Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 16/11/2022: Big Changes at IGEL, Offpunk 1.7 Released



  • GNU/Linux

    • LinuxStansHow Linux Changed My Life (My Linux Journey)

      At the risk of sounding cliche, the statement “Linux changed my life” isn’t said lightly. It has changed not only the course of my career but also changed the way I think and taught me quite a few things about myself.

      I never made it through high school. In fact, until recently I haven’t been to school since I was 15. I’m 31 now. But a few years back while working at an Iron foundry I met someone who was an advocate of open-source software and Linux. He ran a non-profit on the side which taught Linux. He used Slackware, which is what I started with at first. He even gave me a laptop with Slackware Linux on it.

      With a lot of patience, and when I say a lot I mean more than most people have the sanity for, this man did his best to teach me the terminal and bash scripting, from the simple to the advanced, he tried his best. I wouldn’t say I’m a bad student, just a student with a thicker skull who 8 out of 10 times has to just learn things the hard way.

      So I wouldn’t suggest Slackware being the first distro to start with. But starting with it was like sink or swim rather than starting at the shallow end and learning slowly, it was more like being tossed into the deep end. But every Sunday I went to the non-profit and learned what I could and practiced throughout the week.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • CRN‘Dream Come True’: IGEL Exits Hardware Business | CRN

        IGEL, a maker of well-engineered thin client hardware devices for two decades, is exiting that business as part of an all-out drive to make its popular Linux secure edge operating system the standard for Windows workspace computing across any device or cloud.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Snap/Snap-Store on Fedora 37/36/35

        By default, Fedora does not come with Snap or Snap Store installed as this is a feature that was built by developed by Canonical as a faster and easier way to get the latest versions of software installed on Ubuntu systems, and Snap packages are installed from a central SNAP server operated by Canonical. Snap can be installed and, for the most part, work with most packages on Fedora-based systems that are currently actively supported.

      • Manuel MatuzovicDay 37: cascade layers

        Let’s say we’re using a combination of a tag and an attribute selector for styling e-mail input fields. This declaration is part of our base stylesheet and comes early in the stylesheet. Later in the document, we want to use a class to overwrite parts of the base styling: [...]

      • uni TorontoIt's useful to think about a 'ground up' recovery of your environment

        One of the things that many system administrators don't like to think about is a total loss scenario for their entire environment. For people who run physical hardware, what you'd do if your machine room or data center had a fire; for people with virtual hardware, what you'd do if your entire cloud (short of your 'offsite backups') was wiped or deleted. Often we push this off as Disaster Recovery and then punt on it, because a real DR plan is both a lot of detailed work and also something that often doesn't survive contact with reality unless you really, really care about DR (care enough to budget for it and test your plans and so on). However, I'd like to advocate for the exercise of thinking through what it would take in your environment.

      • Terence EdenHow to search Mastodon by date & time

        I'm trying to build something similar for the Mastodon social network. Yes, I know it is new to you - but some of us have been there for several years.

        So here's how to search Mastodon for posts made on specific dates!

      • Linux CapableHow to Install qView on Fedora 37/36/35

        qView is a free, open-source image viewer designed to be minimal and space-efficient with super-fast opening images. The image viewer features no cluttered interface, just your image with a title bar containing features such as animated GIF controls for easy viewing on any device. For more information about what qView features and looks like before installing it, visit the qView website, which features some great examples of the image viewer in action.

        In the following small tutorial, you will learn how to install qView on Fedora 37/36/35 Linux desktop using the command line terminal with tips about installing the alternative development version and removing the application if required in the future.

      • HowTo GeekHow to Find the PID of a Linux Process With pidof or pgrep

        Working with a Linux process often means knowing its process ID, or PID. It’s a unique number given to each piece of running software. Here are two ways to find out what it is.

      • Network WorldHow to use errexit | Network World

        In this Linux tip, we’re going to look at a bash option that will cause a script to exit any time it encounters an error. It’s called “errexit."

      • TecMintHow to Install Latest Python 3.11 in Ubuntu

        Python is the fastest-growing major general-purpose programming language. There are a number of reasons attributed to this, such as its readability and flexibility, ease to learn and use, reliability, and efficiency as well.

        There are two major Python versions being used – 2 and 3 (the present and future of Python); the former will see no new major releases, and the latter is under active development and has already seen a lot of stable releases over the last few years. The latest stable release of Python 3 is version 3.11.

      • FOSSLinuxHow to install and use MongoDB Compass | FOSS Linux

        MongoDB Compass is an excellent tool for anyone who does not know how to analyze and alter data using command-line queries. MongoDB Compass is simple to download and install on major operating systems. It is a simple procedure that takes little time.

        This article will explain how to install and use MongoDB Compass and discuss its essential features. Furthermore, it will walk you through the MongoDB Compass Windows, Linux, and macOS installation processes. To effectively utilize MongoDB Compass on your desktop environment, follow the simple and quick procedures provided in this article. Continue reading to learn about the functions and benefits of installing MongoDB Compass on your OS.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install Wike on Fedora 37/36/35

        Wike is a lightweight and open-source Wikipedia reader app for Linux-based GNOME desktops and uses the MediaWiki API to fetch content from Wikipedia. The app has a minimalist interface, with just a search bar and a sidebar for navigation, and articles are displayed in a simple, easy-to-read format. Wike also supports dark mode, so you can easily read articles at night or in low-light conditions.

        The following tutorial will teach you how to install Wike on Fedora 37/36/35 Linux using a COPR repository using the command line terminal with cli commands for those looking for a fast and lightweight way to view Wikipedia articles on their Linux desktop.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install CMake on Fedora 37/36/35

        CMake is a well-known compiler that has gained much popularity in recent years. The main reason for its popularity is that it is open-source and cross-platform, so developers can use it on any operating system they want and don’t have to worry about licensing fees. Additionally, CMake can generate wrappers and executables in any combination, making it very versatile. Given Fedora is an upstream-focused distribution on a six-month release schedule, most often, the latest CMake version is available to install, making the installation for developers requiring the latest packages very straightforward compared to some other Linux Distributions.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install CMake on Fedora 37/36/35 Linux workstation or server using the command line terminal with two methods: dnf package manager with the native app-stream or compile method.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install PlayOnLinux on Fedora 37/36/35

        When running Windows applications on Linux, Wine is a popular software many people use. However, one of the issues with Wine is that it can be pretty time-consuming and prone to errors when setting up required configurations for each application. Thankfully, a great program called PlayOnLinux can make your life much easier by providing automated installation of popular apps. This can be a massive benefit for those new to using Linux or who don’t want to spend a lot of time setting things up. Fedora is one distribution that makes it easy to install PlayOnLinux with the application being available in the default repositories.

      • UNIX CopHow to get the latest stable version of Opera on Ubuntu 22.04 / Linux Mint 21

        Today you will learn how to get the latest stable version of Opera on Ubuntu 22.04 This web browser is one of the most advanced you can find out there.

        Opera is a powerful web browser based on Chromium that tries to differentiate itself from its competitors with interesting new features that make it very appealing to advanced users. As you can expect, Opera has versions for many operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux.

    • Games

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • HackadayMastodon Comes To The IBM PC | Hackaday

      Elon Musk has bought Twitter for an eye-watering sum, and his live adventures in chaotic mismanagement of a social media company have become a compelling performance for the rest of us. As we munch on our tasty popcorn and enjoy the show, many Twitter users have jumped ship for the open-source alternative Mastodon. It offers much to the escapee including instances tailored to particular communities, but aside from all that it’s got something Twitter never had. You can now use a Mastodon client on an IBM PC.

      Many of you are no doubt looking askance at us, as you have been Tooting for years from behind the keyboard of a PC. But it’s likely that the PC you’re using is a generic modern x86 machine running an up-to-date operating system such as a GNU/Linux flavour or Microsoft Windows, by contrast here we’re referring to the original, the daddy of them all. Because the client we’re talking about is DOStodon, designed to run on a real IBM PC as though it’s the early 1980s again.

    • WiredThe Man Behind Mastodon Built It for This Moment

      Since Musk took over Twitter, Rochko has been working long hours to keep his own server, Mastodon.Social, running, while also preparing a major upgrade to Mastodon, but he took time to videochat with WIRED from his home in Germany. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

    • Armin RonacherScaling Mastodon is Impossible

      In light of recent events at Twitter a lot of the people that I follow (or used to follow) on that platform have started evaluating (or moved) to Mastodon. And I also have a Mastodon account now. But after a few days with this thing I have a lot of thoughts on this that are too long for a Tweet or Toot. Since some of my followers asked though I decided do a longform version of this and explain my dissatifaction with Mastodon a bit better.

      The short version of this is that I believe that Mastodon — more specifically federation and decentralization won't work out.

    • Bèr KesselsThe Fediverse is Inefficient (but that's a good trade-off)

      Let's address the mammoth in the room: the fediverse, the network of mastodon servers, is very inefficient.

      In this post I'll show why it is inefficient and why that isn't a problem.

      A great analogy to explain this with is growing food.

    • Matt RickardOn the Mastodon Experiment

      Users don't want to host their own servers. Even the most technical ones. SaaS is the optimal solution. I'm an avid believer in running open-source software and controlling your own destiny, but for the vast majority of services, I don't want to manage it.

      Moderation and user experience vary from instance to instance. It's hard to sustain at scale. In practice, decentralized moderation ends up as a series of fiefdoms without accountability (e.g., if you don't like it, find another server).

    • Offpunk 1.7 : Offpunk and Sourcehut

      Releasing Offpunk 1.7 today which fixes a handful of crashes and brings some nice features.

    • HackadayBlender Builds LEGO Models

      Blender is a free and open source computer graphics package that’s used in the production of everything from video games to feature films. Now, as demonstrated by [Joey Carlino], the popular program can even be used to convert models into LEGO.

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Mozilla

        • uni TorontoFirefox will now copy non-breaking spaces from HTML and that can be a problem

          For many years, Firefox's copy and paste had a limitation or bug, which is that if you selected something that contained non-breaking spaces and copied it, the non-breaking spaces turned into regular spaces when you pasted. This was traced in bug #359303 and then bug #1769534. In recent Firefox Nightly builds, Mozilla (finally) changed this behavior, but the change has created a new issue for some people, me included. At least on Unix, there are a number of things that don't consider non-breaking spaces to be spaces (or whitespace).

        • MozillaMozilla Open Policy & Advocacy Blog: Mozilla Comments on FTC’s “Commercial Surveillance and Data Security” Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

          Like regulators around the world, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is exploring the possibility of new rules to protect consumer privacy online. We’re excited to see the FTC take this important step and ask key questions surrounding commercial surveillance and data security practices, from advertising and transparency to data collection and deceptive design practices.

          Mozilla has a long track record on privacy. It’s an integral aspect of our Manifesto, where we state that individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional. It’s evidenced in our products and in our collaboration with others in industry to forge solutions to create a better, more private online experience.

          But we can’t do it alone. Without rules of the road, sufficient incentive won’t exist to shift the rest of the industry to more privacy preserving practices. To meet that need, we’ve called for comprehensive privacy legislation like the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), greater ad transparency, and strong enforcement around the world. In our latest submission to the FTC, we detail the urgent need for US regulators and policymakers to take action to create a healthier internet.

    • Programming/Development

      • [Old] Bèr Kessels"How do I test X" is almost always answered with "by controlling X"

        First, there is the question: "can I control X?". Because if you cannot, testing it becomes impossible. When X is some external service, or tool, for example a payment provider or email-server, and there is no way to control it, you cannot (, and therefore should not) test it.

      • Matt RickardOn Launching

        Consumer products lend themselves more to feature creep, which is the enemy of PMF. It's never been easier to create software, which means faster MVPs, but also the possibility to build more out before you even reach your users.

      • ChiselStrikeWhy middleware may not be the right abstraction for your data policies.

        Every frontend developer knows, or at least suspects, that backends are hard. But why would that be?

        There is nothing intrinsically difficult with the business logic of backends: after all, it’s just code and algorithms. A fizzbuzz is a fizzbuzz: equally useless on the backend as it is on the frontend.

      • Lawrence TrattMore Evidence for Problems in VM Warmup

        VMs start programs running in an interpreter where they observe which portions run frequently. Those portions are then compiled into machine code which can then be used in place of the interpreter. The period between starting the program and all of the JIT compilation completing is called the warmup time. Once warmup is complete, the program reaches a steady state of peak performance.

        At least, that's what's supposed to happen: our work showed that, on widely studied small benchmarks, it often doesn't. Sometimes programs don't hit a steady state; sometimes, if they do reach a steady state, it's slower than what came before; and some programs are inconsistent in whether they hit a steady state or not. A couple of examples hopefully help give you an idea. Here's an example of a "good" benchmark from our dataset which starts slow and hits a steady state of peak performance: [...]

      • Making a Go program 42% faster with a one character change

        If you read the title and thought “well, you were probably just doing something silly beforehand”, you’re right! But what is programming if not an exercise in making silly mistakes? Tracking down silly mistakes is where all the fun is to be had!

        I’ll also state the usual benchmarking caveat up front: the 42% speedup was measured while running the program on my data on my computer, so take that number with a big old pinch of salt.

      • RlangPromoting the Use of R in Mali

        The R Consortium recently caught up with Fousseynou Bah of the Bamako Data Science Group (also on Facebook) and talked about the budding R community in Mali. Online events allowed the group to broaden its horizons and invite international speakers to present at their events. They hope to host hybrid events in the future to make the most out of both online and physical event formats.

      • Python

        • Trail Of BitsAre you sure your Python ABI is actually stable?

          The age of Python’s packaging ecosystem also sets it apart: among general-purpose languages, it is predated only by Perl’s CPAN. This, combined with the mostly independent development of packaging tooling and standards, has made Python’s ecosystem among the more complex of the major programming language ecosystems. Those complexities include: [...]

        • Python SpeedWho controls parallelism? A disagreement that leads to slower code

          If you’re using NumPy, Polars, Zarr, or many other libraries, setting a single environment variable or calling a single API function might make your code run 20%-80% faster. Or, more accurately, it may be that your code is running that much more slowly than it ought to.

          The problem? A conflict over who controls parallelism: your application, or the libraries it uses.

          Let’s see an example, and how you can solve it.

  • Leftovers

    • HackadayEV Sales Sticking Point: People Still Want Manual Transmissions

      Call me crazy, but I’m ride or die for manual transmissions. I drove enough go-karts and played enough Pole Position as a kid to know that shifting the gears yourself is simply where it’s at when it comes to tooling around in anything that isn’t human-powered. After all, manuals can be roll-started. A driver has options other than braking and praying on slippery roads. Any sports car worth its rich Corinthian leather (or whatever) has a manual transmission, right? And you know that Rush’s Red Barchetta ain’t no automatic. Face it, shifting gears is just plain cooler. And it’s not a chore if it gets you more, although the fuel efficiency thing is a myth at this point.

    • MeduzaMasters of adaptation András Tóth-Czifra explains how the war on Ukraine is reshaping Russia’s digital underground — Meduza
    • The NationThe Limits of Language

      it was something about the bounce in my step, in the rippling jiggle of my belly & breasts, something about the periwinkle painted pinkies, the purple pointers, the chipping its own kind of fashioning, something about the bend of the wrist, of the flick, about the way it shares the blunt, something about passing, breaths falsetto’d, about the difficulty of altitudes— & maybe less how & why, more when & where— all of the comings in & out, something about pride with a sibling fear of my own body, someone checking the clock, how a sentence shivers, something about my sentient shivering, everything about how i’m too sensitive sometimes, too sensual, something suspect & censured, something to do with attunement, with pulses in the blood, something about water & thickness & viscosity, something more like nectar, yeah, like golden honey, like golden bees & their buzzing geographies—the gut brain in the hive mind, something closer to how land shifts & water waves & waves, something like the supple becoming of flora & fungi, then, of drifting pollen, yeah, reaching closer to something in how limbs can reach & how nails reach in that reach like a camera eye zooming in, out, in, all a single take

    • HackadayRapid Prototyping To Measure Turbidity In Rapids

      [RiverTechJess] is in the process of getting a PhD in environmental engineering and has devoted a chapter to creating a turbidity sensor for river network monitoring. Environmental sensing benefits from being able to measure accurately and frequently, so providing low cost devices helps get more data and excuse the occasional device loss that’s bound to happen when deploying electronics out in the wild. Towards this end, [RiverTechJess] has created a low cost turbidity sensor that rivals the more expensive alternatives in cost and accuracy.

    • HackadayWearable Sensor Trained To Count Coughs

      There are plenty of problems that are easy for humans to solve, but are almost impossibly difficult for computers. Even though it seems that with modern computing power being what it is we should be able to solve a lot of these problems, things like identifying objects in images remains fairly difficult. Similarly, identifying specific sounds within audio samples remains problematic, and as [Eivind] found, is holding up a lot of medical research to boot. To solve one specific problem he created a system for counting coughs of medical patients.

    • Chris HannahReaching the Hacker News Front Page

      As you may have seen, last night I wrote about my experience using Arc Browser. I then submitted this blog post to Hacker News. Usually this gets a tiny bit of attention. But this time, it managed to get on to the front page. The highest I saw it was at 12, although the bulk of the views were once I went to sleep, so who knows, it could have been higher.

      Nevertheless, it's been common to write a post to analyse the impact of being on the Hacker News front page, so since it's now dropped to the second page after around 14 hours, I thought I'd write about the impact it had.

    • Jes Olson.io domains considered harmful

      [...] but what people may not know is that the .io domain name has an annoying history.

    • ButtondownWhy do we call it "boilerplate code?"

      Now that Twitter is on a downward spiral I’m rewriting my favorite tweetstorms in a more permanent medium, so here’s the first: why do we have the term “boilerplate code”? It comes from the peculiar interplay of two industrial revolution technologies: steam engines and hot metal typesetting.

    • Next Twitter Announcements - A Bingo Card

      Since I was joking about this with two friends over text message about the poor decisions that the new head of Twitter is making, and I asked "Is there a bingo card?" and one said "You should absolutely make one!"

    • WiredFive real-world arcologies under construction

      The individual casinos themselves have many arcological features too, including careful climate control, isolation from the traditional day/night cycle, and careful management of scarce resources. It differs from many of the other projects in this list, however, by its lack of any real commitment to sustainability or environmental factors. In fact, in many ways it stands as the antithesis of those principles.

    • AxiosWeb3 is in FTX's blast radius

      Web3, at its heart, is all about using blockchains and [cryptocurrency] tokens as tools for organizing decision-making, governance and financial incentives in every realm of human endeavor — from virtual world-building to social networking and from accounting to art-making.

    • SpaceUS military's X-37B space plane lands, ending record-breaking mystery mission

      The robotic X-37B touched down at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida today (Nov. 12) at 5:22 a.m. EST (1022 GMT). The winged vehicle had spent 908 days in orbit — more than four months longer than any previous X-37B flight.

    • Counter PunchKen Burns, US and the Holocaust

      That said, it would be fair for one to assume that with thirty-five films in the can (and six new efforts on the way) his perpetually expanding cannon would have a reasonable number of miscues, or lackluster projects. But I must say, although I have not experienced all his titles, Burns, in my opinion, has been rather consistent in delivering a sustained level of quality and integrity, in his bare-knuckled approach to filmmaking.

      Notwithstanding superb gems like,€ The Civil War,€ Baseball,€ Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery,€ Jazz,€ Unforgiveable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson,€ The Dust Bowl€ and€ Hemingway, his latest endeavor,€ The U.S. and the Holocaust€ is the most compelling film Burns has delivered. The touching three-part documentary befittingly takes the United States (and its WWII allies) to task, for their negligent response to Germany’s inhumane assault on the European Jewish community. Full disclosure, my grandfather,€ Jerome (Jerry) Netburn, who I did not have the pleasure of meeting, was a Russian Jew who fought in World War II, but one does not have to be born of Jewish ancestry to voice displeasure in the loss of, approximately,€ six million€ innocent lives…

    • Science

      • Multi-ciphertext security degradation for lattices

        Abstract. Typical lattice-based cryptosystems are commonly believed to resist multi-target attacks. For example, the New Hope proposal stated that it avoids “all-for-the-price-of-one attacks”. An ACM CCS 2021 paper from Duman–Hövelmanns–Kiltz–Lyubashevsky–Seiler stated that “we can show that AdvIND-CPA PKE ≈ Adv(n,qC )-IND-CPA PKE ” for “lattice-based schemes” such as Kyber, i.e. that one-out-of-many-target IND-CPA is as difficult to break as single-target IND-CPA, assuming “the hardness of MLWE as originally defined for the purpose of worst-case to average-case reductions”. Meanwhile NIST expressed concern regarding multi-target attacks against non-lattice cryptosystems.

        This paper quantifies the asymptotic impact of multiple ciphertexts per public key upon existing heuristic analyses of known lattice attacks. The qualitative conclusions are that typical lattice PKEs asymptotically degrade in heuristic multi-ciphertext IND-CPA security as the number of ciphertexts increases. These PKE attacks also imply multi-ciphertext IND-CCA2 attacks against typical constructions of lattice KEMs. This shows a contradiction between (1) the existing heuristics and (2) the idea that multi-target security matches single-target security.

        The asymptotic heuristic security degradation is exponential in Θ(n) for decrypting many ciphertexts, cutting a constant fraction out of the total number of bits of security, and exponential in Θ(n/ log n) for decrypting one out of many ciphertexts, for conservative cryptosystem parameters. Furthermore, whether or not the existing heuristics are correct, (1) there are flaws in the claim of provable multi-target security based on MLWE, and (2) there is a 288-guess attack breaking one out of 240 ciphertexts for a FrodoKEM-640 public key.

      • HackadayThe Blood Factory: New Research May Open The Door To Artificial Blood

        There were news stories afoot this week with somewhat breathless headlines that suggested a medical breakthrough was at hand: “In a 1st, two people receive transfusions of lab-grown blood cells.” A headline like that certainly catches the eye, especially as the holidays approach and the inevitable calls for increased blood donations that always seem to happen this time of year as the supply gets pinched. Does a headline like that mean that someone is working on completely artificial blood?

    • Education

      • Niall MurphyReflections on SREcon EMEA 2022

        Though I’ve been involved with SREcon EMEA many times before, this time was unique for two reasons: firstly and most importantly, we hadn't been physically together since late 2019, and secondly, I was program co-chair (alongside Daria Barteneva) - a new experience for me. With the freshness of the experience still in mind, I thought it was the perfect moment to write up my reflections.

      • Pro PublicaMissouri’s Sheltered Workshops Have a 2.3% Graduation Rate

        One weekday morning in July, Kerstie Bramlet was at her workstation inside the Warren County Sheltered Workshop near St. Louis, Missouri, putting plastic labels on rabbit-meat dog chews one by one.

        The 30-year-old, who wore a St. Louis Cardinals shirt and a blue-and-white tie-dye hat, is autistic and has intellectual disabilities. She was on dog-chew assignment that day with a dozen or so coworkers, who are also disabled. As they chatted excitedly about an upcoming bocce ball tournament — part of a local Special Olympics event — Bramlet and her coworkers formed an assembly line of sorts, some counting the dog chews using a gridded piece of paper to ensure they reached the right total before handing them off to a supervisor for shrink-wrapping.

      • The NationWas This Professor Fired for Having Tourette Syndrome?

        In January 2020, Dutchess Community College in New York banned a photography professor named Lowell Handler from its property and declared him unqualified to continue teaching there. Handler, the school claimed, had touched students “in a sexual manner” without their consent and peppered his classes with suggestive comments. “Students have a right to an educational environment free of sexual harassment and forced touching,” wrote then-president Pamela Edington.

    • Hardware

      • HackadayGetting To The Heart Of A Baofeng

        In amateur radio circles, almost no single piece of equipment serves as more of a magnet for controversy than the humble Baofeng handheld transceiver. It’s understandable — the radio is a shining example of value engineering, with just enough parts to its job while staying just on the edge of FCC rules. And at about $25 a pop, the radios are cheap enough that experimentation is practically a requirement of ownership.

      • CNX SoftwareAn Oscilloscope with ARM+FPGA+ADC scheme CNX Software

        The FNIRSI 1013D is a dual-channel flat-panel oscilloscope with a rich set of features. It is cost-effective and useful to people in the maintenance and R&D industries. Although it has been on the market for a few years, I purchased one, and I decided to introduce it and disassemble it to check out the hardware design.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • RlangUsing functional analysis to model air pollution data in R

        The data comes from DEFRA’s (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN), which reports the level of nitrogen dioxide (among other pollutants) in the air every hour at 164 different locations. For this analysis, we considered data recorded between November 6, 2018 to November 6, 2022.

        The data can be downloaded from uk-air.defra.gov.uk/data/data_selector_service.

      • NPRHer miscarriage left her bleeding profusely. An Ohio ER sent her home to wait

        Holeyman, Zielke's husband, says hospital staff seemed "hesitant." The two of them wondered at the ER if that was because of Ohio's new six-week abortion ban. "I wish someone had come out and said, 'Hey, this is a state law, this is what we're afraid of,' and was a little more frank," he says. Instead he says, paraphrasing what he heard: "It was, 'Well, we don't know if this [pregnancy] is viable, this could still be viable. This is the information you got in D.C., but we need to confirm it."

      • NBCWalmart agrees to pay $3.1 billion over sale of opioids at its pharmacies

        The retail giant’s announcement follows similar proposals on Nov. 2 from the two largest U.S. pharmacy chains, CVS Health and Walgreen Co., which each said they would pay about $5 billion.

        Most of the drugmakers that produced the most opioids and the biggest drug distribution companies have already reached settlements. With the largest pharmacies now settling, it represents a shift in the opioid litigation saga. For years, the question was whether companies would be held accountable for an overdose crisis that a flood of prescription drugs helped spark.

      • The Telegraph UKThe scary chemicals you don’t want to see in your food

        UPFs are foods that are industrially altered to a high degree using techniques and ingredients not available in the home; think ready meals, sweet and savoury packaged snacks, soft drinks, confectionery, breakfast cereals and packaged bread.

        UPFs now account for almost 60 per cent of all the calories eaten in the UK. And they all come with a hefty dose of additives; artificial colours and sweeteners, emulsifiers and other chemicals designed to enhance the appearance, taste, texture and shelf life of manufactured food. But are all these additives safe?

      • Pro PublicaA Florida Fund for Injured Kids Raided Medicaid. Now It’s Repaying $51 Million.

        Florida’s long-troubled compensation fund for infants born with catastrophic brain injuries has resolved one of its thorniest disputes: the claim that it avoided hundreds of millions in health care costs by raiding the safety net for impoverished Floridians.

        The Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association, or NICA, settled a three-year-old whistleblower complaint that alleged the program grew assets of nearly $1.7 billion partly by dumping health care and caregiving costs onto Medicaid, the state-federal insurer for poverty-stricken and disabled Floridians.

    • Microsoft Security Failures and Lies

      • TechdirtMicrosoft Says China Is Abusing Vulnerability Disclosure Requirements To Hoard Exploits [Ed: Microsoft is more an enemy than China is. This is Microsoft leveraging nationalism fro distract from its liability.]

        Plenty of countries have vulnerability disclosure requirements in place. This is supposed to increase the security of all users by requiring notification of affected platforms or software of exploits that may be used by malicious entities.

      • Times Higher EducationWhy do university IT systems drive staff round the bend? [iophk: Windows TCO]

        The University of Edinburgh was recently brought to a near standstill by a switchover to a new payments system, with PhD students going unpaid, contracts cancelled and the overseers of multimillion-pound research projects unable to order basic necessities such as paper.

        While an extreme example, the case demonstrated what many who work in higher education have known for years: the systems universities rely on to function on a day-to-day basis are often apparently not fit-for-purpose.

      • Michael West MediaMedibank sticks by [ransomware] ransom call [iophk: Windows TCO]

        But Mr Wilkins said paying a $US9.7m ransom was never an option and would have supercharged the [ransomware] industry.

      • Michael West MediaCyber attack to cost Medibank up to $35m [iophk: Windows TCO]

        “Based on our current actions in response to the cybercrime event, we currently estimate $25 million to $35 million of pre-tax non-recurring costs will impact earnings in the first half of 2023,” Chief Executive David Koczkar will say in his address at Wednesday’s annual general meeting in Melbourne.

      • Krebs On SecurityTop Zeus Botnet Suspect “Tank” Arrested in Geneva [Ed: Windows TCO]

        Vyacheslav “Tank” Penchukov, the accused 40-year-old Ukrainian leader of a prolific cybercriminal group that stole tens of millions of dollars from small to mid-sized businesses in the United States and Europe, has been arrested in Switzerland, according to multiple sources.

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • TechdirtApple Sued After Another Study Finds Its Well-Hyped Privacy Standards Are Often Theatrical

          Last week yet another study indicated that Apple’s heavily hyped new dedication to privacy was somewhat hollow, with the company’s apps often extensively tracking user behavior despite claims that doesn’t happen. It was the latest in a series of studies showcasing how Apple’s pivot to a privacy-dedicated company is often a bit performative once you dig a centimeter or two beneath the surface.

        • TechdirtPublic Records Expose Indian Government’s Full Access To Nation’s Internet Traffic

          The government of India continues to increase its monitoring of residents’ day-to-day lives. Like pretty much every other country in the world, India relies on the internet to handle communications, data, and multiple services used by residents.

        • BBCGoogle to pay record $391m privacy settlement

          The technology giant tracked the location of users who opted out of location services on their devices, 40 US states said.

          Google has been told to be transparent about location tracking in the future and develop a web page telling people about the data it collects.

          It is the largest privacy-related multi-state settlement in US history.

        • IT WireGoogle pays out US$391.5m to settle privacy case in US

          The lawsuit was filed in 2018 after an article by the Associated Press noted that the check-box for "Location History" could not control location history across an entire Google account. The article also pointed out that many features associated with location-tracking were controlled by a second check-box with the name "Web & App Activity."

          The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took Google to the Federal Court over the same issues in October 2019 and won its case.

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Michael West MediaCome on Mr Attorney-General, transparency is more than a cry for opposition benches - Michael West

        Has the government forgotten who employs it? Everyone should get their Freedom of Information requests dealt with in a reasonable time, writes former senator and transparency warrior Rex Patrick.

        When Ralph Nader coined the phrase, “information is the currency of democracy”, he was talking about timely information and information beyond what government actively decides to share.

        And if you agree with the US consumer and transparency advocate’s proposition, then last week’s examination of the Information Commissioner’s (IC) performance at Senate Estimates by Greens Senator David Shoebridge would cause serious concern.

        Last financial year the IC received 1956 applications to reviews agencies’ Freedom of Information (FOI) access refusals. That’s up 60% from the previous year. And of those, the IC only got through 1377. That’s a deficit of 579 reviews.

    • Environment

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Neoliberal Investor-State System Is a Threat to Democracy and Planet

        In advance of the global climate negotiations taking place in Egypt, several countries announced important actions to curb the power of the fossil fuel industry.

      • Democracy NowVanessa Nakate Condemns Fossil Fuel Lobbying at U.N. Climate Talks as Global Warming Devastates Africa

        At the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, we speak with prominent Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate about the impact of the climate crisis on the continent of Africa. Earlier today she spoke at a COP27 event and blasted world leaders for not doing more. She describes the need for wealthy nations gathered at the U.N. climate conference, particularly the U.S., to finance loss and damage for poorer nations in the Global South. “For the current and historic emitters, they need to take responsibility for the climate crisis, and they need to pay for this crisis,” says Nakate.

      • ScheerpostIt’s Not Just Coca-Cola: Corporations Have Co-Opted the UN Climate Talks

        COP27 is covered with logos. But that's just the start of companies' influence.

      • DeSmog‘Back Off’: African Climate Groups Decry Europe’s Dash for Gas at COP27

        Waving giant euro banknotes splattered with the words “blood money”, African protesters at U.N. climate talks in Egypt demanded European governments halt a “dash” for the continent’s natural gas.

        German, Italian and other companies have been scouring Africa for alternatives to Russian supplies in the wake of the February invasion of Ukraine, raising fears that new projects will lock Africa into long-term dependence on fossil fuels.At least nine gas deals have been struck so far on the sidelines of the negotiations – known as COP27 – five involving Africa. In the run-up to the summit, Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding with Germany to expand liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity by 2050. Last week, Tanzania committed to a $40 billion LNG deal with Equinor and Shell, while Germany and the United States agreed to finance Egyptian renewables to “free up” gas for export.“European companies should not be here in Africa,” said Dean Bhekumuzi Bhebhe, a South Africa-based campaigner for the Don’t Gas Africa coalition of advocacy groups, which rallied dozens of protesters in a designated space at the tightly-marshalled venue in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday.

      • TruthOutFossil Fuel Lobbyists Gather at COP27 as Climate Crisis Devastates Africa
      • Democracy NowHossam Bahgat on the “Full-Scale Human Rights Crisis” in Egypt as Country Hosts COP27

        Broadcasting from COP27, the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, we speak to leading Egyptian human rights advocate and journalist Hossam Bahgat about how authorities have launched a widespread crackdown on political dissent. Hundreds have been arrested, including lawyers and journalists, and police have been stopping people randomly on the streets of Cairo and other cities to search the contents of their phones. Meanwhile, imprisoned British Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has sent a letter notifying his family that he has stopped his hunger strike and asked for them to visit on Thursday. Bahgat disagrees with calls to boycott COP27, and gained entry through asking a foreign environmental group to include him. “Sustained engagement with the Egyptian government in public and private about its catastrophic human rights record can actually lead to some change,” says Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Urgent Climate Action Is Needed and Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer

        Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted Europe’s dangerous dependence on fossil fuels, increasingly frequent and intense climate-driven weather events are highlighting the death and destruction that fossil-fuel dependence has wrought. Understandably, political and public pressure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, move away from insecure primary energy supplies, and develop new, reliable, secure, and affordable energy sources is at an all-time high. But rather than rushing ahead, we need to consider carefully which options are most realistic, and how they will be deployed and operate in the real world.

      • Common DreamsMajor Media Outlets From 20+ Nations Demand Windfall Profits Tax on Big Oil

        More than 30 major media outlets from countries on nearly every continent published an editorial Tuesday calling on governments to impose a windfall profits tax on fossil fuel giants that have made a killing as poor nations face devastating climate impacts and people worldwide struggle to heat their homes, feed their families, and pay rent.

        "As a bare minimum, a windfall tax on the combined profits of the largest oil and gas companies—estimated at almost $100bn in the first three months of the year—needs to be enacted," reads the editorial, which appeared at The Guardian in the U.K., The Nation and Rolling Stone in the U.S., The Hindu in India, Camunda News in Angola, El Espectador in Colombia, and dozens of other publications.

      • Common DreamsVanessa Nakate Slams World Leaders for Perpetuating Deadly Fossil Fuels

        Ugandan climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate denounced world leaders Tuesday for continuing to support new coal, oil, and gas projects despite overwhelming evidence that extracting and burning more fossil fuels will exacerbate deadly climate chaos.

        "You are sowing the wind and frontline communities are reaping the whirlwind."

      • Energy

        • New York TimesCollapsed [Cryptocurrency] Exchange FTX Could Owe More Than 1 Million Creditors

          The firm’s founder and chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, announced his resignation when the bankruptcy papers were filed on Friday in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. Mr. Bankman-Fried had agreed to step aside at around 4:30 a.m. that day, the new filing said, after consulting with his own legal team.

          He handed control to John J. Ray III, a veteran of corporate crises. Since then, Mr. Ray and other FTX officials have worked “around the clock” to get the company in order, according to the bankruptcy filing. The firm halted trading and responded to a “cyberattack” reported late on Friday night, the filing said.

        • Craig MurrayFTX

          The FTX story seems truly remarkable. From being founded only in 2017 it rose to be a “partner organisation” of the World Economic Forum and the second largest donor to Biden and the Democrat’s mid-term election campaign. It has now gone completely bust, taking every penny of its depositors money with it.

          That is some trajectory.

          The World Economic Forum has deleted its FTX page, but the Wayback machine has it: [...]

        • ReutersExclusive: At least $1 billion of client funds missing at failed crypto firm FTX

          The exchange's founder Sam Bankman-Fried secretly transferred $10 billion of customer funds from FTX to Bankman-Fried's trading company Alameda Research, the people told Reuters.

          A large portion of that total has since disappeared, they said. One source put the missing amount at about $1.7 billion. The other said the gap was between $1 billion and $2 billion.

        • CNBCBetween $1 billion and $2 billion of FTX customer funds have disappeared, SBF had a secret 'back door' to transfer billions: Report

          Both Reuters and The Wall Street Journal found that Bankman-Fried, now the ex-CEO of FTX, transferred $10 billion of customer funds from his crypto exchange to the digital asset trading house, Alameda Research.

          Alameda, also founded by Bankman-Fried, was considered to be a sister company to FTX. Those cozy ties are now under investigation by multiple regulators, including the Department of Justice, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is probing how FTX handled customer funds, according to multiple reports.

        • SBF built bespoke ‘backdoor’ to outwit FTX compliance systems: Reuters

          He used bespoke software that was designed so that even external auditors would not be notified of changes to FTX books, the report said. It meant that no red flags were raised when $10 billion of funds were moved to FTX's sister trading arm Alameda.

        • The HillWhy the FTX collapse is turning up the heat on Congress

          Washington policymakers are under growing pressure to write new rules for the cryptocurrency industry and crack down on fraud after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.

          The federal government’s failure to find common ground on cryptocurrency regulation blew up in its face last week with the downfall of one of the industry’s most prominent and politically connected firms. As regulators pick up the pieces of what happened, lawmakers are going back to the drawing board to find a path forward — and point fingers.

        • The Gray ZoneFTX partnership with Ukraine is latest chapter in shady Western aid saga
        • The NationIt’s Time to Cut Off Arms Sales to the Saudi Regime

          Last month’s decision by the members of OPEC+ to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day sparked outrage in Washington. Prominent Democrats were furious, arguing that Saudi Arabia sought higher oil prices in order to weaken US-led sanctions on Russian fossil fuels, and also to benefit Republicans by inflating the cost of gasoline before the midterms.

      • Overpopulation

    • Finance

      • Common Dreams'Workers Win' as Illinois Passes Pro-Labor Constitutional Amendment

        Labor advocates on Tuesday applauded the passage of an Illinois state constitutional amendment enshrining what one proponent called "the strongest worker protections in the nation."

        "Illinois is and always will be a workers' rights state. This victory is a historic moment for our workers and our entire state."

      • Michael West MediaForeign tax crooks nab hospitals, nursing homes, electricity - now aim to gut Origin Energy too - Michael West

        Australia’s electricity grid, hospitals, nursing homes. All off to Caribbean tax havens. What the blazes are we doing allowing a bunch of tax cheats to gut our essential services? What’s the scam?

        The scam is that if you are a financial engineering tax grifter from overseas and don’t pay corporate income tax in Australia, you have a 30% advantage over local companies when it comes to winning takeover bids. And these guys from Brookfield are pinning their ears back. Origin Energy is their latest target.

        And why not? They must be quietly thinking Australia’s politicians and policy-makers are a bunch of supreme numpties.

        A couple of years ago, Brookfield bought 41 private hospitals via the Healthscope takeover. These essential services are now controlled in the Cayman Islands. Then it bought a slather of aged care assets when it bought Aveo. Took that to Bermuda. Then it won AusGrid in an $18bn takeover bid early this year.

      • Michael West MediaBillionaire babies: how James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch kept their eyes on the prize - Michael West

        Billionaire media scions Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer have a close friendship which has endured the ups and downs of mega-deals including Australia’s ‘Super League’ war, the collapse of One.Tel, the rise of Realestate.com.au and failure of Channel Ten – some of the best and worst moments of Lachlan’s career. This edited extract from Paddy Manning’s new biography of Lachlan Murdoch sheds new light on their tumultuous business history.

      • ScheerpostIMF Warns of ‘Wave of Debt Crises’ Coming in Global South, With War, Interest Rate Hikes, Overvalued Dollar

        The IMF said a “wave of debt crises” may be coming in the Global South, and “the global economy is headed for stormy waters,” due to war, rising US interest rates, and many currencies depreciating against the dollar.

      • TruthOutBiden May Extend Student Loan Payment Pause Again Amid Court Battles
      • Common DreamsSecrecy Enabled by Rich Countries Lets Corporations Dodge $90 Billion in Taxes Per Year

        An analysis released Tuesday finds that rich countries are allowing multinational corporations to dodge at least $89 billion in taxes every year by not requiring firms to publicly disclose how much of their profits they are shifting to tax havens.

        The Tax Justice Network's latest assessment of the state of global taxation castigates the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—often described as "the rich countries' club"—for failing to uphold basic tax transparency standards in the decade since the G20 directed OECD nations to collect and disclose country-by-country data on corporate profit shifting.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Asking the Right Post-Election Questions in a Nation Adrift

        Britons mourned the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II, and understandably so. The outpouring of affection for their long-serving monarch was more than commendable, it was touching.€ Yet count me among those mystified that so many Americans also professed to care.€ With all due respect to Queen Latifah, we decided way back in 1776 that we'd had our fill of royalty.

      • TruthOutTenants Demand Emergency Measures From White House as Rents Skyrocket
    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • VOA NewsVietnam Using Jail to 'Silence' Human Rights Journalist, Lawyer Says

        Kurtulus Bastimar, an international human rights lawyer representing Trang, believes the legal case against his client is an attempt to stifle her.

        "In order to silence Pham, the government is trying to give the impression that her detention is related to state security issues and making 'anti-state propaganda,' when this is not true," Bastimar said in a phone interview with VOA.

      • RFERLTwo RFE/RL Correspondents Released From Police Custody In Moscow

        [...] Yury Lebedev and Yelizaveta Movchan were taken to a police station after a person whom the reporters wanted to interview called the police. [...]

      • Common DreamsIsrael Refuses to Cooperate With US Probe Into Palestinian-American Journalist's Killing

        The family of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh expressed hope Tuesday that the FBI's newly announced investigation into her death will bring them "closer to justice," as Israeli officials said they will not cooperate with the FBI and condemned the U.S. for opening a probe at all.

        Israeli Foreign Minister Benny Gantz suggested the Biden administration should accept the "professional, independent investigation" already conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which concluded that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank in May was too damaged to determine who had fired it.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • The NationWhite Nationalist Hate Is Infiltrating Our Police

        It would be the first time the government has endeavored to do so, despite plenty of studies finding that the issue is a major problem. Over 140 years after Reconstruction saw slave patrols reform as Southern police departments, a 2006 FBI report warned of a new tide of “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement.” Hate groups, the paper noted, have long found police departments to be fertile recruitment grounds, but there was now evidence of “self-initiated efforts by…those already within law enforcement ranks, to volunteer their professional resources to white supremacist causes.” Three years later, a Department of Homeland Security report predicted that the white backlash to a Black president might become “the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States”; the report was rescinded in the face of conservative outrage. By 2015, an internal FBI counterterrorism guide admitted that agency investigations of white supremacist and other domestic terrorist groups “often have identified active links to law enforcement officers.”

      • Stacey on IoTAmazon is building robots at scale in Massachusetts

        Amazon has built a fleet of robots to help workers get packages from its warehouses to your door, and on Thursday it showed off two new ones. The first is Sparrow, a machine designed to pick up items (not packages) from a container and place them in a different container. The second is a concept for a new delivery drone called the MK30.

      • France24Taliban bans Afghan women from gyms, public baths

        Activists have said the increasing restrictions on women are an attempt to stop them from gathering to organise opposition to the Taliban's rule.

      • France24Iran charges more than 750 over 'riots', issues first death sentence

        Authorities have denied claims by rights groups abroad that about 15,000 people have been detained in the ensuing unrest.

      • ScheerpostHow It Feels to Visit an Apartheid Country

        Racial profiling in Israel is rampant. Abuse and invective are normal. This is the daily machinery of separating Jews from Arabs and justifying it in traditional colonial terms.

      • Pro PublicaInside an Anti-Abortion Meeting With Tennessee’s GOP Lawmakers

        When state Sen. Richard Briggs voted “yes” on Tennessee’s total abortion ban, he never thought it would actually go into effect.

        It was 2019, and Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. His vote seemed like a political statement, not a decision that would soon impact people’s lives.

      • The NationDemocrats Should Use This Moment to Codify Roe v. Wade

        I guess “Roevember” really was a thing. Lots of factors played a role in the Republicans’ underperformance in the midterm elections, but it sure seems like the decision by conservative justices on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade was a major one. The United States Senate might have been handed back to Democrats by Samuel Alito and his extremist ruling—signed, of course, by all five of the other conservatives.

      • ScheerpostInter-American Commission Hears Landmark Case of Torture and Killing by US Border Patrol

        Anastasio Hernández Rojas’s widow, Maria de Jesús Puga, testified that her “whole family, we have all been bearing this pain, 12 years, 12 years of pain and anguish not knowing why, why they killed my husband.”

      • Common Dreams'Chilling' Video Footage Shows Asylum-Seeker Being Force-Fed in ICE Detention

        Human rights advocates on Tuesday renewed calls for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop force-feeding detained people and end its reliance on mass detention after The Intercept obtained and published footage of a hunger-striking asylum-seeker being force-fed in 2019.

        The video depicting nurses forcibly inserting a tube into the nose of Indian asylum-seeker Ajay Kumar in an El Paso, Texas detention center marks the first time the U.S. public has ever seen the federal government force-feed someone, according to The Intercept.

      • ScheerpostCollege Degrees Help Incarcerated People Take the Next Step to Freedom

        Since 2013, the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons initiative, or NJ-STEP, has helped hundreds of individuals earn degrees. What’s next for the program?

      • The NationKiribati’s Disorder in the Court

        David Lambourne sat in the bare airport departure lounge in Kiribati, a nation of islands in the middle of the Pacific, and watched a curious standoff play out before him.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Jan SchaumannWho controls the internet? A look at diversity of authoritative NS records in gTLD

        But while the DNS root servers are known to be distributed, I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at the immediate levels up from the root, and so I went to analyze the diversity or centralization of the authoritative nameservers for the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and the second-level domains in those gTLDs.

    • Monopolies

      • Trademarks

        • TechdirtIn-N-Out Trademark Tourism Allows It To Keep Mark For ‘Double-Double’ In Canada

          In-N-Out is In-N-At it again. In our many posts on the burger chain, we’ve discussed the company’s habit of what I’ll call trademark tourism. In posts that have focused primarily on its trademarks in Australia, we’ve detailed out how In-N-Out will conduct a popup restaurant in these countries that it otherwise has zero brick and mortar presence in, usually once a year or so, simply to satisfy the use-in-commerce requirements to retain its registered trademarks. This allows the company to lock up language and branding in a country it refuses to operate in generally, other than these bullshit events designed solely to allow it to keep these trademarks active and registered.

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent FreakVPN Restrictions Are Problematic, App Association Tells U.S. Government

          The App Association is concerned about restrictive policies in countries such as Russia and China, that ban VPN usage. The industry organization shared its concerns with the US Trade Representative for the forthcoming Foreign Trade Barriers report. Recent actions regarding Iran already show that the U.S. is well aware of the value of VPNs.

        • Torrent FreakMan Used Stolen Netflix Credentials to Acquire Content For Torrent Site

          A man who used hacked Netflix credentials to obtain content before uploading it to a torrent site has been sentenced in Denmark. The 34-year-old DanishBytes user was a staff member for two months, offering tech support to the site's users. The stolen credentials allowed him to obtain content from legal streaming services using other people's accounts.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Russell up a win 🏁🇧🇷

        I didn't write about the Mexican GP. It wasn't very exciting. Verstappen won, but got in a snit because a TV reporter said that Hamilton was "robbed" of the championship last year. I agree that he was robbed, nobody suggested that Verstappen stole it. Verstappen can be an arse sometimes.

        So we arrive in Brazil at a track that everyone likes. As usual, it rained and fastest in qualifying was Kevin Magnussen, who was delighted. His team mate, (son of) Schumacher, was slowest, so Haas had two amazing results.


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



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