Here is a question for you: If hypervisors are going to eventually be offloaded to a DPU attached to the server node by a PCI-Express link, is the server considered bare metal or virtualized? If the DPU is not physically present in the server but hooked to the server over a PCI-Express switch fabric, doesn’t the answer change?
Here is another question: Is a mainframe or Unix server running legacy applications in hardware or software partitions an example of “cloud” infrastructure or not? Or do you have to have other functions, such as metered usage and tracking, live migration, and other features to be called cloud infrastructure? And if these “non-cloud” servers and storage are not bare metal in the strict sense, what are they?
A Linux operating system is the perfect platform to understand, master, and implement ideal user and group management footprints. Also, a Linux operating system is attributed as a multi-user platform. The latter statement implies that various remote users can concurrently access and utilize the resources of a single Linux machine.
As a security precaution, such users are discouraged from sharing their access credentials while at the same time these users share access to prioritized system resources. Only a Linux operating system can accomplish such user and group management milestones.
Managing user and group actions in a Linux operating system environment can be tedious for any Linux system administrator. For instance, a Linux system in a production or commercial environment with a growing number of users might pose a challenge to a system administrator that is yet to master the hacks and tweaks related to efficient user and group management.
Recently we got again questions about the system state in the output of saptune status, so it’s time to talk about it.
[Michael Lynch] recently replaced his Synology NAS with a self-built solution built on ZFS, a filesystem with a neat feature: the ability to back up encrypted data without having to decrypt it first. The only glitch is that [Michael] is using TrueNAS, and TrueNAS only wants to back up unencrypted ZFS data to another TrueNAS system. Fortunately, there’s a way around this that isn’t particularly complicated, but definitely requires leveraging the right tools. It also provides an educational walkthrough for how ZFS handles these things.
Start getting article feeds directly on the terminal by installing Newsboat RSS Feedreader on Ubuntu 222.04 Jammy or 20.04 Focal Fossa.
Newsboat is a fork of Newsbeuter that is also an open-source application to enable users to read articles directly on their Linux command terminal. The main task of this text-based application is to pull the feeds from the set URL, which can be from various sites such as blogs and news portals. If the feed has the full text of the update, then you don’t need to open the browser, however, in most cases, you will have an excerpt and link to read the full article.
Hence, if you have multiple feeds from different websites and want updates from them directly on your terminal, then Newsboat is a good option.
The Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE) is the Linux Deepin distribution’s default desktop environment. It’s also available for UbuntuDDE and other Linux variants. DDE is well-known for its stylish and clean design. With a sleek, clean, minimalistic dock and Launcher that offers rapid access to programs and settings, it mixes current aesthetics with conventional desktop efficiency.
Deepin Music Player, Deepin Mail, Deepin Movie Player, Deepin Image Viewer, and Deepin Terminal are all included. The Deepin Extra is a collection of extra programs that are not part of the main Deepin experience but provide useful functionality. Deepin Calculator, Deepin Clone, Deepin Screen Recorder, and Deepin Screenshot Tool are among them. UbuntuDDE is an unauthorized Ubuntu derivative that blends Deepin’s elegance with Ubuntu’s simplicity. It comes in two editions: Standard and Ultimate (Full). The Normal edition has all of the functionality of the standard Ubuntu system plus the DDE desktop environment. Media codecs, graphics drivers, and language support packs are all included in the Ultimate version.
In this guide, we will teach you how to install Deepin Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
Composer is an incredibly powerful tool for anyone who programs using the PHP programming language. This tool provides you with a standard format for managing dependencies for your web applications.
For anyone who either develops with PHP or uses a PHP web application, you will want to install Composer.
By using Composer on Ubuntu, you can easily download and install any PHP libraries that the software relies on.
These steps for installing Composer on Ubuntu will work for any version of Ubuntu that supports PHP 7.2.5 and newer. This means you can use Composer on Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and more.
It is important to hide your email address from various third-party applications and web services.
You create free accounts with some seemingly cool web service or subscribe to newsletters. This is the general practice and that’s what most people do.
But imagine if there is a database breach on the web or newsletter service. Your email address is exposed to all kinds of scammers and spammers. Such email databases are sold on the dark web all the time.
In some cases, spurious websites also collect email addresses just to send spam messages.
You are no stranger to spam, are you?
Now, some people have dedicated email addresses for these kinds of random, non-work, unimportant emails. But there are better ways to prevent spam emails.
Firefox Web Browser has been updated to 103.0.2 and sent to the software repository for PCLinuxOS.
The Thunderbird Email Client has been updated to 102.1.2 and shipped to the software repository.
Vivaldi browser has been updated to 5.4.2753.28 for PCLinuxOS and shipped to the software repository.
All-in-one voice and text chat for gamers that’s free, secure, and works on both your desktop and phone. Stop paying for TeamSpeak servers and hassling with Skype. Simplify your life. Updated to 0.0.19.
By configuring Kubernetes resources for containers in namespaces, you can support any number of SaaS tenants.
As organizations commit to hybrid work as the new norm in a post-pandemic world, one thing is clear: The workplace will never be the same as it once was.
The first point release to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is now available for download. Along with the first point release, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) users are able to upgrade their installations to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) either automatically or as part of a scheduled update. Starting today, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS users will be notified that an upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is available.
Canonical has released Ubuntu 22.04,1 LTS to the public. The first point release of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS -- Long Term Support -- marks an important milestone in development, as it is the first that will unlock the upgrade gates for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS devices.
Seeed Studio has introduced a new CAN Bus Grove module based on 120 MHz Gigadevice GD32E103 Arm Cortex-M4+ microcontroller with support for CAN FD at up to 5Mbps and controlled by AT command over a serial interface.
The new module appears to be a drop-in replacement for the company’s $19.90 Serial CAN-BUS Grove module based on Microchip MCP2551 and MCP2515, and the main benefit of the new GD32E103 module is that it is much more cost-effective going for only $4.90 including shipping.
 What if you are looking to move away from Google and embark on a new world of online freedom, where you are not constantly tracked, monetised and attached to Google’s ecosystem.
In this series we explore how you can migrate from Google without missing out on anything. We recommend open source solutions.
Documentation is an important part of any technical project. Good documentation tells the end user how to run the program, how to use it, or how to compile it. For many projects, plain text documentation is the standard. After all, every system can display plain text files.
However, plain text is limiting. Plain text files lack formatting elements like italics text, bold text, and titles. To add these elements, we can leverage HTML. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the markup language used in all web browsers. And with a little extra effort, you can use HTML to write project documentation that can be read by everyone.
HTML uses a series of tags enclosed in angle brackets to control how different parts of a document should be displayed. These tags define elements in an HTML document, such as document headings, paragraphs, italics text, bold text, and other kinds of text. Almost every tag comes in a pair: an opening tag, like
to start a paragraph, and a closing tag to end the element, such as
to end a paragraph. When using these tags, remember this rule: if you open a tag, you need to close it. Not closing a tag properly can result in the web browser incorrectly.
Pipewire needs to request realtime priorities for threads. Inside Flatpak pipewire is provided by the freedesktop-sdk, and what that bug report show is that pipewire can't find the module it uses to handle realtime priorities. This was a bug in the SDK, where it was too eager in removing unused files € pipewire-module-rt is the new name of the module. I submitted a fix for the 22.08 release, learning how to build the SDK in the process. freedesktop-sdk 22.08, to be released later this month, should become the base of GNOME 44 (and I think the current nightly), as well as a future KDE SDK release.
I am teaching Python using Raspberry Pi 400 computers in a local library for the second year in a row. A couple of this year's students have not experienced success with mathematics in their school. One asked me if she needed algebra to attend our class. I told her I had failed algebra, geometry, and trigonometry in school. She was relieved. Another student rushed in the door a bit late because she was taking geometry in summer school after failing to pass the course during the school year. I shared my own story of learned helplessness and my distress at the thought of math tests. My own bad experiences impacted my high school and early college years.
I like Python, and in particular, the turtle module, because of an experience in graduate school in the early 1990s. The exercise used Apple's logo to teach students geometry, leading to an epiphany that completely changed my attitude toward mathematics. This week's class has four eighth-grade students. Two have math backgrounds, and two have math phobias. On the first day of class in the Olean Public Library, we started with a brief explanation of the RaspberryPi 400 and how to connect each of those computers to old VGA monitors that came from storage. I gave the students a brief overview and tour of the ports, peripheral mouse, and microHDMI cable we would use. We proceeded, step by step, to assemble the parts of the Raspberry Pi 400 units and connect them to the monitors. We powered up the units, and I assisted the students as they properly configured their computers for the United States and the Eastern Time Zone. We connected to the library's wireless network and were ready to begin.
The radians() function in PySpark returns the radians of any given number present in a DataFrame column.
It can be used with the select() method because the select() function is used to display the values in the PySpark DataFrame.
If you want to sort the values in a column in the PySpark DataFrame having nulls in descending order, then you can go with the desc_nulls_first() and desc_nulls_last() functions. Before discussing these functions, we will create a sample PySpark DataFrame.
It is no secret that we like simulating circuits before we build something and there are plenty of great tools for that. But what about those of us who work on cars? Well, you might try engine-sim which is a real-time internal combustion engine simulation. Honestly, the program freely admits that it isn’t accurate enough to do engineering or engine tuning. But on the plus side, it has audio output and is at least good as an educational tool to show an engine running and how different parameters might affect it. You can see a video of the tool below.
Every once in a while, there will be a project that is light on details but inundated with glorious, drool-worthy pictures. [Nexaner7] recently showed off his cyberdeck he built over a year inside an old LCD-386. So what’s special about it? This isn’t just a Raspberry Pi or some SBC inside but a complete AMD Ryzen 5600, Nvidia RTX 3060, screen, and keyboard in a 19.5-liter space (0.68 cubic feet). Since there wouldn’t be enough space inside for decent airflow, he decided to water-cool everything, which added to the build.
1. Nothing more than a glorified, masturbatory “stunt” to get your name in the news and, later, when you’re dead, have it mentioned in your obituary. So instead of saying something like, “former Eagle Scout,” or “once bowled perfect 300 game,” your obit will include, “once ran for U.S. president.” (“Look, kids…grandpa was almost president.”)
2. Realizing you have no chance of winning, you nonetheless hang in there for as long as possible, milking it for everything you can, convinced that the exposure itself—even with zero viability as a candidate—could lead to future political office or lucrative job offers. (“Hey, aren’t you that guy who ran for president?”)
Need to hook a classic Mac mouse up to your modern machine with the help of a DIY USB adapter? [John Floren] has you covered. [John]’s solution uses a board with an ATmega32U4 microcontroller on it to connect to the Mac mouse on one end, and emulate a USB HID (Human Interface Device) on the other. A modern machine therefore recognizes it like it would any other USB input device.
In January 2022, when British psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff, co-chairperson of the Critical Psychiatry Network, published “The Political Economy of the Mental Health System: A Marxist Analysis”—an examination of how psychiatry was diverting Western societies from the suffering caused by neoliberal capitalism—she was simply ignored by the mainstream media.
However, in July 2022, after Moncrieff published “The Serotonin Theory of Depression: A Systematic Umbrella Review of the Evidence,” she became public enemy #1 for establishment psychiatry and its apologists in the mainstream media, including Rolling Stone.
“So, it’s really an exciting time,” said the moderator for the American Nuclear Society, Jeffrey King, a professor of nuclear engineering and director of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Center at the Colorado School of Mines, and also past chair of the society’s Aerospace Nuclear Science and Technology Division.
“It’s actually a time I didn’t expect that we’d end up seeing in my lifetime,” King said. “But we have now multiple companies—everything from government to the large contractors, small companies to start-up companies all interested in space nuclear power and different aspects of space nuclear power. It’s truly an exciting renaissance time for the field.”
And never produce driverless cars.
[...]
The problem with expert systems is that they are brittle. Presented with a situation for which there is no rule, they fail catastrophically.
This is what happened back in 2016 to one of Tesla Motors’s cars while on autopilot. The neural network failed to recognize a situation and caused a fatal accident.
This is not to say that deep neural networks are bad per se. It means that letting them loose outside strictly controlled environments (e.g. automated factories) is asking for trouble.
The AI community will never solve the problem of truly generalized intelligence unless they completely abandon [that approach].
The hardest thing for AI experts to grasp is that the brain does not model the world.
They have all sorts of arguments to justify their claim that the brain creates representations of objects in the world.
Anyone who’s ever slept through a morning’s alarm can tell you that sounds, even loud piercing ones, don’t always wake a person out of a deep sleep. Similarly, hearing a baby cry on the other side of the monitor might not always wake a parent up in the middle of the night. So what’s the solution? This haptic baby monitor created by [Guy Dupont] certainly looks like it has some promise.
The whole world is in serious trouble because plastic waste is literally everywhere, including human blood.
Our team of environment and health scientists reviewed decades of scientific papers on all known pathogenic disease pathogens to create a map of the human risks aggravated by climate-related hazards.
The numbers were jarring. Of 375 human diseases, we found that 218 of them, well over half, can be affected by climate change.
Viruses do not discriminate. As Covid-19 has made abundantly clear, no one is safe from infection, not even Queen Elizabeth II or Kim Kardashian. But as journalist Steven Thrasher discusses in his new book, The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, the universal properties of viruses do not mean that all humans will contract them at the same rate or experience their infections equally. Rather, viruses collide with entrenched power structures and result in disproportionate rates of exposure, transmission, serious illness, disability, and death for historically marginalized groups of people. Viruses can also deepen unequal power relations and worsen state violence by creating new forms of stigmatization for already criminalized individuals.1
They say that sitting is the new smoking. They’re wrong — smoking is much, much worse, for you than sitting, and smoking only while standing or while jogging around the block in no way to justify the habit. But they’re also not wrong that humans weren’t made for extended periods parked on their posteriors, but we do it anyway, to the detriment of our heart health, posture, and general well-being. So something like this butt-detecting stand-up reminder could make a big difference to your health.
A cybersecurity firm says it has intercepted a large, unique stolen data set containing the names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers and dates of birth on nearly 23 million Americans. The firm’s analysis of the data suggests it corresponds to current and former customers of AT&T. The telecommunications giant stopped short of saying the data wasn’t theirs, but it maintains the records do not appear to have come from its systems and may be tied to a previous data incident at another company.
The debate over end-to-end encryption continues in the UK. It’s really not much of a debate, though. government officials continue to claim the only way to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is by breaking or removing encryption. Companies providing encrypted communications have repeatedly pointed out the obvious: encryption protects all users, even if it makes it more difficult to detect illicit activity by certain users. It’s impossible to break encryption to detect criminal activity without breaking it for every innocent user as well.
Here is a glimpse over a part of today’s world that most parents don’t even know it exists, but really should:
“Over the past six years, a little-known private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, has built an educational software empire that wields unseen influence over the educational journeys of tens of millions of children. Along the way, The Markup found, the companies the firm controls have scooped up a massive amount of very personal data on kids, which they use to fuel a suite of predictive analytics products that push the boundaries of technology’s role in education and, in some cases, raise discrimination concerns.”
Estonia will prohibit Russian citizens with Schengen visas issued by Estonia from entering the country. The decision was announced by Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu.
Russia has begun mobilizing Mariupol residents to fight against the Ukrainian military, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko reported on Thursday. “Yesterday, we received confirmation that Mariupolites have started receiving mobilization orders to fight in the war on the side of Russia. People are frightened and want to leave for Ukrainian [-controlled] territory,” Boychenko reportedly said at a press briefing.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and former President Dmitry Medvedev announced on his Telegram channel on Thursday that he visited the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic on orders from President Putin. Medvedev met with the heads of the two Moscow-backed breakaway regions and reportedly discussed security measures, “harmonizing” the republics’ laws with Russia’s, reconstruction efforts, and local public policy priorities.
Interview by Kristina Safonova. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale.
A series of explosions rocked the Saki airbase in Russia-controlled Crimea on August 9, killing one person and injuring 14 others. Officially, both Moscow and Kyiv denied that Ukraine had anything to do with the blasts, which caused major damage to the airfield and the nearby town of Novofedorivka. However, unnamed Ukrainian officials told Western journalists that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the attack — and that it was carried out using a Ukrainian-made weapon. Curiously, no official sources have suggested that the base was hit by a Ukrainian missile strike, even though the damage seems consistent with such an attack. At the same time, the Saki airbase is located outside of the range of nearly all the weapons that Ukraine is known to have. Meduza breaks down what we know about the explosions two days later.
Patrick Lawrence explores how the truth about Ukraine has turned into a recipe for anger and contempt from the Western media.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday renewed his plea for an end to all military activity around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine after it was reported that fresh shelling has damaged multiple radiation sensors.
Any damage to Europe's largest nuclear power plant could lead to "catastrophic consequences" in the region and beyond, Guterres said in a statement issued ahead of an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss security at the site.
After months of failure to revive the Iran nuclear deal, European Union negotiators have drafted a “final” text for the U.S. and Iran to sign. An agreement seems more likely, due to Iran backing down on original demands for the U.S. to take the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps off its terrorist blacklist and for future U.S. presidents to not have the authority to pull out of the deal as the Trump administration did. This comes as tension grows between the two countries after an Iranian man was charged for an alleged assassination plot on multiple U.S. officials. “That doesn’t mean there needs to be a stop to diplomacy,” says Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Over the long course of the nuclear age, millions of people—from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the United States, Russia, and around the globe—have stood up to demand meaningful action to halt arms racing, end nuclear weapons testing, reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons, and move toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. But without renewed public pressure and focused international demands for renewed disarmament diplomacy between Washington and Moscow, a dangerous, unconstrained global nuclear arms race is on the horizon. Already unsteady and dangerous relations between Moscow and Washington would become far worse.
Willy was a war€ resister from the Russian army in that part of Russia and Eastern Ukraine that moved from one nation to another, depending on the winds of war. Those who study history know that history does not precisely repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes, sometimes violently because of that part of humankind that denigrates human worth, subverting that worth through violence because of greed and power and status. This writing is not meant to assess the current war in Ukraine, but some of the same lethal forces that were obvious during the first quarter of the 20th century are, to a degree, operating today.
Empires in a multipolar world were at the brink of disaster when Willy faced the prospect of the Russian army. The spark of war took place in Eastern Europe. Now, the world’s only superpower, the U.S., has joined forces with others in its march of hegemony toward Russia. Russia launched a preemptive and illegal war (which war isn’t?) against Ukraine. We live in a world where hegemony almost always trumps diplomacy.€
The son of Latvian intellectuals escaping Stalin’s USSR, his family eventually landed in the US after World War II. Peteris was born to them in 1962.€ He grew up in suburban Chicago in the kind of then existing common working middle class households that are rarely found in today’s more socio-economically stratified US. His parents would not countenance having a television in the house, so he grew up with words. Impatient and precocious, he left high school before finishing and directly entered a master’s program€ in the Arts at Bard College, thus bypassing both high school and undergraduate degrees en route to a post-graduate education. Following this he led a predictably bohemian life in the 1980s of little professional distinction, but rich in friendships.
But, history turns and in so doing delivers new paths. The Soviet Union collapsed and he returned to the country of his family as Latvia regained its independence lost during World War II. He carried the pedigree of both a respected line of poets in Latvia, but also was a well-educated American. As a young man under the fluid conditions of Soviet Latvia’s dissolution he was made the Foreign Affairs Director of Latvia’s Writers’ Union, a post carrying some weight in the early 1990’s post-Soviet period. While Peteris’ life chiefly centered on the arts (and no shortage of hedonism) he also engaged politically. He became a speech writer for Latvia’s President,€ Vaira Vī÷e-Freiberga, at the start of our current century.
In 1998, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established by an international treaty, the Rome Statute. Coming into force in 2002 and with 123 nations now parties to it, the treaty provides that the ICC, headquartered at the Hague, may investigate and prosecute individuals for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. As a court of last resort, the ICC may only initiate proceedings when a country is unwilling or unable to take such action against its nationals or anyone else on its territory. In addition, although the ICC is authorized to initiate investigations anywhere, it may only try nationals or residents of nations that are parties to the treaty, unless it is authorized to investigate by the nation where the crimes occurred.
The development of a permanent international court dealing with severe violations of human rights has already produced some important results. Thirty-one criminal cases have been brought before the ICC, resulting, thus far, in 10 convictions and four acquittals. The first ICC conviction occurred in 2012, when a Congolese warlord was found guilty of using conscripted child soldiers in his nation. In 2020, the ICC began trying a former Islamist militant alleged to have forced hundreds of women into sexual slavery in Mali. This April, the ICC opened the trial of a militia leader charged with 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, Sudan. Parliamentarians from around the world have lauded “the ICC’s pivotal role in the prevention of atrocities, the fight against impunity, the support for victims’ rights, and the guarantee of long-lasting justice.”
A group that investigates government malfeasance revealed Thursday that a federal watchdog for months delayed notifying Congress about the Secret Service deleting text messages—which were requested by oversight officials—related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) last month opened a probe into the destruction of texts from the day before and day of last year's attack. Secret Service claims the messages were lost as "part of a device replacement program."
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) coordinated with Trump representatives in 2021, and in January 2022, 15 boxes were transferred to the National Archives. Some of the records contained classified information so NARA contacted the Justice Department [PDF].
On Wednesday, human rights activist Marina Litvinovich posted a photo of one of the death notices sent by the Russian government to the family of a soldier who died in Ukraine. The information on the form was filled out by hand sometime in the last month,€ but the form itself was printed in 1974. In the Soviet era, these documents gave soldiers' relatives the right to apply for pensions and benefits that were established by Soviet legislation, Litvinovich noted.
Every organisation replicates its own rationale for existence, including mechanisms to cope with problems of its own making.€ Such problems are rarely resolved: they are inherent in the nature of the organisation itself, essential to its functioning.€ The United Nations, like many labyrinthine orders, has proven to be impenetrable , bureaucratic and dispiriting.€ For years, it has been dealing with a range of conduct issues regarding UN personnel and, for want of a better term, the workplace.€ Over that time, it has also sought to keep such misbehaviour, and in some cases blatant criminality, concealed, preferring to focus the ire upon those who spill the beans.
Consulting the range of measures supposedly in place does little to encourage optimism.€ In February 2016, we are told of Jane Holl Lute’s appointment as Special Coordinator on improving the UN responds to “sexual exploitation and abuse” which, on first reading, looks like an encouragement rather than a counter.€ “Her role is to work across the United Nations systems’ many offices, departments and agencies to strengthen the UN response to sexual exploitation and abuse, wherever it may occur, from headquarters locations to the most remote field bases.”
Last week's historic rainfall and flash flooding that caused widespread damage and left hundreds of staff and tourists stranded in Death Valley National Park is another clear sign of how extreme weather is being intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, experts say.
"Climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of flooding, and it will likely get worse with further warming."
The East Antarctica Ice Sheet, which is roughly the size of the United States, was long thought to be relatively stable due to its magnitude even as the warming climate caused other glaciers to recede—but a new study warns that€ without sufficient climate action, the ice sheet is vulnerable to melting and causing sea levels to rise significantly over the long term.
After analyzing what happened to the glacier during warmer periods of the planet's past and the current state of the ice sheet, researchers from Australia, Britain, France, and the U.S. concluded that if policymakers limit the heating of the planet to 2€° Celsius above preindustrial levels, the East Antarctica Ice Sheet would melt enough to add 1.6 feet to sea levels by 2500.
Senate Democrats have repeatedly claimed that the Inflation Reduction Act would reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 40% by the end of the decade, a figure used to tout the bill's potentially transformative climate impact despite its myriad flaws.
But is that estimate of the legislation's emissions-reduction capacity reliable?
The climate emergency intensifies daily as the planet warms. More frequent and powerful heat waves, wildfires, floods, and hurricanes are costing billions of dollars while driving unprecedented human migration that fuels conflict. Despite the enormity of the problem, there is still good news to report. As governments prepare for the upcoming United Nations global climate summit to be held in Egypt in mid-November, developments in the fight against catastrophic climate change suggest that, against all odds, hope is not lost.
Food & Water Watch research recently found California could save€ as much as 82 million cubic meters of water every year by switching from fossil fuels to renewables€ like solar and wind power — that’s a 98 percent reduction from the water currently needed to maintain the state’s fossil fuel reliance. The water used for industrial cultivation of thirsty crops like almonds and pistachios is equally stark. Between 2017 and 2021, Food & Water Watch found almond bearing acres grew by 32 percent and pistachio acres increased by 63 percent. That expansion necessitated the withdrawal of an extra 523 billion gallons of water for irrigation — enough water to supply nearly four million households with enough water for an entire year.
“Newsom’s drought plan to conserve water ironically does nothing to curtail the biggest water abusers who are also the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions fueling the crisis,” said€ Food & Water Watch California Organizing Manager Tomás Rebecchi. “The toxic cycles of industrial agriculture and fossil fuel extraction use massive amounts of€ water that could otherwise go to public uses, kneecapping any attempt at meaningful water conservation. Coupled with his energy plans that include€ continued reliance on fossil fuel gas plants€ and his failure to crack down on corporate water abuse, this drought plan heralds an increasingly dry, inequitable California at the mercy of fossil fuel and industrial agricultural companies.
This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation strengthening coverage of the climate story.Is the new climate bill as big a deal as they say? Yes.Is it big enough to save us?No, not by itself.Does it throw environmental justice under the bus?Yes, as usual, but Manchin might be in for a surprise.Will Republicans keep getting a pass on climate?We’ll see between now and the November midterms.
Assuming that the Democratic majority in the House passes the massive climate bill this week, the next round for federal climate action will come when Congress returns after its August recess, and it will center on something euphemistically called ‘permitting reform.’
Here are four key questions...
Public relations giant Edelman and Standard Bank Group are ending their relationship, reportedly due to a controversial oil project—a development that climate campaigners on Thursday welcomed as a win for activism pressuring PR firms to break up with polluters.
"This is a big statement that financial institutions should finance the just energy transition and not climate bombs."
It’s good policy, good politics, and it’s the right thing to do.
Markets are one way of distributing goods and services from producers to consumers. They are established when divisions of labor occur in communities rather than having each person or family produce all that it consumes. Markets involve quid pro quo exchanges between those seeking to sell and those seeking to buy goods and services. Alternatives to markets always existed and also do now. Councils of elders, chiefs, local governmental authorities, religious authorities, and various cultural traditions, separately or together, have distributed products from producers to consumers, deciding who gets how much. Within households or families, kinship rules, including patriarchy and matriarchy, have organized the distribution of products from producers to consumers.
The market mechanism is very simple: People with wants or demands engage with people who own the goods and services. Owners enjoy the right to sell what they own if those who want it—prospective buyers—offer in exchange something the seller seeks to acquire. The two owners, one on each side of the exchange, bargain or negotiate over the precise terms of the exchange: what quantity of one item equals the quantity of the other item being traded. If and when a ratio of exchange (a price) is reached that both sides accept, the exchange is made. The market is thus “cleared.” It has successfully distributed the products to consumers.
Darlene Foreman has been living in University City Townhomes, a privately owned, federally subsidized low-income apartment complex in West Philadelphia, for 28 years.
IRS funding is a good thing. It means the agency can finally go after the real freeloaders in America: The super-rich.
Know the truth.
For the good of us all, America needs to enforce antitrust laws, and break up Big Ag.
Unless we address this growing imbalance, corporations will continue siphoning off the economy’s gains into their CEOs’ and shareholders’ pockets — while everyday Americans get shafted.
"I hate stock buybacks," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said this past Friday.
With less than three weeks until U.S. President Joe Biden's student loan repayment pause expires—and less than three months until the 2022 midterm elections—progressives on Thursday pushed the president to take immediate action to cancel student debt.
"Today is a great day for Biden to cancel student debt," the Debt Collective tweeted. "All of it. For everyone. Automatically. Immediately."
As cities nationwide crack down on unhoused populations and soaring rents force people out of their homes, the Los Angeles City Council faced major protests this week when it voted to ban encampments for unhoused people near schools and daycares. The vote expanded an anti-homeless ordinance to include nearly a quarter of the city. “What they’ve done is to just put a finer point on their intention to criminalize folks out of the city of Los Angeles,” says Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, who spoke in opposition to the measure at the meeting. “Houselessness is a byproduct of a failed housing system.”
Housing activists are in Washington, D.C., this week to meet with Biden administration officials and urge them to take immediate action to address the rent inflation crisis, as prices soar and the end of eviction moratoriums has caused eviction rates to spike again. Aside from gas and groceries, “rent is the largest expense for most American households, and it’s a core driver of inflation,” says Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants and the People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign.
As economic justice advocates push President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to address the crisis of high housing costs facing tenants across the U.S., new polling released Thursday illustrated the risk of doing nothing.
The progressive think tank Data for Progress surveyed 1,344 likely voters from across the nation from August 4-6 and found that a simple majority—51%—believe Biden should take executive action to alleviate the burden caused by rising housing costs "since this is a national crisis and it will provide immediate relief for people facing skyrocketing rents."
There is also a mixed story on supply chain issues: new vehicle prices are still rising sharply, and the same is true with other items like household furnishings. But there are now many areas showing price declines.
There is a small moderation in rents. This is very good news, but we will need to see much more in the months ahead.
Pledging to continue fighting for provisions that were left out of the U.S. Senate-passed Inflation Reduction Act, Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday said that while the package is far from perfect, progressives in the House "should feel very proud of our part in getting to this point" and called for lawmakers to send the bill to President Joe Biden's desk.
"While we're heartbroken to see the care economy, housing, and immigration left on the cutting room floor, we should be very clear that the Inflation Reduction Act [IRA] takes real steps forward on key progressive priorities," wrote Jayapal, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).
The Wall Street Journal editorial board has a long history of liking tax relief only when it benefits the wealthy. Last year, the Journal board slammed rebates for middle- and working-class New Jerseyans, while praising tax cuts for rich Ohioans (FAIR.org, 7/16/21). This year, it’s singing the same tune over different states’ approaches to tax relief.
I can’t say for certain how Elon Musk’s thought process works, but his progression in how he talks about free speech over the last few months through this Twitter ordeal certainly provides some hints. When he first announced his intention to buy Twitter, he talked about how important free speech was, and how that was a key reason for why he was looking to take over the company. Here he was talking to TED’s Chris Anderson:
“I don’t see race,” Stephen Colbert used to say. Since the phrase was clearly a satirical device, he would regularly add punch lines such as, “People tell me I’m white, and I believe them because I just devoted six minutes to explaining that I’m not a racist.” When it comes to politics, however, many in the media and political establishment also don’t see race, and the results are not so funny. In fact, they’re deadly serious, in terms of their impact on who controls this country and what direction it heads.
We have to see the culture wars waged by Putin and America’s right for the cynical strategies they are, and build a future in which prosperity is widely shared.
Protests—some of them massive—in defense of democracy and education and against far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's coup-mongering were held in cities across Brazil Thursday, less than two months before the first round of the South American nation's presidential election.
"Bolsonaro is much closer to jail than to the coup."
Today’s hot news has it that New York Attorney General Leticia James is considering the corporate death penalty for the Trump Organization. If true, it’s really good news for the entire field of corporate governance in America.
I find nothing strange in Joe Biden, at 79 (going on 80), being the oldest president in our history and€ possibly planning€ to run again in 2024. After all, who wouldn’t want to end up in the record books? Were he to be nominated and then beat the also-aging€ Donald Trump, or Florida Governor€ Ron DeSantis, or even€ Fox News’s eternally popular€ Tucker Carlson, he would occupy the White House until he was 86.
Minneapolis—On the eve of the Democratic primary, Don Samuels visited a Somali mall in the Whittier neighborhood—Representative Ilhan Omar’s home turf—to pass out flyers as Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey introduced him to shopkeepers, even as a few voters’ smiles vanished when told whom this affable stranger was running against. Then Samuels drove to the city’s wealthy southwest corner for the final backyard gathering of his long-shot campaign to unseat the congresswoman. He lamented to the white liberals on the lawn that Omar voted against the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, a Russian oil ban, and more funding for the US Capitol Police after the January 6, 2021, insurrection. But what had really done it for Samuels was not any sort of drama on Capitol Hill—it was, he told them, that Omar held a press conference outside City Hall last fall urging citizens to vote against the mayor because he opposed a ballot measure to replace the police department that murdered George Floyd.
“We died in your hills, we died in your deserts, / We died in your valleys and died on your plains. / We died ’neath your trees and we died in your bushes, / Both sides of the river, we died just the same,” Woody Guthrie sang in his 1948 classic “Deportee” (also known as “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos”). While Guthrie’s song referred to the bracero guest workers imported for California’s harvests between World War II and the 1960s, the bracero program was just one incarnation of the uses of the US-Mexico border.
Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott is sending busloads of asylum seekers to New York City and other “liberal” cities to oppose what he calls the Biden administration’s “open borders policies.” About 100 asylum seekers arrived Wednesday at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in a bus chartered by Texas, adding to the thousands of asylum seekers the city claims has strained its shelter system in the past few months. Some say they were misled into boarding the buses and signing consent waivers. Immigration activists are calling for the city, state and federal governments to provide better care for those arriving in New York. “What we’re seeing happening right now is Governor Abbott using asylum seekers as political pawns to merely help increase his polling numbers down in Texas,” says Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the ââ¬â¹Ã¢â¬â¹New York Immigration Coalition, which is part of an effort to welcome people with dignity, mutual aid and legal services.
The Biden administration is not offering meaningful assistance to contain a potential ecological disaster 90 miles from the U.S. coastline, write Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan and Medea Benjamin.
A trio of House Democrats on Wednesday publicly urged President Joe Biden to provide immediate assistance to Cuba amid the catastrophic oil fire devastating parts of the nearby island.
"We are deeply concerned about the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Matanzas, Cuba, less than 150 miles from our border," Reps. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), and Jim McGovern (Mass.) said in a joint statement. "Crises such as this demand an urgent and meaningful response from neighboring countries."
I know that many democrats could answer: is there such a dilemma? And they would continue: – It’s leave or leave, without any doubt or hesitation.€ Others, more thoughtful, would say: On this August 11, 2022, there is no dilemma. You write and leave. Or leave and write later…
First, I must clarify that I am writing this column on Thursday, because I do not want to delay its publication on Friday. And the protest movement in Recife is in a little while, starting at 3 pm. So how to find the starting point of the text and its development, in order to complete the writer’s duty by 2 pm? The time frame is miserable and cruel: it is 10:30 in the morning, close to 11, and while I am thinking and fixing paragraphs, I would have to leave towards Rua da Aurora. Would I be happy like this, without finishing the text that has become a religious obligation? On the other hand (and there seems to be only one), if I cannot arrive on time, finishing the text at 5:00 p.m., thus absent from the wonderful protest, will my conscience be at peace? Look, if I express myself as a writer, I must say: this absence is the same as a lost night of love. It will never come back.
This is a developing story… Please check back for possible updates...
Law enforcement officers on Thursday fatally shot a gunman in body armor who tried to breach a Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Ohio then led police on a chase that ended in nearby farmland.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday moved to unseal the warrant authorizing Monday's FBI search of former President Donald Trump's Florida home, explaining that he personally authorized the decision to raid Mar-a-Lago but offering few details about the unfolding case.
Speaking briefly in an afternoon address, Garland said that "just now, the Justice Department has filed a motion in the Southern District of Florida to unseal a search warrant and property receipt relating to a court-approved search that the FBI conducted earlier this week... The search warrant was authorized by a federal court on the required finding of probable cause."
If he were still around he might well have plenty to say about the English language in general, and our political lexicon in particular. A number of the terms commonly used in American politics conceal more than they reveal and seem almost designed to confuse. One of the more confusing political terms out there is “conspiracy theory.”
Why this matters: Many people are confused about what “conspiracy theories” are, how they originate, and how they are spread. Partly as a result, millions of Americans live in a dark fantasy world as a result of their misunderstanding of the nature of the information that they receive. Consequently, our tired old democracy is in peril.
A clip of New York Starbucks workers walking off the job to protest the firing of a fellow employee believed to have been targeted for union organizing has now been viewed nearly 20 million times on the popular video platform TikTok, bringing greater public visibility to the coffee giant's aggressive attempts to beat back a movement that has spread nationwide.
Watch:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday opened an investigation into the devastating health impacts that state-level GOP abortion bans and restrictions have had on pregnant people across the U.S., citing the litany of horror stories published in local and national newspapers in the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
"The stories are shocking and horrific," Warren (D-Mass.) wrote in new letters to National Nurses United, the American Medical Association,€ Physicians for Reproductive Health, and other organizations as part of her effort to gather information on the consequences of newly enacted anti-abortion statutes.
This op-ed for Police, written by longtime law enforcement officer/official Booker Hodges (currently the chief of the Bloomington, MN police department), may have its heart partially in the right place but it’s wrong in all the wrong places.
For a second, it looked like a pretty stark difference. When Democrats introduced a series of bills to the House this month, each designed to codify in statute a particular kind of sexual freedom, the vote counts were unnervingly partisan. The Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would codify a federal right to an abortion, received no Republican votes. HR 8373, an unnamed bill to protect legal access to contraception, received just eight Republican votes. But the Respect for Marriage Act, which would require states to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages, received a comparatively robust 47 Republican votes.
Alexey Navalny filed a lawsuit against Penal Colony No. 6 in Melekhovo, Vladimir region, where he is serving his sentence. The suit was filed on the grounds that the colony's administration has refused to disclose information about the purchaser of the products the politician manufactures in the colony, according to the joint press service of the Vladimir region's court of general jurisdiction.
This is both the hope and caution with which Fabian Scheidler concludes his spanning survey of civilization from its inception to the present, The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization.€ Challenging the hierarchical nature of the system he calls the Megamachine, infusing virtually every institution that shapes our world, political, economic and social, one could be overwhelmed with despair. Instead, Scheidler leaves us with a sense of possibilities, as he titles the closing chapter.
In his compact work, Scheidler traces the rise of hierarchical civilization to the Bronze Age around four to five millennia ago, when the hard metal provided disproportionate advantage in weaponry and armor to power-seeking elites. Evidence of hierarchy previously not found soon pervaded human settlements, including palaces and variations in diet and burial rituals. The early Megamachine had its first peak under Rome, an empire of iron with legions armed by steel. The collapse of Rome lifted the burden of taxes and slavery, and was actually a relief to the masses.
We noted the other day how our shiny newly proposed federal privacy bill (as written now) includes a massive gift to US telecom monopolies. It effectively strips away huge swaths of FCC authority over telecom giants, shoveling it over to an FTC that often lacks the resources or expertise to police telecom.
It’s always frustrating when you come across an intellectual property lawsuit that is so laughably frivolous. On the other hand, it’s then quite fun when a court gets things so right that the frivolous filer gets a good wrist-slapping for their trouble. In late 2021, Activision Blizzard was sued by a company called Brooks Entertainment, which argued that the video game Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare contained several instances of trademark and copyright infringement.
As it turns out, people would download a car.
The software piracy battle between the U.S. Navy and German software company Bitmanagement is reaching its conclusion. After a drawn-out fight at the US Court of Federal Claims, only the scale of the damages is to be determined. After a recent trial hearing behind closed doors, the final figure could be anywhere between $115,000 and $155,400,000.
HBO hopes that its upcoming Games of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon will be as successful as its predecessor but in the short term, the company has a major problem. A Reddit user claims to have leaked plot summaries for every single episode, noting that two account suspensions by Reddit add credibility to those leaks. Documents obtained by TorrentFreak suggest another incoming credibility boost - via HBO's lawyers in California.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.