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Links 03/12/2022: pgAdmin 4 Version 6.17



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Applications

      • OpenSource.comMake your Linux computer feel faster with the Xfe file manager | Opensource.com

        Computers are like filing cabinets, full of virtual folders and files waiting to be referenced, cross-referenced, edited, updated, saved, copied, moved, renamed, and organized. In this article, I'll look at a file manager for your Linux system.

        Back before NVMe drives and 12-core processors, applications could take seconds to launch. While that wait time is fine for a big application like LibreOffice or Blender, it's a little painful when it's a tiny application you use frequently. 2 seconds times 10 file manager windows in an hour, times 12 hours a day, is 4 whole minutes of wasted time. OK, I admit that's actually not that much when you do the math, but ask anybody and they'll tell you that it felt like 4 hours. One way to make a computer, whether it's last year's model or something hot off the shelf, feel faster is to use "lightweight" applications. An application is usually considered lightweight when it's designed around minimal code libraries that don't demand much from your system's resources.

        The X File Explorer (Xfe) file manager is one of those applications. It's quick to launch, it doesn't feature fancy animations or effects, and it has few dependencies beyond some basic libraries, most of which are probably already on your Linux system.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • LinuxTechiHow to Install Docker Desktop on Ubuntu 22.04

        In this tutorial, we walk you through the installation of Docker Desktop on Ubuntu 22.04.

        The conventional way of running and managing Docker container images is on the command line. However, this can be a daunting prospect for beginners who are just getting started out with learning Docker. And this is where Docker Desktop comes in.

        Developed by Docker, Docker Desktop is a free and user-friendly GUI application that allows users to easily run and manage Docker containers and images from their Linux PC without the need for executing commands on the CLI.

        Docker Desktop is a cross-platform application which means you can install it on Windows, Linux, and Mac. It is free for companies of up to 250 employees beyond which you need a paid subscription.

      • URLs with // at the beginning — mina86.com

        Just a quick message to remained/inform everyone that relative URLs can start with a double slash and that it means something different than a single slash at the beginning. Specifically, such relative addresses are resolved by taking schema of the website they are on (and keeping everything else as is).

      • It's FOSSHow to Install Firefox ESR in Ubuntu

        The snap version of Ubuntu is not to your liking? Don’t like constantly changing things with every Firefox release? You can try the Firefox ESR version if you value stability over features.

      • SparkFun ElectronicsSend Sensor Data Over LoRa With Our New Tutorial! - News - SparkFun Electronics

        We are on mission here at SparkFun to demonstrate the simplest ways to send sensor data using different wireless solutions. So far together we have explored sending sensor data over wifi, but what about longer range projects?

      • FOSSLinuxBash tr command explained with examples | FOSS Linux

        There are a lot of basic functionalities that we don’t think about twice in our daily life. For example, it is straightforward if you are trying to use the find and replace function in your word document. But what about when you cannot have a beautiful interface? What if you need to program it into your script?

        There is the simple solution of using an if-else statement, but that is too long and requires too much effort. A quicker method must be there for something as commonplace as this, which is precisely what Bash offers.

        Today we look at the tr command, which translates (replaces), squeezes (removes repetition), or deletes elements from the standard input and provides a standard output.

      • Linux NightlyOpenLiteSpeed Default Password - Linux Nightly

        After installing OpenLiteSpeed or LiteSpeed web server on Linux, you may be wondering how to log in to the admin panel. In this tutorial, you will learn how to generate a username and password and log in to the admin panel of OpenLiteSpeed web server.

        There is no default password for the admin page of OpenLiteSpeed. Instead, run the script below to configure a username and password for the web server.

      • Linux NightlyBash Script Read Input - Linux Nightly

        The read function allows us to prompt users for input and read that data from within a Bash script on Linux. In this tutorial, you will see multiple examples on how to read input from a Bash script.

      • Linux NightlyLinux stress Command - Stress Test CPU - Linux Nightly

        A performance test will put load on your Linux machine and stress test components like the CPU, memory, and hard drive. The stress Linux command is an ideal utility to put load on a computer and push your hardware to its limits. In this tutorial, you will learn how to install and use the stress and stress-ng commands and their various options.

      • Linux NightlyHow to Install Pip on Kali Linux - Linux Nightly

        pip is the package installer for Python. On Linux, pip allows for easy installation of Python programs and dependencies. For Python developers, pip is an essential tool.

        In the context of Kali Linux, pip is mostly used for hacking scripts or to download dependencies that hacking scripts rely on. Even if you don’t write Python scripts yourself, you may still find it necessary to install pip. In this guide, you’ll see how to install pip on Kali Linux.

      • Linux NightlyHow to Install Python 3 on Kali Linux - Linux Nightly

        In this tutorial, you will learn how to get the latest version of Python and pip installed on Kali Linux.

      • Linux NightlyUpdate System Time From Command Line in Ubuntu

        In this tutorial, we will learn how to update the system time and time zone on Ubuntu Linux. This can be done from the command line terminal with the timedatectl command to synchronize your system’s time with official time servers.

      • Linux NightlyDownload File With wget Command on Linux - Linux Nightly

        Learn how to update the system time and time zone in Ubuntu Linux by using the timedatectl command to stay in sync with time servers.

      • Linux NightlyHow to List Installed Packages With dnf - Linux Nightly

        dnf is a package management tool used for RPM-based Linux distributions like Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and others. In this article, we will show the useful dnf commands that allow us to list installed packages.

    • Games

      • GamingOnLinuxSteam Deck OS 3.4 Preview adds support for 8BitDo Ultimate Wireless controller dongle

        Valve put out a small and sweet update for Steam Deck OS (SteamOS) 3.4 Preview, which adds in support for the 8BitDo Ultimate Wireless controller dongle.

      • Björn WärmedalHow I Ran an RPG Con 4 Times a Year For a Decade

        I promised ~dozens to write this, so here we are 😊️

        A week or so ago I wrapped up the 40th instalment of a small Old School RPG convention I've run four times a year since 2012. A disclaimer here is that I didn't actually run the first one, though I was present.

        But what do I mean when I say I've been running this convention? Basically I mean that I've done the administration and economy. How did I do it? By cheating, of course. The typical expenses for a convention is 1) rent, and 2) other stuff that I don't really know or care about. Maybe marketing?

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • DebugPointTrinity Desktop Environment R14.0.13 is now out with updates!

          If you are one of those users who miss the good ol' KDE (3.5) look, then you can get it via Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE). The TDE is a fork of the KDE 3.5 desktop environment developed by a small team of volunteers. It's a continuation of the KDE 3 desktop methodology, providing updates and bug fixes for those who appreciate its features and design.

          Despite being a small and independent project, TDE is still actively developed and maintained, offering users an alternative to more mainstream desktop environments. And following the prior R14.0.12 release, the thirteenth minor release brings a few goodies.

          The new minor release of Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE R14.0.13) brings a few new features and bug fixes. This is a release summary.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Trend OceansDistrobox: Try Any Linux Distribution Inside Your Terminal

      Have you ever thought to taste exclusive RHEL or Arch-based distribution tools in your Ubuntu or Debian system (or vice versa)? Distrobox is then here for you; it is an open-source wrapper for Podman or Docker (depending on your choice) to provide you with the ability to install whatever Linux system you want...

    • New Releases

      • DebugPoint4MLinux 41.0 stable is now available with SDL games + More

        MLinux is a decade-old small Linux distribution that focuses on four main capabilities: maintenance (e.g., as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (e.g., playing video DVDs), miniserver (using the inetd daemon), and mystery (small Linux games). It is independently developed and comes with 32-bit images as well. A perfect lightweight Linux distribution for older hardware.

        The 4MLinux 41.0 series have been updated to its stable version. This version includes tools for editing documents such as LibreOffice and GNOME Office, file sharing with DropBox, web browsing with Firefox and Chromium, email with Thunderbird, and more. It also includes a LAMP server setup and programming languages like Perl, Python, and Ruby.

        Here's a summary of the changes.

    • Debian Family

      • Ben Hutchings: Debian LTS work, November 2022

        In November I was assigned 24 hours by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative. I worked 9 of those hours and will carry over the remainder.

        I updated the linux (4.19) package to the latest stable update, but didn't upload it. I attended the monthly LTS team meeting.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • CNX SoftwareCool Pi 4 Model B - A much faster alternative to Raspberry Pi 4 SBC - CNX Software

        Cool Pi 4 Model B is a powerful alternative to Raspberry Pi 4 SBC with mostly the same form factor and interfaces but equipped with a Rockchip RK3588S octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor that will run circles around the Broadcom BCM2711 SoC found in the Raspberry Pi board.

        We’ve already reviewed Rockchip RK3588/RK3588S single board computers and mini PC such as Rock 5B, Khadas Edge2 Pro, and Mekotronics R58, and we were impressed by the performance, but if you prefer to have such a board in Raspberry Pi 4 form factor, then the Cool Pi 4 Model B might be for you.

      • Linux Gizmos$10.80 RISC-V AIoT module supports Linux

        The Sipeed M1s is a compact module integrating the Bouffalo Lab BL808 RISC-V SoC module along with a NPU. The device also provides WiFi/BL, 802.15.4 Zigbee connectivity and support for interfaces such as UART, I2C, SPI, etc.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Ken ShirriffHow the 8086 processor's microcode engine works

        In brief, the microcode in the 8086 consists of 512 micro-instructions, each 21 bits wide. The microcode engine has a 13-bit register that steps through the microcode, along with a 13-bit subroutine register to store the return address for microcode subroutine calls. The microcode engine is assisted by two smaller ROMs: the "Group Decode ROM" to categorize machine instructions, and the "Translation ROM" to branch to microcode subroutines for address calculation and other roles. Physically, the microcode is stored in a 128×84 array. It has a special address decoder that optimizes the storage. The microcode circuitry is visible in the die photo below.

      • Raspberry PiRaspberry Pi audio boards for your hi-fi projects

        Back in 2020, we welcomed the IQaudio family of hi-fi audio products into the Raspberry Pi family. This was the first, and so far only, time we’ve acquired electronic products from someone else, rather than developing them ourselves: that we made an exception for IQaudio is a testament to what Gordon, Sharon, and Andrew had built together.

      • Robert HeatonGameboy Doctor: debug and fix your gameboy emulator

        Gameboy Doctor is a tool that compares your emulator to an example emulator that passes Blargg’s test ROMs. It finds the exact tick where your emulator’s state diverges from the example, helping you isolate and fix your bugs. You don’t need to have implemented an LCD in order to use it, and you don’t even have to be able to successfully get any kind of pass/fail message back from Blargg! All you need is a minimally functional CPU and motherboard.

      • Erich StygerAdvent Calendar 2022

        It is already December 1st, and time for a new Advent Calendar. This year the design includes birch plywood with PMMA, SK6812 RGBW LEDs running with a Raspberry Pi Pico board, building a small village.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Leah OswaldScaling the Mastodon

      I was going to write an article for a while now, but there was too much work to do with the latest influx. Together with my co-admin @rixx we run the chaos.social instance. As of writing this, we are one of the biggest and most active instances on the fediverse and one of the oldest mastodon instances, starting mid of April 2017. For the last 5 years everything was simple, one VM with 10 cores, 500GB NVMe SSD Storage and 32GB RAM. This VM did everything from the database to the webserving. Then Musk happened.

      The first time we really had to scale our setup was in May 2022 after Musk announced to buy twitter. We rented another server with 4TB NVMe in a RAID1, 16 Cores, 32 Thread, and 128 RAM and migrated the database to this server. And then there was Friday the 27h October 2022 with the headline that Musk finally bought twitter all over the news. With this date, everything became very complicated very quickly. In only two days, the scaling in work load on the fediverse network increased, and most of the larger instances got very slow. We fixed this in only a few days, and this article is a summary about what we did until now. I will keep it up to date with future changes.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • PostgreSQLPostgreSQL: pgAdmin 4 v6.17 Released

        The pgAdmin Development Team is pleased to announce pgAdmin 4 version 6.17. This release of pgAdmin 4 includes 10 bug fixes and new features. For more details please see the release notes.

        pgAdmin is the leading Open Source graphical management tool for PostgreSQL. For more information, please see the website.

    • Programming/Development

      • RlangExact integral of a polynomial on a simplex

        The paper Simple formula for integration of polynomials on a simplex by Jean B. Lasserre provides a method to calculate the exact value of the integral of a multivariate polynomial on a simplex (i.e. a tetrahedron in dimension three). I implemented it in Julia, Python, and R.

        Integration on simplices is important, because any convex polyhedron can be decomposed into simplices, thanks to the Delaunay tessellation. Therefore one can integrate over convex polyhedra once one can integrate over simplices (I wrote an example of doing so with R).

      • [Old] Bob AlexanderRe-creating a Byte Magazine Cover as a Photograph

        Byte magazine was the leading personal computer magazine in the 1970s and 80s. Every month, its cover was adorned with a beautiful, surrealistic painting by Robert Tinney, showing a mash-up between computers and unrelated objects. The July 1977 issue featured an article about controlling a model railroad with a computer, and so Mr. Tinney painted a cover integrating a train with a computer board. According to Mr. Tinney, this “Computer Engineering” image is one of his most popular creations.

        I wanted to create a piece of art that appeared to be a photograph of a real-life scene that Mr. Tinney might have painted. My first step was to obtain the components pictured in Tinney’s painting. Some of them are no longer manufactured – like the resistor and the big blue potentiometer with the black thumbwheel – or expensive to buy new, like the red transistor socket. I got what I could from eBay and compromised with a white thumbwheel on the potentiometer. I mocked up the component layout on a perfboard, designed the “circuit” (there isn’t actually a complete electrical circuit here) in DipTrace and sent it off to China to be manufactured.

        (Projects like this are the main reason I use DipTrace or KiCad instead of Eagle Lite. The PCB I made is 5.5″ × 6″. The free version of Eagle would not have allowed me to make a board that big.)

      • Abhinav SarkarSolving Rock-Paper-Scissors in Type-level Haskell

        Let’s solve part 1 of today’s Advent of Code challenge “Rock Paper Scissors” in type-level Haskell.

        Instead of using term-level programming as we usually do, we make Haskell’s type system do the work of calculating the solution. So the solution is be known right after we compile the program, and we do not even need to run the compiled program.

      • RlangGaussian Process Regression for FEA Designed Experiments – Building the Basics in R

        Why would GPR be a good choice for modeling data produced by FEA? Well FEA is a deterministic modeling process – the prediction for any set of inputs (boundary conditions) is unique and repeatable. There is no noise or experimental error. This means a transfer function that passes through every point in the training data would be preferred. With a traditional regression model, the flexibility needed hit every data point would require many high order terms, sabotaging the model’s predictive ability on new data. But GPR has the amazing ability to swerve gently and fluidly between data points, meeting each one perfectly on its way to the next. This allows GPR to make perfect predictions on the training data while providing sound predictions in the areas in between the training points.

      • [Old] It’s Time For ‘Maximum Viable Product’ | by Clive Thompson | Debugger

        “Feature creep” messes up a lot of good software.

        We’ve all seen it happen to our favorite apps. We get an early version, we thrill to it; it does exactly what we want. We’re in love.

      • The broken bridge between biologists and statisticians | The coefficient of determination: is it the R-squared or r-squared?

        We often use the coefficient of determination as a swift ‘measure’ of goodness of fit for our regression models. Unfortunately, there is no unique symbol for such a coefficient and both \(R^2\) and \(r^2\) are used in literature, almost interchangeably. Such an interchangeability is also endorsed by the Wikipedia (see at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_determination ), where both symbols are reported as the abbreviations for this statistical index.

        As an editor of several International Journals, I should not agree with such an approach; indeed, the two symbols \(R^2\) and \(r^2\) mean two different things, and they are not necessarily interchangeable, because, depending on the setting, either of the two may be wrong or ambiguous. Let’s pay a little attention to such an issue.

      • Version 0.13.0 of NIMBLE released - NIMBLE

        We’ve released the newest version of NIMBLE on CRAN and on our website. NIMBLE is a system for building and sharing analysis methods for statistical models, especially for hierarchical models and computationally-intensive methods (such as MCMC and SMC).

      • FinnstatsMatthews Correlation Coefficient in R - finnstats

        Matthews Correlation Coefficient in R, We can evaluate a classification model’s effectiveness using a metric called the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC).

      • rOpenSci | postdoc 1.0: minimal and uncluttered HTML package manuals

        This post is part of a series of technotes about r-universe, a new umbrella project by rOpenSci under which we experiment with various ideas for improving publication and discovery of research software in R. As the project evolves, we will post updates to document features and technical details. For more information, visit the r-universe project page.

      • GeshanUsing Axios timeout to make your application more efficient

        Axios is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries to do HTTP requests. It is an HTTP client available for both the browser and Node.js. Setting Axios timeout properly makes your application perform efficiently even when the called API/URL is not responding in a timely manner. In this post, you will learn about Axios, its configs, and how to set Axios timeout properly to not hamper your application’s performance. Let’s get going.

        [...]

        In today’s world of highly interconnected services and API economy, more often than not your application will call either external HTTP APIs or internal ones. Depending on how your company’s applications and the communication between them is architected, you are most likely calling some internal HTTP APIs. In addition to that, your applications might also be calling external APIs to accomplish all sorts of tasks from some AI-related calculation to creating shipments for a customer order.

        Imagine this, your shipment application is calling the Auspost/DHL API to create a shipment and get an Airway Bill (AWB) number to send to the customer. Due to the last quarter of the year, the high traffic season of Black Friday and Christmas sales their API is responding extremely slowly. Usually, the create AWB HTTP API would respond in under 200 milliseconds (ms) but due to the load and ongoing issue at the time of calling it was responding in around 3 seconds.

        This means that your warehouse (fulfillment center) staff are waiting for no direct benefit. In addition, as the API responses are flaky it is causing other issues too. This is where timeout on HTTP requests comes in handy, which is what is going to be discussed next.

      • Paolo MelchiorrePaolo Melchiorre - 2022 Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial€ Prize

        It is difficult to write what a great honor it is for me that the Django Software Foundation has awarded me the 2022 Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Prize, when it was announced to me via email by Anna Makarudze I was not sure how this was possible.

        The two years leading up to this one were very difficult for me, but this last one I’ve been trying to make up for lost time and get back to participating in the life of the Django community in person. I have to admit that it was a reward just that I was able to meet so many amazing members of our community again, each of whom deserves this award.

      • GeshanA beginner’s guide to parse and create XML with Node.js

        Writing and parsing XML files with Node.js might not be one of the first things that strike your mind. On the contrary, the Fast XML parser has millions of downloads per week on NPM. In this post, you will learn how to validate and parse XML with Node.js. You will also learn to generate an XML file from JavaScript objects. Let's get started!

      • Dave DeLongAdventures in Advent of Code

        The nature of last night’s problem was that, when I had a bunch of inputs, I could expect that there was only a single common element between all of them. After getting lucky and solving the problem correctly, I started golfing my code to make it terser. That’s when I started noticing something odd.

      • HackadayBetter Coding Through Sketching

        Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, engineering students would take a few semesters of drafting and there would usually be a week or two of “computer-aided drafting.” In those days, that meant punching cards that said RECTANGLE 20,30 or something like that and getting the results on a plotter. Then we moved on to graphical€  CAD packages, but lately, some have gone back to describing rather than drawing complex designs. Cornell University researchers are trying to provide the same options for coding. They’ve built a Juypter notebook extension called Notate that allows you to sketch and handwrite parts of programs that interact with traditional computer code. You can see a video about the work below.

      • Perl / Raku

      • Python

        • Martijn BraamRewriting my blog again

          Since this is a fully standalone client side webapp thing I can just host those four files and then write a Python Flask application that implements the same REST api that the nodejs backend provided.

          This is exactly what I did, the whole backend is now a small Flask application that implements the Ghost API in ~500 lines of Python. It's called Spook (since this is dutch for ghost).

  • Leftovers

    • HackadayThis Is The Future Of Waste Management

      Many of us have been asking for some time now “where are our robot servants?” We were promised this dream life of leisure and luxury, but we’re still waiting. Modern life is a very wasteful one, with items delivered to our doors with the click of a mouse, but the disposal of the packaging is still a manual affair. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to summon a robot to take the rubbish to the recycling, ideally have it fetch a beer at the same time? [James Bruton] shares this dream, and with his extensive robotics skillset, came up with the perfect solution;€ behold the Binbot 9000. (Video, embedded below the break)

    • Ruben SchadeDemand for ads on the receiving end

      But it’s Doc’s observation about the demand side that piqued my interest. We’re so regularly told about the supply side, from new tracking technologies to business models. But if you ask someone on the proverbial street if they like advertising, or even if they want it, you’ll get the same answer.

    • Ben CongdonOn Personal Predictions

      For the last couple years, I’ve maintained a spreadsheet of personal predictions. It’s been a useful practice that I would recommend. “Personal” in this context has 2 meanings: first, that I don’t preregister or publicly publish these predictions; second, that the content of some of the predictions is personal in nature.

      I’ve had predictions & forecasting on my radar for several years, but it really picked up during the pandemic and 2020 elections. There was a plethora of salient “in the world” things to predict, and in an environment of heightened epistemic uncertainty, checking your intuitions about how things “in the world” were progressing felt quite valuable.

    • Kev QuirkI’m a Fire Starter! - Kev Quirk

      I recently moved to a house that has an open fire (my first one), and I’ve quickly fallen in love with the whole process of maintaining an open fire.

      A little over a month ago my wife, 2 kids, 2 dogs, cat and 4 fish tanks all upped sticks and moved to the Welsh countryside. It’s a much bigger house than we had before, with 2.5 acres of land, a double garage (for my motorbikes) and a couple of outbuildings.

      We’re hoping that it will be a much nicer way of life down here. We intend to have a vegetable patch, more animals and generally be closer to nature. A smallholding, if you will.

      This house has an open fire in the lounge, it’s actually the first house I’ve ever lived in that has an open fire. Lucky for us, my wife grew up with one, so she knows how to lay it properly.

    • Terence EdenIs it cheating to use spell check?

      When I was a kid, our school had one computer per classroom. Luxury!

      Teachers had long-since given up on the state of my handwriting. So I got special dispensation to write up some of my work on whatever primitive word processor was installed on the PC. With one caveat: no spell check!

      Which, even as a ten year old, I thought was reasonable. Learning to spell is an adult life skill. So using a spell-checker was cheating.

      Once I got to secondary school, it was assumed that I knew how to spell. And there was no restriction on using Wrd 2.0's splel chek.

    • Mark DominusWhatever became of the Peanuts kids?

      One day I asked Lorrie if she thought that Schroeder actually grew up to be a famous concert pianist. We agreed that he probably did. Or at least Schroeder has as good a chance as anyone does. To become a famous concert pianist, you need to have talent and drive. Schroeder clearly has talent (he can play all that Beethoven and Mozart on a toy piano whose black keys are only painted on) and he clearly has drive. Not everyone with talent and drive does succeed, of course, but he might make it, whereas some rando like me has no chance at all.

      That led to a longer discussion about what became of the other kids. Some are easier than others. Who knows what happens to Violet, Sally, (non-Peppermint) Patty, and Shermy? I imagine Violet going into realty for some reason.

    • The Washington PostIt’s not your imagination: Shopping on Amazon has gotten worse [Ed: This Web site is owned by the owner of Amazon; it gets the facts wrong, issues "CORRECTION"]

      A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that the “Highly rated” label could be purchased. In fact, Amazon selects who is featured under that label. This article has been corrected.

    • SlateHow the Wordle editor is ruining wordle.

      I realize, doctors, that technically that may not be accurate. But as a 46-year-old with a toddler, I am often propelled from my bed at 6 a.m. (or, God forbid, before) with “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommygetup” and no room to lie still and savor the warm covers. My body is awake and moving around the apartment long before my brain has caught up.

      That’s where Wordle comes in. Once I have managed to sort the child—or, more likely, my husband has taken over—I like to slowly sip my morning tea while tapping the tiles (dark, hard mode). The ritual lets my mind adjust to the morning. I enjoy a tricky word—GLYPH, I see you. I find double consonants sort of irritating (FOGGY???). But mostly, I enjoy the random puzzle as a way to rev my consciousness and prepare for the day.

      When the New York Times announced, on November 7, that Wordle would have an editor, I didn’t give it much thought. How much could the mere presence of a person really change it?

    • Daniel MiesslerCompanies as Alaskan Fishing Boats

      What if companies are supposed to be like Alaskan fishing boats? You know, the kind on The Deadliest Catch.

      So you have this tiny crew of total badasses. Everyone is a superhero at their particular role because the crew needs to stay extremely small to protect profits. The captain is a dictator. The mission is clear. And bad performances from anyone is immediately noticeable and immediately dealt with.

      You hurt your back? Sorry, you’re a great crew member, but you’re not going out on this trip. You want to spent more time with your brother who’s visiting? Cool, you’re off the ship. This crew is for hardcore people only. Remind you of anything?

      [...]

      So to me the question isn’t whether it’s an effective way for people to run their businesses. The question is whether it’s a model that we should pursue given the effects on the people who work there.

    • Terence EdenThe ethics of syndicating comments using WebMentions

      This blog uses WebMention technology. If you write an article on your website and mention one of my blog posts, I get a notification. That notification can then be published as a comment. It usually looks something like this: [...]

    • Roger ComplyJoe Nobody declares victory

      In short, within 48 hours after I sent the first abuse report, the phishing website was rendered useless, thanks to actions taken by some of the notified service providers. Based on my previous experiences with sending abuse reports to service providers, I’ll admit that this was not the outcome I expected.

    • HackadayNixie Display Module Is Addressable Via SPI

      There are plenty of SPI interface screens on the market, but few of them have the charm of the good old Nixie tube. [Tony] decided to whip up a simple three-Nixie module that could be addressed via SPI.€ 

    • HackadayBuild Your Own Mini Fogging Cauldron

      The best cauldrons are full of bubbling, steamy potions of great magical potential. We don’t have many of those in the real world, though, so sometimes we have to make do with a simulacra. [wannabemadsci] has built just that, with this fogging cauldron prop that uses no fog fluid or dry ice, running solely with water instead.

    • Science

      • Vice Media GroupA Huge Satellite Is Now One of the Brightest Objects In the Sky, Astronomers Warn

        The shiny glare of the 693-square-foot satellite, as well as its voluminous radio activity, “could severely hamper progress in our understanding of the cosmos,” according to a statement released on Monday by the International Astronomical Union.

        Scientists involved with IAU’s Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference (IAU CPS) also raised alarms about AST SpaceMobile’s plan to deploy a hundred satellites that are as big, or even larger, than BlueWalker 3 (BW3) in order to build a cellular broadband network designed to fill in coverage gaps around the world.

      • ACMAI is Solving Classical Computing's Quantum Problem

        Artificial intelligence (AI)—in particular, machine learning (ML)— recently began to solve problems for which quantum computers are targeted, according to researchers at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), the Flatiron Institute (New York City), and IBM (Yorktown Heights, NY).

        "ML cannot emulate every quantum algorithm," said Hsin-Yuan Huang, a quantum information theorist at CalTech, "but ML can emulate more quantum algorithms than classical algorithms that do not have learning abilities. For example, to solve the problem of finding quantum ground states [lowest energy levels], one typically wants to use adiabatic [thermodynamic] quantum algorithms. But we've proven that a classical ML model can learn from data to predict these ground states efficiently."

      • Sabine HossenfelderSabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction: Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics: What's the Links
      • Freethink Media IncDoes consciousness change the rules of quantum mechanics? - Big Think

        We can all agree that quantum entanglement is weird. We don’t worry too much about it, though, beyond some of its more practical applications. After all, the phenomenon plays out on scales that are vastly smaller than our everyday experiences. But perhaps quantum mechanics and entanglement are not limited to the ultra-small. Scientists have shown that macroscopic (albeit small) objects can be placed in entanglement. It begs the question: Is there a size limit for quantum entanglement? Carrying the idea further, could a person become entangled, along with their consciousness?

        Asking these questions not only lets us probe the limits of quantum mechanics, but it could also lead us to a unified theory of physics — one that works equally well for anything from electrons to planets.

    • Education

      • uni StanfordStanford Law School will no longer participate in U.S. News Rankings, joining peer institutions

        Martinez also wrote that SLS believes the ranking methodology “distorts incentives” and is “harmful to legal education as a whole.” Specific concerns included the discouragement of public interest careers and inappropriate weight on student expenditure and loan repayment programs. SLS students who are also pursuing an MBA or a Ph.D. are considered “unemployed” under the metrics of the rankings, Martinez wrote.

      • Vice Media Group'Most Dangerous Person In the World' Is a Teacher Union Leader, Former CIA Director Says

        Weingarten has served as the president of the American Federation of Teachers for the past 15 years, and is a well-known labor leader and attorney in the United States. She has also been the focus of targeted outrage from right-wing pundits for the union's position supporting COVID mandates, for example. Fox News has smeared the union and Weingarten specifically as being greedy and attempted to paint a picture of kids failing school due to unions. Weingarten has also been vocal in supporting teachers against right-wing attacks against teaching accurately on topics such as race in schools.

      • CERDoing a Little Housekeeping and Rebranding

        I have been reticent to post under a banner saying “Computing Education Research” because this site has pretty broad visibility now. There are many more subscribers than the first few years. Newcomers might come here with that title and expect to read a newsletter or an authoritative perspective on the field — that’s an overwhelming responsibility. I recognize that I’m a senior (read: “old”) voice in the field, but I am just one of many voices in the field. Like any academic, I want to share what we’re working on and what I’m thinking about. I do not want to my posts here to appear like I’m speaking for the field.

        So, I have renamed the blog for a second time: Computing Ed Research – Guzdial’s Take. This blog represents my perspective. That’s how I’ve always thought of the blog, but I want to make it explicit.

    • Hardware

      • Lionel DricotReinventing How We Use Computers

        Unsurprisingly, most of the reactions I had from my Forever Computer dream where about hardware. Every idea, every project I saw could be summarised as "How to make hardware we can repair while not questioning what we do with this hardware?" The (very interesting) Framework laptop is available as… a Chromebook. This is like transitioning to electric cars while having electricity generated from coal and not questioning why we ride in the first place. Oh, wait…

      • HackadayBit-Banging Bidirectional Ethernet On A Pi Pico

        These days, even really cheap microcontroller boards have options that will give you Ethernet or WiFi access. But what if you have a Raspberry Pi Pico board and you really want to MacGyver yourself a network connection? You could do worse than check out this project by [holysnippet] that gives you a bit-banged bidirectional Ethernet port using only scrap passive components and software.

      • HackadayA Cycle-Accurate Intel 8088 Core For All Your Retro PC Needs

        A problem faced increasingly by retrocomputer enthusiasts everywhere is the supply of chips. Once a piece of silicon goes out of production its demand can be supplied for a time by old stock and second hand parts, but as they become rare so the cost of what can be dubious parts accelerates out of reach. Happily for CPUs at least, there’s a ray of hope in the form of FPGA-based cores which can replace the real thing, and for early PC owners there’s a new one from [Ted Fried]. MCL86 is a cycle accurate Intel 8088 FPGA Core that can be used within an FPGA design or as a standalone in-circuit replacement for a real 8088. It even has a full-speed mode that sacrifices cycle accuracy and can accelerate those 8088 instructions by 400%.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • ABCFBI director raises national security concerns about TikTok

        Wray said the FBI was concerned that the Chinese had the ability to control the app’s recommendation algorithm, “which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.” He also asserted that China could use the app to collect data on its users that could be used for traditional espionage operations.

        "All of these things are in the hands of a government that doesn’t share our values, and that has a mission that's very much at odds with what’s in the best interests of the United States. That should concern us,” Wray told an audience at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

        Those concerns are similar to ones he raised during congressional appearances last month when the issue came up. And they're being voiced during ongoing dialogue in Washington about the app.

      • New York TimesThe Next Anti-Abortion Tactic: Attacking the Spread of Information

        Now that abortion has been banned in more than a dozen states, abortion opponents want to stoke confusion about the legality of not just having an abortion, but even of discussing the procedure. The ultimate goal seems to be ensuring that women are unclear about their options to obtain an abortion or contraception, in their home state or elsewhere.

        Signs of this trend can be found around the country. In Nebraska, law enforcement obtained a warrant to search a teenager’s private Facebook messages, in which she told her mother of her urgent desire to end her pregnancy. The mother is now being prosecuted on charges of helping her daughter abort the pregnancy by giving advice about abortion pills.

      • Michael West MediaDust cloud over worker safety: asbestos alarm at Sydney’s first skyscraper, the AMP rebuild - Michael West

        Construction workers at Sydney landmark, the AMP building have been exposed to asbestos. But those responsible aren’t talking. Exclusive MWM report by Callum Foote.

        Construction workers refurbishing the AMP building in Circular Quay have been exposed to asbestos. MWM understands approximately 30 workers have so far been required to undergo medical examinations.

        Exposure to the deadly mineral appears to be a significant failure of process, and has been condemned by the construction union.

        Other parties have not responded to questions by MWM.

      • Pro PublicaThe Uranium Industry Continues to Poison U.S. Groundwater

        In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed.

        Uranium mills that helped fuel the weapons also dumped radioactive and toxic waste into rivers like the Cheyenne in South Dakota and the Animas in Colorado. Thousands of sheep turned blue and died after foraging on land tainted by processing sites in North Dakota. And cancer wards across the West swelled with sick uranium workers.

    • Proprietary

    • Linux Foundation

    • Security

      • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

        • John GruberTwo Weeks Later and Twitter Is Still Up

          In the immediate aftermath of Twitter’s mass layoffs and subsequent resignations, there were widespread reports that the staffing situation and collective brain drain were so dire that the site would collapse. Two weeks later — with World Cup soccer drama fueling record usage — such concerns seem to have been overblown.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • BrrMcMurdo's Automated Teller Machines

          As of this writing, the McMurdo station store accepts cash and cards. The post office accepts only cards. Bars accept only cash. Haircuts accept only cash. I know I’m going to regret posting this, since it’ll likely change in future years as technology evolves.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • ScheerpostWar Is a Cancel Culture [VIDEO]

        How Democrats, their pro-war Republican cohorts and the media canceled the U.S. Senate campaign of ex-Marine and US foreign policy official Matthew Hoh.

      • Gustaf EriksonThe moral bankruptcy of the IR “realists”

        Only a so-called “international relations realist” can present these demands for an end of the war in Ukraine as “extremist”...

        [...]

        Note to conflation of two separate things here: the supposition that NATO expansion caused Putin to start the war and that the likely end of the war will be a negotiated settlement or a frozen conflict. I personally am a pessimist. I do believe that a negotiated settlement is likely. But having the ideal of a full Ukrainian victory in mind is the morally correct one, not to try to aim for a settlement a priori.

        But it is not clear to me that NATO expansion left Putin with only one option. Note that he himself did not refer to NATO in the beginning of the war, when he was sure he was going to force a regime change in Ukraine within days. Now that Russia is losing badly it’s “because of NATO”, but that’s because he, like the author of this piece, cannot see Ukrainians as a worthy foe.

        By starting the war, Putin ensured that Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO, suddenly increasing Russia’s border with NATO by thousands of kilometers. So Russia has now a worse position vis-a-vis NATO than before the war, even discounting the sanctions and the billions of treasure lost to Ukrainian forces armed by NATO countries.

      • Gatestone InstituteBelgium's World Cup Football Riots: A Symbol of the Failure of the Migration Policy

        In Brussels, Moroccans outnumber people of Belgian origin in the under-18 age group; many schools are attended exclusively by children of non-European origin. In those public schools where parents have the choice of religion classes, Islam is now followed by a majority of pupils. Whether one describes these changes as "diversity" or as a "great replacement" is of little importance; over a few decades the evolution has been considerable and has modified the social fabric of Belgium's cities.

      • ABCMore charges against teen for ISIS-inspired plot show threat to Chicago may have been more serious

        Investigators cited statements from other teenagers allegedly involved in the plot, evidence that Pelkey planned to bring guns and ammunition to Chicago in addition to the explosive devices.

        The homemade bombs, according to court records, were cooked up and concocted out of easily purchased items. That is the new ISIS MO: use what you have and can find to maim and kill.

      • New York TimesFacebook Failed to Stop Ads Threatening Election Workers

        Facebook says it does not allow content that threatens serious violence. But when researchers submitted ads threatening to “lynch,” “murder” and “execute” election workers around Election Day this year, the company’s largely automated moderation systems approved many of them.

        Out of the 20 ads submitted by researchers containing violent content, 15 were approved by Facebook, according to a new test published by Global Witness, a watchdog group, and New York University’s Cybersecurity for Democracy. Researchers deleted the approved ads before they were published.

      • Meduza‘A permanent struggle’ Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko spoke to RBC Ukraine about the aftermath of recent attacks on the city, and what the winter months hold for its residents — Meduza
      • Meduza‘Packing their bags’ Russia might be leaving the Zaporizhzhia NPP in hopes of ‘a deal’ — Meduza
      • HackadayCargo Culting And Buried Treasure

        I have no idea how true the stories are, but legend has it that when supplies were dropped on some Melanesian islands during WWII, some locals took to replicating runway signs in order to further please the “gods” that were dropping them. They reportedly thought that making landing strips caused laden airplanes to visit. Richard Feynman later turned this into a metaphor about scientific theory – that if you don’t understand what you’re doing deeply, you may be fooling yourself.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Vice Media GroupSasha Grey Is Not Recruiting Soldiers for the Russian Army

        The image is a photoshop made from three separate images. The original recruitment ad featured a smiling soldier with the same message. The woman in the uniform comes from a profile of a Russian troop, and Grey’s face has just been layered on top. This isn’t the first time Grey’s face has appeared in weird Russian propaganda.

      • Craig MurrayTrains (Mostly) Planes and Automobiles Part 2

        When the papers were leaked of a law firm representing many thousands of people and enterprises hiding their assets in parliament, the western media filtered the information and hid everything connected to prominent western companies and individuals. Instead they deliberately gave the entirely false impression that the bulk of money laundered through Panama is Russian, and made the headlines entirely about Russian and Russian-linked individuals, including a chef with tenuous connections to Putin as an official caterer.

        Out of 10 million documents leaked, about 120 were actually made available as documents by the journalists, and about a number 200 had their contents referred to by mainstream media journalists – how fully and how honestly we have no way of knowing.

        We live in a world of fake investigative journalism. Access to the Panama Papers was strictly controlled by a Washington-based entity, the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”. Their funders include [...]

    • Environment

      • Counter PunchCOP27 Continues the Climate Summit Ritual of Words Without Action

        The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to use the formal name for COP27, ended with what has the appearance of a breakthrough: An agreement on the establishment of a “loss and damage” fund for Global South countries severely affected by weather and environmental disasters triggered by global warming, and for which they bear almost no responsibility. This finally fulfills a pledge made at the 2009 Climate Summit in Copenhagen. To read this article, log in here or subscribe here. If you are logged in but can't read CP+ articles, check the status of your access hereIn order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

      • Common Dreams'Turn Off the Tap on Plastic,' UN Chief Declares Amid Debate Over New Global Treaty

        Hours before the first round of negotiations to advance a global plastics treaty concluded Friday in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, the leader of the United Nations implored countries "to look beyond waste and turn off the tap on plastic."

        "The push for an ambitious global plastics treaty has only just begun."

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Rich Countries Have an Historic Responsibility to Help Global South Transition to Post-Fossil-Fuel Future

        To keep the planet from overheating, there’s just so much more carbon that humans can pump into the atmosphere. From the onset of the Industrial Revolution until today, humanity has used up approximately 83 percent of its “carbon budget”—the amount of carbon the atmosphere can absorb and not exceed the Paris climate agreement’s aspirational goal of a 1.5C degree increase in global temperatures since the pre-industrial era. At the current rate of emissions, the budget will be used up within the next decade.

    • Finance

      • TruthOutWith No Child Tax Credit, Families Are Slipping Back Into Poverty Amid Inflation
      • TruthOutPentagon to Spend $200 Billion on New Nuclear Bomber as Millions Live in Poverty
      • TruthOutRailroad Workers Slam Biden for Siding With Bosses to Avoid Strike
      • Common DreamsOpinion | Once Upon a Time the US Taxed the Rich

        Once upon a time, the United States seriously taxed the nation's rich. You remember that time? Probably not. To have a personal memory of that tax-the-rich era, you now have to be well into your seventies.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | As Millions Face Poverty, Global Food Companies Paid Out Nearly 15 Billion to Shareholders

        The world's biggest food companies have paid out nearly €£15bn to shareholders as spiralling prices leave desperate families struggling to afford to eat, openDemocracy can reveal.

      • TechCrunchKanye West isn’t buying Parler after all - TechCrunch

        Despite a joint statement between Ye (fka Kanye West) and Parler in October noting that the two had reached an agreement for the rapper to buy the social network, the purchase will not come to pass, Parler-owner Parlement Technologies said today.

        [...]

        Well, there is the fact that earlier today West praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during an interview with none other than Alex Jones — himself a person who was recently found liable for nearly $1 billion in damages for spreading horrible lies about the incredibly tragic Sandy Hook school shooting.

      • John GruberElon Musk Gets Mail

        And to be clear, Elon, you will lose, and you know it.

      • Michael West MediaGoogle Giggle: Josh Frydenberg’s "world-first" media reform a hand-out to billionaire mates - Michael West

        Josh Frydenberg’s “world-first” Media Code is a world-first joke lapped up by a sycophantic media enjoying secret cash payments from Google and Facebook. Michael West reports on the hype and the shameless Treasury review which endorses it.

        Josh Frydenberg sallied forth with a fulsome pat on the back this week … for himself.

        “The Coalition’s ‘world-first’ Media Bargaining Code was a ‘success’,” pronounced the former Treasurer. A success indeed; a terrific success for the Coalition’s media mates Rupert Murdoch, Peter Costello and Kerry Stokes.

        To be fair to Josh, he was only repeating what was in the press. Josh’s “media reforms” had forced Google and Facebook to pay millions in cash (secretly) to Big Media. In return, the News Corp, Nine, Guardian Australia and so forth sang the praises of Josh’s “world-first”. Manufacturing consent is a breeze, you just have to pay people.

      • Michael West MediaQantas profits soar, but little room for better pay for staff as shareholders re-Joyce

        Qantas profit estimates just jumped again this week when Alan Joyce threatened to axe regional routes, ramping up pressure on politicians to stop the looming industrial relations reforms. Michael Sainsbury reports.

        The priorities of Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and chairman Richard Goyder were on display again this week, preferring the fortunes of shareholders and executives over those on the front line of the airline’s low altitude standards – staff and customers. Joyce even reprised the age old Qantas tactic of pressuring politicians by dangling the idea he might shut down a regional route or two … if industrial relations policy did not go his way.

      • Financial TimesTwitter’s $5bn-a-year business hit as Elon Musk clashes with advertisers

        Multiple top advertising agencies and media buyers told the Financial Times that nearly all of the big brands they represent have paused spending on the social media platform, citing alarm at Musk’s ad hoc approach to policing content and decision to axe many of its ad sales team.

        Musk, meanwhile, has sought to personally call chief executives of some brands that have curbed advertising in order to berate them, according to one senior industry figure, leading others to instead reduce their spend to the bare minimum required so as to avoid further confrontation with the billionaire entrepreneur.

      • The Wall Street JournalElon Musk’s Boring Company Ghosts Cities Across America

        The unsolicited proposal from Elon Musk’s tunnel-building venture arrived in January 2020. To the local transportation authority, it felt like finding Willy Wonka’s golden ticket.

      • A ghost to most - Lawyers, Guns - Money

        While he brings his idiotic ideas to Twitter, it’s worth noting that his hole-digging company is basically vaporware that exists solely to undermine actually potentially viable mass transit proposals...

      • Common DreamsProtesting Fuel Poverty, People Tell UK Government to 'Keep Everyone Warm This Winter'

        People in dozens of cities across the United Kingdom hit the streets on Saturday to demand immediate government action to prevent thousands of struggling workers from freezing to death in their homes this winter.

        Demonstrators drew attention to the worsening crisis of fuel poverty and called on lawmakers to pick up more of the tab for skyrocketing bills, fund home insulation, and accelerate clean energy production—all of which would be made easier by enacting a stronger tax on oil and gas corporations' windfall profits.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • The inside story of Trump’s explosive dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes

        “I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he’s missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with,” Yiannopoulos told NBC News. “I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end,” he added.

        And, Yiannopoulos said, he arranged the dinner “just to make Trump’s life miserable” because news of the dinner would leak and Trump would mishandle it.

        Fuentes echoed the sentiment: “I hate to say it, but the chickens are coming home to roost. You know, this is the frustration with his base and with his true loyalists.”

        Trump fumed afterward that Ye had betrayed him by ambushing him. “He tried to f[uck] me. He’s crazy. He can’t beat me,” Trump said, according to one confidant, who then relayed the conversation to NBC News on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

        “Trump was totally blindsided,” the source said of Fuentes’ presence. “It was a setup.”

      • TruthOutRight-Wing Extremist Lauren Boebert to Guide Policy on House GOP Leadership Team
      • TruthOutLet’s Honor Kevin Johnson by Dismantling the Systems That Failed Him
      • Maxim TipsLies about Chatcontrol, Part 1

        Recently (2022-12-01), the European Commission published an article about their planned legislation (called chatcontrol by critics). While the Commission has in the past cited statistics which are wrong, the published article is so stunningly bad in that almost every single sentence is strongly misleading, a blatant lie or flat out wrong. As it's rather short, I'll fully cite the article and explain what's wrong with each part. I assume you have some familiarity with chatcontrol. If not, you may want to read about what it is before reading this post.

      • The VergeElon Musk’s promised Twitter exposé on the Hunter Biden story is a flop that doxxed multiple people

        The emails show Twitter’s team struggling with how to explain their handling of the New York Post story that broke the news of Hunter’s leaked laptop files — and whether they made the correct moderation decision in the first place. At the time, it was not clear if the materials were genuine, and Twitter decided to ban links to or images of the Post’s story, citing its policy on the distribution of hacked materials. The move was controversial even then, primarily among Republicans but also with speech advocates worried about Twitter’s decision to block a news outlet.

        While Musk might be hoping we see documents showing Twitter’s (largely former) staffers nefariously deciding to act in a way that helped now-President Joe Biden, the communications mostly show a team debating how to finalize and communicate a difficult moderation decision.

      • The Spectator UKThe Taliban and Isis are in a battle for control

        Isis and the Taliban both follow variations of jihadist Sunni Islam, but they are ideological enemies. The Taliban’s beliefs are drawn from the Deobandi branch of Islam – which is less extreme than the Wahhabi-Salafist form of Islam practised by Isis (and also by al Qaeda). Many of the Taliban’s beliefs come not only from Sunni Islam but also the traditional Pashtun tribal way of life in Afghanistan. Isis’s jihadi-Salafism places greater emphasis on the ‘purity’ of anti-idolatry than the Taliban. Crucially, the two groups also disagree over nationalism: Isis rejects it, which runs counter to the Afghan Taliban’s aims of ruling Afghanistan.

      • New York TimesTwitter Keeps Missing Its Advertising Targets as Woes Mount

        In tandem, Twitter was rapidly cutting its revenue projections. The company previously forecast that it would generate $1.4 billion in the last three months of the year, down from $1.6 billion a year ago because of the global economic downturn. But as Twitter kept missing its weekly advertising targets, that number slid to $1.3 billion, then to $1.1 billion, two people said.

        Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has warned repeatedly that his social media company faces dire financial straits. Interviews with seven former employees and internal documents seen by The New York Times paint a fuller picture of Twitter’s financial woes.

      • Vice Media GroupHow SBF Created the New Playbook for Manipulating Washington, D.C.

        At the roundtable, Bankman-Fried—who, characteristically, tweeted through the event—played the role of the boy genius to an often receptive crowd. “There were a lot of people there who seemed to be taking some type of pleasure or delight in the fact that they were in the same room with him,” said Lee Reiners, a former financial regulator and current policy director at the Duke Financial Economics Center, who sat near the FTX CEO at the roundtable. The few times Bankman-Fried was attacked, he lashed out, saying at one point: “Most of the traders on our platform know a lot more about these contracts than many of the people in this room.”

      • Counter PunchLatin America's New Left
      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

        • ABCDefeated election conspiracists seek to lead Michigan GOP

          All three candidates were endorsed by former President Donald Trump and echoed his false claims of a stolen election — although Dixon pivoted away from her earlier statements after she won the Republican primary for governor.

        • Vice Media GroupAnti-Vaxers Celebrate Twitter's New COVID Misinformation Policy

          Gold is the founder of America’s Frontline Doctors, a pseudo-medical organization devoted to spreading bad information about COVID and vaccines. Her good mood was due to a brief statement by Twitter that it will no longer enforce its policy against misleading information about COVID-19.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • MeduzaMoscow libraries pull LGBT-themed and ‘foreign agent’ authored books — Meduza

        Moscow libraries are hiding books by authors who have been declared “foreign agents,” or who are critical of the war in Ukraine, as well as books that authorities might consider “LGBT propaganda.” Such books are being pulled from shelves, taken out of circulation, and are not available to order online, writes publication The Village, citing sources in four Moscow libraries.

      • MeduzaThree TV Rain employees to leave network over firing of host Alexey Korostelev — Meduza

        TV Rain hosts Margarita Lyutova (who also works as a special correspondent for Meduza) and Vladimir Romesky announced that they are leaving the network after their colleague, Alexey Korostelev, was fired over an on-air gaffe about the Russian army.€ 

      • MeduzaChechen blogger and Kadyrov critic Tumso Abdurakhmanov is missing in Sweden — Meduza

        Chechen opposition blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov, who lives in Sweden, has stopped communicating, reports Vayfond, a Chechen human rights organization based in Sweden.

      • Michael GeistFreedom of Expression for a Price: Government Confirms Bill C-18 Requires Platform Payment for User Posts That Include News Quotes and Hyperlinks

        The longstanding debate over whether Bill C-18, the Online News Act, requires payment for linking came to an end yesterday. Government officials admitted that even basic quotes from news articles that include a hyperlink to the original source would scope user posts into the law and require platforms such as Google and Facebook to negotiate payment for the links. As noted below, even that position may understate the impact of the bill, which appears to also cover a user post of a news quote without a link. In other words, merely quoting a few sentences from a news article on an Internet platform is treated as making news content available, which triggers a requirement for the platforms to negotiate payment. This position runs counter to Canada’s copyright obligations under the Berne Convention and has no place in a country committed to freedom of expression.

      • Dawn MediaIranian killed ‘celebrating’ World Cup loss to US

        An Iranian man was shot dead by the security forces after celebrating when the United States eliminated his country’s national team from the World Cup, rights groups said on Wednesday.

      • BBCWorld Cup 2022: Inside the ‘secret club’ of Iranian anti-government football fans

        Many Iranians are boycotting the World Cup as they feel the team has not done enough to support the protest movement or criticise a regime which has killed hundreds of people. But a group of expat fans are trying to keep the protest flame alive inside Qatar's stadiums.

      • WiredSecurity News This Week: China’s Police State Targets Zero-Covid Protesters

        The protests are stress-testing China’s sophisticated censorship apparatus, and experts say that the sheer volume of video clips has likely overwhelmed China’s armies of censors. Leaked documents from China’s Cyberspace Administration called the protests a “Level I Internet Emergency Response,” and authorities ordered ecommerce platforms to limit the availability of VPNs and firewall-circumventing routers. On Sunday, Chinese-language Twitter accounts spammed the service with links to escort services alongside city names where protests were occurring to drown out information about the protests.

      • John GruberMeanwhile, in ‘Free Speech’ Twitter Utopia
      • 9to5MacApple to restrict ‘Everyone’ option in AirDrop to 10 minutes in China with iOS 16.1.1 [U]

        Apple today released iOS 16.1.1 for all users. While the release notes for the update say nothing about new features or major changes, there’s a significant one coming for users in China. There, Apple is changing how the “Everyone” option in AirDrop works, which will no longer be enabled for more than 10 minutes.

      • New York TimesHate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find

        Problematic content and formerly barred accounts have increased sharply in the short time since Elon Musk took over, researchers said.

      • John GruberOn the Prevalence of Hate Speech on Twitter

        Reactions on Twitter to this story all seemingly take it at face value that Twitter now has a problem with hate speech being tweeted. I suspect my take is going to be unpopular with many of you, but I’m not seeing it. Doubling the daily average of racial and gay slurs and antisemitic posts is obviously bad. That should go without saying. But in absolute terms these numbers show just how rare hate-speech tweets are. There are over 800 million new tweets posted every day.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Jerusalem PostIran intensifying efforts to kidnap, kill officials, activists and journalists - report

        The report is based on government documents and interviews with 15 officials in the US, Europe and the Middle East officials.

        The individuals being targeted include former senior US government officials, Iranian dissidents who fled to Western countries, media organizations critical of the regime and Jewish individuals or people linked to Israel.

      • Declassified UKMinister ‘misled parliament’ on Foreign Office role in secret Assange operation

        A British MP has accused a Foreign Office minister of “misleading parliament” over his department’s involvement in the secret operation to arrest Julian Assange.

        Kenny MacAskill MP, a former Scottish justice secretary, asked the Foreign Office “whether any people working on Operation Pelican were based within [its] Department’s premises.”

        Pelican was the secret Metropolitan Police-led operation to seize Assange from his asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, which was mounted in April 2019.

        Junior foreign minister David Rutley told parliament last week in answer: “No Foreign and Commonwealth Office [FDCO] officials were directly assigned to work on Operation Pelican.”

        However, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request in July last year, the Foreign Office had already admitted: “Three FCDO officials did some work on Operation Pelican, the most senior of which was Head of Latin America Department.”

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Supreme Court Case 303 Creative Is About Power, Not Religious Liberty

        The U.S. Supreme Court went after reproductive autonomy in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, and recent oral arguments signal that affirmative action could be next on the chopping block. But there’s another landmark case being heard this month that also deserves our attention for its potential to not only roll back anti-discrimination protections for millions of LGBTQ+ Americans but also gut civil rights laws nationwide.

      • Vice Media GroupAmazon Is Refusing to Comply with a Federal Judge’s Order, Emails Show

        Amazon is refusing to fully comply with a requirement to tell its employees that it was ordered by a federal judge to stop retaliating against unionizing employees, according to a motion filed by the National Labor Relations Board.

      • BBCAfghanistan: Parks become latest no-go areas for women in Kabul

        For many Afghan girls, though, it's not about the scale of the impact, but the symbolism of the move - and what it reveals about the intent of the Taliban since they seized power in August 2021.

        "Every day, as girls in Afghanistan, we wake up to new restrictions. It's like we are just sitting and waiting for the next one," one female student says. She's not being named to protect her.

        "I was lucky I finished secondary school before the Taliban came. But I'm scared now that universities might also be closed for women. My dreams will be over."

      • JURISTUvalde elementary school shooting survivors file $27B class-action lawsuit

        Survivors of the mass shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers in May at elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, filed a $27 billion class-action lawsuit on Tuesday against various public officials, including the school district, law enforcement agencies and individual officers. The lawsuit, filed in th US District Court for the Western District of Texas, alleges that public officials failed to follow active shooter protocols and seeks damages for the emotional and psychological wounds of survivors, including parents whose children were killed, and students, teachers and support staff who witnessed the massacre.

      • Associated PressUN: Iraq Christians were victims of Islamic State war crimes

        The report to the U.N. Security Council said crimes included forcibly transferring and persecuting Christians, seizing their property, engaging in sexual violence, enslavement and other “inhumane acts,” such as forced conversions and destruction of cultural and religious sites.

      • GannettDisgraced doc’s evidence sent man to prison. No one knows how many others are like him.

        Affected cases may be scattered across different jurisdictions with a maze of deadlines and funding limits. Courts can't just toss every case an unreliable witness touched — in some he may have been accurate or his testimony wasn't central to the conviction. And it's difficult to find detailed case files to begin with.

        "Those records just simply don't exist. You'd think they would, but they just don't," said Marissa Bluestine, a former Innocence Project defense attorney turned conviction review expert. "We didn't have databases. We didn't have centralized information intake. Maybe even now, frankly."

      • Psychology TodayChild Marriage Links to Climate Change

        By 2050, UNICEF predicts the total number of child brides in Africa, the continent most impacted by climate change, could double to 310 million.

      • RTLIran's hijab law under review: attorney general

        Protesters have burned their head coverings and shouted anti-government slogans. Since Amini's death a growing number of women are not observing hijab, particularly in Tehran's fashionable north.

        The hijab headscarf became obligatory for all women in Iran in April 1983, four years after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy.

      • MeduzaMoscow Financial University students arrested and sent to a military enlistment office — Meduza

        Several full-time students from the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, in Moscow, were arrested in their dormitory and taken to a military enlistment office. Kirill Yudin, the brother of one of the students, reported the events to publication Kholod.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Right-Wing Supreme Court's Shredding of the Voting Rights Act Helped GOP Win House

        The Republicans have won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives. Depending on the outcome in the two seats that have not yet been called, a swing of between three and five seats would have left the House in Democratic hands.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Jamie ZawinskiPSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internet

        As you look around for a new social media platform, I implore you, only use one that is a part of the World Wide Web. tl;dr avoid Hive and Post.

        If posts in a social media app do not have URLs that can be linked to and viewed in an unauthenticated browser, or if there is no way to make a new post from a browser, then that program is not a part of the World Wide Web in any meaningful way.

        Consign that app to oblivion.

        Most social media services want to lock you in. They love their walled gardens and they think that so long as they tightly control their users and make it hard for them to escape, they will rule the world forever.

        This was the business model of Compuserve. And AOL. And then a little thing called The Internet got popular for a minute in the mid 1990s, and that plan suddenly didn't work out so well for those captains of industry.

      • John GruberOoh.directory

        Mastodon is — deservedly! — getting a lot of attention as people re-evaluate their use of Twitter. But what I’m digging more in our current moment is renewed enthusiasm for blogging, and, on the consumption side, RSS feed reading.

      • CERDoing a Little Housekeeping and Rebranding | Computing Ed Research - Guzdial’s Take

        I discovered today that I have written over 2,500 blog posts here on WordPress, starting in June 2009. There was a time when I was writing daily. This is the first post I’ve written here since June. From a pace of a new post every day, to once every six months.

        Our lives change so much from year to year. Thirteen years feels like so many changes ago. I live in a different state, working for a different University. Even the name of the department where I work has changed — I was in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Now I’m in the Division of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan and I direct the Program in Computing for the Arts and Sciences.

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent FreakReddit Reports Surge in Copyright Takedown Notices and User Bans

          Reddit has released a new transparency report, revealing that the number of DMCA takedown requests its receives has rapidly increased. In the first half of this year, 738,010 pieces of content were flagged by rightsholders, already exceeding the total for 2021. In addition, the number of copyright-related user bans has shot up as well.

        • Creative CommonsOur Work in Policy at CC: Artificial Intelligence

          As the year comes to a close, we’re spotlighting Creative Commons’ public policy work, recapping what we’ve done and looking ahead to the new year. In this edition, we turn to our work on artificial intelligence (AI).

        • Michael GeistA Tale of Two Readouts: U.S. Escalates Trade Concerns With Canadian Digital Policy as Canada Seeks To Downplay the Issue

          Canadian International Trade Minister Mary Ng and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai met yesterday to discuss Canada-U.S. Trade issues and concerns regarding Canada’s digital policy – most notably a proposed digital sales tax and Bills C-11 and C-18 – continue to mount. The U.S. raised digital policy concern over the summer, specifically citing Bill C-11 with a reference to “pending legislation in the Canadian Parliament that could impact digital streaming services.” The latest readout suggests that the concerns are growing, as the U.S. now cites both Bills C-11 and C-18 by raising “pending legislation in the Canadian Parliament that could impact digital streaming services and online news sharing and discriminate against U.S. businesses.”

          The U.S. concern is notable for several reasons. First, the Canadian readout against makes no reference to the issue, seemingly hoping that it will simply go away if Canada ignores it or pretends it doesn’t hear the concerns (Canadian officials keep insisting that the U.S. understands where Canada is coming from as if that addresses the concern). The government is clearly aware of trade implications of its legislation – last night it rejected a proposed amendment to Bill C-11 during Senate hearings citing trade obligations – but committees studying the bills have barely scratched the surface on trade related risks. As further discussed below, the Canadian bills are vulnerable to trade challenges with the prospect of billions in retaliatory tariffs that could hit some of Canada’s most important economic sectors.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Dungeon room history, done right

        I’ve often been annoyed by dungeon room descriptions that have tons of history. Scarlet Citadel and Arden Vul both have this problem; they tell you what’s been there before, while as a DM I need to know what’s there now.

        It sucks when it says “this room was an alchemist’s lab used by the great Garbanzo the Magnificent” etc for two whole pages only to end on “anyway, now only glass shards remain”.

        So sometimes I’ve thought that all that history is just in the way and shouldn’t be in the book, and many reviewers have expressed something similar.

        We would’ve wanted: “This room has glass shards” and that’s it.

        I“ve recently reconsidered that, especially as I reread my old post about running mysteries.

    • Technical

      • Void Linux Post-Install and 1 month later notes

        I've now been using Void for a bit over a month. I really enjoy it and want to convert my last Ubuntu computer to Void. I'm going to wait another few weeks, just to confirm stability, and then make the full switch, but mostly I think it'll just be fine. But Void isn't a simple works-out-of-the-box install, so this is a document of my own work in order to be able to reproduce it.

        Below are my notes and a collection of useful snippets. To be honest, I don't feel confident this is a 'final' level of configuration. Maybe a first step. For example, I didn't try to set up a printer, bluetooth, and the like, and I want to try some machine learning work to later on with the machine. At the end of this post I'll link to some info on others' more extensive post-install scripts and guides.

      • qiudanz tag

        the idea of exploring tag systems with movement sequences originated as danzasistemas-tag, and the qiudanz technique was devised as a way to explore it using the same language that could be used for other types of abstract machines.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Re: Reinventing How We Use Computers

          Uhh hi gemspace. It's been /awhile/. A lot's happened. The rising tide of homophobia in my country meant that continuing to work with kids as an instructor wasn't feasible anymore. I changed careers. I got my makerspace project taken from me. A lot has happened.

          On the other hand I now I have a job that actually pays me a living wage and I have the opportunity to create an actual curriculum that addresses literacy around AI hype and the limitations of this technology across departments at a higher ed institution

        • RSS

          I was recently listening to the Cortex podcast on Relay.fm, a podcast hosted by the YouTuber CGP Grey and Podcast Professional Myke Hurley. On this they went into the apps they're using and ways they try and streamline and improve their lives.

          The podcast episode as a whole (State of the Apps) rarely applies to me because of how integrated into the Apple/iOS ecosystem they are - but I have found some common cross-tech struggles and adapted their solutions.

        • clubs, corners, and correspondence - a blog renaissance(?), and a smol web takes shape



          I joined `Ctrl-c.club` as of late. I made mention of Midnight.pub, and Smol.pub, and Write.as, and lo and behold, a member mentioned that they, too, frequented some of those/these establishments! :) I asked which one(s), but no response, yet. This occurred on the CLI-based message forum, Iris.

          But in regards to a blog renaissance, I've heard the term tossed around lately. Some on Write.as, some from Gemini, some from wherever, all over. It's likely true, though for the "knowledgeable"/ "tHinKfLuEnCeRs", they're likely stuck on Substack in Centralia. Because they have a snowball's chance in hell of actually monetizing that to an extent where a bill (a whole bill!) can be paid


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
GNOME GUADEC 2022 & Debian Albanian women trafficked to Mexico?
Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship
Sainsbury's: It Takes Us Up to Two Days to Respond to Customers Upon Escalation (and Sometimes Even More Than Two Days)
It not only does groceries but also many other things, even banking
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day