Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 01/11/2022: Nitrux 2.5 and Linux Mint's Plans



  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

      • DebugPointBest Remote Desktop Clients for Ubuntu and Other Linux [2022]

        Remote desktop clients allow you to connect to any other desktop/server and perform tasks remotely. It's one of the important aspects of IT support and other commercial use cases. In Linux, there are many remote desktop clients available. Some of them are free, while others are paid versions. All of these clients support popular remote desktop protocols (RDP) such as VNC, RDP and others.

        This article looks at some of the best free remote desktop clients for Ubuntu and other distros. The list includes free and open-source apps and some free-to-use but proprietary apps.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Manuel MatuzovicDay 26: using combinators in :has()

        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.

      • 50 Useful Vim Commands

        Here are 50 useful Vim commands that work in normal mode. Many of these can be combined and modified to produce dozens more. Use these as inspiration for your own repeatable workflows. In no particular order: [...]

      • DJ AdamsMore Untappd data explorations with jq - my top ranking beer types (part 2)

        So now it's time to pick out the data I need for the analysis, and that is, for each checkin, the beer's category, and my rating. I'll start by just mapping the array of checkin objects to an array of smaller objects just containing these two things: [...]

      • uni TorontoSilencing KDE application notification sounds under fvwm

        Although I don't use KDE as a desktop, I use a few KDE applications from time to time, mostly kdiff3. Among other things, kdiff3's what Mercurial prefers to use when resolving conflicts in a 'hg pull -u', which comes up from time to time as I have a custom copy of the Firefox development tree. For a while now, kdiff3 and the occasional other KDE applications I use have been making noises at me to notify me of various things. I'm very strongly against programs making noises at me and normally turn this stuff off, but this time around I couldn't find an obvious way to do it in places like kdiff3's own application settings. Normal people might reach for their desktop's general settings, but for my sins I don't use a desktop environment; I use a custom setup built around fvwm as my window manager.

      • Installing Linux Images on Toradex Verdin Boards

        In the post Setting Up Yocto Projects with kas, we built the Linux image for the Toradex Verdin iMX8M Plus. It’s time to flash the image on the board using the Toradex Easy Installer (TEZI). It’s a three-step procedure: wire up the board in a special way, install and run TEZI on the board, and flash our custom-built Linux image from a USB drive on the board.

      • VideoVim: How To Comment Multiple Lines - Invidious

        Vim has a visual block mode which lets you do multiline comments easily. In this video I show you how to comment out a function block using the visual block mode relatively quickly with minimal typing.

      • HowTo ForgeHow to Install Wiki.js on Rocky Linux 9
      • HowTo ForgeHow to Install MEAN Stack on Ubuntu 22.04

        The MEAN stack is a free and open-source JavaScript-based framework used for developing web applications.

      • It's FOSSHow to Remove Snap Packages from Ubuntu and Other Linux

        Installed Snap package earlier and now you want to uninstall it?

      • Red Hat OfficialHow to work with lists and dictionaries in Ansible | Enable Sysadmin

        Learn how to analyze and use data in lists and dictionaries, a crucial skill for anything you want to do with Ansible.

      • H2S MediaCommand to view DNS records for a Domain in Ubuntu Linux

        The Domain Name System (DNS) is a central directory service that is responsible for name resolution on the Internet. If problems arise, it can sometimes be useful to take a look behind the scenes and, for example, to determine an IP address for a hostname. A useful tool for this purpose is nslookup, which we will introduce to you in more detail in this post.

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • It's FOSSKate Editor is Getting Four New Awesome Features

          Kate Editor is a constantly evolving and powerful open-source text editor that acts as a viable alternative to Microsoft's proprietary Visual Studio Code application.

          It is available for Linux, Windows, and macOS.

          The code editor received a significant upgrade in 2021 potentially making it KDE's answer to Microsoft's offering.

        • KDE Yocto Updates - cordlandwehr

          Time is running and already a couple of weeks passed since I have been at this year’s Akademy in Barcelona. It was great to (finally again!!!) meet people in person and talk about free software projects, while eating tapas our having nice beer.

          One of the topics on my agenda was the next iteration of our Yocto layers. At the moment we have two layers provided by KDE for downstream usage, “meta-kf5” and “meta-kde“. The first provides a simple integration of KDE Frameworks into Yocto projects and the second one is a set of KDE Plasma (Desktop, Mobile & Bigscreen) and KDE Gears applications, which is mostly focused on providing nice show cases of KDE software.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Jim NielsenWebsite Fidelity: Browser Perspective

        Website owners aren’t necessarily incentivized to start stripping stuff out of their websites in order to support lower fidelities (including a fidelity of zero JavaScript). What you need is like an agent: somebody who works on your behalf as a user and can do for you what site owners won’t — a user agent if you will 🥁.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • Phil EatonA minimal RocksDB example with Zig

        This post is going to be a mix of RocksDB explanations and Zig explanations. By the end we'll have a simple CLI over a durable store that is able to set keys, get keys, and list all key-value pairs (optionally filtered on a key prefix).

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • Document FoundationDo something awesome! Join the Month of LibreOffice, November 2022 - The Document Foundation Blog

        Love LibreOffice? ❤ You’re not alone – tens of millions of people use the software every day. And hundreds of people around the world collaborate to improve the suite, update its documentation and help to spread the word. Join them!

        In the coming four weeks, we’d love it if you get involved, join our community, and have fun. You can build up valuable skills for a future career – and you don’t need to be a programmer. There are many ways to help make LibreOffice awesome, as we’ll see in a moment.

      • Document FoundationLibreOffice and Google Summer of Code 2022: The results

        This year, LibreOffice was once again a mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a global program focused on bringing more student developers into free and open source software development. Two projects were finished successfully. Students and mentors enjoyed the time, and here we present some of the achievements, which should make their way into LibreOffice 7.5 in early February 2023!

    • Programming/Development

      • Python

      • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

        • Data SwampNushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell

          In a nutshell, nushell is non-POSIX shell, so most of your regular shells knowledge (zsh, bash, ksh, etc…) can't be applied on it, and using it feels like doing functional programming.

          It's a good tool for creating robust data manipulation pipelines, you can think of it like a mix of a shell which would include awk's power, behave like a SQL database, and which knows how to import/export XML/JSON/YAML/TOML natively.

  • Leftovers

    • The NationWhy Did the Football World Reject Geno Smith?

      On this week’s episode of the Edge of Sports podcast, we spoke to sportswriter Chuck Modiano about shock NFL MVP candidate Geno Smith, quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. Chuck predicted this for Smith when others did not. We talk about what he saw.

    • The NationThe Odyssey

      In the most trivial sense, books about being undocumented are about immigration. Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s Undocumented, Julissa Arce’s My (Undocumented) American Dream, Jose Antonio Vargas’s Dear America, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans, and Qian Julie Wang’s Beautiful Country are all about how US immigration policies can sever family ties and categorically exclude populations deemed “undesirable.” These narratives are also about much more: They are about family, childhood, trauma, gender, loss, and joy. They are about the ways in which migrants are far more than the sum of what the United States puts hem through. They are agents in their own right, who define and shape their histories.

    • HackadayDropping Marbles With Millisecond Accuracy

      [Martin] of the band [Wintergatan] is on his third quest to build the ultimate musical marble machine, and that means dropping marbles with maximum reliability and precision timing. Working through several iterations, and returning to first principles, he engineered a marble gate that can drop marbles with a timing standard deviation of 0 ms.

    • MeduzaSquatters take over Amsterdam home of sanctioned Yandex founder Arkady Volozh — Meduza

      A group of squatters have taken up residence in a house in Amsterdam that belongs to Yandex founder Arkady Volozh, they told the publishing network IndyMedia.

    • Counter PunchWe Can’t Go On, We Must Go On

      Beckett’s story was unspeakably strange to me when I first read it in 1979. It seems very familiar to me now. Nothing seems to happen. Or perhaps everything that’s happening has already happened before. He’s stuck in a history that keeps repeating itself like a needle stuck in a lethal groove. If history won’t move, he must. This is our challenge, too, isn’t it? But not only must we move, we need to move others along with us.

    • Counter PunchAmerican Values or Christian Beliefs

      It is remarkable that United States citizens wrote this, for America, their nation, is a Constitutionally secular government, and through its 250-years it has not only “long endured,” it has thrived, to become in many ways the most successful nation in history.

    • Counter PunchThe Art of Protest: Selling Out van Gogh and 8 Billion Others

      In life, van Gogh was an impoverished painter, suffering for his unappreciated work. In death, he is anything we want him to be. Perhaps the soup-throwing protesters wanted to draw attention to the exploitation of art or how materialism devours the spirit, including a broken artist’s dreams. That is, along with the obvious plea emblazoned on their t-shirts for an end to oil. Is any work of art safe from such acts? Is any artist safe from exploitation?

    • Education

    • Hardware

      • Hackaday3D Printed Strain Wave Gearbox

        3D-printed gearboxes are always an interesting design challenge, especially if you want to make them compact. [ZeroBacklash] created a little strain wave gearbox (harmonic drive) for when you want to trade speed for torque on NEMA 17 stepper motors.

      • HackadayInfinitely Scrolling E-Ink Landscape Never Repeats

        Traditional Chinese landscape scrolls can be a few dozen feet long and require the viewer to move along its length to view all the intricate detail in each section. [Dheera Venkatraman] replicated this effect with an E-Ink picture frame that displays an infinitely scrolling, Shan Shui-style landscape that never repeats.

      • HackadayThe Best Threaded Holes For Resin Parts

        Threaded inserts are great for melting into FDM prints with a soldering iron. The process isn’t so simple for resin prints, since they don’t generally soften with heat. Off course, you can also print the threads directly, screw a bolt into an un-threaded hole, or tap a hole. Following his usual rigorous testing process, [Stefan] from CNC Kitchen investigated various ways of adding threaded holes to resin prints.

      • HackadayLighting Up Glue Stick Bicycle Tyres With RGB

        Being visible to motorists is a constant concern for cyclists, but we doubt [The Q] will have this problem with his RGB LED illuminated tires made from glue sticks.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Eesti RahvusringhäälingAir pollution a matter of life and death

        Around Europe, air pollution is still the number one environmental cause of premature death, with hundreds of thousands of people dying early every year due to dirty air. In Estonia, the most recent figures show 500 people dying before their time every year. Millions more suffer from the effects of polluted air, with asthma, cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer, all of which are now linked to pollution beyond dispute.

    • Security

      • Krebs On SecurityAccused 'Raccoon' Malware Developer Fled Ukraine After Russian Invasion - Krebs on Security
      • Make Tech EasierFTC Orders Homework Help App Chegg to “Shore Up Security” [Ed: Fake security for stuff that ought to be banned (far more harms then benefits)]

        Chegg has offered various educational tools for high school and college students over the years. This includes a homework help app and a scholarship search service. While this sounds great initially, if it’s not protecting students’ personal information, then the help really isn’t … helpful.

      • Hacker NewsCritical RCE Vulnerability Reported in ConnectWise Server Backup Solution

        IT service management software platform ConnectWise has released Software patches for a critical security vulnerability in Recover and R1Soft Server Backup Manager (SBM).

        The issue, characterized as a "neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component," could be abused to result in the execution of remote code or disclosure of sensitive information.

        ConnectWise's advisory notes that the flaw affects Recover v2.9.7 and earlier, as well as R1Soft SBM v6.16.3 and earlier, are impacted by the critical flaw.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Matt RickardFacebook's Culture Book (2012)

          When Facebook hit one billion users in 2012, it started leaving little red books on everyone's desk. These books contained stylized graphics of the company's culture and what it aspired to. It's an interesting snapshot of Mark's thinking at the time and interesting to reflect on today, especially since the company is at an important crossroads. The full text is below: [...]

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Environment

      • Green Party UKRishi Sunak must show global leadership at COP27, say Greens

        “Despite being pushed into attending, if he does ultimately go to the COP27 climate talks, we should welcome this news. With the UK holding the COP26 presidency, attending to hand the baton on to Egypt is absolutely essential to demonstrate the UK’s commitment to building on last year’s climate talks.€ 

      • Counter PunchGuinea’s Plight Lays Bare the Greed of Foreign Mining Companies in the Sahel

        Boké, in northwestern Guinea, is the epicenter of the country’s bauxite mining. Guinea has the world’s largest reserves of bauxite (estimated to be 7.4 billion metric tons) and is the second-largest producer (after Australia) of bauxite, an essential mineral for aluminum. All the mining in Guinea is controlled by multinational firms, such as Alcoa (U.S.), China Hongqiao, and Rio Tinto Alcan (Anglo-Australian), which operate in association with Guinean state entities.

    • Finance

      • Counter PunchRevolutionary Marxism vs. Chomsky: Reflections on a Recent Interview

        The title of the interview is “The Class War Never Ends, the Master Never Relents’: An Interview with Noam Chomsky.” I find this a bit odd. That’s because Barsamian and Chomsky talk about what Chomsky calls the “proto-fascist” (more on that term below) attack on “what’s left of democracy” – an assault notable in Chomsky’s words for its “white supremacy, racism, misogyny, Christianity, anti-abortion rights” (Chomsky’s words). € Clearly, then, we are dealing also with race war, gender war, religious war, and culture war, and an overall war on democracy. These attacks are taking place in a class rule society and fuel divisions that serve the capitalist ruling class, of course, but they do not simply reduce to “class war.”

      • MeduzaCrimea set to nationalize property that belongs to people and organizations ‘tied to Kyiv’ — Meduza

        Sergey Aksyonov, head of government in the Russian-annexed Crimea, has ordered a nationalization of private property belonging to either people or organizations “tied to the Kyiv regime.”€ 

      • The NationThe Fed’s Ruinous Course

        The financial shamans at the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, are hiking interest rates at a record rate, intent on slowing growth, throwing millions of workers out of work, and suppressing wage increases. If the Fed holds its course, it will drive the economy into a recession or worse, add to poverty and inequality in the United States, trigger a debt crisis amid growing hunger across the world—and quite likely help elect Donald Trump or whatever gelded MAGA stand-in Republicans end up nominating in 2024. Yet, faithful to the gospel of central bank independence, neither the president, nor Democratic congressional leaders, nor, with few exceptions, progressive legislators have questioned the Fed’s ruinous course.

      • TruthOutMore Churches Are Making Illegal Endorsements as IRS Fails to Enforce Law
      • Common DreamsOpinion | A Wealth Tax Won't End Inequality But It Could Help Fund a Much Better Society

        Every time I hear that we as a nation cannot afford something—whether that might be assuring non-toxic water in Jackson and Flint or universal pre-K or an industrial policy with teeth—I have wondered how many dollars a national wealth tax might yield. So I looked the numbers up.

      • Common Dreams'Could Be a Political Game Changer': Biden to Float Windfall Profits Tax on Oil Giants

        Biden is set to float the popular tax proposal during a White House speech at 4:30 pm ET, days after oil companies in the U.S. and Europe reported massive—and, in the case of ExxonMobil, record-shattering—profits for the third quarter of this year.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • New York could become first state with a ‘Right to Repair’ law for electronic devices

        The bill has not been sent to the governor for her signature or veto but Fahy said her and her office have been in contact with the governor’s staff on the issue. However, Fahy said there has been opposition to this first in the nation bill becoming law making it a “David versus Goliath battle.”

      • senate Bill S4104A: 2021-2022 Legislative Session: Enacts the digital fair repair act

        This bill requires original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to make diagnostic and repair information for digital electronic parts and equipment available to independent repair providers and consumers if such parts and repair information are also available to OEM authorized repair providers.

      • RlangGetting acquainted with Mastodon — Instances

        This decentralised approach now also works with short messages. Via Mastodon. I can choose my server, or my instance as it is now called. But my messages can be read by all Mastodon users, no matter which instance they use. I find that convincing.

        Which instance is the right one for me? Who offers me a Mastodon account now?

        My research this weekend revealed 55 potential providers. I collected these manually, I did not find a central overview of providers. (EDIT: As is sometimes the case, after writing this I found the link to the Fediverse Observer. There is even an API there. I'll take a closer look at that another time).

      • The NationCan the Midterm Elections Help Solve the Climate Crisis?

        Over the past 10 years, Gavin Healy, a senior at the University of California–Berkeley, has seen his hometown in the Lake Tahoe area of Northern California—once a lush, green place—turn brown. A nearby lake is completely drained from a decades-long drought, and uneven water restrictions have created a patchwork landscape. Most summers, fires have brought with them destruction and dangerous air quality. Just last year, a wildfire forced Healy and his family to evacuate their home. Recalling one fire season in 2018, he said, “I remember the sky being completely black, and you can’t breathe, and I’d be walking home for three or four miles, just casually going, and I’d be like, ‘OK, like this is like the most ridiculous thing ever.’”

      • GamingOnLinuxElon Musk completes Twitter takeover, Nextcloud to ship their own social network app

        Just a bit of big industry news to cover today, as an update to the previous article talking about Elon Musk and Twitter — as the sale has completed. Plus a reminder on Mastodon and Nextcloud doing some fun social stuff too.

      • Common DreamsBolsonaro Yet to Concede as Progressives Worldwide Celebrate Lula's Win

        "Six years ago, the coup against Dilma Rousseff ushered in a dark period in Latin America's largest country," DiEM25, a pan-European pro-democracy movement, said in a statement Monday, referring to the 2016 ouster of Lula's presidential successor and ally. "A darkness that deepened with the political imprisonment of Lula, and culminated with the election of Jair Bolsonaro and the disastrous—and criminal—acts perpetrated by him during his presidency."

      • Common Dreams'Lungs of the Earth Will Breathe Easier Tonight': Amazon Defenders Cheer Lula Victory

        Da Silva, who is commonly called Lula, spoke directly in his victory speech about protecting the 1.5 million square miles that the Amazon spans in Brazil, saying, "Brazil and the planet need a living Amazon."

      • TruthOutBolsonaro Has Yet to Concede After Lula Wins by More Than 2 Million Votes
      • Common DreamsOpinion | Lula's Victory in Brazil Proves Transformative Change Is Won When We Are United

        "Those in power can kill one, two, or a hundred roses, but they'll never be able to stop the arrival of spring."

      • Scheerpost‘A Brazil of Hope’ as Leftist Lula Defeats Far-Right Bolsonaro in Presidential Runoff

        Brett Wilkins reports on reactions to Lula's win against Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil's presidential runoff elections.

      • Democracy NowLula Defeats Bolsonaro in Brazil in What Many See as a Victory for Democracy & the Earth

        Leftist presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won Brazil’s runoff election, ousting far-right President Jair Bolsonaro after just one term. Lula won with 50.9% of the vote, though Bolsonaro has yet to concede. Other world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, were quick to congratulate Lula on his victory in an effort to forestall efforts by Bolsonaro and his allies to deny the results. Brazilian socialist organizer Sabrina Fernandes says Lula is trying to return “democratic normality” after four years of Bolsonaro’s environmental destruction, COVID denial and undermining of the country’s institutions. Lula’s victory is also a win for Indigenous peoples, whose sovereignty was disregarded under Bolsonaro amid rampant deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, says freelance journalist Michael Fox.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Lula's Win a Victory for Amazon Rainforest and Global Climate

        Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was elected on Sunday to his second (non-consecutive) term as president, in a victory for the planet earth as well as for Brazil. He first served 2003-2010. Since 2019, Brazil’s president has been the far right demagogue Jair Bolsonaro, who just lost to the leftist da Silva, affectionately known by his nickname “Lula.”

      • The NationElon Musk’s Big Twitter Adventure Will End in Disaster

        On Thursday, Elon Musk completed his protracted and bumpy purchase of Twitter, a contentious business deal he himself had been working to terminate just a few months ago. Hours later, in the dark of Friday morning, an assailant broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house in San Francisco with the apparent intent of harming or killing her. The break-in ended with a hammer attack on Pelosi’s husband. The two events are linked together by chronological proximity. Reporting quickly made clear that the alleged attacker, David DePape, had imbibed a toxic stew of social media hate speech.1

      • TruthOutAfter Twitter Takeover, Elon Musk Tweets Far Right Conspiracy on Pelosi Attack
      • The NationThe Pelosi Attack Marks an Age of Political Violence

        Last week’s attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at the couple’s San Francisco home represents another in a long series of stress tests for American democracy. And as at past such inflection points—the January 6 insurrection, the mobilization of a vast corps of election-denying and conspiracy-mongering candidates in the GOP, the pillaging of social media platforms by feckless billionaires—the system is showing every sign of impending breakdown. An assassination attempt targeting the person third in line for the presidency—Paul Pelosi’s hammer-wielding assailant, David LePape, reportedly shouted, “Where is Nancy?”: the same refrain raised by January 6 rioters vandalizing the speaker’s office—largely registered within key segments of the American right as a regrettable and over-ardent case of propaganda-by-deed , if not indeed another conspiracy targeted at their movement.

      • Counter PunchElon Musk Takes Over Twitter, Can We Stop Wasting Time on Campaign Finance Reform?
      • TechdirtLet’s Talk About Twitter Verification!

        You may recall that, back in April, Elon Musk announced that one of his plans was to “authenticate all real humans” on Twitter. This was his plan to somehow magically get rid of spam. As we noted at the time, doing so would create some pretty serious questions regarding freedom of speech on the platform when it comes to protecting anonymous voices.

      • Pro PublicaElections Officials Facing Unprecedented Challenges

        The elections director, 47-year-old Michella Huff, who’d lived in the county since high school and knew many voters by name, considered it ludicrous that anyone could think the election had been rigged in Surry County. Donald Trump had received upward of 70% of the roughly 36,000 votes cast. Huff, a registered Republican for most of her adult life, had personally certified the vote.

      • Counter PunchThe NYT Loses Its Editorial Mind

        The DoJ ban on the seizure of records or notes from reporters is particularly noteworthy. Nevertheless, one of the€ Times’ editorials charged that Biden “rarely has set policy goals,” and as a result Biden’s appointees have “no idea how the president would want them to make key decisions.”€  The new DoJ rules institutionalized a policy that President Biden put in place last year, which certainly qualifies as an example of Cabinet officials knowing what the president wanted as well as an example of Biden knowing what he wanted to do from the outset.€  Yet, Yuval Lewin from the American Enterprise Institute, a contributing Opinion writer at the€ Times,€  referred to Biden’s “presidential feebleness.”

      • Common DreamsAIPAC Super PAC Throws in Against Progressive Democrat Summer Lee

        According to new federal filings, the United Democracy Project (UDP) has dropped nearly $80,000 on mailers opposing Lee, who overcame millions in UDP spending to win the district's May primary over corporate lawyer Steve Irwin.

      • TruthOutAIPAC Super PAC Ramps Up Spending Against Progressive Democrat Summer Lee
      • Common DreamsFetterman Calls on Dr. Oz to Fire 'Multiple Insurrectionists' on Staff

        Rolling Stone reported on Sunday that at least two people working on Oz's campaign attended the rally former President Donald Trump held in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 before thousands of his supporters waged an attack on the U.S. Capitol and tried to stop lawmakers from certifying the 2020 election results.

      • TruthOutRight-Wing Hostility to Elections Harkens Back to Jim Crow “Apartheid,” AOC Says
      • TruthOutAOC: McCarthy’s Relative Silence on Paul Pelosi Attack Shows “Who He Is”
      • TruthOutGOP Insiders Predict DOJ Will Indict Trump After Midterms
      • Common DreamsTrump Asks Supreme Court to Halt Release of IRS Records to House Dems

        Trump's request comes after a federal appeals court paved the way last week for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to turn over his tax records to the Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee.

      • Counter PunchThe Unspoken Label for America's Growing Political Movement is "Reactionary"

        The easiest way to note the relative absence of using “reactionary” would be to watch liberal or conservative-oriented media. Think about how often you hear the word “reactionary”€ from news analysts and commentators on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News describe politicians, policies, or organizations.€ It would fall into the range of seldom to almost never.

      • Craig MurrayA Real Plebiscite Election, or Fight the SNP

        A “plebiscite election” on Scottish Independence can only mean an election fought on that issue with the understanding that, if the election is won, Independence will be declared. It cannot mean anything else.

      • ScheerpostOh, Great Democracy!
      • The NationScary Times for Democracy
      • ScheerpostChris Hedges: Death of an Oracle

        We have very few oracles. The loss of the poet Gerald Stern means we have one less.

      • Counter PunchThe Democrats Murder Another Third Party
      • Counter PunchIndependent State Legislature: the New Pitch-Black

        Moore involves whether the Election Clause (Article I, section 4 of the Federal Constitution) validates the Independent State Legislature (ISL) theory.€  Not surprisingly, ISL has been and is being promoted by Donald Trump as part of the Big Lie and his effort to subvert Joe Biden’s win of the 2020 presidential election (by both the popular and electoral college votes).

      • TruthOutSocialist and Centrist Visions for Housing Are at Center of LA City Council Race
      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

        • DeSmogDeSmog Launches Project to ‘DeBunk’ Climate Misinformation

          This misinformation is being pumped out when, as UN climate science body the IPCC has said, we have “a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.

        • NPRRight-wing "zombie" papers attack Illinois Democrats ahead of elections

          Pri Bengani, a senior researcher at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, counted more than 1,200 conservative local news outlets connected around the country in Timpone's network.

          She considers them AstroTurf sites "laundering advocacy," driven by the interests of their funders, not an interest in news or in making money from the conventional news business. And she says the Illinois papers served as a model for what's mushroomed nationally. She first issued a study on the proliferation of the sites in 2019.

          In a new report, released today by the Tow Center in the Columbia Journalism Review, Bengani concluded the sites are providing services even beyond the publications.

        • New York TimesThe Latecomer’s Guide to TikTok

          TikTok is not just for viral dance videos — it’s also wildly complicated. Its algorithm, which makes it easy to consume videos, has been blamed for amplifying misinformation and other harmful content. The Biden administration is currently negotiating with ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, over concerns about national security and the safety of Americans’ personal data on foreign servers. And there are ongoing concerns about the mental health harms the app may pose to teenagers and young people.

        • Pro PublicaDHS Has Pulled Back on Tracking Disinformation to Help Election Workers

          But the reality of the administration’s efforts has been less robust than its rhetoric. Instead, a ProPublica review found, the Biden administration has backed away from a comprehensive effort to address disinformation after accusations from Republicans and right-wing influencers that the administration was trying to stifle dissent.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • ABCSedition trial begins for closed Hong Kong news site editors

        Stand News editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam were arrested last December during a crackdown on dissent following widespread anti-government protests in 2019.

        Stand News was one of the city's last openly critical voices after the closure of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, whose jailed founder Jimmy Lai faces collusion charges under a sweeping national security law enacted in 2020.

      • Counter PunchAnother Letter from London

        Not so long ago, my journalist friend dated a well known figure working in Hollywood. As a parakeet dramatically chased off a magpie above our heads, we discussed this person and he remembered me encouraging him to write about the experience of being out there at the time and how he now wished he had. He has some wonderful stories still to tell — and I implored him once again to do so — of busy sets and sideline parties interspersed with driving through burning landscapes. One particular story relates to an extremely well known actress upset during a particularly important outdoor shoot that everyone was suddenly diverting their attention from to study instead a giant and wonderful sea mammal breaking through the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. Affronted the star was. She had been upstaged by a bloody whale. As I said goodbye to my friend, I noticed a long line of black 4x4s choking up the road, with only one person in each. The sun in the sky remained unseasonably warm, almost Californian, as it continued to reach planet earth, and all should really have been well in the world, but it so infuriatingly wasn’t.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Pro PublicaColorado Suspends Custody Evaluator After ProPublica Investigation

        Jaime Watman, of the State Court Administrator’s Office, confirmed the audit of all custody evaluators and said that Mark Kilmer, who has served for decades as an evaluator in Colorado family courts, has been suspended while his “continued suitability” is reviewed. Kilmer was arrested and charged with assault in 2006 after his then-wife said he pushed her to the bathroom floor, according to police reports.

      • The NationHow to Talk About Public Safety

        As we approach the midterm elections, “defund the police” has become a zombie political slogan that just won’t die—thanks to Republican midterm candidates determined to keep it alive as an attack on Democrats, and Democrats who feel compelled to refute it on its own terms. Even President Biden, when he took the stage this summer to inoculate his party against soft-on-crime attacks, fell into the same trap, saying, “It’s based on a simple notion: When it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer is not ‘defund the police.’ It’s ‘fund the police.’”

      • The NationMeredith Tax, 1942–2022

        In her long life, relentless feminist organizer and writer Meredith Tax, who died on September 25 of breast cancer, battled for women and the working class wherever she went. She claimed to have honed her fighting skills during her childhood in Milwaukee, fighting with her mother.

      • Common DreamsRight-Wing Justices Appear Ready to Eviscerate Affirmative Action in College Admissions

        Referring to Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina—cases he contends were "manufactured to abolish affirmative action in higher education"—Slate's Mark Joseph Stern argued that "all six conservative justices are poised to declare that colleges' consideration of race violates the Constitution's equal protection clause and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which applies equal protection standards to private institutions."

      • Project CensoredContextualizing the Events of the Past Month in Iran - The Project Censored Show
      • Counter PunchIran: A Nation With No Illusion

        The basic illusion that helped the Islamic Republic maintain its ideological edifice for decades has been rooted in its base coming from the downtrodden (Mostazafan) who call supposedly for an Islamization of the country and eradication of the Western culture. Understanding their social role and political allure for the regime helps elucidate why and how the 1979 Revolution that toppled a monarchic despotism turned into an Islamic one, a mere replacement of a crown with a turban.

      • ScheerpostUnder Rishi Sunak, Britons Are Set To Face More Austerity, Fewer Rights

        The former chancellor from the ruling Conservative Party is the UK’s third prime minister this year. Sunak’s policy history and present cabinet appointments have raised fears of even more austerity and a drastic curtailing of basic rights.

      • TechdirtFinally: Countries Start To Rebel Against Corporate Sovereignty, But Ten Years Too Late

        Back in 2013, Techdirt wrote about “the monster lurking inside free trade agreements”. Formally, the monster is known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), but here on Techdirt we call it “corporate sovereignty“, because that is what it is: a system of secret courts that effectively places companies above a government, by allowing them to sue a nation if the latter takes actions or brings in laws that might adversely affect their profits.

      • TechdirtIowa Appeals Court Affirms State Cops Can’t Use Their Ignorance Of The Law To Justify Traffic Stops

        In December 2014, the US Supreme Court extended its blessing of pretextual stops to cover imaginary moving violations. Ignorance of the law is the best excuse, cops were told in the Court’s Heien decision. All cops needed to do was make a “reasonable” error when interpreting the laws they enforce and that mistake could be converted into reasonable suspicion supporting the stop.

      • MeduzaSiberian schoolchildren in grades 6–10 stay after school to sew army clothing — Meduza

        After school, students in grades 6–10 in the northern-Siberian town of Labytnangi sew balaclavas and warm cardigans for the Russian troops.

      • MeduzaAnti-war activist and Greta-Thunberg-ally Arshak Makichyan stripped of Russian citizenship — Meduza

        A Russian court has stripped environmental activist and war critic Arshak Makichyan, as well as two of his brothers and his father, of their Russian citizenship, Makichyan has told Meduza. According to him, none of the men have citizenship in any other country.

      • The NationBecca Andrews’s New Book Captures the Final Days of Legal Abortion

        Reporter Becca Andrews’s book about the erosion of abortion rights was supposed to come out in January 2023, the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. But in May, Andrews got a call from her editor: A draft of a Supreme Court opinion had been leaked showing that Roe was about to be overturned, and Andrews needed to get the book done ASAP. The result is a book that reads like the final days of legal abortion captured in amber. In the pages of No Choice, a patient awaits her abortion at a clinic in Tuscaloosa, Ala.; clinic defenders talk back to anti-abortion protesters outside the last clinic in Mississippi; a Tennessee abortion provider considers whether he will one day have to move to continue his life’s work. In all those states, legal abortion is now gone. “I saw the last of something,” Andrews told me. “I don’t really know how to wrap my head around that yet.” But No Choice looks ahead, too, at how the abortion rights movement must change in order to win access for all—and how activists on the ground are already doing this necessary work.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • Creative CommonsWebinars: AI Inputs, Outputs and the Public Commons

          Here at CC, we’ve been thinking about what AI means for the commons we support, both in our strategy for better sharing and for our collaboration for a better internet. Are all these new works generated by AI part of the open, public commons? Should they be? If someone does hold copyright for an AI work, who is it? The technologists who created the AI tool? The person who uses AI to generate a work? The countless creators whose works trained the AI? The machine itself? Or should works generated by AI live in the public domain, as they do in many interpretations of established law?

        • Torrent FreakTikTok Blocks Z-Library Hashtag Pending Piracy Investigation

          Publishers and authors are not happy with Z-Library, an online repository offering millions of pirated books for free download. The site's userbase is growing rapidly, in part helped by TikTok users' viral videos. Following a recent complaint from the Authors Guild, TikTok has banned the hashtag #zlibrary pending further review. But will that help?

        • Torrent FreakCourt Orders Kim Dotcom to Pay Costs After 'Seized Device' Challenge Failed

          During the 2012 operation to shut down Megaupload, 135 electronic devices were seized, mostly from founder Kim Dotcom. After the FBI cloned some of the devices and took them back to the U.S., a legal battle over the validity of the original search warrants and the devices ensued. More than a decade later, the matter appears to be over.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



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