GNU/Linux

• Desktop/Laptop

  • Is Knowing Linux Profitable for a Graduate? – kifarunix.com

  • One of Oldest Linux Users Group in LA Area to Discuss Open Source JPL Projects Thursday Night

    Given its flexibility and ease of modification, institutions like Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory use Linux widely. One of its most recent applications is NASA’s Ingenuity drone on Mars, which was powered by Linux.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Video ☛ Linuxfx 11.2.22.04.2 Quick overview #linux #Linuxfx – Invidious

    A Quick Overview of Linuxfx 11.2.22.04.2. #linux #Linuxfx #KDE

  • Video ☛ How to install Amarok Linux OS 22.09 – Invidious

    In this video, I am going to show how to install Amarok Linux OS 22.09

  • Video ☛ Taking GNOME 43 for a Spin – Full Review – Invidious

    GNOME 43 features many smaller and incremental improvements, which all combine together to form a very solid release. In this video, you’ll see the latest GNOME desktop in action – complete with a look at what’s new, as well as some thoughts.

  • Linux Action News 262

    Plasma 5.26′s standout features, Canonical flips the script on Red Hat, and why Android is leaking traffic outside VPNs.

  • The BSD Now Podcast ☛ BSD Now 476: Warren Toomey interview

    In this special episode, we interview Warren Toomey from the Unix Historical Society. We chat about his involvement in preserving old Unix systems and why that is important.

  • Video ☛ The Best Browser Synchronization – Invidious

    In this video I compare browser synchronization between Firefox, Google Chrome, and Brave browser.

  • The TLLTS Podcast ☛ The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 975

    Joe reads ready player two.

  • Video ☛ When you want .debs on Windows… – Invidious

  • Video ☛ Top 5 GNOME Extensions for a Traditional Workflow – Invidious

    Although I’ve never been a desktop environment user, I do often get to try them out when I’m testing out different Linux distros. And I’ve noticed that recently, GNOME has become a very good desktop environment, even without extensions. But I do prefer a more traditional workflow, so I would install these extensions if I used GNOME full-time.

• Kernel Space

  • Sec Lists ☛ Various Linux Kernel WLAN security issues (RCE/DOS) found

  • LWN ☛ [oss-security] Various Linux Kernel WLAN security issues (RCE/DOS) found

    Security Researcher Soenke Huster from Tu Darmstadt (
    shuster@seemoo.tu-darmstadt.de ) emailed SUSE with a buffer overwrite in
    the Linux Kernel mac80211 framework triggered by WLAN frames.
    
    We delegated the issue to the kernel security folks, and Soenke and
    Johannes Berg from Intel evaluated and worked on this issue.
    
    During their research they found multiple more problems in the WLAN
    stack, exploitable over the air.
    

  • LWN ☛ Some remotely exploitable kernel WiFi vulnerabilities [LWN.net]

    It would appear that there is a set of memory-related vulnerabilities in the kernel’s WiFi stack that can be exploited over the air via malicious packets; five CVE numbers have been assigned to the set. Fixes are headed toward the mainline and should show up in stable updates before too long; anybody who uses WiFi on untrusted networks should probably keep an eye out for the relevant updates.

• Benchmarks

  • Neowin ☛ Windows 11 22H2 can’t keep up with Linux 6.0 and Ubuntu 22.10 on AMD Ryzen 7950X – Neowin

    The last month or so has been pretty eventful when it comes to product launches. Among them, some of the biggest highlights have been the release of the Windows 11 version 2022 (22H2) feature update and AMD’s Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 CPUs. As such, Phoronix decided to take the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X for a ride on the new Windows 11 22H2 update and compare it against other Linux-based distros.

• Applications

  • Make Use Of ☛ How to Keep Your Linux System Up to Date With Topgrade

    Upgrading packages on your Linux machine can be cumbersome. Here’s how to use Topgrade to update almost everything on your Linux desktop at once.

    Updating a Linux machine is a painstakingly tedious task. One that involves running a bunch of commands to get everything from system elements to third-party packages and tools running on the latest version.

    But thankfully, similar to most things on Linux, there’s a tool to facilitate this process too. It’s called Topgrade, and it lets you update your entire system using a single command.

    Follow along as we check out Topgrade in detail and show you how you can use it to keep your Linux system up to date.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Configuring Centralized Kubectl Access to Clusters With Paralus – Container Journal

    Kubectl is one of the most popular tools used to work with Kubernetes. The command line tool allows you to deploy applications, inspect and manage resources. It basically authenticates with the control plane for your cluster and makes API calls to the Kubernetes API. In short, if you are working with Kubernetes you will use kubectl the most.

  • Kali Linux ☛ Community Showcase: Raspberry Pi Zero W P4wnP1 A.L.O.A. | Kali Linux Blog

    The Kali community has been hard at work (as always!), and we want to showcase what we think is a very cool project of Kali Linux on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, the “P4wnP1 A.L.O.A. (A Little Offensive Application)”.

    It takes the standard Kali Linux image and adds custom software and some extra firmware designed for the Raspberry Pi Zero W to turn it into a Swiss Army knife of attacks and exfiltration.

    This blog post will be a brief overview of how to get started using the web interface, setting up a trigger as well as installing additional packages found in Kali Linux. There is a lot more to P4wnP1 than this blog post goes over, which is why we have included additional reading material from the community which cover additional attack scenarios as well as more payloads that people have written if you want to go deeper!

    If you have a Raspberry Pi Zero W, we highly recommend giving this image a try. We see this as a great tool in any tester’s toolkit!

  • H2S Media ☛ How to set Terminator as default terminal in Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

    Get the simple steps to install and set the Terminator terminal as the default one on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish or 20.04 Focal fossa to run the commands.

    If you are looking for a great Terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop environment, the Terminator Terminal emulator is one of the best for you. Among other features of the Terminator emulator, it solves the problem associated with opening multiple tabs in a single Terminal window. You can seamlessly arrange the Terminal tabs with Terminator.

    Terminator basically comes with a lot of customization options, which can help you arrange the Terminals in a grid-shaped arrangement, besides support for multiple tabs. With the number of key bindings, you can carry out the most common activities, and you can easily drag and drop tabs for the purpose of ordering them and enjoy a streamlined workflow. Terminator has support typing the same text in multiple Terminal instances at the same time, which can also be useful in certain situations. Learn how to install Terminator on Ubuntu 22.04 Linux.

  • OSNote ☛ How to Install UrBackup on Ubuntu 22.04 – OSNote

    Keeping backup regularly on the live server is a very challenging task for a system administrator. It helps the user or an administrator to recover the data in case of system failure and even data loss. For that purpose, various free backup tools are available to maintain the backup of your system regularly. UrBackup is one of the most commonly used client/server backup tools that support various file formats images as well as system file backups. Users can install this tool on both Windows and Linux operating systems. The adaptable feature of the UrBackup tool is that it does not interrupt the current working of a system while the target system is running and creates a backup in a parallel way.

    We will learn in this guide how to install the UrBackup server on an Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 system.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install OpenSCAP on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenSCAP on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, OpenSCAP is the best tool for performing security audits and provides a great way to check systems vulnerability. It also integrates with other specifications like CPE, CCE, and OVAL to produce a SCAP-expressed checklist that can be processed by SCAP-validated products.

    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 OpenSCAP security audits on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Monica Personal CRM on Debian 11

    Monica CRM is a free and open-source CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) written in PHP.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Dozzle Real-Time Log Viewer for Docker Containers on Ubuntu 22.04

    Dozzle is a simple, lightweight, and real-time log viewer application. It allows you to monitor docker container logs via a web-based interface. In this post, we will show you how to install Dozzle log viewer on Ubuntu 22.04.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install UVdesk Helpdesk System on Ubuntu 22.04

    UVdesk is an open-source Saas-based helpdesk system for companies to interact with their customers and offer round-the-clock support. Its features include ticket management, knowledgebase support, canned replies, and automatic ticket generation based on emails.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Shopware with Nginx and Free Let’s Encrypt SSL on Ubuntu 22.04

    Shopware community edition is a free and open-source shopping cart platform used that allows you to start your own online shop on the web. It is written in Symfony and Vue.js and based on a modern technology stack. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Shopware CE with Nginx and Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 22.04.

  • Vitux ☛ How to password protect files using Vim editor in Ubuntu – VITUX

    Vim is one of the most powerful and popular open-source command-line text editors.

  • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Find and Batch Rename Multiple Files in Linux

    This article guide demonstrates the use of several Linux commands to successfully query the existence of a file or several files before renaming them.

    Linux offers multiple terminal command solutions for renaming files regardless of the different paths or locations associated with the targeted files. Renaming a single file is easy but what happens when you have multiple files that should be instantaneously renamed?

    This article guide provides an answer to this question.

  • Its FOSS ☛ Install Gedit on Ubuntu 22.10 and Make it Default Text Editor – It’s FOSS

    GNOME has a brand new text editor to replace the good old Gedit editor.

    While it was already available with GNOME 42, Ubuntu 22.04 relied on Gedit.

    This is changing in Ubuntu 22.10. GNOME Text Editor is the default here and Gedit is not even installed.

  • H2S Media ☛ How to set Alacritty as Default Terminal in Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

    Learn the steps to set Alacritty emulator as the default Terminal on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy or 20.04 Focal fossa to run commands.

    Alacritty terminal is known for its fast speed. It’s written in Rust and uses OpenGL for rendering to be the fastest terminal emulator available. It is the simplest terminal emulator for Linux because the developers want to increase its performance of it. That means you won’t find things like tabs, splits, or GUI config editor. Therefore, this terminal is for those who are Linux using some old system or have limited resources or looking for a performance-centric Terminal.

    It is not for those who want some fancy Terminal with dozens of features such as Tabby and Terminator instead a simple, minimal one that can use the GPU to enhance the performance. Well, it is a relatively new Terminal as compared to other popular names such as Gnome terminal or XFCE terminal.

    Here in this tutorial article, where we know how to set Alacritty as the default terminal application on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 Linux…

  • AddictiveTips ☛ How to use alternate browsers on your Chromebook

    The best thing Google ever did for Chrome OS is to allow users to install Linux apps via the Chrome OS Linux container system. Before the container system, installing alternative web browsers on a Chromebook was impossible.

    However, before installing Firefox, Opera, Edge, Brave, or any other web browser, Linux support on Chrome OS needs to be enabled. Follow the steps below to enable Linux on your Chromebook.

  • OSTechNix ☛ How To Monitor User Activity In Linux – OSTechNix

    As a Linux administrator, you need to keep track of all users’ activities. When something goes wrong in the server, you can analyze and investigate the users’ activities, and try to find the root cause of the problem. There are many ways to monitor users in Linux. In this guide, we are going to talk about GNU accounting utilities that can be used to monitor the user activity in Linux.

  • Red Hat ☛ How to deploy JBoss EAP applications with OpenShift Pipelines

    In my previous article, How to migrate your Java applications to Red Hat OpenShift, you learned about the steps involved with building and deploying Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform applications to OpenShift.

  • How to Create a File in Linux

    In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to create a file in Linux. The easiest way of doing this is through the CLI, but you can also do it via the GUI. We’ll include step-by-step instructions for both methods.

  • TechTarget ☛ How to configure and customize Kali Linux

    Penetration tests help determine whether vulnerabilities and weaknesses are present in corporate systems. An array of pen testing tools are available, including the Kali Linux distribution, which provides everything an ethical hacker needs to effectively test a company’s systems.

    In Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing, author and security practitioner Vijay Kumar Velu provides in-depth instructions on how to test a network with Kali Linux. Readers will learn how to select the best tools from the distribution to compromise security, while remaining undetected by services or users.

• Games

  • FEX 2210 Tagged!

    This month’s release was a bit delayed due to the fact that most of FEX-Emu’s developers were meeting up physically at the X.Org Developer’s Conference this year! Before we talk about this months changes we need to spend a bit of time talking about some cool things.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Timothée Ravier: Akademy 2022: What’s next for Flatpaks in KDE

      Thanks to Fedora sponsorship (both for my travel and the conference itself), I was able to attend Akademy last week in Barcelona. It was great to finally meet in person folks I’ve been working with for the last couple of years.

      I’ll report here on the discussion that happened in the Flatpak Birds of a Feather session. I’ve made another post focused on the talks I found interesting during the conference.

    • Timothée Ravier: Akademy 2022: Conference report

      Thanks to Fedora sponsorship (both for my travel and the conference itself), I was able to attend Akademy last week in Barcelona. It was great to finally meet in person folks I’ve been working with for the last couple of years.

      I’ll highlight here a few talks that I found interesting. I’ve made another post focused on the future for Flatpak support and integration in KDE.

      The full agenda for the two days of conference is at conf.kde.org. You can find the recordings for all talks as raw videos on KDE’s YouTube channel until they are cut into more easily linkable videos.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME 43: Endless’s Part In Its Creation – Will Thompson

      GNOME 43 is out, and as always there is lots of good stuff in there. (Me circa 2014 would be delighted to see the continuous improvements in GNOME’s built-in RDP support.) During this cycle, the OS team at Endless OS Foundation spent a big chunk of our time on other initiatives, such as bringing Endless Key to more platforms and supporting the Endless Laptop programme. Even so, we made some notable contributions to this GNOME release. Here are a few of them!

      App grid pagination improvements

      The Endless OS desktop looks a bit different to GNOME, most notably in that the app grid lives on the wallpaper, not behind it. But once you’re at the app grid, it behaves the same in both desktops. Endless OS computers typically have hundreds of apps installed, so it’s normal to have 2, 3, or more pages of apps.

      We’ve learned from Endless OS users and partners that the row of dots at the bottom of the grid did not provide enough of a clue that there are more pages than the first. And when given a hint that more pages are available, indicated by those dots, users rarely discovered that they can switch with the scroll wheel or a swipe: they would instead click on those tiny dots. Tricky even for an accomplished mouse user!

      GNOME 40 introduced an effect where moving the mouse to the edges of the screen would cause successive pages of apps to “peek” in. As we’ve carried out user testing on our GNOME 41-based development branch (more on this another time) we found that this was not enough: if you don’t know the other pages are there, there’s no reason to deliberately move your mouse pointer to the empty space at the edges of the screen.

      So, we proposed for GNOME something similar to what we designed and shipped in Endless OS 4: always-visible pagination arrows. What we ended up implementing & shipping in GNOME 43 is a bit different to what we’d proposed, after several rounds of iteration with the GNOME design team, and I think it’s even better for it. Implementing this was also an opportunity to fix up many existing bugs in the grid, particularly when dragging and dropping between pages.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • EuroLinux 8.7 beta released – the first clone of RHEL 8.7 beta in the world.

    On the 12th of October, we released the EuroLinux 8.7 beta version. It is compatible with the latest version of Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 8.7 beta. It allows you to test technical innovations and compatibility with the upcoming EuroLinux 8.7. Version 8.7 beta includes new versions of developer software (GCC 12, LLVM 14, Rust 1.62.1, NodeJS 18, Ruby 3.1). The changes also apply to system security – NSS no longer supports RSA keys shorter than 1023 bits.

    In this article, we will describe the technical advantages and new capabilities of the EuroLinux ecosystem. We will also present the release notes (release notes) along with the launch documentation. All new items in the release are marked as (New) in the header.

  • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: Community Blog monthly summary: September 2022

    In September, we published 15 posts. The site had 6,850 visits from 4,450 unique viewers. 2,433 visits came from search engines, while 58 came from FOSS Weekly and 35 came from Fedora Discussion.

  • Fedora Magazine ☛ Fedora Magazine: Contribute at the Fedora Linux Test Week for Kernel 6.0

    The kernel team is working on final integration for Linux kernel 6.0. This version was just recently released, and will arrive soon in Fedora. As a result, the Fedora kernel and QA teams have organized a test week now through Sunday, Oct 16, 2022. Refer to the wiki page for links to the test images you’ll need to participate. Read below for details.

  • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: Das Keyboard & Fedora: GIVEAWAYS! [Ed: IBM adds... ads.. to Fedora project.]

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ CISO: A day in the life | The Enterprisers Project

    Being a CISO is not a job. It’s a calling that requires the mindset of a professional like a police officer or firefighter. And despite the statistics, it’s a career for the long haul.

  • IBM Old Timer ☛ Ex-IBMer: The Recent Impact of AI on Jobs and Economies

    “Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have stoked new fears about large-scale job loss, stemming from its ability to automate a rapidly expanding set of tasks (including non-routine cognitive tasks), and its potential to affect every sector of the economy,” said The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the labour market: What do we know so far?, a recently published report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade, the OECD now has 38 member countries around the world.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Sysadmin fundamentals: Create soft links in Linux | Enable Sysadmin

  • Red Hat ☛ Advanced regex: Capture groups, lookaheads, and lookbehinds

    Capture groups, lookaheads, and lookbehinds provide a powerful way to filter and retrieve data according to advanced regular expression matching logic. This article explains capture groups, lookaheads, and lookbehinds, along with the fundamental syntax you need to know in order to write them.

  • @HPCpodcast: Intel Shipping Aurora Blades; Rocky Linux vs. CentOS; Tesla’s ‘Dojo’ AI Supercomputer – High-Performance Computing News Analysis | insideHPC

    Our overall sense is that Intel made a good impression at its well-crafted and executed Innovation Day, with a whole host of announcements, broken down here by Shahin. We also discuss open source software and the big part it plays in the HPC/AI puzzle, along with the ongoing Linux operating system wars – including the emergence of Rocky Linux after Red Hat’s December 2020 announcement it would no longer support CentOS.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Red Hat Names Carolyn Nash as Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

    Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Carolyn Nash has been named the company’s senior vice president and chief operating officer, effective immediately. As part of this move, Red Hat is building out the Finance and Operations organization and has named Robert Leibrock senior vice president and chief financial officer and Jim Palermo as vice president and chief information officer. Nash will continue reporting to Red Hat’s president and chief executive officer, Matt Hicks. Leibrock and Palermo will report directly to Nash.

    Nash most recently served as Red Hat’s senior vice president and chief financial officer and was responsible for leading the company’s global finance organization. Before assuming the CFO role in early 2022, Nash was vice president of Finance, overseeing the Global Finance Transformation and Operations (GTO) organization. She has played an integral part in strengthening and growing the company’s finance operation. Before Red Hat, she served in leadership positions at Cisco, Hewlett Packard and KPMG in finance and operational roles.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Red Hat and FIWARE Foundation Collaborate to Power Eco-smart Cities with Open Source Technology

    Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced collaboration with FIWARE Foundation, a non-profit association that encourages the adoption of open standards for the development of smart solutions, to build an integrated, smart city platform that can enable cities across the world to be more resilient and improve citizens’ wellbeing with data. During a six week residency, Red Hat Open Innovation Labs worked jointly with FIWARE Foundation and Human Oriented Products (HOPU), a solution provider member of the FIWARE community, to create an easy-to-deploy, fully scalable, and robust open source enhanced smart city solution powered by FIWARE, running on Red Hat OpenShift.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ What to expect during AnsibleFest: Join theCUBE Oct. 18-19 [Ed: Conflict of interest in coverage]

    An important tactic for organizations competing in today’s data-driven economy is automating inefficient processes to streamline cloud operations.

    In one use case, global energy company Compañía Española de Petróleos S.A.U., known as Cepsa, reported 6,000 saved work hours, 35% more productivity, and 10-15% faster response times after automating processes using the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. The company also increased security levels thanks to fine-grained data access controls.

    [...]

    (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AnsibleFest. Neither Red Hat Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

• Debian Family

  • Utkarsh Gupta: FOSS Activites in August 2022

    Here’s my (thirty-fifth) monthly but brief update about the activities I’ve done in the F/L/OSS world.

    [...]

    This was my 19th month of actively contributing to Ubuntu. Now that I joined Canonical to work on Ubuntu full-time, there’s a bunch of things I do! \o/

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • The Register UK ☛ Canonical displays controversial ‘ad’ in shell update prog • The Register

    Some Ubuntu users are not happy at receiving a promotional message at the command line when upgrading their systems.

    As we described last week, Canonical’s “Ubuntu Pro” support offering for its Linux distro is now free of charge for up to five machines. If you update your machine from the command line with the apt command, you get an unsolicited ad for the scheme – and some users are not happy about it.

    There are complaints on Reddit, Mastodon, and on the company’s own StackExchange site AskUbuntu.

    This is far from the first time Ubuntu has faced such discontent. Last time, it was a promotional message on servers’ login screens that caused complaints. This was merely some text added to the /etc/motd file (that is, Message Of The Day), but one cause of upset is that it fetched the information from online – in theory, that might fail or cause unanticipated network access.

    A decade before that, it was Amazon listings in search results and fishing for donations on its download page.

    The new message appears if you use Ubuntu’s simplified apt front-end to the underlying Debian Advanced Packaging Tool, although as we mentioned while looking at some Debian derivatives, Debian itself has now adopted the apt command. If you prefer, the older apt-get, and apt-cache commands are still there in both Ubuntu and Debian, and they won’t show the message. They’re a better choice if you’re scripting the operations, too.

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu’s New Terminal ‘Ad’ is Angering Users – OMG! Ubuntu!

    In September I tweeted a screenshot of something unexpected that has started to show up in the terminal when I ran system updates.

    It didn’t enrage me at the time (and it kinda still doesn’t) but I did find it a little …Off.

    Now, if you’re suitably tuned-in to the Linux newswire and/or an avid attendee of social media you’ll probably heard about the drama in question.

    If you haven’t, then allow me to…

  • Ubuntu Community Council election 2022 underway!

  • Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Community Council election 2022 underway!

    Voting has begun for the Ubuntu Community Council election. We will be voting in all seven seats for a two year term. All Ubuntu Members are eligible to vote and should receive their ballot by email.

  • Ubuntu ☛ An inside look at autonomous vehicle hardware: Advantech’s ITA-460

    You’ve probably heard about the Internet of Things but what about the Artificial Intelligence of Things? Yes, connected things are also getting smarter and smarter. AIoT is a new field that combines AI and IoT in fascinating new use cases, some of them in automotive.

    In response to the booming AIoT market, Canonical partnered with Advantech, a global leader in industrial IoT, to provide an AI in-vehicle platform with visual recognition. This platform is powered by the ITA-460, a modular, water-resistant fanless in-vehicle computer that is certified on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and powered by an Intel® 8th/9th Gen Core™ i CPU. This platform allows the installation of several additional extensions that significantly increase its functionality. One of these extensions is the MXM GPU for AI acceleration, which perfectly matches application requirements. In this blog post, we will give you a glimpse of this solution’s capabilities and how it’s used in autonomous vehicles.

  • FOSSLinux ☛ Ubuntu LTS Releases: Everything you need to know | FOSS Linux

    Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distributions used today. It is available in two ways – the Ubuntu Desktop version, that regular users can install on their PCs to perform their daily tasks, and the Ubuntu Server version, which allows you to set up a server.

    Whenever a new Ubuntu release occurs, you will hear terms like “regular/ interim release” and “LTS release.” But what do these terms mean? If you are now well-versed with the Ubuntu releases, continue reading this post. It will give a comprehensive guide on Ubuntu releases and the differences between interim and LTS releases.

  • The Register UK ☛ Zinc: An Ubuntu remix that dares to be different • The Register

    While many Ubuntu remixes just switch the desktop or replace a few default apps, Zinc changes some of the fundamentals. The result is impressive.

    Teejeetech is a small computer consultancy in Kerala, India, run by programmer Tony George. Zinc isn’t the company’s first distro, nor is this the company’s first mention on The Register. We previously mentioned their earlier Unity-based remix, U-Mix, as well as originally developing the Timeshift backup tool included in Linux Mint. We thought we’d come back for a proper look at Zinc, the company’s second-generation distro.

    Unlike U-Mix, Zinc is a free download. It’s based on the current long-term support version of Xubuntu, 22.04.1, so it uses a customized Xfce desktop, plus quite a few additional apps and changed components. Perhaps its biggest change from mainstream Ubuntu is in packaging tools: it includes neither Canonical’s own Snap format nor the GNOME/Red Hat alternative Flatpak.

    This mean that Zinc includes a natively packaged version of Firefox, but that’s true of several distros now. What is different is that Zinc offers several alternative packaging tools instead so that you probably won’t find any need to install either Snap or Flatpak support.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Liliputing ☛ Juno Tablet is a Linux tablet with an Intel Jasper Lake processor for $429 and up – Liliputing

    Juno Computers has been selling Linux laptop and desktop computers for a few years. Now the company is branching out into tablets.

    The first Juno Tablet is now available for pre-order for $429 and up, and it can be configured with one of several different touchscreen-friendly mobile Linux distributions. . Just bear in mind that Juno is selling the tablet as a beta product: some of the hardware is not yet supported by the software.

  • 9to5Linux ☛ Juno Computers Unveils a Linux Tablet Powered by Mobian Linux and KDE Plasma Mobile

    Meet Juno Tablet, one of the few Linux-powered tablets that you can actually buy and own these days. The tablet features a gorgeous 10.1-inch Full HD (1920×1080) IPS 60Hz touchscreen with support for anti-mistouch stylus pens promising a real writing experience thanks to the 1024 level of pressure sensitivity.

    Juno Tablet can actually be bought with a stylus pen, which costs an extra $22 USD. According to Juno Computers, the pen body is light and comfortable to hold and comes with eraser shortcut keys that allow you to write easily, draw freely, and give full play to creative inspiration.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino ☛ The interactive map highlights regional air pollution | Arduino Blog

    Writer Jason Pargin coined the term “Monkeysphere” to convey Dunbar’s number, which is the maximum number of stable relationships that a person can maintain. It is difficult for people to feel true empathy for anyone outside of their Monkeysphere, which is around 150 people. The result is that we often fail to give the proper attention to injustices that happen outside of our personal Monkeyspheres. To combat that tendency, Ahmed Oyenuga created the Interactive Air Quality Map.

    If you live in the United States, the United Kingdom, or almost any other Western country, your air quality is probably pretty good. You might know on an intellectual level that many foreign countries and cities have serious issues with air pollution that cause real health problems. But those areas are far enough outside of your Monkeysphere that you have trouble caring about them. That isn’t a problem with you; it is simple human nature. Oyenuga’s air quality map provides striking visuals to hammer home the point, so that you get a tangible feel for the air quality in far away locales. It is one thing to read a statistic or look at a graph, but quite another to see the conditions in real-time with your own eyes.

  • Arduino ☛ This handy machine automatically cuts plastic gears | Arduino Blog

    Many, many mechanisms require gears, but the good news is that plastic gears are very cheap. The bad news is that you have to buy a lot of them at once and that means you need to know ahead of time what gears you need. Being able to make gears on-demand would be very convenient, but most 3D printers lack the tolerance to do it well and CNC setups get expensive. But by following Mr Innovative’s recent video, you can build your own affordable machine that automatically cuts gears.

    This might be able to handle very soft metals, but it is really meant for cutting nylon and other plastics. Users can set the diameter and the number of teeth, which together dictate the pitch. However, they can not change the tooth cut profile without swapping out the blade. They set the parameters on a Nextion LCD touchscreen and then the machine takes care of the rest. It rotates the gear by the calculated pitch, then moves the gear into the circular cutting blade according to the set diameter.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Make Use Of ☛ The 7 Most Common Hardware Problems on Android Phones and How to Fix Them

  • India ☛ Gboard Is Finally Going To Be Useful On Android Tablets: Here’s How

  • Giz China ☛ Android doesn’t need a new version every year anymore!

  • 9to5Google ☛ Pocket Casts adds support for Android 13 media player, in beta

  • Android Police ☛ YouTube gets a long-overdue visual overhaul on Android TV

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Events

  • Document Foundation ☛ Keynote speeches from the LibreOffice Conference 2022

    We’re uploading more sessions from the recent LibreOffice Conference 2022! First we had the opening session, and now the keynotes from our two main sponsors:

  • Timothée Ravier: Recap from the Pass the SALT 2022 conference

    I’ve had the opportunity to talk at the Pass the SALT conference in July 2022. I would like to thank both the organizers for accepting my talk and the Fedora Project for sponsoring me to attend the event.

    My talk was about how we build operating systems optimized for containers, from IoT to desktops and servers (see the video and slides). In this talk, I go over what we are doing to build secure by default operating systems, for all form factors, using container technologies and security primitives from the Linux kernel.

    This conference was also the first one for me since March 2020 and it was nice to reconnect with old friends and meet new acquaintances.

    Here is a list of some the talks that I found the most interesting, in chronological order.

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • PostgreSQL ☛ PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL 15 Released!

    The PostgreSQL Global Development Group today announced the release of PostgreSQL 15, the latest version of the world’s most advanced open source database.

    PostgreSQL 15 builds on the performance improvements of recent releases with noticeable gains for managing workloads in both local and distributed deployments, including improved sorting. This release improves the developer experience with the addition of the popular MERGE command, and adds more capabilities for observing the state of the database.

    “The PostgreSQL developer community continues to build features that simplify running high performance data workloads while improving the developer experience,” said Jonathan Katz, a PostgreSQL Core Team member. “PostgreSQL 15 highlights how, through open software development, we can deliver to our users a database that is great for application development and safe for their critical data.”

    PostgreSQL, an innovative data management system known for its reliability and robustness, benefits from over 25 years of open source development from a global developer community and has become the preferred open source relational database for organizations of all sizes.

  • LWN ☛ PostgreSQL 15 released [LWN.net]

    Version 15 of the PostgreSQL database management system is out.

  • PostgreSQL ☛ Release 15

    PostgreSQL 15 contains many new features and enhancements…

  • PostgreSQL ☛ New Members of the Community Code of Conduct Committee

  • Linuxiac ☛ PostgreSQL 15 Is Here Loaded with New Features and Enhancements

    PostgreSQL 15’s new SQL MERGE command makes migrating from Oracle and SQL Server easier.

    PostgreSQL, also known as “Postgres,” is an open-source object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). It aims to provide a very robust and feature-complete SQL-compatible storage from the beginning.

    As a result, PostgreSQL advertises itself as “the most advanced open-source relational database in the world.” And the recently released PostgreSQL 15 version confirms this. So, let’s see what it brings us.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Document Foundation ☛ LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.4 is updated – The Document Foundation Blog

    The Documentation Team has released an updated edition of the LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.4 (revision 1) with new contents on sparklines and conditional formatting. Typos and last minute mistakes and formatting were also fixed in this release.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Data

    • HPC Wire ☛ Earth System Grid Federation Launches Effort to Upgrade Climate Projection Data System

      The Earth System Grid Federation, a multi-agency initiative that gathers and distributes data for top-tier projections of the Earth’s climate, is preparing a series of upgrades that will make using the data easier and faster while improving how the information is curated.

    • FOSSLife ☛ ESGF Makes Climate Data Easier to Access

      The Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) is preparing a series of upgrades to make its climate data easier to use and access.

• Programming/Development

  • What is the Most Profitable Coding Language for a Student? – kifarunix.com

    If you are on the market for the best programming languages, you want the best paying to recoup your money and set the pace for the future.

  • KDE Crash Tracking System

    KDE is now evaluating Sentry, a crash tracking system.

    Who can get access? Everyone with a KDE developer account.

    But what is it?

  • Release of Picolibc Version 1.7.2

  • Perl / Raku

    • DEV Community ☛ It’s time to rak! (Part 1) – DEV Community

      A few months ago, I had a bit of a scare with a notebook showing signs of going nuclear (as in batteries growing up to about 3x their original size, dislodging the bottom plate). In the end, all turned out well, thanks to iFixit, patience and a steady hand.

      Not wanting to install Perl’s ack utility on a clean temporary machine, made me write an alpha version of a Raku module App::Rak, providing a similar utility: the rak CLI. Which I presented at the second Raku Conference: Looking for clues with rak.

      Since then, the utility has seen two refactors: the first one was taking out the “plumbing” functionality into a separate module. The second one was rewriting the argument handling (now up to 135 options) to make it easier to produce better error messages, and to make it more maintainable. And now it’s at what I would like to think as “beta version” level.

    • DEV Community ☛ Elizabeth Mattijsen: Don’t fear the grepper! (1)

      This blog post provides an introduction to the Raku Programmming Language and its grep functionality. It does not require any specific knowledge about the Raku Programming Language, although being familiar with basic grep functionality (of the unix utility), is recommended.

      The grep functionality comes in two flavours in Raku: a procedural (sub) version, and an object oriented (method) version. Since everything in Raku is an object (or can be thought of as one), and I personally mostly prefer the object oriented way, I will be discussing only the method way of using grep and friends.

  • Python

    • Qt ☛ Qt for Python Release: 6.4 is finally here!

      It is early fall in the northern hemisphere, and with that not only do the leaves drop, but also a new Qt for Python release!

      Perhaps you were wondering why the release was not on the same day as Qt?: It was a mixture of CI not liking our configurations, conferences happening during the release, and COVID affecting 50% of the team. Now, everything is working well, and most of us have recovered.

Leftovers

• Hardware

  • The Next Platform ☛ TSMC: The Leading Indicator For An Entire Industry

    Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co is the world’s largest and most advanced producer of semiconductors, and is therefore a “bellwether” for the semiconductor industry and, in turn therefore, a leading indicator of the entire IT sector that depends so heavily on semiconductors as its key driver.

    A bellwether is supposed to be the lead sheep in a flock, and is called that because it has a bell around its neck so it can be identified by the shepherd and also by the sheep following it. It is not the bell that makes the sheep special, but rather the special sheep that correctly leads the pack that warrants the bell, which creates a virtuous cycle that helps manage the flock.

    [...]

    “We expect probably in 2023, the semiconductor industry will be likely to decline,” Wei explained.

• Linux Foundation

  • Yahoo News ☛ The Linux Foundation and Fintech Open Source Foundation Announce the Conference Schedule for Open Source in Finance Forum New York 2022

  • PR Newswire ☛ The Linux Foundation and Fintech Open Source Foundation Announce the Conference Schedule for Open Source in Finance Forum New York 2022

• Security

  • MS Enterprise app management service RCE. CVE-2022-35841

    A remote command execution and local privilege escalation vulnerability has been fixed by Microsoft as part of September’s patch Tuesday.

    The vulnerability, filed under CVE-2022-35841, affects the Enterprise App Management Service which handles the installation of enterprise applications deployed via MDM.

    An unprivileged user can exploit the vulnerability both locally and, in some cases, remotely and gain SYSTEM level access on vulnerable hosts.

  • LWN ☛ Security updates for Thursday [LWN.net]

    Security updates have been issued by Debian (libreoffice, rexical, ruby-nokogiri, and squid), Fedora (wavpack), Red Hat (expat), SUSE (gdcm, orthanc, orthanc-gdcm, orthanc-webviewer and rubygem-puma), and Ubuntu (GMP and unzip).

  • TechTarget ☛ Why Kali Linux is the go-to distribution for penetration testing

    The Kali Linux distribution enables penetration testers to explore how potential attackers may enter a system. The suite features hundreds of tools to effectively test all aspects of an IT system, from applications to networks.

    Author and pen tester Vijay Kumar Velu wrote Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing to provide readers with a holistic understanding of ethical hacking, from start to finish, using tools such as Wireshark, Burp Suite and Nmap.

    In an interview with SearchSecurity, Velu discussed what readers at all experience levels can learn from his book, why Kali Linux is such a solid distribution and more.

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ New Alchimist attack framework targets Windows, macOS, Linux [Ed: Classic FUD. Microsoft propaganda site blames "GoLang" and warns about "Linux" because someone wrote some malware and GoLang and tries to trick people into installing it. Microsoft is trying to shamelessly twist cross-platform compatibility as an undesirable thing and security nightmare.]

    The framework and all its files are 64-bit executables written in GoLang, a programming language that makes cross-compatibility between different operating systems a lot easier.

  • TechRepublic ☛ New Alchimist attack framework hits Windows, Linux and Mac [Ed: Same nonsense as above]

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire – Signal to remove support for SMS messages in Android app

    End-to-end encrypted messaging platform Signal will phase out support for plaintext SMS and MMS messages in its Android app over the next few months.

    However current users will have to wait for an update to the Android app before they are able to export their existing plaintext messages to another messaging app on their phones. The current version of the Android app is 5.51.7 (on Android 11) and it lacks any means of exporting messages.

    In a blog post on Wednesday, Signal Messenger, the company behind Signal said while it had offered support for plaintext messages all these years, it no longer made any sense to do so.

  • USCERT ☛ CISA Releases Twenty-Five Industrial Control Systems Advisories

    CISA has released twenty-five (25) Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on October 13, 2022. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Digital License Plates

      More important are the security risks. Do we think for a minute that your digital license plate is secure from denial-of-service attacks, or number swapping attacks, or whatever new attacks will be dreamt up? Seems like a piece of stamped metal is the most secure option.

    • The Register UK ☛ California legalizes digital license plates for all vehicles • The Register

      Which is great news for the single company that makes them

      California has ended a pilot program and fully legalized digital license plates for private and commercial vehicles, which is great news for the one company that makes them.

      A bill, signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, permits the California Department of Motor Vehicles “to establish a program authorizing an entity to issue alternatives to stickers, tabs, license plates, and registration cards” for vehicles in the state.

    • Video ☛ App Privacy Case Study: The Right Stuff

      Today we will talk about the dangers of phone apps and services with a case study looking at the new “The Right Stuff” conservative dating app. This is a huge warning, and we need to be cautious ourselves.

    • EU Observer ☛ EU under scrutiny for bankrolling surveillance in Africa

      A verdict is imminent on the EU Commission, for projects it financed to help dubious governments in Africa spy on their own people.

      The money comes from the EU Trust Fund for Africa, part of which is being used to develop mass-scale biometric identity systems across the African continent.

      “We’re expecting to have an outcome soon,” said Ioannis Kouvakas, a senior legal officer at the London-based Privacy International, an NGO, earlier this week.

      Niger, for instance, received over €11m for surveillance drones and a wiretapping centre, among other equipment.

      The underlying premise is to help national authorities crack down on migration and possible terror threats, either through helping them create tools such as data-retention laws or by bankrolling surveillance projects.

• Finance

  • Fortune ☛ Bombshell report reveals TikTok is getting rich off livestreaming refugee families begging for help

    Is TikTok exploiting starving families in Syria begging on livestreams for donations to survive?

    That’s the charge leveled by the BBC, which investigated how the popular social media platform owned by China’s ByteDance extracts an overly generous cut of the charitable money meant to go to the poor and the destitute.

    According to the report, children in refugee camps engage in lengthy streams during which they can earn up to $1,000 an hour in a kind of modern-day version of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

  • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ US layoffs accelerating under Bailout Biden’s re-defined recession. | BaronHK’s Rants

    Yesterday, over 1,000 US tech layoffs were announced in one day, and that’s just from looking at Layoffs Tracker.

    Some numbers don’t even get published because they try to keep it in an Internal Memo and threaten people’s severance pay if they discuss details with the media.

    And companies that lay off generally also do a hiring freeze and don’t replace people who quit. (Stealth Layoff)

    Today, there’s several big examples.

    For starters, Intel, which just got many billions of dollars in bailout money over the CHIPS Act, which Bailout Biden signed, announced that its sales are a disaster and it will be cutting thousands of jobs as the (Windows) PC market collapses.

    Techrights has been covering the demise of Windows “Vista” 11. Microsoft has a self-inflicted gunshot wound. They figured that they could artificially juice new PC sales by disallowing most upgrade installs for PCs that are older than 2018(!) through ridiculous requirements like TPM 2.0

    [...]

    Windows was already losing 2% of its desktop marketshare every year for the past several years, according to PornHub Insights and was down to just 64.7% last year (all versions). A trend which will no doubt accelerate.

    [...]

    But articles like “The “quiet quitters’ will be the first to get sacked!” are popping up now too. Victim-blaming. Blame-shifting. Disgusting. Gaslighting. Bullshit. They’re starting to admit you’ll lose your job, but it’s going to be entirely “your fault” you know. They’ll have you know.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • IT Wire ☛ The Age: Independent Always? Nope, a little biased now and then

      With the elections in Victoria just 44 days away, the media in the state are keen to step up to the plate and maximise their earnings. Ads roll in at election time, given that the parties in the fray have plenty of money to throw around.

      The Age, the smaller of the two main papers in the state — the other is Rupert Murdoch’s Herald Sun — has always been at pains to project itself as unbiased in its coverage, a claim it made prior to the federal election in May as well. Perhaps it hopes to attract advertising from both major sides of politics.

      At the time of the federal election in May, the editor of The Age, Gay Alcorn, wrote in one of her letters to subscribers [which for some curious reason was placed behind a paywall] that the paper had not moved to the right.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • AccessNow ☛ Digital dictatorship: authoritarian tactics and resistance in EECA

    The use of technology to repress democratic dissent is nothing new. Countries such as China and Russia are widely documented repeat offenders when it comes to deploying authoritarian tactics in digital spaces. Our latest report, Digital dictatorship: authoritarian tactics and resistance in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, explains how a digital dictatorship can emerge and how pro-democracy activists are fighting back.

  • AccessNow ☛ Resisting the rise of digital dictatorship in Eastern Europe and Central Asia – Access Now

    From internet shutdowns in Azerbaijan and Armenia, to Putin’s intensifying online censorship, digital dictatorship is tightening its grip across Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

    Launching today, Digital dictatorship: authoritarian tactics and resistance in Eastern Europe and Central Asia unpacks the intersecting tools and techniques of oppression that furnish digital dictators’ toolboxes all across the region, and explores techniques for resistance. Read the full report and regional snapshot.

    “The digital dictator’s arsenal is stocked with tactics that systematically chip away at freedom of expression, access to information, and privacy online,” said Anastasiya Zhyrmont, Regional Outreach Coordinator – Eastern Europe & Central Asia at Access Now. “The methodical expansion of this online authoritarianism is being met with resistance, and people across Eastern Europe and Central Asia are fending off oppression, and planting the seeds of democracy — we hope Digital dictatorship: authoritarian tactics and resistance in Eastern Europe and Central Asia supports them in this journey.”

  • The Washington Post ☛ With U.S. nudges, Google and others aim to help Iranian protesters

• Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Walled Culture ☛ How music platform Corite is turning true fans into digital street teams – Walled Culture

      The last chapter of Walled Culture – the book looks at how the many problems of copyright might be mitigated. It concludes with Kevin Kelly’s idea of “1000 true fans“, which has been discussed on this blog previously. One of the most interesting aspects of the true fans idea is that it doesn’t depend on copyright, and would work perfectly well without it.

      Kelly first articulated his vision back in 2008. The world has obviously moved on since then, especially online. His rather general idea of artists being supported directly by their fans has now blossomed into a multitude of different approaches that have already been put into practice.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • a beam in my eye

    One is the need to cancel out the discomfort caused by non-fault suffering.

  • Nothing is Complicated

    For the last ten years, I’ve tried to expunge the words ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ from my vocabulary and thinking.

    [...]

    Different cultures use different words. I can’t say how much it affects their thinking – people have levied many criticisms of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Still, I suspect bad words inflict bad thinking.

    I just called words ‘bad’, but the Mbuti would never do that. They don’t have the words ‘good’ or ‘bad’, so their language forces them to specify what problem they want to state. Words can give you the wrong impression, and food can poison you, and the Mbuti never have to call the food ‘bad’.

  • SpellBinding: ACDEFIP Wordo: DUNGS

• Politics

  • Grounding Politics in Reality

    The political compass is laughably limited. It is primarily focused on matching a progressive/conservative spectrum with an authoritarian/libertarian spectrum. It assumes ideologies are variants of left/right and auth/lib spectrums, rather than complete philosophies unto themselves.

    For example, socialism is not simply a more extreme form of social democracy. It is a fundamentally different way of looking at politics. It has always been this way. I don’t think describing Marxism as “further left” than Bernie Sanders is enlightening. Marxists see Sanders as part of the bourgeois political system and as an enemy of the revolution. Social democracy works to appease the proletariat rather than empower it.

    Likewise, fascism is not merely an authoritarian brand of conservatism. It is a revolutionary ideology that often rallies conservatives along, but overall their ideologies do not match up. They have different epistemological systems that play on each other rather than interact intimately.

• Technical

  • Bombing interviews

    I recently (as in today) had an interview for a job I was really hyping myself up for. The first stage went pretty well which helped boost my confidence a bit. For context, I got my first dev job in 2021 which I feel I kinda lucked out with as I didn’t really get technical questions in the traditional sense and the guy interviewing me hadn’t written a single line of code in his life.

    Online interviews are also new for me. I have pretty extreme social anxiety and for some reason not being in the same room as the person I’m talking to really fucks with my nerves. I think I was trying to compensate for how anxious I was by talking as much as possible even though I had been planning for it pretty thoroughly the last few days. Every question I got sucked because my mind would just blank and I didn’t want to just sit there without saying anything so I’d just ramble until anything came up. I think it would have helped if I told the interviewers about my anxiety and to ask me for clarification if what I say is a bit messy. Even when I’m not under pressure the way I talk is disjointed and I don’t structure my thoughts very well which ends up with me throwing everything to the wall and seeing what sticks.

  • Commander X16

    It’s a retro-styled computer made using modern components. I love retro computers and I’ve been eagerly following this project. I keep thinking about driving in and programming on the emulator, but I have other stuff to do right now.

  • Browsers: Clutter to declutter

    Instead of using one browser to rule them all, my life is now scattered across half a dozen browsers: Firefox, LibreWolf, Min, Amfora, Bombadillo and offpunk. I mean it’s fine, nobody is getting hurt, but also what the actual fuck lol. That’s not even counting the ones on my other devices.

    I’m comforting myself with the idea that this is like the time I konmaried my home and there was shit everywhere for weeks. The house looked like a hoarder palace, but I swear I wasn’t a hoarder. I just somehow had a lot of kipple and a chaotic organisation system that got upended when it came time to take stock and thank things for their service.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • New Gemini mailing list

      I’v started a new Gemini mailing list.

  • Programming

    • The OctoForth Token Machine

      OctoForth is a Forth-inspired threaded interpreter with a unique feature: 8-bit tokens that are magically not limited to a fixed set of 256 meanings.

GNU/Linux

• Graphics Stack

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ NVIDIA 520.56.06 driver adds easier NVIDIA NGX updates for Wine / Proton

    NVIDIA has today released driver version 520.56.06, adding support for NVIDIA RTX 40 series and adding a bunch of new features and fixes for Linux gamers.

  • Its FOSS ☛ Blender 3.4 to Enable Native Wayland Support for Linux

    Blender is a popular 3D creation suite that many professionals use. The developers of Blender have recently added native Wayland support for Linux in the daily builds, and have confirmed adding the support in the upcoming Blender 3.4 release. This is probably one of the significant development progress after Blender 3.0 release last year!

• Applications

  • Linux Links ☛ 4 Best Free and Open Source Shutdown Timers

    The desktop environment with its bundle of programs sharing a common graphical user interface (GUI) remains a firm favorite with users. Not surprising really given that a good desktop environment makes computing fun and simple.

    Here’s our verdict of the tools succinctly summarized in a LinuxLinks styled ratings chart.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Manuel Matuzovic ☛ Day 13: the :where() and :is() pseudo classes

    It’s time to get me up to speed with modern CSS. There’s so much new in CSS that I know too little about. To change that I’ve started #100DaysOfMoreOrLessModernCSS. Why more or less modern CSS? Because some topics will be about cutting-edge features, while other stuff has been around for quite a while already, but I just have little to no experience with it.

  • Klara ☛ 5 Key Reasons to Consider Open Source Storage Over Commercial Offerings

    Storage is the most critical and sensitive component of your infrastructure. Applications that crash can be restarted, network packets that are lost can be retransmitted, but storage needs to be always on, and absolutely reliable. This is where it might seem to make sense to go with a popular commercial offering, even falling into the mantra of “Nobody ever got fired for buying $vendor”. However, being locked into a single vendor means you are utterly at their mercy when it comes to upgrades, price increases, and the quality of support they offer. If your storage vendor releases a new version of their software that causes issues for you, they may help you right away, or your issue might be exotic enough that it goes to the back of their support queue. The vendor might also release a newer product focused on a different use case and decide to end-of-life the product you are using. In any of these cases, you are left with just two choices: stay locked-in with the vendor, or take on the pain of a migration.

    Storage can be incredibly hard to migrate, due to the amount of data involved, the fact that it is constantly changing as you are trying to migrate it, and the requirement for absolute accuracy.

    What if we told you there was a third choice? Open source infrastructure. When you have the source code, you control your own destiny and have the freedom to ensure your infrastructure works for you. Open source solutions are reliable, have outstanding performance, and offer a degree of flexibility that is not available with commercial vendors.

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

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install IntelliJ IDEA on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, IntelliJ IDEA is an open-source Integrated Development Environment(IDE) used for developing Java applications. It is developed by JetBrains and is available in two editions, Community and Ultimate. IntelliJ IDEA has built-in support for Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and XML/XSL languages. You can also install plugins to support other languages such as Go, Python, Perl, Erlang, etc.

    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 IntelliJ IDEA on Rocky Linux. 9.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Wine (WineHQ) on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS

    Wine is a software application that translates Windows system calls into POSIX-compliant functions, allowing Windows applications to run on operating systems such as macOS and Linux. Wine is open source and provides an excellent compatibility layer for running Windows applications on these alternative platforms. While Windows applications typically have better performance and stability on their native platform, Wine can be beneficial if one needs or wants to use specific features only available on Windows. Additionally, because Wine is open source, it is possible to run Windows applications on platforms that do not have stable or supported versions of Microsoft’s operating system, such as Android. In general, Wine is a handy tool for anyone who needs or wants to run Windows applications on another platform. Thanks to its compatibility layer, many Windows applications can be run without any issues on macOS and Linux.

    In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Wine on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS release series using the command line terminal by importing the official WineHQ repository and installing the latest stable or next release titled development for those eager to try the latest bleeding-edge version of Wine for your windows compatibility needs.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install VirtualBox 7.0 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

    VirtualBox 7.0 is the latest version of the free and open source (FOSS) hypervisor developed by Innotek, which Sun Microsystems acquired in February 2008 – barely more than a year before Sun was itself acquired by Oracle. VirtualBox allows multiple operating systems to run on a single physical server, providing high flexibility and efficiency for enterprise deployments. Since the acquisition, Oracle has continued to develop and support VirtualBox, and the latest release includes several new features and improvements.

    Among the most notable changes in VirtualBox 7.0 is the remote control of VMs hosted in the cloud and support for encrypted VMs. The GUI has been streamlined, with better integration of help and error messages and the ability to easily tweak settings such as the number of CPU cores during VM creation. The new version also includes several other features, such as support for high-resolution displays, support for multiple monitors, and the ability to print from a VM. Overall, the new version of VirtualBox is a significant improvement over previous versions and should be welcomed by users.

    In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install VirtualBox 7.0 on your Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish system by importing the official virtual box repository and installing the most up-to-date version using the command line terminal. The extra benefit for users using this method is that you will receive them instantly from the VirtualBox repository when updates drop.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install NVIDIA Drivers on CentOS 9 Stream

    When it comes to graphics drivers for NVIDIA video cards, there are two main options: the proprietary/open-source NVIDIA drivers or the open-source Nouveau drivers. Most importantly, the Nouveau drivers are perfectly acceptable; however, if you use your Linux system for activities requiring high-performance graphics, you may want to consider using the official NVIDIA drivers. The Nouveau drivers are community-created and -supported drivers that are available free of charge; however, they may not offer the same level of performance as the NVIDIA drivers. Ultimately, deciding which driver to use depends on your needs and preferences.

    The following tutorial will teach you how to install the NVIDIA drivers on CentOS 9 Stream using the command line terminal with alternative installation methods of RPM Fusion or the NVIDIA Cuda Repository.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Linux Kernel 6.0 on CentOS 9 Stream

    As anyone who has used CentOS Stream for any time knows, one of its primary focuses is stability. This can often mean that the distribution is relatively stable but usually has very outdated packages in terms of new features. For example, at the time of this writing, CentOS Stream features kernel 5.14, but some users may require a more recent kernel for better hardware compatibility, among many other things. While this focus on stability is admirable, it can be frustrating for users who need the latest and most significant features that newer kernels often provide. Fortunately, there are a few ways to work around this issue. One option is to use the ELRepo repository, which has an excellent reputation amongst EL9 distributions such as CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, etc.

    Additionally, ELRepo offers many updated packages across various categories, including everything from kernels and drivers to multimedia codecs and desktop applications. As a result, ELRepo is an excellent option for users who need access to the latest and greatest software while still using a stable distribution like CentOS Stream.

    Some of the various changes besides the typical CPU improvements include the following.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Google Chrome on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS

    Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world, and for a good reason. It’s fast, feature-rich, and compatible with nearly every website and online service. And for Pop!_OS users, Chrome is an especially great choice. That’s because it’s faster than Firefox, the default browser installed on your desktop. Additionally, Chrome has several features that make browsing the web a better experience. For example, Chrome has a built-in PDF viewer, so you can open PDFs without downloading them. Chrome also has an incognito mode, which allows you to browse privately without saving your history or cookies. And because Chrome is synced with your Google account, your bookmarks and passwords will be available on all your devices. So if you’re looking for the best browser for Pop!_OS, try out Google Chrome.

    In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Google Chrome on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS release series in three ways: stable, beta, or unstable versions, along with some essential command tips for users.

  • Linux Nightly ☛ How to Install Steam on Manjaro – Linux Nightly

    This tutorial shows you how to install Steam on Manjaro Linux via command line and GUI step by step instructions.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How to install Jenkins on Rocky Linux 9 / Alma Linux 9

    In this post, we will talk about a vital tool in continuous integration. Today, you will learn how to install Jenkins on Rocky Linux 9 / Alma Linux 9.

    Jenkins is an open-source server for continuous integration. It is a tool used to compile and test software projects continuously. This has the advantage that developers can quickly integrate their changes into the software on the application server.

    Some details about Jenkins include that it is open source and built in Java. With this in mind, it is deducible that it is cross-platform and that you can use it in many environments.

• Games

  • Techdirt ☛ Valve Briefly (Accidentally?) Shows Off Steam Deck’s Useful Ability To Use Emulators

    Buckle in, because there are essentially two ways to write this post but both of them start off the same way. Regular readers here will be familiar with Nintendo’s now years-long war on emulation. The whole thing is ultimately quite stupid, because there is no indication that emulator and ROM sites ever really had a negative impact on Nintendo’s business. Despite that, first with the release of Nintendo retro-consoles and then back catalog games on modern platforms like the Switch, Nintendo went on a legal and DMCA spree trying to end Nintendo emulation on the internet so it could, in some cases, release its own far shittier product. The point here is that, no matter the context, Nintendo hates the idea of having its games emulated.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Humble has a new melee-focused game bundle

    Up for more melee fighting games of various sorts? The Melee Mayhem Bundle might be just what you need. As per usual, I’ll go over each title to show the expected compatibility on Steam Deck and Linux desktop along with ProtonDB ratings.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Steam Mobile App gets a huge revamp out now for everyone

    After some time being in Beta, Valve has officially released the new shiny new Steam Mobile App for all.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Inspired by Factorio and RimWorld, space colony building sim Stardeus out in Early Access

    Taking plenty of inspiration from Factorio and RimWorld (including a very RimWorld style), Kodo Linija and Paradox Arc have released Stardeus into Early Access. It comes with Native Linux support, along with it being Steam Deck Verified. Note: the developer provided me a key months ago for early testing.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Roguelike tactical auto-battler Despot’s Game: Dystopian Army Builder is out now

    Despot’s Game: Dystopian Army Builder has now left Early Access along with Native Linux support, this roguelike tactical auto-battler is certainly unique.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 game engine OpenRCT2 gets another big upgrade

    OpenRCT2 is a free and open source game engine reimplementation for RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, upgrading many parts of it and making it work well cross-platform on modern systems.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ A Robot Named Fight! source code released

    The developer of a nicely reviewed metroidvania called A Robot Named Fight! has released the source code, hoping that others can learn from it.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ A lot of people were clearly waiting on the official Steam Deck Docking Station

    Now that the Steam Deck is available without reservation, and the official Steam Deck Docking Station has released, it appears a lot of people were waiting on Valve for docking.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Steam Deck Boot Videos get an easy app, plus videos coming to the Points Shop

    Recently I mentioned the new Steam Deck Repo website, allowing people to upload and download custom Steam Deck Boot Videos, well now there’s an easy to use app (GitHub) to go along with it.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE Gear 22.08.2

      Over 120 individual programs plus dozens of programmer libraries and feature plugins are released simultaneously as part of KDE Gear.

      Today they all get new bugfix source releases with updated translations, including…

    • 9to5Linux ☛ KDE Gear 22.08.2 Adds 7-Zip and Samba 4.16 or Later Compatibility, Many Bug Fixes

      KDE Gear 22.08.2 is here a little over a month after the first point release, KDE Gear 22.08.1, and it brings compatibility with Samba 4.16 or higher to allow connections to Windows Samba shares from within KDE apps like the Dolphin file manager.

      This second KDE Gear 22.08 point release also updates the Ark archive manager to restore compatibility with the original 7-Zip archiver, updates the KDE Connect app to prevent a crash when there are no audio devices present, and updates the Firefox version in the user agent manager for the Falkon web browser.

    • KDE Crash Tracking System

      KDE is now evaluating Sentry, a crash tracking system.

      Who can get access? Everyone with a KDE developer account.

      But what is it?

      Since forever we have used Bugzilla to manage crash reports but this has numerous challenges that haven’t made any improvements in at least 10 years…

Distributions and Operating Systems

• [Old] Topic: Why do systemd users get very angry when you say systemd bad?

  And they protect it like, some kind of political ideology. And they can get very angry when people opposes them. Yet we are calm. It’s slow, we simply want it gone. Atleast for us home users.

• No systemd

  A good summary about most of the beforementioned distributions can be found here.

  You can also consider changing to BSD derivates: [...]

• Arguments against systemd

  1 Conceptional problems

  2 Poor design

  3 Scope creep

  4 Scope creep leads to vulnerabilities

  5 Absurd bugs and responses

  6 Breaking promises and immaturity

  7 Ignorance of fundamental operating system concepts

  8 further reading: additional links

• systemd is the best example of Suck.

  systemd is driving “just google the problem” attitude, because how the hell are you expected to troubleshoot this kind of error otherwise?

• [Old] Systemd: The Biggest Fallacies

  Over this past year, I’ve seen a lot of frequently-used but logically invalid arguments for using systemd. This blog post is meant to serve as a repository of common but invalid arguments for using systemd that I and others have had to refute multiple times. This is meant to be a living document–I’ll update it with more fallacies as I encounter them, and I will direct people here who make these mistakes.

  Please be informed that this post is not meant to be a criticism of systemd or its authors. For the record, I personally believe that the question “is systemd good or bad?” can only be answered in terms of a particular user’s requirements–systemd is good for the people who need it, but perhaps less desirable for people who do not.

• SystemD – it keeps getting worse

  There are some things where your first impression is “WTF?”, but on closer inspection turn out to have good features. The point of the pyramid is not so good looking, but the deeper you dig, the better it gets. Then there are other things where the top view is great, but “the digger you deep the deeper the doo”…

• [Old] Broken by design: systemd

  My view is that this idea is wrong: systemd is broken by design, and despite offering highly enticing improvements over legacy init systems, it also brings major regressions in terms of many of the areas Linux is expected to excel: security, stability, and not having to reboot to upgrade your system.

• [Old] Internet Archive ☛ UbuntuBSD

• [Old] Re: OT: Open letter to the Linux World

  But systemd has no clear goals, no specification, the single implementation is a moving target… it’s basically a microsoft product. Remember the days when the *.doc file format was “what microsoft offices produces and is capable of consuming”, and the staroffice guys went to GREAT LENGTHS to reverse engineer it made possible only by the fact that Microsoft went years between releases so they had time to work out what the office 6 format was before office 7 came out, and so on. Same for the Excel file format being “what microsoft’s implementation produces and consumes is correct by definition, every strange corner case bug of that one magic implementation _is_ the spec and there is no other.”

• [Old] DnE ☛ Structural and semantic deficiencies in the systemd architecture for real-world service management, a technical treatise

  The conventional understanding of systemd is usually related to its features as a service manager, or as an init system, and it is most often promoted and defended in relation to its capacity in that problem domain. Perks like journald are part of that, as reliable logging has long been established as an important part of a process supervision toolkit. The auxiliary components, such as logind and nspawn, are also frequently given praise, but they largely exist as services and utilities built on top of and consuming the capabilities of the systemd service manager, thus they are seldom advertised in isolation.

  The thrust of my argument, and the positions espoused in this paper, is that this interpretation is wrong, and that in fact almost all commonly given existing definitions of systemd lead to thinking of it in the wrong mental model. It is improper to interpret systemd as an “init system”, as a “service manager”, or as a “software suite for central management and configuration of the GNU/Linux operating system,” (as defined by Wikipedia at present), or even as a low-level userspace middleware.

  Instead, these all emerge or are designed on top of what systemd fundamentally provides and is: an object system for encapsulating OS resources alongside a transactional job scheduling engine (itself consisting of such objects) with the intention of providing a uniform interface for controlling and partitioning the units of CPU time, as well as static names and entities, in a GNU/Linux system.

  Many of my positions will be related to the complexity, inflexibility, inconsistencies and excessive indirection of the aforementioned object system, and why the model it presents is dubious for its stated goals of being a standard building block suite to base OS distributions (GNU/Linux, specifically) under.

• [Old] Ayer ☛ How to Crash Systemd in One Tweet

  After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system. The system feels generally unstable (e.g. ssh and su hang for 30 seconds since systemd is now integrated with the login system). All of this can be caused by a command that’s short enough to fit in a Tweet.

  Edit (2016-09-28 21:34): Some people can only reproduce if they wrap the command in a while true loop. Yay non-determinism!

• [Old] Why Would You not Use Systemd?

  I often see posts elsewhere about some folks not using systemd nor having any interest in using. It raises a few questions: [...]

• [Old] s6/s6-rc vs systemd, or why you probably do not need systemd

  Depending on your actual application scenario, sysvinit, OpenRC, or even upstart and systemd may actually be appropriate for your use, so this post does not attempt to persuade you to migrate to s6/s6-rc. Instead, it just uses s6/s6-rc to help you understand how the most touted features in systemd can be better implemented, and how necessarily (or not) these features are dependent on systemd’s architecture. I try to keep this post factually and logically correct, so please feel free to tell me if you find any mistake; I will update the post as necessary. If you like this post, please consider helping to spread the voice, so that more people will know superior alternatives to systemd.

• [Old] Dealing with Systemd

  Once again something new and unnecessary. We liked, even loved, the old shell script based scheme. But there are bored and restless programmers out there without enough imagination to find better things to do. So, like Hollywood remakes of old classics (which again underscore lack of imagination and creativity), we have systemd and are probably stuck with it.

  One justification for added complexity that I have heard is that systemd allows things in the boot process to run in parallel when possible. This makes boot faster (supposedly), as if we or anybody cares. It also has broken things by introducing nasty race conditions (notably nfs, which has even bitten me!).

  And, I have to point out, most users don’t give a flip how fast a system boots. Most of my systems run 30-40 days at a time, with reboots being done for maintenance (typically to pick up a new kernel). So, I could care less if boot takes 1 or 5 minutes, so long as it doesn’t take an hour. I am sure that most people feel this way, except a handful of developers. This tiny gain is not balanced by the price of introducting new complexity and breaking important things (like NFS, which still is not adequately fixed).

  So, we are stuck with systemd (and plymouth, and gnome3, and grub2), but we don’t have to like it.

• What is a Rc2040

  The RC2040 is an emulated RC2014 (a build your self Z80 computer). But this one is entirely contained within a RP2040 (Raspberry Pi PI Pico) processor.

  On the RC2040 you can Run any RC2014 Stock ROM image. including Basic and various Z80 monitors and CPM monitor. (except RomWBW there isn’t enough RAM) RC2014 Rom Image details are here

  Details on running the various RC2014 ROM based programs are here

• 10 logical fallacies to avoid in UX & product design

• Debian Family

  • Debian ☛ [Debian] bits from the release team: are you ready to skate yet?

    Hi all,
    
    First freeze is getting nearer
    ==============================
    
    On 12 January 2023 we're hitting the first milestone of the bookworm
    release: the Transition and Toolchain Freeze. If you made plans for
    the bookworm release, now is the time to evaluate if it's realistic to
    go ahead or if time is running too short. Keep in mind that others may
    have less time to work on your plans than you do. Remember you always
    have experimental to stage changes. If there is an unfixed bug that is
    nagging you, remember to fix it (e.g. via an NMU) now rather than
    later.
    
    When the Transition and Toolchain Freeze starts, we'll be expecting
    maintainers to not start new transitions, and to avoid large and/or
    disruptive changes in their uploads. Maintainers of packages that are
    part of the toolchain [TOOLCHAIN] are expected to stop uploading these
    packages. In case an upload is really needed, align with us before
    uploading to unstable.
    
    Please consult the bookworm freeze policy and timeline
    [BOOKWORM-FREEZE] for detailed information about the different types
    of freezes and what they mean for you.
    
    [TOOLCHAIN] https://release.debian.org/testing/essential-and-build-essential.txt
    [BOOKWORM-FREEZE] https://release.debian.org/testing/freeze_policy.html
    
    
    Help fixing bugs
    ================
    
    We know that many people would like short freezes (we do as well). We
    can achieve this if we all pull up our sleeves and fix RC bugs in
    testing before the transition freeze starts (or help remove packages
    with RC bugs from testing). You can do that now, by looking at the list
    of RC bugs [BUGS] or joining the #debian-bugs irc channel on
    irc.oftc.net.
    
    You may also want to check if your favorite packages are still in
    bookworm, and haven't been removed because of issues. This is your
    chance to bring them back.
    
    Now is also a good time to join one of the planned Bug Squashing
    Parties[BSP], or organize one yourself [HOSTINGBSP]. Note that Debian
    is willing to reimburse [REIMBURSE] reasonable expenses to attend Bug
    Squashing Parties.
    
    [BUGS] https://udd.debian.org/bugs/
    [BSP] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP
    [HOSTINGBSP] https://wiki.debian.org/HostingBSP
    [REIMBURSE] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/Reimbursement
    
    
    nocheck and nodoc build profiles
    ================================
    
    On our everlasting quest to make the key package set definition as
    useful as possible [ON-KEY-PACKAGES], we have established that it's
    often important to know if Build-Depends are needed for tests
    only. Therefore we would appreciate it if maintainers (particularly
    those of key packages) would actively seek for build dependencies that
    can be rightfully annotated with  [BUILD-PROFILES].
    
    For this to work it means that failing to build from source with the
    nocheck build profile will have to be RC, but until the bookworm
    release we will accept lower severity. Please consider checking that
    the annotation works as intended by building with --nocheck and
    comparing results with diffoscope.
    
    Please also consider supporting the nodoc build profile. We are aware
    that nodoc is regularly used in a non-reproducible way (as intended,
    but with this consequence), so checking for correctness of this
    profile may be a bit harder. Ideally, using the profile would just
    make documentation binaries virtually empty.
    
    [ON-KEY-PACKAGES] https://release.debian.org/key-packages.html
    [BUILD-PROFILES] https://wiki.debian.org/BuildProfileSpec
    
    
    Debian 14
    =========
    
    The release team has decided that the release after bookworm and
    trixie will be called forky.
    
    On behalf of the Release Team
    Paul
    

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • DebugPoint ☛ Ubuntu Budgie 22.10 Kinetic Kudu: Top New Features

    The Budgie desktop has a different fan base because of its fusion of simplicity, feature and performance. Ubuntu Budgie 22.10 is an official Budgie flavour of Ubuntu, where you get the latest Ubuntu base with a stable Budgie desktop.

    Ubuntu Budgie 22.10 is a short-term release, supported for nine months until July 2023.

    Here’s a list of new features and enhancements for the Ubuntu Budgie 22.10 “Kinetic Kudu”, introducing new version of Budgie desktop and more.

• Devices/Embedded

  • CNX Software ☛ Vecow launches NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin-based EAC-5000 Series Edge AI computing system

    Vecow EAC-5000 is a rugged AI computing system powered by NVIDIA’s Jetson AGX Orin 32GB or 64GB system-on-module designed for advanced edge AI applications such as in-vehicle computing, robotic control, machine vision, intelligent video analytics, and mobile robots.

    The embedded computer delivers up to 275 TOPS of AI performance thanks to the NVIDIA module, supports up to eight GMSL2 cameras, various wireless connectivity options with 6 antennas, 9V to 50V wide range DC power input, and operates in the -20°C to 70°C temperature range.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ ODROID SBCs pack Intel Jasper Lake processors

    Hardkernel recently introduced the ODROID-H3 and H3+ SBCs as successors of the ODROID-H2+ board released a couple years ago. These boards support up to 64GB RAM, dual 4K displays, dual 2.5 GbE ports and flexible storage interfaces.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Olimex ☛ ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo RISC-V development board with build in USB JTAG, WiFi, Bluetooth5, Lipo charger and 15 GPIOs

    This is all you need to get started with RISC-V programming in C and Assembly.

  • Olimex ☛ New shield for STMP157-OLinuXino Industrial grade Open Source Hardware Linux computer

    STMP15X-SHIELD plugs on top of OLinuXino, the overlays are already included in OLIMAGE Linux images and no need for additional setup.

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Tufty 2040 interactive name badge review

    Connecting the Tufty 2040 to a computer via USB enables you to program it in MicroPython or C++. The PicoGraphics library makes it relatively easy to write text and draw shapes. JPEGs can also be rendered, and sprites imported from a sprite sheet.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • GO Media ☛ Google Keeps Making Android’s Driving-Focused Modes Worse

    For those who appreciate a simpler experience, it’s good that Google Maps’ version is sticking around. Having choice is always better than not, though. Maps’ implementation has been more popular if you ask Google, but I’d hazard a guess that’s probably less an indictment of the Assistant Driving Mode’s quality and more of Google’s habitual disorganization with these features, hiding them away in voice commands and menus — in separate apps no less — and ditching them when engagement unsurprisingly never takes.

  • 9to5Google ☛ Pixel 7 review: Android’s ‘default’ device gets meaningful upgrades

  • Qt ☛ Qt for Android Automotive 6.4 is released

  • GSM Arena ☛ Samsung will roll out OneUI 5 and Android 13 to S22 family in October – GSMArena.com news

  • Android Authority ☛ How to change the ringtone on an Android phone – Android Authority

  • Android Police ☛ How to set up and customize your Android phone’s Material You theme

  • Android Headlines ☛ The YouTube Player UI On Android TV Gets A Redesign

  • Make Use Of ☛ Android Found to Be Leaking Data Even with VPN On

  • Geeky Gadgets ☛ Vivaldi 5.5 browser lands on Android – Geeky Gadgets

  • CNX Software ☛ Mekotronics LS1200 “live streaming” box is powered by MediaTek Genio 1200 SoC – CNX Software

  • Android Authority ☛ Here’s when Android 13 is coming to the Galaxy S22 – Android Authority

  • [Updated] Android 13 update tracker: Here’s everything we know so far – PiunikaWeb

  • Android Police ☛ Google’s dying to hear what you think of Android 13 QPR1 Beta 2

  • Android Police ☛ TWRP 3.7 released with Android 12 compatibility and support for more devices

  • XDA ☛ TWRP 3.7.0 released, finally brings Android 12 support

  • Hacker News ☛ Hackers Using Vishing to Trick Victims into Installing Android Banking Malware

  • Android Police ☛ Android and Chrome take their first steps towards a blissfully password-free future

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ How to Configure Daijisho Emulator Front-End for Android – Make Tech Easier

  • Android Authority ☛ How to change the ringtone on an Android phone – Android Authority

  • 9to5Google ☛ Google app makes it easier to customize the Search widget on Android

  • 9to5Google ☛ Signal to remove SMS and MMS support from Android app

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• [Old] Software Heritage – CVS loader

  The Software Heritage CVS Loader imports the history of CVS repositories into the SWH dataset.

• Tor ☛ New Release: Tor Browser 11.5.4 (Android, Windows, macOS, Linux)

  Our Android release follows our alpha branch to the ESR 102 release train. Please see the 12.0a2 blog post for details.

• Mailing list ARChives ☛ Software Heritage CVS loader – Call for public review

  The mission of Software Heritage is to collect, preserve and share all the publicly available source code (see https://www.softwareheritage.org for more information).

  Thanks to Stefan Sperling (@stsp), Software Heritage now has a CVS loader [1] [2]. It’s been deployed in our staging infrastructure [3]. We have ingested CVS origins that were listed from sourceforge [3].

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Paper review: The Gamma Database Project

    Last week, I read “The Gamma Database Project” for a Red Book reading group. Unlike the last paper for this group, this one was a lot more approachable in length: 19 pages.

    I’m putting up some of my notes here from reading the paper. If you read through to the end, there’s dessert: a quibble I have with the paper.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • 9to5Linux ☛ LibreOffice 7.4.2 Office Suite Released with 80 Bug Fixes, Download Now

    Arriving about a month after LibreOffice 7.4.1, the LibreOffice 7.4.2 point release is here to further address various issues, bugs, and annoyances discovered in the LibreOffice 7.4 office suite series. There are exactly 80 bug fixes included in the LibreOffice 7.4.2 point release.

    These bugfixes further improve compatibility with document formats from proprietary office suites, as well as support for LibreOffice’s native document format, ODF (OpenDocument Format). They also address crashes, bugs, and other errors reported by the community.

  • Document Foundation ☛ Release of LibreOffice 7.4.2 Community

    LibreOffice 7.4.2 Community, the second maintenance release of LibreOffice 7.4, the volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity on the desktop, is immediately available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows (Intel and Arm processors), macOS (Apple M1 and Intel processors), and Linux.

    LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite market segment, with native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) – beating proprietary formats for security and robustness – to superior support for MS Office files, to filters for a large number of legacy document formats, to return ownership and control to users.

• Education

  • Announcing SWHAP Days in October for Landmark Legacy Software Preservation

    We are very excited to announce the launch of SWHAP Days, a two-day workshop to reflect on the current state and the future of software preservation, exploring challenges and opportunities related to the collection, archival and display of our landmark legacy software.

    Organized with the support of [UNESCO], [INRIA] and [LIP6], this workshop will also be the chance to learn more about the Software Heritage Acquisition Process (SWHAP) and the Software Stories presentation platform, developed with support from [UNESCO] in collaboration with the University of Pisa and the sciencestories.io team.

• Programming/Development

  • uni Toronto ☛ We are stuck with egrep and fgrep (unless you like beating people)

    What’s special about GNU Grep 3.8 is that its version of egrep and fgrep now print an extra message when you run them. Specifically, these messages ‘warn’ (ie nag) you to stop using them and use ‘grep -E’ and ‘grep -F’ instead.

    (I assume that these messages are printed to standard error, because not even GNU Grep would be so hostile as to put them in standard output.)

  • Buttondown ☛ What a Wedding Taught Me About Software Engineering

    Same way for all heuristics: use it to make very low cost judgements or to jumpstart deeper investigations. If simplicity and performance are distinct goal qualities, what do the tradeoff choices look like? Is there a common pattern to them? Is there a conceptual group of “things that trade simplicity for performance” and vice-versa?

  • RTL ☛ Brain cells in dish learn to play video game

    Brett Kagan, who led a study published in the journal Neuron Wednesday, told AFP his findings open the door to a new type of research into biological information processors, complementing normal digital computers.

  • Trail Of Bits ☛ Porting the Solana eBPF JIT compiler to ARM64

    During my summer internship at Trail of Bits, I worked on the fork of the RBPF JIT compiler that is used to execute Solana smart contracts. The RBPF JIT compiler plays a critical role on the Solana blockchain, as it facilitates the execution of contracts on validator nodes by default.

  • Unravelling `if` statements

    The key insight is that if you put a break at the very end of a while statement, it will exit the loop unconditionally. That means if you make the conditional guard on the while loop be what the conditional guard would have been for an if statement, you end up with the same outcome!

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ ref

    Ref is a universal version of list-ref, hash-table-ref etc.

    It can handle lists, alists, hash-tables, strings, vectors, records, and all callable procedures (like call-tables).

    You can also pass multiple arguments to dereference recursively.

  • OpenSource.com ☛ What you need to know about compiling code

    Source code must be compiled in order to run, and in open source software everyone has access to source code. Whether you’ve written code yourself and you want to compile and run it, or whether you’ve downloaded somebody’s project to try it out, it’s useful to know how to process source code through a compiler, and also what exactly a compiler does with all that code.

  • Python

    • James G ☛ Adding fragmention links to my website

      An extension of this idea is the “fragmention.” Fragmentions let you link to a particular string of text on a document. This is useful if you want to link to a particular paragraph rather than an entire section. With direct links to a text in a paragraph, a website can apply styling to highlight either a particular string or a whole paragraph. I like this idea. Imagine being able to link to exactly the part of a document rather than conveying “click this link, then read the third sentence two paragraphs down.”

    • Viraptor ☛ Python dependency management difficulty is an unhelpful meme

      Python package management / installation is famously difficult… or so the story goes. This keeps getting reinforced by forum comments, quoting that one xkcd page, and people who aren’t actually running into the issues repeating the meme. In practice, it will take just a few minutes to understand and not end up in a mess.

      That’s not to say the Python ecosystem doesn’t have its issues. But let’s have a look at what’s actually simple, how things work in practice and what the real issues are. Warning: things will be simplified – if you think “yes but actually …”, you’re likely right and likely not the target for this post

      Let’s start with tooling. There are 3 categories of tools for helping with Python development: [...]

    • Adafruit ☛ Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython Supports Pico W in Latest Beta and much more! #CircuitPython #ICYMI #Python @micropython @Raspberry_Pi

      Work on the CircuitPython support for Raspberry Pi Pico W has reached the point where it has been released on circuitpython.org. While not feature-complete in CircuitPython 8.0.0-beta.1, it is usable for several types of WiFi use. It is currently being actively worked on by Adafruit – circuitpython.org.

  • Rust

    • Rust Weekly Updates ☛ This Week In Rust: This Week in Rust 464

    • OpenSource.com ☛ Asynchronous programming in Rust

      Asynchronous programming: Incredibly useful but difficult to learn. You can’t avoid async programming to create a fast and reactive application. Applications with a high amount of file or network I/O or with a GUI that should always be reactive benefit tremendously from async programming. Tasks can be executed in the background while the user still makes inputs. Async programming is possible in many languages, each with different styles and syntax. Rust is no exception. In Rust, this feature is called async-await.

      While async-await has been an integral part of Rust since version 1.39.0, most applications depend on community crates. In Rust, except for a larger binary, async-await comes with zero costs. This article gives you an insight into asynchronous programming in Rust.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Tools vs standards

    Figure out ways to use what’s there and to make what’s there better.

Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ Be The Star Of The Evening With This Light Up Prom Dress

  [Kellechu] went full parent beast mode by creating a prom dress for her daughter. This incredible build is a tour-de-force of DIY crafting, combining sewing, electronics, 3D printing and programming.

• Hackaday ☛ Enjoy The Beauty Of Corona Discharge With This Kirlian Photography Setup

  In our age of pervasive digital media, “pics or it didn’t happen” is a common enough cry that most of us will gladly snap a picture of pretty near anything to post online. So if you’re going to take a picture, it may as well be as stunning as these corona discharge photographs made with a homebrew Kirlian photography rig.

• The Nation ☛ Beyond the Wall: On Rick Barton

  I’m not the only one who’s been complaining lately that our art museums seem to have lost their nerve. In Artforum last year, for instance, Alex Kitnick lamented that “the dream of the avant-garde museum…has vanished into historical oblivion.” One side effect of the general malaise is that when a museum and its curators not only live up to their promise of serving all who are passionate about art—artists themselves first of all—but go to heroic lengths to do so, it’s newsworthy. You’re tempted to want to pin a medal on someone’s lapel. That’s how I feel about the Morgan Library and Museum and its associate curator of modern and contemporary drawings, Rachel Federman, for organizing the recent exhibition “Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Barton.”

• The Nation ☛ The Politics of Star Wars

  The Star Wars franchise has long seemed to have exhausted itself with endless sequels and prequels offering variations of the same old stories. That’s why the new Disney+ program, Andor, has come as a surprise to many viewers. In tone and story, it’s very different than the Star Wars norm, offering a much grittier story about imperial oppression, police violence, and the emergence of a revolutionary movement.

• Counter Punch ☛ In Search of a Vegan Christianity

  So while there are other elements of my background that made embracing anti-speciesism a struggle, thankfully, when it came to religion, I had a resource that made it considerably less difficult than it might have been. I’m the world’s most distracted and impatient meditator, but I’m very grateful for this. Not everyone has such a resource.

• Counter Punch ☛ Another Day at People’s Park

  Of course, the members of the Regents themselves didn’t dirty their own hands and aren’t directly responsible for the trunks of trees on the ground, the wood chips in huge mounds and the trash and garbage. But the Regents gave the green light to the men with chainsaws and heavy machinery who erected a chain link fence around the lot and then created chaos. For the Regents, the worse the better. As an eyesore, the lot persuades some citizens to say forget about the Park. Build, build, build.  

• Counter Punch ☛ Revolution in the Revolution

  The Berkeley Barb was an aggregator, a Huffington Post with sex ads. My job was to coordinate those sex ads. My ads upheld the lowest end of the Barb’s revenue stream; the paper’s economic engine was powered by full page display ads for records, concerts, and sex worker services: “BIG BUSTED BROADS OVER 21 looking for easy work with groovy hours & good pay. For Men Only.”

• Science

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ What happens when you donate your body to science

    The lab is secured both by ID badges and by Puche’s own rigorous standards. The timing of my visit was carefully planned to minimize the impact on students. When I asked to take a reference photo of a cabinet of wet specimens showing livers, gall bladders, and other organs from donors with specific medical conditions, Puche politely shook his head. The work of protecting donors’ dignity extends to those represented in the museum, who lived a century ago. This is what he’s trying to teach future physicians, who are supposed to treat body donors as they would a living patient. In addition to what’s on the intake form, students at Maryland are expected to keep charts on donors. As they discover new conditions a patient may have—a cyst, a past broken bone, a previous surgery—they note it. Students are required to follow HIPAA rules when discussing their donors outside the lab.

    “These are going to be physicians from day one,” said Puche. “We need them to be exercising the appropriate language choices, appropriate actions. So not only do I firmly believe in what I’m telling you as the right way to do it; it’s important for all faculty members to continuously and consistently display that to our students.”

• Hardware

  • Computer World ☛ PC sales fall off a cliff

    The sale of PCs in the third quarter of the year fell nearly 20% compared to a year ago, the largest drop in decades and the fourth straight quarter of year-over-year declines, according to preliminary research by two analyst firms.

    The surge in PC sales created by the pandemic and the tremendous uptick in hybrid and remote work is over and no longer adding to computer sales. Back-to-school PC purchases also showed “disappointing results, despite massive promotions and price drops, due to a lack of need as many consumers had purchased new PCs in the last two years,” according to Mikako Kitagawa, a director analyst at Gartner.

  • Hackaday ☛ This Infinity Dodecahedron Build Shows All The Tricks

    The infinity dodecahedron is one of those super eye-catching builds that many of us hardware hackers have on our ‘build one day’ project list. The very thought of actually doing it strikes a little fear into the heart of even the most intrepid maker, once you start to think about all the intricate little details and associated ways it could all go horribly wrong. Luckily for us, [Hari Wiguna] has documented his latest build as a long video build log, showing lots of neat tricks and highlighting many problems along the way. With the eventual goal of removing many of the issues that make such a build tricky, [Hari] hopes to make it practically easy. Let’s see how that turns out!

  • Hackaday ☛ The 2022 Supercon Badge Is A Handheld Trip Through Computing History

    Over the last several years, there’s been a trend towards designing ever more complex and powerful electronic event badges. Color displays, sensors, WiFi, USB, Bluetooth — you name it, and there’s probably a con badge out there that has packed it in. Even our own 2019 Supercon broke new ground with the inclusion of a Lattice LFE5U-45F FPGA running a RISC-V core. Admittedly, observing this unofficial arms race has been fascinating. But as we all know, a hacker isn’t defined by the tools at their disposal, but rather the skill and imagination with which they wield them.

  • Hackaday ☛ Toilet Paper Tube Pulls Dissolved Resin From IPA, Cures It For Disposal

    SLA 3D printing with resin typically means rinsing parts with IPA (isopropyl alcohol). That process results in cloudy, used IPA containing a high concentration of dissolved resin. The dual goals of cleaning and reusing IPA are important ones, and we have to say, [Jan Mrázek]’s unusual experiment involving a UV source and slowly-rotating paper tube to extract and cure dissolved resin might look odd, but the results are definitely intriguing.

  • Hackaday ☛ Watermelon CNC Uses Lazy Susan

    It is the time of year when a lot of people in certain parts of the world carve pumpkins. [Gonkee] is carving a watermelon, which we assume is similar. He decided to make a CNC machine to do the carving for him. The unusual part is the use of two lazy Susans to make a rotary carving machine. You can see the result in the video below.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Salon ☛ Microplastics found in human breast milk for the first time

    Indeed, a recent study in the scientific journal Polymers, conducted by Italian scientists, analyzed breast milk taken from 34 healthy mothers one week after they gave birth in Rome. The researchers then analyzed the breast milk to determine if there were microplastics present — and, in 75% of the cases, there were. When combined with the knowledge that microplastics have been found in human placentas, the authors argue, these results should raise a red flag.

  • New Scientist ☛ Exoskeleton boots learn how you walk to help improve your gait

    The exoskeleton boots used in the trials were built from aluminium and carbon fibre and have a motor to pull on a lever that helps to rotate the ankle and push off harder with the toes. The team found that the device, when trained outside a lab, led to a 9 per cent increase in walking speed and a 17 per cent reduction in energy cost during natural walking compared with normal shoes. The researchers calculate that these energy savings are roughly equivalent to removing a 9.2-kilogram backpack.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Lawsuit: Health Influencer’s Diet Made People Sick

    An attorney for the plaintiffs, Nathan Werksman, told Rolling Stone in a statement, “Just because F-Factor Defendants and their defense attorneys say the F-Factor products are safe or have been reviewed by experts does not make it true. As we have alleged, F-Factor Defendants have repeatedly made false statements to the public about their products. Sadly, in my opinion, this is more of the same from them.”

  • Pro Publica ☛ Deaths Raise Concerns About Roseland Community Hospital Quality of Care

    The hospital’s website is loaded with pithy phrases to reassure patients: Trust us. People come first. We provide best quality care. Always on time.

  • Democracy Now ☛ Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is “Heist” by Private Firms to Defraud the Public

    Many of the nation’s largest health insurance companies have made billions of dollars in profits by overbilling the U.S. government’s Medicare Advantage program. A New York Times investigation has revealed that under the Advantage program, health insurance companies are incentivized to make patients appear more ill than they actually are. Some estimates find it has cost the government between $12 billion and $25 billion in 2020 alone. We speak with former healthcare insurance executive Wendell Potter, now president ​​of the Center for Health and Democracy, who says Medicare Advantage will be recognized in years to come as the “biggest transfer of wealth” from taxpayers to corporate shareholders, and blames the lack of regulation over the program on the “revolving door between private industry and government.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ WHO Chief Demands ‘Sustained Action’ to Help Long Covid Patients

    “On behalf of the scientific community, health workers, and the patients with long Covid WHO has worked with, I urge all leaders to seriously ramp up support.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ More Than 57,000 US Sites Contaminated by Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’

    Scientists at Northeastern University in Boston led the study, which was published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology Letters and identified 57,412 sites where per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) contamination is presumed.

  • The Nation ☛ Bernie Sanders Should Know by Now: Abortion Is an Economic Issue

    Even before Roe v. Wade was overturned, whether you have a right to abortion has, in most of the country, boiled down to a simple economic question: Do you have hundreds of dollars for an emergency expense? Many Americans did not, even before outright bans forced swaths of the country to contend with travel, child care, and lodging costs, too. Whether you can access abortion depends not just on where you live but on whether you have sick days, health insurance, and child care. Whether you want an abortion in the first place is an economic question, too. Economic insecurity is one of the most common reasons people seek an abortion—and how messed up is that?

  • The Nation ☛ Everything Biden’s Pardon for Marijuana Convictions Does and Doesn’t Do

    The president’s issuing blanket pardons for all federal convictions of simple marijuana possession is, to put it in Biden-esque tems, a big fucking deal. At least 6,500 people charged with federal pot possession dating to 1992 will have their convictions overturned, as will an as-yet-unknown number of folks convicted as far back as the 1970s. Thousands more convicted of simple pot possession under Washington, D.C., drug laws will also have their convictions scrapped. Just as importantly, after more than 50 years of the federal government rating pot as in league with heroin and fentanyl, the president announced that Attorney General Merrick Garland and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra have been tasked with “expeditiously” reassessing pot’s categorization as a Schedule I drug. Considering the fact that its status deems it a substance with “no currently accepted medical use,” despite pot’s being legalized in at least 37 states for precisely that purpose, the move seemed long overdue. It’s no wonder the Internet applauded the president’s order by flooding social media with “Dank Brandon” memes.

• Proprietary

  • UXCollective ☛ One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

    The blue Apple picked for the iMessage bubbles provides a better color contrast against the white text on it compared to the green Apple picked for the Android bubbles. In other words, since text is white, Apple picked a darker blue but a lighter green to purposefully make the iMessage text more readable.

    To be clear, it is not that green is gross. It is the low color contrast of the green Apple picked and used against white text is gross.

  • India Times ☛ Cisco has cut prices of WebEx services by 50% to strengthen its hold on Indian market

    To provide the complete bouquet of video and messaging services to clients in India, the company has also taken a unified license from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ Pirates are against the new rules on [cryptocurrency] assets which will ban anonymous payments

      Tonight, the ECON and LIBE committees of the European Parliament will vote on a complete ban on anonymous [cryptocurrency] payments. The latest agreement between the European Parliament and the European Council goes even further than the original European Commission’s proposal which was setting the limit at the equivalent of €1000. The new rules will impose an identification requirement for crypto-asset transactions in all amounts. Moreover, all users of hosted wallets will now have to identify themselves, as well as all users who send non-hosted funds to hosted [cryptocurrency] wallets.

    • India Times ☛ New data protection bill draft is coming: 6 ways to ensure data security

      Speaking recently at the Global Fintech Fest’s third edition, Indian Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that in the next few days, the Centre will be coming out with a fresh draft of the data protection bill. The data protection bill is a landmark legislation meant to regulate how various companies and organizations use individuals’ data in India. The bill is aimed to provide protection of digital privacy to individuals relating to their personal data, specify the flow and usage of data, and create a relationship of trust between persons and entities processing the data. Such regulations are needed to safeguard the data and privacy of citizens.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ The complicated danger of surveillance states

      I recently had a very interesting conversation with Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin. They wrote a new book called Surveillance State, which explores how China is leading the global experiment in using surveillance tech.

      We covered a lot of important topics: how covid offered the ideal context to justify expanding government surveillance, how the world should respond to China, and even philosophical questions about how people perceive privacy. You can read the takeaways in full here.

      But in this newsletter, I want to share a few extra snippets from our conversation that have really stuck with me.

    • Hackaday ☛ Rollercoasters Are Triggering The IPhone’s Crash Detection System

      Apple has been busy adding new features to its smartphone and smartwatch offerings. Its new iPhone 14 and Apple Watch 8 now feature a safety system that contacts emergency services in the event the user is in a automobile accident.

    • Techdirt ☛ Employees Reveal Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Vision Is A Clunky, Boring, Ego-Driven Mess

      It will never stop being bizarre to me that a social media app tried to claim ownership of VR, AR, and effectively every next-gen, Internet-related technology under the “Metaverse” brand… and the entirety of the tech press just simply… went along with it. As a result, we’ve spent the better part of the last few years mired in an endless ocean of unhinged hyperbole about “the Metaverse vision” and what it means.

    • Techdirt ☛ Biden’s Executive Order On Surveillance Doesn’t Do Nearly Enough To Protect Privacy; Playing Word Games Doesn’t Actually Limit NSA Surveillance

      Back in March, we noted that the EU and US had announced that they had come to an agreement on transatlantic data flows. This is actually a really big and important story that gets almost no attention, because “transatlantic data flows” sounds boring. However, it’s really, really big and matters for the future of a global internet as opposed to an extremely splintered regional set of internets. People within Facebook have suggested that this is the single biggest issue facing the future of the company, which might be slight hyperbole, but just… slight.

• Defence/Aggression

  • ABC ☛ Ex-Oath Keeper says ‘many weapons’ were stored outside capital during Jan. 6 attack

    A former member of the Oath Keepers militia group testified Wednesday about the large stash of weapons stored by the group at a hotel just outside Washington, D.C., during the Jan. 6, 2001, assault on the Capitol, as prosecutors provided more details on the group’s planning and private communications leading up to the attack.

  • Members of the Riigikogu aim to declare the Russian regime a terrorist regime

    Today, 85 Members of the Riigikogu submitted a draft statement for legislative proceeding, condemning the annexation of the territory of Ukraine and declaring the Russian regime a terrorist regime.

    In the draft statement, the Riigikogu strongly condemns the military actions of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and the illegal annexation of the territories conquered during the aggression and avows that Estonia will never recognise the violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine through aggressions or sham referendums. “Violation of law can never create law. Putin’s regime with its threats of nuclear attack has turned Russia into the biggest danger to peace both in Europe and in the whole world Statement points,” the draft reads.

  • Salon ☛ America’s most effective fascism enforcers are bored boomers, not youthful brawlers

    To understand the threat, it’s crucial to look at how elections are being undermined in 2022 and ahead to 2024. As January 6 showed, violence may make a big splash, but it’s harder to actually hijack elections that way in the high-tech 21st century. For that, you need systematic breakdowns. The GOP has long used red tape regulations to gerrymander and suppress voter turnout. Even Trump, despite his fascination with violence, first tried to get the courts to steal the 2020 election for him, before resorting to inciting the Capitol riot. Even then, the violence of January 6 ultimately revolved paperwork: Preventing electoral votes from being counted in hopes of invalidating the election.

    What you need, in other words, are people who have the time and resources to engage in bureaucratic meddling. Trump is very fortunate in that regard — by far his largest and most robust vein of support comes from people of retirement age. (People over 65 turned out for Trump in greater numbers than any other group of voters.) A veritable army of Fox News-drunk grandparents is forming, ready to interfere every step of the way with the systems that turn out, collect and count votes.

  • ANI News ☛ Pakistan: TLP cleric calls for attack on Ahmadi pregnant women

    A video has emerged on social media showing a speech by TLP cleric Muhammad Naeem Chattha Qadri calling on his supporters to carry out attacks against pregnant Ahmadi women to “make sure that no new Ahmadis are born.”

    He insisted that “there is but one punishment for blasphemers, decapitation.” The preacher said should the attacks not be successful, “those babies who are being born should be killed,” according to a report in Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights.

  • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Over a tenth of snap military exercise call-up emails went unopened

    Even if a person never views the eesti.ee site and their in-box, they will get a notification to their regular email address as provided, and also by SMS text message, while the call-up will also be placed on the EDF service website (secure login needed to access).

  • Scheerpost ☛ Hopes of Peace in Yemen Are Fading

    Congress has the power to end the war in Yemen, but how likely is that?

  • Scheerpost ☛ Patrick Lawrence: Our Shared Addiction to Empire

    “If the Columbus myth has been thoroughly discounted, what is it that causes us to continue closing the banks, stopping the mail, and marching in parades on a Monday around October 12 each year?”

  • Scheerpost ☛ The World’s Other Nuclear Flashpoint

    Michael T. Klare examines how, as Ukraine burns, the U.S. is playing with fire on another continent.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Russian press reviews Telex’s interview with advisor to Ukrainian president – with modifications

    Mykhailo Podolyak’s statement on Transcarpathia made a big splash in the confined Russian media space. The bit about Putin was mostly omitted, but Regnum published a massive distortion in its coverage.

  • Meduza ☛ This is no second draft round — ‘we’re just topping up’ the army, regional officials say — Meduza

    Following the Kremlin’s lead, regional authorities across Russia are now denying the “second wave” of mobilization announced yesterday by the governors of Rostov and Kursk regions. Regional officials now say that there’s no such thing as a “second wave” of the draft. Instead, they’re just “slightly topping up the numbers.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Protection Zone’ Around Ukraine Nuclear Plant Urgently Needed, Says IAEA Chief

    A pair of independent monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who have been stationed at Europe’s largest nuclear plant since the conclusion of an inspection last month informed IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi around 8:30 am ET that the Zaporizhzhia facility had been reconnected to the grid several hours after a missile damaged an electrical substation more than 100 miles north of the site and caused it to go offline.

  • Meduza ☛ Russia’s ‘irrecoverable losses’ in Ukraine: more than 90,000 troops dead, disabled, or AWOL — Meduza

    More than 90,000 troops make up Russia’s “irrecoverable” military losses in Ukraine, as reported by the Russian media project iStories (or Vazhnye Istorii). One of the two sources of this information works in the FSB; the other is a former state security officer.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian authorities reportedly conscripting refugees from Mariupol — Meduza

    Authorities in the Russian city of Lipetsk have begun conscripting refugees from Mariupol, according to the independent Russian outlet Verstka.

  • Meduza ☛ Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says mobilization has not entered ‘second wave’ — Meduza

    Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov denied reports that Russia has begun a “second wave” of mobilization, according to an audio clip posted by the radio station Mayak.

  • Democracy Now ☛ Medea Benjamin & Nicolas Davies: Negotiations “Still the Only Way Forward” to End Ukraine War

    The Biden administration has ruled out the idea of pushing Ukraine to negotiate with Russia to end the war, even though many U.S. officials believe neither side is “capable of winning the war outright,” reports The Washington Post. This comes as the war in Ukraine appears to be escalating on a number of fronts, with Russian President Vladimir Putin accusing Ukraine of committing a “terrorist act” and launching the largest strikes on Ukraine in months. For more on the war, we speak with CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and independent journalist Nicolas Davies, the co-authors of the forthcoming book, “War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.” “We, the American public, have to push the White House and our leaders in Congress to call for proactive negotiations now,” says Benjamin.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | On Disagreements Between Left Comrades Over the War in Ukraine

    Anthony Burnett, a friend, comrade and collaborator, just published an article in openDemocracy, a splendid and much loved source of progressive ideas and material, to which he alerted me in a mail reading: “Dear Yanis, we disagree but in solidarity!” Since Anthony’s article mentions me, along with Jeremy Corbyn, in its subtitle, here I am, responding in the spirit of solidarity, affection and goodwill.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Dangerous Extreme Republicans

    They mean it, regardless of the impact their actions have on the majority of folks. Frankly, they don’t give a damn. It’s all about power. Theirs.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | The GOP Is a Cultish, Destructive Fascist Organization—Not a Legitimate Political Party

    US News and World Report has a story about how the fringe has become the mainstream in the Republican Party. The headline of their story says it all: “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Rises From GOP Fringe to Front.”

  • Meduza ☛ FSB arrests suspects in the Crimean Bridge explosion Russia releases its version of events relating to the bridge explosion. Ukraine calls the whole thing ‘nonsense’ — Meduza

    The FSB has identified 12 people suspected of coordinating and carrying out the October 8 explosion on the Crimean Bridge. It named the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, its director Kyrylo Budanov, and its “employees and agents” as organizers of the explosion. The agency also released its official account of the explosion, including a description of how an explosive device reached the Crimean Bridge on a truck. The Ukrainian intelligence agency declined to comment, calling the FSB’s activities “nonsense.”

  • Meduza ☛ ‘You don’t cover up disfigured corpses by saying something positive’ The Kremlin’s written instructions to propagandists tell a story of desperation, failure, and frictions with the media — Meduza

    The Russian President’s Office regularly sends detailed written instructions to state-controlled media, telling them exactly how to cover daily events in the country. Over the past six months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s publicity efforts were increasingly criticized by people who supposedly take their cues from those memos — the propagandists themselves. The Russian media are, of course, prohibited from calling the war a “war” and must instead always minimize it as merely a “special military operation.” But there is a lot more to how the Kremlin strives to limit and shape the information that reaches mass audiences. Meduza’s special correspondent Andrey Pertsev has pored over six months’ worth of the close-to-daily instructions — the so-called “metodichkas” — sent by the Kremlin to propagandist journalists, editors, and bloggers. It turned out that these documents speak volumes about current events — and Vladimir Putin’s attempts to maintain a grip on public opinion.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian journalist says he was signed up as a volunteer for the war without his knowledge — Meduza

    Vasily Krestyaninov, a journalist with Russian publication The Insider, says that his online state services account was hacked and he was signed up as a volunteer for the war in Ukraine. 

  • Meduza ☛ Two Russian conscripts die during training in Sverdlovsk region — Meduza

    Two conscripts have reportedly died in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region in the last week, according to Russian news outlets.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Entire subjects are being cut’ Russia’s schools are hemorrhaging teachers as they flee mobilization — Meduza

    In the three weeks since it began, Russia’s mobilization campaign has kneecapped the country’s education system. A new investigation from the independent media outlet Verstka found that Russian teachers, who aren’t exempt from the draft, are going into hiding and fleeing the country in droves. Private schools, many of which saw a spike in enrollment this year as families scrambled to avoid the “patriotic” curriculum implemented in public schools this fall, are facing closure. With no other options, students and parents have begun writing directly to politicians, pleading for individual teachers to be made exempt — a painful exercise for war opponents, who know that their appeals need to be soaked in praise for Putin and the Motherland to have a chance of being heard. Meduza recounts Verstka’s findings in English.

  • Meduza ☛ Eight people arrested in connection with Crimea bridge explosion — Meduza

    The Russian FSB has arrested five Russian citizens and “three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia” in a criminal case related to the October 8 explosion on the bridge between Russia and Crimea, Interfax reported Wednesday.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | The Media Finds Its War

    On Sunday, October 9, The New York Times published an article entitled “An American in Ukraine Finds the War He’s Been Searching For.” It could just as easily be entitled “The Media Finds the War It’s Been Searching For.” It is, sadly, a story of the corrupting influence war and profits have on everything, including the press, that very institution which is to keep a constant check on our government, particularly in affairs of war.

  • Meduza ☛ Czechia will ban entry for Russians with tourist visas from October 25 — Meduza

    Starting October 25, Russian citizens will not be allowed to enter Czechia on Schengen tourist visas issued by any EU country, Jan Lipavsky, Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs told the publication Novinky.

  • Meduza ☛ Georgia says it had no part in Crimean Bridge explosion — Meduza

    Georgian authorities announced that a truck, which exploded on October 8 on the bridge over the Kerch Strait, did not cross Georgian borders.

  • Meduza ☛ Putin speaks of Nord Stream explosions at Russian Energy Week — hinting at guilty parties — Meduza

    Explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines are a “most dangerous precedent” and “an act of international terrorism,” said President Vladimir Putin during the Russian Energy Week forum in Moscow, as reported by the Interfax.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Ukraine

    Let’s review the justification that U.S. officials cite for targeting those two cities with nuclear bombs. 

  • Counter Punch ☛ German Unity, War or Peace?

    The first years were great for Ossies’ travel possibilities and lovely commodity assortment, but otherwise – for millions – pretty ghastly! The over-hasty introduction of the “West-mark” into East Germany and the seizure, shuttering or penny-ante sellout of its entire, substantial industrial base caused havoc, misery and bitterness. Adding insult to injury, second or third string “Wessies” moved in and seized control and jobs – in the judiciary, police, education, journalism and economy. By and large, they still run them.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Surviving the Killing Fields: a Worldwide Challenge

    Absent from the briefings was any mention of regret or compensation for the thousands of civilians like Adel and his family whose lives have been forever altered by a drone attack. Human rights organizations like the UK- based Reprieve have sent numerous requests to the U.S. Department of Defense and the State Department, seeking compensation to assist with Adel’s medical care, but no action has been taken. Instead, Adel and his family rely on a Go Fund Me campaign which has raised sufficient funds to cover the most recent surgery and hospitalization. But, Adel’s supporters are now begging for more assistance to pay for crucial physical therapy plus household expenses for Adel and two of his sons, his primary caregivers during the extended stay in Egypt. The family struggles with precarious finances, yet the Pentagon budget seemingly can’t spare a dime to help them.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Attack on Crimea’s Kerch Bridge is Damaging to Putin, But It Doesn’t Change the Dynamics of the War

    The partial severing of the bridge linking Russia and the Crimean peninsula may be more important politically than militarily. It will further persuade countries such as China and India that Russia is losing the war and that they need to avoid becoming collateral damage. Russian allies in Central Asia and the Caucasus will see it as further evidence of Russia’s decline as a regional power.

  • TruthOut ☛ 66 Countries at the UN General Assembly Urge Ukraine-Russia Negotiations

  • TruthOut ☛ Nuclear Power Isn’t Clean — It Creates Hellish Wastelands of Radioactive Sewage

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Chaucer wrongly accused of rape for 150 years, newly unearthed documents show

    Documents appear to indicate that “raptus” refers to Chaumpaigne suddenly breaking the terms of her employment with Staundon in order to join Chaucer’s service instead.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Hungary’s biggest opposition party has ignored Telex’s questions for months – they now say they will look into it

  • Democracy Now ☛ Massive Leak of Military Docs Reveals Mexico Armed Cartels, Surveilled Journalists & Zapatistas

    A stunning leak of more than 4 million documents from inside the Mexican military has revealed collusion between high-level military officials and the country’s cartels. The leak, published by the hacking group Guacamaya, is one of the largest in Mexico’s history and shows how military officials sold weapons, technical equipment and key information about rival gangs to cartels. The documents also show how officials monitored journalists and activists using Pegasus spyware, and evaded cooperation with the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa. For more, we’re joined by journalist Luis Chaparro, who examined some of the documents and reported in a piece for Vice that they reveal Mexico’s military sold grenades to the drug cartels.

  • Techdirt ☛ US Federal Courts Agree To Refund Fees They Overcharged People For Access To PACER

    You may recall that, back in 2016, a lawsuit was filed against the US federal judiciary and how it charges for PACER. If you don’t know, PACER is the court system’s electronic filing/records system, that allows users to access documents in federal court. It looks and acts like it was designed in the 1990s, and charges absolutely ridiculous amounts to use. Every “page” costs $0.05, and that includes for any searches that you do (with a somewhat arbitrary definition of a “page.”) The problem is that the law that enables the judiciary to charge for PACER pretty clearly says that the courts can only charge “reasonable fees” and can do so only to the extent necessary to fund the PACER system itself.

• Environment

  • The Economist ☛ Richard Mosse documents the hidden war in the Brazilian Amazon

    “Broken Spectre” is urgent. On October 30th Brazilians will vote in a run-off to decide whether or not to give Jair Bolsonaro a second term in office. The fate of the rainforest hangs in the balance. Levels of deforestation have reached a record high on Mr Bolsonaro’s watch, and nearly all of it is illegal. His scorn for indigenous reserves and environmentalists has emboldened criminals, who are among the subjects of Mr Mosse’s work.

  • Energy

    • Dawn Media ☛ Scammers make off with $100m from [cryptocurrency] firm

      The total stolen was $580 million, but company chief Changpeng Zhao said roughly 80 percent had been frozen immediately, and the damage had been limited to less than $100m.

    • New York Times ☛ Can E-Bikes Go Mainstream?

      In a bike market remade by the pandemic, VanMoof, the Dutch e-bike company started by the brothers, has been among the biggest winners. With a simple and stylish design and clever integration of technology, the company has drawn comparisons to Apple and Tesla and has attracted a loyal and fast-growing customer base among urban professionals in Europe and the United States.

      Sales of the battery-powered bikes more than tripled during the pandemic, and the company has raised more than $150 million from venture capitalists who don’t typically bet on bicycles.

    • Common Dreams ☛ Scientists Launch Petition Urging Academic Publisher to Stop Aiding Fossil Fuel Industry

      Elsevier, a Dutch firm that operates more than 2,700 scientific, technical, and medical journals in which research is peer-reviewed and disseminated, and its parent company, RELX, claim to be committed to environmental protection, vowing to minimize their “contribution to climate change, in line with the scale of action deemed necessary by science.”

    • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Want to Punish the Saudis? Fast-Track Nuke Agreement With Iran and the Green New Deal

      Reuters reports that the Biden White House is upset with Saudi Arabia over the recent OPEC+ decision to cut the output of the 21 nations grouped in the bloc by 2 million barrels a day. President Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview Tuesday, “there will be consequences” for Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the U.S.

    • Counter Punch ☛ Will NOPEC Bill Spell the End of Saudi Treachery?

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Meet the 66-year-old ranger still battling poachers in Zambia

      Now his efforts have been acknowledged with a prestigious Tusk Wildlife Ranger Award, sponsored by the Nick Maughan Foundation, to be presented at the Tusk Conservation Awards, in partnership with Ninety One, on November 1 at Hampton Court Palace.

      The veteran scout was an easy choice for the judges. During his 14 years in office as a Senior Ranger Support Manager, 570 firearms have been confiscated, 2,660 snares removed, and 1,250 poachers stopped in their tracks.

    • The Conversation ☛ The science of why hawks are one of nature’s deadliest hunters

      How do hawks steer clear of the confusion effect that bewilders us humans when watching a swarm? To answer this question, we filmed the hawks as they plunged into the stream of bats flowing from a cathedral-like cave. High-definition video cameras placed strategically around the mouth of the bat cave allowed my team to reconstruct the 3D trajectories of the hawks and the bats they attacked. But recreating a behaviour is only the first step towards understanding its mechanics. Next, my team analysed how the hawks steered their line of attack.

      We used a computer simulation approach that we had first developed in 2017 to study the attack behaviours of peregrine falcons. This method uses a set of mathematical formulae called differential equations to simulate the birds’ behaviour.

    • The Revelator ☛ 30 Ways Environmentalists Can Participate in Democracy

  • Overpopulation

    • uni Michigan ☛ Tools help Great Lakes region plan for climate-change migrants

      Communities in the Great Lakes region need to start planning now for a future that may include “climate migrants” who leave behind increasingly frequent natural disasters in other parts of the country.

      And user-friendly web-based tools can be a central part of that planning process.

• Finance

  • TruthOut ☛ Workers Make $1.3 Million More Through Their Careers When They’re in a Union

  • Pro Publica ☛ How Mandatory Reporting Punishes Poor Families

    In response, Pennsylvania lawmakers enacted sweeping reforms to prevent anything like it from ever happening again.

  • Scheerpost ☛ 1 in 3 of World’s Poorest Countries Spend More on Debt Repayments Than Education

    Brett Wilkins summarizes key points from a new report from Save the Children which highlights the clear “moral imperative for the world to act now to ensure that all children are in school and learning.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ Poor Hit Hardest as ‘Maternity Care Deserts’ Grow Across US

    “Our country is facing a unique and critical moment as the infant and maternal health crisis continues intensifying.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Less Than 2 Minutes to Understand the GOP’s Dangerous ‘Independent State Legislature Theory’

    The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments on the “independent state legislature theory,” a dubious reading of the Constitution that would let state lawmakers gerrymander and suppress votes without the traditional limitations imposed by governors, state judges, and state constitutions. Checks and balances — so central to our country’s vision — would be wiped out. 

  • Common Dreams ☛ House Dems Slam ‘Economically Catastrophic’ GOP Ploy to Gut Social Security and Medicare

    “Past debt-limit brinksmanship resulted in the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating and cost the country billions of dollars in lost economic activity, even though a default was ultimately avoided,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in a statement after several House Republicans outlined their intentions in interviews with Bloomberg Government on Tuesday.

  • Common Dreams ☛ DeJoy Faces Outrage Over New Postal Service Price Hikes

    Late last week, the USPS notified the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) of its planned price increases, which are set to take effect in January. Under the new pricing proposal, which must be approved by the PRC, the cost of a stamp would rise 4.2% to 63 cents while the cost of a postcard would jump 9% to 48 cents.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Beware the Destructive Force of Shareholder Hegemony

    Attention, class! Here’s our word of the day: “hegemony.” The word describes a situation in which some force becomes the domineering power over a society. Think of a gang of schoolyard bullies. Like them, various kinds of hegemonies have arisen throughout history to rule local, national and even global “schoolyards,” shoving other interests aside and subordinating the whole community to their will.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Robert Reich ☛ The Election Deniers on the Ballot: What You Need to Know

  • Patrick Breyer ☛ European Digital Identity: EU Parliament wants decentralized data storage and right to anonymity

    Tonight, the EU Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) will vote on amendments to the envisaged “European Digital Identity” and “digital wallet”, calling for far-reaching changes to the Commission’s proposal. Among other things, use is to remain voluntary and alternative identification without disadvantages is to remain on offer. Service providers should, as far as possible, enable the anonymous use of their services; otherwise, self-selected, changing pseudonyms could be used for signing up to Internet services. Instead of mandating a unique personal identification number or “citizen number” throughout Europe, every Member State would be able to opt for identifiers that are different for every service. The committee also calls for decentralized storage of the contents of the personal “digital wallet” (e.g., credit card data, driver’s license, medical prescriptions) exclusively on the holder’s own device, unless the holder requests external backup and data storage.

  • The Hill ☛ Court blocks Texas social media law from taking effect

    The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a controversial Texas social media law from going into effect Wednesday as industry groups seek to bring the case to the Supreme Court.

    The court granted a request from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice to prevent the law’s implementation ahead of a potential Supreme Court hearing on the case, the tech associations said Wednesday.

  • Joinup ☛ The United Nations E-Government Survey is out

    The United Nations E-Government Survey 2022 is the 12th edition of the United Nations’ assessment of the digital government landscape across all 193 Member States. The E-Government Survey is informed by over two decades of longitudinal research, with a ranking of countries based on the United Nations E-Government Development Index (EGDI), a combination of primary data (collected and owned by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and secondary data from other UN agencies.

  • UN E-Government Survey 2022

    This edition of the Survey includes data analysis in global and regional contexts, a study of local e-government development based on the United Nations Local Online Service Index (LOSI), consideration of inclusion in the hybrid digital society, and a concluding chapter that outlines the trends and developments related to the future of digital government. As wish all editions, it features extensive annexes on its data, methodology and related pilot study initiatives.

  • Axios ☛ Scoop: TikTok chases Amazon with plans for U.S. fulfillment centers

    Why it matters: The move signifies TikTok’s commitment to e-commerce as its next major revenue stream, following the explosive growth of its ads business.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Africa Is Not Immune to the Rising Tide of Xenophobia

    Xenophobic politics aren’t just on the rise in the West, but in African countries like South Africa. And the culprit is similar: a ruling elite that refuses to address rapacious economic inequality and instead fans the flame of anti-foreign resentment.

  • The Atlantic ☛ J. D. Vance and the Collapse of Dignity

    Today, we no longer expect or even want our politicians to be better than we are. The new American right, however, has blown past the relatively innocuous populism of the past 40 years and added a fetid cynicism about almost everything related to public life. Not only are the MAGA Republicans seemingly repelled by the idea of voting for someone better than they are; they support candidates who are often manifestly worse people than the average citizen, so that they may slather their fears about their own shortcomings and prejudices under a sludgy and undifferentiated hatred about almost everyone in public office.

    These populists not only look past the sins of their candidates but also defend and even celebrate them. Let us leave aside the cult around Trump, which has now reached such levels of weirdness that the specter of Jim Jones is probably pacing about the netherworld in awe. Instead, consider how many people cheer on unhinged cranks such as Marjorie Taylor Greene or allow themselves to be courted by smarmy opportunists such as Vance and Ted Cruz.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Who Is My Member of Congress & What Do They Do?

    Here’s a refresher how the lawmakers we elect are supposed to make laws.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Orbán: When I visited Putin before the war, I could tell there was trouble

  • Common Dreams ☛ Cori Bush to GOP: Stop Putting ‘Profits Over People’ With Attacks on Student Debt Relief

    “Efforts to undermine the Biden administration’s student loan cancellation program are the latest example of Republicans and student loan servicers prioritizing profits over people and corporations over constituencies,” Bush said in a statement as a group of GOP attorneys general—including Missouri AG Eric Schmitt—made their case for an injunction against student debt forgiveness.

  • The Nation ☛ The American Socialism That Might Have Been

    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.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Losing Ground, Cortez Masto Defeat in Nevada Could Cost Democrats Senate Majority

    Cortez Masto’s is one of few key Senate races—along with those in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that election watchers largely consider a toss-up. In Nevada, the first-term incumbent senator faces Republican Adam Laxalt, who succeeded her as state attorney general.

  • The Nation ☛ The Future of Democracy Depends on the Ground Game

    Anybody paying attention—and not everybody is—knows that the upcoming midterms are different. This election will determine whether autocrats gain ground, consolidate power, and set themselves up for a 2024 federal trifecta, or whether they are pushed back hard enough for a nascent pro-democracy alliance to cohere.

  • TruthOut ☛ Far Right Supreme Court Justices Reject Appeal of Man Condemned by Racist Jurors

  • TruthOut ☛ Nevada GOP Candidate Vows to “Fix” Elections to Reinstate Trump as President

  • TruthOut ☛ Wall Street Lobbyists Admit Big Banks Don’t Plan to Honor Their Climate Pledges

  • TruthOut ☛ The Treasury Department Is Investigating DeSantis’s Migrant Transporting Stunt

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ Misinformation Swirls in Non-English Languages Ahead of Midterms

      Unsubstantiated rumors and outright falsehoods spread widely in immigrant communities ahead of the presidential election in 2020. That is happening again in the run-up to this year’s midterm elections, researchers say, but with an insidious twist: The social media accounts pushing misinformation are now targeting audiences in more languages on more topics and across more digital platforms, with scant resistance from social media companies.

    • The Hill ☛ Google adds Trump’s Truth Social to Play Store after holdup

      Google has added former President Trump’s Truth Social app to its Google Play Store after a holdup over its content moderation plans.

      Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, had criticized the tech giant in August after it said the app did not meet Google’s standard policies, namely having effective systems for moderating user-generated content.

    • Hollywood Reporter ☛ Judge Dismisses John Stossel’s Defamation Suit Against Facebook Over Fact-Checking

      U.S. District Judge Virginia DeMarchi found that Facebook couldn’t have defamed Stossel because its fact-check program “reflects a subjective judgment about the accuracy and reliability of assertions” made in the content that’s been checked. “Simply because the process by which content is assessed and a label applied is called a ‘fact-check’ does not mean that the assessment itself is an actionable statement of objective fact,” reads the order.

    • BBC ☛ US midterm elections: Does Finland have the answer to fake news?

      More than ever, the spotlight is on the so-called fake news problem and the real-world consequences it can have.

      Despite the increased focus on tackling false and misleading claims on social media, including from the tech giants themselves, disinformation is still seeping through the cracks.

    • Common Dreams ☛ Far-Right Conspiracy Grifter Alex Jones Hit With Nearly $1 Billion in Damages for Sandy Hook Lies

      “There will be more Alex Jones in this world, but what they learned here today is that they absolutely will be held accountable.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Hill ☛ PayPal just gave America an eerie glimpse into the future. There’s no going back

    It is not difficult to imagine the consequences of a payment processing giant instituting such a policy, making it the arbitrator of “truth” and giving it a stranglehold over a person’s livelihood when it disagrees with that individual. The chilling impact on speech was evident, for example, when the Canadian government froze the bank accounts of protesting truck drivers during the pandemic. Did PayPal observe the effect that Canada’s policy had, essentially eliminating the protests overnight, and decide to introduce a similar rule to establish themselves as influential speech moderators?

    Misinformation is harmful to society and should not be tolerated. However, creating rules that permit a single body to determine what constitutes “information” and what constitutes “truth” is inappropriate. Frequently, misinformation is just an unproven theory or a disputed viewpoint that causes dissidents to consider the opposition as the enemy.

  • The Economist ☛ Despite lethal repression, Iran’s protests continue

    Almost a month after protests erupted at the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman detained by the morality police for showing too much hair, Iran’s ayatollahs are still struggling to keep order. Unrest has spread across the country, prompting strikes in some bazaars and oil installations. State news bulletins which ignored the protests now denounce them as foreign plots. And in an effort to regain full control the ayatollahs have reinforced the police with units of ideological paramilitaries known as the Basij. The loyalty of the army, which has stayed on the sidelines, has yet to be tested.

  • VOA News ☛ Iran Sees ‘Major’ Internet Disruption Amid Renewed Protests

    Calls for protests beginning at noon Wednesday saw a massive deployment of riot police and plainclothes officers throughout Tehran, witnesses said. They also described disruptions affecting their mobile internet services.

    NetBlocks, an advocacy group, said that Iran’s internet traffic had dropped to some 25% compared to the peak, even during a working day in which students were in class across the country.

  • New Indian Express ☛ The censor cannot hold: the pressure of controlling China’s hidden internet content

    What he found when he went online was astounding.

    “There was just like a whole new world that was waiting for me to explore,” he told AFP. The Chinese government’s early attempts at web censorship were imperfect; VPNs provided access to subjects and information not discussed publicly.

    In amongst the forbidden fruit was “The Gate of Heavenly Peace”, a three-hour documentary on student protests in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

  • SCMP ☛ China blocks internet anticensorship tools ahead of 20th party congress as the Great Firewall grows in sophistication

    The move marks an escalation of the Great Firewall’s censorship ahead of the party congress expected to extend President Xi Jinping’s term in power

  • TechCrunch ☛ Popular censorship circumvention tools face fresh blockade by China

    TLS, or transport layer security, is a ubiquitous internet security protocol used for encrypting data sent across the internet. Because data shared over a TLS connection is encrypted and cannot be easily read, many censorship circumvention apps and services use TLS to keep people’s conversations private. A TLS-based virtual private network, or VPN, directs internet traffic through a TLS connection instead of pushing that traffic to one’s internet provider.

    But Chinese censors seem to have found a way of compromising this strategy. “The blocking is done by blocking the specific port that the circumvention services listen on. When the user changes the blocked port to a non-blocked port and keeps using the circumvention tools, the entire IP address may get blocked,” GFW Report says in the post.

    According to GFW Report’s estimates provided to TechCrunch, more than half of China’s netizens who circumvent online censorship use some sort of TLS-based tools.

  • Dawn Media ☛ TikTok deletes 15.4m videos from Pakistan

    Pakistan, with 15,351,388 videos removed for violating Community Guidelines, ranked second in the world for the largest volume of videos taken down in Q2 2022.

  • Dawn Media ☛ Twitter reviews policies around permanent user bans

    Twitter has been exploring if there are other content moderation tools that could replace a ban, its harshest penalty for violating rules, the newspaper said, citing multiple people familiar with the situation.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • VOA News ☛ ‘Bucha Became the Turning Point,’ Says Russian Journalist

    But when Moscow invaded Ukraine, the pressure on Fomina and her news outlet, iStories, ratcheted up.

    IStories, which is registered outside Russia, was designated a foreign agent in 2021. But in March, she and her team learned that just a few days before the war, Russian authorities had also declared their media outlet an “undesirable organization.”

    The media team’s reaction was unanimous. They needed to leave.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • New York Times ☛ Protests in Iran Spread, Including to Oil Sector, Despite Violent Crackdown

    Defying a lethal crackdown in cities across Iran, protesters demanding the ouster of Iran’s Islamic Republic have driven their uprising into a fourth week, with workers from the country’s vital oil sector going on strike this week and activists calling for further work stoppages and protests on Wednesday.

    Despite efforts by Iran’s security forces, including the feared plainclothes Basij militias, to crush the protests, they have only widened. Some have turned into chaotic street battles, with the security forces opening fire and protesters fighting back and refusing to give ground, according to witnesses, rights groups and videos of the clashes on social media.

  • TruthOut ☛ Starbucks Kept List of Pro-Union Employees to Punish, Ex-Manager Says

  • Scheerpost ☛ ‘We Are Not Done Yet’: Railroad Track Workers Reject New Deal

    With 56 percent of BMWE’s members voting against the new deal, leaders hope they can return to bargaining table.

  • Scheerpost ☛ What an Alabama Prisoners’ Strike Tells Us About Prison Labor

    People incarcerated in the Alabama prison system began striking Monday over what they’ve described as inhumane treatment. Organizers say thousands have participated in the work stoppage. 

  • Counter Punch ☛ Annie Ernaux and the Literature of Experience

    From her first book Cleaned Out in 1973, Ernaux’s work has been closely informed by her own life experiences. She has continued to surprise and inspire readers with coverage of daring topics and her innovative approach to genres. Her body of work includes discussions on the act and art of writing, texts incorporating personal photographs, intimate and public diaries, and life-writing that refuses to be contained by categories.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Objective data shows that the level of corruption in Hungary does not differ from EU average – Hungary’s Chief Public Prosecutor

  • Common Dreams ☛ New Data Tool Details Thousands of Corporations Profiting From US Prison Industry

    The Prison Industry Corporate Database, published by New York-based Worth Rises, includes publicly traded and privately held corporations spanning 12 sectors: architecture and construction, operations and management, personnel, programs and labor, equipment, data and information systems, telecom, financial services, food and commissary, healthcare, transportation, and community corrections.

  • The Nation ☛ Hispanic/Latinx USA

  • The Nation ☛ The Radical Polymath Who Fought for Freedom

    In July, Chandler Davis, an American Canadian mathematician and human rights defender, delivered welcoming remarks at a panel for the “Azat Miftakhov Days Against the War” in Ukraine from his hospital bed in Toronto, a vase of sunflowers by his side.

  • TruthOut ☛ Palestinian Hunger Strikers Are Facing Harsh Retaliation Inside Israeli Prisons

• Monopolies

  • Scheerpost ☛ Big Tech: Not Only Market but Also Knowledge and Information Gatekeepers

    How do we regulate an information utility?

  • TruthOut ☛ California Amazon Workers File to Join Amazon Labor Union

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ More Than 20,000 Pirate Sites Are Blocked By ISPs Around the Globe

      The Motion Picture Association has provided a fresh overview of global pirate site-blocking efforts, which now span over 20,000 sites. Blocking measures have expanded to 39 countries in recent years, with the United States remaining the key absentee. The lack of US participation is partly due to a shortcoming in US copyright law, which lacks a carve-out for no-fault injunctions.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Streaming Site Punishes Movie Fans With Free Festival Tickets

      People searching for movies on pirate streaming sites are regularly presented with ‘interesting’ offers. Whether it’s the prospect of becoming a crypto-billionaire overnight or learning one simple trick to lose belly fat, few are known to deliver. With that in mind, we checked out a new pirate site that hopes to connect movie pirates with those behind the silver screen.

    • Techdirt ☛ Techdirt Podcast Episode 333: Walled Culture

      One of the oldest and most important topics on Techdirt is copyright, and the many problems with the law both here and abroad. One of the best voices on the subject, here and in many other publications, is Glyn Moody, who recently released his book Walled Culture, that goes through the history of how legacy copyright industries have tried to harm the internet and gain ever greater control over the work of artists and creators. It’s available as a free e-book under a Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication, and today Glyn joins the podcast to discuss the book and the long, often-sad story of copyright law around the world.

    • Techdirt ☛ Ed Sheeran Just Can’t Get Away From Ridiculous Copyright Lawsuits

      We’ve written a bunch about how Ed Sheeran recognizes how batshit crazy current copyright law is. One of the most successful recording artists today, you’d think that maybe he’d be a copyright maximalist, and yet copyright just seems to keep getting in the way of his creativity. Sheeran has admitted that piracy made him successful. When he started out as an independent artist, he says it was people sharing his music through pirate sites that built up his fan base, eventually leading to his record deals. He’s also been supportive of fans who got hit with copyright claims for covering his songs.

    • NPR ☛ The Supreme Court meets Andy Warhol, Prince and a case that could threaten creativity

      As you might imagine, each side has its experts, and indeed two lower courts disagreed on the matter. A Federal District Court judge found that the Warhol series is “transformative” because it conveys a different message from the original, and thus is: “fair use” under the Copyright Act. But a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, declaring that judges “should not assume the role of art critic and seek to ascertain…the meaning of the works at issue.” If the Supreme Court agrees, the Warhol Foundation will have to pay royalties or licensing fees, and potentially other damages to the original creator, Lynn Goldsmith.

      However the Supreme Court rules, its decision will have rippling practical consequences. So it is no surprise that some three dozen friend of the court briefs have been filed arguing on one side or the other, and representing everyone from the American Association of publishers and the Motion Picture Association of America to the Library Futures Institute, the Digital Media Licensing Association, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the Recording Industry Association of America, and even the union that represents NPR’s reporters, editors and producers, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

    • Techdirt ☛ French Parliament Wants To Make People Pay A License Fee To Use Public Domain Works

      The public domain is the natural state of creative material. It’s where creations end up once copyright’s monopoly has expired. Crucially, it is the quid pro quo for that monopoly. The deal is that the creator of a work is granted a government-enforced intellectual monopoly for a limited period, after which the work enters the public domain for anyone to use for any purpose, including commercial ones. That’s the bargain, but it seems that the copyright maximalists in the French Parliament want to renege on it. Here’s an amendment to a finance bill that was proposed by 75 politicians in the National Assembly a few days ago (translation by DeepL):

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • Where are My Philosopher Kings?

    Plato’s Republic can come across as naïve, and I find that fact tragic.

    Broadly, the book climaxes with a plan to make a state ruled by Philosopher Aristocrats. While Plato calls these rulers “Philosophers”, we shouldn’t picture modern Philosophy students, but academics.

    I find the failure tragic because all rulers – whether by committee or a single ruler – have failed spectacularly at plenty of basic questions.

• Outages

  • thebackupbox.net outage on 2022-10-12

    A thunderstorm rolled through and seems to have fried JUST the PoE injector
    that my internet connection uses to power an antenna that’s outside for the
    point-to-point wireless connection to a tower the ISP owns.

    Having woken up at 3pm and not getting my butt in gear until 6pm, I didn’t
    really have much choice of physical-store to buy one of these at.

• Technical

  • apps are (mostly) overrated

    The more I think about it the more I realise there’s no point in most of the apps. After not touching grass for years, looking at how people live their lives with their phones, their use case seems to be very different to mine, and there are serveal things about it.

    Apps like YouTube or Instagram are basically mobile frontend for Web 2.0 sites. Sure they may load stuff faster but them being apps also grant them unnecessary power and control to your device. Besides, some of them even tries to make their website worse so that the app may offer a generally better experience to the user, or at least on the outside that is.

  • GrapheneOS – A Short-Term Review

    I’ve been running GrapheneOS, a custom Android OS built for privacy and security, on my Pixel 4 XL and have really been enjoying it. It’s been a couple weeks now so I think it’s time I share some thoughts on it.

    If you haven’t seen my recent post on choosing a custom OS to install, it may be worth a read first if you’re unfamiliar with custom Android OSs/ROMs.

  • Programming

    • Overflowing with Colours

      The current Project Euler is going to force me to create a program that does *manual division* and that is quite ok, but it’s getting late and yes that’s an excuse, but fuck um. I shall write some hovno and then get on with my day, saving the *manual division* for tomorrow morning. Hopefully, my sodden brain will muse over it throughout the current day and my sprightly morning mood will conquer it’s flimsy heights with ease. But yes – tomorrow.

      I’ve begun the second revision of *Pony Ride*. It gurgles and eructs as if it were galloping through the scented air of my studio. An issue I’m encountering, which is an issue entirely in my mind, is that of timbre variation. Rock bands have it easy. The basic timbres are established and beyond a bit of distortion or flange on the guitars and bass, they can concentrate on harmonic and melodic ideas.

    • Re: What is a “unit test”?

      Like Sean, a major portion of my developer career has been in the realm of C. However, I have release production quality code in languages from Assembly, C++, C#, F#, Javascript, Python, Rust, tcl/tk and Racket. All of these follow different paradigms. Procedural, OOO, Functional. Statically and Dynamically typed. With how different they all are, you’d expect Unit Testing to be just as complex and nuanced. When I was doing low level system development in I was building industrial control communications systems that could not have failures or down time. For that reason the QA/UAT process was very long and arduous. In the field beta testing took months. From the software side I wrote two types of tests: Unit Tests and System Tests.