03.31.23

Linus Tech (Illiteracy) Tips, LTT, Buys Phoronix Media

Posted in GNU/Linux, Humour, Kernel, Microsoft at 8:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Linus I gotchu fam: Linus Tech (Illiteracy) Tips and PTS

Summary: Phoronix Media is being acquired by a larger company; the site will not change though

Linus Gabriel Sebastian, founder of Linus Tech Tips (LTT), has just announced the transfer of Phoronix Media (best known for Phoronix.com and PTS) to his company based in Canada.

“Readers of the site won’t be affected. They can still get a spoonful of Microsoft chaff along with plenty of (other) ads.”“Phoronix.com and PTS are a strategic addition to our growing portfolio,” remarked Yvonne Ho, who will oversee the operations to ensure the benchmarks always include ClearLinux and articles habitually include a Microsoft distro that only Microsoft uses.

Michael Larabel could not be reached for comment. He has been busy this past month trying to figure out new and innovative ways to block all the ad blockers. Mr. Sebastian insists that evading ads is nothing short of piracy.

Readers of the site won’t be affected. They can still get a spoonful of Microsoft chaff along with plenty of (other) ads. █

Phoronix on Microsoft

Decided to Quit Debian and Use WSL Instead (Best of Both Worlds)

Posted in Debian, Humour, Microsoft at 8:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Hayden Barnes: the only thing Debian needs is a decent back door

Summary: Today starts a journey to a “better” experience, which lets Microsoft audit the kernel and leverage telemetry to improve my Debian experience

THIS is a hard post to write. Today, April 1, I’m beginning my migration. I will report on it later today, explaining how it all went along. Maybe I’ll change my mind.

“Thankfully I already have some Microsoft MVPs like Hayden Barnes helping my migration.”Having used GNU/Linux since my teenage years I’ve decided that it’s just too boring. I’ve not rebooted Debian since January when I first installed it (only the post-install reboot) and I am beginning to wonder if there’s a bootkit somewhere inside my system. Thank God, Microsoft made “secure” boot to do this for me. As it turns out, Debian 11 is not good anymore. Vista 11 has WSL, which reinvents Cygwin, dating back to 1995. So why on Earth use only GNU/Linux? Best of both worlds, right? Anything else would be an act of bigotry and intolerance.

Thankfully I already have some Microsoft MVPs like Hayden Barnes helping my migration. They kept coming to our IRC network for years, advocating WSL. I give up! They have a point! █

Microsoft Has Laid Off Lennart Poettering and Hired Elon Musk

Posted in Humour, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat at 7:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Microsoft hires Elon Musk to oversee layoffs, algorithm decides to fire Poettering

Got Hollerith tabulating machine; willing to travel

Summary: Poettering gets rehired by IBM; IBM and Microsoft announce merger, putting Poettering back into his former position

MICROSOFT is going through some truly tough times. There are layoffs every week, the company is unable to hide it by compelling staff to sign NDAs (the press finds out eventually), and tens of thousands of puff pieces about a chaffbot cannot distract the public entirely… from the real crisis.

“As a result, the first person to go is Lennart Poettering, who quietly defected from IBM to Microsoft only months ago.”Microsoft has just announced, in its Friday shareholders meeting, that it has convinced Elon Musk to join Microsoft’s Board of Directors and spend some time carrying out duties at Microsoft, at least at a part-time capacity, focusing on “AI”.

“Musk has demonstrated solid track record running companies that suffer deep losses,” the company said in its meeting minutes, “not only convincing a lot of staff to leave voluntarily but also laying off a significant proportion without paying severance.”

“IBM has meanwhile signalled that it is willing to rehire Mr. Poettering, but discussions are still ongoing about the IBM/Microsoft merger, which dates back to 2011.”An anonymous source told us that OpenAI has unveiled a new algorithm for HR. As a result, the first person to go is Lennart Poettering, who quietly defected from IBM to Microsoft only months ago. Poettering insists that it was not a defection, it was just a matter of wearing the correct badge after more than a decade of work, which some deemed sabotage.

IBM has meanwhile signalled that it is willing to rehire Mr. Poettering, but discussions are still ongoing about the IBM/Microsoft merger, which dates back to 2011. The discussions are already more than a decade old and Bill Gates is losing interest in them. █

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

Posted in News Roundup at 11:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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

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

Posted in News Roundup at 7:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • [Repeat/important] Free Desktop ☛ 2023 X.Org Board of Directors Elections timeline extended, request for nominations

        Nominees shall be required to be current members of the X.Org Foundation, and submit a personal statement of up to 200 words that will be provided to prospective voters. The collected statements, along with the statement of contribution to the X.Org Foundation in the member’s account page on http://members.x.org, will be made available to all voters to help them make their voting decisions.

        Nominations, membership applications or renewals and completed personal statements must be received no later than 23:59 UTC on April 2nd, 2023

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Ansible Semaphore on Debian 11

        Ansible Semaphore is an open-source web UI for Ansible playbooks. It enables the deployment using Ansible automation via a web browser. In this tutorial, you will install the Ansible Semaphore on a Debian 11 server.

      • How to update NodeJS and NPM to their latest versions?

        Node.js and NPM (Node Package Manager) both are popular and widely used tools among the developer’s community. On one side where nodejs is a JavaScript run-time environment, NPM is its package manager to install various libraries and packages for it, easily.

      • TecAdmin ☛ Iptables: Common Firewall Rules and Commands

        Iptables is a powerful firewall utility that is used to secure Linux systems from unauthorized network traffic. It is a command-line tool that provides a flexible and customizable way to configure and manage firewall rules. In this article, we will cover the essentials of Iptables, including some of the most common firewall rules and commands.

      • TecAdmin ☛ Preventing SQL injection attacks with prepared statements in MySQL

        SQL injection attacks are one of the most common security threats that web applications face today. These attacks occur when malicious actors use specially crafted input to manipulate database queries and gain unauthorized access to sensitive data.

      • ChartCSS ☛ Charts.css

        The web uses HTML for structure, CSS for styling and JS for functionality [sic]. When displaying data the same rules apply – we should use HTML to structure the data, and CSS to style the structural HTML elements.

        With a few simple CSS classes applied on the container element you can turn your entire table of data into a visually appealing chart. The framework is developer-friendly making it easy to customize every element with simple CSS selectors.

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • David Revoy ☛ Krita courses at Activdesign

          I gave courses for Activdesign, a French CG school teaching design, video-game and web-dev. It’s a school using Free/Libre software, that’s so cool!. That’s also why I accepted to teach for them.

          [...]

          I taught remotely from my desk at home with my mic and webcam. Because even if the school is located in France, it was too far away from my home to go weekly over there. To give you and idea, it’s easily located at more than a 6h train distance.

          The school used their own Jitsi server for the visio, and Jitsi rooms were integrated around a larger central hub managed by Mattermost. Thanks to a cool setup proposed by the school, I was able to launch a Jitsi meeting directly from Mattermost chat with a button. Everything was smooth, I was impressed how easy it was for teachers and students to use that. Bravo. The Jitsi room was always ready 5 minutes before the course. I had a webcam view on the classroom, but it was also possible for the students to attends from their home (or anywhere with Internet).

          I recorded the sessions with OBS also for offering a possibility to get a replay in case someone miss a course. The school gave me a sFTP access to upload the courses. I’m sure I’ll have requests here on the blog to ask me to share these files or upload the replays: but I don’t want that. I don’t want the raw recordings of the session I made to go public even if ActivDesign gave me authorisation to do it. It’s mainly because it’s very long (15h! 2.7GiB) and it’s in French.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Stacey on IoT ☛ The Homey bridge is a simple (but sweet) home hub [Ed: What exactly makes a hub "smart"?]

        This week, customers in the U.S. can spend $69 for the Homey Bridge, a smart home hub designed and sold in Europe, and now available for the first time here in the U.S.

        [...]

        The Homey Bridge competes with DIY hubs from SmartThings/Aeotec, Hubitat, Aqara and more. But in a week of testing, I found several things that make it a good option, thanks to its European origins and the addition of IR. It’s also worth noting that this particular product is the entry-level Homey device, and most users will end up paying a $2.99 per month subscription when they add it to their home. More on that in a bit.

      • Stacey on IoT ☛ Podcast: What the heck is an IoT hyperscaler? [Ed: More surveillance basically]

        With this week’s show I feel like we’re singing the same old tune. Philips Hue maker Signify is delaying its implementation of Matter while it waits for others to implement features it needs.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Raspberry Pi ☛ Raspberry Pi Pico Game Boy Interceptor | The MagPi #128

        The RP2040 microcontroller-based Game Boy Interceptor came about when just such a tournament was being planned, “and, of course, they wanted to stream the contestants’ gameplay,” relates fellow Tetris fan Sebastian Staacks. “Streaming would not be a problem with a modified Game Boy or a modern Game Boy clone such as the Analogue Pocket,” says Sebastian, “but it would mean contestants would be forced to use the same platform in order to compete.” This change just wouldn’t fly: “the contestants always played their favourite Game Boy model and, in a contest, would want to use the model on which they trained their muscle memory.”

      • Hackaday ☛ Could 1080p Video Output From The RP2040 Be Possible?

        Modern microcontrollers often have specs comparable with or exceeding early gaming consoles. However, where they tend to fall short is in the video department, due to their lack of dedicated graphics hardware. With some nifty coding, though, great things can be achieved  — as demonstrated by [TEC_IST]’s project that gets the RP2040 outputting 1080p video over HDMI.

      • Hackaday ☛ Foldable PCB Becomes Tiny Rover

        Typically, when you’re putting electronics in a robot, you install the various controller PCBs into the robot’s chassis. But what if the PCB itself was the chassis? [Carl Bugeja’s] latest design explores just that idea.

      • Stargirl Flowers ☛ A reply to Josef Průša

        Yesterday, Prusa Research announced their latest 3D printer: the Original Prusa MK4, a fantastic follow-up to the award winning MK3 which is a favorite among hobbyists and professionals alike. At the same time, founder Josef Průša shared a post lamenting the state of open source hardware in 2023. Josef shares his experience over the last ten years with open hardware and his frustrations around the lack of reciprocity among fellow 3D printer manufacturers. At the end, Josef shares that he’s chosen not to open source the electronics for the MK4 yet1 and calls for the establishment and adoption of a new, highly restrictive license.

        Josef adds that he wants to have a conversation, so this post is my reply. I deeply respect Josef, his company, and all of the work they’ve done within the open source community, but I disagree with him on this matter. The rest of the post is opinion and it’s given from someone with a different perspective- I fully expect many people to disagree with both me and Josef! I welcome feedback, but please treat me, Josef, and each other with respect. For what it’s worth, I own a Prusa MINI+ and I plan on buying the MK4 when kits are available.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • Dylan Paulus ☛ Postgres: The Graph Database You Didn’t Know You Had

        PostgreSQL (Postgres), is a powerful relational database that can store a wide range of data types and data structures. When it comes to storing graph data structures we might reach for a database marketed for that use case like Neo4J or Dgraph. Hold your horses! While Postgres is not generally thought of when working with graph data structures, it is perfectly capable to store and query graph data efficiently.

    • Education

      • Rlang ☛ Introduction to Deep Learning with R workshop

        Description: The purpose of this workshop is to offer an introductory understanding of deep learning, regardless of your prior experience. It is important to note that this workshop is tailored to those who are absolute beginners in the field. We therefore begin with few necessary fundamental concepts, after which we cover the basics of deep learning, including topics such as what is actually being learned in deep learning, what makes it “deep,” and why it is such a popular field. We will also cover how you can estimate deep learning models in R using the neuralnet package. You should attend this workshop if you heard about deep learning and would like to know more about it.

    • Programming/Development

      • TecAdmin ☛ How to Prevent SQL-injection in PHP using Prepared Statements

        SQL injection is a common form of attack that targets web applications that use SQL databases. In this type of attack, attackers exploit vulnerabilities in the application code to inject malicious SQL statements that can compromise the database and potentially expose sensitive information.

      • TecAdmin ☛ How to Validate Email Addresses in Python (Using Regular Expressions)

        Validating email addresses is a crucial step in ensuring that your applications accept only correctly formatted email addresses. A well-formed email address not only ensures proper communication but also helps prevent spam and security risks.

  • Leftovers

    • Hackaday ☛ Upgraded Plasma Thruster Is Smaller, More Powerful

      When [Jay Bowles] demoed his first-generation ion thruster on Plasma Channel, the resulting video picked up millions of views and got hobbyists and professionals alike talking. While ionic lifters are nothing new, this robust multi-stage thruster looked (and sounded) more like a miniature jet engine than anything that had come before it. Optimizations would need to be made if there was even a chance to put the high-voltage powerplant to use, but [Jay] was clearly onto something.

    • CyberRisk Alliance LLC ☛ Chinese hackers tied to novel Linux malware

      “The capabilities offered by Mlofe are relatively simple, but may enable adversaries to conduct their attacks under the radar. These implants were not widely seen, showing that the attackers are likely limiting its usage to high value targets,” said Exatrack.

    • Scheerpost ☛ Patrick Lawrence: French Streets and American Sofas

      You might be Brazilian or Malian or Singaporean, it is remarkable the world over to watch the French explode into the streets of dozens of cities and towns to protest the imperial president residing in Élysée Palace.

    • Science

      • SparkFun Electronics ☛ “Women’s Work” and the Hidden History of Computer Science and Engineering

        For decades, the history of computer science and engineering has largely been told as a story of male geniuses and their groundbreaking innovations. Names like Alan Turing, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs have become synonymous with the field, while the contributions of women have often been overlooked or outright ignored. However, the reality is that women have played a significant role in the development of computer technology since its earliest days.

        From pioneering storing data in binary patterns through weaving, to incredible contributions to the Apollo Moon Missions, women and the work traditionally done by them have been at the forefront of many of the field’s most important breakthroughs. Yet their stories remain largely untold, a hidden history that deserves to be recognized and celebrated.

      • Hackaday ☛ Huygens’ Telescopes Weren’t Very Good, Now We Think We Know Why

        [Christiaan Huygens] was a pretty decent mathematician and scientist by the standards of the 17th century. However, the telescopes he built were considered to be relatively poor in quality for the period. Now, as reported by Science News, we may know why. The well-known Huygens may have needed corrective glasses all along.

      • Science Alert ☛ This Surprisingly Simple Shape Solves a Longstanding Mathematical Problem

        Is that it?

      • Science Alert ☛ A Look at The Proton’s Inner Structure Shows How Its Mass Isn’t The Same as Its Size

        Where do you draw the line?

    • Education

    • Hardware

      • Hackaday ☛ Cold War Military Telephones Now Usable Thanks To DIY Switch Build

        The TA-1042 is the most badass looking telephone you’ll ever see. It’s a digital military telephone from the 1980s, but sadly non-functional unless it’s hooked up to the military phone switches it was designed to work with. These days, they’re really only useful as a heavy object to throw at somebody… that is, unless you had the suitable supporting hardware. As it turns out, [Nick] and [Rob] were able to whip up exactly that.

      • Hackaday ☛ Clever Test Rig Clarifies Capacitor Rules-of-Thumb

        If you’ve done any amount of electronic design work, you’ll be familiar with the need for decoupling capacitors. Sometimes a chip’s datasheet will tell you exactly what kind of caps to place where, but quite often you’ll have to rely on experience and rules of thumb. For example, you might have heard that you should put 100 µF across the power supply pins and 100 nF close to each chip. But how close is “close”? And can that bigger cap really sit anywhere? [James Wilson] has been doing research to get some firm answers to those questions, and wrote down his findings in a fascinating blog post.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Proprietary

      • Silicon Angle ☛ Microsoft confirms it’s testing ads in Bing Chat [Ed: Bing has layoffs, Bing rapidly loses market share, Bing is no business model]

        Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s modern life, search and devices group, wrote in a Wednesday blog post that the company is “exploring placing ads in the chat experience.” Revenue from those ads, the executive added, will be shared with publishers.

      • Silicon Angle ☛ Now-patched Azure vulnerability opened the door to remote code execution

        Dubbed “Super FabriXss,” the vulnerability was demonstrated at BlueHat IL 2023, showing how they could escalate a reflected cross-site scripting vulnerability in Azure Service Fabric Explorer. The demonstration showed how an unauthenticated Remote Code Execution could abuse the metrics tab and enable a specific option in the console, the ‘Cluster Type’ toggle.

        Orca describes Super FabriXss as a dangerous cross-site scripting or XXS vulnerability that affects Azure Service Fabric Explorer. The vulnerability enables unauthenticated, remote attackers to execute code on a container hosted on a Service Fabric node.

    • Security

      • HowTo Geek ☛ Ubuntu 18.04 Support Is About to End, but Not for Everyone [Ed: Canonical charging money for security patches. "My server got cracked because I was poor and didn't pay billionaire Mark Shuttleworth" may be worse than "I lost my blue tick thing in Twitter because I did not pay Elon Musk". Don't use Ubuntu if it resorts to upselling tactics (proprietary stuff) with security 'ransom' on top (risk breaking things by upgrading or pay us for more patches). "Try GNU/Linux... it's free... but then you need to start paying Mark Shuttleworth or risk breaking your workflow..."]

        Ubuntu is still one of the most popular Linux distributions, with a large install base across desktop PCs, servers, and embedded devices. Canonical is about to say goodbye to Ubuntu 18.04, unless you use Ubuntu Pro.

        Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, also known as “Bionic Beaver,” will reach the end of its promised five-year support window on May 31, 2023. After that point, it won’t receive critical security updates or updates to most apps in the default software repositories. Flatpak and Snap-based applications may continue to work, since they usually aren’t tied to specific OS releases, but they may start breaking in unexpected ways (if they haven’t already).

        Ubuntu 18.04 was released in April 2018, replacing 16.04 as the new Long Term Support (LTS) release. For people upgrading from 16.04 (Canonical recommends most people stick to the LTS versions), it switched from the defunct Unity desktop to GNOME Shell, reworked the login and lock screens, improved the Settings app, and more. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS also served as the base for countless other distributions, including official derivatives like Lubuntu 18.04 and third-party spins like elementary OS 5.0 Juno.

      • Silicon Angle ☛ Google researchers detail recently discovered campaigns targeting iOS, Android and Chrome [Ed: Spyware company warns us about... Spyware! (That's not its own)]

        Google LLC’s Threat Analysis Group today revealed the details of two recently discovered campaigns that use various unpatched or “zero-day” exploits against Android, iOS and Chrome. The first campaign was discovered in November and targeted victims through bit.ly links sent to users over SMS text messages in Italy, Malaysia and Kazakhstan.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ NVIDIA release details of security issues and release new drivers

        NVIDIA issued a new Security Bulletin, to advise you to update your GPU drivers due to multiple security issues discovered. This bulletin went out today with the email arriving in my inbox moments ago, so here’s the details of the issues that affect Linux.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • The Local SE ☛ Sweden launches census plan: ‘We have lost control of who lives in our country’

        Sweden’s government, together with the far-right Sweden Democrats, have announced plans for what they claim will be first national census in more than 30 years, with officials potentially checking up on apartments in ‘high risk areas’.

      • New York Times ☛ Days After Netanyahu Fires Him, Israel’s Defense Minister Is Still on the Job

        Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, was fired on Sunday, setting off unrest, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never formally confirmed his dismissal.

      • New York Times ☛ Finland Clears Last Hurdle to Join NATO, Reshaping Balance of Power

        Turkey’s Parliament approved Finland’s bid to join NATO, its final hurdle to membership in the military alliance.

      • Defence Web ☛ Red Sea/Gulf of Aden task force

        Recognising the importance of a secure maritime environment in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, a task force set up by the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in east Africa has set itself six responsibilities.

      • Defence Web ☛ Terrorism in Africa a concern for UN boss

        >No region in the world is immune to terrorism according to United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who told the UN Security Council (SC) this week the situation in Africa was “especially concerning”.

      • AntiWar ☛ The Pentagon’s Budget from Hell

        Originally posted at TomDispatch. Somehow, when it comes to Congress and the mainstream media, the true strangeness of the Pentagon budget always is missing in action.

      • AntiWar ☛ 20 Years Later: Confessions of a Conscientious Quitter

        It’s been 20 years since the lies and obfuscation that led to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

      • Federal News Network ☛ New FBI docs: Las Vegas mass shooter was angry at casinos

        FBI documents made public this week reveal the high-roller gambler who opened fire on concertgoers on the Las Vegas Strip had lost tens of thousands of dollars while gambling weeks earlier. One gambler told the FBI that gunman Stephen Paddock was very upset about how the casinos had treated him and other high-rollers. The new records don’t offer an official motive for the mass shooting but paint a detailed picture of Paddock’s final days before the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting that killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.

      • Federal News Network ☛ Mulkey says no contact with Griner since return from Russia

        LSU coach Kim Mulkey says she hasn’t spoken to Brittney Griner since the former Baylor star returned to the U.S. from a Russian prison. But Mulkey says she’s glad Griner is back and safe. Mulkey and Griner won a national title together at Baylor. Mulkey was criticized in September for not offering any words of support or encouragement for Griner, when she was still being held after her arrest on drug-related charges. Griner came out after her Baylor career and criticized her former coach, saying Mulkey forced her to keep her sexual orientation private.

      • Latvia ☛ Proposal to ban film subtitling in Russian tabled in parliament

        The Education, Culture and Science Committee of the Saeima will review a proposal to prohibit the use of Russian language in film subtitles, LSM’s Latvian language service reported.

      • New York Times ☛ 9 Soldiers Killed After Army Helicopters Collide Over Kentucky

        Two Black Hawk helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division collided on Wednesday night near Fort Campbell. The Army said it did not yet know a cause.

      • TruthOut ☛ Just 2 Days After Shooting, Republicans Vote to Loosen Gun Law in North Carolina
      • NBC ☛ Russia stops sharing information about nuclear forces with the U.S.

        Putin’s decision to put the tactical weapons in Belarus followed his repeated warnings that Moscow was ready to use “all available means” — a reference to its nuclear arsenal — to fend off attacks on Russian territory.

        Russian officials have issued a barrage of hawkish statements since their troops entered Ukraine, warning that the continuing western support for Ukraine raised the threat of a nuclear conflict.

      • VOA News ☛ Pakistani Taliban Kill 4 Police Officers, Injure 6

        A provincial police statement said that militants raided a security outpost in the area, injuring six security forces. It added that a nearby police station had quickly dispatched reinforcements to respond to the attack when their vehicle was blown up on the way by an “improvised explosive device.” The ensuing blast killed four officers.

      • Common Dreams ☛ No Motive Needed When Dehumanization Reigns

        “Chief Drake said it was too early to discuss a possible motive for the shooting, though he confirmed that the attack was targeted. The authorities were reviewing writings, and had made contact with the shooter’s father. . . .”

      • Meduza ☛ Putin signs decree on a spring military conscription drive larger than last year’s — Meduza

        President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the spring conscription campaign for mandatory military service. The draft will run from April 1 to July 15. The authorities plan to call up 147 thousand people for service — 12.5 thousand more people than during the spring conscription drive in 2022.

      • Common Dreams ☛ If Only We Loved Our Children as Much as Our Assault Weapons

        Most people, if asked, will say the welfare of their children is their highest priority. For many, however, the position they take on gun control, and particularly on banning assault weapons, suggests their highest priority is actually their guns. Week after week, the headlines blare as the young bodies, literally blown into pieces, are dispatched to the cold earth. Conservative politicians offer thoughts and prayers, usually followed by lies and misdirection. It’s not the guns, they insist. The secret to solving gun violence is treating mental illness, or hardening schools as potential targets, or maybe arming teachers and good guys with guns. Big guns, little guns. Black guns, blue guns. And always their answer is more guns not less.

      • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Freaking Cowards!’ Bowman Confronts GOP Colleague Face-to-Face on Gun Violence

        Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman vocally condemned his Republican colleagues in a hallway outside the House chamber on Wednesday, calling them “freaking cowards” and “gutless” for refusing to support basic control measures in the wake of the nation’s latest mass shooting—the 130th of the year.

      • Scheerpost ☛ Zelensky Says if He Loses Bakhmut, He Will Be Pushed To ‘Compromise’ With Russia

        The Ukrainian leader told AP his country will lose without US support.

      • Scheerpost ☛ Chinese Official Warns McCarthy Meeting With Taiwanese President Would Be ‘Provocation’

        A potential visit with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen “seriously violates the One China principle, harms China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and destroys peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” said one official.

      • Scheerpost ☛ America’s Remarkable Unwillingness to Support Its Veterans

        Andrea Mazzarino explores how so many of the American military personnel dispatched to fight it and the rest of the disastrous Global War on Terror have suffered until this very day, while this country largely turned its back, leaving them in the lurch.

      • Meduza ☛ ‘He was saving himself from a fascist law’ Meduza’s interview with lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov, who stayed in contact with Alexey Moskalev as he fled house arrest for Belarus — Meduza

        On the night of March 29, the Belarusian authorities arrested Alexey Moskalev, the single father from Russia’s Tula region who fled house arrest the previous day, shortly before he was to face trial for allegedly “discrediting” the Russian army. At the hearing, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to two years in prison, while ordering his sixth-grade daughter to be placed in state custody. Moskalev’s arrest was first reported by Russian independent media and later confirmed by the Belarusian Interior Ministry. His current location remains unclear. Meduza spoke with lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov, who was in contact with Moskalev during his escape, about how the Russian and Belarusian intelligence services managed to find and detain him.

      • Meduza ☛ ‘The command came from the top’ Alexey Moskalev, whose daughter’s anti-war drawing sparked the ire of the Russian authorities, has been arrested in Minsk. Here’s what we know. — Meduza

        The Belarusian authorities have reportedly arrested Alexey Moskalev, the single father from Russia’s Tula region who fled house arrest on March 28, just hours before a court convicted him of “discrediting” the Russian military. Lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov, who stayed in contact with Moskalev after his escape, confirmed the news to the independent outlet Mediazona. Zakhvatov later wrote on Telegram: “I can’t get in touch with Alexey right now. He’s not answering his phone. I can’t confirm for certain, but based on indirect evidence, in all likelihood, it’s true. Very unfortunate.”

      • Meduza ☛ Ukrainian deputy prime minister says Kyiv stands ready to take back its deported orphans — Meduza

        Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk says that Ukraine stands ready to take back its deported orphans. “As an official,” she said, “I am stating our official readiness to take back all of our orphaned children.”

      • The Nation ☛ After the Iraq Debacle, Why Does the National Security Establishment Remain Unshaken?

        In Warsaw last February, President Joe Biden condemned the lawless Russian invasion of Ukraine: “The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country—since World War II, nothing like that has happened.” One month later marked the 20th anniversary of the greatest US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam: America’s “war of choice” against Iraq, with 130,000 US soldiers invading the country to overthrow its government.

      • Meduza ☛ Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church cleric says ‘God will not forgive’ Zelensky for evicting monks from Kyiv Pechersk Lavra — Meduza

        Metropolitan Pavel, the head of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, where the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been headquartered since 1992, said in a YouTube video posted Wednesday that “God will not forgive” Volodymyr Zelensky or his family for evicting hundreds of monks from the monastery.

      • Meduza ☛ In reversal, Argentina’s Migration Service denies dozens of Russian citizens’ applications for stay extensions and residence permits — Meduza

        Argentina’s Migration Service has begun denying tourist stay extensions and residence permits to Russian citizens, Georgy Polin, the head of the consular section of the Russian Embassy in Buenos Aires, told TASS.

      • Meduza ☛ A border deal washed in tears Kyrgyzstan reached a landmark agreement with Uzbekistan, but its critics are behind bars — Meduza

        Thirty years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, one of the Fergana Valley’s border disputes is finally being laid to rest. In January, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan clinched a landmark demarcation deal, which officials hailed as a major turning point in bilateral relations. But what appears to be a victory for Bishkek and Tashkent feels less triumphant on the ground. Kyrgyzstan’s handover of the strategic Kempir-Abad reservoir — or the Andijan reservoir, as it is known in Uzbekistan — has been a particular point of discontent. More than 20 opponents of the land swap are in jail awaiting trial on felony charges of instigating “mass unrest.” And residents of villages near the reservoir fear losing their land — or ending up on the other side of the border. In a dispatch from the region, The Beet reports on the “Kempir-Abad case,” local anxieties, and the upside of the border deal. 

      • Meduza ☛ Wagner Group mercenary suspected of murdering senior while on leave in Russia — Meduza

        A convict pardoned after joining Wagner Group and serving in Ukraine was detained within a week of his return to Russia’s Kirov region, where he was taking his leave. According to the local media, he is suspected of having murdered an elderly woman.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Environment

    • Finance

      • Digital Music News ☛ Decentraland Real Estate Prices Plunged Nearly 90% in One Year

        Once a corporate darling in the metaverse frontier, Decentraland is a ghost town as investors abandon the metaverse. Decentraland was hailed in 2021 as one of the first instances of an actual metaverse for users (ignoring the existence of Second Life entirely).

      • Common Dreams ☛ US Minimum Wage Would Be $42 Today If It Rose as Much as Wall St. Bonuses: Analysis

        The federal minimum wage in the United States would be more than $42 an hour today if it rose at the same rate as the average Wall Street bonus over the past four decades, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Institute for Policy Studies.

      • Michael West Media ☛ Spirits of Australia soothe pandemic hangover as Alan Joyce hosts hangar party for Qantas’ 100th

        The spirits of Australia will be flowing liberally tonight when Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and chair Richard Goyder wine and dine 1200 corporate elites and titanium frequent flyers at the airline’s belated 100th birthday bash. Michael Sainsbury checks out the race to succeed Joyce as CEO and the .

        The Qantas centennial, three years late because of Covid, is imaginatively dubbed the ‘Next 100′. It is paid for in part by the largesse of the Australian taxpayer which tipped in to the tune of $2.7 billion to save the Roo’s skin in Australia’s biggest Covid corporate bail-out. Qantas shows no sign of any inclination to pay it back, as well as a fair chunk of the $800 million pandemic era flight credits that its customers are struggling to use because Qantas makes them so hard to claim.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • CoryDoctorow ☛ We should ban TikTok(‘s surveillance)

        With the RESTRICT Act, Congress is proposing to continue Trump’s war on Tiktok, enacting a US ban on the Chinese-owned service. How will they do this? Congress isn’t clear. In practice, banning stuff on the internet is hard, especially if you don’t have a national firewall:

        [...]

        Which makes the RESTRICT Act an especially foolish project. If the Chinese state wants to procure data on Americans, it need not convince us to install Tiktok. It can simply plunk down a credit card with any of the many unregulated data-brokers who feed the American tech giants the dossiers that the NSA and local cops rely on.

      • Techdirt ☛ Senator Warner’s RESTRICT Act Is Designed To Create The Great Firewall Of America

        Earlier this month, we wrote about Mark Warner’s RESTRICT Act, mainly in the context of how it appeared to be kneejerk legislating in response to the moral panic around TikTok.

      • Common Dreams ☛ House Progressives Offer Biden ‘Bold Vision’ With Executive Action Agenda for 2023

        Outlining the steps that President Joe Biden can take now to deliver justice for the working people who helped elect him in 2020, the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Thursday released its 2023 Executive Action Agenda to ensure that the president will “build on his record of progress.”

      • Nathaniel Borenstein ☛ How Fidelity Treats a former IBM Distinguished Engineer

        Today, I called them again, and spent 45 minutes on the phone to learn that it is now TOO LATE for me to take the lump sum, and I will have to record a trivial deposit every month for the rest of my life. This happened after I took every proper step to get my lump sum on time, and took most of those steps many times over many months. I also spent hours on the phone with Fidelity to achieve this outcome.

        This is the worst example of customer support I have ever seen in my life. If anyone at IBM is listening, perhaps you might look into what Fidelity is doing to your pensioners?

      • 37signals LLC ☛ America is never “getting to Denmark”

        It took moving back to Denmark to realize the folly of thinking America is ever going to “get there”. Whether on guns or healthcare or taxes or any other major policy position that’s so fiercely contested in the US. Despite growing up in this little Nordic country, I didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous, underpinning power of a homogenous culture to fasten all these planks of a socially-democratic state – until I returned after 15 years Over There. I do now.

      • uni Stanford ☛ Prepared Remarks on U.S. Legal Considerations for Children’s Online Safety Policy

        I was recently invited to a private workshop on children’s online safety policy, where I gave a short presentation about the U.S. legal context. Here are my prepared remarks. Note that they largely avoid giving my personal perspective on hotly-debated areas, such as the interaction between Section 230 and app design features, or proposals for age-verification requirements. It is an overview, not an op-ed, presented to an audience that, while it contained some tech policy experts, had many people who are new to these issues. I got asked by a few attendees to share my written remarks, and I’m glad to oblige.

      • EDRI ☛ Why chat control is so dangerous

        The EU Commission currently prepares a legislative package to fight sexual abuse of children. The draft is soon to be presented and in part covers the dissemination of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) via the internet. Additionally, the directive aims at targeting private and encrypted communication, such as that on messenger services. Critics declare this form of preemptive mass surveillance not only a threat to privacy, (cyber)security and the right to freedom of expression but as danger to democracy in general.

      • [Old] Patrick Breyer ☛ UN Human Rights Commissioner warns against chat control

        Specifically, the Human Rights Commissioner criticises the enisioned message screening on private smartphones (so-called “client-side scanning”) for undermining secure message encryption: “Client-side scanning also opens up new security challenges, making security breaches more likely. The screening process can also be manipulated, making it possible to artificially create false positive or false negative profiles. Even if, for current purposes, client-side screening is narrowly tailored, opening up devices for Government-mandated screening is likely to lead to future attempts to widen the scope of content that is the target of such measures. In particular, where the rule of law is weak and human rights are under threat, the impact of client-side screening could be much broader, for example it could be used to suppress political debate or to target opposition figures, journalists and human rights defenders. “

      • Pro Publica ☛ Repatriation Reform Bill Passes Illinois House of Representatives

        For more than 30 years, tribal nations have been asking the state of Illinois and its state-run institutions to return the remains of their ancestors for reburial within the state. For just as long, Illinois has made that nearly impossible.

        But now, legislation moving through the Illinois General Assembly would finally pave the way for the remains of thousands of Native Americans to be repatriated.

      • The Economist ☛ Alibaba breaks itself up in six

        Now a split is happening, though not at the behest of Beijing—at least not directly. On March 28th Alibaba announced that it would be creating six independent business units. Executives say this will yield a more agile overall business, by speeding up decision-making across smaller and more focused operations. The main unspoken goal may be to decentralise decision-making, not least by disassociating Alibaba further from its founder, who stepped away from day-to-day management in 2015 but has remained involved in strategic decisions.

      • The Hill ☛ Roku to cut another 200 jobs

        The filing states that Roku expects most of the charges will be taken on in the first quarter of fiscal 2023, and the layoffs will be “substantially” completed by the end of the second quarter of the fiscal year.

        ABC News reported that Roku previously laid off 200 workers in the fall.

      • ACLU ☛ Here’s How New Mexico is Leading the Way for Voting Rights

        Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy, and protecting that right is one of the central obligations of our government. Due to partisan gridlock in Congress, the federal government has not acted to restore some of the original protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). Following the Supreme Court decisions in Shelby v. Holder and Brnovich v. DNC that weakened the vital voting rights law, the federal government has yet to pass federal legislation to protect the right to vote.

      • CS Monitor ☛ Autumn of the patriarchs? Strong leaders face popular pushback.

        Strong leaders with autocratic tendencies have flourished in recent years, but fears about where they are taking their countries have prompted pushback.

      • uni Michigan ☛ U-M seeks actions by court, labor board against striking GEO

        The university has filed a complaint in Washtenaw County Circuit Court alleging breach of contract by the Graduate Employees’ Organization for striking, and asked the court to order strikers to return to work.

      • CS Monitor ☛ Trump indicted in first ever criminal case against a former US president

        Donald Trump has been indicted on charges involving payments in 2016 to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter, the first ever criminal case against a former U.S. president.

      • The Age AU ☛ Donald Trump arrest LIVE updates: Former US president charged over alleged Stormy Daniels payments

        It is the first-ever criminal case against a former US president and will have huge implications over the 2024 election.

      • The Age AU ☛ How Donald Trump came to be indicted on criminal charges

        A look at the hush-money probe, grand jury process and possible ramifications for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

      • Common Dreams ☛ The US War Drum Against China Sounds Like: Tik.Tok.

        Last Thursday, a Congressional hearing took place where the TikTok CEO was grilled for five hours on the grounds of “security concerns.” This was days after the FBI and DOJ launched an investigation on the Chinese-owned American company.Isn’t it ironic that while the US government is putting TikTok under the magnifying glass, it’s turning a blind eye to its own surveillance programs on the American people?

      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Orbán: The EU has abandoned the two goals it was created for: peace and prosperity
      • CS Monitor ☛ Labor strikes are rising – and winning pay hikes

        At a time of high inflation, pushing household budgets to the limit, workers are speaking up through union action – and the boosts won by employees have been sizable.

      • Digital Music News ☛ Senate Vote On TikTok Ban Bill Blocked Over Free Speech Concerns Amid Continued Bipartisan Scrutiny

        As TikTok grapples with continued user-data criticism and regulatory scrutiny, a Senate vote to ban the controversial video-sharing platform has been blocked. This newest development in the long-running push to prohibit TikTok in the U.S.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Karma: Happy Trump’s First Indictment Day
      • The Nation ☛ Donald Trump Has Been Indicted. Don’t Get Your Hopes Up.

        Late Thursday evening, a Manhattan grand jury voted to bring charges against former president Donald Trump in connection with hush-money payments to actress Stormy Daniels. The specific charges are not yet known, though Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will likely announce them in the near future.

      • Common Dreams ☛ New York Grand Jury Votes to Indict Donald Trump: Reports
      • Federal News Network ☛ Donald Trump indicted; 1st ex-president charged with crime

        A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on charges involving payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. It’s the first ever criminal case against a former U.S. president and a jolt to Trump’s bid to retake the White House in 2024. The indictment was confirmed Thursday by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, and other people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss sealed criminal charges.

      • Federal News Network ☛ Trump’s legal worries extend far beyond charges in New York

        The hush money case in New York that has led to criminal charges against Donald Trump is just one of a number of investigations that could pose legal problems for the former president. A lawyer for Trump confirmed Thursday that he was told the former president had been indicted on charges involving payments made during the 2016 campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. Trump faces a string of other inquiries as he campaigns for another term in 2024.

      • Federal News Network ☛ Kansas moves to help survivors pursue child sex abuse claims

        Abuse survivors and advocates who’ve pushed to make it easier in Kansas to prosecute abusers or file lawsuits decades later have achieved a breakthrough in the Legislature, where a proposal has advanced quickly. The bill would eliminate limits on how long prosecutors have to file charges against suspects for any of a dozen violent sexual offenses against children. It also would give abuse survivors more time to file lawsuits seeking monetary damages. The Senate approved it unanimously Wednesday and the House could vote on it next week. Reports of abuse by clergy across the U.S. have spurred interest in making it easier to pursue criminal prosecutions or lawsuits.

      • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk Tried to Meet With F.T.C. Chair About Twitter but Was Rebuffed

        Mr. Musk requested a meeting with Lina Khan, the chair of the F.T.C., which has been investigating Twitter’s privacy and data practices.

      • Insight Hungary ☛ Hungary is the only EU country not invited to Summit for Democracy

        U.S. Ambassador David Pressman met Hungarian journalists on Wednesday where he also touched on the topic of U.S. President Joe Biden’s upcoming Summit for Democracy to which Hungary wasn’t invited. Hungary was the only EU country that did not receive an invitation to the event in Washington.

        The Hungarian Foreign Ministry earlier commented on the missing invite with the following explanation: “Joe Biden does not invite Donald Trump’s friends. Hungary disagrees with President Biden’s policies on war, migration, and gender. On these issues, we agree with President Trump.”

      • Common Dreams ☛ Trump Is Running to Lead a Fascist Nation—Not This One

        Last Saturday, at the first rally of his presidential campaign, in Waco, Texas, Donald Trump talked about the likely criminal cases being prepared against him as if they were being prepared against his supporters.

      • TruthOut ☛ Ginni Thomas Raised Nearly $600,000 in Anonymous Funds for Right-Wing Group
      • Common Dreams ☛ Tlaib Blasts Republicans as ‘Servants’ of Big Oil After House Passes Pro-Polluter Bill

        Climate campaigners and congressional Democrats on Thursday called out House Republicans for approving energy legislation that would, as U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib warned, “put polluters over people” by “further poisoning of our air and water.”

      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

        • The Economist ☛ The Kremlin escalates its war on truth

          ON MARCH 29TH Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, disappeared during a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-biggest city. The following day Russian security services came clean: they had arrested him on charges of espionage. That Mr Gershkovich, an American citizen, is accredited to report in Russia seems to have made little difference. The arrest is likely to exacerbate the already-terrible relations between Russia and America.

        • TruthOut ☛ Anti-Abortion Bills Like Kansas’s Are Designed to Spread Misinformation

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • VOA News ☛ Breaking Down the Trump Indictment

        Along with Cohen, a key player in the effort was David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc. (AMI), the company that at the time published the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer.

        A longtime Trump friend, Pecker had offered “to help deal with negative stories about [Trump’s] relationships with women” by identifying stories that could be bought and then suppressed. The practice is known in the publishing industry as “catch and kill.”

        In August 2016, AMI agreed to pay former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. The story was shelved.

      • NBC ☛ Russian dad whose teen drew anti-war picture flees jail and exposes cracks in Putin’s crackdown on dissent

        Her father was first investigated after school officials told police that Maria had drawn a picture during an art class that depicted missiles flying over a mother and a child, as well as Russian and Ukrainian flags with the words “No to war” and “Glory to Ukraine.”

        The draconian law used in the case was introduced just days into the invasion, criminalizing any criticism of the Russian army as President Vladimir Putin sought to stamp out dissent at home.

      • Vice Media Group ☛ Missouri Reps Just Voted to Completely Defund the State’s Public Libraries

        Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.

      • Meduza ☛ 63-year-old man gets seven year prison sentence for posting about war — Meduza

        A Moscow district court sentenced 63-year-old Mikhail Simonov to seven years in prison after finding him guilty of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army motivated by political hatred.

      • Techdirt ☛ Appeals Court Reverses Awful Decision Finding That Holding Up A Sign Telling Drivers There Are Cops Ahead Is Not Free Speech

        Officer Richard Gasparino of the Stamford, Connecticut police department couldn’t stand to have his “revenue diverted.” So, he arrested Michael Friend for the imaginary crime of holding up a sign warning motorists there was a sting operation in progress further up the road.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Federal News Network ☛ Russia arrests Wall Street Journal reporter on spying charge

        Russia’s security service has arrested an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal on espionage charges. It’s the first time a U.S. correspondent has been detained on spying accusations since the Cold War. The newspaper denied the allegations and demanded his release. Thirty-one-year-old Evan Gershkovich was detained in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, about 1,670 kilometers (1,035 miles) east of Moscow. Russia’s Federal Security Service accused him of trying to obtain classified information. Known by the acronym FSB, the service is the top domestic security agency and main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

      • Meduza ☛ FSB arrests Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Yekaterinburg — Meduza

        The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) announced Thursday that it has arrested U.S. citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on suspicion of spying for the American government.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Press Freedom Advocates ‘Alarmed’ as Russia Detains US Journalist on Espionage Charges
      • Michael West Media ☛ Julian Assange – when “quiet diplomacy” means diddly squat

        Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has all but confirmed in Parliament the government is doing nothing to bring the world’s foremost political prisoner home. What’s the scam with “quiet diplomacy”?

        Despite claiming the government is deploying “quiet diplomacy” to urge the US to free Julian Assange, and despite the government committing to a $368b spend on submarines – the biggest transfer of public money in Australia’s history – to US and UK weapons makers, there is no evidence whatsoever that our elected representatives have even muttered one word on the matter.

      • VOA News ☛ Suspected North Korean Spies Impersonating VOA, Other Reporters Online

        Experts on nuclear security policy and weapons proliferation were contacted by suspected North Korean hackers posing as Voice of America journalists, according to a threat intelligence group, which says this is part of a recent pattern of impersonating reporters from major news organizations.

        The online spies were attempting to gather intelligence about the stance of international officials toward the Pyongyang government of Kim Jong Un, according to a report issued by Mandiant, an American cybersecurity firm and subsidiary of Google.

      • NBC ☛ Russia arrests U.S. journalist on espionage charges; Moscow court orders he be detained for 2 months

        Evan Gershkovich was detained in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg on suspicion of “espionage in the interests of the American government,” the Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement, which was reported by state media.

        The FSB accused Gershkovich of collecting “information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • AccessNow ☛ To defend democracy, stand up for civil society

        As governments, businesses, and civil society organizations gather for the 2nd U.S. Summit for Democracy, our message is clear: to defend democracy in the digital age, states must stand up for civil society, online and off.

      • Federal News Network ☛ How 3 agency leaders try to mitigate burnout, stress for federal employees

        Work-life balance is one area in particular where agencies are starting to see signs of stagnation among their employees.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Rapidly Melting Glaciers Threaten Collapse of Crucial Ocean Circulation Systems

        Normally, dense water flows toward the ocean floor and helps transport heat and and vital nutrients through the planet’s oceans. The circulation helps support marine ecosystems and the stability of ice shelves.

      • EFF ☛ Digital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.4
      • Scheerpost ☛ America’s Slavery-Ridden Origin Story: Facing the Uncomfortable Reality

        Writer Dionne Ford dives deep into her ancestry and confronts the complexities of being a Black woman in America with the blood of both the enslaved and the enslaver.

      • The Nation ☛ The West Coast Think Tank Helping to Orchestrate DeSantis’s War on the Woke

        It was the latest stop on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s “where woke goes to die” tour. The focus was on higher education—specifically: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at Florida universities. The roundtable event featured speakers like Christopher Rufo, the lead architect of the GOP’s crusade against critical race theory who is now helping to mastermind the ideological makeover of Florida’s New College. The gathering followed the by-now-standard script of education-themed right-wing grievance: DEI initiatives are a scam orchestrated by the “woke mob,” and Florida is not about to submit to them—not if the governor and his brain trust have anything to say about it.

      • The Nation ☛ It’s Been a Year. Why Hasn’t Biden Freed Eyvin Hernandez?

        On March 18, 2022, Eyvin Hernandez, a dedicated Los Angeles public defender, flew to Colombia for a much-needed vacation. In Medellín, he befriended a woman and agreed to accompany her to Cucuta, a town on the Colombia-Venezuela border. Near Cucuta, things took a bad turn. Having unintentionally crossed into Venezuela, Eyvin and his companion were cornered near the border by armed men, who asked them for money they didn’t have before handcuffing and hooding them, throwing them into the back of a pickup truck, and transporting them to a detention facility.

      • New York Times ☛ Vatican Repudiates ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ Used as Justification for Colonization

        Indigenous communities have long called on the Vatican rescind the concept, which had been used over the centuries to seize land from people in the Americas, Africa and elsewhere.

      • New York Times ☛ Under the Taliban, Afghanistan Is Trying to Make Due With Less

        In a time of famine and money shortages, meals are a rallying point — and a topic of worry — during a season of change in Afghanistan.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Minor League Baseball Players Poised to More Than Double Pay With First Union Contract

        Major League Baseball and recently unionized minor league players working for MLB team affiliates reached a tentative deal Wednesday on a historic first collective bargaining agreement.

      • Federal News Network ☛ How California reparations proposals could become law

        California’s first-in-the-nation reparations task force is preparing to send its recommendations to lawmakers. But there’s still a long road ahead to get any reparations plans approved by the state Legislature. Lawmakers who are members of the task force may introduce reparations legislation in January. It usually takes months for bills to get passed by both the state Senate and Assembly before reaching the governor’s desk. Questions remain, including where the money would come from for the state to implement the task force’s recommendations. Economists advising the task force estimated the state could owe more than $800 billion for discrimination in policing and housing loans.

      • The Nation ☛ Howard Schultz’s Union-Busting Paternalism

        Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, briefly touted as a dark-horse Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2020, found himself at a less obliging juncture of federal power this Wednesday, as he delivered testimony on the coffee giant’s union-busting track record before the US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Members of the Starbucks Union thronged the corridors outside the Dirksen Building hearing room, anticipating that the company might finally be held to public account, and be shamed into launching good-faith negotiations for a collective-bargaining agreement. Organizers greeted one another with loud and cheerful “good mornings,” seemingly out of professional habit, but the real message for the occasion was emblazoned on the backs of their T-shirts: “Partners? Prove It—We ARE Starbucks.”

      • Scheerpost ☛ Starbucks’ Howard Schultz Called Before Senate

        Starbucks projects the image of an employee-friendly company, but its workers have been exposing the contradiction between the company’s words and its actions. On March 29, they’ll get some help from the U.S. Senate’s HELP Committee, chaired by Bernie Sanders.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Ex-Starbucks Worker Jaysin Saxton Describes Being Fired After He Helped Organize Union

        We speak with Jaysin Saxton, one of the witnesses who testified at the Senate hearing Wednesday on Starbucks’ union-busting record. Saxton was a former Starbucks shift manager, fired after leading the union drive at a store in Augusta, Georgia. He tells Democracy Now! he and fellow workers were motivated to organize their store to address the “insane” working conditions, including understaffing and inconsistent schedules. “There’s no stability in how much you’re earning and how many hours you’re getting, so you can’t afford to pay your bills, and you have to choose between gas and food,” says Saxton.

      • TruthOut ☛ Former Starbucks Worker Describes Being Fired After He Helped Organize Union
      • Common Dreams ☛ Exonerated Central Park 5 Member Reacts to Trump Indictment With One-Word Statement

        Yusef Salaam, one of the five New York teens wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park, issued a brief statement following Thursday’s criminal indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump—who called for bringing back the state’s death penalty to execute the defendants and never apologized after they were cleared.

      • Meduza ☛ Single father Alexey Moskalev, whose daughter’s anti-war drawing drew the wrath of Russian law enforcement, is apprehended in Minsk — Meduza

        Police in Minsk have reportedly apprehended Alexey Moskalev, the single father from Russia’s Tula region who fled house arrest on March 28, hours before a court sentenced him to two years in prison for repeatedly “discrediting” Russia’s military in posts on social media. Russian officials charged Moskalev after months of harassment that began when his then 12-year-old daughter Masha (now 13) submitted an anti-war drawing to her art class. On March 1, police arrested Alexey and transferred Masha to state custody.

      • Meduza ☛ Masha Moskaleva’s estranged mother plans to collect her daughter from state custody — Meduza

        Olga Sitchikhina, Masha Moskaleva’s daughter, plans to remove her daughter from the juvenile shelter where child welfare authorities sent her after her father, Alexey Moskalev, was accused of repeatedly “discrediting” the army. On March 28, Moskalev was sentenced to two years in prison.

      • Meduza ☛ ‘Everything will be okay, and we’ll be together’ Masha Moskaleva, the Russian middle-schooler whose anti-war drawing provoked a police backlash that landed her in an orphanage, wrote a letter to her father on the day of his prison sentencing — Meduza

        The Moskalev family has been in trouble with the Russian authorities since April 2022, when then sixth-grader Masha Moskaleva drew an anti-war picture in her school art class. Federal Security Service agents interrogated Masha multiple times. Her father, Alexey Moskalev, who has been raising Masha alone, was beaten, fined, and later place under house arrest by the Russian authorities. Earlier this month, Masha was removed from her father’s care and placed in a state shelter. On March 28, Alexey was sentenced to two years in prison, though he wasn’t in the courtroom to hear the verdict — he’d escaped house arrest hours earlier. On March 29, however, Belarusian officials apprehended and arrested him in Minsk.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Bernie Sanders vs. Howard Schultz: Longtime Starbucks CEO Grilled on Company’s Union-Busting Tactics

        Just weeks after the National Labor Relations Board accused Starbucks of engaging in “egregious and widespread misconduct” to prevent employees from unionizing, the company’s longtime CEO Howard Schultz appeared before the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday to answer questions. Committee Chair Bernie Sanders of Vermont grilled Schultz on the company’s union-busting record and demanded an end to retaliation against workers. Since 2021, nearly 300 Starbucks locations have voted to unionize, but the company has responded by firing many organizers and shuttering unionized stores, among other tactics. Schultz is worth over $3 billion and has led Starbucks for much of its history, most recently as interim CEO for the last year as a permanent replacement was found. He stepped down on March 20. We feature excerpts from the hearing.

      • Democracy Now ☛ “The Tale” Filmmaker Jennifer Fox on Surviving Childhood Sexual Abuse & Finally Naming Her Abuser

        We speak with writer and filmmaker Jennifer Fox, whose 2018 movie The Tale dealt with childhood sexual abuse. She has now come forward to name her abuser. The film is a narrative memoir based in part on Fox’s own life experience about being abused by a coach as a young girl. While the main character is named Fox, the name of the abusive coach was fictionalized. Now Fox has revealed the man who abused her as Ted Nash, the legendary Olympic rower and coach who died in 2021. Nash took part in 11 Olympic teams as a rower or coach, and USRowing, the national governing body for the sport, is now investigating the allegations. Fox recently revealed Nash’s name to The New York Times and tells Democracy Now!, in her first broadcast interview since the story, that he began abusing her when she was 13. She says her inner voice told her she could not rest until she publicly named Nash. “It’s very important to bring this other story out to the world now and to show this other part of the man that people put on a pedestal and made into a god,” says Fox, who adds that more women may still come forward about Nash. “It’s a very important act to stand up to power in this way, for me and for others.”

      • RTL ☛ Vatican rejects doctrine used to justify colonial abuse

        The Catholic Church took a fresh step Thursday in acknowledging abuse endured by Indigenous peoples with the Vatican formally rejecting 15th-century papal edicts that empowered Europeans to colonise non-Christian lands.

      • The Hill ☛ Religious freedom for all means sacred Indigenous sites, too

        The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently heard arguments about how the federal government will violate First Amendment religious rights of the appellant Apache Stronghold — a Native grassroots community group — if the mine is allowed to move forward. Numerous religious and legal scholars have argued that the government’s actions will impose a substantial burden on Apache religious freedom and exercise. Religious scholar Thomas Berg has called this case “the most important Native American religious liberty case in 15 years.”

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • Techdirt ☛ Colorado Eyes Killing State Law Prohibiting Community Broadband Networks

        U.S. telecom monopolies like AT&T and Comcast spent millions of dollars and several decades quite literally buying shitty, protectionist laws in around twenty states that either ban or heavily hamstring towns and cities from building their own broadband networks. Even in instances and areas where AT&T and Comcast have repeatedly refused to upgrade their networks.

    • Monopolies

      • Silicon Angle ☛ UK watchdog launches deeper probe into $61B Broadcom-VMware merger

        The U.K.’s antitrust regulator said today it will launch a deeper investigation into Broadcom Inc.’s proposed $61 billion acquisition of VMware Inc., a move that seemingly dashes any prospect of the merger being completed with minimal fuss.

      • Trademarks

      • Copyrights

        • Hackaday ☛ 2022 Supercon: Jac And Ralf Explore The Secrets Of The Digital Compact Cassette

          During the 1990s, music was almost invariably stored on CDs or cassette tapes. When the new millennium came around, physical formats became obsolete as music moved first to MP3 files, and later to network streams. But a few years before that big transition, there were several attempts at replacing the aging cassette and CD formats with something more modern. You might remember the likes of MiniDisc and Super Audio CD, but there were a few other contenders around.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ CD Projekt’s Legal Pressure Pushes GOG-Games to The Dark Web

          GOG-Games.com switched to the dark web this week. The videogame piracy site took this drastic action following legal pressure from game company CD Projekt, known for The Witcher series. The Polish company also owns the game distribution service GOG, which explains why GOG-Games is considered a prime enforcement target.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Spiritual Quandary

        Syd got me a deck of tarot cards back when we were dating.

        She was interested in those sorts of things like astrology and tarot, it didn’t command her life like with some people, but nevertheless she enjoyed it. She always said it was more of a mindfulness exercise for her. I hadn’t ever really been exposed to that sort of stuff, sure I knew my zodiac sign, but not much besides that. Syd showed me her deck of cards and did a few readings every now and then, especially when she or I were stressed. I didn’t put much credence into it for a while, not until I had a big falling out with my best friend and I borrowed Syd’s deck to do some readings for myself. When I centered around the question of my future with this friend, one of the cards I pulled was The Lovers, but inverted; the other cards all passing along a similar message of not having a friendship with this person into the future. It’s been a few years now and despite a few attempts to reach out to this friend, I haven’t really spoken to them since. It kinda spooked me by how accurate the cards and the meanings behind them directly followed what the question at hand.

      • Doing and being in books

        In my town public library, they must discard older
        books. They don’t have many of my favorites. I want
        children who explore, adventure, discover, imagine,
        learn, misunderstand, and live actively in books.

        King Shabazz goes with Tony Polito to find spring
        in Lucille Clifton’s (1992) The Boy Who Didn’t
        Believe in Spring. They get in trouble for going
        too far. In Donald Crews’ (1992) Shortcut, the kids
        go a dangerous way. One of them easily could’ve
        been killed. They never go that way again; they
        never tell.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: BGUILTH Wordo: SLIME
      • straight friends

        I’ve found myself gravitating away, really withdrawing from some straight people or friends, emotionally. I think by now I am kind of over this.. issue that always presents.

        When queer people around me talk about their romantic life, it is pretty wholesome. “He smiled and said I am cute, does that mean he likes me?” “She gifted me flowers and chocolates and calls me her wife, do you think she likes me back or does she mean it in a friend way?” and the typical hilarious, sweet stuff that makes you laugh and cheer for them. It’s joyful and easy, energizing convos. Even the less good stuff is still okay to deal with.

      • If spirituality is an interpretation of emotional flavors

        If spirituality is an interpretation of emotional flavors
        I would create a tongue map of human consciousness
        And explain how each feeling is tied to its own set of traditions
        How they’re featured in different cultures
        What ingredients communicate such a flavor
        I would experiment and concoct new recipes
        Experience new states of being

    • Games

      • Antiblorb

        But I don’t because I think it’s good that non-blorby games fully take advantage of not having to be tied to the limitations of blorb. You give up the awesomeness of blorb and in return you hope for things like pick-up, zero prep, character-tailored play.

        Tailoring play to character’s abilities is usually a bad idea, but in a heist scenario the upside is that you make all “roles” relevant.

      • Character-tailored play

        In #blorb the game world is supposed to be created independently from the player characters and not be tailor-made to them. If there’s a lock and they don’t have have a lockpick with them, (or if they flub their lockpicking roll), maybe they can’t get past that door and that’s fine. Plenty of other places to go and other things to do.

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

IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 30, 2023

Posted in IRC Logs at 2:21 am by Needs Sunlight

Also available via the Gemini protocol at:

Over HTTP:

HTML5 logs

HTML5 logs

#techrights log as HTML5

#boycottnovell log as HTML5

HTML5 logs

HTML5 logs

#boycottnovell-social log as HTML5

#techbytes log as HTML5

text logs

text logs

#techrights log as text

#boycottnovell log as text

text logs

text logs

#boycottnovell-social log as text

#techbytes log as text

Enter the IRC channels now

IPFS Mirrors

CID Description Object type
 Qmf856EwmjK7CQLUAnHkd4EgHkCQjQwADRY9GofSVgWbaF IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmWMDtjXHxdnLn6wBbHcFP624RF5EUFSsDVviexP4y76Ga IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmVkbUgSANv8adujKvKy4eUiJVZ8S2gSkQx7yxF776Kp9z IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 Qmeah7JgLYmTQ3iiby3kWmLq3MXSDpNHoNQ9Nu3UJEztHA IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmSgioPTv8gJcVMVZZY8xjRSuG3HBU1JLgsQCifAvNYmZp IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 Qmbst3tqkdKpd5Jjto6KKfgzTAau156963VG2qM3HmZdQv IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmbvsS5fcxFst13tGmPftJkNTwb9Niqcar2HUQkAcRRkuy IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmZafMWCLy9buFzkpxaUxAdFPoM5jBpCEK1G3pytL5Q2Df IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs

IPFS logo

Bulletin for Yesterday

Local copy | CID (IPFS): QmZz4PybmqwxQvJ6383XsbijS6b7BRGW5rSKMTvsLRtRae

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

Posted in News Roundup at 1:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • The BSD Now Podcast ☛ BSD Now 500: Guarding the Wire

        Wireguard VPN Server with Unbound on OpenBSD, Auditing for OpenZFS Storage Performance, OpenBSD 7.2 on a Thinkpad X201, Practical Guides to fzf, Replacing postfix with dma, and more

      • Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ Linux Action News 286

        What we’re liking about GNOME 44, how Microsoft’s Linux distro is trying to attract more users, and we bust a CentOS myth.

    • Kernel Space

      • LWN ☛ Reducing direct-map fragmentation with __GFP_UNMAPPED

        The kernel’s direct map makes all of a system’s physical memory available to the kernel within its address space — on 64-bit systems, at least. This seemingly simple feature has proved to be hard to maintain, in the face of the requirements faced by current systems, while keeping good performance. The latest attempt to address this issue is this patch set from Mike Rapoport adding more direct-map awareness to the kernel’s page allocator.

      • LWN ☛ Generic iterators for BPF

        BPF programs destined to be loaded into the kernel are generally written in C but, increasingly, the environment in which those programs run differs significantly from the C environment. The BPF virtual machine and associated verifier make a growing set of checks in an attempt to make BPF code safe to run. The proposed addition of an iterator mechanism to BPF highlights the kind of features that are being added — as well as the constraints placed on programmers by BPF.

        One of the many checks performed by the BPF verifier at program-load time is to convince itself that the program will terminate within a reasonable period of time, a process that involves simulating the program’s execution. This constraint has made supporting loops in BPF programs challenging since the beginning; it has only been possible to use loops since the 5.3 release. Even with that addition, convincing the verifier that a loop will terminate can be a challenge; this annoyance has led to, among other things, the addition of features like bpf_loop(), which puts the looping logic for some simple cases into the kernel’s C code.

        Not all problems are readily addressable by a simple function like bpf_loop(), though. Many loops in BPF programs are simply iterating through a set of objects, and BPF developers would like easier ways to do that. While numerous languages have some sort of built-in notion of iteration over a set, C does not. As noted above, though, BPF is not really C; this patch set from Andrii Nakryiko reiterates (so to speak) that point by adding an iteration mechanism to the BPF virtual machine.

      • LWN ☛ Zero-copy I/O for ublk, three different ways

        The ublk subsystem enables the creation of user-space block drivers that communicate with the kernel using io_uring. Drivers implemented this way show some promise with regard to performance, but there is a bottleneck in the way: copying data between the kernel and the user-space driver’s address space. It is thus not surprising that there is interest in implementing zero-copy I/O for ublk. The mailing lists have recently seen three different proposals for how this could be done.

    • Applications

      • Linux Links ☛ 6 Best Free and Open Source GUI Electronic Circuit Simulators

        Electronic circuit simulation uses mathematical models to replicate the behavior of an actual electronic device or circuit. Simulation software allows for modeling of circuit operation and is an invaluable analysis tool.

        This roundup only includes software with a graphical user interface. Circuit simulation backends are covered in this roundup. And software that offers electronic design automation are also covered in a separate roundup.

        We include software which acts as a simulation backend. We also include software with a GUI that lets you use these backends. Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style chart.

      • PowerDNS ☛ PowerDNS DNSdist 1.8.0 Released

        We are thrilled to release DNSdist 1.8.0 today! This 1.8.0 release contains a significant amount of changes since the last major release, 1.7.0, which was released a bit over a year ago. We try to stick to a major release every six months, but this one took a bit longer than expected.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Bitbucket for Newbies: Mastering Basic Commands and Collaborating on Code

        As a newbie to Bitbucket, navigating the platform and using its basic commands can be overwhelming. However, with some guidance, you can quickly become proficient in using Bitbucket.

      • nixCraft ☛ How To Install LXD on Debian 11 Linux

        You can install LXD pure-container hypervisor on Debian 11 Linux to run an unmodified version of Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Alpine, Arch and many other Linux distro. You can mimic AWS or different cloud instance types with LXD for testing and deployment purposes on your development machine. You can also run a GUI app such as Firefox completely isolated using LXD for security or privacy reasons. Let us see how to set up and use LXD on the Debian Linux 11 server or desktop.

      • urldecode with AWK

        $ awk -niord '{printf RT?$0chr("0x"substr(RT,2)):$0}' RS=%..

        Fast and simple awk urldecoder!
        Note: Parameter -n is specific to GNU awk

      • Vitux ☛ How to Verify if OpenVPN Protocol is Installed on Ubuntu

        VPN or Virtual Private Network is an encrypted path between a device and a network over the internet. VPNs ensure the security of transmitted data by providing encrypted channels for data flow.

      • Vitux ☛ How to Delete Files on Linux

        Linux has tons of commands that simplify tasks and make work more efficient. Rm is a helpful command for quickly deleting files, links, directories, etc.

      • Vitux ☛ How to Install Ansible on Rocky Linux 9

        Ansible is an open-source software platform for configuring and managing computers. It combines multi-node software deployment, ad hoc task execution, and configuration management. Ansible works over SSH and requires no software or daemons to be installed on remote nodes.

      • Vitux ☛ How to generate CA-signed SSL certificates for a Website

        What is an SSL certificate? SSL certificate is a digital certificate that validates the identity of a website and establishes an encrypted connection. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a security protocol that allows encrypted communication between web server and client.

      • TecMint ☛ How To Exclude a Schema While Restoring a PostgreSQL Database

        Sometimes when restoring a multi-schema database from a backup file, you may want to exclude one or more schemas, for one reason or the other.

      • TecMint ☛ How to Install Spotify on Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint

        Founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon on 23 April 2006, Spotify is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Opera Browser on Manjaro Linux

        Welcome to the world of the Opera Browser, a modern, sleek, and feature-rich web browser designed to make your online experience efficient and enjoyable. As a Manjaro user, you may be considering making Opera your default browser, and for good reason!

      • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Run a Script Before Shutdown Under Systemd

        Modern Linux systems use systemd to manage daemons and system settings. Systemd is a service manager and initialization system, which took over from SysvInit

      • Linux Cloud VPS ☛ How to Install Grafana on AlmaLinux 9

        In this tutorial, we will explain how to install Grafana on AlmaLinux 9 OS. If you ever doubt what Grafana is and what it is used for, we are here to explain it to you.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install VSCodium on Manjaro Linux

        As a Manjaro Linux user, you may have encountered Visual Studio Code—a popular and feature-rich source code editor. But have you ever wondered if there’s a more privacy-focused alternative? Introducing VSCodium, a free, open-source, and community-driven fork of Visual Studio Code.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Discord on Manjaro Linux

        As a Manjaro Linux user, you might wonder why Discord has become such a popular platform, especially among gamers and those transitioning to Linux gaming systems. This introduction will highlight the key aspects that make Discord an essential tool for Linux gamers and provide a detailed overview of its benefits.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install OpenRGB on Manjaro Linux

        OpenRGB offers a variety of advantages for Manjaro Linux users looking to manage their RGB devices seamlessly. By utilizing the AUR and command line terminal, you can unlock the full potential of your RGB hardware.

    • WINE or Emulation

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • LWN ☛ Hopes and promises for open-source voice assistants

      At the end of 2022, Paulus Schoutsen declared 2023 “the year of voice” for Home Assistant, the popular open-source home-automation project that he founded nine years ago. The project’s goal this year is to let users control their home with voice commands in their own language, using offline processing instead of sending data to the cloud. Offline voice control has been the holy grail of open-source home-automation systems for years. Several projects have tried and failed. But with Rhasspy’s developer Mike Hansen spearheading Home Assistant’s voice efforts, this time things could be different.

      Science fiction shows and movies have sold us on the idea of spaceships and homes we can talk to. In recent years, voice control at home has become possible thanks to the so-called “smart speakers” from Google, Amazon, and Apple. However, there’s nothing smart about these devices: their intelligence is almost completely in the cloud, where the user’s voice recordings are processed and translated into sentences and meaning.

      This is a complex and computationally intensive task, and these companies make us believe that their services are required to be able to use voice control. Of course this comes with downsides: users don’t have any control over what’s happening with their voice recordings, which is a big privacy risk. But, fundamentally, the problem lies even deeper. It just makes no sense for users to have their voices make a long detour through the internet just to turn on a light in the same room.

    • It’s FOSS ☛ FOSS Weekly #23.13: New blendOS Linux Distro, New Rust Series, Ubuntu Cinnamon and More

      This week sees the start of a new Rust tutorial series and takes a look at blendOS Linux distro.

    • OSI Blog ☛ Open Source Approved License® registry project underway with help of intern, Giulia Dellanoce [Ed: But OSI continues to shill Microsoft proprietary software, GPL violations, and openwashing. OSI has become a self-harming sham, attacking its very own mission while bagging bribes from Microsoft.]

      I shared last month the details of the new OSI website, hosted on WordPress.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • PostgreSQL ☛ pg_dumpbinary v2.10 released

        Zurich, Switzerland – March 30th, 2023

        pg_dumpbinary

        pg_dumpbinary is a program used to dump a PostgreSQL database with
        data dumped in binary format. The resulting dump must be restored
        using pg_restorebinary that is provided with this tool.

        pg_dumpbinary v2.10 was released today, it adds a new option to the pg_dumpbinary command:

        • -C, –compress-level 0-9 : speed of the gzip compression using the specified
          digit, between 1 and 9, default to 6. Setting it
          to 0 disable the compression.
      • YottaDB ☛ YottaDB r1.38 Released

        YottaDB r1.38 is a minor release that includes functionality needed at short notice by a customer. A MUPIP REPLICATE option provides for a replication stream to include updates made by triggers on the source instance. $ZPEEK() and ^%PEEKBYNAME() provide direct access to an additional process-private structure.

    • Licensing / Legal

      • LWN ☛ Jumping the licensing shark [Ed: GPL opportunists who slander the GPL's author for salaries like $250,000 per year]

        The concept of copyleft is compelling in a lot of ways, at least for those who want to promote software freedom in the world. Bradley Kuhn is certainly one of those people and has long been working on various aspects of copyleft licensing and compliance, along with software freedom. He came to Everything Open 2023 to talk about copyleft, some of its history—and flaws—and to look toward the future of copyleft.

        Kuhn began by saying that he spends much of his time these days thinking about the enforcement of GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1; “it turns out that those are the most widely used copyleft licenses in the world”, thus they are the most frequently violated. It is sometimes painful to be looking at license text written in 1991 and 1993 as we move through 2023, but that is what he has to do. Outside of work, though, he has time to think about what sort of copyleft license he would draft if he were to do so. He was just out of high school when GPLv2 was released, so he did not participate in that process at all.

    • Programming/Development

      • Andrew Helwer ☛ Pseudocode Showdown

        Last weekend I had a conversation with an undergraduate student new to computer science, who was reading CLRS. “I wish” they said, “that all the pseudocode in my algorithms textbook was just written in Python.” “Ah” I said, “but textbook authors sometimes want their work to endure beyond a decade.” “But Python’s been around for a long time” came the reply, “and it’s very readable, and you can’t execute pseudocode anyway so what’s the harm?

      • Qt ☛ Qt Creator 10 – CMake update

        Now that Qt Creator 10 has been released, it’s time to highlight the CMake changes.

  • Leftovers

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Walking on the Katy Trail

        Took a lunch walk today with my wife and youngest son (who brought his
        bike, so he got a walk/ride experience). We drove down to Mokane and
        hopped on the Katy Trail. Walked for two miles total then came home.
        Gorgeous spring day. The trees aren’t leafed out yet, but the farmer’s
        fields are covered in soft greens and purples. Some nice bulb flowers
        budding early as well. One piece of creek that we crossed over was
        bubbling with clear water, but no fish visible. Sunny and 68F with a
        light, cool breeze, it was hard to beat.

      • I bought some books

        I usually read just Science Fiction and Fantasy for fun, or some language study books here and there, but over the past couple of years I’ve been feeling inspired by the sort of character developing advice I’ve been seeing in content I read online.

        I’ve completed a first pass of both books, but I’ve only just started to go back over them and make notes. While I read them, I did record a few quick notes here and there, but really just a few thinking points. I’ll probably post more on these two texts over the next couple of weeks.

      • On lazyness and growing up…

        While wife and son are visiting the in-laws for a week i have time to visit the pub again… bartender, do you have Grasovka in stock? Yes? Great!

        Turning in the general direction to the next patron i start to ramble…

        The biggest bane in my life always was my lazyness… but a particular kind of lazyness: If there is a deadline, a release date or an emergency i am hyper productive, i work from 05:00 – 22:00, eat, sleep and jump out of bed fresh as the morning just to head straight to work. But on the other hand… routine work is killing me. Give me a straight good workday without emergencies or big catastrophes and i am doing the bare minimum or even less to just get by. Just today my boss told me “Mr. ralfwause, i am absolutely glad you work here and i hope you will work here in 20 years from now, but sometimes… sometimes i have this urge to simply shoot you…”.

      • Testing midnight.sh

        There seems to be conditions under which “midnight.sh” does not work… in particular, the server often seems to answer that there is no content, especially when I’m sending only one line as a reply.

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

03.30.23

Translating the Lies of António Campinos (EPO)

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 8:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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

THE Benoît Battistelli era did not truly end. Another terrible liar, whose English isn’t that good (their native tongue is French), said the above. Our remarks below, preceded by timestamps:

0:06: Yes, Tony, global uncertainty like “tactical” nukes being deployed to Belarus, which you at the EPO funded. When the general public found out that the EPO had worked with and paid Belarus you just started shouting out the “F” word at staff! Like a true grown-up…

0:11: Tell us more about inventors, Tony. What did you invent?

0:17: A “record number of applications” when you openly advertise lenience and expansion of scope, e.g. “Hey Hi” (AI, software patents in new clothing)

0:25: “Up 2.5%” after a year of lockdowns

0:30: I count Europe (a continent) like a country to make it sound good when only 1 in 3 applications in the ‘European’ Patent Office is in fact European (in origin)

0:35: Growth in requests for monopolies (inside and across Europe) comes from outside Europe, so the ‘European’ Patent Office is increasingly granting European monopolies to firms that are not European

0:43 I measure “growth” in China in terms of %, year-to-year, because in relative terms (relative to the whole) not many patent applications come from China

0:50: I cannot tell the difference between patents (monopolies) and inventions, but I never invented anything, so I just read this script regardless

1:00: At 50 (not yet!) I celebrate “tremendous growth” when the number of employees is in fact decreasing, as does the calibre

1:11: I compare the present to the early 1970s to make it seem like an incredible growth (national patent offices had existed already and there was no EU)

1:20: I don’t say “software patents”, I just use some other words

1:30: I say “double-digit growth” when measuring only how many monopolies the EPO granted (lenience, pressure on examiners to meet “quotas” and “targets”), nothing economic and nothing to do with national patent offices, foreign patent offices etc.

1:37: This is 1contradicted by what Campinos said earlier because over time fewer and fewer patent applicants (relative to the whole) are European

1:40: 60% of the top 10 applicants are not European (and about 66% of the applications are not European either)

1:52: “Computer technology” does not sound like “software patents,” right?

2:00: I cannot even pronounce “sustainable” (at least I don’t say it like I say “focus”; that always, consistently sounds like “fuck yous”)

2:10 Now I read out the greenwashing part of the script they gave me because patents save the planet!!

2:50 I’ve just spent about a minute (20% of the talk) greenwashing, so let’s talk about “inclusive”

2:52 Monopolies are about social justice and helping women… or something

3:10 Now I pretend that the EPO is good for SMEs. After all, 80% of the applications come from large international businesses, so let’s twist the statistics a little…

3:17: “SMARTER FUTURE”… let’s start with some buzzwords now. Wow, “fourth industrial revolution!” Amazing stuff!! Also habitual cover for software patents…

3:32: Yes, “digital technologies” just means software patents

3:37: “Computer technology”… yes, software patents again. Up 11% in one year!

3:48: Inclusive and sustainable. We’re back to marketing…

3:53: A patent system that is a) illegal b) unconstitutional c) harmful to Europe d) initiated in violation of several conventions e) damaging to the EU’s legitimacy, i.e. a risk to the union

4:00: The “first of June” is in “just a few weeks” (9 is “few”)

4:09: First European Patent with “unitary effect” might be one of hundreds of thousands of European Patents that are legally invalid and, once challenged in court, the entire system will simply crash down because it’s illegal and was never tested in a high court before

4:20: I keep lying about how a system stacked against SMEs is in fact good for Europe because I’m backed by UPC lobbyists

4:35: I mention “US and China” as role models for Europe even though those are countries, not a collection of dozens of countries with many different cultures, languages etc.

4:39: “Game changer for innovation in Europe” is a lie. It’s game changer for litigation in Europe (more lawsuits and bigger lawsuits with vastly higher fees).

« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts