GNU/Linux

• Desktop/Laptop

  • Hindustan Times ☛ 10 best Linux laptops to look for in 2022

    Best Linux laptops to look for in 2022: Our list includes laptops that mostly come with 11th Gen Intel Core processors ranging from i3 to i5, which are best for work purposes, basic gaming, entertainment and online studies.

    [...]

    Ensure to check with the manufacturer or seller regarding the features provided by the Linux laptop.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Linux in the Ham Shack ☛ LHS Episode #483: LHS4EVA | Linux in the Ham Shack

    Hello and welcome to the 483rd episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short topics episode, the hosts discuss the upcoming JOTA and JOTI event, an additional period of ARRL club grants, the Internet Archive creating a repository for amateur radio content, a kerfuffle at SQLite, making money with Open Source and much, much more. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

  • Video ☛ Google delays adblock’s death, New Nvidia driver, Debian goes non free – Linux and Open Source News – Invidious

  • Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ The Badger Stack | Self-Hosted 81

    Chris Raspberry Pi server is dead, and Alex has a few ideas for his next build.

  • Tux Digital ☛ 70: Razer and Logitech Put Steam Deck On Notice? – Hardware Addicts – TuxDigital

    In this episode, we’re going to be talking about Intel Arc, new portable gaming devices, and Apple’s latest launch. Then we head to Camera Corner where Wendy will discuss Camera Sensors.

    Hardware Addicts is a proud member of the TuxDigital Network. Hardware Addicts is the podcast that focuses on the physical components that powers our technology world.

• Kernel Space

  • Collabora ☛ HEVC uAPI mainlined

    The release of Linux 6.0 earlier this week brought a significant milestone: the H.265/HEVC user-space API was mainlined. That is the result of more than two years of efforts by our engineering team.

    Collabora has actively contributed to the enablement of video codecs such as VP8, VP9, H264, and others, so the addition of HEVC marks another important contribution from our team to this space. These activities do involve not only kernel drivers but also GStreamer plugins for stateless decoders.

    The primary focus of the HEVC uAPI work was on VeriSilicon’s Hantro Codec component, present on a number of popular SoCs (Rockchip, NXP, Microchip, …). Marketed as a small and power efficient, it is especially attractive for open source developers as a stateless accelerator. The RKVDEC and the Cedrus codecs will also benefit from the stable HEVC uAPI, gaining the ability to decode HEVC in mainline too.

    Designing the HEVC uAPI has been challenging as we wanted to make it future proof. To get maximum confidence in the uAPI, we leveraged the Fluster testing framework and fixed the whole decoding stack from the driver to userland until all tests passed, up to the limit of the hardware capabilities of course. Along the way, we also added support for 10-bit bit-streams and the P010 pixel format.

  • LWN ☛ Stable Kernel: Linux 5.4.217

    I'm announcing the release of the 5.4.217 kernel.
    
    
    All users of the 5.4 kernel series must upgrade.
    
    
    The updated 5.4.y git tree can be found at:
            git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.4.y
    and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:
    
    https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
    
    thanks,
    
    
    greg k-h
    

  • Fudzilla ☛ Linux bug can tigger Chipzilla PC screens

    A bug in the Intel integrated graphics driver for Linux machines is triggering a power sequencing issue which, can damage the screen.

    Victims see very fast white flashes on the screen which can potentially send the panel to silicon heaven.

    Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman promptly released Linux 5.19.13 where the faulty patches for the Intel graphics driver have been reverted.

  • Linux Kernel 6.0 Officially Released

    It’s been a long two month waiting period, but Linux Kernel 6.0 has finally arrived. While not a huge release in terms of features and bugfixes, the Linux Kernel 6.x is anticipated to bring many news features to the kernel and continue to modernize Linux as a platform. In his release announcement, Linus assured us that 6.0 was meant to establish a stable base before the “big changes” come.

  • How to Install Linux Kernel 6.0 on Ubuntu / Linux Mint – Tips On Unix

    This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install Linux kernel 6.0 On Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and LinuxMint 21.

• Applications

  • IT Pro ☛ Best email client for Linux | IT PRO

    While web-based email has become the norm and can be accessed from any web browser, many users prefer a native email client. On Windows, you have applications like Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird. On Android or iOS, there are clients like Nine and K-9 Mail. But what about Linux?

    Hundreds of native email clients for Linux have come and gone, and only a few offer comparable features to Windows native clients. But one of the great things about Linux is that most applications are available for free, forever, so you can try them all out to find the best email client for Linux for your needs.

    There is also a more diverse range of email clients for the Linux desktop than you’ll find on Windows. When developers don’t like something about a piece of software written on Linux, they often make their own version and release it free to the world. This has resulted in some unique email clients that you might find suit you better than the usual suspects, and which may yet rank among the best email providers.

  • Linux Shell Tips ☛ Nala – A Neat Structured Frontend for APT Package Manager

    This article will walk us through the installation and usage of Nala as an alternate package manager to the commonly used APT package manager for Debian-based Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

    The primary aim of the Nala package manager is to help Debian-based Linux users understand what goes on in the background when installing, removing, and/or upgrading various system packages.

    The libapt-pkg frontend is interfaced by python-apt api hence the need to have Python 3 installed on a Debian-based system prior to the installation of Nala.

    The use of Nala as a package manager excludes redundant messages, provides better package formats, and uses color to highlight specific system events behind package installation, removal, and upgrade.

  • Linux Links ☛ TIDAL Hi-Fi – Electron-based software for TIDAL

    
    TIDAL Hi-Fi is a third-party music streaming program. It uses Castlabs’ version of Electron for widevine support. It’s free and open source software. You’ll need a subscription to TIDAL to use the software.

    It will no doubt cause confusion that the software is named TIDAL Hi-Fi given that the TIDAL service has a HiFi plan. Let’s be very clear, TIDAL Hi-Fi has no affiliation with TIDAL. The latest version appears to be renamed to Tidal-Hifi although it’s still showing as TIDAL Hi-Fi in the program. Even with this renaming, things really aren’t any clearer.

  • Make Use Of ☛ 10 Essential Privacy and Security Apps for Linux Desktops

    Linux Privacy and Security Apps
    Linux-based operating systems have a reputation for being very secure and private. Linux is free and open source, unlike Windows or macOS. This makes its source code more open to scrutiny—more difficult for developers to add any malicious software.

    Many Linux distributions also have built-in features and apps for improved desktop security. But installing a Linux OS isn’t the be-all and end-all solution for protecting your desktop.

    Fortunately, there are also many free and open-source software (FOSS) that can add more layers of protection to your desktop. Here are some of the best Linux apps for keeping your computer private and secure.

  • Neowin ☛ QOwnNotes

    QOwnNotes is a open source (GPL) plain-text file notepad with markdown support and todo list manager for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, that (optionally) works together with the notes application of ownCloud (or Nextcloud). So you are able to write down your thoughts with QOwnNotes and edit or search for them later from your mobile device (like with CloudNotes) or the ownCloud web-service. The notes are stored as plain text files and you can sync them with your ownCloud sync client. Of course other software, like Dropbox, Syncthing, Seafile or BitTorrent Sync can be used too.

  • Its FOSS ☛ FOSS Weekly #22.37: Free Ubuntu Pro, Kernel 6.0, TUXEDO OS, Crossword, Btrfs and More

    After several weeks, I published a new video on YouTube. Videos take quite some effort and I am not a fan of videos.

    However, I know many people prefer videos to text articles. What do you prefer?

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Linux Hint ☛ “apt-add-repository” Command Not Found on Debian 11

    “In Linux, the “apt-add-repository” command is used to add a new repository to a system for installing any or all the packages belonging to that repository. This command adds the repository into the /etc/apt/sources.list file or in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory. However, after running the “apt-add-repository” command for the first time in your Debian 11 system, you may receive the “apt-add-repository command not found” error. Let’s see why your system returns this error and how to fix it in Debian 11.”

  • LinuxTechi ☛ Tar Command in Linux with Practical Examples

    Tar command is used for creating archive of multiple files and directories into single archive file, extension of archive file will always be ‘.tar’. Tar can further compress the archived file using gzip and bzip2 techniques. Tar stands for ‘Tape archive’ and used to create and extract archive files from the command line. Tar can also be treated as command line backup and restore utility.

  • H2S Media ☛ How to install Tabby Terminal on Ubuntu 22.04 Linux

    Download and install Tabby Terminal on your Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Linux Jammy JellyFish to have a feature-rich app to run commands.

    Tabby is another user-friendly open-source terminal app for local shells, serial, SSH, and Telnet connections. It is available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Comes with an integrated SSh client, serial terminal, SFTP, and Zmodem.

    This open-source Terminal app for Ubuntu offers fully configurable shortcuts and split panes that can remember your tabs. Tabby uses integrated encrypted containers for SSH secrets and configuration. Hence, it is full of features that further support PowerShell, PS Core, WSL, Git-Bash, Cygwin, Cmder, and CMD as well on Windows.

  • Video ☛ How to install Parrot 5.1 Security Edition – Invidious

    In this video, I am going to show how to install Parrot 5.1 Security Edition.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install and Configure Squid Proxy Server on Rocky Linux/Alma Linux 9

    In this tutorial, you will learn how to install and configure Squid Proxy on a Rocky / Alma Linux 9 server.

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ How to Enable Audio Casting in Linux – Make Tech Easier

    This universal guide is everything you need to know about Audio Casting on Linux. Find out how to enable Audio Casting and more, right here!

  • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ How to Setup OpenVPN Server in Ubuntu 22.04 [The Easy Way] | UbuntuHandbook

    This simple tutorial shows how to easily setup OpenVPN in your Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 server and connect remotely in Windows or Linux with GNOME.

    My PPTP and IKEv2 VPN server refused to work recently due to the Great Firewall (maybe). So I decided to setup OpenVPN in my Ubuntu VPS as a workaround.

    DigitalOcean has a step by step setup guide, but it’s really long and complicated for beginners. Thankfully, there’s a free open-source script make things as easy as few commands.

  • Make Use Of ☛ How to Start X11 on Linux Without a Display Manager

    It is completely possible to start your Linux desktop without a display manager, or even a GUI for that matter.

    While most modern Linux systems use a display manager to log in users and start a desktop environment, it’s possible to start X11 and your favorite window manager/desktop environment without one. You can start X from a virtual console and even set it up to launch automatically on login. Here’s how.

  • ByteXD ☛ How to Use DreamBooth to Fine-Tune Stable Diffusion (Colab)

    With Stable Diffusion DreamBooth, you can now create art generation images using your own trained images.

    For example you can generate images with yourself or a loved one as a popular video game character, as a fantastical creature, or just about anything you can think of – you can generate a sketch or a painting of your pet as a dragon, or as the Emperor of Mankind.

    You can also train your own styles and aesthetics like aetherpunk/magicpunk, or maybe people’s facial expressions like Zoolander’s Magnum (I haven’t tried this yet).

    In this tutorial we’ll cover the basics of fine-tuning Stable Diffusion with DreamBooth to generate your own customized images using Google Colab, for free. After we’ve fined tuned Stable Diffusion we’ll also test it out using Stable Diffusion WebUI built into the same Google Colab notebook.

    In machine learning, fine-tuning means adjusting a model that was trained on one dataset to work with a new, related dataset. This can make your model work better on the new dataset, or help it work better in a new situation. A dataset, in our case, is a bunch of pictures and some words that tell a machine what they should be looking for in order to generate new images.

  • Video ☛ Linux Cloud Servers | Create and Install SSH Key Pairs – Invidious

    What’s up, Linux Community!!! In this video, we’ll focus on setting up SSH keys for Ubuntu 22.04 installation. SSH keys provide an easy, secure way of logging into your server and are recommended for all users.

  • SUSE’s Corporate Blog ☛ Meet the latest SUSE documentation “accrual” | SUSE Communities

    Under the two currently available categories Kubernetes and Linux, we have already published 50+ documents—expect more to be posted during the next few weeks.

• Games

  • Boiling Steam ☛ Top 14 New Games You Can Play on Linux with Proton – October 2022 Edition – Boiling Steam

    We are back with our usual monthly update! Boiling Steam looks at the latest data dumps from ProtonDB to give you a quick list of new games that work (pretty much?

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Overhaul Enncryption Support in Kontact — Decrypted mind

      For a long time I have been fixing issues behind the scenes to support Autocrypt and fixing bugs around encryption.

      But the best crypto support does not help if it is too complicated for users to use the system. PGP is complex and a lot of things can go wrong, so the UI should support the user to find solutions, if things are going the wrong way. For me it was obvious that I cannot do this on my own and found Eileen Wagner a UX designer who is experienced in crypto UX. It was a lot fun to work together with Eileen to improve the UX in Kontact

      It soon became obvious that the part that needs an overhaul is mostly sending. There is a lot that happens AFTER you press send. You may be faced with information that the keys are not good enough, or that a used key is near expiry. So we tried to improve the UX so that these issues will bubble up earlier so you can fix the issues before pressing send.

      At least for me, it is often that I concentrate in order to finish a message before I need to go, and then press send in a hurry. So all dialogs and warnings are facing me while I’m in a hurry and I just want them to disappear. If instead, I know of those things in advance, I will have time to ask for a new key or search for the correct key for a particular recipient.

      Here you see a sample of creating a message to several recipients after our improvements.

    • KaOS 2022.10

      It is with great pleasure to present to you the October release of a new stable ISO.

      Many changes have been implemented to the installer Calamares in the last few months, so it is fitting to start with listing all that is new or has changed.
      It is now possible to do a typical install entirely from a touchpad or mouse, a keyboard is no longer needed. A virtual keyboard has been implemented for those modules that need text input.

      For those who prefer PulseAudio over Pipewire, a module has been added (KaOS only), that gives users the option to select which sound server they prefer (with Pipewire set as default).

      Dracut is the new default for the initramfs image creation (mkinitcpio is no longer in use for new installs). To accommodate that change, the Dracut module in Calamares had to be adjusted, so it now supports version-less kernels.

    • Adriaan de Groot ☛ Akademy Awards 2022

      As one of the three winners of the KDE Akademy Awards in 2021 (Alexander Semke for Best Application; Paul Brown for Best Non-Application; me for Jury Award), it fell to me and the other winners to decide upon winners for this year’s Akademy. Alexander couldn’t make it to the event, so Paul and I got up on stage. Congratulations Jasem, Harald and Aniqa!

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • This Week in GNOME ☛ #64 Everything Green Again! – This Week in GNOME

      Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from September 30 to October 07.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• New Releases

  • Barry Kauler ☛ EasyOS 4.4.1 released

    Version 4.4.1 has put in place improvements for running apps in containers, plus various small fixes and enhancements.

  • EasyOS Dunfell-series 4.4.1

    EasyOS was created in 2017, derived from Quirky Linux, which in turn was derived from Puppy Linux in 2013. Easy is built in woofQ, which takes as input binary packages from any distribution, and uses them on top of the unique EasyOS infrastructure.

    Throughout 2020, the official release for x86_64 PCs was the Buster-series, built with Debian 10.x Buster DEBs.

    EasyOS has also been built with packages compiled from source, using a fork of OpenEmbedded (OE). Currently, the Dunfell release of OE has been used, to compile two sets of binary packages, for x86_64 and aarch64.

    The latter have been used to build EasyOS for the Raspberry Pi4, and first official release, 2.6.1, was in January 2021.

    The page that you are reading now has the release notes for EasyOS Dunfell-series on x86_64 PCs, also debuting in 2021.

    Ongoing development is now focused on the x86_64 Dunfell-series. The last version in the x86_64 Buster-series is 2.6.2, on June 29, 2021, and that is likely to be the end of that series. Releases for the Pi4 Dunfell-series are still planned but very intermittent.

    The version number is for EasyOS itself, independent of the target hardware; that is, the infrastructure, support-glue, system scripts and system management and configuration applications.

    The latest version is becoming mature, though Easy is an experimental distribution and some parts are under development and are still considered as beta-quality. However, you will find this distro to be a very pleasant surprise, or so we hope.

  • Barry Kauler ☛ Considering future directions for EasyOS

    I have decided to release EasyOS 4.4.1 in a day or two, as contemplating major changes that may break things.
    One major change is a move away from running as the root user. Remember “fido”?

    [...]

    User ‘fido’ never got any traction, and has just about been forgotten. I am considering bringing back user fido, but doing it differently. This proposed fido will (maybe) have root privileges — if go for giving fido full root access, it will be just like before, except apps that object to running as root will no longer complain.

    And, fido may have some restrictions, that you can decide on in a menu in the initrd at bootup. In other words, may back off from full root privileges.

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • Linux Made Simple ☛ Lubuntu 22.10 Beta

    Today we are looking at Lubuntu 22.10 Beta. It comes with LXQt 1.1.0, Linux kernel 5.19, and uses about 400-500MB of ram when idling.

  • Video ☛ Lubuntu 22.10 Beta Run Through – Invidious

    In this video, we are looking at Lubuntu 22.10 Beta.

• BSD

  • DragonFly BSD Digest ☛ BSD Now: 475 Prompt Injection Attacks

    The first link and the title for this week’s BSD Now doesn’t have anything to do with BSD as far as I know, but I think it’s funny.

• Fedora / Red Hat / IBM

  • Fedora Project ☛ Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2022-40 – Fedora Community Blog

    Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

    I have weekly office hours on Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time) in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

  • Fedora Project ☛ CPE Weekly Update – Week 40 2022 – Fedora Community Blog

    This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering) Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat.

    We provide you both infographics and text version of the weekly report. If you just want to quickly look at what we did, just look at the infographic. If you are interested in more in depth details look below the infographic.

  • Telecompaper: NEC selects Red Hat OpenShift as preferred container platform for mission-critical applications

  • Computer Weekly ☛ Red Hat CEO on OpenShift roadmap, competitive play

    Red Hat’s newly minted CEO Matt Hicks talks up OpenShift’s roadmap, the competition with VMware and opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region.

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ 3 ways CIOs can empower their teams during uncertainty

    The role of the CIO has evolved from technology decision-maker and IT gatekeeper to change agent and strategic business partner, influencing decisions that impact client and customer-facing business initiatives. In addition to serving as technology experts who lead the traditional enterprise IT organization, CIOs now lead collaborative, cross-functional initiatives that drive business impact.

    Additionally, CIOs must be change leaders, driving innovation and business agility at scale. In times of economic volatility, CIOs, more than ever, are tasked with helping organizations ride out the storm.

  • Red Hat ☛ Moving from apt to dnf package management

    A package manager makes it simple to install GNU/Linux applications on a local computer. Before package management became commonplace, installing applications was a tedious, error-prone undertaking. The ease a package manager brings to installing an application on a Linux computer has been a major factor contributing to the widespread adoption of Linux as a mainstream operating system for both business and home users.

  • Red Hat ☛ What’s inside an RPM .repo file?

    The previous article in this series, How does RPM package discovery work?, described how the RPM package management technology discovers and installs an .rpm package on a local computer running the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, or CentOS Stream operating system. In that article, you learned that the .repo files stored in the /etc/yum.repos.d directory of the local machine play a critical role in discovering, installing, and managing RPM packages.

    This article goes to the next level of detail to describe the format specified for a .repo file.

    This article describes not only the format specification for a .repo file but also describes the logic that’s applied to a .repo file when managing RPM packages on a given machine. But, before delving in, let’s review how RPM discovers a package on the internet and then installs it.

  • TechTarget ☛ IBM integrates Red Hat storage for hybrid cloud

    IBM storage has integrated Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation and Ceph into its new hybrid cloud data storage offering. Analysts said the move is good for both vendors.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ IBM merges its data storage offerings with Red Hat’s OpenShift and Ceph

    IBM Corp. is making some big changes to its data storage services, announcing today that it will bring Red Hat Inc.’s storage products and associates under the “IBM Storage” umbrella. The aim, IBM said, is to deliver a more consistent application and data storage experience across on-premises and cloud infrastructures.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ AnsibleFest 2022: Know before you go

    AnsibleFest 2022 is right around the corner, so it’s time to start preparing for your automation experience. Here you can find some ways to map out your time spent with us in Chicago on Oct. 18 – 19.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ What is the Confidential Containers project? [Ed: Microsoft is not confidential. It is an NSA facilitator. Many of these companies only pretend to value security.]

    Confidential Containers (CoCo) is a new sandbox project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) that enables cloud-native confidential computing by taking advantage of a variety of hardware platforms and technologies.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Pipelines for cloud-native network functions (CNFs) Part 3: Pipelines for multi-tenant end-to-end integrations

    In this article, I discuss how to use the outputs from the previous pipelines and combine them to achieve automation, consistency and reliability of Day 2 operations at scale.

    [...]

    When a new version of OpenShift has been accepted by the service provider’s lifecycle management pipelines, the end-to-end combination of applications and CNFs that have been accepted by the service provider’s onboarding pipelines need to be tested and validated. This is achieved using multi-tenant end-to-end integration pipelines, as depicted below. This pipeline illustrates the concept and is not intended to represent any final configuration or definition of this type of pipeline.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Open source incident response solutions

    Red Hat leads the tech industry’s cutting edge practices for the resolution of cybersecurity issues. Red Hat does this by providing relevant and accessible information and enabling the larger community to make well-informed decisions about security issues.

    As part of our continuing reviews, Red Hat saw the need to make public a formal incident response plan (IRP) to lead our incident response and vulnerability management. FedRAMP and other regulatory frameworks also require a formal, published IRP. It made sense that Red Hat should put forth the effort to make sure we thoroughly documented our incident response processes to cover our needs and to deliver a more systematic way to analyze and improve our vulnerability reports.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • LinuxInsider ☛ Free Ubuntu Subscriptions, Some Pause Open Source, New ’Undistro’

    Ubuntu Pro, the expanded security maintenance and compliance subscription, is now in public beta for data centers and workstations. Canonical will provide a free tier for personal and small-scale commercial use for up to five machines.

    Canonical on Wednesday announced the new program as part of the company’s community commitment and mission to make open source more easily consumable by everyone. Ubuntu Pro is available for every Ubuntu LTS from 16.04 LTS, and it is already in production for large-scale customers offering global services. Users can obtain a free personal Ubuntu Pro subscription.

    “Since we first launched Ubuntu LTS, with five years of free security coverage for the main OS, our enterprise customers have asked us to cover more and more of the wider open-source landscape under private commercial agreements,” according to Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth.

  • ZDNet ☛ Ubuntu Linux tries for the office desktop | ZDNET

    Linux runs the world, but it doesn’t run the traditional PC desktop — nor does it seem likely it ever will.

    But, that doesn’t mean the Linux desktop can’t play a major role on the office desktop. Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company, is trying a new take on its popular Ubuntu desktop.

    One of these moves is the introduction of Ubuntu Pro beta. This is an expanded security take on the Ubuntu Long-Term Support (LTS) releases.

  • HowTo Geek ☛ What’s New in Ubuntu 22.10 ‘Kinetic Kudu’

    Canonical has released the beta build of Ubuntu 22.10, the next release of their Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ahead of its October 20, 2022 release, we check out the Kinetic Kudu to see what’s new.

    The Kinetic Kudu is an interim release of the Ubuntu Linux distribution produced by Canonical and the Ubuntu community. Interim releases are the builds—usually three of them—that come out at six-month intervals between the Long Term Support versions. LTS versions are released in April every two years. The last LTS build was 22.04, the Jammy Jellyfish. 22.10 is the first interim build since then.

    Commercial or mission-critical installations tend to move from LTS build to LTS build, because they prioritize stability and long-term support over the newest visual tweaks and the latest round of upgraded applications. For the more casual user in a domestic setting, each build is a chance to move to a new kernel, new applications, and new eye candy. The new kernel and applications will always have security fixes, so that’s worth the price of admission in itself.

  • Ubuntu ☛ The State of IoT – September 2022 | Ubuntu

    Smart homes, automotive and RISC-V took the headlines, with several announcements and press releases in each industry. Without further ado, let’s dive straight into the most prominent news across the IoT landscape from the last month.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Purism ☛ Librem 5- Device Overview – Purism

    Librem 5 phones are for those who care about their digital security and the use of free and open source software. Our team has designed the phone so that the parts are easily repairable and you can keep using the same phone for a longer time. Let’s go through the hardware of the phone.

  • Arduino ☛ This gorgeous headboard simulates sunrises | Arduino Blog

    The world would be a much better place if everyone could wake according to their own natural circadian rhythm and natural sunlight peeking through their window. But the world doesn’t work like that and many people have to force themselves awake. That’s especially true for people who don’t have conventional work schedules and this gorgeous Artificial Sunrise Headboard gives them a pleasant wakeup call.

    Consider how our ancestors woke up before artificial lighting came along and humanity was still nomadic, because we haven’t evolved much since then. As the sun started to rise, the sky would transition from black to dark blue and then continue to lighten over the course of an hour or two. That provided people with gradual stimulation to ease them from sleep into wakefulness, which stands in stark contrast to the sudden, blaring alarms that are common today. This headboard simulates the gradual sunrise and an integrated personal assistant brews coffee to give sleepers a little extra incentive to get out of bed.

  • Arduino ☛ James Burton is giving legs their snakes back | Arduino Blog

    James Bruton gave that title to his most recent video as a good-natured jab at Allen Pan’s project about “giving snakes there legs back.” In Pan’s video, he built a robotic exoskeleton to let snakes walk around on motorized legs. But as Bruton noted in his video intro, those legs didn’t look very snakelike. So Bruton created his own robot that walks around on more serpentine limbs.

    This robot’s six limbs each have three degrees of freedom (DoF), all of which are motor-driven. But unlike most robotic limb designs, these use “oblique swivel joint mechanisms.” That mouthful of a term means that each joint rotates on a plane offset at an angle relative to the preceding joint. While that arrangement isn’t suitable for many applications, the kinematics are interesting and the resulting movement does resemble the wriggling of a snake’s body as it slithers along.

  • CNX Software ☛ Olimex ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo is a tiny RISC-V board with WiFi 4, Bluetooth 5.0, and a LiPo battery charger – CNX Software

    Olimex has just launched the ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo board based on ESP32-C3 RISC-V wireless microcontroller offering WiFI 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, some I/Os, as well as USB and JTAG.

    As its name implies, the board can be powered by a LiPo battery and charged through a USB Type-C port. It offers up to 15 GPIO for expansion and comes with an ICSP connector in case you need to reflash or debug the bootloader through a JTAG interface.

  • Arduino ☛ Can you become the next Trombone Champ? | Arduino Blog

    The first Guitar Hero game hit shelves in 2005 and kickstarted the rhythm game revolution. While it wasn’t the first rhythm game, its inclusion of “realistic” guitar controllers changed the industry. It wasn’t long before competitor Rocksmith took things a step further and let players use real electric guitars. But guitars are so common; if you want to stand out, you go for the brass. That’s why Greig Stewart (AKA Theremin Hero) built this custom controller for the Trombone Champ game.

    Trombone Champ is currently enjoying viral attention thanks to its quirkiness. To play the game, the user drags their mouse cursor up and down to mimic moving a trombone’s slide and clicks their mouse to blow air. Like Guitar Hero and most other rhythm games, the goal is to hit the notes with the most accuracy possible. But Theremin Hero correctly surmised that moving a mouse is nothing like playing a real trombone, so he converted a cheap trombone kazoo toy into a controller for Trombone Champ.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android Police ☛ Android 13′s themed icons don’t make sense

  • 9to5Google ☛ Samsung’s fourth Android 13 beta for Galaxy S22 now rolling out

  • Motorola Android 12 update and bugs tracker (cont.updated)

  • XDA ☛ Stable OxygenOS 12 update goes live for the OnePlus 7 and 7T series

  • FOSSBytes ☛ How To Get New Pixel Ringtones On Your Android Phone?

  • TechRadar ☛ How to record your screen on Android for free | TechRadar

  • Android Police ☛ How to control your Android phone from Galaxy Watch 4

  • CNET ☛ Google Pixel Watch Hands-On: Fitbit Makes Its Android Watch Debut – CNET

  • Indian Express ☛ India among countries with most Android malware, ‘GB WhatsApp’ among responsible apps: ESET report | Technology News,The Indian Express

  • 9to5Google ☛ Android Auto weather icon disappears for some, again

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• The Register UK ☛ Plop Boot Manager boots PCs off media they can’t start from • The Register

  Elmar Hanlhofer’s Plop Boot Managers are a small family of tiny tools to enable booting from media that a computer can’t usually boot from.

  Before you point out that all modern computers can boot from USB – the boot managers also work well in virtual machines, where USB boot support is still a lot rarer. Yes, of course, you can virtually “insert” an ISO file into your VM’s virtual CD-ROM, but if you want to boot a VM from a real physical USB key, it’s not so easy.

  The programs are tiny: they fit onto a single floppy disk (even a 720kB one), and the ISO image is about half a megabyte.

  [...]

  The original Plop Boot Manager, currently on version 5.15, and the new, still in development, PBM6 are freeware, but they’re not open source. Saying that, though, both are free to use for both personal and commercial purposes. They also have a Linux-only relative, PlopKexec, which is fully open source.

• TechTarget ☛ Compare container orchestrators Apache Mesos vs. Kubernetes

  Exploring options for container orchestration? Kubernetes’ popularity doesn’t mean it’s always the best choice. Discover the tradeoffs and use cases of Mesos vs. Kubernetes.

• The Register UK ☛ OpenStack ‘SLURP’ ends requirement for six-monthly upgrades • The Register

  OpenStack has completed an alphabet’s worthy of releases, with the project on Wednesday issuing “Zed” – the 26th version of the open-source cloud stack and also adding an optional slower upgrade cadence.

  The stack’s 41 sub-projects – from adjutant to zun – each publish release notes and there are too many changes to mention or summarise.

  The OpenStack project has chosen to highlight the addition of OAuth 2.0 to the Keystone authentication service, Cinder now allowing users to transfer encrypted volumes across projects, and support for Xilinx FPGAs in the Cyborg accelerator support framework. The Nova VM-wrangler can now support IOMMU, which means VMs get direct access to memory if needed.

• Programming/Development

  • Edward Betts ☛ Fish shell now has underscore as a number separator (my feature request)

    In November 2021 I filed a feature request for the fish shell to add underscore as a thousand separator in numbers. My feature request has been implemented and is available in fish 3.5.0, released 16 June 2022.

  • Perl ☛ The deep, the shallow and the ugly (classes) | lichtkind [blogs.perl.org]

    Previously I showed a bit of the API of my new module Graphics::Toolkit::Color. This time I want to mention some bits about the code base, which it to what i tried to say before (sorry for the long delay i hope I can complete the series).

    From technical point I was willingly cutting some corners – but what I want to talk about is the software engineering angle of good code.

    [...]

    Graphics::Toolkit::Color are in reality 3 modules. One is handling the low level operations, value like range checking, value conversion, averaging and so on. This is about single or few numbers and it does not have to be object oriented. Another module is handling the color names. I mean even the list of constants is so long it should not be intermingled with too much other code of the file gets hard to navigate. That is why the class sitting on top both packages can be rather concise and yet is handling a lot of complexity.

    I know to some of you this all is like explaining how to use the bathroom. But i think its worth to explicitly thinking about to write code we enjoy to work with even next year. And it’s also about to get the theory straight behind what we are doing and not get fooled by by buzz words.

  • Barry Kauler ☛ OpenGL fixed in containers

    I figured out how to get openGL working in containers; achieved by mount-binding /dev/dri on /dev/dri inside the container. This is now a checkbox “3D graphics”…

  • Dirk Eddelbuettel ☛ Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rblpapi 0.3.14: Updates and Extensions

    Version 0.3.14 of the Rblpapi package arrived on CRAN earlier today. Rblpapi provides a direct interface between R and the Bloomberg Terminal via the C++ API provided by Bloomberg (but note that a valid Bloomberg license and installation is required).

    This is the fourteenth release since the package first appeared on CRAN in 2016. It comprises a nice PR from Robert Harlow extending support to B-PIPE authentication (for those who have it) along with a few fixes made since the last release in January. The last one provided from a kind assist by Tomas Kalibera who pointed out how to overcome an absolute ‘rpath’ dynamic linker instruction (and as I noticed noticed something I already did in another package – ah well) so that we no longer require StagedInstall: yes.

  • OpenSource.com ☛ Learn programming at Open Jam 2022 | Opensource.com

    Open Jam game jam is happening from October 28 to November 9 this year. Every year for the past several years, programmers from around the globe build open source video games, and then play and rate one another’s games. Just for fun.

    Open Jam is a “game jam,” which is a casual way to inspire programmers of all skill levels to focus on a just-for-fun project for a concentrated period of time. It promotes open source games as well as open source game creation tools. While participants aren’t required to use open source tools to create their game, the games themselves must bear an open license, and you literally get extra points during the scoring round for using open source tools.

    Another important aspect of the jam, for me, is that it promotes alternate win conditions, but not in the way you might think.

  • Ubuntu Pit ☛ Atom vs Sublime: Most Significant Differences You Should Know [Ed: Atom is dead, bloated, and controlled by Microsoft, which formally abandoned it; what's the point giving it such promotion?]

    Source code editors are crucial when it comes to real-time programming jobs. They allow users to code with their desired features and build the editor as they go on working. Atom and Sublime Text are two such editors we know of, so if you are looking to compare Atom vs Sublime Text, you’re in just the right place.

  • Qt ☛ Qt for Android Automotive 6.2.6

    We are happy to announce that the latest patch release on Qt for Android Automotive is available for commercial Qt users, based on the latest LTS Qt 6.2.6.

  • Qt ☛ 8 Tips for Improving UX with Qt’s Digital Advertising Platform [Ed: Offline spam: Qt to help put ads inside software]

    Doesn’t everyone just hate ads? You know the feeling when you’re watching a video or using an application and the irritating advert interrupts you? It’s also completely irrelevant and has nothing to do with your interests!

  • Qt ☛ Qt Safe Renderer Monitor: Debugging the Safety Application

    The Qt Safe Renderer (QSR) is our solution for creating user interfaces (UI) for safety-critical systems. Since 2017 the Qt Safe Renderer has been used by multiple customers and certified for different functional safety standards. With the upcoming version 2.0, we are introducing a new approach for validating the correct rendering of safety-critical information – the Monitor.

  • Medevel ☛ GrapesJS is A Developer-friendly Open Source Rrich Web Page Builder

    GrapesJS is an open-source, multipurpose, Web Builder Framework which combines different tools and features with the goal to help you (or users of your application) to build HTML templates without any knowledge of coding.

    It comes with dozens of handy feature that can be used to build a rich web pages, newsletter, landing pages, marketing and informative reports.

    It supports page layouts, blocks, and offers developers with a rich API set to add their own component.

  • [Old] First make the change easy, then make the easy change

    This quote is from Kent Beck, a software developer and the creator of the extreme programming methodology.

    Refactoring code can be a challenge. Software projects tend to grow with time. If left unchecked they can become unruly and hard to reason about. Spaghetti code is a term that’s never too far from such a mess.

    In a way, this quote is saying “first do what you should have always been doing; being organized” and “then do what you came here to do in the first place (add a feature, fix a bug).”

  • C/C++

    • Paul E. McKenney ☛ Stupid RCU Tricks: CPP Summit Presentation: paulmck — LiveJournal

      I had the privilege of presenting Unraveling Fence & RCU Mysteries (C++ Concurrency Fundamentals) to the CPP Summit. As the title suggests, this covered RCU from a C++ viewpoint.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Posix Mutex in C

      “The usage of Mutex is the method for preventing race situations that is most frequently used. Mutex, which refers to mutual exclusion, essentially gives us a deadbolt lock that stops several users from simultaneously accessing and modifying the crucial data. Whenever multiple or more processes employ the same process as their medium for finishing their processing, deadlock must be avoided. The main subject of today’s discussion will be using the Posix Mutex function to avoid deadlock with different methods with C language in Ubuntu 20.04 system. Before doing anything with your code snippets, we should install the “gcc” compiler.”

    • Linux Hint ☛ Fsync System Call in C

      “You may have heard a lot about the C language’s basic structure and its simplicity because most developers tend to learn it first before learning any other language. It has a Fsync() system call or function that flushes (passes) all the updates to the disk to reflect the changes made to a file. Also, the fsync function stops the process of flush until all the updates taking place by several processes on a single file got done, and then the flush would happen using the fsync() function call. This article will demonstrate the working of the fsync() function in the C language.

      Any system in which you have been working or installed your coding environment must be upgraded and updated so that the new errors can be encountered well, and we can avoid any inconvenience. Therefore, it’s recommended to update your system, especially the Linux system, before and after any installations and configurations. Thus, the “apt” utility is the best to use for updating with “sudo” rights on the console. If it asks for your permission by requesting a password, you have to provide it. In a moment of seconds, your system will be updated.”

  • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

    • Network World ☛ Using bash options to change the behavior of scripts | Network World

      Bash provides a large number of options that can be used to control the behavior of bash scripts. This post examines some of the more useful ones and explains how to display which options are in use and which are not.

    • Linux.org ☛ Bash 09 – Conclusion | Linux.org

      Over the last eight articles, we have covered all the information for making Bash scripts. The rest is up to you.

      In this article, I hope to go over some concepts again and help you set up a helpful script.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Computer Weekly ☛ NFS vs SMB vs CIFS: File storage protocols defined

    We take a close look at NFS and SMB – the key file storage access protocols – and weigh up their pros, cons and suitability to differing datacentre environments

Leftovers

• Freethink Media Inc ☛ An end to doomerism – Big Think

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ UP Element i12 Edge embedded computer is equipped with Intel’s NUC 12 Compute Element – CNX Software

    AAEON’s UP Bridge the Gap has announced the UP Element i12 Edge fanless embedded computer based on the Intel NUC 12 Compute Element and designed for the autonomous mobile robot (AMR) and industrial automation markets.

    The computer is fitted with NUC 12 Compute Element equipped with 12th generation Alder Lake hybrid processor from Celeron 7350 to Intel Core i7-1255U hybrid processor, supports up to 32GB LPDDR5 memory, NVMe support, offers three Ethernet ports including one 2.5GbE, several USB ports, two RS232/422/485 interfaces, a DIO header, and more.

  • The Next Platform ☛ Datacenter Will Be AMD’s Largest – And Most Profitable – Business [Ed: AMD does not count on Microsoft and Windows?]

    Two and a half years into the global coronavirus pandemic we all have upgraded our home IT infrastructure. And after several fibrillatory interest rate shocks by the major governments to try to curb inflation in the world economy, spending on PCs has consequently taken a nose dive. And a glut of back-generation GPUs on the market as cryptocurrency mining changes algorithms is going to also hurt those who make datacenter CPUs and GPUs.

    Nvidia took its financial hits back in August, with gaming GPU sales falling $1.58 billion sequentially to just over $2 billion in its second quarter of fiscal 2023 ended in early May, and luckily Nvidia does not have a CPU business aimed at PCs or else it would have taken a double whammy back them and probably for a few more quarters as inventories burn down. AMD is not so fortunate, in that it sells both CPUs and GPUs for client devices, but like Nvidia, it is fortunate in that it has a growing and vibrant datacenter business that counterbalances the PC crash to a certain extent.

  • Petros Koutoupis ☛ The ‘Great Decline’ of High Capacity Disk Drive Sales – Random [Tech] Stuff

    Blocks & Files just published an interesting piece showcasing how fewer large capacity Hard Disk Drives (HDD) are being shipped than last year (let alone, last quarter) and by a significant amount. About 1/5 less HDDs are being shipped today, than they were last year around the same time. This is significant. Additional data from the top HDD manufacturers also show that the larger the capacity, the fewer the sales. I guess that would make total sense if your digital footprint hasn’t grown or needed to scale with hard drive replacements.
    What adds to this is the fact that prices are going down with the larger capacity NVMe drives. This gives HDD technologies a bit of competition. Why settle for just capacity when you can also get the performance with it?

    Although, this has and continues to raise the same key concern that I have always had: fault tolerance. I shared some of those concerns back in May when writing about the Nimbus Forever Lasting SSD. The larger the drive, the more risk of failure and without the proper measures in place to tolerate any and all sorts of failures, you run the risk of losing all of your data. That risk is even higher with rotational HDD media (more movable components).

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Computer Weekly ☛ Oil giant Shell lends support to LF Energy in its open source power networks push [Ed: Openwashing polluters while misusing the "Linux" brand (using it up... to the point where it means nothing)]

      Open source community LF Energy is continuing to go from strength-to-strength as its push to transform the way power networks operate gathers pace

• Security

  • Diffoscope ☛ Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 224 released

    The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 224. This version includes the following changes:

    [ Mattia Rizzolo ]
    * Fix rlib test failure with LLVM 15. Thanks to Gianfranco Costamagna
      (locutusofborg) for the patch.

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire – New firm aims to help Huawei avoid US sanctions: claim

    A chip start-up known as Pengxinwei IC Manufacturing based in Shenzhen is allegedly aiming to help Huawei Technologies get around American sanctions that have crippled its smartphone business, the Bloomberg news agency claims.

    The start-up is run by a former Huawei employee, Bloomberg said on Thursday, adding that the firm was receiving support from Huawei to order chipmaking gear which it hopes to obtain by the first half of 2023.

    However, as Bloomberg admitted, Pengxinwei had not yet got off the ground, making a great deal of its extremely lengthy report speculative.

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ Hackers exploiting unpatched RCE bug in Zimbra Collaboration Suite [Ed: A patch has been out for ages]

    Hackers are actively exploiting an unpatched remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS), a widely deployed web client and email server.

  • Duo ☛ Researchers Warn of Unpatched, Actively Exploited Zimbra Flaw | Decipher [Ed: Patched ages ago]

    A critical-severity, remote code execution vulnerability in Zimbra’s enterprise collaboration software and email platform is being actively exploited, with no patch currently available for the issue, warn researchers.

  • LWN ☛ Security updates for Friday

    Security updates have been issued by Debian (dbus, isc-dhcp, and strongswan), Fedora (booth, php, php-twig, php-twig2, and php-twig3), Oracle (expat, prometheus-jmx-exporter, and squid), Red Hat (expat, openvswitch2.11, and squid), Scientific Linux (expat and squid), SUSE (exiv2, LibVNCServer, postgresql-jdbc, protobuf, python-PyJWT, python3, slurm, squid, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (libreoffice).

  • USCERT ☛ FBI and CISA Publish a PSA on Information Manipulation Tactics for 2022 Midterm Elections [Ed: Country that engages in election meddling all around the world claims to be protecting integrity of elections]

    The PSA also describes the extensive safeguards in place to protect election infrastructure and includes recommendations to assist the public in understanding how to find trustworthy sources of election-related information.

  • Spectro Cloud Strengthens Kubernetes Security at the Network Edge

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Spyware Maker Intellexa Sued by Journalist – Schneier on Security

      The Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis was spied on by his own government, with a commercial spyware product called “Predator.” That product is sold by a company in North Macedonia called Cytrox, which is in turn owned by an Israeli company called Intellexa.

    • Gizmodo ☛ Thanasis Koukakis Sues Intellexa Over Predator Spyware

      A Greek financial journalist is one of several who believe they have been targeted for surveillance by the nation’s government with the help of Intellexa.

    • Haaretz ☛ Criminal Allegations Against Israeli-linked Spyware, Ex-intel Commander in Greek Hacking Scandal – Security, Cyber – Aviation – Haaretz.com

      Investigative journalist Thanasis Koukakis was under surveillance by Greece. Now he’s decided to take Intellexa, the firm behind the Predator spyware allegedly used against him, and its owners to court

    • Consumer Reports ☛ TikTok Tracks You Across the Web, Even If You Don’t Use App – Consumer Reports

    • AccessNow ☛ Biden signs Executive Order for EU-US data transfer deal: privacy and surveillance reforms missing – Access Now

      Today, US President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities, which paves way for a new EU-US data transfer deal. But this document alone is not sufficient to protect privacy and reform disproportionate US surveillance programmes, leaving the future of the deal in limbo.

      “This Executive Order is a positive yet insufficient step to ensure that any future EU-US data transfer deal effectively protects people’s rights, and doesn’t end up invalidated by the EU’s highest court,” said Estelle Masse, Global Data Protection Lead at Access Now. “Access Now appreciates the work done to bring more clarity on US safeguards, but the measures signed today are not sufficient to guarantee an effective right to remedy and to put limitations to the far-reaching scope of US surveillance.”

      Officials in the EU have been expecting this Executive Order to finalise the drafting and ratification process for the future data deal sometime early next year.

      The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) struck down the previous data deals — the Privacy Shield in 2020 and the EU-US Safe Harbour in 2015 — because US authorities’ disproportionate data access and surveillance practices violate EU rights to data protection and privacy. The CJEU also found that the US failed to provide people in the EU with an effective remedy.

• Finance

  • The Atlantic ☛ Since When Does the IMF Care About Inequality? – The Atlantic

    Last Thursday, the International Monetary Fund spooked the markets and surprised the commentariat by chiding the U.K. Conservative government for fiscal irresponsibility. The shock was palpable. For the IMF to criticize the government of a major Western economy was a little like the janitor scolding the landlord for putting the building’s assessed value at risk. That sense of a reversal of the usual order of things was all the sharper because, lest we forget, it was Britain’s Tories, under Margaret Thatcher’s steely leadership, who wrote the book on fiscal probity as the bedrock of neoliberalism. The IMF spent more than four decades inflicting that orthodoxy upon hapless governments the world over.

    As if in a bid to amplify the stir it knew it would make, the IMF’s communiqué went so far as to censure the British government for introducing large tax cuts (now partially canceled after the IMF intervention), because they would mainly “benefit high-income earners” and “likely increase inequality.” Tories loyal to Britain’s beleaguered new prime minister, Liz Truss; America’s feistier Republicans; international economic pundits; and even some of my comrades on the left were briefly united by a common puzzlement: Since when did the IMF oppose greater inequality? One would be hard-pressed to identify a single IMF “structural adjustment program”—ask Argentina, South Korea, Ireland, or Greece (where I was once a finance minister who had to negotiate with the IMF) about the strings attached to its loans—that had not increased inequality. Had the fund’s hard-nosed bureaucrats enjoyed a road-to-Damascus moment?

    [...]

    A year later, in a telephone conversation among senior IMF staff published by WikiLeaks, its European chief told a colleague that the IMF should confront the German chancellor…

  • Reason ☛ “FIRE Statement on Free Speech and Online Payment Processors”

    In 2010, WikiLeaks began disclosing the contents of diplomatic cables, leading government officials to criticize credit card companies for allowing people to donate to the organization. Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal soon suspended WikiLeaks’ accounts.

  • Computing UK ☛ See how much Oracle’s top executives made in 2022

    Larry Ellison’s total compensation grew by about 12 times the amount seen the year prior.

  • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ Fake meat stocks in the toilet and layoffs at Impossible and Beyond. | BaronHK’s Rants

    “Creepy Uncle Bill” Gates is heavily invested in both companies and was perplexed at the market rejection of both products. He took to his bribed/friendly media a while back to say that states were passing laws that prevented them from calling these products “beef” (because they’re not beef, and calling it beef is a form of fraud). So now, they have to call it “Plant Based Ground” on the package.

    He said that they sort of want to “force us to call it lab garbage”, which is basically what the stuff is.

    Plants are healthy. Beyond and Impossible are not.

    To make it taste better, they salt the crap out of it and do things to give it an unhealthy lipid profile, to the point where, from a health standpoint, you’re better off eating beef. Which obviously tastes like beef. Even if they made the fake stuff taste like beef, it would still be an unnatural highly processed junk food.

    The companies generally tend to charge about $9 per pound for “Plant Based Ground” lab garbage, whereas beef costs half that, for the decent stuff.

    Bill has some big problems.

    He invested heavily in these things, even though he admits that he doesn’t eat them himself. Of course not. Why would he? He’s so concerned about climate change that he has 9 private jets and it’s usually just him flying on them, and his house is 50 times bigger than the space he needs, especially now that his wife Melinda divorced him due to being embarrassed by his association with Jeffery Epstein.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • We the People Are All in This Together – YES! Magazine

    The purpose of human institutions is to secure the well-being of people and Earth. Despite our differences, all of Earth’s people share a common destiny that depends on our learning to live together with mutual commitment to a foundational truth recognized by our early ancestors: “I am because you are.” South Africans call it ubuntu.

    Now, however, we get near-daily reminders of the failure of our institutions to uphold that truth. Ignoring ubuntu, they pit us against each other in a deadly competition to dominate and exploit both the planet and our neighbors.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • Quitting tactics

    It is easy to get addicted to things; quitting is a bitch. And it feels awful to do something you know you shouldn’t, be it using some substance, social media, eating meat, destructive behavior, or whatever.

    The human brain is designed to optimize risk/reward behaviors, but it has bugs. The same circuitry that helps you learn, gets you hooked on stupid things, like checking how many ‘likes’ your post got or whipping out your phone every 30 seconds. When substances are involved, the results may devastating. But there may be ways to gamify quitting, by metaprogramming the addiction bug into a tool.

  • SpellBinding: AEMNRVU Wordo: GOEST

  • Style

    Consider some of this next time you are operating machinery like a computer. Consider how computers discipline their operators and what that entails for the world at large.

  • Sometimes I just feel like such a loser

    I quit my job and after one year I’m unhappy, poorer and undisciplined

  • Personal Training

    I had my first workout with my new personal trainer yesterday. It went really well. Our session began with a bit of an assessment to record my baselines and to help her get an idea of how my body moves and behaves. She helped identify some of my areas of weakness and we’re going to work on improving them together, which I am pretty stoked about, honestly. We used the rest of our time to get a sweaty full body workout in. I am aching in its aftermath today.

• Politics

  • If only teaching paid more than it does …

    I was in a nearly three hour meeting today (second of three), doing what is called a “transfer of knowledge.” I’m the only developer left on my team who actually knows how “Project: Wolowizard [1],” “Project: Sippy-Cup [2],” “Project: Lumbergh [3],” “Project: Cleese [4]” and “Project: Seymore [5]” all fit together in production (even if I don’t fully understand all the business logic implemented by “Project: Lumbergh”). So I spent my time mostly talking and answering questions from the other developers, including the team leader. Bunny was concerned that it might lead to me being let go, but just for my own sanity (and because plenty of *other people* at The Corporation have told our Corporate Overlords that under no condition should I be let go) I decided not to sink into cynical dispair and treat it for what it is—getting some other developers up to speed on the various components.

• Technical

  • Science

    • Pocket calculator

      I’ve bought a pocket calculator / scientific calculator to use instead of relying on a computer or smartphone, it’s a refreshing experience.

      Being solar-powered helps as I can use it in extreme situations in which you’d need a calculator.. which are not that many, but who knows. The battery alone resists three years if you’d use it one hour per day which is quite something, this is if you’d have no light which is not the case unless we go into the next ice age in the upcoming months. Has a few modes which I still have to figure out.

    • Binocular observation of Jupiter and the moon

      When I was young, I used to be quite into astronomy (I was into a lot of things before computing came along and hypnotised me to the exclusion of much else for a big chunk of my life which I’ll never get back). I never owned a telescope or even, as far as I recall, binoculars, and to be honest I’m not sure I even felt the need. I grew up somewhere moderately remote, where light pollution wasn’t really an issue, so you could just go outside and look up on a clear night and behold the Milky Way whenever you felt like it. Shooting stars and satellites were things you could easily spot multiple times on any given night. I had one of those little rotating cardboard wheel star chart things, and I learned my way around the sky pretty well and spotted plenty of planets. I guess maybe all of this is more what you would call “stargazing” rather than amateur astronomy per se, although maybe that’s a bogus and snobbish distinction to draw. I guess it took a while even after the internet and computing appeared in my life for this interest to completely wane, I remember taking a degree of geeky pride in making the objectively unwise decision to interrupt my sleep at some ungodly hour the night before my final high school physics exam in order to watch a meteor shower (I still did fine). And I was even in my university’s astronomy club, although to be honest that was mostly just a social club for hypernerds and any kind of genuine astronomy-based event was outnumbered more than ten to one by quiz nights, video nights, fundraising BBQs, etc. Good times, to be sure, but I spent more time staring at the skies by myself as a kid. Until very recently, it had been definitely over a decade since I’d done *anything* like any of the above.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Re: Gemini is not decentralized

      
      Over at the Midnight Pub, ~ostov complains [1] that Gemini is not
      decentralized, pointing out that capsules can be "banned" just the
      same as on the surface web.
      
      On the face of it, this is a pretty ridiculous statement.  There's
      nothing intrinsically centralized about gemini or http (or gopher -
      hello, we're still here!) as protocols.
      
      However, I do agree that geminaunts tend to fall more often than not
      into the "centralization is bad" camp.  So, like the author of this
      post, I've found it somewhat perplexing that people seem to be at the
      same time so quick to throw themselves behind explicitly centralized
      social hubs such as Midnight Pub, Station, etc.
      

    • Making my Blog Mobile-Friendly

      In 2015 I remade my blog to consist of static HTML and CSS files. I made the body of the page a single column of fixed width. (I chose the width to get the same line lengths as books and articles.) The margins to the left and right were set to fill out all the extra space, resuling in a centered column. My hope was that this would automatically make my blog look good in mobile browsers. Instead I found that the page seemed to be rendered with very wide margins, and that the page was then zoomed-out so that the whole width was visible, which in turn resulted in the text being too small to read.

GNU/Linux

• Desktop/Laptop

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ Windows 11 Adoption Stats Less Than 3% of Machines – Make Tech Easier

    Windows 11 made quite a splash when it was released last year, but the stats say that it may not have been that big of a splash – more like just a toe dip in the water than a big belly flop. The stats say that while Windows 11 has been publicly available for the past year, only 2.61% of Windows machines are running it.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Video ☛ 13 Quick Tips to Make Linux File Manager Nautilus Even Better – Invidious

    Nautilus is GNOME’s default file manager application, and you may have seen it in many Linux distributions. It’s a good file manager with plenty of features. However, you can enhance your experience by employing some tweaks and tips. In this video, I share 13, actually 14 with the bonus, tips. Check them out and see which ones are suitable for you.

  • Video ☛ Stadias closure WILL impact Deck gamers! (Plus other Deck news) – Invidious

  • Video ☛ Why I Regret Buying the Steam Deck *Reaction* – Invidious

    04:20 to 09:20 audio cut out totally my own doing and mistake I own that. I really got to remap that mute mic hot key. These are one takes and real first reactions to the videos so everything is left in mistakes and all. So another day another person giving their reason the Steam Deck is a regrettable purchase. Lets see if this one has some actual reasons or if its more full of stupid.

  • Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ Linux Action News 261

    Our thoughts on IBM slicing up more of Red Hat, what stands out in Nextcloud Hub 3, and a few essential fixes finally landing in the Linux kernel.

  • OSI Blog ☛ First Insights: Deep Dive AI Podcast [Ed: The OSI runs this series to whitewash criminal behaviour by Microsoft, which pays to do this whitewashing. Today’s OSI works against the OSI’s original mission.]

  • The TLLTS Podcast ☛ The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 974

    Joe slides in the two cheeseburgers.

  • Video ☛ Linux Hangout and Future Directions – Invidious

    Today we will return to our Thursday live show and talk about random topics and some future channel directions.

• Kernel Space

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire – Linux bug in kernel version 5.19.12 said to damage Intel-based laptop panels

    Laptops which are built atop Intel’s 12th generation Core processors are affected by a bug in version 5.19.12 of the Linux kernel, according to a post from an Intel Linux engineer on Tuesday.

    Ville Syrjälä said in his post: “After looking at some logs we do end up with potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel.”

    He suggested to Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of the stable kernel line, that this be immediately reverted and a new stable release issued.

  • Its FOSS ☛ Pros and Cons of Using Btrfs Filesystem in Linux

    
    Whenever you install Linux, you get to choose a file system, especially when you are manually partitioning your disk.

    The most common option is Ext4, which is used as default in many desktop Linux distributions. But, after Fedora took the plunge to use Btrfs as its default file system, many desktop Linux users switched to Btrfs.

    If you are one of them who want to switch to Btrfs, let me help you by listing the Pros and Cons of Btrfs as a file system. This will help you to decide whether to switch or not.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Differences between a thread and a process

    In this article, we will try to clarify the differences between an operating system process and a thread. But before jumping into the main disparities, we will first define what is the role of each of these operating systems’ important entities.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ 10 ways to use the Linux find command | Enable Sysadmin

    Discover what you’re looking for, find misplaced data, and troubleshoot everyday problems with this handy Linux command.

  • TecAdmin ☛ How to Create User Manually in AWS Cognito (CLI) – TecAdmin

    Amazon Cognito is a user identity and access management solution that makes it easy for developers to create and manage user authentication, user data, and authorization for their mobile and web apps. In this article, we are going to see how you can create users in AWS Cognito using AWS CLI. Different services have different APIs so the syntax may be different than what you’re used to but don’t worry! We’ve got you covered with some great examples that are sure to get you up and running in no time. It’s super easy to get started with the AWS SDKs. Each service has its own unique commands – so let’s get started!

  • Linux Nightly ☛ How to Change LibreOffice Language and Spell Check on Ubuntu

    If you want to use a different or additional language in LibreOffice, that language pack must be installed separately. In this tutorial, you will learn how to change the language for LibreOffice, and you’ll also see the steps for configuring the spell check feature to work with your language of choice.

    The steps below have been performed on Ubuntu Linux, but should also work on a variety of other Linux distros. The new language and spell check features will work for the entire LibreOffice suite: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base, Math, and Charts.

  • Its FOSS ☛ How to Install Ubuntu Linux in VMWare – It’s FOSS

    Software like VMWare gives an easy option to try and use Linux inside Windows. This article covers a step-by-step guide on installing Ubuntu inside VMWare in Windows.

    Virtualization is a good way to try Linux from the comfort of Windows. WSL and WSL2 might be easier but not everyone has access to them. And for a relatively better desktop experience, a VM is better.

    You may have to use Linux as part of the course curriculum, for some development tools (like Docker) or just for experimenting with Linux desktop before making the switch. VMWare and similar virtualization software can be of great help.

    You don’t have to make actual changes to the disk partition, no changes in the boot and Linux runs like any other application inside Windows.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install Jenkins on Rocky Linux 9 – idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Jenkins on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration tool that helps to automate the software build, testing, and deployments involved in the software development process. It is a server-based application written in Java, and it typically runs as a background service on Windows or Unix machines. We use Jenkins to automatically monitor the repository for changes to our source code. As soon as someone pushes his/her changes to the central source code repository, Jenkins analyzes the new source files for changes.

    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 the Jenkins automation server on Rocky Linux. 9.

  • Linux Nightly ☛ How to Mount ISO File in Linux – Linux Nightly

    To access the contents of an ISO file in Linux, you will need to mount it. In this tutorial, you will learn how to mount an ISO file using command line and GUI.

  • Linux Nightly ☛ How to Remove Exif Data via Linux Command Line – Linux Nightly

    Images that contain Exif metadata may reveal when and where a photo was taken and with what device, among other things. While this is usually a desirable feature, it can also be a privacy concern if the images are going to be shared or published online. Exif data also helps inflate file size. In this guide, we’ll see how to remove EXIF data from JPG, JPEG, PNG, and other image files from the Linux command line.

    There are quite a few tools available that can remove Exif data, but one we’ve found to work very well is ExifTool. This program can strip Exif metadata without recompressing the image, so there’s no loss in quality. There are a variety of options that can be used with the program, such as exporting a new version of the image (without the Exif data) or simply resaving the image in-place. We’ll show you all the most useful commands below.

  • Linux Hint ☛ How to Use the Bash Sort Command

    “The Bash sort command is used to sort a file’s content and give output in the stdout. With sort, you can sort a file’s contents alphabetically, in reverse, numerically, ascending, or descending order. The sort command sorts a file’s contents line by line, and the input you give acts as the sort key. By the end of this guide, you will have an understanding of using the Bash sort command.”

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How to add a local DNS entry on Linux

    In this short but interesting post, you will learn how to add a local DNS entry on Linux. Let’s get started.

    As we all know, DNS servers are responsible for translating IP addresses into a domain name easier to remember by humans. So, we don’t have to learn by heart IP addresses, but only the domain name associated with them.

  • H2S Media ☛ How to install Guake Terminal app on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Linux

    Get the simple steps in this tutorial to install Guake Terminal on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish to run commands.

    Guake (based on Quake) is a Python-based terminal emulator. Guake behaves like the terminal at Quake: By a certain keystroke (hotkey) Q12 ) the window rolls down from the top of the screen and back in when the same key is pressed again. Furthermore, tabs are supported, changing the size (here height), the transparency of the window, and much more.

    It is a simple multimonitor terminal for GNOME Desktop Environment. It comes with Compiz transparency and shows animation. It gives tabs an environment and the names of tabs can be customized for ease of working. We can configure the automatic start of Guake Terminal at login along with some script that we want to execute.

    Guake provides 130 color palettes to customize the look and feel of the boring old black color terminal. Like other terminals, we can show and hide it by simply pressing a single key again and again.

  • H2S Media ☛ How to install Hyper Terminal app on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

    Replace your default Gnome terminal by installing the Hyper Terminal app on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish for more features and customization options.

    Hyper is an Electron-based Terminal emulator with a number of customization options, and that is your first priority, Hyper Terminal should be the best choice for you. Built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript this terminal app is more suitable for developers, and also has support for plugins to increase the productivity of the program.

    You can find a number of plugins in the Hyper Repository, and I am sure you will definitely find some of them useful for you. With support for ZSH, you can actually change the complete look and feel of the emulator and the support for various themes in some way or another can increase your productivity and workflow. Just give Hyper Terminal a try to unleash the full potential of a Terminal emulator.

  • DebugPoint ☛ What is KDE Connect? How Do You Use It? [Beginner's Guide]

    Technology evolves at a rapid pace. That includes the software, hardware and different form factor devices. The future is all about seamless integration and workflow across different devices. Every day, we are moving a little closer to a state where you send and receive data across all connected devices. And KDE Connect application is a flag bearer on Linux desktop systems.

    KDE Connect is an application developed by the KDE Desktop team that offers seamless connectivity between Linux System and any other system running Windows, macOS, Android or Linux. In this article, we explain what KDE Connect is, its main features, basic usage guide and installation steps.

  • DebugPoint ☛ Essential DNF Commands for Linux Users [With Examples]

    DNF (Dandified Yum) is a package manager used in RPM-based Linux systems (RHEL, Fedora, etc.). It is a successor of the Yum package manager (Yellowdog Update Modified). The DNF package manager is efficient in performance, memory consumption and dependency resolution issues.

    Here’s a easy to understand guide with common dnf commands for your reference. Take a look.

  • How to find your motherboard model and other hardware information in Linux

    Regardless of your motherboard’s manufacturer, a single command line tool makes it simple to find your hardware’s manufacturer, model, and more in Linux.

  • TecMint ☛ Most Common SSH Command Usage and Configuration in Linux

    In this guide, we will discuss the common use cases of SSH. We will also discuss commonly used SSH configurations that can be used in day-to-day life to boost your productivity.

    Secure Shell (SSH) is a widely adopted network protocol, which allows us to interact with remote hosts in a secure way. It provides security by encrypting all communication between them.

  • Configure Docker Daemon to Use HTTP Proxy

    Running Docker inside a semi-isolated corporate network.

  • Data visualization with Grafana and Telegraf – Zoltán’s Blog

    Few weeks ago we have decided to create a dashboard where we can monitor the status of the SUSE Linux Enterprise maintenance update queue. Naturally there are tons of cool open source solutions to build this type of monitoring. Two decades ago I probably would have written a Perl or Python based monitoring script for the monitoring part and use the good old gnuplot (http://www.gnuplot.info/) to visualize the data and create an active page written in some silly web UI framework. Let’s just say that luckily those times has passed.

    I have turned to the development team of the openQA and asked them what do they use for their monitoring system. It is a really good open source practice to use the technology what our friends are using so we can ask for help and we can later contribute to their projects.

  • Apply Linux Kernel Patches from LKML | Adam Young’s Web Log

    Linux kernel work can call for you to test out a patch set that someone has posted to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). If the patch sets are sufficiently long enough, you want to apply them all together, and not have to down load them individually. I recently worked through this, and here’s how I got things to work.

    For example, picking the top one (today) from LKML: [PATCH 0/8] MediaTek watchdog: Convert mtk-wdt.txt to dt-schema. I actually don’t care about this particular patch, but the process is the same.There is a link to this on the lore.kernel.org Webpage.

    Note that this title bar implies there are 8 patches (labeled 1 to 8) inside it, and a Patch labeled 0 which serves as the header to the whole patch set. When you try to apply the patch using git -am it is going to complain about that first one, but this is not a problem.

    If, like me, you tend to do development work on a system that is not your primary email client, you will want a way to download the patches directly to the target machine. I am going to use wget to fetch a patchset in its mailbox format using gzip compression. There is a link to the gz file at the bottom of the page. Scroll to the section that shows the thread.

• Games

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ No more Steam Deck reservation queue — buy it now, plus Docking Station available

    The day is finally here. Valve has removed the reservation queue for the Steam Deck, so you can buy it right now. Additionally, the Steam Deck Docking Station is also now available.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Cassette Beasts is a wonderful take on monster catching

    It needs to hurry up and be 2023 so I can play the full game of Cassette Beasts, an upcoming monster catching / creature collection game from Bytten Studio and RawFury. Coming with full Native Linux support built with Godot Engine, it’s easily one of my biggest highlights from the ongoing Steam Next Fest, where it has a rather great demo available to play right now.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Dead Cells now has a Boss Rush mode if you like pain

    Love pain? Want to make your life difficult? Good news for you then as Dead Cells now has a fresh upgrade out with a Boss Rush mode so you can sweat against the toughest.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Formula Retro Racing – World Tour is a fresh upcoming low-poly racer

    Love your classic racing games with low-poly visuals? Keep an eye on Formula Retro Racing – World Tour which releases next year and has a demo available along with Native Linux support.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ RimWorld – Biotech expansion announced and a big free update

    RimWorld is set to get even bigger with the upcoming Biotech expansion that releases in a few weeks, along with a major free update for all players.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ SteamOS 3.3.2 and a Stable Steam Deck Client Update are out now, here’s what’s new

    SteamOS 3.3.2 and a Steam Deck Client Update are out now, pulling together all the recent Beta / Preview updates and putting them out for everyone. Here’s what’s new.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • Linux Made Simple ☛ Xubuntu 22.10 Beta

    Today we are looking at Xubuntu 22.10 Beta. It comes with XFCE 4.16, Linux kernel 5.19, and uses about 900MB of ram when idling.

  • Video ☛ Xubuntu 22.10 Beta Run Through – Invidious

    In this video, we are looking at Xubuntu 22.10 Beta. E

  • Linux Made Simple ☛ Linux Lite 6.2 RC1

    Today we are looking at Linux Lite 6.2 RC1. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.15, based on Ubuntu 22.04, XFCE 4.16, and uses about 500 – 900 MB of ram when idling.

  • Video ☛ Linux Lite 6.2 RC1 Run Through – Invidious

    In this video, we are looking at Linux Lite 6.2 RC1.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • QEMU, Vim update in Tumbleweed

    Snapshot releases of openSUSE Tumbleweed were plentiful during the month of September with the rolling release delivering 27 snapshots out of 30 days in the month.

    Since last Friday, four snapshots have been released.

    Several libraries were updated in snapshot 20221003. An update of libva 2.16.0 was among those changed in the snapshot; the Video Acceleration Application Programming Interface for Linux simplified some mapping tables. Another library to update was libcap 2.66. This library made the Makefiles more robust to address an error and the package fixed some documentation typos. The links 2.28 package disabled the cache when following redirects from consent.google.com. An update of yast2-network 4.5.8 fixed an issue when writing the NetworkManager configuration without a gateway. The C library for parsing command line parameters, popt 1.19, fixed multiple resource and memory leaks. It also improved random number handling. There were several other packages to update in the snapshot including libbluray 1.3.3, tdb 1.4.7, python-cryptography 38.0.1 and more.

  • SUSE’s Corporate Blog ☛ Understanding the benefits and cost savings of the SUSE and Intel Server Platform for SAP Environments [Ed: SUSE keeps promoting proprietary software like SAP instead of "Linux"; for hosting it keeps promoting foreign and hostile companies like Microsoft]

  • SUSE’s Corporate Blog ☛ SUSE Launches its Inaugural Customer Awards at SUSE Exchange London and Munich

  • SUSE’s Corporate Blog ☛ Multi-factor authentication on SUSE’s Build Service | SUSE Communities

    The Open Build Service (OBS) is a generic system to build and distribute packages from sources in an automatic, consistent and reproducible way. It makes it possible to release software for a wide range of operating systems and hardware architectures.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • DebugPoint ☛ EuroLinux Desktop Review: A Worthy Alternative to Ubuntu LTS?

    EuroLinux is a Polish company which has been developing open-source server OS and solutions for almost a decade, mostly in the Europe market. The company is also known for its Linux server operating system (OS) based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

    A couple of weeks back, the company introduced a desktop operating system based on RHEL – “EuroLinux Desktop”.

    Since few distros are available based on RHEL, I thought of giving it a spin and finding out how it is designed, its performance, etc. Moreover, the team markets the distro as “combines the look and functionality of Windows® and macOS® with the reliability and security of a server-based Enterprise Linux distribution”.

    EuroLinux desktop is free to download and install. However, you can buy the support if you are a small business owner or have other commercial needs. Here’s a detailed review of EuroLinux Desktop.

• Debian Family

  • Linuxiac ☛ SparkyLinux 2022.10 Semi-Rolling Replaces LightDM with SDDM

    A new display manager, kernel 5.19, and two new themes are some of the features in the just-released update to the Sparky Rolling series.

    SparkyLinux is a Debian-based lightweight desktop-oriented Linux distribution that aims to be easy on system resources and can breathe new life into aging computers.

    The distro has two editions. The first is a regular point release based entirely on the stable Debian branch that adheres to the established pattern of releasing new versions over time.

  • DebugPoint ☛ Debian 12 Picks Up Ubuntu’s Triple Buffering Patch for GNOME

    Among some good news on the Debian 12 features, another exciting and useful change is now landed. The Triple buffering patch for the GNOME desktop from Ubuntu is now merged in Debian 12.

    The triple buffering code developed by Ubuntu, now lands in Debian 12 Bookworm unstable for GNOME and planned release on 2023.

• Devices/Embedded

  • CNX Software ☛ ODROID-Go Ultra Amlogic S922X portable gaming console and devkit launched for $111

    Hardkernel ODROID-Go Ultra (OGU) portable gaming console and devkit is powered by the same Amlogic S922X hexa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor found in the company’s ODROID-N2+ SBC. The new model also adds a 16GB eMMC flash for faster storage and increases the RAM capacity to 2GB.

    The Korean company’s adventure with portable gaming consoles started with the ESP32-based ODROID-Go to celebrate its 10th birthday in 2018. At the time it looked like a side project, but the console was popular enough that they released their first Linux handheld game console with the ODROID-Go Advance (OGA) in 2019, and then the ODROID-Go Super (OGS) in 2020 with a larger 5-inch display, and both equipped with a Rockchip RK3326 quad-core Cortex-A35 processor. The new ODROID-Go Ultra is based on the same design as the OGS model, but with a serious jump in performance, and the ability to support more demanding emulators.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Data ethics for computing education through ballet and biometrics

    For our seminar series on cross-disciplinary computing, it was a delight to host Genevieve Smith-Nunes this September. Her research work involving ballet and augmented reality was a perfect fit for our theme.

  • Adafruit ☛ Cheekmate – a Wireless Haptic Communication System

    Social media is abuzz lately over the prospect of cheating in tournament strategy games. Is it happening? How is that possible with officials watching? Could there be a hidden receiver somewhere? What can be done to rectify this? These are probing questions!

    We’ll get to the bottom of this by making a simple one-way hidden communicator using Adafruit parts and the Adafruit IO service. Not for actual cheating of course, that would be asinine…in brief, a stain on the sport…but to record for posterity whether this sort of backdoor intrusion is even plausible or just an internet myth.

  • Arduino ☛ This tinyML-powered baby swing automatically starts when crying is detected | Arduino Blog

    No one enjoys hearing their baby cry, especially when it occurs in the middle of the night or when the parents are preoccupied with another task. Unfortunately, switching on a motorized baby swing requires physically getting up and pressing a switch or button, which is why Manivannan Sivan developed one that can automatically trigger whenever a cry is detected using machine learning.

    Sivan began his project by first gathering real world samples of crying sounds and background noise from an Arduino Portenta H7 and Vision Shield before labeling them accordingly in the Edge Impulse Studio. From here, he created a simple impulse which takes in time-series audio data and generates a spectrogram which is then used to train a Keras neural network model. Once fully trained, the model could accurately distinguish between the two sounds about 98% of the time.

  • Hackaday ☛ Git Your PCBs Online

    Last time, I’ve shown you how to create a local Git repository around your PCB project. That alone provides you with local backups, helping you never lose the changes you make to your files, and always be able to review the history of your project as it developed.

  • Hackaday ☛ Exploring The Cutting Edge Of Desktop ARM Hardware

    While the x86 architecture certainly isn’t going away anytime soon, it seems that each year more and more of our computing is done on ARM processors. It started with our smartphones, spread into low-cost Chromebooks, and now Apple’s gone all-in with their M1/M2 chips. But so far we haven’t seen too much movement in the desktop space, a fact which has arguably slowed the development of ARM-compatible software and operating systems.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • The Sun ☛ Simple trick for all Android phone users that stops creepy trackers | The US Sun

  • Android Headlines ☛ Top 7 Reasons Why Android Is Better Than iPhones

  • Android Headlines ☛ Best 5 Encrypted Messaging Android Apps 2022

  • Android Police ☛ Google’s new Security & Privacy pane for Android is coming soon

  • Android Police ☛ The Pixel Watch might be Google’s Apple Watch, but is that what Android needs?

  • Android Headlines ☛ Galaxy S22 Series Gets Another Android 13 Beta Update

  • Samsung One UI 5.0 (Android 13) update and bugs tracker (cont. updated)

  • Kim Kommando ☛ Sideloading apps could infect your Android phone with malware

  • 9to5Google ☛ Google Play system updates October: Android TV tweaks

  • Qt ☛ Qt for Android Automotive 6.2.6

  • Android Auto bug preventing phones from pairing persists

  • IT Wire ☛ Google launches watch, next generation of Pixel smartphones

    Google has launched its new line of Pixel smartphones, along with the first Pixel watch and earbuds.

    A tablet has also been mentioned in the launch literature but it has not yet been authorised as required from the US Federal Communications Commission or other regulatory bodies.

    The smartphone has two models, the 7 and the 7 Pro, which will both be powered by the Tensor G2 processor. Both will come with Android 13.

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ How to Compress Large Audio Files on Android – Make Tech Easier

    Have you ever tried to send a large file through WhatsApp or other messaging app to only get the message that it’s too big? It’s something that’s happened to almost everyone and can be very annoying if it’s something you need to send immediately.

    If the audio (or video) file you want to send goes over WhatsApp’s 64MB limit, the following apps can help you. They are easy to use, so you have nothing to worry about if you don’t get along with technology very well.

Leftovers

• New Scientist ☛ Metal-enriched silkworm silk is one of the strongest materials ever

  The resulting silks, depending on how they had been dissolved, had properties that exceeded those of natural silks. The researchers found that the average force the silks could receive without stretching (up to 2 gigapascals) was 70 per cent higher than the average value from natural spider silks (0.9 to 1.4 GPa). Its Young’s modulus – a measure of how easily it can stretch – was higher than any natural silk, meaning it is stiff rather than stretchy.

• Hackaday ☛ Building A Digital Library Of Amateur Radio And Communications

  For years the Internet Archive has provided the online community with a breathtaking collection of resources, out of print books, magazines, recordings, software, and any other imaginable digital asset in easily retrievable form. Now with the help of a grant from the Amateur Radio Digital Communications Foundation they are seeking to create a collection that documents amateur radio from its earliest days to the present.

• Counter Punch ☛ A Poetic Invitation: 5 x 5

• Science

  • uni Stanford ☛ Stanford professor Carolyn Bertozzi wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

    Bertozzi, a chemistry professor and director of Sarafan ChEM-H on campus, shares the approximately $1 million prize with Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless Ph.D. ’68. Her research includes mapping cells through bioorthogonal reactions, discoveries crucial for health innovations, including cancer treatments alongside other applications.

• Education

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ How underpaid are Hungarian teachers really in comparison with other tertiary graduates?

    Rotating strikes, vigils, demonstrations – protests in various forms have been ongoing since early September over the state of Hungary’s massively underfunded education system and the degradingly low pay and high workloads of teachers. The Ministry of Interior, which is responsible for education, has been trying to counter these with sackings and issuing warnings, which seem to be adding fuel to the fire. In this article, we will show exactly what it means that teachers earn very little, and how this compares with other professions and with salaries in other developed countries.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Robot Blade Runner Turns In World Record Time

    While we wish colleges and universities competed more on academics, we can’t deny that more people are interested in their athletics programs. Oregon State, however, has done a little of both since their bipedal robot, Cassie, became the world’s fastest bipedal robot according to the Guinness Book of World Records. You can see a video of the 100 meter run below, but don’t blink. The robot turned in a time of around 25 seconds.

  • Hackaday ☛ Immersive Cursive: Growing Up Loopy

    Growing up, ours was a family of handwritten notes for every occasion. The majority were left on the kitchen counter next to the sink, or in a particular spot on the all-purpose table in the breakfast nook. Whether one was professing their familial love and devotion on the back of a Valpak coupon, or simply communicating an intent to be home before dinnertime, the words were generally immortalized in BiC on whatever paper was available, and timestamped for the reader’s information. You may have learned cursive in school, but I was born in it — molded by it. The ascenders and descenders betray you because they belong to me.

  • Hackaday ☛ Rubber Band Behemoth Winds Its Way Toward World Record

    Egged on by adoring fans who demanded more aircraft videos, [ProjectAir] has decided to break the world record for rubber band powered aircraft… despite having never built a rubber band powered aircraft. Why rubber band power?

  • Hackaday ☛ Seven Segments, But Not As We Know Them

    We’ve seen a lot of clever re-imagining of the classic 7-segment display, and proving there is still room for something new is [Jack]’s 7-segment “DigiTag” display.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Mass shootings are far rarer outside the United States.

    From 1966 to 2012, Americans accounted for 31 percent of the gunmen in mass shootings worldwide, according to a 2016 study by Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama. The study found that among countries with more than 10 million people, only Yemen had a higher rate of mass shootings per capita.

  • uni Michigan ☛ UMich to ban use of smokeless tobacco products, electronic nicotine delivery systems

    The ban comes in conjunction with The Great American Smokeout, an annual event that takes place on the third Thursday of November. Since 1997, the American Cancer Society has used the Smokeout to encourage people to quit smoking. The use of tobacco products will still be allowed in privately-owned vehicles on campus and on public sidewalks.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Judge dismisses Flint water crisis charges against former Michigan officials

    Seven former government officials faced felony charges tied to the Flint water crisis

    An earlier Michigan Supreme Court decision ordered the dismissal of the charges

    The dismissal was a result of prosecutors incorrectly using a one-person grand jury

  • BBC ☛ Biden to pardon federal marijuana convictions

    President Joe Biden is issuing an executive order pardoning all Americans who have been federally convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana.

    The move will only affect a relatively small number of cannabis convictions since most occur at the state level.

  • New York Times ☛ Biden Pardons Thousands Convicted of Marijuana Possession Under Federal Law

    The pardons will not apply to people convicted of selling or distributing marijuana. And officials said there are no people now serving time in federal prisons solely for marijuana possession. But the move will help remove obstacles for people trying to get a job, find housing, apply to college or get federal benefits.

    Mr. Biden urged governors to follow his lead for people convicted on state charges of simple possession, who vastly outnumber those charged under federal laws.

  • CNN ☛ Biden pardons all federal offenses of simple marijuana possession in first major steps toward decriminalization

    And the President will task the Department of Health and Human Services and Attorney General Merrick Garland to “expeditiously” review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law, the first step toward potentially easing a federal classification that currently places marijuana in the same category as heroin and LSD.

  • The Nation ☛ Exclusive: Texas Governor Greg Abbott Used Covid Aid to Pay for a Border Wall

    Texas’s Governor Greg Abbott is a magician—or at least a skilled practitioner of three-card monte. In spring 2021, he declared southern Texas “a disaster area” overrun by marauding migrants, thanks to what he labels President Joe Biden’s “open border policies.” To stem the flow, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star (OLS), marshaling the Texas National Guard and state troopers to beef up security at the border with Mexico. He also tapped the OLS budget for his recent headline-grabbing scheme to bus 12,000 migrants to Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago since last spring.

  • The Nation ☛ Hervé Guibert’s Last Laugh

    The 1990 publication of To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life—Hervé Guibert’s candid roman à clef about a fake AIDS vaccine—made the novelist, photographer, and AIDS victim both rich and famous. He gave interviews on national TV, and his toothsome blue-eyed face appeared in magazines and on affiches plastered across Paris. During the subsequent two years, Guibert made his proximity to death the subject of four more novels and a hospital diary. He also produced La Pudeur ou l’impudeur (Modesty or Immodesty), an hour-long home video in which he documents himself craning his arms into pajamas, shooting diarrhea, and play-acting a suicide attempt, as if bent on disarming and satisfying the tumescent sympathies of a liberal French middle class who had become perversely invested in watching him, their resident AIDS patient, perish in real time. In December 1991, a month before his video diary aired on the television network TF1, a botched suicide attempt and complications with the virus led to Guibert’s actual death at the age of 36.

  • TruthOut ☛ Absence of Universal Health Care Can Be Traced to State Repression of Socialists

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Why We Can’t Have Nice Things—Like Socialism—in the United States

    Donald Trump has had the urge to crush many things, including the last election. So I must admit I found it eerily amusing that, when the FBI entered his estate at Mar-a-Lago recently, they did so under a warrant authorized by the Espionage Act of 1917. History certainly has a strange way of returning in our world and also of crushing alternatives. Whatever Trump did, that act has a sorry track record in both its own time and ours when it has been used, including by his administration, to silence the leakers of government information. And because my latest book, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and America’s Forgotten Crisis, is about the crushing of alternatives a century ago in this country, in the midst of all this, I couldn’t help thinking about a part of our history that The Donald would undoubtedly have been the first to crush, if he had the chance.  

• Proprietary

  • The Hill ☛ Former Uber exec convicted in [breach] cover-up

    A former Uber executive has been convicted on charges that he obstructed a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation involving two [breaches] of the company that happened in 2014 and 2016.

    A jury found Joe Sullivan guilty of obstruction of proceedings of the FTC and misprision of felony, which is taking steps to conceal a felony from authorities, on Wednesday after a four-week trial.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Silicon Angle ☛ French open-source cybersecurity startup CrowdSec raises $13.7M

      Founded in 2019, CrowdSec offers an open-source security engine that analyzes the behavior of internet protocol addresses. The company’s platform focuses on real-time threat detection, security automation, data breach prevention, reputation and behavior analysis to respond to attacks and share signals across the community.

• Security

  • USCERT ☛ Top CVEs Actively Exploited by People’s Republic of China State-Sponsored Cyber Actors [Ed: CISA ☛ Microsoft Windows TCO (Microsoft tops the list; 4 out of 13 for “Remote Code Execution”)]

    CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA) have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) providing the top Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) used since 2020 by People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber actors. PRC state-sponsored cyber actors continue to exploit known vulnerabilities to actively target U.S. and allied networks, including software and hardware companies to illegally obtain intellectual property and develop access into sensitive networks.

  • Wladimir Palant ☛ Wladimir Palant: Scirge: When your employer mandates spyware [Ed: Report them to authorities, quit the job, or get an entirely separate machine to put that spyware on]

    I recently noticed Scirge advertising itself to corporations, promising to “solve” data leaks. Reason enough to take a look into how they do it. Turns out: by pushing a browser extension to all company employees which could be misused as spyware. Worse yet, it obfuscates data streams, making sure that employees cannot see what data is being collected. But of course we know that no employer would ever abuse functionality like that, right?

    [...]

    There is no point searching for Scirge in any of the extension stores, you won’t find it there. Each company is provided with their individual build of the Scirge extension, configured with the company’s individual Scirge backend. The extension is then supposed to be deployed “automatically using central management tools such as Active Directory Group Policy” (see documentation).

    This means that there are no independent user counts available, impossible to tell how widely this extension is deployed. But given any Scirge server, inspecting extension source code is still possible: documentation indicates that the Firefox extension is accessible under /extension/firefox/scirge.xpi and the Chrome one under /extension/firefox/scirge.crx.

    The stated goal of the browser extension is to look over your shoulder, recording where you log in and what credentials you use. The idea is recognizing “Shadow IT,” essential parts of the company infrastructure which the management isn’t aware of. And you would never use your work computer for private stuff anyway, right?

  • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ Blizzard tried to make it mandatory to have a phone for 2FA with Overwatch 2, and wasn’t allowing people with cheap prepaid plans to authenticate. 2FA is kind of dumb if you use text messaging. | BaronHK’s Rants

    Blizzard tried to make it mandatory to have a phone for Two Factor Authentication with Overwatch 2, and wasn’t allowing people with cheap prepaid plans to authenticate.

    This is all getting pretty nasty, and rather stupid. Pretty much the only point of requiring a phone for 2FA is to force everyone to get cell phones whether they need one or not.

    There’s an authenticator application for GNOME that’s FOSS and works pretty much the same way any other authenticator application does.

    But a lot of Web sites demand SMS text messaging, which isn’t even secure.

    Someone can get around it via SIM card cloning, which doesn’t happen with authenticators, which don’t need cell phones.

    It’s totally debatable how much actual security 2FA even adds.

  • IT Wire ☛ When ‘experts’ speak, it’s best to state their affiliations upfront

    Whenever there is a network attack in Australia — what some commentators call “cyber attacks” carried out by “hackers” — dozens of well-known and not-so-well-known commercial operatives literally fall over themselves in a bid to try and gain some advantage from the disaster.

    As someone who reports on incidents of this kind with alarming regularity, one is often at the receiving end of singularly ill-informed missives, all striving to get a few lines in, just as long as their names are attached to those meaningless words.

    However, there is nothing wrong with this particular form of narcissism, provided proper disclosure is made, so that the public, our ultimate masters, know what is driving those comments.

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire – Maurice Blackburn files OAIC complaint over Optus data breach

    Law firm Maurice Blackburn has made a formal complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner in connection with the data breach which the telco Singtel Optus experienced recently.

    The OAIC can order Optus to pay damages to customers affected by the leak which was disclosed on 22 September.

    The representative complainant is Macquarie University academic Sean Foley, one of the millions whose data was compromised, Maurice Blackburn said in a statement on Friday.

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Mailing list ARChives ☛ LibreSSL 3.6.0 released

      We have released LibreSSL 3.6.0, which will be arriving in the LibreSSL directory of your local OpenBSD mirror soon. This is a development release for the 3.6.x branch, and we appreciate additional testing and feedback before the final release coming soon with OpenBSD 7.2.

    • Undeadly ☛ LibreSSL 3.6.0 released

      Signalling another turn of the seasons, Brent Cook (bcook@) announced that a new release of LibreSSL is out. The announcement reads: [...]

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Teen Vogue ☛ The FBI Monitored Marilyn Monroe Over Suspected Communist Ties

      The root of the FBI’s interest in Monroe was her romantic involvement with Miller, which began as a secret affair but grew into a media spectacle. Miller was a politically involved individual, engaged with many of the Communist Party’s cultural and social front groups, a progressive American writer who staunchly opposed fascism. Suspicions were aroused that Monroe, too, might be a Communist, causing the FBI to escalate its tracking of her whereabouts and the monitoring of her political opinions. The US has always tried to brand itself as a country of freedom and individual autonomy, but the FBI was jailing Americans and censoring culture that didn’t fall in line with this branding. This is the story of how Marilyn Monroe was dragged into the world of anti-Communist hysteria.

    • Gannett ☛ Remove your personal info from the top 7 people search sites without charge

      Speaking of your home, your address is connected to your name all over the web – along with your age, cellphone or landline number, family members’ names, every address where you lived, and lots more. You should delete it, and I’ll show you how.

    • India Times ☛ Google pays $85 mn to settle location tracking data lawsuit in US

      Earlier this year, the attorneys general of three states and the District of Columbia had sued the tech giant, alleging that Google pushed Android users with “repeated nudging, misleading pressure tactics, and evasive and deceptive descriptions” to share more information either “inadvertently or out of frustration”.

      The lawsuit built on the 2020 complaint filed by the Arizona Attorney General over location data collection.

    • BBC ☛ Elton John and Prince Harry sue Daily Mail publisher over ‘privacy breach’

      Sir Elton John is among several public figures taking legal action against the publisher of the Daily Mail over what they call “gross breaches of privacy”.

      The Duke of Sussex, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and actresses Sadie Frost and Elizabeth Hurley have also filed cases against Associated Newspapers Ltd.

      The company’s alleged activity includes having listening devices secretly placed inside people’s cars and homes.

    • EFF ☛ A National Lab Is Promoting a “Digital Police Officer” Fantasy for Law Enforcement and Border Control

      The research team is based out of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a facility managed by the corporation Battelle on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy. They have commissioned concept art and published articles in magazines aimed at law enforcement leaders, EFF has learned through a review of materials, including records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

• Defence/Aggression

  • NBC ☛ ISIS infiltrated a refugee camp to recruit fighters. Inside the Biden admin’s plan to stop it.

    The Biden administration has enacted a new plan to reduce the population of a sprawling refugee camp near the Iraq-Syria border that has become a haven for the Islamic State terrorist group to recruit members, plot a comeback and carry out some of its most brutal tactics — including the torture and sexual abuse of women and girls — according to five senior administration officials.

  • NBC ☛ Man gets 4 years for plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Whitmer

    Kaleb Franks, 28, is the second person sentenced in the plan to abduct Whitmer, a Democrat, which the government has said was orchestrated by anti-government extremists.

    He pleaded guilty to kidnapping conspiracy in February and cooperated with prosecutors, testifying at a trial in August that resulted in the convictions of two men accused of being the ringleaders, Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr.

  • FAIR ☛ ACTION ALERT: NYT Celebrates Neo-Nazi Azov Unit

    Three years ago, describing an Australian white supremacist charged with massacring 49 people in New Zealand, the New York Times (3/15/19) wrote: “On his flak jacket was a symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization.”

  • Democracy Now ☛ Walking a Tightrope on Ukraine: How India Is Balancing Ties to Russia & United States

    India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a phone call on Tuesday that he will help peace efforts with Russia, just days after India abstained from a United Nations vote condemning the Russian annexation of four regions in Ukraine. We speak to the prominent Indian activist Kavita Krishnan about the different stances of India’s political parties toward the war in Ukraine and the interrelated struggles against authoritarianism in countries such as Iran and India. India’s foreign policy is currently like “walking a tightrope,” says Krishnan. “It would like to have a relationship with Russia. At the same time, it wants to build a bridge with America.”

  • Meduza ☛ Russian conscripts buy their own gear and essential medications. The government will not reimburse them. — Meduza

    Russians conscripted during mobilization are forced to buy their own military gear, since the army does not supply even the basics they will need when sent to the front. The Russian government website “We Explain,” set up to answer questions about current laws and regulations, has posted an article, which says that conscripts should not expect reimbursement for their expenses.

  • Meduza ☛ A group of armed Russian soldiers fled from Kherson to Ukraine — Meduza

    A group of Russian soldiers escaped from the military unit of the Cossack detachment Don, located in annexed Kherson, and are currently wanted in Russia. Photographs of wanted posters were published on Telegram channels and social media, including on the Telegram of Ukrainian parliament member Oleksiy Honcharenko. 

  • Meduza ☛ Zelensky calls on NATO to launch a preemptive strike to prevent Russia from using nuclear weapons — Meduza

    Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky announced that NATO should preemptively strike Russia, in order to “exclude the possibility of use of nuclear weapons by Russia.” He did not specify whether he had in mind a preventative nuclear strike or the use of conventional weapons.

  • Meduza ☛ Multiple sources deny a story about 13 armed men escaping from Kherson — Meduza

    The Rostov-on-Don publication 161.ru managed to contact people who were mentioned in a “wanted poster” about 13 armed soldiers who had escaped from Kherson to Crimea, which circulated widely on social media on October 6.

  • The Nation ☛ Not Even Nuclear War Will Stop the Fighting in Ukraine

    We live in extremely dangerous times. It feels like August 1914, and the world’s leading actors are playing a game in which not everyone understands the rules.

  • The Nation ☛ Do Sanctions Work?

    In October 1935, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini launched an invasion of Ethiopia, designed to satisfy long-standing Fascist ambitions for a neo-Roman empire of conquest in Africa. Having had ample warning of Italian designs on Africa’s last uncolonized state, officials in the British and French finance ministries had already drawn up elaborate plans to deploy what they called “the economic weapon” against a major European power launching an unprovoked war of aggression. Fearful of the consequences of direct military confrontation, they opted instead for a more clinical approach: cutting off Italy’s ability to purchase crucial imports of food and fuel by blocking its access to credit and refusing to purchase its exports. Under the auspices of the League of Nations, some 52 countries—including, crucially, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin—joined an international effort to poleax Italy’s rampaging war economy.

  • The Nation ☛ War or Peace Is the Most Neglected Issue on the November Ballot

    America has had elections where questions of war and peace were definitional. That was certainly true in 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson campaigned and won on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War.” It was very much the case in the 1968 and 1972 Democratic presidential primaries, when peace candidates Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern disrupted the status quo with campaigns that objected to the Vietnam War. And as recently as the 2006 midterm elections, Democrats channeled frustration with the ongoing Iraq War into major victories in the fight for control of Congress.

  • Meduza ☛ One from a ‘blood clot,’ another by suicide The Russian conscripts who died without going to war — Meduza

    Since the start of Russia’s current mobilization, new conscripts have complained about their living conditions prior to being dispatched to the front. Newly drafted soldiers are routinely sent to Ukraine without adequate training, essential gear, or even warm clothing. What’s even more alarming is the number of deaths that occur among these new conscripts even before they leave their home country. We have compiled stories from across Russia that have emerged to date.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian Federation Council Speaker calls for Ukraine to enter negotiations ‘today’ at G20 summit — Meduza

    At the G20 Parliamentary Speakers’ Summit summit in Indonesia on Thursday, Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko proposed to Ukraine’s delegation that the two countries begin peace negotiations “today.”

  • Meduza ☛ Pavel Durov criticizes WhatsApp as a ‘surveillance tool.’ Hackers can gain full access to the phone, he says. — Meduza

    Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram messenger and the social network VKontakte, described a new vulnerability discovered last week in WhatsApp. On his Telegram channel, Durov wrote that hackers would only need to send a malicious video or make a video call to gain full access to the targeted phone.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Together in electric dreams’ Journalist Nikolay Ovchinnikov explains how Russian music is coping with the war — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Patriarch Kirill calls for two days of ‘zealous’ birthday prayers for Putin — Meduza

    The Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Kirill blessed the Orthodox bishops, clergy, monastics, and all the faithful to offer their “zealous home prayers” for the health of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on October 7, his seventieth birthday.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Judge’s Ruling Puts New York Gun Control Efforts on Path Back to Supreme Court

    Judge Glenn T. Suddaby of the state’s Northern District ruled that large portions of the law which went into effect last month in New York, making “sensitive” places including New York City’s crowded Times Square, parks, and theaters “gun-free zones,” were unconstitutional.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza charged with treason — Meduza

    Russian authorities have opened a new criminal case against jailed opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, RT reported on Thursday, citing an unnamed source. The politician reportedly stands accused of treason.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian lawmakers ask Attorney General to address military supply shortage — Meduza

    Russian State Duma Defense Committee head Andrey Kartapolov and Security Committee head Vasily Piskarev have submitted a letter to Attorney General Igor Krasnov asking him to find a solution to the supply problems plaguing the country’s military, RIA Novosti reported on Thursday.

• Environment

  • The Nation ☛ Princeton Activists Just Won a Historic Victory for Climate Research

    In addition to fully divesting the endowment of fossil fuels, Princeton will also reject gifts and grants from 90 companies involved in the coal and tar sands sectors of the fossil fuel industry, including current research funders ExxonMobil, Syncrude, and Total E&P. This is a departure from typical divestment decisions. Dissociation has only ever been used twice before at Princeton: to combat apartheid in South Africa in 1987 and in protest of the Darfur genocide in Sudan in 2006.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Experts Say Climate Crisis Made Hurricane Ian $10 Billion More Destructive

    Although the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season is far from over, it is already leaving a lethal legacy.

  • Energy

    • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Flying Blind’: Analysis Shows World’s Biggest Polluters Hide Climate-Related Financial Risks

      Carbon Tracker, which assesses how fossil fuel companies are financially adapting to the climate emergency, revealed in Still Flying Blind: The Absence of Climate Risk in Financial Reporting that 98% of 134 companies did not show that they’d considered the impact of climate matters when compiling yearly financial statements.

    • Bridge Michigan ☛ Michigan lands two more EV battery plants, bringing up to 4,000 jobs

      The new plants, valued at $4 billion, will be located near Big Rapids and in western Wayne County. Previously announced projects by General Motors and LG Energy Solutions would be near Lansing and Holland. Collectively, the four projects could add about 7,300 new advanced-manufacturing jobs and an estimated EV battery investment of $8.5 billion to the state.

    • DeSmog ☛ Prime Minister Liz Truss Accepted £5,000 From Climate Denial Funder

      Lord Nigel Vinson made the donation towards transport costs for Truss’s campaign, according to the latest register of MPs’ financial interests out this week, which covers donations in the month up until October 3.

    • Common Dreams ☛ After Dumping $15 Billion Into Fossil Fuels, World Bank Urged to Stop ‘Investing in Climate Disaster’

      “The Earth is on fire and the World Bank is one of the biggest arsonists in disguise.”

    • DeSmog ☛ World Bank Continues Financing Fossil Fuels Despite Climate Crisis

      The report analyzed the financial flows from the World Bank in recent years, and identified the top 10 fossil fuel projects moving forward with the help of the development bank. In the list’s number-one spot is the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), a long-distance gas pipeline that runs from Azerbaijan through Turkey, moving gas from the Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea throughout southern Europe.

    • TruthOut ☛ Sanders Calls for End to Military Aid to Saudi Arabia Amid OPEC Production Slash

    • Common Dreams ☛ After OPEC Move, Sanders Says US Must ‘Eliminate Military Assistance to Saudi Arabia’

      In a social media post, Sanders (I-Vt.) denounced the Saudi-led OPEC cartel over its “blatant attempt to increase gas prices at the pump,” which he said “cannot stand.”

    • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | EVs and the Green Grid to Power Them Are the Best Response to OPEC

      In a major blow to President Joe Biden, on Wednesday, OPEC+ took steps toward cutting the oil production of the members by 2 million barrels a day. Jackie Northam at NPR reports the views of analysts who believe that Saudi Arabia and Russia drove the decision in order to get prices back up over $100 a barrel. Oil prices have fallen consistently since last spring when the price touched $120 a barrel on the Brent Crude Exchange, to only $93 a barrel today. It had been as low as $88 a barrel in recent days, but news of the OPEC decision sent prices higher.

    • Meduza ☛ Riyadh sends a signal Will OPEC’s production cuts save the Russian economy? — Meduza

      On October 5, the 24 countries that make up OPEC+ reached a deal to cut oil production by two million barrels a day in a bid to bring prices back up amid a weak global economy. The news caused the price of Brent crude oil to increase to more than $93 a barrel. To find out whether this portends the failure of the West’s anti-war sanctions, Meduza spoke to Institute for Energy and Finance president Marcel Salikhov.

    • Common Dreams ☛ Fury Over Privatized Grid Grows as Tens of Thousands Still Without Power in Puerto Rico

      “We are going to be here, every day, until the town of Ponce has electricity.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Counter Punch ☛ Plundering Wilderness for ‘Financial Certainty’

  • Overpopulation

    • The Hill ☛ California offers to cut back Lake Mead water use amid drought

      California is, for the first time in a series of negotiations, offering to cut back its use of water from Lake Mead next year.

      California on Wednesday offered to conserve 400,000 acre-feet, or 130 billion gallons, of water from Lake Mead annually from 2023 through 2026.

• Finance

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Puerto Rico Has Become a Microcosm for the Worst Kind of Capitalist Ideas’

    Janine Jackson interviewed Center for Popular Democracy’s Julio López Varona about Puerto Rico colonialism for the  September 30, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Meduza ☛ Starting ‘not tomorrow, but today,’ Lukashenko orders price freeze in Belarus — Meduza

    The President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko ordered a price freeze across all business sectors, beginning on October 6. Belta reports Lukashenko’s announcement at today’s meeting with the economic segment of his government:

  • Scheerpost ☛ Our Democracy Was Stolen A Long Time Ago w/ Chris Hedges and Jimmy Dore

    “American democracy has been steadily eroding since the Reagan administration, Hedges says, and if you think Donald Trump’s arrival on the political scene is what killed democracy you have not been paying attention.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ IMF Urged to Unlock $650 Billion for Poor Nations Facing Crises ‘Unprecedented in Human History’

    In a letter sent ahead of the IMF’s annual gathering in Washington, D.C. next week, the organizations specifically urged the U.N. agency’s leadership to support a “major new general issuance of at least $650 billion worth of debt-free Special Drawing Rights,” an international reserve asset that can be exchanged for dollars and other currencies.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | For Our Kids and Our Future, We Must Fight to Extend the Childhood Tax Credit

    I like to think I’m an American success story.

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump Erased Millions of Possible PPP Fraud Flags in Last Days in Office

  • Common Dreams ☛ US Jobless Claims Jump as Fed Shoves Economy to ‘Precipice of Global Recession’

    For the week ending October 1, total initial jobless claims were 219,000, more than analysts expected and up from 190,000 the previous week. The weekly increase in unemployment applications was the largest since June, according to the new federal numbers, though the job market remains strong overall for the time being.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Democrats Push to Lift Ban on Student Loan Bankruptcy Relief

    “This legislation updates the federal bankruptcy code to ensure student loan debt is treated like almost every other form of consumer debt.”

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • ABC ☛ US kills 3 Islamic State leaders in 2 Syria operations

    U.S. officials say U.S. forces killed three senior Islamic State leaders in two separate military operations in Syria Thursday, including a rare ground raid in a portion of the northeast that is controlled by the Syrian regime

  • Pro Publica ☛ How the Stolen Election Myth Helped Shaped Wisconsin Voting

    A group of phony electors tried to claim the state’s electoral votes for Donald Trump. Wisconsin’s top lawmaker launched a yearlong inquiry led by a lawyer spewing election fraud theories. And its courts heard numerous suits challenging the integrity of the 2020 election and the people administering it.

  • The Nation ☛ British Prime Minister Liz Truss Is No Margaret Thatcher

    British Conservative Party conferences normally give their leaders unadulterated adulation, but these are far from normal times in the land of hope and glory. The delegates did their best to put on a show of loyalty in Birmingham when Prime Minister Liz Truss made her maiden speech, but it can’t have been easy with the party hitting record lows in the polls after the turmoil of the past two weeks. She was wise to leave the hall hurriedly before the applause subsided.1

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Hello, Fascism. And How Long Will You Be Staying?

    The telegenic star of Europe’s far right, Giorgia Meloni, released a video last August that was designed to dispel all the fears that Europeans were voicing about the potential “return of fascism” to Italy. Meloni’s short speech was a triumph of misdirection.

  • TruthOut ☛ Nearly 300 Republican Midterm Candidates Embrace Trump’s Big Lie, Analysis Finds

  • TruthOut ☛ New Poll Shows Lauren Boebert and Dem Challenger Are Statistically Tied

  • Common Dreams ☛ Small-Donor Giving to Fetterman Drives Record $22 Million Fundraising Haul

    Fetterman’s fundraising “shattered” the campaign’s second quarter total, which stood at $11 million—another record-breaking sum at the time.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Fetterman Calls Biden Marijuana Pardons and Reforms a ‘BFD’

    “I don’t want to hear any bullshit from Dr. Oz or any Republican conflating decriminalizing marijuana with seriously harmful crime.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Next Up? Legalize It’: Advocates Cheer Biden Move to Pardon Marijuana Convictions

    U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday afternoon issued a “full, complete, and unconditional pardon” to people convicted of simple federal marijuana possession.

  • Scheerpost ☛ ‘Next Up? Legalize It’: Advocates Cheer Biden Move to Pardon Marijuana Convictions

    This must be the first of many steps to ending our decades long failed policies on marijuana.

  • TruthOut ☛ Court Error Exposes Judge Aileen Cannon’s “Obvious” Trump Sympathy

  • The Nation ☛ Beyond First Aid

  • TruthOut ☛ 11th Circuit Court Grants Expedited Review on Special Master in Trump Docs Case

  • The Dissenter ☛ Unauthorized Disclosure: Zoe Alexandra

  • Scheerpost ☛ Meet the Censored: Katie Halper

    The “Useful Idiots” co-host is dismissed from The Hill, which is a little too frank about the reason.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Now Is the Moment for Global Solidarity with China’s Ethnic Minorities

    President Xi Jinping is on the verge of securing an unprecedented third term as the leader of the world’s most populous country, the People’s Republic of China. On October 16th, the Communist Party congress will declare Jinping as China’s ruler for an additional five years. Such congresses typically bring in a new batch of rulers but Xi, who is also head of state and leader of the military, amended the party constitution in 2018 to remove all term limits on the presidency, effectively making him China’s self-appointed forever-leader.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | How Can We Transcend the “Morality Police”?

    I’ve been haunted by a phrase for almost a month now: “morality police.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ Immigrant Rights Advocates Tell Congress to ‘Step Up’ After Court Declares DACA Illegal

    “DACA recipients can’t continue living court ruling to court ruling.”

  • Scheerpost ☛ The Supreme Court May Well Legalize Election Theft This Term

    The court’s rulings in two cases could drive a dagger through the heart of the democratic process.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Taiwan News ☛ Letter to Editor: Social media movements against China, Russia’s disinformation campaigns

      Most tend to think of information warfare from the perspective of government versus government. However, the constantly evolving dynamic of the internet ecosystem means that state actors usually fail to catch up. This is when online communities like NAFO come into play.

    • Techdirt ☛ Conspiracy Channel OAN Tries To Survive Using Over The Air Antennas

      When last we checked in with One America News (OAN), it was trying (with the help of numerous Republican AGs) to pretend that DirecTV’s decision to boot the barely watched conspiracy network from its cable lineup was part of a vast, diabolical cabal to censor conservatives (it wasn’t). It then decided to attack Verizon, right before that cable provider kicked it to the curb as well.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • India Times ☛ The censor cannot hold: The pressure of controlling China’s internet

    Some imagery was always off limits: pictures of tanks, candles or yellow umbrellas — a symbol of protest in Hong Kong — along with any criticism of President Xi Jinping and other Communist Party leaders, according to Zeng.

    He said guidance was handed down to ByteDance from the Cyberspace Administration of China, but supplemented by the company itself, ever wary of overstepping purposefully vague rules.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Sues CNN Yet Again And It’s As Dumb, If Not Dumber, Than His Previous Failed Lawsuits Against CNN

    I’m only a human being, and not a machine, so it’s beyond my ability to keep track of all the times that Donald Trump has threatened to sue CNN for defamation, or actually carried through, on his threat. I will just note that it seems to happen a lot. None of these lawsuits have actually been successful in terms of winning the litigation. As always, they get tossed out. They appear to be fairly obvious SLAPP suits, designed to (1) cause pain to CNN by being costly and time consuming to defend and (2) convince his extremely gullible base of supporters that he’s “fighting” the evil media.

  • Meduza ☛ A website launched by the staff of Ekho Moskvy has been blocked in Russia — Meduza

    Russia’s federal censor, Roskomnadzor, has restricted access to the site Ekho, a project of former employees of the radio station Ekho Moskvy, according to the Ekho Telegram channel.

  • EFF ☛ Court’s Decision Upholding Disastrous Texas Social Media Law Puts The State, Rather Than Internet Users, in Control of Everyone’s Speech Online

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Craig Murray ☛ Activist Saturday

    On Saturday we try to put Hands Around Parliament in opposition to the extradition of Julian Assange. Human chains are being formed in support internationally in many different countries.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Mark Fiore: Extradition Threatens Julian Assange (and Press Freedom)

    With Julian Assange facing extradition to the United States, we’ll likely be hearing more about his case and see more protests around the world very soon. His legal battle against extradition from the UK to the United States has been winding its way through the British courts for months. […]

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire – Crowds to gather on Saturday to press for Assange freedom

    Supporters of jailed WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange will be staging protests on Saturday to call for his release.

    A human chain will start on Princes Bridge, Southbank, in Melbourne at 11am on Saturday and those who gather will be addressed by Assange’s brother and father, Gabriel Shipton and John Shipton, respectively at 12.30pm. The protesters will then march to Government House.

    In London, there will be a human chain around Parliament starting at 1pm UK time; a total of 3600 people have registered to take part.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RTL ☛ Iran protests: What happened on Zahedan’s ‘Bloody Friday’?

    Iranian security forces have massacred over 80 people in the southeastern city of Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchestan province, in a crackdown on protests that erupted as Iran is convulsed by nationwide demonstrations, rights activists charge.

    President Ebrahim Raisi has ordered an investigation into the unrest that started on September 30 after Friday prayers, which officials have characterised as attacks by “extremists” on police stations.

    Activists however say the horrifying images of bloodied corpses with bullet wounds are emblematic of Tehran’s repressive polices towards a poor ethnic minority region.

  • The Atlantic ☛ A Whole Generation Revolts Against the Iranian Regime

    The protesters were not chanting in support of the revolution that turned Iran into a theocracy in 1979, but against an Islamic Republic that oppresses its people at home and wields power well beyond its borders. They were singling out a foreign government that upholds dysfunctional political systems in other countries so that it can manipulate them to its advantage and deploys proxy militias that mete out violence from Baghdad to Beirut against those who rise in opposition to Tehran’s dark worldview. The protests in Lebanon, which were only partially focused on Iran, were taking place just as Iraqis were marching through the streets across their country, openly protesting Iran’s stranglehold over their politics, their economy, and their clerical establishment. Meanwhile, Iranians, angered by an increase in fuel prices, were chanting “Death to the dictator” and setting dozens of government sites on fire.

  • Democracy Now ☛ “Complete Dissatisfaction with the Current Order”: Why Mahsa Amini Protests in Iran Are Not Slowing Down

    Protesters in Iran are continuing to demand justice for Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in the hands of the so-called morality police, as well as envisioning a political future beyond the Islamic Republic. The Norway-based group Iran Human Rights estimates at least 154 people have been killed since the protests began. “We saw women, really, what it seemed like for the first time, putting their bodies in direct confrontation with the police,” says Nilo Tabrizy, writer and video journalist at The New York Times. “Today’s movement is not calling for reform. Today’s movement is calling for a new vision of politics … with women at the helm of it,” says Narges Bajoghli, professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University.

  • TruthOut ☛ In Iran, Feminists Rise Up to Imagine “What Comes After the Islamic Republic”

  • Engadget ☛ ‘The Onion’ filed a real brief with the Supreme Court supporting man jailed for making fun of cops

    When was the last time you’ve read an amicus brief? If you’re not involved in the legal profession, chances are you may have never actually spent precious time reading one. This amicus brief (PDF) could change that. It was submitted by The Onion, which describes itself in the brief as “the world’s leading news publication” with “4.3 trillion” readers that maintains “a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires.” In addition to running a highly successful news publication, The Onion said it “owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.” Oh, and its motto is “Tu stultus es.” That’s “you are dumb” in Latin.

  • Techdirt ☛ California Governor Signs Bill Forbidding The Use Of Rap Lyrics As Criminal Evidence

    Rap music has long conveyed the narrative of the streets. As such, its subject matter often details violence, police oppression, and criminal activities. And the expression itself often provides the only legitimate potential source of income for people living in impoverished, high-crime areas.

  • Shadowproof ☛ In California, Prisoners Organize Program To Confront Patriarchy And Toxic Masculinity

    “It is true that masses of men have not even begun to look at the ways that patriarchy keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving,” hooks writes in the 2004 edition of the book. “To know love, men must be able to let go of the will to dominate. They must be able to choose life over death. They must be willing to change.”

  • TruthOut ☛ Poll Conducted Before Walker Abortion Report Shows Warnock Leading by 12 Points

  • Common Dreams ☛ At Least 66 Clinics in 15 States Have Ended Abortion Care Post-Dobbs

    “An already precarious abortion access landscape is likely to continue to deteriorate.”

  • Uganda named worst digital rights violator

    At last week’s Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa 2022, in Lusaka, Zambia, Uganda drew unwelcome criticism. Speaker after speaker described the east African country as the worst global example of a digital rights violator.

    The country’s recently passed ‘regressive’ Computer Misuse (Amendment) Bill, 2022 with a clause that criminalizes ‘misuse of social media, the passed and repealed social media tax, and the pre and post-election internet shutdowns shored up Uganda’s reputation as the worst example of an abusive regime of its citizens’ rights online.

    It’s coming close to two years since the government shutdown Facebook ahead of the January 14, 2021 elections on suspicion of promoting then opposition candidate Robert Kyagulanyi of the National Unity Platform and in retaliation against the platform’s shutdown of over 220 accounts conspicuously created by the ministry of ICT to shore up President Yoweri Museveni and his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s popularity.

    Access to the entire internet was blocked for nearly a week while access to other social media platforms was restored after a month. From Ghana MP Samuel Nartey George; Abigail Mpabwa Bridgman of Meta (Facebook) Oversight Board; Jillian York, the director for International Freedom of Expression; Victor Ndede from Amnesty International Kenya; Cecilia Maundu of International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT); Felicia Anthonio of Access Now and Moses Gowi from Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), all condemned the continued blockade, saying it infringes on the citizens’ rights.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Telecom Experts Tell EU Leaders Their Plan To Tax ‘Big Tech’ On Behalf of ‘Big Telecom’ Is A Dumb Idea

    Last year we noted how FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had launched a bad faith effort suggesting that “big tech” gets a “free ride” on the internet, and should be forced to fund broadband expansion. This argument, that tech giants like Google and Netflix somehow get a free ride (they don’t) and should “pay their fair share” to fund broadband expansion is a 20 year old AT&T lobbyist talking point.

• Monopolies

  • RTL ☛ Apple wins 728-mn-euro cut to France antitrust fine

    France’s competition authority levied the fine — its biggest ever — after concluding that the firm squeezed independent sellers of Apple products as it tried to push buyers towards its own stores and preferred retailers.

    But the Paris appeal court revised the decision and knocked 728 million from the fine, meaning Apple still faces having to pay 370 million euros.

  • TruthOut ☛ Apple Leads Smartphone Industry Into Anti-Consumer, Environmental Hell

  • Trademarks

    • Techdirt ☛ Authentic Brands Group Behind Another Silly Parent, Child Trademark Dispute

      We’ve talked about Authentic Brands Group here a couple of times and never for good behavior. The company that manages the rights for several living and deceased celebrities is also a notorious trademark troll and enforcer. Most recently we discussed a bizarre trademark opposition brought against Shaqir O’Neal, Shaq’s son, who had the trademark application for Shaqir’s name opposed by ABG… on behalf of his father Shaq.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Pornhub Sees DMCA Notices Vanish After Enabling Uploader Verification

      Pornhub has discovered the ‘holy grail’ to combat piracy on user-generated content sites. This remarkable achievement is exemplified by a historic 98% drop in DMCA removals. All that it took was the mandatory verification of uploaders’ identities. An impressive result that won’t go unnoticed by some of the largest media companies in the world.

    • Techdirt ☛ There Are All Sorts Of Problems With Ruling That YouTube Ripping Tool May Violate Copyright Law

      There are a number of different tools out there that let you download YouTube videos. These tools are incredibly useful for a number of reasons and should be seen as obviously legal in the same manner that home video recording devices were declared legal by the Supreme Court, because they have substantial non-infringing uses. But, of course, we’re in the digital age, and everything that should be obviously settled law is up for grabs again, because “Internet.”

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • Low, Grinding Buzz

    A perpetual rumble is the grey backdrop of the street below our apartment. It is the sound of constant motoring. Even if no car or motorcycle or scooter is passing, it exists. The impression the flow of machines across my consciousness has made over the seeming centuries painted the backdrop. Now it is a constant, even if in “reality” no machine exists to create the low, grinding buzz. It’s so persistent that one’d think I’d carry it with me to other places. In a manner, I do, but only as a phantom. The lack of the grey colour coating every molecule of my environment is a disturbance. I’ve grown so accustomed to it that it is, itself, silence and actual silence is a jittery, randomly filtered white noise. When I walk paths in the mountains near Fresneda, far from my home, the rustle of leaves and the scurry of hidden creatures is not sufficient to cover the dissonant growl that is the *lack* of that grey rumble.

• Technical

  • A Technological Analogy

    It is a more recent technology and was, at first, just for fun. There’s no direct competition with the older, heavier solution. It is lighter, easier to learn and to use even if it might be hard to break some habits and to get moving differently.

    You can understand fully how it works with minimal effort. All the theory fits in one head! You can usually maintain it yourself and fix most breakage. If you can’t, your neighbour or your friend will probably help you.

    While using it, you can interact with other humans with a smile. You are not forced to be angry. You will not find yourself cursing behind a huge piece of glass while polluting your environment.

  • Get thee behind me, Belial

    I walk into the Computer Room at Chez Boca to find a box sitting on my chair. It’s a sealed and empty box that was shipped to me via https://www.fedex.com/ [1]. It can only mean one thing—it’s the box to ship Belial, the annoying Mac Laptop [2] back to The Enterprise.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Gemini is not decentralized

      Many people say that Gemini is decentralized.

      But it’s not like that!

      Yes, Gemini is handsome and graceful.

      But after all, as in https, gemini is organized on the same technological principles.

      And here you can also be banned for your thoughts and beliefs, and sometimes just because you are a citizen of some country.

      I had such a case when my capsule was banned. Other than that, I’m not the only one.

    • If Gemini is a bicycle, the web is a bus

      Maybe there could be a more integrated and user-friendly app? I vaguely remember the “blogging apps” from the early 00s. Maybe it could do both editing and transfer?

    • A seven-line summary of Gemini’s markup format

      All line breaks count for real, which is great for poetry but means that when you write long paragraphs, you need to put all of the paragraph on one line.

      That’s all. There is no way to mark text as italic or bold.