09.06.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

Links 06/09/2022: Gawk 5.2.0 and KPhotoAlbum 5.9.1

Posted in News Roundup at 7:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Its FOSSAdvantages and Disadvantages of Using Linux

      Basically, Linux is everywhere and everyone keeps talking about it. And that gives you FOMO.

      So, you wonder about the advantages of Linux and whether is it really worth trying.

      I have compiled various possible advantages and disadvantages of Linux in this article.

      If you are on the fence about choosing Linux over your preferred operating system, we would like to help you out.

    • Applications

      • Trend Oceansnnn: A Linux Terminal File Manager To Reduce Your Terminal Navigational Stress – TREND OCEANS

        Throw your desktop environment and start using the terminal app for your daily routine. Sounds easy! Those who did this can easily relate to the pain of navigating to the different directories using the cd command.

        For instance, you may ignore the stress of navigating to different directories from the terminal. However, over time, this hidden stress will exhaust your mental power, which will reduce your productivity.

        To tackle the pain of navigation and increase your productivity on the terminal can be easily achieved using the nnn terminal-based file browser.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • RoseHostingHow to Install Tomcat on Ubuntu 22.04 – RoseHosting

        Apache Tomcat or Tomcat is a widely known and used Java application server. It is an open-source web server and servlet container developed and maintained by a community of developers of the Apache Software Foundation. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps of installing Tomcat on Ubuntu 22.04. At the time of this writing, Tomcat 10 is the latest stable version available to download.

      • ID RootHow To Install PlayOnLinux on Linux Mint 21 – idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PlayOnLinux on Linux Mint 21. For those of you who didn’t know, PlayOnLinux is an open-source gaming framework (software) based on Wine, that allows you to easily install any Windows-based applications and games on Linux operating systems. The purpose of PlayOnLinux software is to simplify and automates the process of installing and running Windows applications on Linux platforms. Apart from Linux OS, it also offers PlayOnMac to run Windows programs on macOS.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of a PlayOnLinux on Linux Mint 21 (Vanessa).

      • Install MySQL 8 on Oracle Linux 9 – kifarunix.com

        Follow through this tutorial to learn how to install MySQL 8 on Oracle Linux 9. Being a popular open-source relational database management system, MySQL is available and can be installed on Oracle Linux 9.

      • chown Command in Linux – Complete Guide – Linux Stans

        This is a complete, beginner-friendly, detailed guide to the chown command in Linux. This tutorial will teach you what the chown command does, and how to use it, along with a few useful examples.

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Hotfix: KPhotoAlbum 5.9.1 | KPhotoAlbum

          Due to a problem with releaseme’s tarme.rb script, the release tarball for KPhotoAlbum 5.9.0 didn’t contain any translation data. Alas, I noticed this not before the tarball already spread the mirrors, so we had to withdraw it an create a new one, with a bumped version number.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • HackadayKittyOS: Writing A Toy OS For The ATmega168 From Scratch

      Writing an operating system for a computing platform is one of those non-trivial tasks few people actually need to do, regardless of whether it’s for a small microcontroller or a larger general-purpose computer. Many of us spend a large amount of our time working on producing robust code for embedded systems, occasionally diving deeper into the abstraction when we’re stuck on a problem. Quite often this work is sitting on top of an RTOS, which we consider a solved problem. [Jonathan Diamond] had picked up a fair bit of knowledge of some of the low-level AVR black magic, as well as some details of how operating systems work internally, and so decided to have a crack a building a toy operating system called KittyOS, for the learning experience alone.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Its FOSSLapce is a Fast, Lightweight Open-Source Code Editor in Making

      There are plenty of open-source code editors available for Linux.

      What would you think about another option: A Rust-based open source code editor focusing on performance?

      It should be exciting, right?

      Lapce is one such project in development that aims to present a feature-rich and fast code editor as an alternative to Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code.

      The developer also mentions that it was inspired by Xi-editor (which is no longer in active development).

    • Web Browsers

      • Best Privacy-Centric Web Browsers For Linux

        I wrote an article about the best web browsers for Linux a while ago. Since then, a slew of web browsers have appeared, many of which appear to be based on Chromium or Firefox. However, many of those cool-looking Linux web browsers are not as private as you might think. In this article, I’ll go over the best privacy-focused web browsers for Linux.

        I’ve used more than ten web browsers on my Linux in the last few months. Each one focuses on providing secure web browsing, regular feature updates, and customizability, but there are few developers who actually focus on providing not only secure but private web browsing, no matter how far they have to go to do so.

        Remember that bad actors aren’t the only ones to be wary of these days; tech behemoths like Google, Facebook, Instagram, and others are constantly monitoring users’ activities across the Internet, even when the user isn’t on their website. Typically, internet users are unaware of how these tech juggernauts track their online activities, so they make no effort to avoid it. Some even do not consider it a matter of privacy, which is a topic for another day.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

    • Content Management Systems (CMS)

      • Linux Links7 Top Free and Open Source Lua Web Frameworks – LinuxLinks

        One of the types of software that’s important for a web developer is the web framework. A framework “is a code library that makes a developer’s life easier when building reliable, scalable, and maintainable web applications” by providing reusable code or extensions for common operations. By saving development time, developers can concentrate on application logic rather than mundane elements.

        A web framework offers the developer a choice about how to solve a specific problem. By using a framework, a developer lets the framework control portions of their application. While it’s perfectly possible to code a web application without using a framework, it’s more practical to use one.

        Lua is a lightweight, small, compact, and fast programming language designed as an embeddable scripting language. This cross-platform interpreted language has a simple syntax with powerful data description constructs. It has automatic memory management and incremental garbage collection, making it ideal for configuration, scripting, and rapid prototyping.

        [...]

        Here’s our recommended web frameworks for Lua captured in a legendary chart.

    • FSFE

      • FSFE information desk on Veganmania Danube Island 2022

        It was the usual information stall like described several times before in this blog. Unfortunately I didn’t have time yet to write more about it. I created an updated information leaflet and really should get a tent because this time we had heavy rain twice and it was very hard to protect the paper materials with only an umbrella as cover.

      • FSFELibrem 5: a PC in your pocket +++ Booths are back – FSFE

        In this issue we look into the software development of Librem 5 phone and of Phosh, the popular graphical environment for Linux phones. And booths are back! We are happy to discuss Free Software in person again.

    • GNU Projects

      • LWNGawk 5.2.0 released [LWN.net]
        Version 5.2.0 of the GNU Awk implementation is out. The biggest change, perhaps, is the addition of "persistent memory" support that allows gawk to keep values around between runs. Old-timers will be disappointed by the removal of VAX/VMS support.
        
        
        [...]
        
        Greetings all.
        
        This note announces the next major release of GNU Awk: version 5.2.0.
        
        The following files may be retrieved via HTTPS from
        
        https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk:
        
        -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 6540181 Sep  4 18:52 gawk-5.2.0.tar.gz
        -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 3228577 Sep  4 18:52 gawk-5.2.0.tar.lz
        -rw-rw-r-- 1 arnold arnold 3386344 Sep  4 18:52 gawk-5.2.0.tar.xz
        
        This is a major new release.  The relevant part of the NEWS file
        is appended below.
        
        This release represents a lot of very hard work by a number of people.
        I thank them all for their contributions, I could not have done it
        by myself.
        
        Differences from gawk 5.1.1 are not available; they would be too large.
        
        The online documentation on the GNU web site is already updated,
        including a manual for the new persistent memory feature.
        
        The usual GNU build incantation should be used:
        
        	tar -xpvzf gawk-5.2.0.tar.gz
        	cd gawk-5.2.0
        	./configure && make && make check
        
        Please use the new buggawk script to report bugs. If it doesn't
        work for you, then send email to bug-gawk@gnu.org.
        
        NOTE that the manual's instructions for sending bug reports have
        been updated. Please review them carefully before submitting a report!
        
        ONLY bug reports should be submitted to the bug-gawk list. All other
        questions should use the relatively new help-gawk@gnu.org mailing list.
        
        Enjoy!
        
        Arnold Robbins (on behalf of all the gawk developers)
        arnold@skeeve.com
        ------------------------------------------------------------
           Copyright (C) 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
           
           Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
           are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
           notice and this notice are preserved.
        
        Changes from 5.1.x to 5.2.0
        ---------------------------
        
        *****************************************************************************
        * MPFR mode (the -M option) is now ON PAROLE.  This feature is now being    *
        * supported by a volunteer in the development team and not by the primary   *
        * maintainer.  If this situation changes, then the feature will be removed. *
        * For more information see this section in the manual:                      *
        * https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/MPFR-O...    *
        *****************************************************************************
        
        1. Infrastructure upgrades: Libtool 2.4.7, Bison 3.8.2.
        
        2. Numeric scalars now compare in the same way as C for the relational
           operators. Comparison order for sorting has not changed.  This only
           makes a difference when comparing Infinity and NaN values with
           regular numbers; it should not be noticeable most of the time.
        
        3. If the AWK_HASH environment variable is set to "fnv1a" gawk will
           use the FNV1-A hash function for associative arrays.
        
        4. The CMake infrastructure has been removed. In the five years it was in
           the tree, nobody used it, and it was not updated.
        
        5. There is now a new function, mkbool(), that creates Boolean-typed
           values.  These values *are* numbers, but they are also tagged as
           Boolean. This is mainly for use with data exchange to/from languages
           or environments that support real Boolean values. See the manual
           for details.
        
        6. As BWK awk has supported interval expressions since 2019, they are
           now enabled even if --traditional is supplied. The -r/--re-interval option
           remains, but it does nothing.
        
        7. The rwarray extension has two new functions, writeall() and readall(),
           for saving / restoring all of gawk's variables and arrays.
        
        8. The new `gawkbug' script should be used for reporting bugs.
        
        9. The manual page (doc/gawk.1) has been considerably reduced in size.
           Wherever possible, details were replaced with references to the online
           copy of the manual.
        
        10. Gawk now supports Terence Kelly's "persistent malloc" (pma),
            allowing gawk to preserve its variables, arrays and user-defined
            functions between runs. THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE!
           
            For more information, see the manual. A new pm-gawk.1 man page
            is included, as is a separate user manual that focuses on the feature.
        
        11. Support for OS/2 has been removed. It was not being actively
            maintained.
        
        12. Similarly, support for DJGPP has been removed. It also was not
            being actively maintained.
        
        13. VAX/VMS is no longer supported, as it can no longer be tested.
            The files for it remain in the distribution but will be removed
            eventually.
        
        14. Some subtle issues with untyped array elements being passed to
            functions have been fixed.
        
        15. Syntax errors are now immediately fatal. This prevents problems
            with errors from fuzzers and other such things.
        
        16. There have been numerous minor code cleanups and bug fixes. See the
            ChangeLog for details.
        
        Changes from 5.1.1 to 5.1.x
        ---------------------------
        
        1. Infrastructure upgrades: Automake 1.16.5, Texinfo 6.8.
        
        2. The rwarray extension now supports writing and reading GMP and
           MPFR values. As a result, a bug in the API code was fixed.
        
    • Programming/Development

      • QtCode coverage integrated into your IDE with Coco

        The new release of Coco is now available and offers a huge step forward in usability and functionality for your testing. Developers can now review code coverage directly from their Integrated Development Environment (IDE) without switching back and forth between tools.

        By bringing this information into the IDE, you’re empowering your developers to consider code testing and coverage as part of their ongoing development rather than seeing it as a separate process.

      • QtRelease of Coco 6.0 With IDE Integrations
  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • HackadayToday’s The Day You Finally Learn Quaternions

        If you’ve ever dealt with orbital mechanics or sophisticated computer graphics, you’ve probably run across the math term quaternions. [Anyleaf] has a guide to the practical use of this math concept which focuses more on practicality than theory. We like it!

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Biden’s “Safer America Plan” Should Follow the Science of Public Safety

        Last week, President Biden addressed a crowd in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, pitching his plan to combat crime and gun violence, dubbed the “Safer America Plan”. The plan includes a number of important measures in line with what advocates of criminal justice reform have been fighting for, with these specific measures receiving praise from organizations like the ACLU.

      • HackadayNanoparticles Rip Hydrogen From Water

        Hydrogen fuel is promising, and while there’s plenty of hydrogen in the air and water, the problem is extracting it. Researchers have developed a way to use aluminum nanoparticles to rip hydrogen out of water with no additional energy input. It does, however, require gallium to enable the reaction. The reaction isn’t unknown (see the video below), but the new research has some interesting twists.

    • Education

    • Hardware

      • CNX SoftwareSensirion SCD40 CO2 sensor units for makers: M5Stack UNIT CO2 and TeHyBug ESP8285 device – CNX Software

        We just wrote about the Infineon XENSIV PAS CO2 Shield2Go board to measure carbon dioxide (CO2) levels last week, but I’ve just come across two more hardware with a CO2 sensor designed for makers, but based on Sensirion SCD40 sensor instead, and mostly designed to monitor indoor CO2 levels since high concentrations may impact your health negatively.

        The first one is the M5Stack UNIT CO2 that’s designed to be connected to one of the company’s Core modules through an I2C interface, and TeHyBug portable mini sensor device equipped with ESP8285 WiFi microcontroller, as well as optional AHT10 temperature & humidity sensor and BMP280 pressure sensor, besides the SCD40 sensor.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Telex (Hungary)Government-backed study finds Chinese Covid vaccine performs worst

        The third part of the HUN-VE series of studies was published at the end of July. This is a study that systematically assesses the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines used in Hungary and is unique in that it has government support as well as high professional quality. HUN-VE 3 tested vaccine efficacy against the then dominant Delta variant during last autumn’s epidemic wave and found that although the efficacy of all vaccines declines over time after vaccination, the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine offers the lowest protection in almost all respects. According to the authors, this is the first study to investigate the efficacy of Sinopharm’s booster vaccine, particularly in comparison with mRNA-based booster vaccines. The study was published more than a month ago, but its results have not been communicated anywhere.

      • The NationWeaponizing Food
      • HackadayFood Safe 3D Printing: A Study

        [Matt Thomas] wanted to answer the question of whether 3D printed structures can be food-safe or even medical-safe, since there is an awful lot of opinion out there but not a lot of actual science about the subject. As a mechanical engineer who dabbles in medical technical matters, he designed as series of tests using a wide range of nasty-sounding pathogens, to find once and for all what works and what does not.

      • Counter PunchBrewing Pandemic Pestilence

        The second source of pestilence is the centuries-long devastation of the natural world by mining, fossil fuels extraction, the logging of forests, industrialized fishing and one-crop mechanized agriculture relying on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Nature also suffers from wastes dumping in the oceans, the intentional burning of the Amazon and other forests in several countries for the growing of soybeans, corn, and other cash crops. Wars and vast armies inflict destruction and death to nature.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | How This Rural Wisconsin County Put Publicly Funded, Non-Profit, National Health Care on the Ballot

        Citizens of Dunn County, Wisconsin, have a plan to place national, publicly-funded health care for everyone on their November 8th county ballot.  In June and July at meetings of the County Board of Supervisors, many spoke of a broken health care system and their proposal to fix it.  After the third meeting, the Board voted unanimously to put the following question on the ballot:  

    • Security and Clown Computing/Kubernetes

      • LWNSecurity updates for Tuesday [LWN.net] [Ed: Some hype, outsourcing, and unnecessary complexity come at a cost]

        Security updates have been issued by Red Hat (pcs), SUSE (389-ds and firefox), and Ubuntu (linux-hwe-5.4 and linux-oracle).

      • Help Net SecurityBest practices for Kubernetes security in the enterprise market – Help Net Security

        As part of digital transformation, more and more organizations are transforming their application using cloud native architecture to become more agile and accelerate time to market. They are increasingly adopting containers and Kubernetes to do so. However, the increasing Kubernetes adoption has also increased security risks.

        In this Help Net Security video, Deepak Goel, CTO at D2iQ, talks about best practices for Kubernetes security in the enterprise market.

      • The Top 7 Kubernetes Alternatives for Container Orchestration – Container Journal

        Container management is a heated subject when it comes to developing software. Containerization has revolutionized how we look at infrastructure, making it easier to execute software in production. But, you don’t need to become a developer or administrator to take advantage of containers. There are several orchestration tools available that can help you automate the management of your containers.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • TorBoosting Adoption of Tor Browser Using Behavioral Science

          As part of our research, we used an experiment to test the effectiveness of different nudging interventions at increasing adoption of Tor Browser. We found that our nudge based on Protection Motivation Theory nearly doubled the odds that participants would use Tor Browser. Our results also show that users commonly encounter usability challenges when using Tor Browser, and that people use Tor Browser for a variety of benign activities. Our study contributes to a greater understanding of factors influencing the adoption of Tor Browser, and how nudges might be used to encourage the adoption of Tor Browser and similar privacy enhancing technologies.

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Counter PunchWhat I Learned About Governments by Reading Classified Documents

        When I first began plowing through masses of official records in the 1970s, I was attempting to discover the role of the U.S. government in the Greek civil war of the 1940s, which inspired the Truman Doctrine and a broad pattern of overseas U.S. military intervention. After official review, the relevant State Department files, many of them previously classified, had recently been opened to researchers at the U.S. National Archives. But when I started digging through these records, I found that a considerable number of classified documents remained unavailable. When I complained about this to another historian, he responded: “Those are exactly the documents you should see. File for them under FOIA” (the Freedom of Information Act). So that’s what I did. As a result, after another review, some were declassified, sometimes with sections redacted (“sanitized”).

    • Environment

      • Energy

        • Common DreamsZelenskyy Accuses Russia of Using Zaporizhzhia Power Plant as ‘Nuclear Weapon’

          Zaporizhzhia, which the Russians took over soon after invading Ukraine on February 24, is the largest power plant in Europe, and Zelenskyy compared the occupation to the Russians occupying “six Chernobyls,” referring to the deadliest nuclear disaster in history.

        • MeduzaZaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant disconnected from Ukrainian power grid — Meduza

          Ukraine’s electrical grid has been disconnected from the last remaining power line that was connecting it to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), the Ukrainian state energy company Enerhoatom reported on Monday. According to the company, Russian troops have shelled the facility repeatedly throughout the last three days. On September 5, it said in a statement, the attacks caused a fire to break out on the station’s territory.

        • TruthOutDangerous Mountain Valley Pipeline Has No Place in Manchin’s Deal With Democrats
        • HackadayAluminium-Sulphur Batteries For Local Grid Storage?

          Lithium-Sulphur batteries have been on the cusp of commercial availability for a little while now, but nothing much has hit the shelves as of yet. There are still issues with lifetime due to cell degradation, and news about developments seems to be drying up a little. Not to worry, because MIT have come along with a new battery technology using some of the most available and cheap materials found on this planet of ours. The Aluminium-Sulphur battery developed has very promising characteristics for use with static and automotive applications, specifically its scalability and its incredible charge/discharge performance.

        • HackadayHackaday Prize 2022: A Backup Battery Pack

          These days, we’re all running around toting smartphones and laptops that could always use a bit more charge. Portable battery packs have become popular, and [Anuradha] has designed one that packs plenty of juice to keep everything humming.

        • Common Dreams‘Beyond Bleak’: UK Show Rebuked for Squid Game-Esque Segment Amid Energy Crisis

          Aired on the same day that the ruling Tory government chose a new leader in Liz Truss to become the nation’s next Prime Minister, the segment on This Morning! featured a rotating wheel where the prize was either a £1,000 or four-months payment of “Energy Bills.”

        • Common Dreams‘Gas Is Green… Washing’: Greenpeace Disrupts Industry Conference in Milan

          Greenpeace Italy led the direct action including more than 50 campaigners from across Europe, confronting officials there to promote gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and hydrogen as “greener” alternatives to oil and coal.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Counter PunchOur Forests are a Sanctuary

          Seeing these giants hacked down is like watching old friends killed. An ugly new road now crosses the trail and stumps are everywhere.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • ScheerpostMark Lloyd: A Letter From Washington on Communication Policy

        Choose Your Elected Representatives in Congress Wisely: They Will Determine the Future of Our Democratic Deliberation.

      • Meduza‘Potential threats to the country’: How EU-recommended sanctions are affecting Russian students in the Czech Republic — Meduza
      • Democracy Now“You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train”: Remembering the People’s Historian Howard Zinn at 100

        We remember the legendary historian, author, professor, playwright and activist Howard Zinn, who was born 100 years ago this August. Zinn was a regular guest on Democracy Now!, from the start of the program in 1996 up until his death in 2010 at age 87. After witnessing the horrors of World War II as a bombardier, Zinn became a peace and justice activist who picketed with his students at Spelman College during the civil rights movement and joined in actions such as opposing the Vietnam War. He later spoke out against the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. “I believe neutrality is impossible, because the world is already moving in certain directions. Wars are going on. Children are starving,” Zinn said in a 2005 interview. “To be neutral … is to collaborate with whatever is going on, to allow it to happen.”

      • Democracy NowLabor Day Special Featuring Howard Zinn & Voices of a People’s History of the United States

        This year marks 100 years since the birth of the historian Howard Zinn. In 1980, Zinn published his classic work, “A People’s History of the United States.” The book would go on to sell over a million copies and change the way many look at history in America. We begin today’s special with highlights from a production of Howard Zinn’s “Voices of a People’s History of the United States,” where Zinn introduced dramatic readings from history. We hear Alfre Woodard read the words of labor activist Mother Jones and Howard’s son Jeff Zinn read the words of an IWW poet and organizer Arturo Giovannitti.

      • Telex (Hungary)Hungarian government to set up an anti-corruption authority
      • Counter PunchThe OHCHR Report on China’s Human Rights Situation: The Conundrum of Balancing State Sovereignty with International Obligations

        Even before she went to China, Bachelet was criticized for her China agenda. Over 220 regional groups expressed concerns that the trip risked “walking into a propaganda minefield laid out by the Chinese Communist Party.”

      • Counter PunchThe Story of Ted Hall, the Atomic Spy

        Joseph Allbright and Marcia Kunstel, former Moscow correspondents and authors of the book on Ted Hall, Bombshell (1997), appear on numerous occasions in the film to offer expert historical commentary on the Hall narrative. Photos of Hiroshima and an interview with the pilot of Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, provide historical evidence of the nuclear devastation that Ted Hall helped create and wished to end. Well-chosen music evokes past events.

      • Common Dreams‘Unfit for the Bench’: Trump-Appointed Judge Orders Halt to DOJ Review of Seized Materials

        Cannon, who was appointed by the former Republican president and confirmed after he lost the 2020 election, ruled that Trump “faces an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public” if the review of the materials, which included documents marked “confidential” and “top secret” continues.

      • Telex (Hungary)Director with close ties to Orbán government upset over EU leaders not attending Gorbachev funeral
      • TruthOutFar Right Liz Truss Replaces Boris Johnson as UK Prime Minister
      • Common Dreams‘Buckle Up, It’s Going to Be a Rough Ride’: Far-Right Liz Truss Named New UK Prime Minister

        “New prime minister, same old deceit!”

      • DeSmogAnalysis: New UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’s Links to Climate Science Denial

        A vocal advocate of free-market economics, during her campaign Truss called solar farms on agricultural land “depressing” and on Sunday claimed “gas is a very important transition fuel” to help reach net zero. 

      • Counter PunchDoubting Thomas and the Fallen Court

        He was the lone dissenter in the Court’s February 2021 ruling dismissing baseless MAGA claims of voter fraud and in its January 2021 ruling allowing the National Archives to release to the January 6 committee Trump White House documents, rejecting monarchical claims of executive privilege. Ethics 101: you don’t rule on cases which concern your family. Given his wife’s active role in promoting voter fraud claims and in the January 6 coup attempt being investigated by Congress he obviously should not have ruled in these cases. His outlier views in them affirm his lack of impartiality and further tarnish the Court.

      • Counter PunchJoe Biden’s Battle for “the Soul of This Nation” is a Fascist versus Fascist Cage Match

        He’s not wrong, but his emphasis on a single aspect — Donald Trump’s cult of personality — obscures the real nature of “semi-fascism” and comes a century too late.

      • Counter PunchThe Flaws in the “Assessment” Report of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on China

        High Commissioner Bachelet did well in delaying publication of the Xinjiang “assessment” and returning to Chile before the unappetizing and destructive debates start during the forthcoming 51st session of the Council (12 September-7 October 2022).  Already the Chinese mission has rejected[2]the “assessment” as unprofessional and incompatible with the end-of-mission statement issued by Michelle Bachelet after her successful mission to China and Xinjiang in May 2022, a statement, which I consider balanced, detailed and constructive[3].  Alas, Bachelet’s statement after her well-prepared visit did not succeed in silencing the Washington and Brussels critics that have been systematically misrepresenting the situation in Xinjiang and misusing it for purposes of their geopolitical hybrid war against China.  Bachelet’s sedate statement was met by hostility, media mobbing and calls for her resignation.

      • Counter PunchWhy Putin’s Failure in Ukraine will be as Momentous as Gorbachev’s in Russia

        In other words, Putin is doubling down on winning a war that is proving as risky for the Russian state as the radical changes introduced by Gorbachev during his years in power between 1985 and 1991. Unsurprisingly, Putin wants to avoid any close association with a man who presided over the dissolution of the USSR and failed utterly in his ambition to modernise the Communist party and the Soviet state.

      • Counter PunchDemocracies have Prosecuted Corrupt Leaders – America Can Too

        In a democratic republic, after their term in office ends, the person who was the executive returns to the same status as everyone else; being a citizen of that nation—a nation where all citizens have the same legal rights and responsibilities. Consequently, a former executive must obey the laws, no matter how long they served as the executive or how popular they were while in office. This is the second important characteristic of a democratic republic.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • MeduzaIndependent newspaper Novaya Gazeta banned by Russian court — Meduza

        A Moscow court has revoked the print license of independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, effectively banning the outlet from operating inside Russia. Russia’s federal censor, Roskomnadzor, first asked the Basmanny District Court to declare the 29-year-old paper’s license invalid in July.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Counter PunchThe Helsingin Sanomat Case: Prosecuting Journalists in Finland

        As the paper noted in scathing tone, the MPs debating the matter in Parliament seemed ignorant about what was actually at stake and taking place at Tikkakoski.  In the miasma of celebrated political ignorance, powers could be enlarged with little care and worry, elected representatives remaining, as they often have in history, asleep as the needle is administered.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • MeduzaEx-journalist Ivan Safronov sentenced to 22 years in prison for treason — Meduza

        The Moscow City Court has sentenced former journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in a high-security prison colony, as well as a 500,000-ruble ($8,200) fine and two years of “restrictions on freedom” after his release, on treason charges. Safronov’s defense team said they plan to appeal the sentence.

      • Telex (Hungary)Hungarian students protest for their teachers

        Several thousand people protested in Budapest the day after the new school year began, demanding a solution to the many problems in the Hungarian education system. Many of the students told us that there is a lack of teachers in their schools, and said that even those who are there are overworked and always tired and would deserve more money for their work.

      • Common Dreams‘We’ll Come Back Stronger,’ Vows Chilean Left After Visionary Constitution Rejected

        “We resisted for 500 years and will continue to do so.”

      • Counter PunchBlack Girls are More Than 4 Times as Likely to Get Suspended Than White Girls, But Hiring More Teachers of Color is Only Part of the Solution

        Most recently my work has focused on understanding and addressing racially disproportional school suspensions and the ways in which those are also gender disproportionate. For example, we know nationally that in the 2017-2018 academic year, over 2.5 million children received one or more out-of-school suspensions. While these numbers are going down compared to years prior, students of color and students with disabilities are receiving a greater share of suspensions and expulsions.

      • Counter PunchSilliness About the Jump in Labor Force Participation

        While this was bothersome, folks who follow the data closely know that the household survey often does weird things. On a month to month basis its movements are largely noise, and even over a period of several months it can often follow a path that is inconsistent with what we know about the economy.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Barbara Ehrenreich and the Real Work of Labor Day

        Only a week of two before Barbara Ehrenreich’s death I was in a used bookstore, where I found and bought an out-of-print pamphlet she co-wrote in 1988 with journalist and author Annette Fuentes. It’s called “Women in the Global Factory.”

      • EFFHonoring Peter Eckersley, Who Made the Internet a Safer Place for Everyone

        His most ambitious project was probably Let’s Encrypt, the free and automated certificate authority, which entered public beta in 2015. Peter had been incubating the project for several years, but was able to leverage the famous “smiley face” image from the Edward Snowden leaks showing where SSL was added and removed, to build a coalition that actually made it happen. Let’s Encrypt fostered the web’s transition from non-secure HTTP connections that were vulnerable to eavesdropping, content injection, and cookie stealing, to the more secure HTTPS, so websites could offer secure connections to their users and protect them from network-based threats. 

      • Public KnowledgePublic Knowledge Joins 20 Groups Urging Congress To Shelve Journalism Competition and Preservation Act – Public Knowledge

        Today, Public Knowledge joined 20 public interest, consumer advocacy, and civil society groups as well as media companies and both antitrust and copyright law experts in a letter urging Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and other members of Congress to reconsider the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act” (JCPA). The groups argue that the bill remains “enormously problematic,” worsening some of the biggest problems in journalism while simultaneously failing to support local news.

        The following is an excerpt from the letter:

        “[We] represent a broad cross-section of organizations focused on protecting and advancing our democracy. We include civil society organizations; librarians and archivists; creators; technology companies; experts in antitrust, copyright, constitutional and digital rights law; and media and news groups. While we represent a broad range of policy positions, we join in the view that this legislation should not be passed.

    • Monopolies

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Technical

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Week 34/35: Thoughts and Photos

          A few comments around Antenna recently have noted that the service will order links by their apparent post date, even if that post date is in the future. Right now the community is well-meaning enough that such behavior is not a problem, but I worry that it could be abused. Were a bad actor to try to spam the service, he could force junk posts to always appear at the top by giving them a date far out in the future, then simply re-submitting them from a different IP address when the offending is banned. It might be paranoia on my part, and I hope such checks will never be necessary in this space.


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DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 01/04/2023: Red Hat Turning 30

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  2. Links 31/03/2023: Mozilla Turns 25 and OpenMandriva 23.03

    Links for the day



  3. IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 31, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, March 31, 2023



  4. Linus Tech (Illiteracy) Tips, LTT, Buys Phoronix Media

    Phoronix Media is being acquired by a larger company; the site will not change though



  5. Decided to Quit Debian and Use WSL Instead (Best of Both Worlds)

    Today starts a journey to a “better” experience, which lets Microsoft audit the kernel and leverage telemetry to improve my Debian experience



  6. Microsoft Has Laid Off Lennart Poettering and Hired Elon Musk

    Poettering gets rehired by IBM; IBM and Microsoft announce merger, putting Poettering back into his former position



  7. Links 31/03/2023: Ruby 3.2.2 and Linux Lite 6.4

    Links for the day



  8. Links 31/03/2023: Devices and Games, Mostly Leftovers

    Links for the day



  9. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 30, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, March 30, 2023



  10. Links 31/03/2023: Ubuntu 23.04 Beta, Donald Trump Indicted, and Finland’s NATO Bid Progresses

    Links for the day



  11. Translating the Lies of António Campinos (EPO)

    António Campinos has read a lousy script full of holes and some of the more notorious EPO talking points; we respond below



  12. [Meme] Too Many Fake European Patents? So Start Fake European Courts for Patents.

    António Campinos, who sent EPO money to Belarus, insists that the EPO is doing well; nothing could be further from the truth and EPO corruption is actively threatening the EU (or its legitimacy)



  13. Thomas Magenheim-Hörmann in RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland About Declining Quality and Declining Validity of European Patents (for EPO and Illegal Kangaroo Courts)

    Companies are not celebrating the “production line” culture fostered by EPO management, which is neither qualified for the job nor wants to adhere to the law (it's intentionally inflating a bubble)



  14. Links 30/03/2023: HowTos and Political News

    Links for the day



  15. Links 30/03/2023: LibreOffice 7.5.2 and Linux 6.2.9

    Links for the day



  16. Links 30/03/2023: WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” and OpenMandriva ROME 23.03

    Links for the day



  17. Sirius is Britain’s Most Respected and Best Established Open Source Business, According to Sirius Itself, So Why Defraud the Staff?

    Following today's part about the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ another video seemed to be well overdue (those installments used to be daily); the video above explains to relevance to Techrights and how workers feel about being cheated by a company that presents itself as “Open Source” even to some of the highest and most prestigious public institutions in the UK



  18. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 29, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, March 29, 2023



  19. [Meme] Waiting for Standard Life to Deal With Pension Fraud

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were concealed with the authoritative name of Standard Life, combined with official papers from Standard Life itself; why does Standard Life drag its heels when questioned about this matter since the start of this year?



  20. Former Staff of Sirius Open Source Responds to Revelations About the Company's Crimes

    Crimes committed by the company that I left months ago are coming to light; today we share some reactions from other former staff (without naming anybody)



  21. Among Users in the World's Largest Population, Microsoft is the 1%

    A sobering look at India shows that Microsoft lost control of the country (Windows slipped to 16% market share while GNU/Linux grew a lot; Bing is minuscule; Edge fell to 1.01% and now approaches “decimal point” territories)



  22. In One City Alone Microsoft Fired Almost 3,000 Workers This Year (We're Still in March)

    You can tell a company isn’t doing well when amid mass layoffs it pays endless money to the media — not to actual workers — in order for this media to go crazy over buzzwords, chaffbots, and other vapourware (as if the company is a market leader and has a future for shareholders to look forward to, even if claims are exaggerated and there’s no business model)



  23. Links 29/03/2023: InfluxDB FDW 2.0.0 and Erosion of Human Rights

    Links for the day



  24. Links 29/03/2023: Parted 3.5.28 and Blender 3.5

    Links for the day



  25. Links 29/03/2023: New Finnix and EasyOS Kirkstone 5.2

    Links for the day



  26. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 28, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, March 28, 2023



  27. [Meme] Fraud Seems Standard to Standard Life

    Sirius ‘Open Source’ has embezzled and defrauded staff; now it is being protected (delaying and stonewalling tactics) by those who helped facilitate the robbery



  28. 3 Months to Progress Pension Fraud Investigations in the United Kingdom

    Based on our experiences and findings, one simply cannot rely on pension providers to take fraud seriously (we’ve been working as a group on this); all they want is the money and risk does not seem to bother them, even when there’s an actual crime associated with pension-related activities



  29. 36,000 Soon

    Techrights is still growing; in WordPress alone (not the entire site) we’re fast approaching 36,000 posts; in Gemini it’s almost 45,500 pages and our IRC community turns 15 soon



  30. Contrary to What Bribed (by Microsoft) Media Keeps Saying, Bing is in a Freefall and Bing Staff is Being Laid Off (No, Chatbots Are Not Search and Do Not Substitute Web Pages!)

    Chatbots/chaffbot media noise (chaff) needs to be disregarded; Microsoft has no solid search strategy, just lots and lots of layoffs that never end this year (Microsoft distracts shareholders with chaffbot hype/vapourware each time a wave of layoffs starts, giving financial incentives for publishers to not even mention these; right now it’s GitHub again, with NDAs signed to hide that it is happening)


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