02.18.23

Links 18/02/2023: FreeBSD 13.2 Beta 2

Posted in News Roundup at 9:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • BSD

      • FreeBSD ☛ FreeBSD 13.2-BETA2 Now Available
        The second BETA build of the 13.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available.

Installation images are available for:

o 13.2-BETA2 amd64 GENERIC
o 13.2-BETA2 i386 GENERIC
o 13.2-BETA2 powerpc GENERIC
o 13.2-BETA2 powerpc64 GENERIC64
o 13.2-BETA2 powerpc64le GENERIC64LE
o 13.2-BETA2 powerpcspe MPC85XXSPE
o 13.2-BETA2 armv6 RPI-B
o 13.2-BETA2 armv7 GENERICSD
o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 GENERIC
o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 RPI
o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 PINE64
o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 PINE64-LTS
o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 PINEBOOK
o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 ROCK64
o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 ROCKPRO64
o 13.2-BETA2 riscv64 GENERIC
o 13.2-BETA2 riscv64 GENERICSD

Note regarding arm SD card images: For convenience for those without
console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of
freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access.  Additionally,
the root user password is set to root.  It is strongly recommended
to change the password for both users after gaining access to the
system.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here:

https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/13.2/

The image checksums follow at the end of this e-mail.

If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR
system or on the -stable mailing list.

If you would like to use Git to do a source based update of an existing
system, use the "releng/13.2" branch.

A summary of changes since 13.2-BETA1 includes:

o OpenSSH has been updated to version 9.2p1.

o The ahci(4) timeout on Marvell 88SE9230 has been increased.

o A bug fix to [hash]sum -c.

A list of changes since 13.1 is available in the releng/13.2
release notes:

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.2R/relnotes/

Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be
updated on an ongoing basis as the 13.2-RELEASE cycle progresses.

=== Virtual Machine Disk Images ===

VM disk images are available for the amd64, i386, and aarch64
architectures.  Disk images may be downloaded from the following URL
(or any of the FreeBSD download mirrors):

https://download.freebsd.org/releases/VM-IMAGES/13.2-BETA2/

BASIC-CI images can be found at:

https://download.freebsd.org/releases/CI-IMAGES/13.2-BETA2/

The partition layout is:

    ~ 16 kB - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
    ~ 1 GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
    ~ 20 GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image
formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB and 165 MB
respectively (amd64/i386), decompressing to a 21 GB sparse image.

Note regarding arm64/aarch64 virtual machine images: a modified QEMU EFI
loader file is needed for qemu-system-aarch64 to be able to boot the
virtual machine images.  See this page for more information:

https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/QEMU

To boot the VM image, run:

    % qemu-system-aarch64 -m 4096M -cpu cortex-a57 -M virt  \
	-bios QEMU_EFI.fd -serial telnet::4444,server -nographic \
	-drive if=none,file=VMDISK,id=hd0 \
	-device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \
	-device virtio-net-device,netdev=net0 \
	-netdev user,id=net0

Be sure to replace "VMDISK" with the path to the virtual machine image.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • SJVN ☛ Canonical announces the general availability of Real-Time Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS

        Most of you know Ubuntu as a desktop operating system; others know it as an outstanding server Linux; or as a popular cloud OS. But Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, is also a serious Internet of Things (IoT) player. And after years of work, IoT release, Ubuntu Core 22.04, Canonical is offering a true real-time operating system.

        A real-time operating system is one that’s fast enough that it can guarantee a reaction to data within a tight, real-world deadline. Typically, real-time computing delivers results from microseconds (one-millionth of a second) to milliseconds (one-thousandth of a second). Real-time applications that take things down to microsecond latency include stock market high-frequency trading (HFT) applications. The much more common millisecond real-time processing is used in banking and telecom applications, digital ad networks, and self-driving cars. Us? People? We have average reaction times of around 250 milliseconds.

        According to Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s CEO, “The real-time Ubuntu kernel delivers industrial-grade performance and resilience for software-defined manufacturing, monitoring, and operational tech.”

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Arduino ☛ All aboard the java train!

        These days, everyone seems to turn to robots for automating tasks in the physical world. But robots are often clumsy and unreliable — not to mention expensive.

      • Tom’s Hardware ☛ Polish Raspberry Pi Clone Sports M.2 Socket, Real-Time Clock | Tom’s Hardware

        Though the situation is improving, it can still be difficult to find a Raspberry Pi in stock. Meanwhile, companies from around the world continue to offer their own alternatives to the world’s most popular single-board computer. A product of Polish Electronics Maker EVEO, the Urve Board Pi (opens in new tab) has identical dimensions and a nearly-identical layout to the Raspberry Pi 3B / 3B+ but throws in unique features such as an M.2 SSD port, a real-time clock and a power-over-Ethernet (PoE) connector.

        Available now for the equivalent of $90 (opens in new tab)on Polish web store TEM, the Urve Board Pi has an all-white PC PCB that’s the same 85 x 56 mm size as the Pi 3B and it has pretty-much the same ports in the same locations so it should fit into a case that would accept a Pi 3B / 3B+.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Leftovers

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ Stress Wärnings: Be aware of your resources

      Stress occurs when there is a perceived imbalance between demands and resources. It is therefore important to address stressors, perception and resources when dealing with stress, as often the importance of resources is overlooked.  Resources are keyResources are the aspects

    • Ben Congdon ☛ On Prompt Engineering
    • teleSUR ☛ Strikes Bring Air Traffic To Standstill in Germany

      Around 2,340 flights were to be canceled, affecting almost 300,000 passengers, said the German Airports Association.

    • Off Guardian ☛ Paranoia: Is it Always a Bad Thing?

      Todd Hayen “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Kurt Cobain What is paranoia? Usually the condition is coupled with another mental malady: schizophrenia, due to the psychosis brought about by that particular mental illness.

    • Off Guardian ☛ Virtue and Terror: How the New Normal was Created

      Simon Elmer “If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the mainspring of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing but swift, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.

    • France24 ☛ ‘No doctors, no clinics near them’: French and Turkish medics visit Turkey’s rural areas

      Turkey’s hospitals are full of patients injured in the earthquakes, and many of the millions left homeless in the cities have left for rural areas to find refuge with relatives, making it harder for sick people to find medical assistance. A group of Turkish and French paramedics has been travelling to rural areas to respond to this need. FRANCE 24′s Thameen Al-Kheetan, Julien Chehida and Brice Agier-Grégoire accompanied the team on a visit to a village near Adiyaman.

    • France24 ☛ Turkey-Syria death toll tops 45,000; three found alive 13 days after quakes

      More than 45,000 people have been killed in the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, and the toll is expected to soar with some 264,000 apartments in Turkey destroyed and many still missing in the country’s worst modern disaster.

    • Tedium ☛ Old Archives, New Controversy

      The New York Times has the most robust online archives of any newspaper, but it’s proving difficult to square their handling of a recent controversy with the quality of those archives.

    • Computers Are Bad ☛ Something up there pt II

      As we discussed previously, the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of 2017: the public revelation of the AATIP and alien-hunting efforts by Robert Bigelow and Tom DeLonge. While widely publicized, these programs seem to have lead to very little. I believe the termination of the AATIP (which lead to the creation of TTSA) to be a result of the AATIP’s failure to address the DoD’s actual concern: that UAP represented a threat to airspace sovereignty.

      I just used a lot of four- and five-letter acronyms without explaining them. These topics were all discussed in the previous post and if you are not familiar with them I would encourage you to read it. Still, I will try to knock it off. Besides, now there is a new set of four- and five-letter acronyms. The end of the AATIP was not the end of the DoD’s efforts to investigate UAP. Instead, military UAP research was reorganized, first into Naval intelligence as the UAP Task Force, and later in the cross-branch military intelligence All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO.

      It is unclear exactly what the AARO has accomplished. As a military intelligence organization, the DoD will not comment on it. Most of what we know comes from legislators briefed on the program, like Sen. Gillibrand and Sen. Rubio. In various interviews and statements, they have said that AARO’s work is underway but hampered by underfunding—underfunding that is, embarrassingly, a result of some kind of technical error in defense appropriation.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • More Fountain Pens

        Well fountain pen madness continues. I have acquired another teeny
        tiny pen – a Kaweco Liliput. This is a similar size to the Ohto Tasche
        but in a more attractive package. There is some 3 to 5 mm difference.
        I ended up getting a black aluminium version of the Liliput, mostly
        down to cost and worry about how well it writes. There are lots of
        warnings about bad nibs. It cost around $45. The steel and brass
        versions are closer to $100. The design of theLiliput is essentially
        a tube with rounded edges.

      • SMILE: Progress and collapse

        While we are accelerating towards a crash due to unsustainable consumption, there are still believers in progress. The singularity is near, we are told. Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, and Life Extension – summarised in the catchy formula SMI²LE – was LSD guru Timothy Leary’s vision already in the early 1970′s. General AI might reach a point where it becomes capable of improving itself and, at that point, we’re done; the all-mighty AI will start making paper clips in enormous quantities and will be unstoppable, unless it comes up with something even worse. Already, automation and AI have seriously reshaped the labour market, increased wage gaps between skilled and unskilled workers, and is about to make some previous professions obsolete. Designers and illustrators might feel somewhat threatened by generative art, now that anyone can produce images from a text prompt. Contemporary artists hardly worry, for them generative art is just another opportunity to be explored.

    • Technical

      • Messing with pkg_info and ditching password-store

        This week has been a tinkering one where I haven’t been doing anything
        very productive. It has been so long since I properly used C, so I am
        working my way through a book on C programming as a refresher. I was
        recommended a game, Tales of Maj’Eyal [0], on IRC [1] and I have been
        hooked on that most of the day! As a sidenote, I am pleasantly surprised
        with the games available on OpenBSD so far.

        I did notice at the beginning of the week that bash somehow ended up
        installed on my system, since I use ksh and never installed it directly
        it must be a package dependency. I managed to track it down to the
        password-store [2] utility.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Gemini Capsule on Pico W

          I received my Pico W long time ago but couldn’t find the time to finish this.

          I decided to do this in Python (using MicroPython) first, then translate to C and see how things can be improved.

          It’s very simple and very basic, without concurrency. Like my ESP32 setup, it uses Duck DNS.

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

Links 18/02/2023: Wine 8.2 Released and Celebrating 20 Years of Inkscape

Posted in News Roundup at 12:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

    • Server

      • PostgreSQL ☛ PostgreSQL: CloudNativePG 1.19.0, 1.18.2 and 1.17.4 Released!

        The CloudNativePG Community has announced version 1.19.0, a new minor release of the CloudNativePG Operator, which introduces support for backup from a standby, which reduces the I/O impact on the primary, and delayed failover, which enables you to wait for some amount of time after a failure on the primary before triggering an automated failover.

        Support for separate WAL volumes has been enhanced with the possibility to add a separate WAL volume even on an existing PostgreSQL cluster. More metrics for WAL usage monitoring have been added to the default Prometheus exporter. Both functionalities have also been backported to 1.18.2.

        The cnpg plugin for kubectl has been enhanced with the introduction of the backup command to issue a new base backup on a selected cluster.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Applications

      • Make Tech Easier ☛ The Best Terminal Emulators for Linux

        If you’re a fan of Linux, you know the reason it’s awesome: the command line. Though many outsiders view it as only a “hacker tool,” it’s one of the best available tools for any operating system. The Linux shell has the ability to install software, manage your operating system, and basically everything else, but you need a terminal emulator to interact with the command line.

        There are many good ones, and picking the right one depends on your needs and how you prefer it to look.

      • 1.3 About Screen Contest — celebrating 20 years of Inkscape | Inkscape

        We are eagerly awaiting your artwork submissions, created using only Inkscape, for our 1.3 About Screen Contest. This contest represents one of the highlights for contributors across the project – to see just how artists and designers are putting the vector editor’s tools and features to great use.

        This year’s release contest, which launched on February 5, has a new twist – a topic to rally around together. So, please join in and help us in “Celebrating 20 years of Inkscape”!

        It’s hard to believe that the free and open source Inkscape project has been around since 2003. That’s when it “forked” or started its own path from its predecessor Sodipodi.

        Almost two decades later, the Inkscape project has grown to include active contributors and artist and design communities from around the world. This diversity is part of what enables the project to continue advancing and launching new versions and innovating in its features, capabilities and solutions. Version 1.3 will continue the tradition. The draft release notes are available for reading in the Wiki.

        In preparation for 1.3, as with all our major releases, the new Inkscape release will feature a contributing artist’s work on the About Screen. Over the years, other such Inkscape contest entries have been used for visuals for articles, T-shirt designs, banners and more.

        Looking back at the About Screen Contest entries over the years, it’s impressive to see the variety of styles and tools used to create and, ultimately, inspire others, through artwork created using Inkscape.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • H2S Media ☛ How to Remove Stacer from Ubuntu Linux

        Stacer is a free & open-source Linux system monitoring software with a beautiful GUI. The primary purpose of using this software is to get metrics data of the system to analyze its performance and resource usage.

      • Make Use Of ☛ How to Install Webmin on Linux

        Webmin is a browser-based tool for administering Linux and Unix servers. Here’s how you can install it on your system.

      • Cloudbooklet ☛ How to Set Up Deep Learning Architecture on Ubuntu 22.04
      • MySQL Generated columns

        MySQL Generated Columns are the next big thing in database management. With the introduction of generated columns, you can create virtual columns that calculate values based on an expression and store the result. The generated columns make it easier to perform complex queries and sort data without having to repeat the same calculation multiple times.

      • MySQL Common table expressions (CTE)

        SQL is a language that has been used for decades to manage and manipulate data in relational databases. It provides various tools and techniques to fetch, filter, and aggregate data from tables. One such tool is the Common Table Expression (CTE).

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Apache JMeter on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
      • ID Root ☛ How To Install IonCube Loader on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Matomo on Rocky Linux 9
      • Video ☛ How to install EndeavourOS Cassini Neo – Invidious

        In this video, I am going to show how to install EndeavourOS Cassini Neo

      • Citizix ☛ How to install and use ClamAV in Ubuntu 22.04
      • Bootlin ☛ Embedded Linux and Yocto training courses now available in Italian
      • Make Use Of ☛ How to Take a Screenshot on Chromebook With the Snipping Tool
      • TecAdmin ☛ A Beginner’s Guide to Installing TensorFlow on Ubuntu

        TensorFlow is an open-source software library developed by Google for machine learning and deep learning tasks. It provides a flexible and efficient way to build and train machine learning models, from simple linear regression to complex neural networks. TensorFlow supports a wide range of platforms, including Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ How to install MariaDB on Fedora 37
      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Microsoft Fonts on Linux Mint 21 or 20

        Microsoft fonts, such as Arial and Times New Roman, are widely used in documents, and other media created using Microsoft Office applications. However, these fonts are not included by default in most Linux distributions, including Linux Mint.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Metasploit Framework on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

        Metasploit Framework is an open-source platform that has become a powerful tool for penetration testing and vulnerability assessment in today’s cybersecurity landscape. It is designed to help security professionals perform comprehensive testing of their network’s security posture, identify potential weaknesses, and mitigate them before attackers can exploit them.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Oracle Java 17 on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

        Welcome to the world of Java Development! As a professional developer, you know that Java is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and the Java Development Kit (JDK) is an essential tool for Java development.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Jellyfin Media Server on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

        Jellyfin is an open-source media server software that allows you to organize, stream, and share your media content with friends and family. It is a powerful tool that lets you enjoy your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and photos on any device with internet access.

      • UNIX Cop ☛ How to Install the latest OpenSSL version on Debian 11

        Hello, friends. OpenSSL is a vital component for many systems, and knowing how to install the latest version of it on Debian 11 could be quite useful. OpenSSL is a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured toolkit for general-purpose cryptography and secure communication. This makes it an almost indispensable component of any current Linux system.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install BookStack with Nginx on Ubuntu 20.04

        BookStack is a self-hosted, open-source, easy-to-use platform for organizing and storing information. This tutorial will teach you how to install BookStack on a Ubuntu 20.04-based server.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install XWiki on Ubuntu 22.04

        XWiki is a free and open-source wiki software written in Java and runs on Tomcat. This tutorial will show you how to install XWiki on Ubuntu 22.04 server.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to install Zabbix 6 on Debian 11

        Zabbix is a free and open-source software used for monitoring several IT components, including networks, servers, virtual machines, and cloud services. This tutorial will show you how to install the Zabbix monitoring server on Debian 11.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install and Use iostat on Ubuntu

        iostat, also known as input/output statistics, is a popular Linux system monitoring tool that can be used to collect statistics of input and output devices. It allows users to identify performance issues of local disk, remote disk, and system information. This tutorial will teach us how to install and use iostat on Ubuntu.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Concrete5 CMS with free Let’s Encrypt SSL on Debian 11

        Concrete5 is a free and open-source content management system for publishing Internet content. This post will show you how to install Concrete5 CMS with Apache and Let’s Encrypt SSL on Debian 11.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Debug C Programs in Linux using gdb

        If you are a C/C++ programmer or develop software using the Fortran and Modula-2 programming languages, you’ll be glad to know there exists an excellent debugger – dubbed GDB – that lets you easily debug your code for bugs and other problems. In this article, we will discuss the basics of GDB, including some of the useful features/options it provides.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Open Files in Default Desktop Application from Command-Line on Ubuntu

        What do you do when you want to open a PDF file in Ubuntu?

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install GNOME Flashback on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

        GNOME Flashback is a lightweight desktop environment that offers a classic and traditional user interface for Linux systems.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install and Enable OpenSSH on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

        OpenSSH is a highly robust utility that offers safe access to remote machines through an unsecured network. It is an extensively utilized encryption protocol that establishes secure communication between two untrusted hosts.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Add a User to Sudoers on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

        Ubuntu is a popular operating system widely used for servers and desktops.

      • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Install and Use ‘NeoVim’ [Vim-based] Text Editor

        Vi or Vim is an age-old default command line text editor that you’ll come across in any Linux distribution. No doubt, Vim is a

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Subversion on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

        Subversion, also known as SVN, is a powerful version control system that can help developers manage and track changes to their software projects. Unlike other version control systems like Git, Subversion uses a centralized model, which makes it easier to manage and control access to your repository.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Eclipse IDE on Fedora Linux

        Eclipse IDE, or Integrated Development Environment, is a powerful open-source software tool for developing and deploying applications across various platforms. The Eclipse IDE is widely known for its excellent support for different programming languages, including Java, Python, C++, and many more.

      • How to Install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS {Step by Step} with Screenshots

        The Ubuntu 22.04 operating system (code name: Jammy Jellyfish) is a free and open-source Linux distribution derived from the Debian Linux distribution.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install GitLab on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

        GitLab is an open-source web-based Git repository management tool that offers a complete DevOps platform. It provides a wide range of features and tools for software development teams to manage their projects, including version control, project management, CI/CD, monitoring, and more.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Change Hostname on Debian 11 or 10

        Modifying the network device’s hostname in a Linux system is an uncomplicated procedure that can be executed via the terminal.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install ImageMagick on Debian 11 or 10

        ImageMagick is an incredibly powerful open-source software that provides users with the tools to create, edit, and manipulate images. It is a versatile software commonly used by graphic designers, photographers, and web developers for various image-related tasks, ranging from resizing images to adding special effects.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install balenaEtcher on Debian 11 or 10

        balenaEtcher is a widely used, user-friendly, and efficient tool for creating bootable USB drives and SD cards. Its popularity stems from its ease of use, reliability, and robust features that simplify creating bootable media.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to use the fuser command in Linux

        Suppose you are given a task to identify the processes that are using a particular file, and then kill them one by one – all this has to be done from the command line. What would you do? Well, if you are a command line newbie, I am sure you’d be clueless, asking around for help. But command line pros will likely have an idea that there exists a command line utility in Linux that lets you identify processes based on the files (or directories, or sockets) they are accessing. Not only that, the tool also allows you to kill these processes, so you don’t have to use the kill or killall commands separately. The command line utility we’re talking about is fuser.

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Spotify on Ubuntu

        Spotify is a Swedish entertainment company founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon that gives you instant access to millions of songs from old favorites to the latest hits. In this tutorial, we will explain how to install Spotify on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver).

    • WINE or Emulation

      • WINE Project (Official) ☛ WineHQ – News – Wine 8.2 Released

        The Wine development release 8.2 is now available.

        What’s new in this release:

        Better debug information in Wow64 mode.
        Wow64 thunks in the WPCAP library.
        Indeo IV50 codec support.
        Monitor names set from EDID data.
        Various bug fixes.

        The source is available now. Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Wine 8.2 rolls out along with a new Proton Experimental update

        Today we’ve seen an update for two translation layers. Wine has development release 8.2 available, and there’s an update for Proton Experimental too.

      • Wine development release 8.2 is now available for Linux FreeBSD and macOS
        The Wine development release 8.2 is now available.

        What’s new in this release:

        • Better debug information in Wow64 mode.
        • Wow64 thunks in the WPCAP library.
        • Indeo IV50 codec support.
        • Monitor names set from EDID data.
        • Various bug fixes.

        The source is available now. Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • TuMFatig ☛ Adding variable tiling width ratio and gaps to XFCE xfwm4

        After a lot of desktop environment and window manager hoping, I’ve settle down with XFCE. I find it customizable, pretty and fast. But after all my hoping, I’ve always missed a couple of things learned from the tiling window manager world: resizable master area and gaps.

        Here a couple of patches I wrote to enable those two features for Xfwm4.

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Nate Graham ☛ This week in KDE: a smooth release of Plasma 5.27

          This week we finally released Plasma 5.27 and so far it’s been very smooth! The only significant regressions found so far are already fixed, ready for release in a few days. There have been some grumblings about the new window outlines feature, but you can’t please everyone, and there’s a chance we’ll end up making them optional.

        • Plasma Mobile 5.27 + PlaMo Gear 23.01.0

          Manjaro ARM is proud to present the packages for Plasma 5.27.0 together with the packages for Plasma Mobile Gear (soon to be regular Gear) 23.01.0 for the mobile devices.

          These packages are currently being tested in our Unstable branch and will soon be transferred to Testing and then finally to Stable branch when the time comes…

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ Gnome Console adds Overview Page to show All Open Tabs | UbuntuHandbook

          Gnome Console terminal emulator added new tab overview feature a few days ago by releasing version 44 beta.

          For those never heard of Gnome Console, it’s new core application for GNOME desktop since version 42. Gnome Console formerly called kgx, has a more modern and native look and feel than the previous Gnome Terminal. Ubuntu proposed to use Gnome Console as default terminal emulator in 22.10 release, but delayed due to few regressions.

          Gnome Console has an attractive feature that the header bar turns red when running sudo command or switching to root user. And, it goes purple for remote / ssh terminals.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • New Releases

      • Ubuntu Pit ☛ Clonezilla Live (3.0.3-22) Released: Now Support for Multiple LUKS Devices and Linux 6.1 LTS

        Today, Steven Shiau — the developer of Clonezilla Live — announced that Clonezilla 3.0.3 is now available! This open source and free partition clone/imaging live ISO distribution based on Debian Sid repositories offers users a powerful tool to manage their data with ease. The new version includes several bug fixes and improvements over its predecessor,

    • BSD

      • GonzaloR ☛ Nextcloud + OpenBSD = <3

        Looks like everything is made of clouds and farts now, so we cannot be out of it we need to keep up on the trend. I maintain the nextcloud port since ever, and I am using since then, to be honest it’s pretty cool and handy, despite all the php slowness and other flavors the system has and the OpenBSD’s issues as client and server (in comparation with loonix and others), it works really really well in every way I use it; which is as “multimedia cloud”, “CalDAV/CardDAV” server for my android phone, “Password Manager” and “Backups” in general.

    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • Dominique Leuenberger ☛ openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2023/07

        Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

        Week 7 of the year – 7 days have passed since the last review, BUT we only released 6 snapshots since then. The reason is only timing though: the 7th snapshot is still in QA and, looking at the current results, is likely to be published later today. So no need to be worried. This review will cover snapshots 0210…0215.

        The most exciting changes delivered during this week were:

    • Fedora Family / IBM

    • Debian Family

      • Debian ☛ bits from the release team: bookworm in soft freeze
        Dear all,

Soft Freeze
===========

Following our release calendar, we have frozen bookworm a bit
[1]. That means that from this week on we expect all uploads to be
small, targeted fixes and no new source packages are allowed into
bookworm. Source packages must also no longer add or drop binary
packages. All packages will have to age at least 10 days in unstable
before they are eligible for migration (including those having
autopkgtests). Quoting from the policy:

"""
Starting 2023-02-12, only small, targeted fixes are appropriate for
bookworm. We want maintainers to focus on small, targeted fixes.

[...]

Please note that new transitions, new versions of packages that are
part of (build-)essential or large/disruptive changes remain
inappropriate.

[...]

Packages that are not in testing will not be allowed to migrate to
testing. This applies to new packages as well as to packages that were
removed from testing (either manually or by auto-removals).

[...]

Dropping or adding binary packages to a source package, moving
binaries between source packages or renaming source or binary packages
is no longer allowed. Packages with these changes will not be allowed
to migrate to testing. These changes are also no longer appropriate in
unstable.

Please note that packages that are in bookworm at the start of the
soft freeze can still be removed if they are buggy. This can happen
manually or by the auto-removals. Once packages are removed, they will
not be allowed to come back.

[...]

Don't upload changes to unstable that are not targeted for
bookworm. Having changes in unstable that are not targeted/appropriate
for bookworm could complicate fixes for your package and related
packages (like dependencies and reverse dependencies).
"""

State of bookworm
=================

The state of bookworm is pretty good. We ask everybody to keep working
on fixing the remaining RC bugs (and please find and file those that
are currently unreported). [2] has the list we should drive down to
zero together. Please try out upgrading your bullseye systems to
bookworm now and report issue you encounter.

General
=======

As always, talk to us, preferably via the bts, if you experience
issues that we need to be aware of or where you need help. Please be
aware it's now a very busy time for us, so bear with us.

Our freeze policy is at [1].

On behalf of the release team,
Paul

[1] https://release.debian.org/testing/freeze_policy.html#soft
[2] https://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi?release=bookworm&merged=ign&rtbookworm-will-remove=ign&keypackages=only&fnewerval=7&flastmodval=7&rc=1&cpopcon=1&chints=1&ckeypackage=1&ctags=1&cdeferred=1&caffected=1&sortby=last_modified&sorto=asc&format=html#results
      • Sparky GNU/Linux ☛ Heroic Games Launcher

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • Ubuntu Pit ☛ A Match Made in Tech Heaven: Ubuntu and Lenovo ThinkPad X13s Arm Laptop

        If you’re searching for an extraordinary Arm-powered laptop, look no further than the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s! Boasting a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SoC and 13.3 inches 1920 x 1200 resolution display that will provide an unparalleled viewing experience, not to mention up to 32GB RAM with 28 hours of battery life…

      • Ubuntu Pit ☛ Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is Equipped with Linux Kernel 5.19 — From Ubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu!

        With the launch of Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS quickly approaching, Canonical has upgraded its long-term supported Jammy Jellyfish series to the Linux 5.19 kernel from Kinetic Kudu in Ubuntu 22.10 for an even more efficient and secure user experience! Initially slated for early February 2023, the Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS point release will come with Linux 5.19…

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Boiling Steam ☛ VisionFive 2: A Raspberry Pi Like Moment for RISC-V – Boiling Steam

        The VisionFive 2 is a new RISC-V System-on-a-Chip (SoC) board that offers powerful performance (somewhere between RPi 3 and RPi 4) and low cost. Until now most of the powerful RISC-V systems were much more expensive and out of reach of most of us. This new board features a quad-core processor with a clock speed of 1.5GHz, 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM (there is also 4GB and 8GB RAM versions available) and an eMMC storage and TF card slot.

      • Arduino ☛ Small, MKR WAN 1310-powered device monitors CO2 levels in classrooms

        This CO2 monitor performs two functions: it shows anyone nearby the CO2 levels in the area and it uploads that data over LoRaWAN to a central hub that can track the levels across many locations. A school could, for example, put one of these CO2 monitors in every classroom. An administrator could then see the CO2 levels in every room in real time, along with historical records. That would alert them to immediate dangers and to long term trends.

      • CNX Software ☛ Control 8 relays with the Raspberry Pi Pico using PicoRelay8 or Pico-Relay-B

        8086 Consultancy’s PicoRelay8 is a baseboard for the Raspberry Pi Pico (W) board equipped with eight 28V DC / 10A Normally Open relays that be used for all sorts of automation projects, while Waveshare Pico-Relay-B also supports eight relays with both DC and AC loads and comes with some extra features.

      • SparkFun Electronics ☛ Remember This?

        We’re celebrating two decades of invention, innovation, and electronics here at SparkFun this year! We’ve released thousands of products throughout our history, and we thought it’d be a fun look back to show you what the top products were each year.

        We’ve linked related or similar products below the retired ones in case you’re inspired by trends of years past to start something new. We’ve loved growing and developing with you all these years, and these are the highlights of what we’ve accomplished together.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • OpenSource.com ☛ What does ChatGPT mean for the open source community

      Community is about people. Making connections with other people with a shared interest and passion for something is what makes communities so fulfilling. Both the disagreements and the moments of shared inspiration are profound experiences that we humans bring to one another in our forums, chat rooms, bug reports, conferences, and neighborhoods. As an open source community, we create technology. We create it openly, together, and with a genuine interest in sharing experiential knowledge. We value diversity, and we find value in the perspectives of novices and experts alike. These are things you can’t distill in machine learning chat bot, whether it’s open source or not (and ChatGPT is not).

      The open source community thrives on the genuine interest in sharing. That’s something ChatGPT cannot emulate.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • PostgreSQL ☛ PostgreSQL JDBC 42.5.4 Released

        The PostgreSQL JDBC team has released version 42.5.4

        This release fixes some tests that were failing.
        Changes in 42.5.3 caused some tests to fail. These failing tests were not noticed in the Github testing workflow.
        This oversight has been corrected as well.
        There are no changes to the code. The details can be found in the Changelog

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • LibreOffice Dark Mode: Manual switch to enable/disable coming in 7.5.1

        LibreOffice 7.5 introduced a new Dark Mode, activated automatically to match your system settings. But many of you asked for a manual switch, so our Design community has implemented it for the next update – LibreOffice 7.5.1, in two weeks! Follow the Design community’s activities on Mastodon and Twitter

    • Programming/Development

      • TecAdmin ☛ Where is php.ini? Find the Correct PHP Configuration File

        The php.ini file is a configuration file used by PHP to specify settings for your web server, such as file upload size, error reporting, and memory usage. However, the location of the php.ini file can vary depending on your server setup and operating system. In this tutorial, we will explore a few methods to help [...]

      • git status Side Effects

        There is a way to prevent this, by running git status –no-optional-locks (https://git-scm.com/docs/git#Documentation/git.txt—no-optional-locks) or by setting GIT_OPTIONAL_LOCKS to 0, as writing the updated index is just an optimization and git knows it can be avoided.

        I don’t think there are many chances to actually stumble on this in the real life, but I’m writing this down so that if I ever do I have an easy way to remember what happened and find the solution.

      • The New Stack ☛ Deploy MongoDB in a Container, Access It Outside the Cluster – The New Stack

        How to a deploy a containerized version of MongoDB and connect to it from a machine or service outside of the hosting server.

      • Peter Czanik: The syslog-ng Insider 2023-02: 4.0; Azure; 101; FreeBSD;

        After almost 14 years, a new major version of syslog-ng is available. Type support for name-value pairs is now available and Python support received major improvements.

      • Qt ☛ Certified Qt Safe Renderer 2.0 is released

        We are happy to announce that our latest Qt Safe Renderer (QSR) 2.0 is certified and available as of today, addressing the need to build UI applications with Functional Safety in mind.

      • Arduino ☛ Adorable model trolley livens up a garden
      • Arduino ☛ Instantly understand 40+ languages, with Speech Recognition Engine

        Voice commands are a contactless, hands-free, natural way to interact with devices, equipment, and machines of all kinds: no wonder they are increasingly popular! With speech recognition technology advancing faster than you can say “users expect it,” developers often need to find ways to integrate it in their new projects. This, however, requires them to take the time to train a smart device to listen for wake-up words, understand commands… and potentially start over for every new voice or language.

        To cut through all the hassle and help you integrate speech recognition in the easiest and fastest way, Arduino Pro has released Speech Recognition Engine: a powerful, ready-to-use and extensive software library born out of the collaboration with worldwide leader in the field, Cyberon.

      • The Atlantic ☛ AI Search Is a Disaster

        The trouble arises when we treat chatbots not just as search bots, but as having something like a brain—when companies and users trust programs like ChatGPT to analyze their finances, plan travel and meals, or provide even basic information. Instead of forcing users to read other internet pages, Microsoft and Google have proposed a future where search engines use AI to synthesize information and package it into basic prose, like silicon oracles. But fully realizing that vision might be a distant goal, and the road to it is winding and clouded: The programs currently driving this change, known as “large language models,” are decent at generating simple sentences but pretty awful at everything else.

      • Armin Ronacher ☛ I Think AI Would Kill my Wife

        Turns out the Bing AI is bizarre and that is making quite the waves at the moment. In essence, the Bing version of ChatGPT has the capability of performing internet searches and as a result will feed some extra data into itself. Then it uses this to conjure up answers with hilarious results, particularly if its internal learned state does not line up with the results. Among other things this has lead to the bot gaslighting its users into believing that they are in the wrong calendar year. I think there is something quite a bit deeper being uncovered by these AI stories and it does worry me a bit.

      • Barry Kauler ☛ mount-img asks read-only or read-write

        If you click on a .img drive-image file, the partitions in the
        image get mounted read-only. If you do it from a terminal, you can
        pass the “rw” parameter to mount read-write. But clicking on the
        file in ROX-Filer does not offer that choice.

        This came up in the forum, someone wanted to mount the partitions
        read-write. So, I have modified /usr/sbin/mount-img script to ask.
        Now, click on the file and this window pops up:

      • Julia Evans ☛ Writing Javascript without a build system

    • Standards/Consortia

      • Med City News ☛ 3 Conditions that Must be Met to Make Interoperability a Reality

        The term “interoperability” holds different meanings for different people. While we all would agree that the primary goal of interoperability is to make sharing data easier in order to improve outcomes and lower costs, there are varying perceptions about what that looks like. FHIR has been great at giving us a common set of protocols and standards to work from, but how we connect and how data actually gets shared are still open challenges.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • The Scientist ☛ Mice Pass Epigenetic Tweaks to Pups

        An engineered methylation pattern persisted for four generations of mice, demonstrating transgenerational epigenetic inheritance can occur in mammals.

      • The Scientist ☛ RSV Vaccines That Work?

        Multiple candidates are in Phase 3 clinical trials for

      • The Scientist ☛ RSV Vaccines That Work?

        Multiple candidates are in Phase 3 clinical trials for older adults and pregnant women, with some getting close to approval in the United States.

      • VOA News ☛ Unidentified Object Downed by US Could Belong to Hobbyists

        The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB), a group that launches small, lightweight balloons equipped with GPS trackers, transmitters and antennas, announced in a blog post that one of its balloons had not transmitted its location since traveling toward the region where a U.S. F-22, on February 11, used a missile to destroy a “high-altitude object” that was deemed to be a threat to commercial aviation.

        Last week, the organization posted information to its website indicating that the last recorded communication from the balloon, with the call sign K9YO, occurred on February 11 and indicated that it was located off the southern coast of Alaska, and traveling east, in the direction of Canada’s Yukon province.

    • Education

    • Hardware

      • CNX Software ☛ MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Armv9 Cortex-A715/A510 processor targets mainstream 5G smartphones

        Manufactured with a 4nm processor, the MediaTek Dimensity 7200 is an octa-core Armv9 processor designed for mainstream smartphones. with two Cortex-A715 cores, six Cortex-A510 cores, a Mali-G610 MC4 GPU, as well as 5G, WiFi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity.

      • Tom’s Hardware ☛ Lenovo Eyes Job Cuts Due to Weakened PC Market

        Lenovo, the world’s biggest computer company, will cut jobs amid a weak PC market.

      • Hackaday ☛ Hackaday Podcast 206: Busted Crypto Killed The Queen, Kicad’s New Clothes, Peer Inside The Sol 20

        Under the weather though they both were, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Staff Writer Dan Maloney got together to take a look under the covers of this week’s best and brightest hacks. It was a banner week, with a look at the changes that KiCad has in store, teaching a CNN how to play “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” and going deep into the weeds on JPEG.

      • Hackaday ☛ Fail Of The Week: Epic 312 Weeks Of Fixing A Broken Project

        If a hacker guardian angel exists, then we’re sure he or she was definitely AWOL for six long years from [Aaron Eiche]’s life as he worked on perfecting and making his Christmas Countdown clock. [Aaron] started this binary clock project in 2016, and only managed to make it work as expected in 2022 after a string of failures.

      • Hackaday ☛ Giant 3D Printed Excavator Is Awesome, But Needs Work

        Many of us adored big construction machinery as children. Once we got past the cute, tiny age, it became uncool to gasp with shock and awe at diggers and bulldozers for some reason . [Ivan Miranda] still digs the big rigs, though, and built himself a giant 3D printed excavator that looks like brilliant fun. 

      • CNX Software ☛ IoT Prototype Kit is powered by an Alder Lake-H COM Express module with up to Core i5-12600HE CPU

        ADLINK has launched an IP-i IoT Prototype Kit based on their Express-ADP COM Express Type 6 Basic “Alder Lake-H” module with either an Intel Core i5-12600HE 12-core (4P+8E) processor clocked at up to 4.5 GHz or a Core i3-12300HE 8-core (4P+4E) processor reaching up to 4.3 GHz.

      • Hackaday ☛ Anatomy Of A Fake CO2 Sensor

        The pandemic brought with it a need to maintain adequate ventilation in enclosed spaces, and thus, there’s been considerable interest in inexpensive C02 monitors. Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous actors out there that have seen this as a chance to make a quick profit.

      • Hackaday ☛ Quantum Interconnects Get Faster

        If you are a retrocomputer fan, you might remember when serial ports were a few hundred baud and busses ran at a few megahertz at the most. Today, of course, we have buses and fabric that can run at tremendous speeds. Quantum computing, though, has to start from scratch. One major problem is that jockeying quantum states around for any distance is difficult and slow. Part of it is that qubits decay rapidly, so you don’t have much time. They are also generally susceptible to noise and perturbation by outside forces. So many quantum machines today are limited by how much they can cram on one chip since there isn’t a good way to connect to another chip. The University of Sussex thinks it has improved the outlook for quantum interconnects with a technique they claim can move qubits around at nearly 2,500 links per second.

      • Hackaday ☛ Hack Lets Intel MacBook Run Without A Battery

        A long time ago, a laptop was a basic thing, and you could pretty much run one just by hooking up a power supply to the battery contacts. A modern MacBook is altogether fussier. However, when [Christophe] was stuck in the midst of a 2020 lockdown with no parts available, he found a way to get his damaged MacBook up and running without a battery.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Common Dreams ☛ Watchdogs Upset EPA Has ‘Once Again Failed’ to Limit Dicamba Herbicide Harm

        “I call bullsh*t.”

      • Atlantic Council ☛ Metzl on Fox News discussing the need to investigate the origins of COVID

        On February 10, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative Nonresident Senior Fellow Jamie Metzl appeared on Fox News to discuss the need for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission investigating the origins of the COVID-19 virus. He asserts that the noncompliance of the Chinese governments is cause for worry, and further investigation is the best means to prepare for – or even stop – a future pandemic. Metzl stresses that this is a bipartisan issue that has seen agreement and consensus among members of both sides of the aisle. He also notes the lack of transparency on the part of the NIH in the work they were minimally funding in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

      • Defence Web ☛ Thousands of people benefitting from SANDF’s Project Owethu health drive

        As part of Armed Forces Day 2023 events, the South African Military Health Service (SAMHS) has launched Project Owethu that is bringing free healthcare to thousands of people in the Richard’s Bay area.

      • France24 ☛ France drops Covid testing restrictions for travellers from China

        France has dropped Covid testing restrictions imposed on travellers from China, the French embassy in Beijing said.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Biden DOJ Supporting Rail Giant Norfolk Southern’s Effort to Block Future Lawsuits

        Norfolk Southern—the railroad giant whose train derailed and caused a toxic chemical fire in a small Ohio town earlier this month—has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 2017 lawsuit filed by a cancer-afflicted former rail worker, and the Biden administration is siding with the corporation, fresh reporting from The Lever revealed Thursday.

      • Hackaday ☛ Like Chording But Not

        Repetitive strain injuries (RSI) can be a real pain. You’ve got a shiny new laptop, and everything’s going smoothly, but suddenly you can’t use it without agonizing (as in typing-speed reducing) pain caused by years of keyboard bashing or just plain bad posture. All of us hacker types will likely have or will experience this at some point, and luckily there are many potential solutions.

      • teleSUR ☛ Ohio Train Disaster Could Happen Elsewhere in The US

        “We cannot risk the lives of millions of people in our region for the gas industry’s profits,” the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out.

      • Vice Media Group ☛ There’s No Toxic Spill Conspiracy. This Happens Constantly in America

        The East Palestine disaster raised public awareness of toxic spills, which are a disturbingly constant feature of U.S. capitalism.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Green Groups Say Buttigieg Must Act to Ensure Ohio Toxic Train Derailment Is Last of Its Kind

        With progressive lawmakers and rail workers condemning the profit-driven railway scheduling policies that employees say are to blame for the February 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, environmental advocates on Friday called on the U.S. Department of Transportation to reinstate safety rules to prevent similar crashes.

      • The Nation ☛ Buttigieg’s Paralysis After the East Palestine Disaster Is a Gift to the Hard Right

        The Biden administration likes to put Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on television. It’s easy to understand why. Buttigieg is well-spoken and rhetorically fluid, a forceful advocate for Biden’s policies, and especially skilled in verbal sparring against Republicans and reporters. Yet Buttigieg’s silences are sometimes as telling as his words.

      • Common Dreams ☛ When a Toxic Bomb Train Hits Your Town

        On February 3rd, a massive train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio blanketed the town with a toxic brew of spilled chemicals and gasses, fouling the air, polluting waterways and killing thousands of fish and frogs. Local residents are suffering ailments ranging from respiratory distress, sore throats, burning eyes and rashes, all with unknown long-term consequences. The two mile long freight train was operated by Norfolk Southern Corporation, It’s been called a “bomb train,” as among its 141 cars were tankers that can hold up to 32,000 gallons each of highly flammable toxic chemicals. In addition to the spill, an out-of-control fire raged for days followed by a “controlled” burn of the train’s most toxic cargo, releasing a huge mushroom cloud of fire and smoke. This catastrophe could have been prevented, had it not been for lax regulation and the outsized lobbying power of corporations like Norfolk Southern.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Amid Ohio Nightmare, Rail Worker Alliance Urges All of Labor to Back Railroad Nationalization

        An alliance representing rail workers across the United States published an open letter late Thursday urging all of organized labor to support the nationalization of the country’s railroad system, arguing that the private and inadequately regulated industry has “shown itself incapable of doing the job.”

      • The Economist ☛ How to save two million lives a year

        New analysis by the World Bank suggests that is mainly because they are trying to do so, as Beijing formerly did, on too small a scale. Most of the toxic brown haze choking South Asia’s cities comes not from local cars and waste dumps but from brick kilns, stubble-burning and other pollution sources far away.

        The best way to reduce it, as China has shown, is to model pollution, share data and plan controls over the vast expanse in which the smog circulates. That way the most cost-effective solutions, such as regulating brick-kilns, can be prioritised over more expensive or growth-dampening ones, like closing power stations. The Bank has mapped six of these so-called airsheds in South Asia. Huge areas, they span states and municipalities; four of the six cross national borders. One stretches from eastern Iran via western Afghanistan into Pakistan; another from northern India to Bangladesh.

      • The Atlantic ☛ America’s Teenage Girls Are Not Okay

        Some psychologists point to social media, whereas others blame school shootings; others chalk it up to changes in parenting. Climate-change activists say it’s climate change. Atlantic writers like me blather on about the decline of physical-world interactions. These explanations aren’t equally valid, and some of them might be purely wrong. But the sheer number of theories reflects the complexity of mental-health challenges and suggests that, perhaps, nobody knows for sure what’s going on.

        The numbers are undeniable. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which is published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the gold standard for measuring the state of teen behavior and mental health. From 2011 to 2021, the survey found, the share of teenage girls who say they experience “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” increased from 36 to 57 percent, with the highest jump coming during the coronavirus pandemic. The share of girls who said they’ve contemplated suicide increased 50 percent in the decade. (For teenage boys, the increase was smaller.)

      • “Heroism” in the face of COVID-19?

        It never ceases to amaze me just how much COVID-19 antimaskers and anti-“lockdowners” have fallen into exactly the same narratives commonly used by antivaxxers that I used to write about for years and years before the pandemic. I realize that it shouldn’t amaze me anymore, particularly given how much COVID-19 minimization narratives have nearly completely embraced common antivaccine narratives, but occasionally it does. For example, earlier this week I came across what will likely become (for me, at least) a classic example of COVID-19 minimizers and antivaxxers embracing an old antivax message at—where else?—that never-ending font of misinformation, pseudoscience, and disinformation about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines, the Brownstone Institute, in the form of a post by someone (whom I haven’t heard of before) named Haley Kynefin entitled Covidianism Inverts the Heroic Archetype. It’s a post that reminds me of something I wrote about over five years ago, something that could have been written by a certain antivaxxers whose blatherings and frequent fantasies about “heroism” I’ve written about a number of times, namely Kent Heckenlively, such as when he fantasized about being Aragorn, Son of Aragorn, the lost true king of Gondor, charging into battle against the Dark Lord Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Pesticide Use and Climate Crisis Locked in ‘Vicious Cycle’ Backed by Polluting Industries

        Even though synthetic pesticides—the majority of which are derived from fossil fuels—contribute significantly to planet-heating pollution and increase the vulnerability of food systems, industrial agriculture interests continue to recklessly portray further pesticide use as a sensible response to the climate emergency’s worsening impacts.

      • Counter Punch ☛ Super Drought Super Bowl: The Goddess Sings

        The land was parched, its people too. The rivers that had raged through the Nation’s once-wild Southwestern desert shrank in their canyons. Vast man-made lakes shriveled to puddles behind massive dams, cathedrals of leisure, irrigation and electricity transformed into towering monuments to vanished abundance, implacable wailing walls of hubris and shame.

        The ancient king perched perilously on his throne far away in a White House built long ago by the enslaved. Crowned only by a tuft of transplanted hair, the ruler spoke through false teeth of a better-built tomorrow. From the old play book/prayer book, he read his litany of Hope. Few listened. Fewer believed.

      • DeSmog ☛ The Battle to Stop Air Products’ Carbon Capture Project at Lake Maurepas Grows

        Where the Tickfaw River leads into Lake Maurepas in South Louisiana, a coffin containing a plastic skeleton is fastened to pilings rising out of the water. “Save Lake Maurepas From Impending Death by Air Products,” a sign above it states. This arresting visual captures the sentiments of opponents of a plan to develop the world’s largest carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project under the lake.

        Air Products, a global hydrogen manufacturing company, is proposing to build a $4.5 billion “Clean Energy Complex” to manufacture blue hydrogen and an accompanying carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project, that would be operational by 2026.  

      • The Age AU ☛ Inside Out recalls more plant-based milks after link to NSW botulism case

        Inside Out is recalling two types of oat milk, days after its almond milk was taken off the shelves due to the discovery of a toxin that causes serious illness.

    • Proprietary

    • Security

      • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

        • India ☛ Beware while searching for phone numbers on Internet

          In the first case, a man was duped of Rs 71,000 when he surfed the Internet to find the number of a hospital. His wife had fallen ill and he called up the number for consultation.

          The victim, Bhagwandin, was asked to deposit Rs 10 through Phonepe to get the patient’s registration done for consultation with a doctor of Indiranagar.

          Since the victim told the miscreant that he cannot make the payment through the app, on which the miscreant asked him to share the bank account number, which he did.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • RFERL ☛ Russia Summons Dutch Ambassador Over MH17 Probe

        Russia said it summoned the Dutch ambassador over what it called “obsessive attempts” by the Netherlands to hold it responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine in 2014.

      • Frontpage Magazine ☛ How Reuters Covered Terrorist Mahmoud Aleiwat

        Reuters, the largest wire agency in the world, has established a record of deep antipathy to Israel. It recently did itself proud with a report by Henriette Chacar, covering the story of 13.-year-old Mahmoud Aleiwat, who attempted to murder an Israeli father and son at the City of David archeological site in Jerusalem. More on this story can be found here: “Reuters Glowingly Describes Palestinian Terror Teen as Wannabe Chef Who Loved Football,” by Rachel O’Donoghue, Algemeiner, February 7, 2023: [...]

    • Environment

      • RTL ☛ ‘Feedback loops’ worsening climate crisis: report

        Global warming melts sea ice, which leads to further warming because water absorbs more heat than ice, creating what scientists call a “climate feedback loop.”

        A report released Friday contains what researchers believe is the most comprehensive list of feedback loops ever compiled and a stark warning that climate models may be underestimating their impact.

      • Teen Vogue ☛ Cancer Alley in Louisiana: What Is It, and How Can Legislation Address Environmental Injustice?

        Naively, I believed water was only ever polluted through the use of dated pipes, so I was taken aback upon being introduced to the chemical waste that pollutes Louisiana’s bodies of water in St. James Parish. I was even more alarmed when I learned that these issues have been festering since the plants first arrived in the 1960s, with little intervention by the local Louisiana government.

      • CNN ☛ Nearly 30 dangerous feedback loops could permanently shift the Earth’s climate, scientists say

        Dangerous climate feedback loops are increasing global warming and risk causing a permanent shift away from the Earth’s current climate, according to a new study.

        Climate feedback loops are cyclical chain reactions that happen when one change triggers further changes, in a process that keeps on repeating itself. Some of these feedback loops drive down warming, but others amplify it.

      • Helsinki Times ☛ Significant deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Finnish Lapland

        The company estimates that setting up the mine would require an investment in the region of 1–1.5 billion euros. Constructing the mining infrastructure could begin early next decade, provided that the conclusions of the scoping study are corroborated by further investigations and permitting processes are initiated.

      • The Nation ☛ Antarctica Time Bomb

      • Energy/Transportation

        • YLE ☛ E-scooters more popular than taxis, but walking still rules in Helsinki

          Nearly half of the journeys around the city were done on foot.

        • YLE ☛ Some Lapland filling stations fear fuel shortage

          Filling stations in northern Finland might run out of fuel, if a truckers’ strike continues as planned until next Tuesday.

        • Renewable Energy World ☛ California solar farm marks largest private-public partnership in DOD history

          A recently-unveiled solar farm at Edwards Air Force Base in California represents the largest public-private partnership in Defense Department history.

          The 1.3 GW project was built in collaboration with Terra-Gen as a result of the Edwards Solar Enhance Use Lease Project. The project, which features more than 2 million panels, is the largest project of its kind in U.S. Air Force history.

        • MIT Technology Review ☛ Meet the new batteries unlocking cheaper electric vehicles

          New batteries are coming to America.  This week, Ford announced plans for a new factory in Michigan that will produce lithium iron phosphate batteries for its electric vehicles. The plant, expected to cost $3.5 billion and begin production in 2026, would be the first to make these batteries in the US.

        • MIT Technology Review ☛ How does an EV battery actually work?

          The batteries propelling electric vehicles have quickly become the most crucial component, and expense, for a new generation of cars and trucks. They represent not only the potential for cleaner transportation but also broad shifts in geopolitical power, industrial dominance, and environmental protection.

        • MIT Technology Review ☛ Huge EVs are far from perfect, but they could still help fight climate change.

          This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. When it comes to watching the Super Bowl, I’ve always been more of a football person than a commercials person.

        • All Africa ☛ Zimbabwe: When Energy Crises Leave Us in the Dark, But Life Has to Go On

          Load shedding has been the reality every day since the start of 2023, according to a local tracker. All indications are that the situation won’t be remedied for many months ahead. Just recently, Eskom’s board chairperson, Mpho Makwana, said South Africa was going to be hit by power cuts for at least two more years.

          Across the country, a schedule of power cuts dictates two- to four-hour periods when power supply is cut off, and this is done in stages: Stage 1 means the least loadshedding, while Stage 8 could mean hours and hours of load shedding. In addition, the schedules vary from region to region and municipality to municipality. In some areas, schedules are implemented more efficiently than in others – and Eskom sometimes changes from one stage to another with very little notice.

        • The Economist ☛ Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

          Few technologies defined the 20th century more than the car. On the surface, the love affair with the personal automobile continues unabated into this century. The number of drivers on the world’s roads continues to rise almost everywhere. The distance driven by American motorists hit a new peak last year, according to data from the Federal Highway Administration. But there are hints that this is changing. People like Ms Crandall show why. Getting a driving licence was once a nearly universal rite of passage into adulthood. Now it is something that a growing minority of young people either ignore or actively oppose, into their 20s and beyond.

          That, in turn, is starting to create more support for anti-car policies being passed in cities around the world. From New York to Norway, a growing number of cities and local politicians are passing anti-car laws, ripping out parking spaces, blocking off roads and changing planning rules to favour pedestrians over drivers. Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris, boasts of “reconquering” her city for its residents.

        • [Old] The War on Cars ☛ The War on Cars

          The War on Cars is a new podcast about the epic, hundred years’ war between The Car and The City. We deliver news and commentary on the latest developments in the worldwide fight to undo a century’s worth of damage wrought by the automobile. We produce a new show every other week.

        • YLE ☛ E-scooters more popular than taxis, but walking still rules in Helsinki

          The most common mode of transportation was walking, with 47 percent of trips done on foot. Walking was even more popular in the heart of the city.

          After pedestrian travel came automobiles (15%), buses (11%) and then bicycles (9%), according to the survey.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • RFA ☛ Philippines intercepts Vietnamese fishing boat in Reed Bank

          Incident on Feb. 9 happened days after alleged Chinese laser harassment against a Philippine coast guard boat.

        • RFA ☛ Vietnam’s fishing fleet unaware of newly agreed Indonesian economic zone

          The alleged incursions put pressure on Hanoi and Jakarta to disclose details of the deal.

        • All Africa ☛ Africa: A Man’s Best Friend is a Trafficker’s Worst Nightmare

          In a recent webinar, Dr. Philip Muruthi, vice president of Species Conservation and Science at the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) and Mark Kinyua, a Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) canine expert and Head of KWS’s Marine and Community Program, explained to journalists how dogs have become a useful new tool in combating the illegal wildlife trade.

          Sniffer dogs, we were told, are capable of detecting the tiniest amounts of wildlife contraband, such as ivory tusks or jewellery and even rhino horn powder, even if it is hidden in a 40-foot shipping container. As a result, the AWF is promoting the deployment of detection dogs to combat illegal trade in East Africa, where poaching in national parks and other protected areas is one of the greatest menaces to wildlife preservation.

      • Overpopulation

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Scheerpost ☛ The Specter of ‘Woke Communism’

        How Corporate America Became the Bogeyman of Today’s Anti-Communist Crusaders.

      • Common Dreams ☛ How ‘Woke’ Corporate America Became the Bogeyman of Today’s Anti-Communist Crusaders

        Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and perhaps the next president of the United States, is waging war against something he and many others on the right identify as “woke communism.” DeSantis even persuaded the Florida legislature to pass a Victims of Communism law, mandating that every November 7th (the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia), all public schools in the state must devote 45 minutes of instruction to the evils of the red menace.

      • Press Gazette ☛ Local media bosses furious at Tim Davie’s ‘cat that got the cream’ licence fee comments [Ed: While BillBC (BBC) takes bribes from Bill Gates to advance its agenda and cover up his crime... instead of informing people who pay TV Licensing.]

        BBC’s £3.7bn licence fee income rising as commercial sector budgets cut.

      • Press Gazette ☛ Channel 5 agrees second payout in a year over ‘Can’t Pay? We’ll Take it Away!’

        The settlement relates to an episode of the show broadcast in April 2017.

      • TruthOut ☛ Fox News Worried That Fact-Checking Trump’s “Big Lie” Would Hurt Ratings
      • New Yorker ☛ [Joke] Tucker Carlson Fears That Leaked Texts of Him Telling Truth Will Kill His Brand

        “Tucker is in a very dark place right now,” a Fox News colleague said. “To be unmasked as an honest person is literally his worst nightmare.”

      • The Nation ☛ Nasty, Brutish, and Short—Chicago-Style

        Chicago, Ill.—The mayor is female and an accomplished lawyer. She is Black, and gay, with a wife and child. And she is a progressive who beat the establishment when the odds were against her. For Democrats and left-leaning local politicians, what’s not to love?

      • The Nation ☛ After Another Police Killing in Chicago, We Need to Focus on Care, Not Cops

        When police take a life, a public-relations machine whirrs into motion. The goal of the subsequent press releases and media interviews is to cast whoever has been killed by a police bullet, car, or baton in an unsympathetic light. She may have been using drugs. He had an aggressive face. She was experiencing a mental health crisis. He had a gun. He ran. He had been arrested before. He was in a gang. Such well-worn lines serve a purpose: to keep the public from seeing the person and their family as victims deserving of rights, care, or mourning.

      • The Nation ☛ The Supreme Court Can’t Even Agree on a Code of Ethics for Itself

        Reports surfaced last week that the nine justices of the Supreme Court have not been able to agree on a code of ethics for their institution. The Supreme Court is the only court in the nation that operates without a code of ethics, but in 2019 Justice Elena Kagan appeared before Congress and assured representatives that one was in the works. Four years and one Supreme-spouse-supported coup attempt later, the justices still appear unable to agree on the basic ethical standards to which they should be held accountable.

      • The Nation ☛ When Black Women Are Punished for Winning Too Much

        At this year’s Grammy awards, Beyoncé Knowles became the winner of the most Grammys ever, but lost the Album of the Year category to Harry Styles. It was the fourth time she lost that prize to a white artist. As widespread incredulity gave way to outrage, a Variety article that had been published a couple of days before the awards ceremony began resurfacing on Twitter.

      • The Nation ☛ America’s Toxic Romance With the Free Market

        The publication of Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change in 2010 helped transform how science news was reported in the media. The book persuaded reporters worldwide to become more skeptical of industry-sponsored “experts”—particularly on issues like global warming. Oreskes and Conway hope their latest collaboration, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (Bloomsbury), will have a similar impact. I recently caught up with Oreskes, who teaches science history at Harvard, and is also the author of Why Trust Science, Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know About the Ocean, and Plate Tectonics An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth. Long ago, in another life, Oreskes was a geologist. During our conversation, we discussed The Big Myth and how free-market economics became a dominant force in American public policy.1

      • TruthOut ☛ Trump Claims He’s Been Exonerated in Georgia Elections Probe. That’s Not True.
      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Justice Minister Varga refuses to meet EP’s PEGA Committee
      • The Nation ☛ Berlin’s Recent Botched Election Breeds Public Distrust

        Berlin—An unprecedented do-over election here last Sunday, February 12, put the notoriously left-wing German capital on the precipice of conservative government for the first time in two decades. The revote for state and municipal government—ordered by the state’s constitutional court after widespread mishandling of the September 2021 polls—saw support for the Social Democrats (SPD) plummet, while the rival Christian Democrats (CDU) surged more than 10 percent to 28.2 percent to take the clear lead among parties.

      • Press Gazette ☛ Americans’ trust in news continues to decline, says new survey

        Americans’ trust in news continues to fall according to a new survey from the Knight Foundation and Gallup.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Brazil’s New Lula Government Is an Opportunity for a New Trade Model

        Change is afoot in Latin America. The region—battered by COVID, inequality and environmental crisis—is seeing a second wave of progressive governments elected, most significantly with the recent victory of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. This is a unique opportunity for us to build a new trade model that puts people and the planet first. Stopping the harmful EU-Mercosur trade deal is a good place to start.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Brazilian Amazon Leader Urges Lula to Prosecute Bolsonaro for Genocide Against Indigenous Yamomami

        The new Brazilian government recently conducted operations to expel thousands of illegal gold miners from Indigenous Yanomami land in the Amazon rainforest. The miners have caused a humanitarian crisis among the Yanomami who have suffered from severe malnutrition and illness from illegal mining operations that have polluted rivers and destroyed forests. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently accused Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government of committing genocide against the Yanomami people. Bolsonaro, who is expected to return to Brazil from Florida next month, could face genocide charges for his actions. Democracy Now! spoke to Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, a leader and shaman for the Yanomami people, while he was in Washington, D.C., last week. Yanomami says he supports the prosecution of Bolsonaro.

      • FAIR ☛ You’d Scowl, Too, if Media Covered You Like Bernie Sanders

        Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the new chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions—and the New York Times has something to say about it. In a piece by veteran reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg (2/12/23) headlined, “Bernie Sanders Has a New Role. It Could Be His Final Act in Washington,” the paper demonstrates once again (FAIR.org, 2/24/16, 10/1/19, 1/30/20) how the lens through which corporate media view progressive politicians colors their coverage.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Echoing Workers, Sanders Says Train Derailments Stem From Wall Street Greed

        Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday connected the spate of recent train derailments in the United States to Wall Street-backed cost-cutting and other policy decisions that have decimated the rail industry’s workforce and compromised safety for the sake of larger profits.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Silencing Critics of Israel: Biden Pulls Nomination of Human Rights Lawyer For Decrying Apartheid

        Last Friday, the State Department announced the nomination of James Cavallaro, a widely respected human rights attorney, to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. But earlier this week, the State Department withdrew Cavallaro’s nomination after reports emerged that he had described Israel as an apartheid state and had criticized House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s close ties to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Defending the withdrawal of Cavallaro’s nomination, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said, “His statements clearly do not reflect U.S. policy. They are not a reflection of what we believe, and they are inappropriate to say the least.” The decision has sparked outrage within the human rights community. Cavallaro joins us to explain that this move by the Biden administration is particularly troubling because the role he was nominated for does not have any authority over U.S.-Israel relations and is an independent position.

      • The Nation ☛ Trump’s Legal Team Is in Hot Water

        By any reasonable measure, it’s been a bad week in the legal system for former President Donald Trump and his allies. Special prosecutor Jack Smith—who’s heading up inquiries into the run-up to the January 6 insurrection and the former president’s enormous cache of classified documents in Mar-a-Lago—has sent out a new flurry of subpoenas, including one for former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s former personal attorney Evan Corcoran. The Corcoran subpoena seeks to compel the attorney’s testimony under what’s known as the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege, which is not what you’d call a good look for the Trump legal team.

      • The Nation ☛ Katie Porter Is Aiming for Dianne Feinstein’s Seat

        This week, California’s 89-year-old Senator Dianne Feinstein bowed to the inevitable. Facing a growing chorus of critics who detailed her incapacity for the job, and a growing number of young congressional colleagues who were throwing their hat into the ring in an effort to forcibly dislodge her, Feinstein has announced that she will not seek reelection in 2024.

      • The Nation ☛ Nikki Haley’s Anti-Union Fanaticism Is Wild Even for a Republican

        Nikki Haley has tried to distinguish herself as a Republican presidential candidate by announcing, “We won’t win the fight for the 21st Century if we keep trusting politicians from the 20th Century.”

      • American Oversight ☛ News Roundup: Deliberate Lies
      • Digital Music News ☛ ARIA Fires Back Against TikTok’s Song Restrictions in Australia: ‘An Attempt to Downplay the Significance of Music’

        Earlier this month, amid continued licensing talks between the major labels and TikTok, it came to light that the video-sharing app had started limiting the music that certain users can feature in their clips. Now, rightsholders including the Big Three are pushing back against the “test.”

      • Digital Music News ☛ Top Justice Department Official Advises Against Using TikTok: ‘We Need to Be Very Concerned’

        Following a Chinese spy balloon’s much-publicized entry into U.S. airspace – and amid continued talks of a possible TikTok ban in the U.S. – a top Justice Department official is now advising Americans against using the app. Since arriving on the scene,

      • American Oversight ☛ In the Documents: Emails Between Pennsylvania’s Butler County Commissioners and Prominent Election Denial Group
      • Digital Music News ☛ YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Announces She’s Stepping Down

        YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that she’s stepping down from her position. YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan, will take the lead as the Senior Vice President and new head of YouTube.

      • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong 47: Court told of division among election hopefuls, as democrat Au Nok-hin testifies against peers

        The second week of a landmark national security trial relating to 47 Hong Kong pro-democracy figures saw a former legislator testifying against his co-defendants. Meanwhile, three handpicked judges heard that democrats were divided over candidate selection methods in the unofficial primary polls.

      • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Corruption scandal deals new blow to Xi’s Chinese football dream
      • The Gray Zone ☛ How Nick Fuentes dashed Joe Kent’s congressional hopes, delighting Democrats
      • FAIR ☛ NYT Trans Letter a Fight for Media Democracy

        In a letter to New York Times leadership (2/15/23), more than 180 of the paper’s contributors (later swelling to more than 1,000) raised “serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non⁠-⁠binary and gender nonconforming people.” What started as a conversation about a paper’s coverage exploded into a battle between media workers who see a problem at one of the most powerful media outlets on earth, and a media management that simply won’t listen.

      • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong gov’t deregisters pro-democracy union that called for protest ahead of security law

        A Hong Kong pro-democracy union that called for a protest ahead of the national security law’s enactment has been dissolved by the government. The Hong Kong White Collar (Administration and Clerical) Connect Union (HKWCCU) announced its deregistration on Thursday.

      • Bruce Schneier ☛ Defending against AI Lobbyists

        When is it time to start worrying about artificial intelligence interfering in our democracy? Maybe when an AI writes a letter to The New York Times opposing the regulation of its own technology.

        That happened last month. And because the letter was responding to an essay we wrote, we’re starting to get worried. And while the technology can be regulated, the real solution lies in recognizing that the problem is human actors—and those we can do something about.

      • Craig Murray ☛ Murder, Lies and State Conspiracy

        Donald John Morrison was the last man to speak to Willie McRae, unless his murderer talked. He invited me warmly into his neat Benbecula home, where I was visiting with my friend, his cousin Donnie.

      • The Hill ☛ Musk shuts down two India Twitter offices: report

        The social media company closed its offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, leaving only one remaining office in Bengaluru, Bloomberg reported. Twitter cut more than 90 percent of its Indian workforce late last year.

      • Outlook India ☛ After Mass Layoffs At Twitter, Elon Musk Shuts Two Of Three Twitter India Offices: Report

        According to a Bloomberg report, Elon Musk has shut these Twitter India offices and asked the staff to work from home in an effort to cut costs. Since only two of the three offices have been shut, the report mentions that Twitter’s office in New Delhi and Mumbai have been closed but the one in Bengaluru (Bangalore) is still open. The latter also houses most engineers.

      • India Times ☛ TikTok planning 2 more data centers in Europe amid data security concerns

        The short video-sharing app, owned by China’s ByteDance, aims to expand its European data storage, TikTok’s general manager for operations in Europe Rich Waterworth said in a blog post.

        “We are at an advanced stage of finalising a plan for a second data centre in Ireland with a third party service provider, in addition to the site announced last year,” he said.

      • India Times ☛ VMware, Broadcom extend merger close deadline by three months

        Britain’s competition regulator in January said it had started the first phase of an investigation into the acquisition, while EU antitrust regulators in February have resumed their investigation and will decide by June 7 whether to clear or block the deal.

        A Broadcom spokesperson said it was common for acquisitions of this size to extend their deal deadline.

      • Deutsche Welle ☛ Chinese tech billionaire Bao Fan goes missing: company

        Bao Fan, the chairman and chief executive of China Renaissance investment bank, has gone missing, the firm said Friday.

        “The company has been unable to contact Mr. Bao,” China Renaissance said in an announcement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, without offering further details.

      • Dawn Media ☛ Chinese tech billionaire goes missing: company

        The Chinese billionaire chairman of investment bank China Renaissance has gone missing, the firm said, as shares in the company plunged in Hong Kong on Friday.

        Bao Fan, who is also executive director of the bank, is a major figure in the Chinese tech industry and has played a key role in the emergence of various domestic [Internet] startups.

      • India ☛ Google India hands over pink slips to over 400 employees

        Employees, who survived the recent layoffs at Google, are worried and have demanded assurances that their jobs are not next to be axed by the company during a recent all-hands meeting with top bosses.

        Denying that the layoffs were done “randomly”, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai had said earlier that he is “deeply sorry” for reducing the workforce.

      • Outlook India ☛ Google India Lays Off 453 Employees Across Departments: Report

        Google India layoffs come just a few weeks after the parent company Alphabet Inc. announced that it would sack close to 12,000 employees or almost 6 per cent of its total staff. While back then the chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai did not exactly mention the names of departments that could see layoffs, he did mention that the company was also focussing more on artificial intelligence (AI).

      • Quartz ☛ Google has laid off 453 staff in India and Twitter has shut down two offices

        Google has reportedly laid off 453 employees in India as part of its global move to reduce its headcount by 12,000. The move came late yesterday (Feb. 16) night. CEO Sundar Pichai had mailed employees taking “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” The Hindu reported today citing sources.

      • TheHinduBusinessLine ☛ Tech layoffs. Google India sacks 453 people from various operations

        Sources told businessline that a mail was sent out by Sanjay Gupta, Country Head and Vice President, Google India to the affected employees. Email sent with queries seeking comments from Google India did not elicit any reply.

        Last month, Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google, announced the sack of 12,000 employees or 6 per cent of its total headcount globally.

      • The Nation ☛ Turkey

        NClick on the image above for a list of charitable and humanitarian organizations that are aiding the relief efforts in Syria and Turkey. (Steve Brodner)

      • New Yorker ☛ Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House?

        Trump’s performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • AccessNow ☛ #KeepItOn in Nigeria: social media, internet must stay connected during elections

        Authorities in Nigeria must not shut down social media or in any way interfere with internet access throughout the upcoming elections.

      • AccessNow ☛ Open letter: the government of Nigeria must keep the internet and social media platforms open and secure during the 2023 general elections and beyond

        Through an open letter, the #KeepItOn coalition calls on authorities in Nigeria to keep the internet and social media platforms open during the elections.

      • ACLU ☛ Author George Johnson on Writing Black, Queer — and Banned — Stories

        Over the past two years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of books being banned or challenged in school districts across the country. The majority of the stories that are being censored contain LGBTQ storylines and protagonists of color, including All Boys Aren’t Blue, a story about growing up Black and queer in New Jersey and Virginia and one of the top five most banned books in the country. The author, George Johnson, joined At Liberty this week to talk with us about what makes Black queer voices so threatening, the unique power of books, and their resolve to remain true to their story despite the attacks.

        You’ve said in prior interviews that you always knew your book was likely to be banned. Why did you think that?

      • NCAC ☛ Florida prisons ban “The Militant”

        The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has contacted the Florida Department of Corrections to express its concern regarding reports that The Militant was removed from several prisons due to the ideas expressed in the newspaper.

      • The Economist ☛ After silencing critics at home, Narendra Modi goes after foreign media

        The raid follows the BBC’s airing last month (only outside India) of a two-part documentary, “India: the Modi Question”. It charts Mr Modi’s career-long efforts to demonise India’s 200m-odd Muslims. It examines above all the prime minister’s role in an outbreak of sectarian violence in 2002 in Gujarat, during his time as chief minister of the state, in which over 1,000 died, most of them Muslims. This episode, in which dozens of Muslim women and girls were raped and burned alive by well-co-ordinated Hindu mobs, has long dogged the chest-puffing Hindu nationalist leader. The bbc documentary cites an unpublished report by the British government on the violence. It describes an organised campaign of ethnic-cleansing against Muslims. It holds Mr Modi “directly responsible” for a “climate of impunity” that enabled the violence.

      • VOA News ☛ Trial Begins for Belarusian Blogger Grabbed Off Diverted Flight

        One of Nexta’s founders, Stsiapan Putsila, and a site administrator, Yan Rudzik — both of whom no longer live in Belarus — are being in tried in absentia.

        The Nexta channel, which ran via a messaging app, gained popularity as a way to share news and information in 2020 during the contested reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko and the mass protests that followed.

      • Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ Iran’s Orwellian Ploy to Outlaw Citizen Journalism and Online Speech

        Spooked by the success of citizen journalists in revealing the magnitude of the state-sponsored crackdown on protests and the critical role of popular public figures in mobilizing grassroots activists, Iran’s parliament is pursuing two pieces of legislation that boil down to a government fiat that Iranians shouldn’t have public opinions and express them freely.

        As part of the first legislation, which is being euphemistically promoted as a “bill to criminalize the publication of news contradicting citizenship rights,” the judicial commission of Iran’s Majlis, or parliament, is working to codify into law a ban on publishing—both by individuals and media outlets—any news that may have “detrimental societal consequences.”

      • Dawn Media ☛ Why India’s crackdown on BBC has left foreign correspondents anxious

        Indeed, while the income tax surveys on the British public broadcaster perhaps represent an unprecedented escalation, foreign correspondents say “hostility”, more often than not, is the Indian authorities’ default mode of engagement with them.

        Yet, how things unfolded after the raid — a full-throttle public attack on the BBC by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and almost no word of condemnation from back home — has left many of them stunned.

        “A lot of governments go after the media, they pinch and poke, but in a way that there’s deniability,” said a journalist working with a western daily, who requested anonymity, like all other journalists interviewed for this article. “But yesterday, there was not even a pretense.”

      • The North Lines IN ☛ IT survey at BBC offices clocks over 55 hours

        The Supreme Court last week dismissed a plea seeking the imposition of a complete ban on the BBC in India in the wake of the controversial documentary, terming the petition “entirely misconceived” and “absolutely meritless”. Another set of petitions challenging the government’s decision to block the documentary’s access on social media platforms will be heard in April. On January 21, the government had issued directions to block multiple YouTube videos and Twitter posts sharing links to the documentary.

      • El País ☛ Ortega strips another 94 Nicaraguans of their nationality, including writers Sergio Ramirez and Gioconda Belli

        Daniel Ortega’s regime stripped another 94 people of their Nicaraguan nationality on Wednesday. Among those affected are exiled writers Sergio Ramírez, winner of the Cervantes Prize, and Gioconda Belli; Nicaraguan journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro; writer and feminist Sofía Montenegro; Bishop Silvio Báez, one of the most critical voices from the Church; and activist Vilma Núñez, who is the president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CNDH). The decision was notified by the president of the Court of Appeals of Managua, Ernesto Rodriguez. According to the ruling, the affected persons are charged with “treason” and are considered “fugitives.” In addition to revoking their Nicaraguan nationality, the justice system – which is under Ortega’s control – ordered all properties owned by the affected persons to be seized. Journalist Wilfredo Miranda, a contributor to EL PAÍS, is also one of the 94 people who have been stripped of their nationality.

      • Techdirt ☛ Some Guy Thinks A Legal Doc Website’s Failure To Report On His Settlement Is Somehow Defamatory

        Lots of people have really strange ideas about what defamation entails. Far too many people believe defamation occurs anytime their feelings are hurt or they aren’t portrayed in the best light possible.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • RFA ☛ Voice of Democracy seeks way to restore broadcast license

        Hun Sen says the independent media outlet won’t be revived five months from election

      • CPJ ☛ Iran’s seizure of detained journalists’ devices raises fears of fresh arrests, convictions

        Five months after the death of a young woman in morality police custody sparked widespread protests, Iranian authorities are charging journalists who covered the uprising with anti-state crimes. In many of these cases, authorities have powerful tools at their disposal to aid in convictions: journalists’ phones and laptops. CPJ counted at least 95 journalists arrested since the start of the protests. More than half — at least 48 — had their devices seized, according to news accounts and interviews with sources inside the country.

        CPJ senior researcher Yeganeh Rezaian knows firsthand what happens when Iranian officials gain access to personal devices. In 2014, Iranian authorities arrested Yeganeh and her husband, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, and seized their iPhones and laptops. Forensic analysis conducted later showed that the Rezaians’ computer files were copied using Disk Drill, a kind of file recovery software for phones and computers developed in the U.S. and widely available online.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Techdirt ☛ Next Week, The Supreme Court Could Destroy Everything Good About The Internet

        Next week, the Supreme Court will hold the oral arguments in the Gonzalez and Taamneh cases. Gonzalez is the main show (and I’m somewhat surprised they didn’t have the hearings on the same day). There were dozens upon dozens of amicus briefs filed in the case, including one by us. There have been lots of articles this week talking about the case, and most of them are… not great. But I did want to present three very useful summaries — one video, two written — if you’d like to understand just what’s at stake here.

      • Internet Freedom Foundation ☛ Digital Transparency: A Right to Information Report for January 2023

        For the month of January 2022, IFF has filed 7 Right to Information (“RTI”) applications and 02 First Appeals. We received 5 responses including 1 from the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare and 4 from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology.

      • Internet Freedom Foundation ☛ Read our public brief on the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022

        Our brief summarises the issues with the draft and tries to provide better insight into how they may be resolved.

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Unified Patents ☛ $2,000 for Lower48 IP data arrangement patent prior art

          A new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, was added seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 11,100,070, owned and asserted by Lower48 IP, LLC. The ‘070 patent generally relates to system for manipulating hierarchical sets of data. The patent has been asserted against Shopify.

          The contest will expire on May 1, 2023. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.

        • Breaking News: UPC Countdown Begins [Ed: Misleading headline. UK cannot ratify.]
        • UPC Code of Conduct for representatives [Ed: UPC is an overt violation of the law; who are they to talk about conduct? They are criminals.]
        • The Unitary Patent is to become a reality [Ed: Nope, the UK cannot ratify it. So it remains illegal.]

          Germany has deposited its instrument of UPCA ratification.

        • EFF ☛ Two Ways The U.S. Patent Office Could Do Better At Examination

          Fees from patent applicants pay about 85 percent of the budget of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the office very much serves those “customers” who are seeking patents—not the public. 

          In sum, there’s a very long way to go before the patent examination process becomes fair to the public. However, there are a few ways the process could be changed that we believe would deliver outsized results. That’s why when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) asked for public feedback on how to improve the examination process, we were glad for the opportunity to weigh in with our comments. 

          The America Invents Act, passed in 2012, brought important changes to the patent system, including a review process on granted patents called inter partes review, or IPR. While the IPR process isn’t perfect, and needs to be strengthened, it’s been a big success in getting some of the worst patents out of the system, more cheaply and effectively than a court case. 

        • Scheerpost ☛ Sanders Excoriates ‘Unprecedented’ Greed of Big Pharma During Pandemic

          The senator asked if it is “morally acceptable that tens of thousands of people die each year in this country because they cannot afford the medicine their doctors prescribe, while at the same time, the drug companies make billions of dollars in profits.”

        • An Up and Down Year at the USPTO

          From the confirmation of Kathi Vidal as Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to the Western District of Texas’s standing order attempting to break up Judge Alan Albright’s monopoly on patent lawsuits…

      • Trademarks

      • Copyrights

        • Digital Music News ☛ Layoffs Hit Motown Records Amidst Capitol Music Group Restructuring

          Layoffs begin at Motown Records as the label changes course to return to the fold of Capitol Music Group. Motown Records has had a rough year. After the exit of CEO and chairwoman Ethiopia Habtemariam in November, the label is now planning restructuring efforts under Capitol Music Group.

        • Digital Music News ☛ Over One-Third of U.S. Music Listeners Don’t Pay for a Streaming Service, Study Finds

          Despite continued subscribership growth for Spotify, Apple, and others, a little over one-third of U.S.-based music listeners opted not to pay for streaming during 2021 and 2022, according to a newly released report.

        • Creative Commons ☛ Fair Use: Training Generative AI

          Perhaps unsurprisingly to anyone who has been paying attention to the conversation around generative AI, the past year also saw the first lawsuits challenging the legality of these tools. First, in November, a group of programmers sued Github and OpenAI over the code generation tool, Github Copilot, alleging (among other things) that the tool improperly removes copyright management information from the code in its training data, in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and reproduces code in its training data without following license agreement stipulations like attributing the code to its original author. Then, in January, a group of artists (represented by the same attorneys as in the Github lawsuit) sued Stability AI and Midjourney over their text-to-image art generation tools. In this second lawsuit, the artist-plaintiffs made several claims, all of which deserve discussion. In this blog post, I will address one of those claims: That using the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works (and as many as 5 billion other works) to train Stable Diffusion and Midjourney constitutes copyright infringement. As Creative Commons has argued elsewhere, and others agree, I believe that this type of use should be protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine. In this blog post I will discuss what fair use is, what purpose it serves, and why I believe that using copyrighted works to train generative AI models should be permitted under this law. I will address the other claims in both the Github and Stable Diffusion lawsuits in subsequent blog posts.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Filmmakers Request Identities of Reddit Users to Aid Piracy Lawsuit

          Filmmakers have obtained a subpoena to reveal the identities of Redditors who commented on piracy-related topics. The comments can provide relevant evidence in support of a repeat infringer lawsuit against ISP RCN, the companies argue. Reddit disagrees and frames the effort as a fishing expedition that is at odds with the right to anonymous speech.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Sci-Hub Founder’s High Court Creativity Fails to Dismiss Publishers’ Lawsuit

          In late 2020, major academic publishers Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, filed an application to have Sci-Hub blocked by India’s ISPs. Rightsholders targeting conventional pirate sites have obtained similar injunctions within days, but Sci-Hub’s founder is no ordinary opponent. While the High Court of Delhi has just rejected an attempt to have the case dismissed, a creative legal strategy shows that Alexandra Elbakyan is no pushover.

        • Techdirt ☛ One City Builder Game’s Tale Shows Just How Wide Open The DMCA Process Is For Abuse

          We’ve had no shortage of posts at Techdirt on the problems of fraud and abuse in the current DMCA takedown process. The reason for that is pretty obvious: the whole thing is so wide open to this kind of abuse that it’s actually sort of a wonder that it doesn’t suffer from it even more frequently than it already does. We’ve seen individuals use it try to silence online criticism. We’ve seen it used by media companies to try to silence speech they don’t like.

    • Gemini* and Gopher

      • Personal

        • Happy New Year

          Today I was looking at my system logs and happened to notice that I didn’t rotate my gemlog this year. A while ago I made it so the index file only shows entries from the current year in order to prevent the index from becoming too long. This makes sense if post to my gemlog regularly, but I was actually a bit surprised to see that I hadn’t written ANYTHING in 2023. Ouch!

          This is combined with the fact that I also haven’t recorded a gemcast in months. Of course, you can sympathize with this because I am swamped at work and at home, teaching full time and then taking care of my little ones at home, who are in need of constant attention.

        • CDEIKTW Wordo: BEAUS

      • Politics

        • Evangelicals & Climate Change

          The quote “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” is in the “after the flood” chapter, in the context of the Lord promising not to wreck the world on us again. But this time it’s us (less us as individuals, and more our systems such as fossil economics and wedge politics) that are driving these calamities. Contrary to some common “lol humans can’t touch this” memes in the evangelical community there is (as correctly explained in the video) scriptural support for how we can royally bork up this blue marble garden if we don’t sober up from this bread of idleness.

      • Technical

        • smolver development log, part 9 – client certificates

          This is the ninth in a planned series of posts (well, tenth if you count the announcement) where I’ll share my experience writing smolver, my Gemini server software, written in Swift.

        • New project: “GeschTAp” – the story telling telephone.

          A couple of years ago I tried to modify an old telephone from the 1980th and
          include an MP3 player that can be controlled by the telephone keys and output
          audio over the receiver. I used an old MP3 player but controlling the buttons
          of the player with the telephone keys (microcontroller in between) was very
          complicated. Finally, I abandoned this project.

          Nowadays, you have easier options. I found the DFPlayer Mini module which is
          essentially a media player that can play sound files from a SD card and can be
          controlled via IO ports.

        • Re: Feeds are a dark pattern

          That is not an issue with feeds. It’s an issue with feed viewers.

          OK, I am kinda sorta breaking my vow to never argue semantics, since this is semantics. dzwdz is not disputing the facts: that a viewer that shows feeds sorted in other ways, like grids or trees can be great. I use one that shows a 2d grid where each feed is a line and each post is a cell.

          Not that I, a veritable firehose of a poster, support the idea that posts from frequent posters are less valuable. Even so, having some sort of organization beyond just a 1-dimensional line is a good idea. You wouldn’t sort a bookshelf by cutting out all the pages, sorting the pages by when the book was written regardless of what book it’s from, and putting that in a huge stack.

        • Lightweight data monitoring using rrdtool

          I like my servers to run the least code possible, and the least services running in general, this ease maintenance and let room for other thing to run. I recently wrote about monitoring software to gather metrics and render them, but they are all overkill if you just want to keep track of a single value over time, and graph it for visualization.

        • Introduction to nftables on Linux

          Linux kernel has an integrated firewall named netfilter, but you manipulate it through command lines such as the good old iptables, or nftables which will eventually superseed iptables.

          Today, I’ll share my experience in using nftables to manage my Linux home router, and my workstation.

          I won’t explain much in this blog post because I just want to introduce nftables and show what it looks like, and how to get started.

        • Programming

          • [Cheatsheet] Fossil version control system

            Fossil is a DVCS (decentralized version control software), an alternative to programs such as darcs, mercurial or git. It’s developed by the same people doing sqlite and rely on sqlite internally.

          • Programming Wordle

            Inspired by Ravi’s program (see my last phlog), I decided to give
            programming Wordle a try. To make it “more fun”, I’m coding in Swift
            on my Mac. The version I’m writing is just for the command line, but
            if I get comfortable with Swift, I may just try to implement it as a
            GUI.

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

IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 17, 2023

Posted in IRC Logs at 2:11 am by Needs Sunlight

Also available via the Gemini protocol at:

Over HTTP:

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#techrights log as HTML5

#boycottnovell log as HTML5

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#boycottnovell-social log as HTML5

#techbytes log as HTML5

text logs

text logs

#techrights log as text

#boycottnovell log as text

text logs

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#boycottnovell-social log as text

#techbytes log as text

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CID Description Object type
 QmS16SyDF7DsCQgoyhjuVeYsec6idvP5HdsibZjSdmzWzX IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmWA3aY8EywhBzCJPtBeRaEST7MueNA1tLQUQTwVv6BjLf IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmTsWqzkhArfd5ZpQ9x6BayDs4entYGwna4ZtALiykbebR IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
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 QmTiZ2TDKzjaid9dJkjkiWsnvbtLgs5meGH7hi5hpcKct5 IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmTF4wL4CMoackyWBbfi16qn8WN8F6otT1bpThVFViGXym IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmVyUKUxvW3ho4qkFJf7rKiktwK7U6xCZxL3JhFf5Z4ncZ IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmXs3gFv2aSnqL2879RUaKv4q9LWtjVUKmhoLMTvH9bM36 IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmU7q1g4tDe8dwqGCKTeT8PWJp4bFNETCDHPfdCjpLQZjo IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs

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