01.31.23

Links 31/01/2023: Catchup Again, Wayland in Xfce 4.20

Posted in News Roundup at 9:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Tux Digital ☛ 310: Web 3.0 Discussion & Interview with Danielle Fore of elementary OS

        This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to be discussing Web 3.0 . . . what is it and should you be excited about it? Then we have Danielle Fore’ from elementary on the show to discuss the latest release.

      • Late Night Linux – Episode 214

        The Mars Helicopter continues to amaze, aviation nerds get burned, Google lays off loads of open source people, running a Mastodon instance isn’t for everyone, KDE Korner, and more.

    • Applications

      • Linux Links ☛ Best Free and Open Source Font Managers

        Linux users may not have a plethora of fonts, but there are many lovely and usable fonts. Different Linux fonts are supplied with different Linux distros. What you may need is an efficient way to manage your fonts. Step forward a dedicated font manager utility.

        Here’s our verdict captured in a LinuxLinks-style chart. We only feature free and open source software in this article.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Installing Python on windows, Mac and Linux

        Python is a popular programming language that is widely used for web development, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and many other applications. It is easy to learn, versatile, and has a large community of developers who contribute to its development.

      • What is Python?

        Python is a high-level programming language that is widely used for web development, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and more.

      • MySQL: Creating tables

        Creating tables in MySQL is a fundamental task for any database administrator or developer. A table is a collection of related data that is organized in a specific structure, with rows and columns. In this article, we will go over the basics of creating tables in MySQL and provide examples to help you get started.

      • MySQL: Creating databases

        MySQL is a popular open-source relational database management system that is widely used for web development, data warehousing, and other applications. One of the first things you’ll need to do when working with MySQL is to create a new database.

      • Connecting to MySQL using the command-line client

        Connecting to MySQL using the command-line client can seem like a daunting task for those new to the world of databases. But don’t worry, it’s not as difficult as it may seem.

      • It’s Ubuntu ☛ Find WiFi Password Of Connected Networks In Linux
      • Linux Host Support ☛ 5 Ways to Empty or Delete a Large File in Linux

        In this article, we will go over five different ways to empty/delete a large file in Linux. You might have a file that’s gigabytes in size that you want to get rid of quickly, or you want to automate emptying a file for each iteration.

      • It’s Ubuntu ☛ How To Apply Updates Automatically With dnf-automatic In RHEL, AlmaLinux And Rocky Linux [2023]
      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install OpenJDK on CentOS V8

        With the three options we have presented in this guide, you can quickly get the latest Firefox version on your Linux Mint.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Getting the Latest Version of Firefox on Linux Mint

        The preinstalled version is not the latest one and with the three options in this guide, you can quickly get the latest Firefox version on your Linux Mint.

      • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install TeamSpeak on Linux

        This guide covered how to install TeamSpeak on Ubuntu using three ways. In one of the methods, you will soon start enjoying the comfort of TeamSpeak.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Vim Undo and Redo howto

        After going through this guide, you will have enough knowledge of using “Undo” and “Redo” operations in the Linux Mint “Vim” editor.

      • Linux Hint ☛ Linux Uniq Command

        Practical tutorial on the Linux Uniq command to eliminate the duplicate content from files and only display it once on the output using the “uniq” keyword.

      • It’s Ubuntu ☛ How To Install Git On Ubuntu 22.04 LTS [2023]
      • It’s Ubuntu ☛ How To Change Java Version In Linux [2023]
      • Ubuntubuzz ☛ How To Setup Ubuntu Computer for Chinese Writing Input
      • Linux Cloud VPS ☛ Sign up for a LinuxCloudVPS today

        This tutorial will cover the most used SS commands in Linux with examples to make using the SS command easier.

      • Linux Handbook ☛ Find All Symbolic Links in Linux

        How do you find a soft link?

      • Linux Handbook ☛ Netstat Command Examples in Linux

        The netstat is one of the most popular utilities to monitor connections over your network.

      • OpenSource.com ☛ Use Terraform to manage an OpenStack cluster

        After having an OpenStack production and home lab for a while, I can definitively say that provisioning a workload and managing it from an Admin and Tenant perspective is important.

        Terraform is an open source Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) software tool used for provisioning networks, servers, cloud platforms, and more. Terraform is a declarative language that can act as a blueprint of the infrastructure you’re working on. You can manage it with Git, and it has a strong GitOps use case.

        This article covers the basics of managing an OpenStack cluster using Terraform. I recreate the OpenStack Demo project using Terraform.

      • OpenSource.com ☛ How to use GitOps to automate Terraform

        GitOps as a workflow is perfect for application delivery, mostly used in Kubernetes environments, but it is also possible to use for infrastructure. In a typical GitOps scenario, you might want to look at solutions like Crossplane as a Kubernetes-native alternative, while most traditional infrastructure are still used with CI/CD pipelines. There are several benefits of creating your deployment platform with Kubernetes as the base, but it also means that more people would have to have that particular skill set. One of the benefits of an Infrastructure-as-Code tool like Terraform is that it is easy to learn, and doesn’t require much specialized knowledge.

        When my team was building our platform services, we wanted everyone to be able to contribute. Most, if not all, of our engineers use Terraform on a daily basis. They know how to create Terraform modules that can be used in several scenarios and for several customers. While there are several ways of automating Terraform, we would like to utilize a proper GitOps workflow as much as possible.

    • Games

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Free strategy shooter game Unvanquished v0.54 is out now

        Free, open source and full of bugs (the squishable kind) — Unvanquished is a mixture of strategy and an FPS with a new release v0.54 out now. Unvanquished is a fork of Tremulous, for those don’t know it’s similar in style to Natural Selection with aliens versus humans fighting it out with each having a little base to build.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Steam Deck and desktop Beta fix up more on-screen keyboard bugs

        Bugs! Kill ‘em all! Would you like to know more? Valve have a new Steam Deck and Desktop Steam Beta available with a few bugs being stomped. As per usual, there’s some shared between them since they mostly use the same bits of the Steam client now.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Forspoken gets an update to improve Steam Deck performance

        Forspoken has been controversial for quite a lot of a reasons but also a title many were looking forward to. The release was a bit rough but the developers are cleaning it up now and it has some Steam Deck fixes.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ AMD GPU driver on Linux and Steam Deck to get big improvement on stuttering problems

        The work to improve gaming performance on Steam Deck and Linux desktops for AMD GPUs is always ongoing, and it seems we’re set for another nice improvement to how smooth games are.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Colossal Cave returns from the 1970s in a 3D reimagining

        Colossal Cave, originally released in 1977 from Will Crowther and Don Woods has been revived and reimagined for modern audiences. Another one for a heavy dose of nostalgia perhaps? This new version comes from Sierra On-Line founders Ken and Roberta Williams.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Inspired by Boulder Dash and Supaplex, Gem Worlds is out now

        Oh the nostalgia is heavy with this one! Gem Worlds is inspired directly by the likes of Boulder Dash and Supaplex. I didn’t play either, but it’s also very similar to one I did play and LOVED on Amiga called Emerald Mine.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ SurrounDead looks like a mix of DayZ and Project Zomboid

        It’s early days for the game yet with it in Early Access but SurrounDead could be a promising one to play online with some friends.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • 9to5Linux ☛ Xfce 4.20 Desktop Environment Will Finally Bring Wayland Support

        Great news for users of the lightweight Xfce desktop environment as the next major release, Xfce 4.20, which is currently in early development, will finally bring the long-anticipated and highly requested Wayland support.

        That’s right, work on Xfce 4.20 kicked off earlier this month with the release of libxfce4windowing, a new dependency for the Xfce desktop environment to provide support for the next-generation Wayland display protocol.

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Using Kate’s Git Features

          Git support in Kate landed almost 2 years ago but so far it is undocumented. I am writing this article in order to fill this gap and hopefully make more people aware of the git related features that Kate has.

          To be able to use git functionality you need to enable at least two plugins

        • QCoro 0.8.0 Release Announcement

          This is a rather small release with only two new features and one small improvement.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Mozilla

        • Mozilla ☛ How to have the tech talk with kids, according to TikTok’s ‘Mom Friend’

          Cathy Pedrayes earned a following as TikTok’s “Mom Friend” for her practical safety tips – from how to break a car window in an emergency to what not to post on social media. She’s a TV host and has been featured on Today Parents, The Miami Herald, BuzzFeed News, The Bump and Good Morning America. Her book, “The Mom Friend Guide to Everyday Safety and Security,” was published last year.

        • Mozilla ☛ Pocket kicks off 2023 with new and expanded publisher partnerships

          The Pocket editorial and product teams have been busy over the past couple of months to continue delivering the great experience Pocket users have come to expect. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new at Pocket, starting with our newest and returning publisher partnerships, followed by the latest updates to Pocket Android.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • Neowin ☛ OnlyOffice 7.3.0

        OnlyOffice Desktop Editors is an open-source office suite distributed under AGPL v.3 that combines text, spreadsheet and presentation editors allowing to create, view and edit documents stored on your computer. The application does not require constant connection to the Internet and allows you to create, edit, save and export text, spreadsheet and presentation documents.

      • LibreOffice project and community recap: January 2023

        Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks….

      • Meet the LibreOffice community at FOSDEM 2023!

        FOSDEM is one of the largest meetups for free and open source software projects. After two years of online events due to the panic, it’s back in-person, in Brussels on February 4 and 5! And, of course, LibreOffice and The Document Foundation will be there.

    • GNU Projects

      • GNU ☛ a2ps @ Savannah: a2ps 4.14.94 released [alpha]
         Another alpha release, some more tweaks and tidy-ups.
        

        
Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature:
        
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/a2ps/a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz
        
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/a2ps/a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz.sig
        

        
Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
        
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html
        

        
Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:
        

        
1c99e0200ed0d93119ad6ab54a4735692dbb6d26  a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz
        
3+mUXOzeILDgtP08dCJjPI2BL5px92ndCH27qjW1RPI  a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz
        

        
The SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the
        
hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.
        

        
Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
        
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
        
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:
        

        
  gpg --verify a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz.sig
        

        
The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:
        

        
  pub   rsa2048 2013-12-11 [SC]
        
        2409 3F01 6FFE 8602 EF44  9BB8 4C8E F3DA 3FD3 7230
        
  uid   Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>
        
  uid   keybase.io/rrt <rrt@keybase.io>
        

        
If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
        
or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve
        
or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.
        

        
  gpg --locate-external-key rrt@sc3d.org
        

        
  gpg --recv-keys 4C8EF3DA3FD37230
        

        
  wget -q -O- 'https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?group=a2ps&download=1' | gpg --import -
        

        
As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU
        
keyring:
        

        
  wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
        
  gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz.sig
        

        

        
This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
        
  Autoconf 2.71
        
  Automake 1.16.5
        
  Gnulib v0.1-5639-g80b225fe1e
        

        
NEWS
        

        
* Noteworthy changes in release 4.14.94 (2023-01-31) [alpha]
        
 * Features:
        
   - Replace the 'psmandup' utility with simpler 'lp2' to directly print
        
     documents to a simplex printer.
        
   - Remove the outdated 'psset' and 'fixnt', and simplify 'fixps' to
        
     always process its input with Ghostscript.
        
 * Documentation
        
   - Remove some obsolete explanations.
        
 * Build
        
   - Minor tidy up and removal of obsolete code.

    • Programming/Development

      • OpenSource.com ☛ Merge design and code with Penpot

        For most of the history of computer programming, there’s been a gap between the programmers creating an application’s code and the designers creating an application’s user experience (UX). The two disciplines receive vastly different training, and they use a different set of tools. Programmers use a text editor or an IDE to write code, while designers often draw concepts of widget layout and potential interactions. While some IDEs, like Eclipse and Netbeans, have interface design components, they’re usually focused on widget position and not on widget design. The open source design app Penpot is a collaborative design and prototyping platform. It has a suite of new features that make it easy for designers and developers to work together with familiar workflows. Penpot’s design interface lets developers write code in harmony with the design process like no other tool does. And it’s come a long way since Opensource.com last looked at it. Its latest features don’t just improve your experience with Penpot, they propel the open source Penpot app past similar and proprietary tools.

      • OpenSource.com ☛ Automate Mastodon interactions with Python

        The federated Mastodon social network has gotten very popular lately. It’s fun to post on social media, but it’s also fun to automate your interactions. There is some documentation of the client-facing API, but it’s a bit light on examples. This article aims to help with that.

        You should be fairly confident with Python before trying to follow along with this article. If you’re not comfortable in Python yet, check out Seth Kenlon’s Getting started with Python article and my Program a simple game article.

      • OpenSource.com ☛ Learn to code a simple game in Zig

        Writing the same application in multiple languages is a great way to learn new ways to program. Most programming languages have certain things in common, such as:

        These concepts are the basis of most programming languages. Once you understand them, you can take the time you need to figure out the rest.

        Furthermore, programming languages usually share some similarities. Once you know one programming language, you can learn the basics of another by recognizing its differences.

        A good tool for learning a new language is by practicing with a standard program. This allows you to focus on the language, not the program’s logic. I’m doing that in this article series using a “guess the number” program, in which the computer picks a number between 1 and 100 and asks you to guess it. The program loops until you guess the number correctly.

      • An Introductory Guide to Golang

        Golang is an open-source programming language developed by Google in 2007. It is a statically typed and compiled language which makes it lightning fast and

      • Daniel Lemire ☛ Move or copy your strings? Possible performance impacts

        You sometimes want to add a string to an existing data structure.

      • Medevel ☛ 10 Open Source CSS Animation Frameworks

        What is a CSS animation?

        CSS animation allowing you to animate HTML elements using only CSS classes. It does not require JavaScript, nor extensive setup or configuration.

        CSS animations allow you to create fancy eye-catching websites, parallel sliders, control, animated hover effects, 3D effects, entries, and exit animations per element.

      • Perl / Raku

        • Rakulang ☛ 2023.05 RB Awarded

          And the winner is Oleksander Kiryuhin (aka sena_kun aka Altai-man). The Rainbow Butterfly Award is awarded to Oleksander for their tireless efforts as release manager of the Raku Programming Language for two years (2020-2021), and their work on getting a more functional Raku documentation in general, and a better documentation web site in particular.

      • Python

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Stack

          A guide on how to use the pandas stack for stacking the level columns into rows or indexes to save time by providing the desired results in the DataFrame.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Sum Column

          A guide on computing the sum across DataFrames using the Pandas sum() method, adding columns conditionally, and adding the values after grouping the columns.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas to Array

          Guide on what arrays are and how the DataFrames in Pandas can be converted to NumPy columns using three methods to change the DataFrame columns into an array.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Tabulate

          Comprehensive tutorial on how to alter a Pandas DataFrame into a table with different styles using the tabulate() method along with practical examples.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas str Replace

          This teach you how to substitute/replace the string values in pandas. We have discussed the syntax of the str.replace() method to understand its functionality.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Add Column with Default Values

          Practical tutorial on adding a column with the default value in Pandas using three methods – assign(), [], and insert() – to add a column with a constant value.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Drop Duplicate Index

          Tutorial on the concept of dropping the duplicate indexes using the module by utilizing the Index.drop_duplicates() method along with the syntax and parameters.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Add Days to Date

          Practical guide on how to add the days to the dates in Pandas by utilizing three methods – pandas.DateOffset(), pandas.timeDelta(), and pandas.to_timeDelta().

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Display All Columns

          Tutorial on how to display the column names and how to filter the columns using the data types and view the DataFrame memory usage and summary statistics.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Argmax()

          Guide on how to locate the index location of the maximum value in a DataFrame or Series using the Index.argmax(), Series.argmax, and DataFrame[‘column’].argmax.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Apply() Function to Every Row

          Tutorial on how to utilize the apply() function to every row in Pandas to implement any function to every row in DataFrame in Pandas using practical examples.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas DatetimeIndex

          Tutorial on how to create the DatetimeIndex and access the Date and Time details separately using some date and time methods along with practical examples.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Crosstab() Function

          Comprehensive tutorial on the concept of calculating the cross-tabulation for data analysis with a bunch of useful features like the pandas.crosstab().

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Append to CSV

          Tutorial on how to append to the CSV in Pandas using three distinct examples to append the data to the already existing CSV file with the to_csv() function.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Columns to List

          Guide on converting the Pandas columns to lists using the tolist(), [], and list() functions, and using the list() function to convert the columns into lists.

        • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Bins

          Tutorial on the cut() and qcut() functions to bin the data in Pandas, how to segment the data into bins, label the bins, and use the equal-sized binning data.

  • Leftovers

  • Environment

    • Energy/Transportation

      • Reason ☛ Court Orders Unsealing Names of Non-Parent Sureties Who Put Up Bail for Samuel Bankman-Fried

        From yesterday’s opinion in U.S. v. Bankman-Fried, decided by Judge Lewis Kaplan (S.D.N.Y.): At defendant’s presentment on December 22, 2022, the government and defense jointly proposed a set of bail conditions. Those conditions required, inter alia, that defendant sign a $250 million personal recognizance bond to be co-signed by defendant’s parents.

  • Finance

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Civil Rights/Policing

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Monopolies

    • Patents

      • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ A new European patent landscape (1): the bumpy road to the Unitary Patent system [Ed: No, it has not been ratified yet; this is lobbying disguised as 'journalism']

        In June 2023 the European patent landscape will see one of the most dramatic changes in decades with the introduction of the Unitary Patent (UP) and the opening of Unified Patent Court (UPC).

      • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ What will the Irish population vote on in the UPC referendum? [Ed: UPC has not even started; the litigation fanatics and profiteers use a lot of 'fake news' to promote it regardless]
      • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Federal Circuit Dataset & Stats: January 2023 Update [Ed: Federal Circuit historically dominated by patent maximalists, until Sharon Prost]

        It’s time for the January 2023 Federal Circuit statistics update! As I’ve done for the last few years, below I provide some statistics on what the Federal Circuit has been doing over the past year. These charts draw on the Federal Circuit Dataset Project, an open-access dataset that I maintain that contains information on all Federal Circuit decisions and docketed appeals.  While previous versions of the dataset have been limited to merits decisions, this year we began including non-merits terminations as well.  Currently, all non-merits terminations from 2022 are included in the dataset.  We’ll be working backwards to add terminations from earlier years.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Technical

      • A Documentary About Early ANSI Art / BBS History

        I just rewatched a 2005 documentary about early ANSI/BBS history on YouTube. It mainly shows the eternal battle of ACiD vs. iCE, two dominant ANSI groups.

      • One billion, one continent

        In the online circles I frequent, I bump into the notion of “solarpunk” primarily in the form of a label applied to things actual people are actually doing, a kind of practice. But it’s “supposed” to be a genre of fiction, and when I first encountered the term, around ten years ago now (and, yes, for the record, when I chose the handle “solderpunk”, I did kind of like that there was a subtle nod to solarpunk in there, even though at the time I wasn’t anywhere near as focused on sustainability stuff as I am now), there didn’t seem to be any notion of it as anything *other* than a genre of fiction. It was a strange kind of “vapourgenre”, I remember discovering it and feeling like it was really strange that there seemed to more words written about what solarpunk was than there were words written in the total sum of actual solarpunk literature, unless you counted stuff which had been retroactively labelled solarpunk, stuff written years before the label existed. I suppose this has probably changed quite a bit in the decade since, I’m vaguely aware that Tomasino has a solarpunk writing prompt podcast, which I ought to check out some time if I can ever overcome my innate aversion to podcasts.

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

Links 31/01/2023: elementary OS 7

Posted in News Roundup at 12:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • XDA ☛ Linux and Android are the future of handheld gaming

      Devices like the Steam Deck, Ayaneo 2, and even the Nintendo Switch have taken the world by storm in recent years. Portable handheld consoles open up a new world of experience. While Nintendo has been making handhelds for years, the first two offer PC gaming on the go, complete with good performance, excellent battery life, and the ability to do so much more with the software.

      However, the Steam Deck has a leg-up over the Ayaneo 2 in one big department: the operating system. It’s so much easier to do whatever you want on SteamOS, a fork of Arch Linux, not to mention the reduced overhead. On the one hand, this decreases the cost since there’s no need to shell out for a software license for its distribution. However, there are disadvantages to using Linux, such as the requirement for the Proton compatibility layer to ensure that games built for Windows are still playable.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Hackaday ☛ Classic Calculators Emulated In Browser

        The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, now known simply as MAME, started off as a project to emulate various arcade games. The project is still adding new games to its library, but the framework around MAME makes it capable of emulating pretty much any older computer. The computer doesn’t even need to be a gaming-specific machine as the latest batch of retro hardware they’ve added support for is a number of calculators from the 90s and early 00s including a few classics from Texas Instruments.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • It’s FOSS ☛ 5 Linux Distros for Visually Impaired People

      If a user is visually impaired or blind, they may rely on sound prompts or other interactions (like Braille) to read and communicate.

      How can they use a Linux distribution?

      Well, in general, accessibility software help make it possible.

      I focus on listing some of the best options here. Before that, there are some essential pointers to note before you try/recommend Linux for visually challenged users.

    • IT Wire ☛ IIT Madras firm develops Indian mobile operating system

      Called BharOS, the new operating system is an Android open source project, developed by incubated JandK Operations Private Limited.

      Unlike Android, it does not have default Google apps or services and IIT Madras says the operating system can be installed on commercial off-the-shelf handsets.

      According to IIT Madras, BhasrOS provides a secure environment for users and is a significant contribution towards Atmanirbhar Bharat, a phrase coined by by Indian PM Narendra Modi and his government, which translates to ‘self-reliant India’, in relation to the country’s economic development plans.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Unicorn Media ☛ OSI License Review Working Group Seeks Input on Changes

      The Open Source Initiative, the organization that decides what is or is not an open source license, are thinking about making some changes to how it handles its license review process, and they’re looking for community input before putting any new policies in place.

      Back in 2020, OSI established a License Review Working Group which was tasked with the job of examining and improving the organization’s license review process, which is how OSI decides whether a license receives its seal of approval as an OSI approved open source license.

    • The Register UK ☛ FOSS could be an unintended victim of EU crusade to make software more secure

      But FOSS is in the most danger. The underlying assumption of the regulation is that cybersecurity exists in the digital market like fire resistance does in that for soft furnishings. Putting regulatory cost burdens on a part of the market with no revenue and no gatekeeping on its distribution channels cannot work; there are no prices to increase to absorb compliance costs and no tap to turn off to keep the stuff off the market.

      And FOSS can’t be outlawed. To re-engineer infrastructure and applications to exclude it would be unthinkably expensive and undoubtedly vastly destabilizing for cybersecurity resilience. To allow grandfathering – allowing pre-regulatory software components to continue to be used but demand compliance if new or updated – would freeze the sector to death. And what “cybersecurity framework” would catch the sort of errors that currently only appear after intensive analysis by the few teams of good and bad hats who are already fully employed for better or worse on a tiny percentage of extant software.s

    • [Old] NLNet Foundation ☛ Open-source software vs. the proposed Cyber Resilience Act

      We feel the current proposal misses a major opportunity. At a high level the ‘essential cybersecurity requirements’ are not unreasonable, but the compliance overhead can range from tough to impossible for small, or cash-strapped developers. The CRA could bring support to open-source developers maintaining the critical foundations of our digital society. But instead of introducing incentives for integrators or financial support via the CRA, the current proposal will overload small developers with compliance work.

      We would love to be wrong about most of our analysis. So if you believe the situation to be less grim than we portray it to be, please talk to me so I can update this overview. However, if you share our concerns, this is what you can do: [...]

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • It’s not you, it’s SQL

        And that something was MongoDB. MongoDB happily took our Python dictionaries, stored them away somewhere, and sometimes even gave them back later. No hand-crafted SQL strings littering our Python codebase, and everything still worked.

        It was like a veil had been lifted. “What was with all the ceremony, SQL? My controllers are so lean now, and my schema is whatever I want it to be.” We paused just long enough to take a sip of our Spicy Maya Mocha from Coupa Cafe. “I mean, so what if none of my writes are ever actually confirmed by my new database? These are just hamster-likes and wristwatch-enthusiast-pokes! We can lose a few and still get to our Series B.”

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

    • Programming/Development

      • A call to action: Think seriously about “safety”; then do something sensible about it

        What might “something sensible to do” be? I suggest making a list of issues that could be considered safety issues (including UB) and finding ways of preventing them within the framework of P2687R0. That’s what I plan to do.

        And anyway, what is “the overarching software community”? To the best of my knowledge, no experts from the ISO C++ standards committee were consulted.

      • Undeadly ☛ Game of Trees 0.83 released

        Version 0.83 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated): [...]

  • Leftovers

    • Hackaday ☛ Let This Minimal Desktop Weather Display Point The Way

      Much of the Northern Hemisphere is currently in the middle of winter, so what better way to brighten a potentially gloomy day than to put this charming, minimalist weather display on your desk.

    • Hackaday ☛ A Reverse Polish Calculator For Your Keychain

      As the smartphone has eaten ever more of the gadgets with which we once surrounded ourselves, it’s with some sadness that we note the calculator becoming a less common sight. It’s with pleasure then that we bring you [Nekopla]’s keychain calculator, not least because it’s a little more than a conventional model. This is a calculator which uses Reverse Polish Notation, or RPN.

    • Counter Punch ☛ NEPA: Sunshine in Government
    • Counter Punch ☛ Letter from London: Words and Pictures

      I used to love the way words clinked together to make sense. Images didn’t really get a look-in once I’d learned how to read. It was like I’d cracked the code and was in. I liked reading both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers. And if information wasn’t enough, I also liked cadence. Life in my early teens was ‘dreich’ — Scots for dreary or bleak — and overripe language was fun. Hard news, of course, didn’t like it, but some documentaries that I watched did. As a result, I began to play around with cameras as well as words. Not quite with the same application as some people I knew — I wasn’t a technician — and the first ever camera I took abroad, a small vintage 8mm cine camera, was stolen. (Years later, I was robbed of a larger one on Ibiza but vowed not to leave the island until I got it back, which, thanks to the admirable efforts of others, I got back.) I wrote occasional features and the odd play but grew to see cameras not just as artful expressions but also as very useful portals through which to grab information and analyse it. In time, I felt, one slow pan in a conflict zone, or even a gallery or sitting room, was worth more than a page of notes.

      Today I find myself writing again, as if attempting to complete a full-circle. It’s not what I was expecting. At a time when everyone now is filming, I am headed back in the opposite direction. Even in the deliberately discursive style of this Letter, I feel writing more direct today. I don’t even have to spend a whole year trying to raise funds for the damned thing, not like I did with documentaries. Writing cuts to the chase, which is ironic. I have one good friend who regularly sends me long articles from small journals and I like to devour each one. This is written information from the fringes. As for me, I used to say I wrote with a camera. Well, now I am filming with a pen. I also like what Gloria Steinem said: ‘As a profession, freelance writing is notoriously insecure. That’s the first argument in its favour. For many reasons, a few of them rational, the thought of knowing exactly what next year’s accomplishments, routine, income, and vacation will be — or even what time I have to get up tomorrow morning — has always depressed me.’ Just as Orson Welles wasn’t so wrong when he said filmmaking was two per cent moviemaking and ninety-eight per cent hustling for money.

    • Counter Punch ☛ Encounters with Tom Verlaine

      Everyone knows that Television was instrumental in creating New York’s punk scene —  that CBGB’s would not have existed as a venue without their intervention — but ever since their debut Marquee Moon came out in 1977, critics wondered if there was anything punk about the band at all. Maybe that’s why, for all the classic punk records released in the late seventies, this is the one that seems as relevant and modern today as it was then; it is not dated by slogans, fashions or sounds.

      If we back up a couple of years to the Neon Boys (the pre-Television trio consisting of Verlaine, Richard Hell and Billy Ficca), well, yes, it sure sounds like they were inventing punk rock. But they soon evolved. Punk bands played short and played fast. Television’s first single, “Little Johnny Jewel,” recorded while Richard Hell was still in the band, runs nine minutes and was broken up over two sides of a 7” single.

    • Techdirt ☛ DoNotPay’s CEO Appears To Modify Donation Receipt After Being Called Out On Unfulfilled Promise

      We’ve written a few stories lately about DoNotPay, the “robot lawyer” service whose gimmick of an automated AI-driven tool that would help users deal with challenges like getting out of parking tickets or cancelling subscription services that are difficult to get out of sounds like a really enticing idea. But there have long been questions about the service. While we’ve seen a bunch of truly impressive AI-generation tools in the last year or so, for years many companies claiming to offer AI-powered services often seemed to be doing little more than finding someone to hack together a complicated spreadsheet that the marketing folks would labels as “artificial intelligence.” It’s unclear how sophisticated DoNotPay’s technology actually is, though as guest poster Kathryn Tewson discovered last week, it sure seemed sketchy.

    • New York Times ☛ Australians Scour Desert for Dangerous Radioactive Capsule Smaller Than a Penny

      The truck carrying the sensor arrived in Perth on Jan. 16. On Friday, nearly two weeks later, the authorities called an emergency news conference to alert the public that the capsule had disappeared somewhere along the 1,400-kilometer, or 870-mile, journey.

    • Science

      • Pro Publica ☛ 2 Key Examples of Junk Science in Forensics and Criminal Justice

        It’s been decades since the intersection of forensic science and criminal justice first became a pop culture phenomenon, popularized by countless TV shows, movies and books. But the public’s growing awareness of forensic techniques obscures a far more complex field that’s chock full of bogus science — and the people who champion it, often for profit.

        For years, ProPublica has reported on these dubious techniques as they’ve wormed their way into every corner of our real-life criminal justice system.

      • Jeff Geerling ☛ Is AM Radio Dead?

        …that was the question I asked my Dad, a radio engineer for many decades, who worked at the biggest AM station in St. Louis, KMOX. The station is approaching its centennial in 2025, as are—some YouTube commenters argue—its primary audience!

    • Education

    • Hardware

      • Hackaday ☛ 1000 Aluminium Cans Cast Into A Guitar

        Aluminium cans are all around us, and are one of readily recyclable. While you can turn them into more cans, [Burls Art] had other ideas. Instead, he turned roughly 1000 cans into a custom aluminium guitar.

      • Hackaday ☛ Converting A Sink To An Ultrasonic Cleaner

        While ultrasonic cleaning might sound a bit like the “sonic shower” from Star Trek, this is actually one case where the futuristic-sounding technology predates its use in Sci-Fi. Ultrasonic cleaners have been around since the 50s and are used to clean all sorts of oddly-shaped or specialty objects by creating cavitation within a liquid that allows the surface of the object to be scoured. With the right equipment, these cleaning devices are fairly straightforward to build as well.

      • Hackaday ☛ RF Spectrometer Sees Inside

        Spectrometry is a well-known technique or, more correctly, a set of techniques. We usually think of it as the analysis of light to determine what chemicals are producing it. For example, you can tell what elements are in a star or an incandescent based on the spectrum of light they emit. But you can also do spectroscopy with other ranges of electromagnetic radiation. [Applied Science] shows how to make an RF spectroscope. You can see the video below.

      • Hackaday ☛ Retro Computer Enclosure Without The Sacrifice

        The unique look of early desktop computer systems remains popular with a certain segment of geekdom, so it’s no great surprise when we occasionally see a modern hacker or maker unceremoniously chuck 40+ year old electronics from a vintage machine just to reuse its plastic carcass. We try not to pass judgement, but it does sting to see literal museum pieces turned into glorified Raspberry Pi enclosures.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Counter Punch ☛ Venting About Ventilation in the Time of Covid

        I need to vent, because we need better ventilation.

        The World Health Organization now recommends masking “for anyone in a crowded, enclosed, or poorly ventilated space.”  But few of us know the quality of ventilation in our spaces.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Medical Aid in Dying and Knowing the Mind of God

        Once again, the GOP supermajority/Freedom Caucus is taking a run at criminalizing doctors who provide medical aid to a dying patient, enabling that person to end his or her own suffering, and life, with a self-administered medication prescribed by the physician. SB 210 is the bullet that ends the statutory approach to medical aid in dying set out in the Montana Supreme Court’s 2009 Baxterdecision.

        Despite its detractors, we know that over the intervening 14 years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Baxter v. State,[1] Montanans suffering from horrible and debilitating life-ending illnesses have successfully sought and have obtained medical aid in dying from various compassionate physicians in this State.

      • CNN ☛ Surgeon General says 13 is ‘too early’ to join social media

        US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says he believes 13 is too young for children to be on social media platforms, because although sites allow children of that age to join, kids are still “developing their identity.”

        Meta, Twitter, and a host of other social media giants currently allow 13-year-olds to join their platforms.

        “I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early … It’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships and the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children,” Murthy said on “CNN Newsroom.”

      • CNN ☛ For adolescents, social media might be a brain-changer, researchers say

        Over a three-year period, the students — who were all 12 or 13 years old when the research began — reported their social media behavior and underwent annual fMRI imaging of their brains to see their neural responses to an onscreen display of positive and negative social feedback, such as a happy or angry face.

        During that period, the students who reported checking their social media more regularly showed greater neural sensitivity in parts of the brain like the amygdala, Telzer said. Those who checked their social media less frequently saw less sensitivity in those areas on the fMRI.

        It is not clear whether the neural changes resulted in behavioral changes, like increased anxiety or addictive behaviors, Telzer said.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Americans Want Government-Run Health Care, What’s Standing in the Way?

        Here’s one of many indicators about how broken the United States health care system is: Guns seem to be easier and cheaper to access than treatment for the wounds they cause. A survivor of the recent mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, California, reportedly said to Gov. Gavin Newsom that he needed to keep his hospital stay as short as possible in order to avoid a massive medical bill. Meanwhile, the suspected perpetrator seemed to have had few obstacles in his quest to legally obtain a semi-automatic weapon to commit deadly violence.

        Americans are at the whim of a bewildering patchwork of employer-based private insurance plans, individual health plans via a government-run online marketplace, or government-run health care (for those lucky enough to be eligible). The coverage and costs of plans vary dramatically so that even if one has health insurance there is rarely a guarantee that there will be no out-of-pocket costs associated with accessing care.

    • Security

      • Bruce Schneier ☛ Ransomware Payments Are Down

        Chainalysis reports that worldwide ransomware payments were down in 2022.

        Ransomware attackers extorted at least $456.8 million from victims in 2022, down from $765.6 million the year before.

        As always, we have to caveat these findings by noting that the true totals are much higher, as there are cryptocurrency addresses controlled by ransomware attackers that have yet to be identified on the blockchain and incorporated into our data.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • EFF ☛ California Law Says Electronic Search Data Must Be Posted Online. So Where Is It?

          When it was passed in 2015, the California Electronic Communications Act (CalECPA) was heralded as a major achievement for digital privacy, because it required law enforcement to obtain a warrant in most cases before searching a suspect’s data, be it on a personal device or on the cloud. But the law also contained a landmark transparency measure: the legislature ordered the California  Department of Justice (CADOJ) to publish a regularly updated dataset of these search warrants on its website.

          Up until last year, CADOJ was doing a pretty good job at uploading this data to its OpenJustice website, where it hosts a number of public datasets related to criminal justice. Advocacy groups and journalists used it to better understand the digital search landscape and hold law enforcement accountable. For example, the Palm Springs Desert Sun analyzed the data and found that San Bernardino County law enforcement agencies were by a large margin filing more electronic search warrants than any other jurisdiction in the state. The Markup also published a piece highlighting a troubling discrepancy between the number of search warrants based on geolocation (a.k.a.geofence warrants) self-reported by Google and the number of search warrants disclosed by agencies to the California Department of Justice.

          But then, last summer, CADOJ accidentally exposed the personal data of 192,000 people who had applied for a concealed carry weapons permit. Among the various actions it took in response, CADOJ suspended its OpenJustice website. Over the next several months, other datasets–such as data about use of force, jail deaths, complaints against officers, and threats to reproductive health providers–returned to the website.

        • Techdirt ☛ More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

          If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Environment

      • Energy/Transportation

        • MIT Technology Review ☛ Yes, we have enough materials to power the world with renewable energy

          Powering the world with renewable energy will take a lot of raw materials. The good news is, when it comes to aluminum, steel, and rare-earth metals, there’s plenty to go around, according to a new analysis.

        • Renewable Energy World ☛ Duke Energy’s N.C. coal plants more expensive to run than building new solar farms, report finds

          Duke Energy could save customers money by swiftly shutting down its coal plants and replacing them with a mix of solar and energy storage, a report found.

        • uni Michigan ☛ U-M startup joins White House partnership to remove lead pipes

          U-M startup BlueConduit, which helped accelerate the removal of dangerous lead pipes in Flint has joined a White House partnership aimed at replacing all of the nation’s lead service lines in a decade.

        • The Nation ☛ Nuclear Fusion Isn’t the Silver Bullet We Want It to Be

          I awoke on December 13 to news about what could be the most significant scientific breakthrough since the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first Covid vaccine for emergency use two years ago. This time, however, the achievement had nothing to do with that ongoing public health crisis. Instead, as The New York Times and CNN alerted me that morning, at stake was a new technology that could potentially solve the worst dilemma humanity faces: climate change and the desperate overheating of our planet. Net-energy-gain fusion, a long-sought-after panacea for all that’s wrong with traditional nuclear-fission energy (read accidents, radioactive waste), had finally been achieved at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

        • Copenhagen Post ☛ Billion kroner project could send cars underground in Copenhagen

          Now the city is inching closer to a decision regarding one of its primary car-related eyesores in the city: Bispeengbuen, the six-lane road that slices through the heart of the city from Nørrebro past the Lakes to Ørestads Boulevard in Amager.

          A majority of City Hall is in favour of plans to submerge parts of the contentious stretch of road underground and replace the current concrete monstrosity with green areas on the surface.

        • DeSmog ☛ Canada’s New Oil And Gas Strategy: Green Promises at Home and More Exports Abroad

          Top Canadian oil and gas companies are moving “aggressively” to cut their greenhouse gas emissions domestically so that they can sell more of their climate-warming products abroad.

          That was the message delivered by the sector’s most powerful trade and lobby group at a recent resources industry conference in British Columbia, that achieving “net-zero” at home is crucial for opening up foreign markets.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • MIT Technology Review ☛ A de-extinction company is trying to resurrect the dodo

          The dodo bird was big, flightless, and pretty good eating. All that helps explain why it went extinct around 1662, just 150 years after European sailing ships found Mauritius, the island in the Indian Ocean where the bird once lived.

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Counter Punch ☛ McCarthy’s 15-Round Victory: Capitalism’s Politicians Perform in Public

        After 15 raucous votes spanning almost two weeks, Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy, R-California, was elected House Speaker on January 7. The vote was 216-212, a party-line vote with six Republicans voting present. From the beginning, former President Donald Trump pressured his 20 super-supporters, mostly in the Republicans’ “rightwing” Freedom Caucus, to back McCarthy. They refused until several behind-the-scenes deals, and a new “rules package” governing House operations, were negotiated.

        Perish the thought! The Republican dissenters won the right to actually see future proposed legislation packages a number of days before they are put to a vote! Imagine that! Members of the U.S. Congress will now have the right to read and review the legislation they are voting on! Readers here might think that my words are exaggerated. Not so. Contrary to popular belief, the often multi-thousand page pre-packaged legislation traditionally put together by the House Speaker is often quickly rammed through without most House members having seen it or having time to read it. Regardless, they follow their leader.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Lies, Damned Lies, and George Santos

        “Of course,” the late P.J. O’Rourke wrote in Parliament of Whores, by way of explaining why government is boring, “politicians don’t tell the truth …. But neither do politicians tell huge, entertaining whoppers: ‘Why, send yours truly to Capitol Hill, and I’ll ship the swag home in boxcar lots. … There’ll be government jobs for your dog.  … Social Security checks will come in the mail not just when you retire at sixty-five but when you retire each night to bed. Vote for me, folks, and you’ll be farting through silk.’”

        O’Rourke seems to have actually preferred a more prosaic style of political falsehood: In 2016, the long-time Republican endorsed Hillary Clinton for president over whopper-prone Donald Trump, citing her “lies and empty promises.” She’s “wrong about absolutely everything,” he said, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”

      • Counter Punch ☛ The Winter Coup Season in Latin America

        Coup attempts have gone viral this winter season in Latin America. The contagion spread first to Argentina, then Peru, and finally Brazil on January 8. In addition, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua continue to suffer from long-term US regime-change efforts.

        Coverage of this political pandemic by the US liberal press (i.e., the preponderance of mainstream media that endorse a Democrat for the presidency) reflects politically motivated agendas. Its spin on Brazil in particular reflects a trend among Democrats to greater acceptance of the security state.

      • TruthOut ☛ Some States Eye New Protections for Election Workers Ahead of 2024
      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Hungary would award the Nobel Peace Prize to Turkish President Erdoğan – Szijjártó
      • Meduza ☛ State media speculate about date of Putin’s anticipated annual address to Russia’s legislature — Meduza

        The address delivered annually by Russia’s president before the parliament may take place in late February, report both TASS and Ria Novosti, citing sources in the State Duma.

      • Techdirt ☛ New Report: Twitter’s Ad Revenue Woes Are Even Worse Than Expected

        We knew that Elon Musk had driven away tons of top advertisers, which is kind of a big deal, as the company has been desperate for revenue, if only to cover the interest payments Elon loaded the company with by using a $13 billion loan as part of his $44 billion purchase. Elon keeps talking about how much he’s cut costs, but killing off the revenue isn’t particularly helpful either. Earlier, we had noted that both Elon directly, and other internal reports, had suggested that ad revenue at the company had been sliced by a somewhat astounding 40%. Since then, we’ve seen that the company is desperately offering to give advertisers a $250k match if they promise to spend $250k.

      • TruthOut ☛ McCarthy May Not Have the Votes to Unseat Omar From Committees
      • Counter Punch ☛ Overcoming Social Fragmentation

        Fragmentation is a particular curse of the modern world. We live in a bewildering array of systems and networks, of groupings and cultures. In market society we are continually being sold one thing or another. The grabs for our attention and focus are seemingly infinite. There is not much to bring us together as people, especially around concepts about how we might create a better society.

        There seems to be some design in this. The very idea we might create a better society stands in challenge to business as usual. Since the 1980s, we have lived with the neoliberal ideas that the market rules, there is no alternative, and, as neoliberal icon and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families.

      • TruthOut ☛ RNC Passes Resolution Urging GOP to Make Abortion Bans a Top Priority for 2024
      • TruthOut ☛ Minnesota Becomes First State to Pass Abortion Protections Bill After “Dobbs”
      • Techdirt ☛ Twitter Tumbleweed Watch

        I just want to share some back-of-the-envelope math. I’m increasingly convinced that Twitter (or at least the network neighborhoods that comprise my Twitter experience) is becoming a ghost town. Here’s why:

      • Techdirt ☛ Twitter Sued For Not Paying Rent On Its SF Headquarters And Its London Offices

        There have been a bunch of stories about how one of Elon’s big “cost saving” techniques was to stop paying for basically anything, including rent.

      • Common Dreams ☛ 20 House Dems Push Biden to Cut Off Security Aid to Peru Over ‘Violent Repression’ of Protesters

        Twenty House Democrats on Monday pressed the Biden administration to immediately halt the flow of security funding to the Peruvian government over its vicious crackdown on protests against unelected President Dina Boluarte, who rose to power following the arrest of leftist President Pedro Castillo last month.

      • The Nation ☛ Kathy Hochul Can’t Govern Like Andrew Cuomo. Why Would She Want To?

        Profiling New York Governor Kathy Hochul last year, I labeled her the “un-Cuomo.” Admirers and detractors alike gave her credit for a collegial approach to decision-making, pulling in legislators, sometimes even opponents, to confer about her next moves, in a way her disgraced predecessor Andrew Cuomo never did.

      • Scheerpost ☛ Ralph Nader: Drug Price Showdown Time for Chairman Bernie Sanders

        By Ralph Nader It is showdown time. Senator Bernie Sanders, new chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee versus Big Pharma. The self-described “democratic socialist” from a safe seat in Vermont has long been a Big Pharma nemesis.

      • India Times ☛ Trai calls for overhaul of existing norms around entertainment apps, tech convergence

        Trai observed in the paper that while in the past telecommunications and broadcasting served two distinct purposes, and as such were government by separate regulatory and licensing framework, it is no longer the case.

        “Today’s evolving digital technologies and ongoing deregulation are beginning to blur the boundaries that once separated these two functions, at least from the perspective of carriage of these services,” the sector regulator further observed.

      • Broadband Breakfast ☛ Must Internet Platforms Host Objectionable Content? Appeals Courts Consider ‘Must Carry’ Rules

        As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a pair of cases about online platform liability, it is also considering a separate pair of social media lawsuits that aim to push content moderation practices in the opposite direction, adding additional questions about the First Amendment and common carrier status to an already complicated issue.

      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • The Straits Times ☛ Viral video puts spotlight on issues faced by breastfeeding mums in China

        China had just 2,600 nursing rooms in 2019, when 14.6 million babies were born that year.

      • Gannett ☛ 3 charged in plot to assassinate activist Masih Alinejad, who is critical of Iran regime

        Since July, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the criminal group had been planning the assassination of New York-based journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, who just two years ago had been the target of a foiled kidnapping attempt linked to Iranian intelligence operatives.

      • YLE ☛ Police: Koran burning would not be allowed in Finland

        An Yle poll in 2021 found that a majority of Finnish MPs did not want to change Finland’s law on the sanctity of religion, which includes the possibility of a six-month prison sentence for blasphemy.

        However, some MPs called for changes to the law based on freedom of speech concerns.

        The UN Human Rights Committee has urged Finland to change the criminal provision, arguing that it restricts freedom of expression.

      • NDTV ☛ Pakistan Tightens Blasphemy Laws That Already Carry Death Penalty

        The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has said that these amendments are likely to exacerbate the persecution of the beleaguered religious minorities and minority sects.

        The HRCP Chairperson, Hina Jilani, in a statement issued from Lahore on Friday, said the enactment would further increase persecutions of the minorities.

      • India Today ☛ Pakistan’s new blasphemy laws may be ‘weaponised’ against minorities, says rights group

        The Pakistan National Assembly unanimously passed the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act 2023 last week, enhancing the minimum punishment for those who insult the revered personalities of Islam from three to 10 years along with a fine of Rs 1 million. It also makes the charge of blasphemy an offence for which bail is not possible.

        This latest piece of legislation has left human rights activists alarmed, as they fear the laws would be misused to settle scores and further persecute religious minorities like Hindus and Christians in Pakistan.

      • New York Times ☛ Pakistan Strengthens Already Harsh Laws Against Blasphemy

        The move this week by Parliament to further strengthen the nation’s strict blasphemy laws, which are often used to settle personal scores or persecute minorities, has raised concerns among rights activists about the prospect of an increase in such persecution, particularly of religious minorities, including Christians.

        As Pakistani society has turned more conservative and religious in the past several decades, religion and display of religiosity in public life have become ever more pronounced.

      • Gatestone Institute ☛ ‘The Shame of Pakistan’: Blasphemy Accusers: Courageous Christian Woman Stands Up to Them

        “Pakistan was to review its harsh blasphemy laws. It has made them even harsher…The National Assembly has unanimously passed an amendment to the laws that widens the net and makes punishment more stringent under these laws…. The blasphemy laws are often misused in Pakistan to settle personal scores. It is also used to persecute its small minorities.”

        Recently in Pakistan, however, an encouraging sign emerged: an interesting uproar on social media about a Christian female security officer who bravely stood up to a Muslim colleague threatening her with a false accusation of blasphemy.

      • IAMC writes to Elon Musk seeking censorship reversal of BBC documentary on Modi

        Indian American Muslim Council writes to Twitter CEO Elon Musk seeking the reversal of censorship of the BBC documentary critical of the Indian Prime Minister titled “India: The Modi Question”.

        In a two-page letter, the IAMC also sought Twitter to refuse all future compliance with media censorship requests from the Indian Government.

      • The Verge ☛ Elon Musk’s Twitter is caving to government censorship, just like he promised

        Over the weekend, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting senior advisor Kanchan Gupta tweeted that both Twitter and YouTube had complied with orders passed down by the government, which has labeled the BBC documentary “hateful propaganda.” The documentary has also been apparently removed by the Internet Archive, although it’s not clear whether this was following a demand from the government or a copyright complaint from the original owner, and the Internet Archive didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

      • NBC ☛ Elon Musk’s Twitter faces censorship allegations in India free speech battle

        Elon Musk is facing allegations of being complicit with state censorship after Twitter appeared to take sides with India’s government in a turbulent free speech fight over a documentary critical of the country’s prime minister.

        The fight revolves around a new documentary from the BBC that focuses on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, delving into accusations that the politician allowed religious-based violence against Muslims. India is majority Hindu with a Muslim minority.

      • The Independent UK ☛ Elon Musk shrugs off criticism that he has helped India censor BBC’s Modi documentary

        Google-owned YouTube and Mr Musk’s Twitter have been receiving flak for complying with the Indian government’s demand to prevent users from sharing the documentary. It reports for the first time a British intelligence report that held Mr Modi “directly responsible” for the Gujarat riots in 2002, where potentially thousands of Muslims were massacred, when he was the state’s chief minister.

      • Foreign Policy ☛ Modi Is Muzzling Big Tech

        This week, India made global headlines by banning a BBC documentary on its prime minister, Narendra Modi, which focused on his role in religious riots in the state of Gujarat in 2002 when he was the state’s chief minister. The broadcast ban included a directive to YouTube and Twitter under the country’s technology laws, demanding they take down links to the documentary, which a government advisor said the companies complied with.

      • Meduza ☛ OnlyFans stops working in Russia — Meduza

        The adult content sharing platform OnlyFans is no longer accessible in Russia, according to multiple Russian Telegram channels and media outlets. The site is showing a 403 error, which suggests that it’s been blocked by its owners.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Scheerpost ☛ Assange Visitors Renew Request for CIA to ‘Purge and Destroy’ Files on Them

        Attorneys and journalists, who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was living under political asylum in the Ecuador embassy, amended their lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for allegedly spying on them.

      • Don’t Extradite Assange ☛ Assange Odysseia, 23 January 2023, Strasbourg, France

        Inspired by the narrative form of Homer’s Odyssey, Assange Odysseia tells the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and, with the help of witnesses, experts as well as political and cultural figures, sheds light on facts and events that are little known by the general public.

      • The Hill ☛ Trump sues journalist Bob Woodward

        Trump concedes that he consented to Woodward recording their conversations for the purpose of a book, and gave 19 interviews to the veteran journalist in 2019 and 2020, which Woodward included in his 2020 book “Rage.”

        But the former president is arguing the agreement doesn’t cover the inclusion of those audio files in “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook collection of the recordings published by Simon & Schuster Inc. last year.

      • VOA News ☛ With Media on Trial or in Exile, Belarusian Journalists Strive to Keep Reporting

        Tut.by drew the government’s ire for its coverage of the August 2020 contested presidential elections, when Lukashenko claimed victory and opposition candidates were detained or forced to flee. When demonstrations broke out across the country, authorities arrested scores of protesters and journalists.

        The government later branded Tut.by and other independent outlets as “extremist.” In May 2021, officials raided the newsroom, blocked access to its website and detained staff, including the editor-in chief Marina Zolatova and general director Lyudmila Chekina. A few months later, Tut.by was declared “extremist” and banned.

      • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Top court: Prosecution must give credible reasons for fining journalists

        The Supreme Court agreed with the circuit court in that while Eesti Ekspress journalists Sulev Vedler and Tarmo Vahter and their employer Delfi Meedia AS did disclose criminal investigation details without permissions from the prosecution, fining them was not justified in this case.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Denmark rated world’s least corrupt country in index

        Denmark has been named the least corrupt country in the world for the fifth time in an annual index – but that does not mean the Nordic country is corruption free, according to a representative from the organisation behind the ranking.

      • Meduza ☛ Izyum’s petal mines Human Rights Watch documents the Ukrainian military’s apparent use of thousands of banned rocket-fired landmines during the city’s Russian occupation — Meduza

        In a new report, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch calls on Kyiv to investigate the Ukrainian military’s “apparent use of thousands of [banned] rocket-fired antipersonnel landmines” in and around the city of Izyum. The findings are based on interviews with more than 100 people, including “witnesses to landmine use, victims of landmines, first responders, doctors, and Ukrainian deminers.” HRW also found copious physical evidence in and around Izyum showing the use of PFMs (anti-infantry high-explosive mines) — colloquially known as “butterfly mines” or “petal mines” — and observed blast signatures consistent with these weapons, which have reportedly maimed dozens of local civilians. Meduza summarizes the report’s key findings.

      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Transparency International: Hungary is the most corrupt country in the EU
      • Shadowproof ☛ Delays And Obstacles Disrupt Communications For Georgia Prisoners

        Incarcerated Georgians and their loved ones have struggled to stay in touch after the Georgia Department of Corrections began switching communications services from JPay to Securus, as the former merges its systems with the latter. This change was accompanied by the emergence of a more stringent and increasingly punitive prison communications policy.

        While the Georgia Department of Corrections’ (GDC) policy was written in 2018, it is only now being enforced, according to incarcerated people and their loved ones. Under the policy, people who wish to communicate with someone inside must submit an application and submit to government screening. Additionally, a prisoner may only have 12 people on this approved communications list.

      • BBC ☛ Afghan women share what their lives are really like under the Taliban

        Women from across Afghanistan have been telling us about their daily lives under Taliban rule.

      • Medforth ☛ France: Muslim convert beats former partner into a coma because the Qur’an allows him to do so

        On that December 13, 2022, the young woman was nevertheless determined to press charges against the man she had just separated from, and even to have an abortion. After staying with her mother in the Vienne department for a few days, she spoke out about the fear he caused her: harassment by text message, threats, an attempt to strangle her. Since she converted to Islam, Marvin J. has also been spreading the idea that the Qur’an allows a man to beat his wife…

      • Sara Khadem: ‘I’m not me when I’m wearing a hijab’

        On December 26, the Iranian chess player participated in the World Rapid Chess Championship in Kazakhstan with her head uncovered, a silent protest that is a very serious offense in her native country. After the photos circled the world, she announced her intention to settle in Spain. Her story represents the cause of freedom that so many Iranian women are fighting for

      • TruthOut ☛ We Must Refuse “Normal Life” After Police Violence Like Killing of Tyre Nichols
      • The Nation ☛ The Killing of Tyre Nichols Is an Indictment of the Entire Political System

        The five Memphis police officers charged on Thursday with murdering Tyre Nichols after he was stopped for an alleged traffic violation were not ordinary cops on the beat. They were members of an elite unit bearing the type of name usually given to a villainous secret society in a James Bond movie: SCORPION. As journalist Radley Balko, who specializes in writing about police abuse, noted in The New York Times, “The SCORPION program has all the markings of similar ‘elite’ police teams around the country, assembled for the broad purpose of fighting crime, which operate with far more leeway and less oversight than do regular police.” (The SCORPION unit was disbanded on Saturday).

      • NPR ☛ Police statements tell the first version of an incident. Then video footage comes out

        Video footage released Friday, taken from officers’ body cameras and a street surveillance camera, shows a different story. In the videos, police quickly yank Nichols from his car, shout obscenities and threats, and then pepper spray him. Nichols flees, and when police finally catch him a second time, officers kick him, hit him with a baton and repeatedly punch him in the head while he’s being restrained.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • Hollywood Reporter ☛ NBCUniversal Shakes Up Ad Sales Division For Streaming-First Restructure

        The changes include new or reworked roles for a variety of top executives, including Maggy Chan, who joined from the BBC last month and will oversee global ad sales and partnerships; Mark Marshall, who will lead a centralized national sales team; Frank Comerford, who will lead local ad strategy; and Dan Lovinger, who leads a sales team dedicated to the Olympics.

    • Monopolies

      • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Rep. Issa – House IP Leader

        Ryan Davis at IP360 is reporting that Rep. Darryl Issa is the new chair of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. He was previously Chair 2015-2019.

      • Patents

      • Software Patents

        • Unified Patents ☛ $1,500 awarded for IP Edge entity AdaptFlow Technologies video data patent prior art

          The ongoing contests are open to anyone, and include tens of thousands of dollars in rewards available for helping the industry to challenge NPE patents of questionable validity by finding and submitting prior art in the contests.

        • EFF ☛ Stupid Patent of the Month: Digital Verification Systems Patents E-Signatures

          This month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is a great example of that. U.S. Patent No. 9,054,860 has been used by a company called Digital Verification Services, LLC, (DVS) to sue more than 50 companies that provide different types of e-signature software.

          There’s no evidence that the inventor of this patent, Leigh Rothschild, ever created his own e-signature software. But in patent law, that doesn’t matter. He acquired this patent in 2015, by adding a trivial, almost meaningless limitation to an application that the U.S. Patent Office had spent the previous seven years rejecting.

          You can’t learn much about how to verify digital identities from the patent owned by Digital Verification Services. But the breadth of work on actual digital verification can be gleaned by looking at the long list of companies and products that DVS has sued. In fact, DVS has sued more than 50 different companies. Some are large, like NASDAQ-listed DocuSign, but many more of its targets are small companies with less than 50 or even less than 10 employees. They stand accused of offering “hardware and/or software for digital signature services.”

      • Trademarks

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate IPTV Owners Liable For $100m in Damages Fight House Seizure

          In June 2022, the operators of pirate IPTV service Nitro TV were ordered to pay $100 million in damages to broadcaster DISH Network. To recover at least some of the millions made by the service, DISH obtained permission to seize and sell a house worth almost $1 million. After failing to participate in the original lawsuit, the defendants are now trying to defend their house.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Court: Accused Pirate Can Use the Term ‘Copyright Troll’ at Trial

          Online piracy lawsuits against individual file-sharers rarely make it to trial, but a case in Florida between Strike 3 Holdings and an alleged pirate is moving strongly in that direction. A recent order provides positive news for the rightsholder but that won’t prevent the defense from being able to use the term “copyright troll” in court.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Re: This is Bananas!

        I always peeled from the stalk end until I visited Thrigby Hall, a zoo in Norfolk. A keeper gave a talk as she fed the gibbons, and said that it’s only humans who start at the stalk. We watched the gibbons start at the other end, and later I tried it. I’ve never gone back to the stalk end.

      • Fecking Bahamas

        It’s been a really long time since I last was this excited about an album! I’m about halfway and it’s pretty good. But there’s this little something in Ireland and Australasia, even in France, missing here…

        At first I was planning only a quick mention in the tinylog, but that doesn’t make justice to how much I appreciate these compilations. So let’s make a short summary of my favorite compilations and songs.

    • Technical

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Better Availability or I Begrudgingly Switched My Gemini Server Back to ECDSA

          When I setup my Gemini server in the beginning of December of 2022, I used Agate with Ed25519 certificates. They are more modern than the ECDSA ones and are the ones you should use.

          But judging from my Agate log, a lot of requests fail, apparently because they don’t support this newer algorithm. While from a security standpoint this is not a big deal, because no sensitive data will be transfered, but I prefer current technology and don’t like abandonware.

          I’m not sure about my general feelings here. Do I want to be more inclusive or am I thinking about reaching more people too much and therefor emphasizing the performative aspect of publishing on the internet. I despise this.

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

Intimidation Against Nitrux Development Team Upsets the Community and Makes the Media Less Trustworthy

Posted in GNU/Linux, Review at 11:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 00770802190b1c2ddea678a9910d0b65
Blackmailed by Establishment Media
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Nitrux is being criticised for being “very unappealing”; but a look behind the scenes reveals an angry reviewer (habitual mouthpiece of the Linux Foundation and Linux foes) trying to intimidate Nitrux developers, who are unpaid volunteers rather than “corporate” developers

THIS Twitter thread (discussed in the video above) was highlighted to us by a reader who had once experienced similar mistreatment as an independent reporter. These people deserve a voice and taking this public can hopefully discourage repetition. We need to protect one another from mistreatment and injustice.

“As for the corporate media, it’ll injure itself to death. People are getting tired of what it’s trying to offer.”The paid press is full of people with a twisted agenda. One must track who’s who (or their true agenda). Techrights has had a go at it for years. We must support community distros and volunteers who are technical, always placing them above the ‘suits’ and their corporations. As for the corporate media, it’ll injure itself to death. People are getting tired of what it’s trying to offer.

The video above shows what the media did to Uri from Nitrux and MauiKit. █

Links 31/01/2023: GNOME 44 Wallpapers and Alpha

Posted in News Roundup at 7:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • GNU World Order (Audio Show) ☛ GNU World Order 497

        **latte dock** , **layer-shell-qt** , **libgravatar** , **libkcddb** , **libkcompactdisc** , **libkdcraw** , **libkdegames** from the Slackware **kde** package set.

    • Applications

      • Make Tech Easier ☛ 8 of the Best Video Editors for Linux

        The good thing about Linux video editing software is that they are often free, easy to use and full of professional features. If you’re looking to try video editing on Linux, check out these eight video editing software options.

      • Linux Links ☛ 5 Best Free and Open Source Font Editors

        Linux users may not have a plethora of fonts, but there are many lovely and usable fonts. Different Linux fonts are supplied with different Linux distros.

        A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor.

        Most computer fonts are in either bitmap or outline data formats. Bitmap fonts consist of a matrix of dots or pixels representing the image of each glyph in each face and size. Outline or vector fonts use Bézier curves, drawing instructions and mathematical formulae to describe each glyph, which make the character outlines scalable to any size.

      • Ubuntu Pit ☛ 20 Best IRC Clients For Linux Systems

        In computing, IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat and is widely regarded as the first mainstream text-based communication mechanism. At its peak, IRC chat enjoyed overwhelming popularity and served millions of people before losing ground to modern-day chat services like Facebook.

      • TecMint ☛ 9 Best Google Drive Clients for Linux in 2023

        One of the best cloud storage contenders to emerge is Google Drive — the popular cloud storage application that allows you to store data and access it from a Google account securely. Unfortunately, despite

      • CNX Software ☛ Green Metrics Tool helps developers measuring & optimizing software power consumption

        The Green Metrics Tool (GMT) is an open-source framework that allows the measurement, comparison, and optimization of the energy consumption of software with the goal of empowering both software engineers and users to make educated decisions about libraries, code snippets, and software in order to save energy along with carbon emissions.

        While the firmware of battery-powered embedded devices and the OS running on your smartphone are typically optimized for low power consumption in order to extend the battery life, the same can not be said of most software running on SBCs, desktop computers, and servers. But there are still benefits of having power-optimized programs on this type of hardware including lower electricity bills, a lower carbon footprint, and potentially quieter devices since the cooling fan may not have to be turned on as often. The Green Metrics Tool aims to help in that regard.

      • Linux Links ☛ Best Free and Open Source Software – January 2023 Updates

        Here are the latest updates to our compilation of recommended software. Open source software at its finest.

        It’s been a very productive month in January with many new and updated group tests published.

        As always, we love receiving your suggestions for new articles or additional open source software to feature. Let us know in the Comments box below or drop us an email.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • LinuxTechi ☛ How to Install KubeSphere on Linux Step-by-Step

        KubeSphere is an open-source enterprise-grade Kubernetes container platform that provides streamlined DevOps workflows and full-stack automation. It offers an intuitive and user-friendly web interface that helps developers build and monitor feature-rich platforms for enterprise Kubernetes environments.

      • Unix Men ☛ How To Use the Touch Command in Linux: A Simple Guide

        Many Linux users, especially newbies, confuse the touch command for being the one that creates files. While it can do this, the command can do much more.  For example, if you use VPS hosting on your Linux machine, you can use the command to alter the timestamps of folders and files.

      • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ This Indicator Shows CPU, GPU, Memory Usage on Ubuntu 22.04 Panel

        There are several Gnome Shell extensions to display system resource usage in Ubuntu, but in this tutorial I’m going to introduce an indicator that works in not only GNOME, but also Unity, MATE, and Budgie desktop environments.

      • Trend Oceans ☛ How to Test DNS Speed using Two Popular Tools on Windows and Linux

        How do you know which DNS server will offer the best speed? The answer is simple: you need to check and compare the speeds of various DNS servers to find out which one works best for you.

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Jakub Steiner ☛ GNOME 44 Wallpapers

          As we gear up for the release of GNOME 44, let’s take a moment to reflect on the visual design updates.

          We’ve made big strides in visual consistency with the growing number of apps that have been ported to gtk4 and libadwaita, embracing the modern look. Sam has also given the high-contrast style in GNOME Shell some love, keeping it in line with gtk’s updates last cycle.

        • DebugPoint ☛ GNOME 44 Alpha is Out, Shaping Up to Be A Moderate Release

          GNOME 44 Alpha has been out for testing, offering the first sneak peek into the latest changes and improvements in this popular desktop environment. The GNOME desktop environment has long been a favourite among popular distributions.

          After I glance through the changes, I must say this release is high on under-the-hood bug fixes and optimizations. A few key native apps get major feature changes. However, GNOME Shell and mutter see moderate enhancements.

          Let’s take a look at the key features.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • 9to5Linux ☛ Escuelas Linux 8.0 Educational Distro Celebrates 25 Years of Promoting FOSS

      

      Escuelas Linux 8.0 is dubbed as the 25th-anniversary edition of the Debian/Ubuntu/Bodhi Linux-derived GNU/Linux distribution and it’s available in two editions.

      The 64-bit edition is based on the upcoming Bodhi Linux 7.0 distribution, which in turn is derived from the well-tested Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) long-term supported operating system series. On the other hand, the 32-bit edition is based on Bodhi Linux 6.0 and its Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” base.

    • Joe Brockmeier ☛ Joe Brockmeier: Poking at Distrobox

      I’m probably late to the party, butDistroboxhas to be one of the best open source projects to drop in the past few years.No matter which Linux distro I standardize on, there’s inevitably something I want to run that runs best or only on another distro. Or I just want to dip into a shell for $distro real quick to verify whether a certain package exists, or what the package name is, the default config for an application, etc.

      Or I’d like to run two instances of an application with different profiles, without having to set up a whole virtual machine.

      Distrobox provides an easy answer for many of those use cases. Distrobox lets you run “any Linux distribution inside your terminal.” There’s a slight asterisk next to “any” in the form of “the distribution has to have a ready made Docker container you can pull.” But the number of distros I’d like to run and the number of distros that don’t have an official container are few and far between. The only exception that comes to mind is Slackware, which has a container on Docker Hub but it hasn’t been updated in about 7 years.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

    • FSF

    • Programming/Development

      • CNX Software ☛ MicroBlocks is a visual programming IDE for 32-bit microcontrollers

        Most electronics education platforms have good documentation in English, but it may be more difficult to find details instructions in other languages. The good news is that MicroBlocks also offers a few tutorials in German, Chinese, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, and Turkish. The source code is available on Bitbucket which includes the Arduino/PlatformIO firmware for each supported board and the IDE written in GP Blocks.

        Another reason MicroBlocks project caught my eyes is that I had seen several people share something about “MicroBlock” (note: no “s”) on Facebook last week. But it happens to be a visual programming IDE for the KidBright32 education board in Thailand, and MicroBlocks and MicroBlock are completely separate open-source projects albeit with a similar use case… You’ll find more details about MicroBlocks on their website.

      • Unix Men ☛ Reading & Parsing JSON Data with Python: A Simple Tutorial

        JavaScript Object Notation is a standard format mostly used by APIs and websites to store data objects using text. In simple words, JSON supports data structures that can represent objects as text. Also used in contemporary databases such as PostgreSQL, JSON is derived from JavaScript, as you might have already guessed. Though XML and YAML

      • Dirk Eddelbuettel ☛ Dirk Eddelbuettel: #39: Faster Feedback Systems – A Continuous Integration Example

        Today we have a fairly nice illustration of two aspects we have stressed before:

        Fewer dependencies makes for faster installation time (apart from other desirable robustness aspects); andUsing binaries makes for faster installation time as it removes the need for compilations.

  • Leftovers

    • New Yorker ☛ Dear Pepper: Avert Your Eyes

      You can’t make eye contact when you feel that the world is coming at you through a fire hose.

    • uni Stanford ☛ An invitation to reconsider: The role of the actor

      In the third installment of “An Invitation to Reconsider,” Yonatan Laderman reflects on the concept of actor as “malleable vessel.” The actor, Laderman writes, must “learn to be faceless” so that they may “become everyone.”

    • Stuart Langridge: Ronin

      In 1701, Asano Naganori, a feudal lord in Japan, was summoned to the shogun’s court in Edo, the town now called Tokyo. He was a provincial chieftain, and knew little about court etiquette, and the etiquette master of the court, Kira Kozuke-no-Suke, took offence. It’s not exactly clear why; it’s suggested that Asano didn’t bribe Kira sufficiently or at all, or that Kira felt that Asano should have shown more deference. Whatever the reasoning, Kira ridiculed Asano in the shogun’s presence, and Asano defended his honour by attacking Kira with a dagger.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • This is Bananas!

        So I will have to disagree with Telepta and allegedly also all monkeys (who would possibly indulge with my second objection and more experience cancelling my first).

      • 🔤SpellBinding — AELVSUO Wordo: COWLS
      • A Hopeful January

        It’s only Monday night and I’m already exhausted. But in the good way, I’m pretty sure. Figured I should write a quick informal post about the semester so far to help me process and unwind.

        Job searching has kept me busy but I feel like I’m still not quite able to put all the time into it that I’d need to see the results that I’d like. It’s tedious but I get some amount of enjoyment out of it and seeing some of the opportunities out there. I’m hoping the little bits of time I’ve been putting into the search will add up and eventually be enough to get some decent offers by the time I graduate.

        Job searching has also helped me appreciate all the skills I’ve collected. I feel like I’m in a good spot. It’s been great for motivation.

      • Memory vs Reason

        Me and Halo are so evenly matched at Baduk even though we have so opposite strengths and weaknesses that the other’s playstyle looks like magic.

        I’ve got a lot of tesuji and sabaki and proverbs and shape patterns so when he runs into a stone I’ve played five moves earlier he thinks I’m kidding when I say I placed it there for a reason.

        He on the other hand can estimate the score in a way that I just can not. I am always shocked when the scores come in whileche has a pretty good idea.

    • Technical

      • Eulogy for a Beautiful Disaster – Itanium, 2001-2013

        In November 2012, as part of the release of the new “Poulson” Itanium processors, Intel also announced details of Poulson’s successor, “Kittson” – and it was exciting. Kittson was supposed to share a socket and uncore with future Xeon-EX processors, and was intended to be built on Intel’s shiny new 22nm lithography. Specs were few on the ground, but Intel was making noise about doubling performance generation to generation, as they had with Poulson. Kittson seemed like a perfect fit for the future DragonHawk Superdomes, with a mix of Itanium and Xeon cells, and it seemed like Itanium was getting an extended roadmap and a soft landing, even without an HP-UX port.

      • Inbox Zero

        Since early 2000′s I used to manage email with Mozilla Thunderbird. At some point (around 2006, maybe?) a new interesting feature was added, something called now Saved Search[1]. Saved searches looked like folders, but instead of real paths, they stored a query and the results showed up as content. Just exactly as views work on relational databases.

      • Matrix To MMS-Over-Email Bridge: Step 2 — Matrix Over Email

        This step was considerably harder than the last, but the end result turned out to be pretty simple.

        <

      • 2023 Week 3/4: Thoughts and Photos

        I haven’t been posting many logs on Gemini recently, but Rob’s Capsule has been busy in other ways. I finally posted a beginner-friendly Rubik’s Cube solution guide in the “Twisty Puzzles” section of the capsule, as well as an example scramble to follow along with. I plan to continue expanding the puzzle section with solution guides and puzzle information, as well as a few other interactive puzzles.

      • Build a new capsule generator

        Just like almost every body who runs a static website, I have build and rebuild my own generator.

        It is part of the fun, I guess.

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

Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) and KU Leuven Boosting Americans and Cancellers of the Father of Free Software

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, FSF, GNU/Linux, GPL at 6:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 8dee6747c29ac8a73083f75a14c2882b
PR Stunt Doctorate for the Wrong Person
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and its founder, Richard M. Stallman (RMS), along with the SFLC one might add, have been under a siege by the trademark-abusing FSFE and SFC; Belgium helps legitimise the ‘fakes’

A few years ago we joked about FOSDEM USA/America, seeing that sponsors, panels, and keynotes were usually American rather than European. FOSDEM also took money from Microsoft.

“FOSDEM also took money from Microsoft.”We previously wrote about how the SFC was censoring critics of American companies. Even in FOSDEM (Europe). SFC seems to be weaponising some online mobs, as we already explained in “Free as in Finance/Money: Salary of SFC’s Chief Rose to $216,000 Per Year ($18,000 Per Month), or More Than Twice the FSF’s Chief” and commentary about the more recent IRS filings (finances) of SFC. It seems profitable to do the posturing and then cancel the original thing (which you try to mimic and then replace). Yes, the FSF and RMS are the “Real Deal”. SFC is basically like the GNU hoarder, exploiting the project’s good name and reputation like Linux Foundation exploits the “Linux” brand.

“It seems profitable to do the posturing and then cancel the original thing (which you try to mimic and then replace).”RMS has got honorary degrees, but he actually pioneered many things and helped inspire others, for no financial (monetary) gain, unlike Karen Sandler. It’s therefore a bit sad to see this self-praising press release, stating: “Sandler was nominated by the student body in recognition of her outstanding work at Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), her many years of FOSS leadership, and her advocacy and pursuit of software freedom and rights for all.”

So that’s what it takes now? Being nominated? People in the student body nominating you to be called “doctor”? I say a lot more in the above video, but the accomplishments of Sandler are too few; she’s in it for the money. █

Techrights in the Next 5 or 10 Years

Posted in Site News at 4:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum f0cc5572559292e2b2f632f5820524bc
Techrights Road Ahead
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Now that I’m free from the shackles of a company (it deteriorated a lot after grabbing Gates Foundation money under an NDA) the site Techrights can flourish and become more active

THE recent exit from my job (where I had worked since my 20s) means that I now have far more time to spend here in Techrights. We have lots of exciting things planned and we predict that the site will still be around in 2033. If the Web perishes by then, we’ll have already adopted alternatives such as IPFS, Gemini etc.

The video above speaks of personal matters and site-related stuff. It’s more or less a continuation of this last post about Sirius 'Open Source'. █

60 Days of Articles About Sirius ‘Open Source’ and the Long Road Ahead

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software at 3:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum 46726a937016a1d3c37cb00ecce28246
End of Sirius
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The Sirius ‘Open Source’ series ended after 60 days (parts published every day except the day my SSD died completely and very suddenly); the video above explains what’s to come and what lessons can be learned from the 21-year collective experience (my wife and I; work periods combined) in a company that still claims, in vain, to be “Open Source”

THIS is going to be the last video about Sirius, at least for a while. We’ll get back to this subject, but only infrequently. We plan to publish a list of things that are applicable to every worker in the technology sector, especially companies that are openwashing (and let’s face it, as of recent years almost every technical company merely claims to support “Open Source” while doing almost everything secretly and keeping the crown jewels proprietary, sometimes patented too).

“At the moment society faces a number of threats and growing disruption, magnified further by an ever-escalating global (but proxy) war, which in turn impacts all sorts of other things (access to food, price of energy, mental health and so on).”I can finally devote 100% of my technical capacity to Free software, either developing some or writing about it, as I’ve already done for more than 20 years (my personal site turned 20 last year).

At the moment society faces a number of threats and growing disruption, magnified further by an ever-escalating global (but proxy) war, which in turn impacts all sorts of other things (access to food, price of energy, mental health and so on). Things will be further exacerbated later this year, based on gloomy but seemingly realistic predictions (the forecasts of a recovery aren’t based on actual observable facts, only wishful thinking).

“We’ll try to produce more articles with more videos.”More and more people seem to be choosing to “disconnect”; if not from society then from “tech” (stuff like social control media, which was never meant to make people happy, except temporarily — that’s just what addiction does). Many people whom we used to revere and look up to have vanished. Many sites went offline (the Web is generally shrinking, based on Netcraft). Financial strain would accelerate these trends.

The rest of what I have to say will be covered in the next video. We’ll try to produce more articles with more videos. █

IRC Proceedings: Monday, January 30, 2023

Posted in IRC Logs at 2:42 am by Needs Sunlight

Also available via the Gemini protocol at:

Over HTTP:

HTML5 logs

HTML5 logs

#techrights log as HTML5

#boycottnovell log as HTML5

HTML5 logs

HTML5 logs

#boycottnovell-social log as HTML5

#techbytes log as HTML5

text logs

text logs

#techrights log as text

#boycottnovell log as text

text logs

text logs

#boycottnovell-social log as text

#techbytes log as text

Enter the IRC channels now

IPFS Mirrors

CID Description Object type
 QmaZ2DAV1c5UkwHhsLWPNfAexPGFNfxadtiDNeUkydAVFA IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmabPdUaA59FiptyDR1PDWnMy857WTsUKxiq3vfxJecLkD IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmbwUp7mJHVYqJJTDdABgJbVxYLcfgQrkzEkrnJXpG17VZ IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmYgQ8FGvU5zuJw1SdJuC423gL1MhZGGTAKM8gjbdk48du IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmbvifnMCDEv9pYdaszCY39qiLgoZwShiEszVwqvJ4Dmar IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmUpWQTsSANksyQBvq7X8qUtyfHzVgi1F6niLVBByhZtmy IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmSK1GMiEvRS61DgZbq95TcdQ6JGWwTWBkgw5rKvXE9uTK IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmesdDPfLLgKHCSS233JWQ53bM9Z5vJeHAdcUfempNiYX4 IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs

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Bulletin for Yesterday

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