the reason is the cost of silicon chips and part of the reason is that silicon chips don’t appreciate bending. What if you could make CPUs for less than a penny out of flexible plastic? What applications would that open up? PragmatIC — a company working to make this possible — thinks it would open up a whole new world of smart items that would be unthinkable today. They worked with a team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to create prototype plastic CPUs with interesting results.
Michaà â Kasprzak: TraceRoute42 is a technology consultancy firm with a vast expertise in infrastructure architecture, design & maintenance. We help startups and enterprises create bulletproof architectures and choose an optimal solution during the concept phase or implementation of major functional changes. We advise on how to prepare for changing factors and parameters of system load, security breaches, unexpected emergency situations, and their impact on project resources.We are a team of Linux Administrators who have once decided to move over to Kubernetes. Currently we are working on automation of creation and updates of various k8s environments, and we assist projects in their sysadmin, devops, and database related issues.
Privacy fears should never stand in the way of healthcare. That's why this common-sense bill will require businesses and non-governmental organizations to act responsibly with personal information concerning reproductive health care. Specifically, it restricts them from collecting, using, retaining, or disclosing reproductive health information that isn't essential to providing the service someone asks them for.
These restrictions apply to companies that collect personal information related to a person’s reproductive or sexual health. That includes information such as data related to pregnancy, menstruation, surgery, termination of pregnancy, contraception, basal body temperature or diagnoses. The bill would protect people who, for example, use fertility or period-tracking apps or are seeking information about reproductive health services.€
We are proud to join Planned Parenthood, NARAL, National Abortion Federation, URGE, National Partnership for Women & Families, and Feminist Majority in support of the bill.
As is the case with so many of these services, there are a few apps that are more popular than others. While we started with the one we were being asked to use, this prompted us to look closer at the entire industry.
These days, offering two-factor authentication (2FA), where two different methods are used to verify a user’s login, is fairly standard. EFF has frequently asserted that it is one of the easiest ways to increase your security. Therefore, it seemed like a basic first step for daycare apps.
In October 2021, we tried to reach out to one of the most popular daycare services, Brightwheel, about the lack of two-factor authentication on their mobile app. We searched around on the site for an email to report security concerns and issues, but we could not find one.
Just imagine! The words are those of Robert Weissman, president of the organization Public Citizen, in response to the legislative efforts of Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan, who are the co-chairs of — glory hallelujah! — the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus. They recently introduced legislation that would cut Pentagon spending by $100 billion and divert the money to programs that actually helped the country . . . e.g., universal health care, ending child poverty, saving the environment.
Yeah, just imagine. One can also quickly, unavoidably imagine the cynicism that rushes in whenever someone tosses out the word “peace.” Then it’s all pushed to the margins, both political and social, as America continues its business as usual, which is all about protecting itself from enemies (most of whom it creates). The sales pitch is fear. The motive, hidden in the shadows, is extraordinary profit for some.
“We don’t feel safe,” lamented one Afghan asylum-seeker whose brothers translated for U.S. invasion forces. “We don’t know what will happen in an hour. We don’t …
From his first days in office, Joe Biden and his national security advisers seemed determined to revive America's fading global leadership via the strategy they knew best—challenging the "revisionist powers" Russia and China with a Cold War-style aggressiveness. When it came to Beijing, the president combined the policy initiatives of his predecessors, pursuing Barack Obama's "strategic pivot" from the Middle East to Asia, while continuing Donald Trump's trade war with China. In the process, Biden revived the kind of bipartisan foreign policy not seen in Washington since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
As a key witness prepared to testify Tuesday before the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol, a growing number of U.S. legal experts argued that one of Donald Trump's recorded phone calls offers ample grounds for the former president's prosecution.
"The tape should provide a simple case for criminal prosecutors to bring against Trump after the hearings."
It was a thoroughly misguided mission.
Call it a cultural genocide, a crime against humanity, or (as I prefer) a genocide, the repression in Xinjiang Province is a well-documented Chinese government policy authorized by the specific order of President and communist party leader Xi Jinping.
Alfred McCoy takes you to a planet where things are only getting hotter in so many ways, not just nuclear.
Campaigners on Tuesday welcomed an announcement that the United States military would end anti-personnel land mine use in most of the world, while pushing the Biden administration to go further and join the international treaty prohibiting the deployment of weapons that kill and maim thousands of people every year.
"Inherently indiscriminate weapons that disproportionately harm civilians have no place in the 21st century."
In mid-May, the Azovstal steel plant became the last bulwark of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol as Ukrainian troops, including from the Azov regiment, sheltered there. On May 16, Azovstal’s defenders started leaving the complex in surrender, and on May 20, the Russian Defense ministry reported that the Azovstal plant had been “completely liberated.” According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, over 2,500 soldiers surrendered. A portion of them are currently being held on the territory of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic”; others are in Moscow's Lefortovo remand prison. In an effort to rescue their loved ones, relatives of the captured soldiers have created the Association of Azovstal Defenders' Families. Meduza spoke to its deputy head, Yulia Fedosyuk, wife of Azov fighter Arseniy Fedosyuk, about the ongoing fight to free the soldiers.
Cops love secrecy. When a citizen does something wrong, it’s a public record. When cops do the wrong thing, union contracts, internal policies, and multiple public records exemptions often allow law enforcement agencies to keep the public from learning about misconduct.
Several young victims of the climate emergency plan to file a lawsuit Tuesday in Europe's top human rights court, where they will challenge an arcane energy treaty that protects fossil fuel investors at the expense of securing a livable planet.
"It's hard to think of an international treaty that is more out-of-date and out-of-time."
Climate justice campaigners in€ Africa on Tuesday rebuked the International Energy Agency over a new report that urges nations across the continent to quickly extract and export their natural gas reserves before the world shifts to renewable energy sources.
The IEA's new Africa Energy Outlook 2022, released Monday, notes that countries around the world are gradually shifting toward alternatives to fossil fuels and called on the continent to profit from the 90 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas that it could potentially produce per year until 2030. The report says a full third of that production should be exported to overseas markets.
“You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life,” she said. “They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish [sic].” The fascist went on, saying the government would punish those who didn’t comply.
“So you’ll probably get a little zap inside your body that’s saying, ‘No no don’t eat a real cheeseburger; you need to eat the fake burger,’ the fake meat from Bill Gates,” she said, in characteristically bizarre fashion. “They probably also want to know when you go to the bathroom and if your bowel movements are on time or consistent.”
By 2002, according to Defense News:
But buyer’s remorse set in quickly. As the U.S.-China relationship—never entirely smooth—soured in the twenty-first century, the realization that our entire tech industry was at the mercy of an authoritarian and sometimes capricious government set off reactions ranging from fear to anger. Since 2010, the United States and other countries have been searching for a way to replace these critically sourced strategic materials.
These groups preach protection for WSAs but in practice they are actually part of the “measly 6%.” They justify this by saying it’s okay to drop protections for some of “Montana’s wildest places” as long as it’s done by “locally-driven collaborative process.” They are wrong. These National Public Lands belong to all Americans and not just a few self-appointed collaborators using a top-down approach embodied in legislation.
Wild Montana’s history on WSA protection represents the measly 6%. They supported the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, which ended WSA status for the Zook Creek and Buffalo Creek WSAs on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in eastern Montana and forced the BLM to assess the oil potential in other WSAs, angering conservationists. They supported Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act agreeing to remove protections from the entire 151,000 acre West Pioneer WSA, the second largest in Montana, removing part of the Sapphire WSA and releasing 68,000 acres in seven BLM WSAs. They supported Wilderness designation for just 29% of the 400,000 acres of WSAs considered. More recently, on the EIS for BLM WSAs in Montana they recommended that several of these be opened to other uses and their status as WSAs ended.
In March, the Southern African Faith Communities' Environment Institute (SAFCEI) sent letters€ to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors€ calling on them to stop funding the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).€ Evidence from a€ donor-commissioned evaluation, released in February, confirmed the findings of an€ independent academic assessment€ that the billion-dollar program was failing to significantly improve yields, incomes or food security for Africa's small-scale farming households.€
The United Nations announced Tuesday that it is moving the conclusion of its pivotal global biodiversity conference from Kunming, China to Montreal, Canada after several coronavirus-related delays.
"We don't have a moment to waste."
It appears that Republicans on the Supreme Court are preparing to light our planet on fire.
Technology: creativity and power
Humanity’s considerable technical prowess over the last two centuries – stream engines, railways, the telegraph, electricity, automobiles, airplanes, chemical industries, modern medicine, information technology and, more recently, the digital revolution and robotics, biotechnologies, nanotechnologies—has provided humanity with enormous benefits. We are right to rejoice: Pope John Paul II exclaimed that “science and technology are wonderful products of a God-given human creativity” (p. 79). Pope Francis adds his praise: “How can we not feel gratitude and appreciation for this progress, especially in the fields of medicine, engineering and communications? How could we not acknowledge the work of many scientists and engineers who have provided alternatives to make development sustainable?” (ibid.). Humanity, it appears, has a relentless impulse to overcome all material limitations.
Federal free school meal waivers that would cost just $11 billion to extend for another year are set to lapse at the end of the month due to GOP obstruction as the Senate simultaneously advances—on a bipartisan basis—an $857 billion military budget, a $45 billion increase over President Joe Biden's latest request.
"Universal school lunches have been a lifeline for families, especially as corporations price-gouge at the grocery store."
A new paper published Tuesday shows that U.S. corporate price markups and profits surged to their highest levels since the 1950s last year, bolstering arguments for an excess profits tax as a way to rein in sky-high inflation.
Authored by Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani of the Roosevelt Institute, the analysis finds that markups—the difference between the actual cost of a good or service and the selling price—"were both the highest level on record and the largest one-year increase" in 2021.
Instead of growing financial security, Sam Pizzigati says the current retirement system in the U.S. is growing greater overall economic inequality.
Labor unions, civil society and religious groups joined the Poor People’s Campaign on June 18 to demand justice and redressal for the 140 million people in the US facing poverty and growing insecur…
After her niece, a low-income mother of three, was murdered several years ago, Wel'ega Ma'Shak of Galt, California, joined Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) to feel less alone in her grief. She also joined the state chapter of the Poor People's Campaign (PPC), and on Saturday, June 18, she stood with tens of thousands of people in Washington, D.C.—representing MMIW—to condemn government policies that elevate militarism over human needs and to denounce religious bigotry and legislation that allows racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia to persist.
Climate, environmental, and social justice advocates on Tuesday condemned the decision by a Democratic California lawmaker to kill proposed legislation that would require two of the state's leading pension funds to divest from the fossil fuel industry.€
"Teachers and state employees whose retirement futures are invested by our state's pension funds have long demanded that CalPERS and CalSTRS cease investing their money in fossil fuel companies."
The California-born governor of Montana sports a modified version of western wear with Levi and Carhart clothing and the ever-present over-sized, somewhat Freudian compensation, belt buckle with his ranch brand, implying good-old-boy Lyndon Johnson type power, including body-slamming reporters half his size. A candidate for a Montana U.S House seat, when he isn’t € Nav cribbing a travel invoice, is often seen during election times clad in cowboy attire with a black hat and riding a paint horse like Monte Montana. € While the governor tries to pass as one of the common people (excluding reporters) the potential House Seat politico tries to portray a John Wayne image, but resembles a goofy ex-jock variety of Don Knotts, with the ethics of Richard Nixon.
The new women of the west sport over-sized belt buckles, sequin-laden clothing, pink ropes, intentionally shredded Levis and New Mexico buckaroo hats, with silk scarfs, spurs and chinks that make a statement – apparently with a subliminal desire to look like a hybrid Dolly Parton and Dale Evans – while going to the post office in their RAM 3500, dually, diesel pickup. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the chore person will deliver the bedecked lady rider in a side-by-side to a saddled, trusty steed. This modern-day cowgirl will then transport the trusty steed in a $50,000 plus, truck and trailer, to a place to ride in circles in a large barn.
Following the historic victory in Colombia’s presidential election of former guerrilla member, former senator and former mayor of Bogotá Gustavo Petro and his running mate, the Afro-Colombian environmentalist Francia Márquez Mina, we feature interviews with each of the candidates on Democracy Now! Francia Márquez Mina is set to become Colombia’s first Black vice president. We spoke to her in March, when she was running for president. She later lost in the primary to Petro, who went on to choose her as his running mate. “We are giving impetus to the idea that in Colombia a new form of government is possible, governance that is built up from the Black, Indigenous and peasant peoples from the very different sectors of the community, LGBTIQ+, from the youth, from the women, from the small farmers of Colombia, those who have been no one — that is to say, who have never had a voice in the government,” says Márquez Mina.
Colombian President-elect Gustavo Petro spoke to Democracy Now! in 2018 about his vision for the country after he placed second in the presidential election, losing to right-wing politician Iván Duque. Petro is a former M-19 guerrilla and the former mayor of Bogotá. “A new progressivism is emerging,” explained Petro. On Sunday, he succeeded in his new attempt at the presidency, becoming the first leftist president in Colombia, long a conservative stronghold in Latin America. He has vowed to fight worsening climate change, poverty and inequality in Colombia by raising taxes on the rich and expanding social programs, as well as access to education and healthcare.
The Historical Pact coalition they represent had gained 50.5 percent of the votes cast in a second round of elections. The loose-lipped, right-wing construction and real estate mogul Rodolfo Hernández, candidate of the recently-devised League of Anti-Corruption Governors Party, accounted for 47.2 percent.
This was the third presidential campaign for Petro, senator, former urban guerrilla and former Bogota mayor, who won 40.3 percent of the votes in first-round voting on May 29. He and Vice President-elect Francia Marquez take office on August 7.
47-year-old Dmitry Skurikhin, a small business owner from the village of Rusko-Visotskoye in Russia’s Leningrad region, has a “No to War'' bumper sticker, refuses to shave his beard as long as Putin is in power, and keeps the front of his shop covered in political and anti-war graffiti and posters. He spoke to the Russian outlet The Village about his small acts of protest, the reactions he gets from his neighbors, and whether he’s afraid there might be criminal prosecution in his future.
In 2017, thanks to an investigation by independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the world learned about the repressions queer people face in the North Caucasus. Stories of torture and kidnappings appeared on the homepage of the New York Times, and Vladimir Putin had no choice but to comment. Soon, people began evacuating from Chechnya. The majority of evacuees in the first wave were men, but human rights advocates have since seen an increase in the number of requests from women, not all of them LGBT+. To learn more about the threats women face in Chechnya, Meduza spoke to two human rights advocates and two Chechen women who managed to escape.
A documentary filmmaker who filmed extensively with former President Donald Trump and his top advisers in the run-up to the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has "fully complied" with a subpoena of his footage and is expected speak to the House Committee investigating the insurrection on Thursday.
"A very small group of people had knowledge of this documentary project, and a lot of Trump advisers were surprised to see it existed."
On Thursday, June 16, a conservative icon issued an ominous warning about the most influential Republican in the country. Former federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig concluded his testimony before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol with these words:
The president of far-right National Rally, meanwhile, celebrated a “historic breakthrough” as Le Pen’s xenophobic party won a record 89 seats.
Former President Donald Trump's role in concocting a fake electors scheme with the goal of overturning the 2020 election is set to be a major focus of the House January 6 committee's latest public hearing Tuesday on the origins of last year's violent assault on the U.S. Capitol.
As The Guardian explains, the fake electors ploy was "conceived in an effort to create 'dueling' slates of electors" that Vice President Mike Pence "could use to pretend the election was in doubt."
Wisconsin Democrats on Tuesday led calls for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson's resignation after the House January 6 committee revealed texts indicating that the Republican's office wanted to hand-deliver certificates of fake electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence in service of former President Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
"Ron Johnson actively tried to undermine this democracy. He literally tried to hand Mike Pence fake ballots."
Will Donald Trump be held accountable for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and what was a multi-layered conspiracy to overturn the results of the presidential election?
CoreCivic is one of the nation’s largest private prison companies. And while it should already be concerning that we even have private prison companies, CoreCivic appears to be particularly awful. Just last week, CoreCivic was in the 9th Circuit appeals court trying to overturn a dismissal of its SLAPP lawsuit that it filed against investment firm Candide Group and a Forbes writer, Morgan Simon, for making claims about the company that turned out to be pretty accurate. In the process, CoreCivic is trying to undermine California’s useful anti-SLAPP law by saying it can’t be used in federal court (something the 9th Circuit has already allowed in other cases).
Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well says my impossibility theorem. And, basically every day we see more examples of this in action. The latest is that the NY Times reports how YouTube took down a video that the January 6th House Select Committee had posted to the site, detailing many of the lies Donald Trump made about the 2020 election.
His final recourse is an appeal to the High Court of Justice where, if the history of his case is any indication, he’ll be told that they’re all out of justice and have none for him.
If justice had anything to do with it, previous courts would have thrown out the US extradition request on grounds of both jurisdiction and treaty language. The “crimes” of which Assange is accused were not committed on US soil. And Article 4 of the US-UK extradition treaty forbids extradition for political offenses.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday warned that the court's right-wing majority had further eroded the nation's bedrock laws separating church and government when it ruled that Maine must include religious schools in a state-run tuition program.
"Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation," wrote Sotomayor in the minority's dissent of the 6-3 decision.
The resolution, “On Anticipation of a Historic Moment in the Pro-Life Movement,” was not without controversy, however. A faction of Southern Baptists who consider themselves “abortion abolitionists” argued the Convention should also call for the criminalizing of people who have abortions as murderers. Instead, the resolution calls on Southern Baptists to stand with and pray for “abortion-vulnerable women.”
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., and often referred to as the “bellwether for conservative Christianity,” has long voiced opposition to abortion. A Pew survey in 2014 found that two-thirds of Southern Baptists believed abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. In 2021, the Convention passed a resolutionstating “unequivocally that abortion is murder” and calling for “abolishing abortion immediately, without exception or compromise.”
A few years ago the Trump DOJ and FCC€ rubber-stamped€ the Sprint T-Mobile merger without heeding expert warnings that it would stifle competition, kill jobs and slowly raise rates. Working closely with T-Mobile and Dish, the FCC and DOJ “antitrust enforcers” unveiled what they claimed was a “fix” for these problems: they’d cobble together a fourth major replacement wireless carrier in Dish Network.
We’ve been pointing out for a long time now that the main antitrust bill making its way through the Senate has a hidden content moderation trojan horse in it. Indeed, it seems likely the main reason the bill has significant Republican support is that they know the bill will be abused to file vexatious lawsuits over content moderation decisions, attempting to get around Section 230 by claiming the decisions were actually anti-competitive. Senator Ted Cruz has admitted he supports the bill because it will “unleash the trial lawyers” to file lawsuits about content moderation against internet companies.
The formula scarcity began when the COVID-19 pandemic led to a disruption of ingredient supply chains and transportation delays. Then, this past February, the Food and Drug Administration found that several leading brands produced by Abbott Laboratories were contaminated with dangerous bacteria leading to a recall and a temporary closure of Abbott’s main Michigan factory where government inspectors found “shocking” conditions. Then, just as the Michigan plant reopened, torrential flooding forced it to shut down again.
There is nothing more important to a parent than providing for their child, especially during the most vulnerable, early years of their child’s life. As a mother who was unable to breastfeed when my children were newborns, I relied on formula and remember once having to drive quite far to a store in a neighboring town because my local store was out of the brand I relied on and that my child was used to. It was a stressful experience, one that is a mild example of what millions of parents are feeling right now as they face store shelves emptied of formula.
You may recall that, last fall, we wrote about a truly bizarre legal fight, in which a little-followed pseudonymous Twitter account @CallMeMoneyBags had tweeted out some images of a woman, suggesting a few times that the woman was the mistress of billionaire Brian Sheth. The account put out lots of tweets generally mocking people in the private equity space, including Sheth. Sometime after the tweets including those photos, Twitter received a DMCA subpoena from a company called Bayside Advisory, which had basically no presence online, claiming it held the copyrights in those photos and demanding identifying information on Money Bags.