03.04.23

Links 04/03/2023: Lots of Fedora and Politics

Posted in News Roundup at 12:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • Dominique Leuenberger ☛ openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2023/09

        Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

        The weather is unpredictable and here changes from almost spring-like back to winter in a few days. In this world I am happy to have one constant: snapshot delivering 7 snapshots in as many days (0223…0301). Snapshot 0226 has not been announced to the mailing list as it did not contain any change of packages that are part of the DVD)

        The snapshots delivered these changes:

        • gimp 2.10.34
        • Node.JS 19.7.0
        • SQLite 3.41.0
        • KDE Plasma 5.27.1
        • NetworkManager 1.42.2
        • MariaDB 10.10.3
        • Linux kernel 6.2.0 & linux-glibc-devel 6.2
        • cURL 7.88.1
        • make 4.4.1
        • Mesa 23.0.0
        • AppArmor 3.1.3 (fixes for log format change in kernel 6.2)
        • zstd 1.5.4

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Red Hat Official ☛ 5 ways to make an impact on your IT community

        Learn how to grow your network, engage with other technologists, and give back to the community.

      • Fedora Magazine ☛ Fedora Magazine: How to use a YubiKey with Fedora Linux

        This article explains how to configure Yubico’s YubiKey, a hardware security token, and Fedora Linux Workstation for typical use-cases such as logging into GDM, authentication for the sudo command, OpenSSH authentication and key management, or as a second-factor on the web.

      • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2023-09

        Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

        The F38 Beta freeze is in place. The current F38 Beta target is the early target date (2023-03-14).

        I have weekly office hours most Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time). Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

      • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: CPE Weekly update – Week 9

        This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering) Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat.

        We provide you both infographics and text version of the weekly report. If you just want to quickly look at what we did, just look at the infographic. If you are interested in more in depth details, look below the infographic.

      • Remi Collet ☛ Remi Collet: PHP version 8.1.17RC1 and 8.2.4RC1

        Release Candidate versions are available in testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS / Alma / Rocky and other clones) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests, and also as base packages.

        RPM of PHP version 8.2.4RC1 are available

        • as base packages
          • in the remi-php82-test repository for Enterprise Linux 7
          • in the remi-modular-test for Fedora 35-37 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8
        • as SCL in remi-test repository

    • Debian Family

      • Louis-Philippe Véronneau: Goodbye Bullseye — report from the Montreal 2023 BSP

        Hello World! I haven’t really had time to blog here since the start of the
        semester, as I’ve been pretty busy at work1.

        All this to say, this report for the Bug Squashing Party we held in
        Montreal last weekend is a little late, sorry :)

        First of all, I’m pleased to announce our local community seems to be doing
        great and has recovered from the pandemic-induced lull. May COVID stay away
        from our bodies forever.

        This time around, a total of 9 people made it to what has become somewhat of a
        biennial tradition2. We worked on a grand total of 14 bugs
        and even managed to close some!

      • Sven Hoexter: exfat-fuse 1.4 in experimental

        I know a few people hold on to the exFAT fuse implementation due the
        support for timezone offsets, so here is a small update for you.
        Andrew released 1.4.0, which includes the timezone offset support, which
        was so far only part of the git master branch.

      • Russell Coker ☛ Russell Coker: Hyper Threading on the E5-2696v3

        I just did some quick tests of hyper-threading on my new E5-2696v3 CPU. I compiled the Linux 6.0.10 kernel with and without hyper-threading enabled. Here’s the times for “make -j36 bzImage” and “make -j36 modules” with HT enabled:

        real    2m26.540s
user    55m25.121s
sys     9m56.443s

real    10m57.374s
user    309m21.531s
sys     58m1.070s
      • Diziet ☛ Ian Jackson: Never use git submodules

        tl;dr

        git submodules are always the wrong solution. Yes, even the to the problem they were specifically invented to solve.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Content Management Systems (CMS)

      • WordPress ☛ The Month in WordPress – February 2023

        February has been an exciting month for the WordPress community, with the celebration of the first-ever WordCamp Asia bringing friends and contributors back together in person. But that’s not all; read on for the latest project updates.

      • WordPress ☛ Let’s Party: Organize your WP20 Celebration!

        Join WordPress enthusiasts from across the globe on May 27, 2023, as they come together to celebrate its 20th anniversary!

        Regardless of how you use WordPress or where you call home, you are invited to celebrate this great milestone. Plan a larger party that includes your entire meetup, spend the day coworking with a group of friends, or hang out virtually online.

    • Education (not FOSS)

      • Pro Publica ☛ New Bill Could End Police Ticketing in Illinois Schools

        A new bill in the Illinois House aims to stop schools from working with police to issue students tickets for minor misbehavior, a harmful and sometimes costly practice that many districts have continued despite pleas to stop from the state’s top education officials.

        An investigation by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune revealed last year that school-based ticketing was rampant across Illinois, with police writing citations that can result in a fine of up to $750 for conduct once handled by the principal’s office.

    • Programming/Development

      • Systemd Container and Podman in GitHub CI [Ed: Everything that's wrong in one place: Microsoft/IBM systemd, Microsoft GitHub (proprietary), Podman (IBM), and containers (blobs typically)]

        As D-Installer consists of several components like D-Bus backend, CLI or web frontend,
        we see a need to test in CI that each component can start and communicate properly
        with each other. For this we use a test framework and more importantly
        GitHub CI where we need a systemd container which is not documented at all.
        In the following paragraphs we would like to share with you how we did it so that
        so that each of you can be inspired by it or use it for your own project.

        A Container Including Systemd

        We created a testing container in our build service that
        includes what is needed for the backend and the frontend. After some iterations, we
        discovered that we depend on NetworkManager which is really coupled with systemd.
        Additionally, we needed to access the journal for debugging purposes, which also does not
        work without systemd. For those reasons, we decided to include systemd.

      • MauiKit ☛ Maui Release Briefing # 1

        A new release is now available! – with internationalization – supporting multiple languages, introducing new libraries and apps, a more cohesive look-and-feel, and improvements to the current stack of apps.

        Today, we bring you a new special report on the Maui Project’s progress.

        Maui 2.2.1 was released about three months ago, and since then, we have added new features, bug fixes, and improvements to the Maui set of apps and frameworks; the Maui Shell components and new apps have been updated and pushed for a new release. The following blog post will cover changes and highlights from the last three months, which pave the road for a Maui Desktop environment for convergence.

        Community

        To follow the Maui Project’s development or say hi, you can join us on Telegram:https://t.me/mauiproject.

      • Niko Matsakis: Trait transformers (send bounds, part 3)

        I previously introduced the “send bound” problem, which refers to the need to add a Send bound to the future returned by an async function. This post continues my tour over the various solutions that are available. This post covers “Trait Transformers”. This proposal arose from a joint conversation with myself, Eric Holk, Yoshua Wuyts, Oli Scherer, and Tyler Mandry. It’s a variant of Eric Holk’s inferred async send bounds proposal as well as the work that Yosh/Oli have been doing in the keyword generics group. Those posts are worth reading as well, lots of good ideas there.1

        Core idea: the trait transformer
      • Mozilla ☛ Mozilla Performance Blog: Ancient Bug Discovered in the Visual Metrics Processing Script

        Recently, we had an odd regression in our page load tests. You can find that bug here. The regression was quite large, but when a developer investigated, they found that the regression looked more like an improvement.

        Below you can see an example of this, and note how the SpeedIndex of the Before video shows up before the page is loaded. You can also see that in the After video the page seems to load faster (less frames with gray boxes) even though we have a higher SpeedIndex.

  • Leftovers

    • Science

      • Hackaday ☛ The Curved Nature Of Time Clock

        While we’re told that space-time curves, we aren’t sure that was what [andrei.erdei] was going for when he built a great-looking curved LED clock. The LEDs are courtesy of a strip of 84 WS2812 smart LEDs, the curve comes from a 3D printed part, and a Wemos D1 mini provides the brains.

      • Hackaday ☛ Daniel Valuch Chats About CERN’s High Caliber Hacking

        For those of us who like to crawl over complex systems, spending hours or even days getting hardware and software to work in concert, working at places like NASA or CERN seems like a dream job. Imagine having the opportunity to turn a wrench on the Space Shuttle or the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — not only do you get to spend some quality time with some of the most advanced machines ever produced, you can be secure in the knowledge that your work will further humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe around us.

    • Hardware

      • Ruben Schade ☛ Breaking a Commodore 16 key, and retrocomputer storage

        Last weekend I was working on my 1984 Commodore 16, like a gentleman, trying to figure out why warm restarts don’t work. The machine can be switched on after a few minutes of being off, but the reset button doesn’t work, and flicking the power switch to simulate a warm reboot does nothing. The Commodore Plus/4 resets exactly as I expected when pressing its reset and power buttons, so I knew how the function was supposed to work on these 264-line of machines.

        I’d just reassembled the machine having probed its reset lines with my adorable new budget oscilloscope (a subject for another post), when I stood up and bumped the machine clean off the table. On its journey to the floor, the 6 keycap somehow popped off, sending the spring flying and snapping off its post from the board. I couldn’t believe it; it had literally just been sitting there.

        I have a spare parts board from the VC-20 I can use, though it will require desoldering and reattaching the shift lock key to gain access. It shouldn’t be too difficult, I hope. But it still sucks.

      • Hackaday ☛ Supercon 2022: Michael Whiteley Saves The Badge

        Michael Whiteley (aka [compukidmike]) is a badgelife celebrity. Together, he and his wife Katie make up MK Factor. They have created some of the most popular electronic conference badges. Of course, even experts make mistakes and run into challenges when they dare to push the envelope of technology and delivery schedules. In his Supercon 2022 talk, There’s No Rev 2: When Badgelife Goes Wrong, Mike shares details from some of his worst badge snafus and also how he managed to gracefully pull them back from the edge of disaster.

      • Hackaday ☛ Defender Arcade Rebuilt To Settle A Childhood Memory

        [Jason Winfield] had a nemesis: the Defender arcade machine. Having put quite a number of coins into one during his childhood, he’s since found himself as a seasoned maker, and decided to hold a rematch on his own terms. For this, he’s recreated the machine from scratch, building it around the guts of a Dell laptop, and he tells us the story what it took to build a new Defender in this day and age.

      • Hackaday ☛ All The USB You Can Do With A CH552

        Recently, you might have noticed a flurry of CH552 projects on Hackaday.io – all of them with professionally taken photos of neatly assembled PCBs, typically with a USB connector or two. You might also have noticed that they’re all built by one person, [Stefan “wagiminator” Wagner], who is a prolific hacker – his Hackaday.io page lists over a hundred projects, most of them proudly marked “Completed”. Today, with all these CH552 mentions in the Hackaday.io’s “Newest” category, we’ve decided to take a peek.

      • Hackaday ☛ PCB Makes 7 Segment Displays

        Of course, there’s nothing unusual about using 7-segment displays, especially in a clock. However, [Edison Science Corner] didn’t buy displays. Instead, he fabricated them from a PCB using 0805 LEDs for the segments. You can see the resulting clock project in the video below.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Proprietary

      • Pro Publica ☛ How to File Taxes for Free Without TurboTax

        Intuit, the Silicon Valley software giant behind TurboTax, doesn’t provide the only way to file your taxes electronically, but it has captured the market share like no other.

        For over two decades, Intuit waged a campaign to prevent the federal government from making filing taxes simple and free for most taxpayers. The company spent millions of dollars on lobbying to restrict the IRS from creating its own free filing system, all while growing its multibillion-dollar franchise.

      • Counter Punch ☛ AI Chatbots are Even Scarier Than You Think

        A New York Times reporter has a creepy experience

        Among the most read stories in the NYTimes in the last few weeks was the one by tech reporter Kevin Roose about his unsettling experience with Bing, the updated search engine by Microsoft. Initially delighted by its capabilities and speed, he changed his mind after discovering that Bing’s Open AI Chatbot was creepy. After a brief, getting acquainted period involving online searches and basic questions about AI capabilities, Roose began to get personal. Posing his questions as hypotheticals, he put the bot on the couch, probing its inner life. He asked about his analysand’s desires, fears and animosities. After some resistance, Sydney (the bot’s emerging alter ego) opened up, and out poured a surprising series of confessions and professions.

    • Privatisation/Privateering

    • Security

      • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

        • Techdirt ☛ Dish Network Finally Acknowledges Huge Hack After Days Of Not Answering Questions

          Early this week reports began to emerge that Dish Network was suffering from a widespread outage that effectively prevented a large chunk of the company’s employees from being able to work for more than four days. Initially, Dish tried to downplay the scope of the problem in press reports, only stating that they’d experienced an ambiguous “systems issue.”

      • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Environment

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • TruthOut ☛ DOJ Says Trump Can Be Sued for January 6 Speech
      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ 334,000 Hungarians disappeared – preliminary census results reveal
      • Common Dreams ☛ The Far-Right’s Culture Wars Are Just a Distraction So Oligarchs Can Keep Looting the Working Class

        Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for an American “divorce.”

      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ European Commission: The EU’s long-standing position on member states not having embassies in Jerusalem is unchanged
      • Modern Diplomacy ☛ The Unpredictable World and the Lust for Power

        As the world becomes increasingly unpredictable and power dynamics shift, nations grapple with the desire for influence and control. From rising powers like China and Russia to established players like the United States, countries are jockeying for position and seeking to shape the international system in their image. T

      • Modern Diplomacy ☛ If Trump Returns as President: An Existential Threat to the United States

        Credo quia absurdum, “I believe because it is absurd”-Tertullian There are many reasons to fear Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, but one remains especially worrisome. It stems from the former president’s conspicuous ignorance of international law and US foreign policy.

      • The Nation ☛ Protests Against AMLO’s Reforms Reveal the Strongholds of Mexico’s Ancien Régime

        Mexico City—The ongoing protests against Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s reforms to the National Electoral Institute, or INE by its Spanish acronym, must be understood in the context of the opposition’s declining sway.

      • The Nation ☛ Ron DeSantis’s Struggle

        For someone who loudly announces his principled devotion to the American civic and constitutional order, Ron DeSantis spends a lot of time feeling besieged by it. In his new campaign memoir, The Courage to Be Free, the Florida Republican governor offers a rolling litany of cultural and ideological persecution, which he seems to experience anew with each passing breath. The grim saga starts with his young adulthood as a Yale undergraduate and carries right on through to his authoritarian tour in the governor’s mansion. There, his eager prosecution of culture-war inquisitions has drawn virtually every Sunshine State institution—from the courts and the K-12 and university system to the Covid-besotted “biomedical security state” to the Disney Corporation—into its book-banning, tenure-decimating, vote-suppressing, and tax-assessing sights.

      • Counter Punch ☛ DeSantis’s Educational Policies Come Right Out of the Fascist Playbook

        Fascism in its different forms has always thrived on attacking teachers, schools, critical ideas, democratic values, and allegedly unpatriotic groups while stifling dissent in the alleged name of freedom. Ron DeSantis is a religious, political, and ideological demagogue whose view of power is as ruthless as it is opportunistic. He views academic freedom and freedom of speech as liabilities to be stamped out, not unlike what happened in Nazi Germany. He has weaponized the government to punish industries such as Disney who challenged his “don’t say gay” bill. The dangerous nature of this precedent should be clear, particularly regarding how it resonates with tactics used in repressive regimes in the past.[1] He has signed into law Bill 233 which requires Florida’s public colleges and universities to conduct annual surveys of students’ and faculty members’ beliefs in order “to determine the institutions’ levels of ‘intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity’.” One can only assume that those with views at odds with DeSantis’s view of history, politics, and authority will be labeled as “unpatriotic” and will be pressured to conform to his indoctrinating pedagogy and policies or lose their jobs. This is not unlike what happened in the witch hunts conducted during the McCarthy era by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s in which a number of faculty were fired for having alleged subversive views.[2] In addition, DeSantis’s banning ideas, and entire fields of study–such as gender and race studies– aims to turn learning at the college and university levels into a form of stupidity, one whose ultimate goal is to undercut the ability of young people to think critically, learn from history, and make power accountable.

        Every level of education is under siege in Florida. Regarding public education, DeSantis intensifies and expands a policy of erasure and manufactured ignorance that is endemic to the GOP which provides the driving momentum for a nationwide banning of books and restrictions on teaching about race and gender in public schools. As Julianne Malveaux notes, “More than 1600 books have been banned in 138 school districts in 33 states so far, as the momentum for ignorance is increasing. Among the banned books – Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved; and Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale.”[3] In addition, as Sarah Schwartz points out in Education Week: “Since January 2021, lawmakers in 44 states have introduced bills or other policies that would restrict how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to an Education Week analysis. Eighteen states have imposed these bans.”[4]

      • Scheerpost ☛ Ralph Nader: Prairie Populist, Honest Senator James Abourezk, Fearless Fighter for Justice

        By Ralph Nader Most citizen advocates who work with U.S. senators on a wide variety of issues probably would agree that the late South Dakota Democrat, James Abourezk, was one of a kind. It was not that he was so honest, so down to earth, or so engaging with friend and foe alike.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Opposition Disputes Nigeria’s Election Results After Ruling Party’s Bola Tinubu Declares Victory

        Opposition parties are disputing the results of Saturday’s presidential election in Nigeria, where the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission has declared the winner to be Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress party. The former governor of Lagos played a key role in helping outgoing Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari win two terms in office and campaigned using the slogan “It’s my turn.” Tinubu received about 36% of the vote, and turnout was under 30%. Several of Tinubu’s challengers have disputed the results, alleging fraud, while election observers and voters have cited delays, closures and violence at voting sites. For more on how the election could play out in Africa’s most populous nation, we speak with Aderonke Ige in Lagos. She is a human rights activist and lawyer who works with Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, or CAPPA.

      • TruthOut ☛ GOP Megadonors Are Trying to Pull the Party Away From Trump. It Could Get Ugly.
      • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Hungary to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • AccessNow ☛ New U.S. Cybersecurity Strategy: a strong step forward, with room for improvement

        Access Now commends the U.S.’s National Cybersecurity Strategy that centers “respect for human rights,” but it still falls short on collaboration with stakeholders abroad.

      • Reason ☛ “I Was Just Kidding!” Assertion Can’t Justify Dismissal of Libel Case

        Def Noodles v. Keemstar.

      • AccessNow ☛ Joint statement: Iraqi authorities must cease their chilling crackdown on free speech

        Through a joint statement, civil society calls for Iraqi authorities to stop censoring free speech online through crackdowns on so-called “indecent content.”

      • NCAC ☛ NCAC protests cancellation of play at Northwest Allen County Schools

        The National Coalition Against Censorship has written a letter to the School Board of Northwest Allen County Schools in Indiana to protest the cancellation of the high school’s production of Marian: The True Tale of Robin Hood.

      • NCAC ☛ ACLU, NCAC oppose removal of abortion-related art from exhibition at Idaho college art gallery

        Lewis-Clark State College announced that it will pull several artworks addressing abortion care from an upcoming exhibition for fear of violating the state’s No Public Funds for Abortion Act LEWISTON, Idaho – In a letter sent to Lewis-Clark State College President Dr. Cynthia Pemberton, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho [...]

      • Techdirt ☛ No, Ukraine, The World Should Not Boycott A Video Game That Looks Kindly On Russian Communism

        As we’re right at the 1 year anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of its sovereign neighbor, Ukraine, regular readers here will have followed along with all kinds of posts we’ve done on the subject, be it on tech-related items or some of the ways the video game industry has organized to help the country get the funds it needs to survive. Throughout it all, the conflict has, in most cases rightly, been pitched as a conflict between good and evil, democracy vs. authoritarianism, and a free and open society combatting an aggressor with all the hallmarks of a closed, censor-heavy society.

      • Techdirt ☛ Another Day, Another Blatant Attack On The 1st Amendment From The Florida GOP

        I keep hearing people pretend that the GOP in general, and Florida GOPers more specifically, and Governor Ron DeSantis most specifically, are fighting for “free speech,” when they continually seem to push blatantly unconstitutional legislation designed to attack free speech and the 1st Amendment in a way that keeps getting Florida shot down in court by judges (while wasting tons of taxpayer money).

      • India Times ☛ Codify an Internet shutdown protocol

        Internet shutdowns in Rajasthan – as well as Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal – the latest case related to curbing cheating in examinations, has run against a Supreme Court ruling that allows suspension of freedom of expression and trade on grounds of national security and protection of citizens. This latest petition to codify [Internet] shutdown procedures has wider ramifications.

        India holds the dubious record of the most [Internet] shutdowns among countries, and permitting this for not-so-grave reasons risks holding this record for longer than necessary. Internet restrictions in Kashmir have a strategic bearing that cannot be altered in the immediate future. But GoI must codify limits on administrative overreach. It does the world’s largest democracy’s international standing no favour to find itself ahead of Ukraine and Iran, the two countries next in the list of most [Internet] shutdowns.

      • National Secular Society ☛ We need to normalise blasphemy

        The latest iteration of Britain’s new de facto blasphemy code came last week when four students were suspended from Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield after a Quran was allegedly ‘desecrated’.

        From what’s been reported it appears a Quran received minor damage after being brought into school as a forfeit by a pupil who lost while playing a Call of Duty videogame with other students.

      • Raw Story ☛ Florida Republican wants any blogger writing about Ron DeSantis to ‘register with the state’

        Senate Bill 1316: Information Dissemination would mandate that writers register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics. It would apply to anyone who writes “an article, a story, or a series of stories,” about “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature,” and is paid for doing so. They would have to register within a five-day period by the publication of the article or stories.

      • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hongkongers wearing face masks at protests risk prosecution, says gov’t advisor as anti-mask law set to stay

        The protest would be the first legal demonstration of its kind since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out over three years ago. The authorities previously cited Covid-19 health concerns to ban protests and rallies, including the city’s annual Tiananmen crackdown vigils in 2020 and 2021.

      • Deutsche Welle ☛ Tunisia bans upcoming opposition protest

        Tunisian authorities on Thursday banned an upcoming protest by the country’s main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front (NSF), but the group has vowed to press ahead with its planned demonstration on Sunday.

        The governor of Tunis, Kamel Feki, said the NSF’s request to hold a march on Sunday had “not been approved as some of its leaders are suspected of plotting against state security.”

      • Medforth ☛ Woke Slovakian justice: Three years in prison for cleaning buttocks with Koran

        Sheila Smerekova’s reasoning for this: she had been sexually molested in her childhood and had also been a victim of Islamist human trafficking.

        The Special Criminal Court in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, on Wednesday sentenced Sheila Smerekova, who desecrated the Koran years ago, to three years in prison, parameter.sk reported today

      • Techdirt ☛ Texas, Which Banned Most Content Moderation, Now Pushing Law Requiring Abortion-Related Info Be Blocked From The Internet

        Well, this will be fun. As you’ll recall, in 2021, Texas signed into law a bill that effectively banned the right of companies to moderate content on social media. That law has been challenged in court, and while a district court tossed it out as unconstitutional (and obviously so), the 5th Circuit reversed in a ruling so bizarre and incomprehensible, I still have difficulty understanding how anyone takes it seriously. That law is currently in limbo as the Supreme Court figures out what to do about it.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Call to ‘Boycott Walgreens’ Erupts After Company Caves to Right-Wing on Abortion Pills

        Calls to “boycott Walgreens” grew on social media after the United States’ second-largest pharmacy chain confirmed Thursday that it will not sell abortion pills in nearly two dozen GOP-controlled states, including several where such medication remains legal.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • CPJ ☛ Journalist Syed Fawad Ali Shah found jailed in Pakistan after going missing in Malaysia

        Syeda, who asked to be identified by her first name, said that Shah fled Pakistan after he was abducted by agents of the country’s military intelligence agency, the ISI, who held him for three and a half months while beating and threatening him in retaliation for his reporting that unfavorably portrayed Pakistan’s security forces during the U.S. war on terror.

      • [Old] VOA News ☛ Wife Still Seeking Answers 5 Months After Pakistani Journalist Disappears

        The first inkling of her husband’s fate came on January 4, when Malaysian Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail acknowledged at a press conference that Shah had been deported to Pakistan in August, at the request of the Pakistan High Commission in Kuala Lumpur.

      • Meduza ☛ Belarusian human rights activist and Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski sentenced to 10 years in prison — Meduza

        A court in Minsk has sentenced the chairman of the Belarusian human rights center Viasna, Ales Bialiatski, to 10 years in a strict regime colony. This news was reported by Viasna itself.

      • New York Times ☛ Nobel Prize Is No Defense Against Jail for a Winner in Belarus

        Andrei Sannikov, an old friend of Mr. Bialiatski and a fellow Belarusian human rights activist, said the sentence handed down Friday against a Nobel laureate was part of a drive by authorities to show they will brook no dissent.

      • CNN ☛ Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski sentenced to 10 years in prison by Belarusian court

        Bialiatski, a pro-democracy activist, has documented human rights abuses in Belarus since the 1980s. He founded the organization Viasna, or Spring, in 1996 after a referendum that consolidated the authoritarian powers of president and close Russian ally, President Alexander Lukashenko.

        The activist was arrested in 2020 amid widespread protests against Lukashenko’s regime.

      • BBC ☛ Ales Bialiatski: Nobel Prize-winning activist sentenced to 10 years in jail

        Supporters of Mr Bialiatski, 60, say the authoritarian regime of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is trying to silence him.

      • Scheerpost ☛ The Nightmare Espionage Act That is Killing Julian Assange and the First Amendment

        Shenkman: What’s sobering is that I want to remind folks that Assange is not a U.S. government employee. He’s not even a U.S. citizen. And somehow the U.S. government says it has jurisdiction. Over this person for publication that exposes the US crimes and war crimes and human rights violations. So what does that mean? That means the US is saying that anyone, literally anyone on earth is subject to this Espionage Act. And what I want, what’s honestly scary and I think folks don’t talk about enough. Imagine if China or Russia said the same thing. What if Russia came forward and said, we want to extradite this U.S. citizen under our laws to face prosecution and life in prison in Russia for publishing evidence of war crimes committed in Ukraine, for instance? What if China… Yeah, by Russians. The same thing, what if China did that? I mean, we folks would be up in arms. They’d say they’d see it for what it is. I mean, and that’s exactly what the U.S. is doing. And I think if this case goes forward, it’s going to legitimize other countries doing it. And that’s truly scary. Just imagine any other country on earth saying that someone who is not even a citizen of their country is subject to prosecution for exposing the misdeeds of their government.

      • The Dissenter ☛ TUNE IN: Belmarsh Tribunal In Sydney, Australia

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • ABC ☛ The Perks Workers Want Also Make Them More Productive

        But that’s not all. The pandemic, combined with a strong labor market where workers have persistent power to demand the kinds of work cultures they want, means even more changes could be coming. After years of advocacy, many U.S. states are moving towards mandatory, paid family and sick leave for all workers. Meanwhile, companies are flirting with a four-day workweek in pilot programs worldwide, including in the U.S.

        Policies like these have conventionally been seen as good for workers’ personal lives but bad for business. But thanks to the massive, sudden changes brought on by the pandemic, we now have more data than ever, and it shows that assumption is mostly wrong. Overall, policies that are good for employees’ personal lives are, when enacted correctly, good for their work lives, too. In fact, they seem to be good for everyone. The only question is whether we’ll start to see more companies adopt them.

      • Atlantic Council ☛ Critical connectivity: Reducing the price of data in African markets

        In outlining why data remains so costly and inaccessible across Africa, Hruby profiles four main detriments: infrastructure, competition, policy, and consumption patterns. Through case studies and success stories from other developing nations who struggled with high-priced data and implemented successful mitigation measures, Hruby develops a framework for reform and showcases how key changes can rapidly reduce data costs, spur development, and transform entire industries. Her recommendations directly address the current US administration, African governments seeking to build and benefit from a digital economy, and global development finance institutions (DFIs) that are already investing and making much needed transformative inroads into African markets.

      • Firstpost ☛ Hindu slavery under Islamic dominion in India: A topic not discussed in history

        Prior to this, slavery in ancient India was humanist in nature and slaves were not seen as commodities for making profit through sale, a major reason why foreigners like Megasthenes, aware of the fate of slaves in western nations, failed to see any slaves in India and declared that all Indians were free (Indica of Megasthenes, cited in Om Prakash, “Religion and society in Ancient India,” 1985, p. 140).

        While the western world right from ancient times was well acquainted with slavery, it was Islam that started the practice of slave trade, taking it to gargantuan proportions, making it run for profit like any other commercial activity. Prophet Muhammad had continued with the prevailing pagan Arab practice of keeping slaves; and as per his first orthodox biographer Ibn Ishaq, he had set a precedent by selling few captured Jewish women and children of Medina in exchange for horses and weapons in Egypt (The Life of Muhammad: A translation of Ibn Ishaqs Sirat Rasul Allah by A. Gillaume, 1987, p. 466). The Quran also expressly permits Muslims to acquire slaves through conquest.

      • ABC ☛ Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad: Suspected poisonings a ‘terror attack’ on Iranian schoolgirls

        ALINEJAD: Look, the Islamic Republic is exactly acting like Taliban. That actually, if you remember, the chemical attack happened in Boko Haram in Afghanistan by Taliban and now by the Islamic Republic. So they are all following same ideology. They are against schoolgirls. They are against women. They hate women. So they actually try to create fear among schoolgirls to stop them from protesting. So that is why it’s ironic that the Islamic Republic trying to tell the rest of the world that we are against Taliban because the girls are not allowed to go to school. The Islamic Republic cannot admit it publicly that they are against the schoolgirls. But they are using terror tactic to create fear among schoolgirls.

      • Reason ☛ SCOTUS Questions the Government’s Absurdly Broad Definition of ‘Aggravated Identity Theft’

        According to the Justice Department’s reading of the law, the crime need not involve impersonation or even fraud.

      • RFERL ☛ UNICEF Offers Help As Mysterious Wave Of Illness Sweeps Through Iranian Schools

        The first incident is believed to have occurred in November, when 18 schoolgirls in the city of Qom were taken to a hospital after complaining of symptoms that included nausea, headaches, coughing, breathing difficulties, heart palpitations, and numbness and pain in their hands or legs.

        Since then, hundreds more cases have occurred and it remains unclear what may be causing the illnesses, though some of those affected have said they smelled chlorine or cleaning agents, while others said they thought they smelled tangerines in the air.

      • VOA News ☛ US to Focus Bison Restoration on Expanding Tribal Herds

        U.S. officials will work to restore more large bison herds to Native American lands under a Friday order from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that calls for the government to tap into Indigenous knowledge in its efforts to conserve the burly animals that are an icon of the American West.

      • Democracy Now ☛ Meet Thelma Cabrera, the Indigenous Leader Barred from Running in Guatemala’s Presidential Election

        Guatemala’s presidential election this year is taking place against a backdrop of worsening repression against journalists, human rights activists and Indigenous environmental defenders. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court on Thursday upheld a decision by the country’s electoral tribunal to bar Indigenous human rights defender Thelma Cabrera from running. Cabrera and her running mate, former human rights ombudsman Jordán Rodas, are members of the leftist political party the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples. They visited the United States in February to meet with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights following their ban and spoke with Democracy Now! about the election, their platform and how political elites in the country have consolidated power. “Guatemala is a corrupt state that’s been coopted by criminals. This is now reflected in violating our right to participate in this presidential election,” said Cabrera.

      • TruthOut ☛ Indigenous Leader Is Barred From Running in Guatemala’s Presidential Election
      • Common Dreams ☛ Progressives Mourn Karen Hobert Flynn—Among Democracy’s ‘Fiercest Defenders’

        Progressive groups and activists showed an outpouring of love and admiration for Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of Common Cause, after her death from an undisclosed cause was reported by the pro-democracy group on Friday.

      • Jon Chiappetta: Security Camera Tech – A Crime Was Committed Against Me!

        Well, my grandpa had a saying that I remember til this day, he said “son, nothing good ever happens at 4am”. So last night, at 4:15am, 2 folks stole my license plate off my car and they could be out there committing crimes in my name! :/

      • Democracy Now ☛ Meet the Bronx Activists Who Won a Historic Settlement for NYPD’s Violent Attack at 2020 BLM Protest

        New York City has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with peaceful protesters who were violently “boxed in” or “kettled” by NYPD officers during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in response to the police murder of George Floyd in 2020. As part of the settlement, over 300 people who were trapped by police and assaulted with batons and pepper spray, then detained or arrested at a June 4, 2020, protest in the neighborhood of Mott Haven, will each receive $21,500 — believed to be the largest class-action settlement in a case of mass arrest. We are joined by three people who were at the Mott Haven protest: Samira and Amali Sierra, sisters who are two of the five listed plaintiffs, and Democracy Now! video news fellow Sonyi Lopez, whose footage of the protest was used in a Human Rights Watch report that condemned the NYPD’s actions as “serious violations of international human rights law.” In addition, we speak to Joshua Moskovitz, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.

      • Common Dreams ☛ Sea of Death and Our Unforgiveable Cruelty Towards Migrants

        The bodies of drowned migrants are still washing up on the beaches of Crotone, Italy on the Mediterranean Sea. Their wooden boat crashed on the rocks just offshore from this Calabrian resort town, turning the beach, said one local, “into a graveyard.” The death toll reached 67 on Wednesday, with 80 survivors. It is assumed that many more died, as at least 200 people were aboard the boat when it departed Izmir, Turkey, a few days earlier.

    • Monopolies

      • Techdirt ☛ Kenyan Court First To Tell Meta It Can’t Walk Away From A Lawsuit Just By Claiming It’s Not From Around Here

        A lawsuit filed over exploitation of content moderators will be allowed to continue, according to a recent ruling by a Kenyan court. Former employees of Meta sued the company in the Kenya Employment and Labour Relations Court last year, alleging being subjected to a “toxic work environment” while performing the often unpleasant task for removing harmful content before it is seen by Facebook users. The plaintiffs also alleged Meta and its third-party contractor (Kenyan digital services provider, Sama) engaged in “union busting” and refused to provide mental health services to moderators.

      • Gizmodo ☛ Several Amazon Go Stores Are Crumbling

        Amazon is closing eight of its Amazon Go stores including two in New York City, effective early this Spring. The company confirmed the closures in an email to Gizmodo but clarified the only stores affected were those that had minimal impact on customers.

      • Trademarks

        • TTAB Blog ☛ TTABlog Test: Is “REMO” Primarily Merely a Surname for Telecommunication Services?

          The USPTO refused to register the proposed mark REMO for telecommunication services and on-line networking services, deeming the mark to be primarily merely a surname under Section 2(e)(4). Applicant argued that “Remo” is a rare surname, and therefore “the consuming public would not recognize this term as a surname, and there is practically no risk to persons wanting to use the surname in business.”

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Google Deindexes ‘Pirate’ IP Addresses When Used to Circumvent Blocking

          On top of billions of URL removals, at least 10,000 domains have already been deindexed and permanently removed from Google’s search results on copyright grounds. In response to some pirate sites ditching regular domains and publishing their IP addresses instead, Google is now deindexing by IP address when certain standards are met.

        • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Bay Forum Suffers Extended Downtime After Hack

          The Pirate Bay’s official forum is usually a beacon of information if the main site goes offline, but for the last few days, it has become unreachable. According to a SuprBay administrator, the forum is recovering from a hack and should be back online in a week or two. Reportedly, no user data was compromised.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • 🔤SpellBinding: TIKLPSC Wordo: YAHOO
      • The Names

        I keep a list of names for my characters. There were two names in particular that I liked for a story, the truth is I still like the names all the same, but they no longer belong to the character I had in mind; I’ve met a person who, as fate would have it, has both first and middle name just as I had written them. I met her on the subway, I was reading Last Evenings on Earth, and she asked if I was studying, and I said no, I said I was reading a Chilean writer. What a coincidence, she said, I’m Chilean too. A couple of days later we went to her friend’s concert in Brooklyn, two days after that she came along with me to buy some books in Manhattan and we walked around the city. She’s been living here fewer months than me. She’s a singer and understands life as an artist, I’m just a writer. The names came swiftly off the list. They fit her better anyway.

      • Without a mouse or keyboard

        It’s been a while since I wrote on my tablet using the text editor I programmed. Last year I relied heavily on it as I cranked out poems about lost love before falling asleep, yet those feelings have now been numb for quite some time and I suppose without the cathartic release of melancholy and nostalgia it’s just not been a priority. I’ve taken to prose lately, writing short yet unfinished stories on my laptop. Somehow, desktop operating systems feel safe. I’ve attempted to prove a point to no one in particular about the utility of a tablet in matters of productivity, yet that concept remains elusive and perpetually ridiculous. Sometimes it’s just fun to do things without a mouse and keyboard. Hunched over a touchscreen, pecking with thumbs, index and middle fingers, with my legs numb from sitting cross-legged on my bed, I feel like a kid with a new toy. The rain splashing on the window outside makes it all the more exciting.

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

Sirius ‘Open Source’ CEO Leaves Sirius

Posted in Free/Libre Software at 12:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Liar? No more.

Summary: 3 months after my wife and I left Sirius ‘Open Source’ the CEO is leaving as well

Links 04/03/2023: Linux From Scratch 11.3 and Mixxx 2.3.4

Posted in News Roundup at 8:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Linux Magazine’s New Issue

    • Server

      • Container Journal ☛ 3 Miniaturized Kubernetes Distros to Manage Compact Containers

        By now, you are likely well aware of Kubernetes, the comprehensive container orchestration platform. Although many people think the platform is overly complex and not beginner-friendly, this is not necessarily true. Miniaturized Kubernetes distributions (distros) make the platform much more accessible as they do not require a wide range of

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • André Almeida ☛ Installing kernel modules faster with multithread XZ

        My target machine is the Steam Deck, that uses .xz for compressing the modules. Giving that we want gamers to be able to install as many games as possible, the OS shouldn’t waste much disk space. amdgpu, when compiled with debug symbols can use a good hunk of space. Here’s the comparison of disk size of the module uncompressed, and then with .zst and .xz compression: [...]

    • Applications

      • ZDNet ☛ Linux desktop powers consider uniting for an app store [Ed: This usually means proprietary if not DRM down the road]

        One reason why there are so many Linux desktops is that there’s endless disagreement on what makes the best desktop. Now, GNOME, Debian, and KDE are exploring the idea of uniting, using Flatpak to create a Linux desktop app store.

      • 9to5Linux ☛ Mixxx 2.3.4 Open-Source DJ Software Adds Support for Traktor Kontrol S2 Mk1 and Numark Party Mix

        Arriving more than seven months after Mixxx 2.3.3, the Mixxx 2.3.4 update brings controller mapping support for the Traktor Kontrol S2 Mk1 and the Numark Party Mix controllers, and improves sampler and HotCue buttons for the Traktor S3 controller, which was introduced in the previous release, and improves support for the Denon DJ MC7000 and Ableton Push controllers.

        OMixxx 2.3.4 also adds HotCue clear with pad support and improves sliders, knobs, and inverted tempo fader for the Numark DJ2Go2 controller, adds an inverted pitch slider to the Numark N4 controller to match the GUI orientation, and adds support for arbitrary maximums in 7-bit and 14-bit handlers from controller scripts to Potmeters.

      • yewtube Is A Feature Packed Terminal Based YouTube Player – Linux Uprising Blog

        yewtube is a command-line tool to search, browse, and play YouTube videos directly from your terminal, for Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows. It uses no API keys, and it can play audio only or audio/video using a third-party media player like VLC, mpv or mplayer, with lots of features on top.

        yewtube is a fork of mps-youtube, which had its last release in back in 2018. This January, yewtube was merged back in mps-youtube, and its development continues at https://github.com/mps-youtube/yewtube. The fork is a year old, and it contains numerous bug fixes as well as some minor new features such as the ability to run yewtube over tor using torsocks, and the ability to set the mplayer cache.

      • Linux Links ☛ 10 Best Free and Open Source Linux HDR Imaging

        HDR software allows computer graphics to offer the full real world levels of illumination, with darker darks and brighter lights, while at the same time increasing the amount of lighting detail displayed in all areas of the image. While standard image formats utilizes 8, 16 or 24 bits with applied gamma and color space, the HDR image format extends the bit depth up to 96 bit in a linear color space. Additionally, HDR images can be photometrically correct.

        HDR images are normally generated by combining multiple normal images of the same scene taken with different intensity levels, or as the result of creating a global illumination rendering.

        To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 10 top quality open source HDR applications. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone interested in HDR imagery.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Kifarunix ☛ Connect to Remote Docker Environment on Docker Desktop

        Can docker Desktop connect to remote host? Yes. Follow through this guide to learn how to connect to Remote Docker environment on Docker Desktop. Docker desktop is a GUI based application that enables developers to easily create environments for building their applications.

      • Reconfigurable and embedded Digital Systems ☛ How to apply patches from the Linux Kernel Mailing List

        The Linux Kernel is under constant development and improvement. Everyday patches are submitted to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). Some of these patches get accepted and merged into the mainline Linux kernel and become available to the user, other patches never do.

        Sometimes it is useful to get patches from the LKML, for example if you are developing in the kernel or simply because you want to stay at the bleeding edge. Another reason could be that you need patches that were proposed to the LKML but were never merged. This can happen when developing with exotic hardware, for example a driver could have been submitted but never merged because of some reason (e.g., code doesn’t follow the kernel guidelines etc.), however this code might still be of interest to you.

        In this post we will explore how we can incorporate code from the LKML into our kernel.

      • University of Toronto ☛ Modern email addresses can be in UTF-8

        Specifically, the character in question is Unicode U+2010 Hyphen (also). The email in question was sent to us using this character in a destination address that actually had the ASCII dash; given that the U+2010 version of the address didn’t exist, Exim on our external MX gateway rejected it. These days, Exim’s logging is in UTF-8, as is pretty much anything you’ll use to read the logs, so the result was pretty confusing to disentangle. To all appearances it looked like our email system had temporarily glitched out and decided that some valid local addresses didn’t actually exist.

      • Jake Bauer ☛ Styling External Links

        Long time no see! While I have a few other, longer blog posts still cooking, I figured I’d post about a cool bit of CSS I came across on eli_oat’s site which adds a marker to every link on a site that points to an external domain.

        This means that links which point to pages on the same site (or within the same domain, if configured like that) look like this: paritybit.ca, whereas links which point to any external domain look like this: example.com.

      • Make Use Of ☛ How to Quickly Update Google Chrome on Ubuntu

        Google Chrome isn’t available in the official Ubuntu repositories. So how do you go about updating the app once it’s installed?

      • Pablo Iranzo Gómez: Automating SSH keys loading for Ansible usage
      • Make Use Of ☛ How to Fix the “ifconfig: command not found” Error in Linux

        If you encounter the command not found error while using ifconfig, here’s an easy way to solve it.

      • Make Use Of ☛ How to Run Multiple Commands in Linux at Once

        The Linux terminal is a powerful tool that allows you to perform various system operations using commands. File manipulation, program management, and service automation are some of the operations you can carry out efficiently using shell commands.

        However, when it comes to executing multiple operations, running commands one by one isn’t efficient. A faster way to do it is to chain multiple commands in one line. Not only does this speed up the process, but it also saves you time.

        Let’s explore all the ways to run multiple commands at once in Linux.

      • Make Use Of ☛ How to Create a Windows Bootable USB on Linux

        Want to make the switch from Linux to Windows? Here’s a guide on creating a bootable Windows USB on Linux, covering everything from downloading a Windows ISO to flashing it to a USB drive using WoeUSB and balenaEtcher.

      • Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install Firefox Developers Edition on a Chromebook
      • Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install PhpStorm on Linux Lite 6.2
      • Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install LibreOffice on a Chromebook in 2023
      • Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install RubyMine on Linux Lite 6.2
      • Julia Evans ☛ Some notes on using nix

        Recently I started using a Mac for the first time. The biggest downside I’ve noticed so far is that the package management is much worse than on Linux. At some point I got frustrated with homebrew because I felt like it was spending too much time upgrading when I installed new packages, and so I thought – maybe I’ll try the nix package manager!

    • Games

      • Anbernic RG353P retro handheld has Android & Linux compatibility with dual analog sticks

        Play Android and Linux games on the Anbernic RG353P retro handheld! It can run both with its Android 11 or Linux operating systems. This gives you impressive support and compatibility for your gaming library, emulators, and apps. Additionally, it has a 3.5” IPS 640 x 480 touchscreen display for vibrant gameplay right on the device. With a premium-quality build, it has dual analog sticks as well as dual speakers for high-quality stereo sound. Moreover, it offers Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity, and it has a powerful quad-core 64-bit RK3566 processor. This works together with the fast LPDDR4 2GB RAM. Not only that, but it also has a 3,500 mAh battery capacity that delivers up to 6 hours of battery life. You’ll also get an included screen protector and microSD card included. Elevate your gaming setup with this retro gadget!

      • Boiling Steam ☛ Godot 4.0 is Out – What You Need to Know, And Why You Should Care

        There is a chance that you do not intend to use games to tell your stories, to convey your messages or to help with training and simulations in your company. [...]

        This new iteration took +3 years of hard work, they added a myriad of technical features: improved performance and multithreading, better shading and lighting, bringing Godot closer to the big engines. You can check the novelties here: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-4-0-sets-sail/

      • LWN ☛ Godot 4.0 released

        The waiting is done; version 4.0 of the Godot game engine has been released.

      • Boiling Steam ☛ Steam Mystery Fest 2023

        Right after Steam Next Fest, before I could put down my gamepad, Valve presents us Steam Mystery Fest. It focuses on games where you investigate and solve mysteries, detective games of all kinds already released or upcoming.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Factorio gets official Wayland support on Linux

        Are you a Wayland user? Do you play Factorio? The latest update should make things a lot smoother for you.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a Vampire Survivors styled spin-off

        Ghost Ship Publishing and Funday Games recently announced a Deep Rock Galactic spin-off named Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and I need it right now.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Meg’s Monster is a cute looking unique short JRPG out now

        Japanese developer Odencat just released Meg’s Monster, a cute looking short JRPG with a rather interesting twist.

      • GamingOnLinux ☛ Steam Deck OS 3.4.6 Beta adds DOOM Eternal Ray Tracing, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty fixes

        Valve has updated the Steam Deck Preview update branch to bring with it Steam Deck OS 3.4.6 Beta and it’s quite an exciting one. It brings an update to the open source Mesa graphics drivers with Mesa 23.1, mainly focused on the Vulkan side of things but DXR Ray Tracing is coming too but not quite ready yet.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Nate Graham ☛ This week in KDE: Plasma 6 begins

          As has been reported in various other places already, this week the “master” branch of Plasma-aligned software repos have been ported to Qt 6. Work is ongoing, but the actual change-over is happening very quickly, and adventurous people are able to run Plasma 6 in a usable state already! This builds on years of work to port old code away from deprecated APIs and libraries that was just quietly happening in the background all along, pushed along by people like Nicolas Fella, Friedrich Kossebau, Volker Krause, and many others. It can be fairly thankless and boring-looking work, but it’s incredibly important, and the foundation of how quickly this technical transition has been able to happen. So I find myself feeling quite optimistic about our chances of shipping a solid and high quality Plasma 6 this year!

        • It’s FOSS ☛ KDE Plasma Gearing Up for its Next Release With Qt6-only Master Branch

          KDE is firing up development for the Plasma 6.0 release in a big way.

          Seeing that KDE Plasma 5.27 was the last major release in the 5.x series and also the last one to use the Qt 5 framework. The upcoming release has a lot to stand up to.

          With a recent notice, a significant development shift was announced that would affect all the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.x releases.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Events

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • Start of multi-page floating tables in Writer

        Writer now has the early steps to handle tables that are both floating and span over multiple pages.

        This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but is useful on the desktop as well.

    • Education

      • Rlang ☛ 7 New books added to Big Book of R

        Welcome to this new edition of Big Book of R additions! Thanks to Lluis Revilla and Gary for submitting books!

        I also wanted to give a special shout-out to Niels Ohlsen (a long-time RStats twitter mutual!) who helped me review book submissions and add these to the collection.

    • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

      • Open Access/Content

        • Bruno Rodrigues ☛ What I’ve learned making an .epub Ebook with Quarto

          Quarto is a tool made by Posit and is an open-source scientific and technical publishing tool. If you know what LaTeX is, then it should be easy for you to grok Quarto. The idea of Quarto is that you write documents using Markdown, and then compile these source files into either PDFs, Word documents, but also books, web-sites, ebooks (in the Epub format) and so on… It’s quite powerful, and you can also use programming language code chunks for literate programming. Quarto support R, Python, Julia and ObsevableJS chunks.

    • Programming/Development

      • Geshan ☛ How to use React fragments, a step-by-step guide for beginners
      • Rlang ☛ Content Security Policy – Why You Need It

        Heads up! We’re about to launch WASP, a Web Application Security Platform. The aim of WASP is to help you manage (well, you guessed it) the security of your Posit Connect application using Content Security Policy and Network Error Logging. More details soon, but if this interests you, please get in touch.

        This blog post is aimed at those who are somewhat tech literate but not necessarily a security expert. We’re aiming to introduce the concept of Content Security Policy and teach some of the technical aspects.

      • James G ☛ Send a Trackback in Two Lines of Code

        You can also specify a title, excerpt, and blog name, although these are optional as per the specification.

      • India Times ☛ US unveils new cybersecurity strategy, puts onus on Big Tech

        The National Cybersecurity Strategy stressed on rebalancing the responsibility to defend cyberspace by “shifting the burden for cybersecurity away from individuals, small businesses, and local governments, and onto the organisations that are most capable and best-positioned to reduce risks for all of us”.

      • Daniel Stenberg ☛ My hacker station

        My home office was featured over at Hacker Stations where I also detailed stuff in my workplace and offer a few more photos. I have been working exclusively from home for nine years straight now.

      • Brad Taunt ☛ Why I Stopped Using an External Monitor

        Over the past year I switched away from a traditional desktop environment to a window manager – dwm to be specific. This also involved changing most of my daily software programs to utilize the full suckless “suite”. In doing so, the shift away from floating windows and virtualized desktops happened quickly.

        I continued to use my UHD monitor with this new environment but slowly started running into minor (yet still inconvenient) roadblocks: [...]

      • Perl / Raku

      • Python

        • Idiomdrottning ☛ In defense of ReStructuredText

          That’s right! This post isn’t just an excuse to snipe at RST’s design decisions; I’m trying to make a larger point about overly wanting to improve formats and create layers of specs upon specs upon specs upon specs.

          RST is part of the Python ecosystem just like POD is for Perl and roff is for manpages, and it’s better that it remains that way than trying to change it.

    • Standards/Consortia

      • Ruben Schade ☛ I… like the US Letter paper size

        I’ll admit, I liked it. The dimensions and ratio made no mathematical sense to someone not also used to inches, furlongs, and measuring things by counting chickens or something (it makes more sense than Celsius because poultry doesn’t need a decimal point!), but it was visually pleasing. I can’t explain it, but US Letter looks right.

  • Leftovers

    • The Straits Times ☛ Massive fire hits Hong Kong high-rise construction site
    • Science Alert ☛ Easter Island Statue Submerged For 200 Years Has Just Been Discovered

      In a volcanic crater, watching the sky

    • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ Thoughts on Microsoft Stabber Joseph Cantrell’s Drug Diary.

      They hired him, he scared the fuck out of everyone that worked with him, then he started responding badly by demanding transfers to another dept that got denied, calling in, using PCP for an entire month, and then stabbing a coworker 13 times.

      The witnesses to the Microsoft Stabber told police that the man he was trying to murder was “screaming like a dog that got hit by a car or something”.

      Some folks asked why the guy wasn’t able to get him off of him.

      Well, just off the top of my head, he was being stabbed 13 times, by surprise, by the result of the Neurodivergent Microsoft Hiring Program, who was on PCP. (He had been on PCP the entire month according to his diary.)

    • Axios ☛ Robots are your new office security guard

      Lower costs mean it’s now substantially cheaper for companies to use robots than traditional guards for 24/7 security.

      Robots can check in visitors and issue badges, respond to alarms, report incidents, and see things security cameras can’t.

    • Science

    • Education

      • Michigan News ☛ 126-year-old U.P. university announces it’s closing, won’t enroll students next year

        “I do want to assure you that the leadership team, the Board of Trustees and myself have left no stone unturned in an attempt to avoid this day,” Pinnow said in his letter. “Our efforts have been noble and unceasing and while none of us wanted this day to come, we have also realized that in order to honor Finlandia’s 126 year-old legacy appropriately, we must end its operations with grace and dignity.”

      • Quartz ☛ More than a third of US centi-millionaires are graduates of just 8 universities

        The uber wealthy invest not just in name-brand cars and clothing but also in name-brand degrees.

        [....]

        A considerable proportion of US college enrollments are international students, according to the report. These graduates often remain in the US to launch their careers and go on to lead billion-dollar companies. About 25% of billion-dollar startups in the US have a founder who first came to the US as an international student, according to a report by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit think tank.

      • uni Emory ☛ Emory announces 4.9% tuition increase for 2023-24 academic year

        Emory University’s undergraduate tuition will increase 4.9% for the 2023-24 academic year, rising from $57,120 to $59,920, according to a March 2 Emory News Center article. In total, the cost of undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board will grow from $74,964 to $79,054 — a 5.5% increase.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Proprietary

      • BBC ☛ Zoom boss Greg Tomb fired ‘without cause’

        The businessman had taken up the role in June 2022 and had been active on earnings calls and overseeing the company’s sales.

        A spokesperson for Zoom said the tech firm isn’t looking for a replacement.

      • John Gruber ☛ Daring Fireball: Tweetbot and Twitterrific Face the Cliff

        You surely recall that last month, in a fit of pique, Elon Musk spitefully pulled the plug on third-party Twitter clients with no notice whatsoever, in the most chickenshit way imaginable. Twitter didn’t even make it official that third-party clients had been banned until a week of confusion and dread had passed.

        The obvious problem for developers of such clients, of course, is that Twitter clients are useless without the ability to connect to Twitter. A less obvious but no less serious problem is that the leading clients, Tapbots’s Tweetbot and The Iconfactory’s Twitterrific, were monetized through annual subscriptions. That left each company with thousands and thousands of customers with months left on those subscriptions, but no functionality.

        Financially, this isn’t a “Huh, yeah, that must kinda suck” situation. It’s more of an “Oh shit, we’re fucked” situation. Twitterrific and Tweetbot weren’t side projects — they were flagship products from small companies. As I mentioned last month, The Iconfactory has a bunch of other great commercial apps (and games). Tapbots does too — Calcbot (a calculator and unit converter for both iOS and Mac) and Pastebot (my personal favorite clipboard history utility for Mac — I’ve been using it for years now). But you don’t need access to Tapbots’s sales figures to surmise that Tweetbot was the company’s sole tentpole.

      • 37signals LLC ☛ SaaS startups will have to care about productivity again

        Those days seem to be over, at least for most SaaS startups. Entrepreneurs everywhere are suddenly having to count each hire as a cost rather than a trophy. Getting to profitability is no longer a distant, post-IPO nice-to-have, but a short-term necessity for survival. But how to do that without cutting off the legs of the product team? By using better tools and techniques, that’s how.

        I’ve been talking to a lot of SaaS entrepreneurs lately. Here are the three pieces of advice that I’ve given them all: [...]

      • Data Breaches ☛ Another ransomware-related lawsuit settles: Preferred Home Care

        As DataBreaches reported in March 2021, this was a ransomware attack claimed by REvil threat actors in January 2021.

      • CBC ☛ Ransomware group behind Indigo [breach] says it released stolen employee data, but nothing has appeared yet [iophk: Windows TCO]

        On Wednesday night, Canada’s largest bookstore chain said it would not agree to payment demands from an online group claiming affiliation with ransomware site LockBit, because it could not guarantee the money wouldn’t “end up in the hands of terrorists.”

      • CSO ☛ BlackLotus bootkit can bypass Windows 11 Secure Boot: ESET

        A Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) bootkit called BlackLotus is found to be capable of bypassing an essential platform security feature, UEFI Secure Boot, according to researchers from Slovakia-based cybersecurity firm ESET.

        BlackLotus uses an old vulnerability and can run even on fully up-to-date Windows 11 systems with UEFI Secure Boot enabled, the researchers found.

      • CyberRisk Alliance LLC ☛ Windows Secure Boot evaded by BlackLotus malware

        Such evasion of Secure Boot protections is enabled by BlackLotus’ exploitation of CVE-2022-21894, which has been addressed by Microsoft in January 2022, and will also allow the deactivation of other security systems, including Windows Defender, Hypervisor-protected Code Integrity, and BitLocker, to facilitate User Account Control evasion, according to an ESET report. BlackLotus then proceeds to distribute a kernel driver that would prevent the removal of bootkit files, as well as an HTTP downloader, which would facilitate payload execution following contact with the command-and-control server, the report showed.

      • Tom’s Guide ☛ Dangerous BlackLotus bootkit can be used to hijack Windows 11 PCs

        Besides running on systems with UEFI Secure Boot enabled, the bootkit can even disable built-in security mechanisms in Windows including BitLocker, HVCI and even Windows Defender. BlackLotus also leaves a kernel driver and an HTTP downloader on infected systems which allows it to communicate with a command and control (C&C) server to retrieve additional malware.

        While updating to the latest version of an operating system can usually keep you protected, this bootkit exploits a vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-21894 (opens in new tab) which has already been fixed. However, as vulnerable UEFI binaries still haven’t been revoked, BlackLotus can “stealthily operate on systems with UEFI Secure Boot enabled” according to ESET.

      • Neowin ☛ BlackLotus bypasses Secure Boot, Microsoft Defender, VBS, BitLocker on updated Windows 11

        It’s capable of running on the latest, fully patched Windows 11 systems with UEFI Secure Boot enabled.

        It exploits a more than one year old vulnerability (CVE-2022-21894) to bypass UEFI Secure Boot and set up persistence for the bootkit. This is the first publicly known, in-the-wild abuse of this vulnerability.

      • CyberRisk Alliance LLC ☛ Danish hospitals latest target of DDoS attacks on NATO-backed countries

        A relatively new hacking group known as Anonymous Sudan targeted nine Region H hospitals in Denmark with DDoS attacks late on Feb. 26, bringing down their website for several hours.

    • Linux Foundation

    • Security

      • Dark Reading ☛ Linux Support Expands Cyber Spy Group’s Arsenal [Ed: This does not describe an issue with Linux itself, only tries to associate it with something bad]

        An infamous Chinese cyber-hacking team has extended its SysUpdate malware framework to target Linux systems.

      • Bleeping Computer ☛ Iron Tiger hackers create Linux version of their custom malware [Ed: But they rely on a GNU/Linux machine being compromised in the first place]

        The APT27 hacking group, aka “Iron Tiger,” has prepared a new Linux version of its SysUpdate custom remote access malware, allowing the Chinese cyberespionage group to target more services used in the enterprise.

      • Hacker News ☛ SysUpdate Malware Strikes Again with Linux Version and New Evasion Tactics [Ed: Why did it not make headlines when it targeted Windows? And should it not be noted the issue isn't in Linux, whereas Windows has back doors?]

        Cybersecurity company Trend Micro said it observed the equivalent Windows variant in June 2022, nearly one month after the command-and-control (C2) infrastructure was set up.

      • LWN ☛ Security updates for Wednesday [LWN.net]

        Security updates have been issued by Debian (multipath-tools and syslog-ng), Fedora (gnutls and guile-gnutls), Oracle (git, httpd, lua, openssl, php, python-setuptools, python3.9, sudo, tar, and vim), Red Hat (kpatch-patch), Scientific Linux (git), SUSE (compat-openssl098, glibc, openssl, postgresql13, python-Django, webkit2gtk3, and xterm), and Ubuntu (awstats, expat, firefox, gnutls28, lighttpd, php7.2, php7.4, php8.1, python-pip, and tar).

      • LWN ☛ Security updates for Thursday [LWN.net]

        Security updates have been issued by CentOS (git), Debian (spip), Fedora (epiphany), Mageia (binwalk, chromium-browser-stable, crmsh, emacs, libraw, libtiff, nodejs, pkgconf, tar, and vim), Oracle (kernel and systemd), SUSE (emacs, kernel, nrpe, and rubygem-activerecord-4_2), and Ubuntu (c-ares, git, postgresql-12, postgresql-14, and sox).

      • Security Week ☛ White House Cybersecurity Strategy Stresses Software Safety [Ed: But they have no intention of banning Microsoft? Because the aim is back doors for the US government?]

        Some say the White House cybersecurity strategy is largely aspirational. Its boldest initiatives — including stricter rules on breach reporting and software liability — are apt to meet resistance from business and Republicans in Congress.

      • Security Week ☛ Industry Experts Analyze US National Cybersecurity Strategy

        Feedback Friday: Industry professionals commented on various aspects of the new national cybersecurity strategy, its impact, and implications. 

      • CISA ☛ CISA Releases Three Industrial Control Systems Advisories

        CISA released three Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on February 28, 2023. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.

      • CISA ☛ CISA Red Team Shares Key Findings to Improve Monitoring and Hardening of Networks

        Today, CISA released a Cybersecurity Advisory, CISA Red Team Shares Key Findings to Improve Monitoring and Hardening of Networks. This advisory describes a red team assessment of a large critical infrastructure organization with a mature cyber posture. CISA is releasing this Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) detailing the red team’s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and key findings to provide network defenders proactive steps to reduce the threat of similar activity from malicious cyber actors.
         
        As detailed in the advisory, the CISA red team obtained persistent access to the organization’s network, moved laterally across multiple geographically separated sites, and gained access to systems adjacent to the organization’s sensitive business systems. This cybersecurity advisory highlights the importance of early detection and continual monitoring of cyber assets.

      • CISA ☛ CISA Releases Decider Tool to Help with MITRE ATT&CK Mapping
      • CISA ☛ Cisco Releases Security Advisory for Cisco IP Phones | CISA

        Cisco has released a security advisory for vulnerabilities affecting the 6800, 7800, 7900, and 8800 Series of Cisco IP Phones. A remote attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system. For updates addressing lower severity vulnerabilities, see the Cisco Security Advisories page.

      • CISA ☛ FBI and CISA Release #StopRansomware: Royal Ransomware [Ed: Stop Microsoft Windows]

        Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) #StopRansomware: Royal Ransomware to provide network defenders tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) associated with Royal ransomware variants. FBI investigations identified these TTPs and IOCs as recently as January 2023.

      • Security Week ☛ Organizations Warned of Royal Ransomware Attacks [iophk: Windows TCO]

        FBI and CISA have issued an alert to warn organizations of the risks associated with Royal ransomware attacks.

        [...]

        The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued an alert to warn organizations of the increasing threat posed by the Royal ransomware.

      • CISA ☛ CISA Releases Five Industrial Control Systems Advisories

        CISA released five Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on March 2, 2023. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.

      • Qubes Canary 034

        Editor’s note: An earlier version of this post mistakenly contained the text of an older canary. This has been corrected below.

      • Security Week ☛ Thousands of Websites Hijacked Using Compromised FTP Credentials

        Cybersecurity startup Wiz warns of a widespread redirection campaign in which thousands of websites have been compromised using legitimate FTP credentials.

        [...]

      • Unix Men ☛ Ways to Enhance the Security of Your Linux Server

        Security has always been the cornerstone of any Linux software. Since Linux is open-source software, people can audit code to find and patch any vulnerabilities, making it more secure than closed software. Due to its increased security and strong default permissions structure, most companies rely on Linux software for their server security.

        Like any other operating system, Linux isn’t completely immune to security breaches. As such, any undetected vulnerability in the operating system can jeopardize your company’s valuable information. The first step to strengthening your server’s security is finding a reliable Security Program Management (SPM) and Governance platform to assess your program’s security and mitigate potential risks. Besides utilizing Security Program Management, here are a few best practices you must adopt to maintain your Linux servers running safely…

    • Defence/Aggression

      • The Age AU ☛ US, Russia hold highest-level talks since Ukraine invasion

        The short encounter on the sidelines of the G20 came as relations between Washington and Moscow have plummeted over Russia’s war with Ukraine.

      • YLE ☛ Parliament approves Finland’s Nato membership, 184-7

        Six MPs from the Left Alliance, one of the governing parties, voted against joining Nato.

      • Quartz ☛ Ericsson has to pay a $206 million fine for failing to come clean on corruption

        In 2019, Ericsson had entered into the DPA to resolve previously disclosed Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations relating to conduct in several countries between 2000 and 2016. The company was accused of “paying bribes, falsifying books and records, and failing to implement reasonable internal accounting controls,” according to the SEC. (There is no new criminal or illegal misconduct that has been tacked on since.)

      • VOA News ☛ UN Nuclear Chief in Iran After Near Weapons-Grade Uranium Find

        A confidential IAEA report seen Tuesday by AFP said uranium particles enriched up to 83.7% — just under the 90% needed to produce an atomic bomb — had been detected at Iran’s underground Fordo plant about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the capital.

      • The Nation ☛ Meet the YouTube Bros Who Might Help Trump Win in 2024

        There couldn’t be a more “politics in 2023” story than this: A group founded by Canadian bros who got famous posting prank videos on YouTube could now become a potent political force for Donald Trump’s reelection campaign. And if Democrats don’t know who they are, they’d better learn fast. Meet NELK.

      • Atlantic Council ☛ Iran’s nuclear program is advancing. So too should negotiations.

        Although the spike could be an accident, as Iran claims, Tehran has recently threatened to pursue 90 percent enrichment to build leverage over the United States. The particles could indicate that Iran is experimenting with near-weapons grade enrichment without informing the agency, as required, to increase pressure or shorten the path to nuclear weapons down the road.

      • The Hindu ☛ Hijab not allowed in examination centres, says Karnataka Education Minister

        Talking to reporters in Bengaluru on March 3, Mr. Nagesh said, “We have made it clear that all students should come to the examination centres in uniforms. Hijab is not a part of the uniform. Hence, those who wear a hijab will not be allowed to appear for the exams.”

      • ME Forum ☛ Facebook: Where Jihadist Hate Thrives

        More evidence on how social media works to promote Islamic radicalization — while suppressing its victims — recently emerged. According to a Feb. 20, 2023 report, “bombshell findings” by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) allege that

        Facebook created over 100 pages for ISIS (Islamic State), as well as pages for other terror organizations, including the group behind the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., Al-Qaeda.

        TTP reported that Facebook creates the pages based on its algorithm, automatically generating them when users add the terror groups to their profiles. The platform’s so-called ban on the groups apparently did little to prevent the automatic process that generated the terror group pages.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • CNN ☛ Why did this cop turn up dead?

        Much of this story hinges on why he didn’t want the medal. But by any reasonable standard, he deserved it.

      • Reuters ☛ Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market

        To that end, the news organization cut a shallow cavity into the interior sole of one of the blue Nikes, placed a Bluetooth tracker inside, then concealed the device by covering it with the insole. The tracker was synched to a smartphone app that showed where the shoe moved in real time.

        Within weeks, the blue Nikes had left the prosperous city-state and were moving south by sea across the narrow Singapore Strait to Batam island, the app showed. Reuters decided to put trackers in an additional 10 pairs of donated shoes to see if wayward pair No. 1 had been a fluke.

        It wasn’t.

      • Press Gazette ☛ Isabel Oakeshott’s ‘massive betrayal’ was action of a journalist who turned whistleblower

        At a personal level, many journalists would not do what she has done for reasons of sheer professional survival. How would sources trust them in future? And how would they get future ghostwriting work?

        But in these particular circumstances it is difficult not to see how, ethically speaking, she is anything but a whistleblower who has acted in the public interest.

        She was working with Hancock on a project and felt that vast swathes of public interest information had been kept back from the historical record.

    • Environment

      • CS Monitor ☛ Climate activists too radical? They point to suffragettes as a comparison.

        “[Suffragettes] were also treated very harshly, and they also heard arguments that it isn’t democratic what they’re doing – that no one ‘voted’ for the right to vote,” says Ms. Rüge. “But they started the change. I can vote in a few weeks in Germany.”

        “History shows that civil disobedience can work, although it’s unpopular. Whether this [climate activism] will work, no one knows,” says Reinhard Steurer, a professor of climate politics at Vienna’s University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. “We don’t have the mass protests anymore, because society is fed up with the climate crisis and wants to be left alone. So you can either put your head into the sand, or try other things, and that’s what these small groups are doing. They’re trying to wake up society.”

      • The Register UK ☛ Hubble images photobombed by space hardware on the up

        Using deep learning algorithms to scan historic images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2002 and 2021, researchers found 2.7 ± 0.2 percent of images with a typical exposure time of 11 minutes contained at least one satellite trail.

      • New Yorker ☛ Why S.U.V.s Are Still a Huge Environmental Problem

        The move toward bigger and heavier vehicles, it seems pretty obvious, is incompatible with the goal of reducing global emissions. The I.E.A. report noted that the average S.U.V. consumes about twenty per cent more oil than the average medium-sized car does to drive the same number of miles. Oil use translates directly into CO2, so the average S.U.V. is also releasing twenty per cent more carbon per mile driven.

      • Science News ☛ Half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. Here’s why that may be a problem

        SpaceX launches Starlink satellites roughly once per week — it will launch 51 more on March 3. And they’re not the only company launching constellations of internet satellites. By the 2030s, there could be 100,000 satellites crowding low Earth orbit.

        So far, there are no international regulations to curb the number of satellites a private company can launch or to limit which orbits they can occupy.

      • Space ☛ 6 types of objects that could cause space debris apocalypse

        In just the past month, the goings-on in near-Earth space have twice made headlines and prompted experts to call for action. On Jan. 27, space debris researchers looked on in horror as two huge pieces of space junk ⁠— a decades-old upper stage of a Russian rocket and a long-defunct Russian satellite — came within 20 feet (6 meters) or so of each other. The incident, described as a close call “worst case scenario,” could have spawned thousands of dangerous debris fragments that would have stayed in orbit for centuries. Then, a report released on Feb. 6 revealed that in early January a mysterious Russian satellite broke apart into 85 fragments large enough to be tracked from Earth.

        Both of these incidents happened in areas that experts refer to as bad neighborhoods (opens in new tab), regions of low Earth orbit too high above the planet to benefit much from the cleaning effects of its atmosphere. Both of these incidents involved objects that are at the top of space debris experts’ list of hazards. Here we review what type of stuff the experts fear the most.

      • Energy/Transportation

        • Quartz ☛ Is nuclear fusion power the future of renewable energy?
        • Neil Selwyn ☛ Algorithmically Embodied Emissions

          AI is an environmental disaster in many different ways. One less obvious issue is what Jutta Haider and Malte Rödl term “Algorithmically Embodied Emissions”. This describes the ways that the algorithmic outputs of many everyday AI procedures (search, recommender systems etc) promote and normalize high-carbon practices.

        • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU delays vote on combustion engine ban as Germany hesitates

          Sweden, the current holders of the rotating EU presidency, on Friday delayed a vote scheduled for next week among EU government leaders on the bloc’s plans to halt the sale of new internal combustion engine cars from 2035.

          The reason for the sudden delay to the move towards electric cars appeared to be hesitancy within Germany’s coalition government. One party in the government, the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), are calling for an exemption for petrol and diesel cars using synthetic fuels or “e-fuel.”

        • Renewable Energy World ☛ The U.S. battery energy storage boom is just getting started

          Project developers energized a record 4,221 MW of large-scale battery storage capacity last year, an increase of 29% from 2021, according to the analysis from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Only about 42% of planned capacity additions came online in 2022.

        • Reason ☛ How To Save American Mass Transit

          Supporters of fare-free transit do have a point that ending fare collections can increase transit ridership. But it’s important to understand that not all ridership gains are created equal. Transit is often sold to the public as a solution to social costs related to the use of private automobiles, such as traffic congestion and pollution. Fare-free transit may entice those who were already dependent on transit, as well as people who would have otherwise walked or biked. But it likely won’t draw many new riders who can drive their own cars. This means that while fare-free transit can provide private benefits for riders, it is unlikely to meaningfully increase the social benefits often touted by transit advocates to justify additional government subsidies.

        • Bruce Schneier ☛ Nick Weaver on Regulating Cryptocurrency

          Nicholas Weaver wrote an excellent paper on the problems of cryptocurrencies and the need to regulate the space—with all existing regulations. His conclusion: [...]

        • uni Yale ☛ The Death of Cryptocurrency: The Case for Regulation [PDF]

          Not only is the technology that underlies cryptocurrency not novel, these technologies are deployed in ways that will inevitably result in unstable products that are fundamentally at odds with the stated goals of the cryptocurrency and decentralized finance raison d’être: They do not work as currency or a store of value. They are neither trustless nor decentralized. They cannot create a new paradigm for the web, finance, and micropayments. They are less secure in practice and more prone to widespread fraud than our current financial system, and frequently result in irreversible consumer harm that could have been mitigated using traditional financial processes.

          This paper argues that the very nature of cryptocurrency technology ensures that current cryptocurrency projects cannot actually succeed at their purported goals. Until and unless the cryptocurrency community develops new objectives, or significantly alters cryptocurrency technology to meet existing objectives, this mismatch between existing means and desired ends will forever relegate cryptocurrency to the novelty, speculative space that it currently occupies—good for a news headline but not for sea change in the financial system.

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Latvia ☛ Interim council elected for Latvian State Forests

          State JSC Latvian State Forests (Latvijas Valsts meži, LVM) elected its interim council on March 3 following the resignation of the entire council, said Agriculture Ministry.

        • Latvia ☛ Latvian State Forests loses its council

          One of the largest state companies – Latvian State Forests (Latvijas Valsts meži, LVM), had four people on its council just days ago. Now, the whole council, including its chairman, have handed in their resignations, Latvian Television reported March 2.

        • Science Alert ☛ Dogs Living in The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Are Genetically Distinct, Study Shows

          >How does the radioactive zone change animals?

        • uni Stanford ☛ The Importance of Paruroctonus Scorpions for Desert Conservation

          The deserts of the southwestern United States are well known for their high levels of biodiversity and endemism. An abundance of mountain ranges breaks this landscape into a series of isolated lowland valleys, many of which contain sand dune or wetland systems harboring unique species. Following leads from the citizen science database iNaturalist, our work in two of California’s desert valleys, the Carrizo Plain and the Fremont Valley, uncovered two formerly unknown species of scorpion which we recently described as Paruroctonus soda and Paruroctonus conclusus.

      • Overpopulation

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • El País ☛ Ericsson to pay $206M for breaking US deal in bribery case

        Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson has agreed to plead guilty to U.S. foreign corruption violations and pay more than $206 million for breaking a deal with the Justice Department over charges of bribery and falsifying records in countries from China to Kuwait.

      • USA ☛ NATIONAL CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY [PDF]

        The Administration will work with Congress and the private sector to develop legislation establishing liability for software products and services. Any such legislation should prevent manufacturers and software publishers with market power from fully disclaiming liability by contract, and establish higher standards of care for software in specific high-risk scenarios. To begin to shape standards of care for secure software development, the Administration will drive the development of an adaptable safe harbor framework to shield from liability companies that securely develop and maintain their software products and services. This safe harbor will draw from current best practices for secure software development, such as the NIST Secure Software Development Framework. It also must evolve over time, incorporating new tools for secure software development, software transparency, and vulnerability discovery.

        To further incentivize the adoption of secure software development practices, the Administration will encourage coordinated vulnerability disclosure across all technology types and sectors; promote the further development of SBOMs; and develop a process for identifying and mitigating the risk presented by unsupported software that is widely used or supports critical infrastructure. In partnership with the private sector and the open-source software community, the Federal Government will also continue to invest in the development of secure software, including memory-safe languages and software development techniques, frameworks, and testing tools.

      • Truthdig ☛ Dawn of the Fediverse

        Yet as today’s brand names grew, they made a fateful decision: They rejected interoperability, choosing to remain sealed off from each other. Facebook and Twitter built walled gardens to keep us locked into their services, unable to slide into other applications and platforms. The format ensured the [Internet] of today was dominated by behemoths. A few networks to rule them all.

        This was always a business decision, not a technological one. Had they wanted to, it was possible for emergent networks to “interoperate” and allow users on Facebook to make “friends” with users in other social media networks. But doing so would have limited the benefits of the “network effects” that proved so profitable to the Big Social Media corporations. If they could build features that manipulated people into spending more time on their network, and thus create more ad impressions, they did.

      • The Register UK ☛ Arm swans off to Nasdaq despite UK gov pleas to IPO in London

        The move follows months of speculation about whether Arm, which is owned by Japanese investment outfit SoftBank, would list on both New York’s Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange, although there was never any doubt that if it came down to a choice between the two it would be New York; SoftBank stated in June last year that it intended to list Arm on the Nasdaq.

      • Scoop News Group ☛ EPA issues water cybersecurity mandates, concerning industry and experts

        The water sector has been aware of the issue for years and have not shied away from regulations. A 2021 study by the American Water Works Association called for cybersecurity regulations similar to those of the electric grid with industry creating minimum cyber rules with oversight from the EPA.

      • Andre Franca ☛ Re: De-brand

        Well, basically it is the accumulation of capital that could be better distributed and the excess of power that it brings. Just see the soft power that characters like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or maybe the king of some Arabic country you want to name have.

      • Bert Hubert ☛ The EU’s new Cyber Resilience Act is about to tell us how to code

        The extremely short version: The EU is going to task a standardisation body to write a document that tells everyone marketing products and software in the EU how to code securely. This to further the EU Essential Cybersecurity Requirements. For critical software and products, EU notified bodies (which until now have mostly done physical equipment and process certifications) will do audits to determine if code and products adhere to this standard. And if not, there could be huge fines.

      • International Business Times ☛ PM Rishi Sunak might face pressure to follow EU, US in banning TikTok

        By a vote of 24 to 16, the US lawmakers approved the legislation giving the administration new powers to ban the ByteDance-owned TikTok, which an estimated 100 million Americans use, and other applications deemed security risks.

        “TikTok is a national security threat … It is time to act,” Representative Michael McCaul explained. The lawmaker is the Republican chair of the committee who sponsored the bill.

      • USA ☛ FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces National Cybersecurity Strategy

        This Strategy sets out a path to address these threats and secure the promise of our digital future. Its implementation will protect our investments in rebuilding America’s infrastructure, developing our clean energy sector, and re-shoring America’s technology and manufacturing base. Together with our allies and partners, the United States will make our digital ecosystem: [...]

      • TechReflect ☛ How I predicted the rise of Twitter, barely used it, and amassed 35,000 followers

        I also didn’t predict that random people would email me every few months, wanting to buy my username. My highest offer so far has been $10,000. But I’ve come to enjoy not using my account at all.

      • Scoop News Group ☛ New cyber reality: With great interdependence comes great liability

        For more than a decade, government leaders have grappled with an insurmountable reliance on digital technologies and communications without an aggressive approach to security. Technology vendors have pushed their products to market under the guise that liability shifts once products are delivered, bolstering their position in the marketplace with security by design or after-market protections. Security products and partnerships offer a complex add-on tapestry to backstop the black hole that is identifying and mitigating every potential threat or exploit.

        In security consulting, there’s an adage suggesting a 60/40 rule when analyzing sectors’ willingness to sink costs into impending regulation without a forcing mechanism. Sixty percent of companies will likely wait and see how 40% of leading companies respond. For cybersecurity regulations, it’s more likely 80/20. The national cybersecurity strategy released Thursday decidedly states that’s not good enough. While there’s clearly room for improvement at every level, companies already taking cybersecurity seriously should not be panic-stricken by the new strategy document.

      • The Nation ☛ Yuh-Line Niou on the Politics of Clothing

        All over Twitter and social media, people posted about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s State of the Union outfit, which looked like a Cruella de Vil costume. There were articles about it in news outlets from The Washington Post to The Guardian. People wondered if it was real fur, what she meant by it, and whether she was just, as usual, promoting white… ness? Apparently it was a comment on President Biden and the Chinese balloon, but her obvious goal was to get media attention, and it worked.

      • The Nation ☛ Fix the Courts by Investigating Federalist Society Sleaze

        In August of 2018, Leonard Leo, at the time vice president of the Federalist Society, spoke at the Koch Summit in Colorado Springs and gloated over the ongoing right-wing takeover of the courts. As CNBC reported at the time, Leo “told a small group of financiers that the Trump administration was looking to overhaul a large chunk of the federal court of appeals by the end of the year.” Addressing some of the wealthiest donors to the Republican Party, including Charles Koch, Leo did a victory dance. He crowed that “by the end of this year my prediction is that basically 26 percent of the federal appellate bench will have changed under the Trump administration.”1

      • Federal News Network ☛ Oil for Charles III’s coronation consecrated in Jerusalem

        Two senior clergymen in Jerusalem have consecrated the holy oil that will be used to anoint King Charles III during his May 6 coronation, as the Anglican Church seeks to underscore the monarchy’s long history and the royal family’s links to the Middle East.

      • Federal News Network ☛ Pompeo, Haley take veiled jabs at Trump in CPAC remarks

        Leading Republicans took veiled jabs at Donald Trump at an annual gathering of conservatives as they urged a party course correction ahead of the 2024 presidential contest. But their refusal to call him out by name underscored the risks faced by potential and declared challengers worried about alienating Trump’s loyal base.

      • AntiWar ☛ On False Hopes and Broken Promises: Behind the Scenes of the UN Statement on Palestine

        Rarely does the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations make an official remark expressing happiness over any UN proceeding concerning the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

      • AntiWar ☛ The Coming Battle for the Liberation of Cuba

        The US loudly proclaims that large, belligerent powers should listen when the world is united against their hostility toward their smaller neighbors. The world is united against the US. In thirty consecutive votes since 1992, the UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned the US embargo of Cuba.

      • AntiWar ☛ Living on a Deadline in the Nuclear Age. Some Personal News From Daniel Ellsberg

        Dear friends and supporters, I have difficult news to impart. On February 17, without much warning,

      • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Internet Freedom Foundation ☛ #5 questions to ask the Grievance Appellate Committee

        The three Grievance Appellate Committee(s) (GAC), constituted under Rule 3A of the notified IT Amendment Rules, 2022, become functional today, i.e. March 01, 2023. As part of our series #5Questions, here are 5 questions that are worth raising with the GAC, to help secure user rights and protect online freedom of speech.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • uni Emory ☛ AI DJ Spotify service creates new music experience, sparks debate

        Despite Spotify’s established status as the world’s most popular music-streaming service, the company still proves itself as an innovative brand, keeping its product relevant among the sea of competitors. Spotify announced on Feb. 22 that they were rolling out a new feature: an AI DJ.

    • Monopolies

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • a wave from a usually-overlooked corner

        i don’t really have much to introduce, frankly—i’m fairly nondescript on- and off of the internet, and i’m mostly fine with that. i tend to think of interests as things that people “wear” to mesh with other people, and the non-mandatory things i cast emotional energy into aren’t really mesh-able. though i would say the closest thing i have to an interest is “other people’s interests”. in longer words: to the degree i can manage do it, i love being able to see what other people do, and how they do it.

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

IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 03, 2023

Posted in IRC Logs at 2:09 am by Needs Sunlight

Also available via the Gemini protocol at:

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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
 QmZ7nvYDzPE2RptdStWeumbDHmHBm3wSQUFepQuoMMhUBt IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmWAyoA44Fz4f8CsH9sqXk3VNYREpskJevDDVPhHUcJdXm IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmRX5M66gh5dFdciGNrmkBy74QXRYthnZUr7Y5y8omtYmK IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmWbKAAK3B3jp37N4cyri6zmmqT6RNJzKEPRtpRfzb6rwR IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 QmTNNWtpuk3Q5Jit98ra1eLvLpV36ysoQ724METbW4QHPg IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 QmZVzpXWDfvRWfZcAtJdkYcwgihEJfSZLeSuvW7EtGfs2Q IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs
 Qmdgy1DccG8cwNQF7uQB7qYp1Vm7k9P9M1zGx2MtByNFmq IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as HTML)		 HTML5 logs
 Qmciu7GvAvFJor7PET8GaDqeivZWVvY4PUgpFxwAzdLX54 IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text)		 text logs

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