02.02.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

Links 02/02/2023: KDE Gear 22.12.2 and LibreOffice 7.5

Posted in News Roundup at 8:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Counter Punch ☛ Electra Reborn

      Last night, January 30, 2023, Turner Classical Movies Channel showed Electra, the tragic play of Euripides from the 1962 black and white film production by the Greek filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis. The first time I saw this unforgettable film-play was at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, on December 11, 1999.

    • Shadowproof ☛ Should The Left Embrace Preparedness Culture?

      A few days after a massive power outage in North Carolina in early December, Margaret Killjoy shared a thread on preparedness in response to the outages. Alongside the usual emergency supplies like extra water, batteries, medicine, heat sources, and food, Killjoy noted something not usually included in preparedness toolkits: “organize against the far right so that they are less capable of shooting up power stations.”

      Killjoy, an author and musician who lives in the mountains of West Virginia, hosts the anarchist prepping podcast Live Like The World Is Dying. Since its creation just before the pandemic began, it has grown into a valuable and widely-accessed resource for people wondering how to deal with any number of emergencies in their communities.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Make Use Of ☛ 8 Things You Should Never Do After Installing Linux

        At some point in your Linux journey, you may have found yourself scouring the internet for things to do after installing Linux. While it’s essential to know what you should do after booting Linux for the first time, knowing what not to do is more important to avoid wrecking your newly set up system.

        Let’s look at some common things you should steer clear of when using your new Linux installation. These tips are helpful for all Linux users, irrespective of their expertise.

      • Unicorn Media ☛ Quick 10 Question Linux Desktop Quiz

        Since February is Linux Desktop Environment Month here at FOSS Force, we figured what better way to get the ball rolling than with a fun quiz to test your knowledge of Linux DEs. It’s down-and-dirty — kind of like a pop quiz — and because we believe in privacy, nothing is going on your permanent record.

        Have fun, and good luck!

      • Unicorn Media ☛ A Beginners’ Guide to Linux Desktops

        No wonder people find that the process of moving to Linux is a little daunting. Around every corner there’s a new choice for you to make, starting with the decision to give Linux a try.

        For a Mac user who want’s to move to Windows, there aren’t any choices because there’s only one Windows (you might have to choose between Windows 10 or 11, but Microsoft pretty much makes that decision for you, based on the capabilities of your hardware). For a Windows user who wants to switch to Mac, not only is there only one MacOS, but it also will only run on Mac hardware (well, if you’re a real whiz-kid and have a lot of coding chops, you can probably get MacOS to run on anything, but this article is for mere mortals).

    • Server

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ Linux Action News 278

        A lot happened in the free desktop world this week, we cover the impressive releases, changes, and surprises.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Collabora ☛ Exploring Rust for Vulkan drivers, part 1

        Over the course of the last decade, Rust has emerged as a new programming language for writing safe low-level code. This blog post is the first in a series exploring the area of using Rust to write Mesa Vulkan drivers.

    • Applications

      • Linux Links ☛ 9 Best Free and Open Source Pixel Art Editors

        Pixel art is sometimes associated with sprites. They are the images in 2D games that represent the various objects in a game like your player character, monsters, items, etc.

        Nowadays, pixel art is still popular in games and as an artform in and of itself, despite realistic 3D graphics. The barrier to entry for pixel art is less steep than painted or 3D graphics, making it a welcome option for indie game developers.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • TecMint ☛ Understanding The /etc/mtab File in Linux System

        In this article, we will explore the /etc/mtab file on a Linux system and understand the various parameters and directives included therein. What is /etc/mtab File in Linux The /etc/mtab file is a file

      • ID Root ☛ Mastering the Netstat Command on Linux

        In this tutorial, we will discuss your mastering the netstat command on Linux. Netstat is one of the most versatile and powerful tools in a Linux administrator’s arsenal.

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Minikube on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Minikube on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

      • A .git directory template

        Git is a powerful tool for managing and tracking code changes, but it can be difficult to set up and organize, especially for large and complex projects. One way to make this process easier is to use a .git directory template.

      • Red Hat Official ☛ Set up base configurations for Ansible automation controller using GitLab CI

        Set up base configurations for Ansible automation controller using GitLab CI

      • Docker Containers Introduction

        Docker is a powerful platform that enables developers to easily create, deploy, and run applications in containers. Containers are lightweight, portable, and self-sufficient units that allow developers to package their applications and all of their dependencies together, making it easy to run them on any system.

      • Docker: Listing and searching for an image

        Docker is a powerful tool that allows developers to easily create, deploy, and run applications in a containerized environment. One of the most important parts of working with Docker is managing images. In this article, we will take a look at how to list and search for images in Docker.

      • Linuxiac ☛ How to Install VMware Workstation Player on Fedora

        Get the most out of your Fedora’s virtualization capabilities by installing VMware Workstation Player. Learn how here!

      • TecAdmin ☛ How to Install Mate Desktop on Debian 11

        The Mate desktop is a popular and lightweight graphical user interface (GUI) for Linux systems. It provides a traditional and easy-to-use interface that can run on both high-end and low-end computers. If you’re looking to install the Mate desktop on Debian 11, this guide will walk you through the process step by step.

      • Docker: Pulling an image

        Introduction Docker is a platform that allows developers to easily create, deploy, and run applications in containers. A container is a lightweight, standalone, executable package that includes everything needed to run a piece of software, including the code, runtime, system tools, libraries, and settings.

      • Listing docker image

        Docker images are the backbone of containerization. They are essentially snapshots of a specific environment, including the operating system, application, and dependencies. They can be used to deploy containers on any machine that has Docker installed, making them a convenient and efficient way to manage and distribute applications.

    • Games

      • Boiling Steam ☛ New Steam Games with Native Linux Clients – 2023-02-01 Edition

        Between 2023-01-25 and 2023-02-01 there were 30 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients. For reference, during the same time, there were 269 games released for Windows on Steam, so the Linux versions represent about 11.2 % of total…

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Sports management / visual novel mash-up Roller Drama is out now

        I don’t play many visual novels (mostly a whole zero) but I do love when games sprinkle it in with other things like the sports management game Roller Drama. The game is certainly inspired and looks a lot like Roller Derby but it’s not a simulator of it, and the actual gameplay is quite different according to the developer.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Zoom Platform, a store aimed at ‘Generation X’ adds more Linux support

        One I’ve been meaning to point out for a while now is Zoom Platform. A games store that tries to appeal to “Generation X” with both new and classic games, DRM-free and they’re continuing to build up their Linux support.

      • OpenSource.com ☛ Learn Basic by coding a game

        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 start figuring the rest out.

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

        Practicing with a standard program is a good way of learning a new language. It 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 one and 100 and asks you to guess it. The program loops until you guess the number correctly.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Heroic Games Launcher 2.6.0 out now adding auto updates, new theme

        Heroic Games Launcher continues advancing letting you manage your games from GOG, Epic Games and more on Linux, Steam Deck, macOS and Windows. Easily my favourite launcher next to Steam. In case you missed it, be sure to check out my recent interview with the creator.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Dwarf Fortress made over $7 million in January

        Something that’s completely deserved of course. The Dwarf Fortress developers shared that the game made over $7,230,000 in January.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ New Humble Bundle celebrates Black Creators and Characters

        To go along with Black History Month, the folks at Humble Bundle have put up a bundle of games to celebrate Black Creators and Characters.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • 9to5Linux ☛ KDE Gear 22.12.2 Released with Improvements to Dolphin, Elisa, and Spectacle

          The KDE Project released today KDE Gear 22.12.2 as the second maintenance update to the latest KDE Gear 22.12 open-source software suite for the KDE Plasma desktop environment and other projects bringing various minor improvements to some of your favorite KDE apps.

          KDE Gear 22.12.2 is here almost a month after the first point release, KDE Gear 22.12.1, to further improve the Dolphin file manager by forcing type-ahead to no longer inappropriately enter Selection Mode when one of the typed characters is a space.

        • KDE ☛ KDE Gear 22.12.2

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

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

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • 9to5Linux ☛ New Slax Releases Make Persistent Changes Up to 10 Times Faster with DynFileFS

      Slax 15.0.1 and Slax 11.6.0 are now available based on Slackware-current and Debian GNU/Linux 11.6 “Bullseye” respectively. The biggest change in these releases is the use of the newest DynFileFS FUSE file system for dynamically-enlarged files to store persistent changes on the bootable media.

      DynFileFS is written by Tomas Matejicek himself, but the new release received a performance boost, and thanks to the use of a new file format, promises up to 10 times faster persistent changes, especially when storing a lot of data on the persistent disk.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Tor

        • Tor ☛ Arti 1.1.1 is released: Groundwork for onion services

          Arti is our ongoing project to create an next-generation Tor client in Rust. In late November, we released Arti 1.1.0. Now we’re announcing the next release in its series, Arti 1.1.1.

          Since our last release, our primary focus has been preparation for onion service support in Arti. To that end, we’ve broken the work down into a bunch of tickets, designed our major internal APIs, and started to work on the lower-level features. There’s nothing you can use here yet, but the work is coming!

        • Tor ☛ 2022 Fundraising Results: thank you!

          Every year, the Tor Project asks our community for financial support during October, November, and December. We do this because we’re a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and your help keeps Tor free for everyone to use. In the new year, we aim to publish clear and transparent results of our fundraising—that’s what this post is all about.

          First, everyone in our community deserves a big THANK YOU for supporting the Tor Project during the campaign. Together, you raised $367,674 to power privacy online! Additionally please help us thank the Friends of Tor who provided the generous match during the campaign—Aspiration, Jon Callas, Craig Newmark, Wendy Seltzer, and several anonymous supporters.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • 9to5Linux ☛ LibreOffice 7.5 Open-Source Office Suite Officially Released, This Is What’s New

        The Document Foundation released today the LibreOffice 7.5 open-source, free, and cross-platform office suite for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows, to offer users new features and numerous improvements.

        After almost six months of development, the LibreOffice 7.5 office suite is here to introduce major improvements to dark mode support, new application and MIME-type icons that are more colorful and vibrant than ever, an improved version of the Single Toolbar UI with context-aware controls, as well as support for the Start Centre to filter documents by type.

      • The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 7.5 Community

        LibreOffice 7.5 Community, the new major release of the volunteer-supported free office suite for desktop productivity, is immediately available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows (Intel/AMD and ARM processors), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel processors), and Linux.

      • Linux Magazine ☛ LibreOffice 7.5 has Arrived and is Loaded with New Features and Improvements

        LibreOffice is the favorite office suite for many Linux users. With the newest release, version 7.5, there are plenty of new features and even some visual refreshing that has gone into the software.

        One of the most obvious changes comes by way of a new icon set that is more colorful and vibrant. As well, if you use LibreOffice on a touch-based device, zoom and rotate finally function via multi-touch gestures. And although you won’t find major changes to the UI, the subtle changes help to make LibreOffice more modern and professional feeling.

      • It’s FOSS ☛ LibreOffice 7.5 Unveils Stunning New App Icons and Cool Features

        LibreOffice 7.5 community edition is here with many feature upgrades and new app icons. The previous major release version 7.4 bought in better ‘interoperability’ with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats and further solidified LibreOffice as one of the best open-source alternatives to Microsoft Office on Linux.

        And now, a new release is here with a lot in store.

        Let’s take a look at what this has to offer.

      • OMG Ubuntu ☛ LibreOffice 7.5 Released with New Icons, PDF Export Options + More

        This update arrives on schedule, six months after the LibreOffice 7.4 release, which was notable release for doubling-down on the suite’s compatibility with Microsoft Office files. In LibreOffice 7.5 devs further that work, deliver a sizeable set of fixes, and furnish the app with powerful new features.

        LibreOffice 7.5 is the result of 144 contributors chipping in to do their bit.

    • Programming/Development

      • Qt ☛ Desktop and Mobile Application Development Trends in 2023

        With January done and dusted, we wanted to take a look at the year ahead and discuss some of the hottest trends of 2023 for desktop and mobile app development, as whether you’re a seasoned developer or just about to set up your new app, it’s always good to stay up-to-date with trends to ensure your apps are interesting, user-friendly, and keep up with the competition.

      • Red Hat ☛ How we added support for the C++23 assume feature in GCC

        For the past few years, I have been working on Project Ranger, a new infrastructure in GCC that determines value ranges of variables inC and C++programs. This article discusses how Ranger supports the newassumefeature of the C++23 standard, which helps programmers optimize programs.

  • Leftovers

    • The Nation ☛ A Translator in Tokyo, or: A Language Love Story

      The history of literary translation, as the critic Lawrence Venuti once memorably put it, is one of invisibility. In the struggle between foreignizing and domesticating a text—between reminding the reader of the original’s fundamental difference versus creating the illusion that it was written in the reader’s own language—domestication has reigned, especially in the English-speaking world. The best translations in the eyes of critics and publishers are innocuous and transparent, never betraying their status as derivative of some foreign original. And translators have long been themselves invisible, mentioned in passing by reviewers for their “elegant” or “faithful” or sometimes “wooden” or “archaic” rendering, and expected to sign over ownership of their work to the author and publisher of the original. Think of the Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Norwegian, or Japanese books you’ve read. Do you know who translated your editions of The Second Sex, My Struggle, or The Tale of Genji?

    • Hackaday ☛ Not A Pot, Not An Encoder: Exploring Synchros For Rotational Sensing

      We’re all familiar with getting feedback from a rotating shaft, for which we usually employ a potentiometer or encoder. But there’s another device that, while less well-known, has some advantages that just might make it worth figuring out how to include it in hobbyist projects: the synchro.

    • Hackaday ☛ Let’s Make SCPI More Helpful

      The SCPI (Standards Command for Programmable Instruments) protocol is exceptionally popular in lab and workspace tools, letting you configure and fetch data from oscilloscopes and lab scales alike in a standardized way. However, when interfacing with a SCPI device, you need to use a programming guide document if you want to know the commands for any of the inevitably extended features; essentially, SCPI isn’t as human-friendly as you might want. [MisterHW] argues that SCPI could use more discoverability by proposing a HELP? command.

    • Hackaday ☛ Want Better 0402 Reflow? Consider These Footprints!

      Assembling with a stencil is just that much more convenient – it’s a huge timesaver, and your components no longer need to be individually touched with a soldering iron for as many times as they have pads. Plus, it usually goes silky smooth, the process is a joy to witness, and the PCB looks fantastic afterwards! However, sometimes components won’t magically snap into place, and each mis-aligned resistor on a freshly assembled board means extra time spent reflowing the component manually, as well as potential for silent failures later on. In an effort to get the overall failure rate down, you will find yourself tweaking seemingly insignificant parameters, and [Worthington Assembly] proposes that you reconsider your 0402 and 0201 footprints.

    • Democracy Now ☛ “All That Breathes”: Oscar-Nominated Doc About Brothers Saving Birds Amid Delhi’s Ecological Collapse

      We speak with filmmaker Shaunak Sen about his Oscar-nominated documentary, “All That Breathes,” which follows two self-taught brothers who rescue black kite birds suffering from air pollution in New Delhi. The brothers, Nadeem and Saud, have saved about 25,000 black kites from the dirty air in India’s capital over the last 15 years. “When you live in the city of Delhi, you’re almost always preoccupied with the air,” says Sen, who explains why he centered the film on the brothers and purposely stayed away from obvious environmental and political messages. “The idea is to open the conversation and not close it,” he says. “All That Breathes” became the only film ever to win the best documentary prize at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals last year.

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ Rapunzel’s rapport says it all: we’re all panto-lovers at heart
    • CS Monitor ☛ Endurance test: How Sri Lanka’s batik artists keep the craft alive

      Keeping a traditional craft alive in modern times often requires creativity and perseverance. Sri Lanka’s loyal batik artisans have both.

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ 14 km of electrical cable stolen from CDMX Metro in 2022

      Metro Director Guillermo Calderón is blaming organized crime for the theft of 14.5 km of the cable from the subway’s tracks over last year.

    • uni Stanford ☛ Films My Father Loves: In spite of everything, ‘Life is Beautiful’

      Through a father-son film about fascist Italy, columnist Allan Lopez remarks on his own relationship with his father and life.

    • Science

    • Education

    • Hardware

      • Hackaday ☛ ChipWhisperer Adapter Helps Reverse-Engineer A Controversial Game Cartridge

        The ChipWhisperer has been a breakthrough in hobbyist use of power analysis and glitching attacks on embedded hardware. If you own one, you surely have seen the IDC and SMA sockets on it – usable for connecting custom breakouts housing a chip you’re currently probing. Today, [MAVProxyUser] brings us a ChipWhisperer adapter for STM32F446ZEJx, which comes in a UFBGA144 package – and the adapter has quite a backstory to it.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ AMD reveal prices and availability for Ryzen 7000X3D CPU series

        AMD has now revealed how much you can expect to be poorer by when picking up one of the new 7000X3D CPUs, along with release dates. The details were announced on Twitter and are:

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Security

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Meduza ☛ Moldova Foreign Ministry expresses alarm at Lavrov’s threatening insinuations about Moldova as new ‘anti-Russia’ — Meduza

        In an interview to Russia Today CEO Dmitry Kiselev, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the West “has got its sights” on Moldova as a country that might “follow Ukraine’s path” by turning into an “anti-Russia.”

      • Counter Punch ☛ An Evidence-Based Look at Mass Shooters in the US

        The US has become a shooting gallery (New York Times, January 24, 2023). Here is a list of mass shootings in the US since the 1920s. Mass shootings involve 3 or 4 deaths and often additional injuries among survivors. The list is quite telling, and the list makes the shootout at the OK Corral look like child’s play and there is absolutely no intent of any kind of humor involved here! The US frontier or West is one place where machismo and guns (“Gun Sellers’ Message to Americans: Man Up,” New York Times, June 22, 2022) were turned into national ideals. It is no longer adequate to list the endless mass gun shootings in the US and pass them off to an unbridled Second Amendment frenzy, fascists in the streets, or bald-face machismo. No other so-called “developed” nation comes close to the mass shooting deaths in the streets, buildings, and other places in the US. We are nonpareil in that respect.

        Besides the mass shooting at the University of Texas, the so-called tower shooting in 1966 in which 15 people were killed, mass shootings got limited attention, besides the initial shock, until the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado. In that scene of mass murder, bullying was one reason given for that school massacre. Charles Whitman, the University of Texas tower gunman, had a host of issues leading to that massacre, including domestic violence, a contributing factor in many mass shootings. Whitman was shot and killed by two police officers. Many mass shooters place themselves in situations where the police will kill them after their heinous acts of mass murder, or like Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary School, take their own lives. Suicide is a recurring theme in mass shootings. Like Adam Lanza, decades later in Newtown, Connecticut, Whitman would kill his mother, and also his wife, before his shooting spree at the university. Reportedly, he wanted to spare his mother and wife the fallout from the school shooting. Whitman’s history of domestic violence may have factored into the murder of his mother and wife before the massacre at the University of Texas. Schools and other places where the public gathers such as churches and synagogues, shopping malls, a music venue, and a movie theater seem to be the places of choice for lethal gunmen/shooters. The onslaught of mass murder by those with many motives has moved with the swiftness of the Niagara River over Niagara Falls.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Palestinians Are Not Liars: Confronting the Violence of Media Delegitimization

        On January 19, during one of its raids in the Occupied West Bank, the Israeli military arrested a Palestinian journalist, Abdul Muhsen Shalaldeh, near the town of Al-Khalil (Hebron). This is just the latest of a staggering number of violations against Palestinian journalists, and  against freedom of expression.

        A few days earlier, the head of the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate (PJS), Naser Abu Baker, shared some tragic numbers during a press conference in Ramallah. “Fifty-five reporters have been killed, either by Israeli fire or bombardment since 2000,” he said. Hundreds more were wounded, arrested or detained. Although shocking, much of this reality is censored in mainstream media.

      • Scheerpost ☛ Patrick Lawrence: The Pathology of Ukrainian Nationalism

        What kind of people are these? I asked as I considered, in my previous commentary, the bottomless corruption and cynical theft that have lately bubbled to the surface in Ukraine. What kind of polity is this? What kind of country is Ukraine? To advance this line of inquiry […]

      • Meduza ☛ Transneft spokesman reports Ukrainian ‘shelling attempt’ on Bryansk oil pipeline — Meduza

        Igor Demin, the spokesman for Transneft, a state-owned Russian oil pipeline operator, has told TASS about a Ukrainian “shelling attempt” on a pumping station in the Bryansk region.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Ukraine’s Tank Problem

        It seems to be a case of little provision for so much supposed effect. The debates, the squabbles, the to-and-fro about supplying Ukraine with tanks from Western arsenals has served to confirm one thing: this is an ever-broadening war between the West against Russia with Ukraine an experimental proxy convinced it will win through. Efforts to limit the deepening conflict continue to be seen as the quailing sentiments of appeasers, the wobbly types who find democracy a less than lovable thing.

        So far, promises have been made to ship the US M1A2 Abrams, Germany’s Leopard 2 and the UK’s Challenger. Others have alluded to doing the same thing – including France regarding its Leclerc tanks – but tardiness fills the ranks, and logistics will make the provision of such weapons a long affair. Re-export licenses will have to be issued, notably regarding the Leopard 2; training Ukrainian tank crews will also need to be undertaken.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Can the Military-Industrial Complex Be Tamed?

        My name is Bill Astore and I’m a card-carrying member of the military-industrial complex (MIC).

        Sure, I hung up my military uniform for the last time in 2005. Since 2007, I’ve been writing articles for TomDispatch focused largely on critiquing that same MIC and America’s permanent war economy. I’ve written against this country’s wasteful and unwise wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its costly and disastrous weapons systems, and its undemocratic embrace of warriors and militarism. Nevertheless, I remain a lieutenant colonel, if a retired one. I still have my military ID card, if only to get on bases, and I still tend to say “we” when I talk about my fellow soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen (and our “guardians,” too, now that we have a Space Force).

      • Pro Publica ☛ New Pentagon Rules Keep Many Military Court Records Secret

        In 2016, Congress passed a law that was supposed to make the military justice system more transparent, instructing the U.S. military’s six branches to give the public broader access to court records. Seven years later, the Department of Defense has finally issued guidelines for how the services should comply with the law, but they fall far short of the transparency lawmakers intended.

        Caroline Krass, general counsel for the Defense Department, told officials from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and Space Force in a memorandum last month that they could mostly continue doing what they have been for years: keep many court records secret from the public.

      • The Nation ☛ War Racketeers Won’t Reform Themselves

        My name is Bill Astore and I’m a card-carrying member of the military-industrial complex (MIC).

      • The Nation ☛ Barrett Strong Wrote America’s Most Urgent Anti-War Song

        When Bruce Springsteen updated his set list at the end of his extended 1985 tour, he added what he would later refer to as “one of the greatest anti-war songs ever written.” At a moment when millions of Americans were afraid that the Reagan administration’s deadly interventions in Central America could eventually see US troops sent to the region, Springsteen would pause toward the close of his marathon concerts and declare, as he did at the Los Angeles Coliseum on September 30 of that year:1

      • CNN ☛ Russian missile strike sends terrified civilians scrambling to find shelter
      • Modern Diplomacy ☛ NATO press South Korea to provide arms to Ukraine

        NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged South Korea to provide military support to Ukraine, saying the country is in urgent need of ammunition, stresses “The Wall Street Journal”. Mr. Stoltenberg met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

      • LRT ☛ Lithuania initiates Baltic appeal to bar Russian athletes from Paris Olympics

        Lithuania’s minister for sports is initiating an appeal, to be joined by the other Baltic countries, asking the International Olympic Committee to not allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to take part in the 2024 Olympic Games.

      • New York Times ☛ I Will Fight the Forgetting of Homs, Syria

        Homs was the capital of the Syrian revolution. Now it is a footnote, but not to me.

      • RFA ☛ Philippines grants US access to more military sites amid tensions over Taiwan

        The 2 sides announced the move at a meeting between their defense chiefs.

      • Spiegel ☛ Accusations of Colonialist Thinking: Ukrainians Angered By Messages from Russian Opposition Leader Navalny

        Alexei Navalny has been opposing the war and the Kremlin from prison. But many Ukrainians distrust him. They accuse the Russian opposition leader and other dissident figures of exploiting their suffering for their own gain.

      • Site36 ☛ ATM bombers in Germany: Successes against „Audi gang“
      • Meduza ☛ Ukrainian Finance Ministry says Kyiv will need $3 billion per month in foreign assistance throughout 2023 — Meduza

        Ukrainian Deputy Finance Minister Olga Zykova said Thursday that the country will need approximately $3 billion of international financing per month throughout 2023, the ministry’s press service reported.

      • Meduza ☛ ‘Modern weaponry should protect ordinary Russians’ What speechwriters are planning for Vladimir Putin’s overdue Federal Assembly address — Meduza

        The Russian president is required by law to address parliament at least once a year, but Vladimir Putin has shirked that rule twice: first in 2017 and again in 2022. What was supposed to be the 2017 address was eventually delivered in March 2018, but the president’s 2022 speech still hasn’t happened. Last month, journalist Farida Rustamova reported that the president’s speechwriters were still working on the address, and shortly after, two Russian state news outlets reported that it will likely take place in late February. Now, Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev has learned from sources close to the Putin administration what the president is likely to say when he finally addresses lawmakers.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Atlanta’s “Cop City” Moves Ahead After Police Kill 1 Protester & Charge 19 with Domestic Terrorism

        Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens announced Tuesday that a proposed $90 million police training facility known as “Cop City” is moving forward, despite growing opposition and the police killing of a forest defender. Just weeks ago, law enforcement officers — including a SWAT team — were violently evicting protesters who had occupied a wooded area outside the center, when they shot and killed a longtime activist and charged 19 with domestic terrorism. The activists have been camping out in Weelaunee Forest for months to prevent its destruction. Mayor Dickens vowed to address their concerns, but protesters have vowed that Cop City will not be built. We speak with investigative reporter Alleen Brown, who says the “flimsy” domestic terrorism charges appear to be part of a strategy to undermine the protest movement rather than respond to an actual threat to public safety. “These charges may not be meant to stick. Perhaps instead it’s meant to send a message,” she says.

      • The Nation ☛ What the Charges Against the Cops Who Killed Tyre Nichols Really Mean

        The five officers who beat Tyre Nichols to death have been charged by the state of Tennessee with murder in the second degree. Perhaps because of the race of the officers, we have been spared the usual mewling from the copaganda brigades arguing that the officers did nothing wrong and shouldn’t be charged with any crime. But there has been some debate about whether the cops have been charged with the right crime. That discussion has been complicated by the fact that the legal definitions of various criminal homicides—manslaughter, murder, and the various degrees of each—don’t always match up with our colloquial understanding of these terms. “Murder in the first degree” sounds more murder-y than “murder in the second degree,” while “voluntary manslaughter” sounds like a fancy lawyer trick to help murderers escape accountability.

      • Democracy Now ☛ “No More”: At Tyre Nichols Funeral, VP Harris, Rev. Sharpton Join Family, Demand Police Accountability

        We air excerpts from the funeral of Tyre Nichols, whose death on January 10 after a brutal police beating sparked protests across the country. “On the night of January 7, my brother was robbed of his life, his passions and his talents — but not his light,” said Nichols’s sister Keyana Dixon. We also feature remarks from Reverend Al Sharpton and Vice President Kamala Harris. “This violent act was not in pursuit of public safety,” said Harris. “It was not in the interest of keeping the public safe, because, one must ask: Was not it in the interest of keeping the public safe that Tyre Nichols would be with us today?”

      • The Nation ☛ Tyre Nichols
      • The Nation ☛ The Cops!
      • TruthOut ☛ As Mourners Gather for Tyre Nichols’s Funeral, Calls Grow for Abolition
      • Democracy Now ☛ Howard Prof. Justin Hansford & Abolitionist Andrea Ritchie on Tyre Nichols & Calls for No More Police

        Mourners gathered in Memphis, Tennessee, Wednesday for the funeral of Tyre Nichols, who died on January 10, three days after being severely beaten by five police officers following a traffic stop near his home. The funeral will be held at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. Expected attendees include Vice President Kamala Harris and relatives of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, two other Black Americans who were killed by police violence. We discuss national responses to police violence and calls to abolish the police with two guests. Justin Hansford is a professor at Howard University School of Law and the founder and executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. Hansford is also the first American nominated and elected to the United Nations Permanent Forum for People of African Descent. Andrea Ritchie is a lawyer and organizer who has worked on policing and criminalization issues for over 30 years. Ritchie is the author of several books, including, most recently, “No More Police: A Case for Abolition,” co-authored with Mariame Kaba.

      • The Gray Zone ☛ Suspicions of state security set-up in Germany’s far-right ‘coup’
      • Meduza ☛ At least three killed by Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk apartment building — Meduza

        At least three people died and at least 18 were injured as a result of a Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Wednesday evening, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. Eight people were reportedly hospitalized.

      • TruthOut ☛ FL GOP Bills Would End Requirement for Unanimous Juries on Death Penalty
      • Meduza ☛ ‘Talented and reliable’: Ramzan Kadyrov’s 26-year-old nephew appointed Chechnya vice premier — Meduza

        Khamzat Kadyrov, Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov’s 26-year-old nephew, has been appointed deputy prime minister for private property and real estate in Chechnya.

      • Meduza ☛ Kyiv calls on Georgia to ‘stop tormenting’ imprisoned ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili and return him to Ukraine — Meduza

        Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has called on the Republic of Georgia to return the imprisoned politician Mikheil Saakashvili to Ukraine.

    • Environment

      • Energy/Transportation

        • The Age AU ☛ Radioactive capsule site in WA cleared of contamination

          Authorities say no contamination has been detected at the site where a tiny radioactive capsule was discovered in outback WA.

        • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Croatia to pay $235 million in damages to Hungarian oil giant MOL
        • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Shell Is Richer Because We’re Poorer’: UK Oil Giant Sees Record $40 Billion Profit

          The London-based oil giant Shell reported Thursday that its profits more than doubled in 2022 to a record $40 billion as households across Europe struggled to heat their homes, a crisis that campaigners blamed on the fossil fuel industry’s price gouging.

        • DeSmog ☛ UK Minister Steve Baker Receives £10k from Chair of Tufton St. Climate Denial Group

          A minister in Rishi Sunak’s government who has been a fierce opponent of climate action received £10,000 from the chair of the UK’s main climate science denial group last month.

          Wycombe MP Steve Baker stepped down as a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in September, when then Prime Minister Liz Truss made him Minister of State for Northern Ireland – a post he still holds under Rishi Sunak, Truss’s replacement.

        • Hackaday ☛ China’s New 100 MPH Train Runs On Hydrogen And Supercaps

          Electric cars are very much en vogue right now, as the world tries to clean up on emissions and transition to a more sustainable future. However, these vehicles require huge batteries as it is. For heavier-duty applications like trucks and trains, batteries simply won’t cut the mustard.

        • Axios ☛ U.S. Permian Basin oil production — and profits — have surged

          Production in the oil-and-gas-rich Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico hit records recently, juicing oil company profits and easing energy supply worries.

        • MIT Technology Review ☛ Busting three myths about materials and renewable energy

          This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. No piece of media shaped me more than the mid-2000s TV show MythBusters.  In the show, a band of special-effects pros tested out myths from TV shows or popular knowledge, like: Can a…

        • Ruben Schade ☛ The overjustification effect

          Richard Bartle recently talked on a “Crypto Circle” panel in the UK, which to my disappointment wasn’t about cryptography.Nobody heeded his warnings, which sounds about right for those drunk on blockchain KoolAid, or turpentine, or whatever they drink.

          His comment about play-to-earn games introduced a new phenomena to me:

          [T]he psychological phenomenon known as the overjustification effect means that if people are doing something for an intrinsic reward and you start giving them extrinsic rewards for it, they lose their intrinsic motivation. Imagine if you were reading a book and were paid for every page you read: after a while, you’d be reading pages because you wanted paying, not because of the content.

        • Hackaday ☛ Copy And Paste Lithium Battery Protection

          Lithium batteries have, nearly single-handedly, ushered in the era of the electric car, as well as battery energy storage of grid power and plenty of other technological advances not possible with older battery chemistries. There’s just one major downside: these lithium cells can be extremely finicky. If you’re adding one to your own project you’ll have to be extremely careful to treat them exactly how they are designed to be treated using something like this boilerplate battery protection circuit created by [DIY GUY Chris].

      • Wildlife/Nature

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Common Dreams ☛ Activists Slam ‘Compromise’ Proposal for Georgia’s Cop City

        As Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond announced Tuesday that construction of the $90 million, 85-acre police and fire training center known as “Cop City” will proceed under what Dickens called a “compromise,” critics of the project had a resounding message: “Defend the Atlanta Forest. Stop Cop City.”

      • FAIR ☛ Independent Media Need You to Get the Word Out on Social Media

        “Liking” a post on social media might not seem like a high-impact action. But nonprofit media groups actually depend a great deal on their readers’ online engagement.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Progressives Condemn GOP Effort to Oust Omar From House Panel as McCarthy Plans ‘Shameful’ Vote

        Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and her progressive allies are denouncing the Republican effort to oust her from a key House panel as early as Thursday.

      • Scheerpost ☛ Watch: Twitter Files & the Death of Russiagate

        Matt Taibbi joins CN Live! to discuss the implications of his Twitter Files revelations, including his latest on Hamilton 68 and its fatal blow to the Russiagate narrative. With Chris Hedges and John Kiriakou. Watch the replay.

      • Scheerpost ☛ ‘Freedom’

        Can Oppressed People Ever Truly Be­ Free In America?

      • Counter Punch ☛ CELAC Summit Offers Proposals, Amid Divisions and Dissent

        The 7th Summit Meeting of the Community of Latin and America States (CELAC) took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina on January 23. In their Declaration, representatives of 33 member nations, including 14 presidents, paid homage to integration, unity, and “political economic, social, and cultural diversity among member states.” They agreed “by consensus” to an all-embracing set of proposals and statements, 100 in all, and to 11 “special statements” on the situations of particular countries.

        As is usual, host-country president Alberto Fernández made arrangements and set the agenda. The one-day meeting included closed- door discussions and brief presentations by representatives of the various country.

      • Meduza ☛ ‘Let’s not cling to dogma’: Federation Council speaker suggests freeze on state budget regulation — Meduza

        Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko encouraged the senators to consider a freeze on enforcing Russia’s state budget and purchasing regulations until the end of the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

      • Meduza ☛ Petersburg police confiscate anti-war posters the day after exhibit opens — Meduza

        On January 31 in St. Petersburg, an exhibit of Yelena Osipova’s work opened in the offices of a branch of the Yabloko political party. The exhibit displayed the 77-year-old artist and activists’s anti-war posters.

      • Meduza ☛ Science research and development suffer as 10K Russian companies face international sanctions — Meduza

        The number of Russian companies that came under international sanctions has doubled in 2022, reports Kommersant, citing data from Kontur.Prizma, a Russian analytics company.

      • Press Gazette ☛ News avoidance? We’re not seeing it, say Sky News bosses after bumper 2022

        Sky News averaged 9.9 million cross-platform users per day in 2022, up 13% year-on-year.

      • Press Gazette ☛ How Google has downgraded importance of news websites in search results

        Data from SEO experts Sistrix reveals big losses for news domains in organic search in 2022.

      • Matthew Garrett ☛ Matthew Garrett: Blocking free API access to Twitter doesn’t stop abuse

        Twitter will block free API access. This prevents anyone who has written interesting bot accounts, integrations, or tooling from accessing Twitter without paying for it. A whole number of fascinating accounts will cease functioning, people will no longer be able to use tools that interact with Twitter, and anyone using a free service to do things like find Twitter mutuals who have moved to Mastodon or to cross-post between Twitter and other services will be blocked.There’s a cynical interpretation to this, which is that despite firing 75% of the workforce Twitter is still not profitable and Elon is desperate to not have Twitter go bust and also not to have to tank even more of his Tesla stock to achieve that. But let’s go with the less cynical interpretation, which is that API access to Twitter is something that enables bot accounts that make things worse for everyone. Except, well, why would a hostile bot account do that?

      • New York Times ☛ Senator Calls on Apple and Google to Ban TikTok in App Stores

        Michael F. Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, cited national security, adding to bipartisan pressure on the Chinese-owned video app.

      • Federal News Network ☛ Spain and Morocco renew ties with migration, business deals

        The governments of Spain and Morocco have signed deals on managing migration and boosting Spanish investment in Morocco. They were among 20 agreements reached at wide-ranging meetings aimed at turning the page on diplomatic tensions linked to the disputed Western Sahara. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez applauded what he described as a trust-building step Thursday.

      • The Nation ☛ Trump’s New Platform Goes Attack Mode on Schools

        Welcome to the 2024 GOP primaries. In a video recently released by Donald Trump outlining his education policy plan for his presidential campaign, he appears bathed in darkness and flanked on either side by sagging American flags. “Our public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs,” he brays. “Here is my plan to save American education, restore power to American parents.” He pledges that when he returns to the presidency he’ll cut funding for any educational institution “pushing critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate gender, racial, or political content onto our children.” He goes on to promise Justice and Education department prosecutions of “any school district that has engaged in race-based discrimination,” especially against Asian Americans, in a frontal attack on the already endangered practice of affirmative action. He declares his intentions “to find and remove the radical zealots and Marxists who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education.” His vows include assurances to “keep men out of women’s sports,” “certify teachers who embrace patriotic values,” dismantle “the costly divisive and unnecessary diversity equity and inclusion bureaucracy,” and establish “a parental bill of rights.”

      • Common Dreams ☛ Disorder In the House: Frauds, Dimwits and Grenades ‘R Us

        House GOPers just turned their first Oversight hearing into bad performance art by raving about Biden’s (really Trump’s) COVID crimes to kick off their reign of grievance, paranoia and crackpot misinformation: Antifa = fascists, insurgents = ethicists, COVID masks = Taliban, Hunter Biden. They’ll get a good boost from veteran, defense contractor, teargas peddler and new Florida Rep. Cory Mills – “Soldier. Conservative. Outsider.” Fascist – who gave them a dummy grenade to urge, “Let’s come together and get to work.”

      • Counter Punch ☛ Biden Wielding DNC to Guard Against Progressive Challenge

        When the Democratic National Committee convenes its winter meeting on Thursday in Philadelphia, a key agenda item will be rubber-stamping Joe Biden’s manipulation of next year’s presidential primaries. There’ll be speeches galore, including one by Biden as a prelude to his expected announcement that he’ll seek a second term. The gathering will exude confidence, at least in public. But if Biden were truly confident that Democratic voters want him to be the 2024 nominee, he wouldn’t have intervened in the DNC’s scheduling of early primaries.

        New polling underscores why Biden is so eager to bump New Hampshire from the first-in-the-nation spot that it has held for more than 100 years. In the state, “two-thirds of likely Democratic primary voters don’t want President Joe Biden to seek re-election,” the UNH Survey Center found. “Biden is statistically tied with several 2020 rivals, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, all of whom are more personally popular than Biden among likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire.”

      • TruthOut ☛ Kevin McCarthy Appoints 3 Election Deniers to the House Ethics Committee
      • Common Dreams ☛ The US House Is Not Controlled by a Bunch of GOP Crazies

        An old political saying notes that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. However, given the proliferation of today’s goofball culture wars and fanatical right-wing phobias, that truism should be updated to say: Evil swarms when power-hungry leaders unleash the crazies.

      • The Nation ☛ Our Democracy Is More Fragile Than We Would Like to Think

        Americans tuning into the television news on January 8 eyed a disturbingly recognizable scene. In an “eerily familiar” moment of “déjà vu,” just two years and two days after the January 6 Capitol insurrection in Washington, D.C., a mob of thousands stormed government buildings in the capital city of another country—Brazil. In Brasilia, what New York Times columnist Ross Douthat ominously labeled “the first major international imitation of our Capitol riot” seemed to be taking place.

      • Common Dreams ☛ The Debate Democratic Party Should Have Had About the Iraq War 20 Years Ago

        Twenty years ago this month, the U.S. was rushing headlong into war with Iraq—a war that has proven to be one of the most fatal and consequential travesties in modern American history. What follows is the story of how one congressman and I tried and failed to get the Democratic Party on record opposing that war.

      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Szijjártó: What the US ambassador thinks is completely irrelevant
      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Hungarian state responsible for Syrian refugee’s death – ECHR rules
      • Meduza ☛ Be careful what you wish for Ukraine’s State Security Service raids multiple officials’ homes and discovers evidence of corruption, including hand-written dreams of mink coats and more — Meduza

        On January 31, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned about upcoming “staffing changes” in the Ukrainian government. The following day, Ukraine’s State Security Service and other law-enforcement agencies conducted a series of searches targeting prominent officials and businesspeople suspected of corruption. Among their discoveries were “manifesting” wish lists — and loads of embezzled money.

      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

        • Techdirt ☛ Federal Court Says Election Disinformation Isn’t Protected Speech

          This is some bad looking precedent here. Everyone is right to be concerned about election disinformation, especially if that disinformation is intended to keep certain people from voting, but historically, it has been public officials facing criminal charges for voter suppression, rather than toxic Twitter trolls.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Meduza ☛ Sochi woman charged with ’Nazi or extremist symbolism’ for posting ‘Glory to Ukraine’ in Korean on WhatsApp — Meduza

        A 38-year-old woman in Sochi has been charged with displaying “Nazi symbolism or symbols of extremist organizations,” a misdemeanor under Russian law, for posting a Korean-language status update on WhatsApp, according to multiple Russian Telegram channels. The status reportedly translated to “Glory to Ukraine.”

      • Techdirt ☛ Financial Times Sets Up Mastodon Server, Realizes Laws Exist (Which It Was Already Subject To), Pulls Down Mastodon Server

        Here’s a weird one. With the rapid pickup of Mastodon and other ActivityPub-powered federated social media, there has been some movement among those in the media to make better use of the platform themselves. For example, most recently, the German news giant Heise announced it was setting up its own Mastodon server, where it will serve up its own content, and also offer accounts to any of the company’s employees, should they choose to use them. Medium, the publication tool, has similarly set up its own Mastodon server as well. At some point, Techdirt is going to do that as well, though we’ve been waiting while a bunch of new developments and platforms are being built before committing to a specific plan.

      • Techdirt ☛ CFL Decides To Shut Down Cool YouTube Channel Promoting Its Product For Free

        For sports fans in general, one of the great benefits of social media sites, particularly Twitter, has been the way highlights are shared across those platforms, both by individuals and, more commonly, by the leagues and teams themselves. Both Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) have been particularly good at this, filling up timelines with amazing highlights nearly as they happen. It’s been great for promoting both products, with MLB’s Advanced Media division really driving more people to the sport with this sort of content.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Counter Punch ☛ What’s Driving ‘Irregular’ Cuban Emigration to the United States?

        In 2022, an unprecedented number of Cubans arrived in the United States through irregular, or ‘illegal’ channels. Historically the United States has encouraged and weaponised Cuban emigration. Cuban migrants fuel US propaganda about the failure of socialism and about political persecution and the lack of freedom and human rights on the island. However, it is an issue which can spiral out of control, forcing US administrations into dialogue with the Cuban government in the past. The current surge is creating political problems for President Biden as his opponents exploit the issue for electoral gain. As a result, in January 2023 the administration introduced legislation that it hopes will halt the wave of ‘illegal’ Cuban entrants and that threatens to undermine the blanket privileges granted to Cubans in the United States. However, until the United States alleviates the punishing blockade that is suffocating the Cuban people, economic hardship will continue to drive Cuban emigration. The United States’ policy towards Cuban migrants is characterised by paradox and contradictions.

        In 2022, over 313,000 Cubans arrived in the United States, most of them without visas and entering from Mexico. This is more than double the previous peak of Cuban migration during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. They were admitted after claiming asylum. However, these are economic migrants. Once settled, like many of the Cubans who preceded them, most will return to the island when possible to visit their families without the slightest fear of retribution from Cuban authorities.

      • Common Dreams ☛ UN Human Rights Expert to Conduct First-Ever Visit to Guantánamo Bay Prison

        For the first time ever, a United Nations human rights and counterterrorism expert will visit the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a U.N. office announced Wednesday.

      • The Nation ☛ Will New Leadership Make the UAW Labor’s Vanguard Once Again?

        The last time the United Automobile Workers had a truly contested election for union president, the radical sociologist C. Wright Mills was there to celebrate a new force in American life. Progressive ideas and the union-made intellectuals who advanced them, he observed, were coming “in live contact with power.” That was in 1947, when Walter Reuther and his caucus won control of every top office in a million-member union that Reuther, a former socialist, proclaimed “the vanguard in America.”

      • Site36 ☛ Catalan spycop with sexual relations, case reminds on Mark Kennedy
      • The Nation ☛ For Mixed-Status Students, Immigration Reform Is the Only Hope

        Since Daymieri Ariciel Narvaez was a child, she wanted was to help her parents live without fear. As the daughter of undocumented immigrants, she dreamed of enrolling in the military so that they could obtain a green card and no longer be at risk of deportation. “I was always afraid that I wouldn’t find my parents when I got home.”1

      • Democracy Now ☛ Standoff at NYC Hotel: Asylum Seekers Protest Relocation & Demand Their Right to Shelter in City

        Since last spring, nearly 42,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City, many sent to the state on buses against their will. The city says it has opened 77 emergency shelters and four Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, but asylum seekers say the city has dragged its feet on providing job permits and permanent and humane housing. Many are now peacefully protesting outside a hotel not far from Times Square, where they were living for weeks until city officials suddenly evicted them over the weekend to move them to a remote warehouse facility in Brooklyn that contains 1,000 cots and lacks heating. Mutual aid organizers have rallied with the asylum seekers and vowed to fight the evictions. For more, we’re joined by Josh Goldfein, a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project, and Desiree Joy Frías, a community organizer with South Bronx Mutual Aid.

      • The Nation ☛ Leigh Goodmark on “Imperfect Victims” and the Need for Abolition Feminism

        Leigh Goodmark is a lawyer and advocate for incarcerated survivors of gender-based violence. She began her legal career by representing domestic violence victims and arguing for swift and harsh intervention. But she says her clients—and the system itself—showed her how ineffective these criminal interventions are. Now, she argues the opposite—that the criminal legal system fails to decrease or deter gender-based violence and punishes the victims of that violence. She is the director of the Gender Violence Clinic at the University of Maryland’s Carey Law School and is frequently called upon by the media to contextualize criminal cases in which survivors of violence are prosecuted for acts of survival, such as Tracy McCarter, whose charges were eventually dropped.

      • Meduza ☛ Russia suspends applications for biometric passports — Meduza

        Russia’s official government services portal, Gosuslugi, announced Thursday that the government has temporarily stopped accepting applications for biometric foreign passports.

      • The Nation ☛ Deference to Religion Has No Place in Higher Education

        I had never heard of Hamline, a small private liberal arts university in St. Paul, Minn., until it burst into the headlines after a fracas over a picture of the Prophet Muhammad. In brief, Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor of art history, showed a celebrated 14th-century Persian miniature in her online class, having prepared her students ahead of time. Prater warned them in the syllabus that pictures of holy personages, including Muhammad, would be shown. (No one complained, she says.) She introduced the class by talking about the history of such images, which some but not all Muslims regard as blasphemous, and inviting anyone who didn’t want to see it to turn off their video. No one did, but after class, Aram Wedatalla, a business major and head of the Muslim Student Association, complained to the administration.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Unified Patents ☛ Dynamic IP Deals entity AuthWallet financial transactions patent held invalid

          On January 31, 2023, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Authwallet, LLC holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 9,292,852 unpatentable. Owned by AuthWallet, LLC, an NPE and subsidiary of Dynamic IP Deals, the ’852 generally relates to transaction processing services. It has been asserted against CitiGroup, Square, American Express, Starbucks, and Nordstrom.

        • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ EPO consultation on EPC and PCT-EPO Guidelines [Ed: As expected, this blog relays EPO propaganda for criminals who hijacked the EPO and try to maintain the illusion that they follow the rules]

      • Copyrights

        • Techdirt ☛ DoNotPay Promotes Itself As Helping You Get Out Of Subscriptions, But Keeps Charging Customers After Telling Them Their Own Accounts Are Closed

          We’ve been writing a bunch lately about DoNotPay, the massively hyped up “AI lawyer” run by Stanford dropout* Joshua Browder. Again, the company has received a ton of publicity regarding its “robot lawyer,” often from some of the publicity stunts that Browder pulls. Again, I think the underlying concept of using technology to help people solve problems is a good one. And that can include helping them to get better access to useful information that was, historically, kept behind expensive legal gates.

        • Creative Commons ☛ CC’s #BetterSharing Collection | February: Sharing Brightens The Future

          Each month throughout 2023, we will be spotlighting a different CC-licensed illustration from the collection on our social media headers and the CC blog. For February, we’re excited to showcase “Sharing Brightens The Future” by Bulgarian illustrator and graphic designer, Teo Georgiev. The piece, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, was inspired by a quote from Biyanto Rebin, an open knowledge advocate and Indonesian Wikipedian:

        • Creative Commons ☛ Volunteer to Help Shape CC’s Global Summit in Mexico City

          You’ve heard the exciting news that the 2023 CC Global Summit will be in Mexico City? Now you have the opportunity to volunteer to join the committees  that will help shape the program and evaluate applications for participant scholarships.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Top Russian Official Thanks Pirates For Enabling Access to ‘Enemy’ Content

          Former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev used Telegram yesterday to thank pirates who developed programs to enable access to “expensive intellectual products” owned by Russia’s enemies. In future, everything from movies to industrial software will be pirated, Medvedev said.. All that remains is the adoption of the rules.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ U.S. Identifies Top Pirate Sites and Other ‘Notorious Markets’

          The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has published its annual list of the largest piracy websites and other “notorious markets.” This year’s overview includes usual suspects The Pirate Bay, FMovies, and Rapidgator, but several IPTV services and even hosting companies are mentioned as well. The USTR hopes that by highlighting the threats, platform operators or foreign authorities will take action.

        • Techdirt ☛ That’s A Wrap On The Public Domain Game Jam! Check Out All The Great Entries

          At the beginning of the year, we kicked off the latest edition of our annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927! Last night, the jam came to a close, with a few submissions sneaking in right before the deadline and bringing us to a total of 20 entries this year. We’ve only just begun digging into the many games that were submitted, but we can already tell it’s a great lineup. There are entries from plenty of new designers as well as returning winners who created incredible games in past years, and games drawing on all kinds of newly public domain works ranging from big names like the film Metropolis to truly obscure deep cuts, like a 1927 article on homing pigeons from an ornithology magazine. You can (and should!) check out all the submissions over on Itch.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • kessoku band

        Yeah I watched another anime and now I’m here tk rate the album of the anime band.
        I would be talking about bocchi the anime except I feel like I still haven’t know the anime well enough to talk about it in the way I wanted to.

      • Get Busy Writing Your Thesis or Get Busy Dying

        I’ve been chugging away at my thesis, sort of, in the sense that I feel like I’ve been treading water the entire time and have done absolutely nothing. In spite of this, my advisor thinks we’re making great progress! We’re almost done, he says. I struggle to believe this, but he’s driving this bus, so I guess he’s right?

        My brain has difficulty with viewing tasks in terms of smaller chunks, I think, and as a result it seems to think about things in binary. I have not completely finished this task, so it is not done. Progress is an illusion. Oddly enough, this sort of thing doesn’t lead to increased procrastination on my part (I do procrastinate sometimes, but not for this reason). I actually wonder if my workflow contributes to my inability to recognize when I’ve accomplished something.

      • Wise debit card and corporate green washing

        I am not totally against this product. Physical cards are still needed by many consumers and perhaps some of these changes help but seriously Wise just make this your one physical card offering, and give up on your non-”green” (but actually green in colour) card.

        As a side note, I do sort of like the no PAN printed on the card idea. Not for the green aspect but from an improved security perspective. Why are we still printing credit card numbers on all our cards? If you need the numbers you can get them from your bank’s website or app, store them in your browser and/or your password manager, or even write them down on a note you keep in a safe place at home. Or if you use Google or Apple Pay, your mobile device has the number as well.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: UCINOSB Wordo: STOUP
      • Running the first session

        This is yet another page for Knives. I really want to structure the game into a handful of pages for players, ideally less than ten, plus a lot of how to run a game for referees. I guess I was motivated by my writing in German about how to run Dungeons (2022-12-26 Das Megadungeon Pamphlet). That’s why I posted a bunch of “advice” pages.

      • fantasynamegenerators

        I am a huge fan of fantasynamegenerators.com. I use it for so many different things. It’s obviously helpful with worldbuilding and fantasy/sci-fi writing, but I also use it for fake business names to practice logo design with, or for coming up with interesting sci-fi items to 3d model.

        Anyways, that’s not the point of the post. The point is that I was just looking through their list of generators and was so pleased to see that they have a “clown names” generator and a “clown names (evil)” generator. I just think that’s great.

    • Politics

      • When the EU wanted to own all computers

        Just found out that the EU commission proposal I wrote about last May is still underway.

        Their desire to monitor 100% of all communication is understandable, it’s for a good cause, but the only way to do that technically is if the are the admin user on every single computer (because otherwise people can still chat over Omemo, PGP, Matrix, or SSH+talk).

        So no more passwords, SSL certs, bank login, no more free operating systems, no more Jitsi or SSH or HTTPS. This law literally breaks all computing and the entire Internet. Which, if that’s what they really intend to do, they should just say so explicitly. The EU anti–all-computers-ever law. I can kind of see the appeal but I doubt business & politicians would, if they really understood that that was the ramifications.

    • Technical

      • hey look i’m famous

        Hey look, somebody much smarter than I am wrote a detailed blog post about a random toot I wrote in thirty seconds with no though…

      • When they didn’t just leave it in the ground out of the goodness of their own hearts

        Today I encountered a new argument: that since people living in that paradigm are seeing the everyday result of direct self-rule they learn to take responsibility for the outcomes of one’s decisions, and because of this inherent tendency, we don’t need a plan beyond liberation.

        [...]

        It’s not enough, though. I’m worried that there might still be malicious actors, and that the potential for resource gain is a strong motivator for exploiting externalities (such as drilling & burning fossils), that these two issues are stronger than the inherent tendency towards responsibility can handle.

        It’s been my own lived experience with ancom and alternative structures time and time again that someone outside wrecks it or finds a way to exploit it. Facebook and Apple cannibalizing free software into path dependency services is a well-known example.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • activity pub

          I’m wanting to run my own activity pub server.
          but I really don’t want to run mastodon, or pleroma, or whatever.
          so I’m writing my own bullshit.

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DecorWhat Else is New

  1. Links 31/03/2023: Ruby 3.2.2 and Linux Lite 6.4

    Links for the day

  2. Links 31/03/2023: Devices and Games, Mostly Leftovers

    Links for the day

  3. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 30, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, March 30, 2023

  4. Links 31/03/2023: Ubuntu 23.04 Beta, Donald Trump Indicted, and Finland’s NATO Bid Progresses

    Links for the day

  5. Translating the Lies of António Campinos (EPO)

    António Campinos has read a lousy script full of holes and some of the more notorious EPO talking points; we respond below

  6. [Meme] Too Many Fake European Patents? So Start Fake European Courts for Patents.

    António Campinos, who sent EPO money to Belarus, insists that the EPO is doing well; nothing could be further from the truth and EPO corruption is actively threatening the EU (or its legitimacy)

  7. Thomas Magenheim-Hörmann in RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland About Declining Quality and Declining Validity of European Patents (for EPO and Illegal Kangaroo Courts)

    Companies are not celebrating the “production line” culture fostered by EPO management, which is neither qualified for the job nor wants to adhere to the law (it's intentionally inflating a bubble)

  8. Links 30/03/2023: HowTos and Political News

    Links for the day

  9. Links 30/03/2023: LibreOffice 7.5.2 and Linux 6.2.9

    Links for the day

  10. Links 30/03/2023: WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” and OpenMandriva ROME 23.03

    Links for the day

  11. Sirius is Britain’s Most Respected and Best Established Open Source Business, According to Sirius Itself, So Why Defraud the Staff?

    Following today's part about the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ another video seemed to be well overdue (those installments used to be daily); the video above explains to relevance to Techrights and how workers feel about being cheated by a company that presents itself as “Open Source” even to some of the highest and most prestigious public institutions in the UK

  12. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 29, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, March 29, 2023

  13. [Meme] Waiting for Standard Life to Deal With Pension Fraud

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were concealed with the authoritative name of Standard Life, combined with official papers from Standard Life itself; why does Standard Life drag its heels when questioned about this matter since the start of this year?

  14. Former Staff of Sirius Open Source Responds to Revelations About the Company's Crimes

    Crimes committed by the company that I left months ago are coming to light; today we share some reactions from other former staff (without naming anybody)

  15. Among Users in the World's Largest Population, Microsoft is the 1%

    A sobering look at India shows that Microsoft lost control of the country (Windows slipped to 16% market share while GNU/Linux grew a lot; Bing is minuscule; Edge fell to 1.01% and now approaches “decimal point” territories)

  16. In One City Alone Microsoft Fired Almost 3,000 Workers This Year (We're Still in March)

    You can tell a company isn’t doing well when amid mass layoffs it pays endless money to the media — not to actual workers — in order for this media to go crazy over buzzwords, chaffbots, and other vapourware (as if the company is a market leader and has a future for shareholders to look forward to, even if claims are exaggerated and there’s no business model)

  17. Links 29/03/2023: InfluxDB FDW 2.0.0 and Erosion of Human Rights

    Links for the day

  18. Links 29/03/2023: Parted 3.5.28 and Blender 3.5

    Links for the day

  19. Links 29/03/2023: New Finnix and EasyOS Kirkstone 5.2

    Links for the day

  20. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 28, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, March 28, 2023

  21. [Meme] Fraud Seems Standard to Standard Life

    Sirius ‘Open Source’ has embezzled and defrauded staff; now it is being protected (delaying and stonewalling tactics) by those who helped facilitate the robbery

  22. 3 Months to Progress Pension Fraud Investigations in the United Kingdom

    Based on our experiences and findings, one simply cannot rely on pension providers to take fraud seriously (we’ve been working as a group on this); all they want is the money and risk does not seem to bother them, even when there’s an actual crime associated with pension-related activities

  23. 36,000 Soon

    Techrights is still growing; in WordPress alone (not the entire site) we’re fast approaching 36,000 posts; in Gemini it’s almost 45,500 pages and our IRC community turns 15 soon

  24. Contrary to What Bribed (by Microsoft) Media Keeps Saying, Bing is in a Freefall and Bing Staff is Being Laid Off (No, Chatbots Are Not Search and Do Not Substitute Web Pages!)

    Chatbots/chaffbot media noise (chaff) needs to be disregarded; Microsoft has no solid search strategy, just lots and lots of layoffs that never end this year (Microsoft distracts shareholders with chaffbot hype/vapourware each time a wave of layoffs starts, giving financial incentives for publishers to not even mention these; right now it’s GitHub again, with NDAs signed to hide that it is happening)

  25. Full RMS Talk ('A Tour of Malicious Software') Uploaded 10 Hours Ago

    The talk is entitled "A tour of malicious software, with a typical cell phone as example." Richard Stallman is speaking about the free software movement and your freedom. His speech is nontechnical. The talk was given on March 17, 2023 in Somerville, MA.

  26. Links 28/03/2023: KPhotoAlbum 5.10.0 and QSoas 3.2

    Links for the day

  27. The Rumours Were Right: Many More Microsoft Layoffs This Week, Another Round of GitHub Layoffs

    Another round of GitHub layoffs (not the first [1, 2]; won’t be the last) and many more Microsoft layoffs; this isn’t related to the numbers disclosed by Microsoft back in January, but Microsoft uses or misuses NDAs to hide what’s truly going on

  28. All of Microsoft's Strategic Areas Have Layoffs This Year

    Microsoft’s supposedly strategic/future areas — gaming (trying to debt-load or offload debt to other companies), so-called ‘security’, “clown computing” (Azure), and “Hey Hi” (chaffbots etc.) — have all had layoffs this year; it’s clear that the company is having a serious existential crisis in spite of Trump’s and Biden’s bailouts (a wave of layoffs every month this year) and is just bluffing/stuffing the media with chaffbots cruft (puff pieces/misinformation) to keep shareholders distracted, asking them for patience and faking demand for the chaffbots (whilst laying off Bing staff, too)

  29. Links 28/03/2023: Pitivi 2023.03 is Out, Yet More Microsoft Layoffs (Now in Israel)

    Links for the day

  30. IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 27, 2023

    IRC logs for Monday, March 27, 2023

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