06.01.23
Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux at 1:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Tux Machines recently joined millions of others who had already quit Twitter, including passive posting (fully or partly automated)
As noted here some days ago, Tux Machines had officially left Twitter. Now we’re decommissioning what’s left and invite others to quit similarly. Tux Machines actually exited all forms of social control media as they’re volatile and generally a waste of time, never mind many inherent issues, especially for people who actively “engage” there. In fact, “momentum” is never a good excuse for anything, let alone staying in such nefarious sites…
Tux Machines was there for 12 years and now it’s the end.
A last reminder to leave:
Before deletion/deprecation, a local copy:
With updates stopping around the middle of May, the impact on visibility can be seen.
Nothing of value lost. █
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05.31.23
Posted in News Roundup at 8:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Contents
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GNU/Linux
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I’ve held off on reviewing Ubuntu Kylin for a long time. One part of the explanation is that there’s a certain mystery to this Linux distribution that’s confused some and worried others, but Ubuntu Kylin is an official “spin” of the Ubuntu Desktop operating system.
Originally, Kylin was based on FreeBSD and was intended to be used by the Chinese military and government.
With version 3.0, Kylin made the switch to a Linux base, and in 2013, we saw the first iteration of Ubuntu Kylin.
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Applications
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From shapes and patterns to documents and fonts, Inkscape’s 1.3 beta release offers you some new features, alongside a basket full of improvements large and small.
Let’s dig into a few of the bells and whistles this new version has to offer!
What’s New?
Among the new features in this beta release, these four top our list:
Shape Builder Tool
Inkscape’s new shape builder tool helps get the job done quickly and efficiently. You’ll enjoy the overview of all shapes and the ability to select multiple overlapping shapes – click or click and drag them. Your objects will retain their original color, too. Shortcuts for this tool include Shift for quickly switching between adding and subtracting parts.
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Instructionals/Technical
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If you are new to the world of system administration and need to maintain and monitor remote servers, it is important to master Secure Shell (SSH) for remote access. With SSH, you can securely connect to and manage your servers from anywhere, which ensures efficient administration and enhanced security. So, in this guide, we will explain how to use ssh to connect to a remote server in Linux.
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Distributions and Operating Systems
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Fedora Family / IBM
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I work at Red Hat on GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection. For the last four releases of GCC, I’ve been working on -fanalyzer, a static analysis pass that tries to identify various problems at compile-time, rather than at runtime. It performs “symbolic execution” of C source code—effectively simulating the behavior of the code along the various possible paths of execution through it (with some caveats that we’ll discuss).
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David Malcolm writes about a number of new features that have been added to the static analyzer in the GCC 13 release.
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This Fedora distribution preloaded with Python goodies is perfect for teaching Python in the classroom and also has a lot to offer to developers.
The Python Classroom Lab first introduced with Fedora 26 and now updated to Fedora 38, is a ready-to-use operating system targeted to teachers and schools.
It is perfect in a school setting due to the property of Linux being able to run on old and limited hardware, since the available machinery seldom is up to date. Python classroom does not just that, but also fosters all the necessary tools to
set up a complete Python environment for studding and trying out Python. As such this is not just addressed to schools but also programmers themselves wanting a fully blown development environment.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Advance Auto Parts taps Red Hat for IT infrastructure modernization [Ed: This is Red Hat-sponsored SPAM about Red Hat, under the "rhsummit" tag; why does IBM think these fake articles are worth the price? It makes Red Hat look unethical and desperate.]
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Canonical/Ubuntu Family
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Ubuntu 18.04 ‘Bionic Beaver’ lives on through Expanded Security Maintenance1, or ESM.
This provides users of the distro with a further five years (!) of core security updates from Canonical and Ubuntu developers.
ESM isn’t automatic but it is easy to enrol.
To benefit, you need to sign up for an Ubuntu Pro subscription — but don’t worry, this is free for regular users on up to 5 devices (more if you’re an active Ubuntu contributor) — then link it to your computer via the Software & Updates app.
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Devices/Embedded
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NXP has developed an optimised Linux processor based on the ARM Cortex-A55 for embedded edge devices with several European companies taking the lead on adoption.
The i.MX91 is an optimised system on chip aimed at emerging protocols such as Matter or the ISO 15118-20 standard for electric vehicle (EV) chargers for creating new, Linux-based product categories across IoT and industrial markets.
The chip includes a 1.4GHz Cortex-A55 with support for LPDDR4 memory, dual Gigabit Ethernet for gateway or multi-network segment support; dual USB ports; and the essential I/O for products in smart factory, smart home, smart office, medical device, metering, and cost-optimized system-on-modules such as those from SECO and Variscite.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
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Rich Filemanager is an open-source file manager released under MIT license. Based on the @simogeo Filemanager,
* Drag-and-drop support
* Clipboard feature: copy, cut, paste, clear
* Selectable files & folders support (mouse dragging & Ctrl key)
* Multiple actions support for selected files & folders: move, delete, download
* Before and After callback functions for some
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Content Management Systems (CMS)
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Content Management Systems (CMS) have revolutionized the way people create, manage, and maintain websites.
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Programming/Development
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Programming is often about making decisions based on certain conditions. In the world of R, there are numerous functions that can help us simplify our code and make it more efficient. One such function is any().
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We are excited to announce the standby package. It allows you to easily create alerts, notifications, tooltips and loading screens in Shiny.
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Leftovers
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I started wearing glasses when I was 14, because computer-induced myopia had made reading classroom whiteboards difficult. I could make out words with enough squinting, but sitting near my crush towards the back (who was even cuter wearing glasses, as Clara is now!) made reading all but impossible.
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Denel has recently found itself refuting allegations of malfeasance made by suspended Denel Dynamics CEO Sello Ntsihlele. In a statement issued on 25 May, the company said it has consistently maintained its commitment to confidentiality regarding internal disciplinary processes and refrains from discussing them publicly.
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Science
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The 2,700-year-old stone carvings in Sweden include a 13-foot image of a boat and elaborate scenes with an unclear meaning.
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Education
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“Not once will I ever understand why I chose a college so far away, and why I’ve chosen it again for next year,” the student admitted about her daily trek.
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Have you reached out to a favorite grade school teacher of yours recently? While I’m sure they would love to hear from you (whether or not they remember you), they probably don’t get much praise for their profession at the moment.
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Proprietary
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Episode 459 of the Cyberlaw Podcast
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“Every single thing Tessa suggested were things that led to the development of my eating disorder.”
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People are already tired of machine-generated text, and they’re not afraid to say it.
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Windows TCO
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The records of nearly 9 million people have been published online following a LockBit ransomware attack on Managed Care of North America Inc. The company, also known as MCNA Dental, is a leading provider of dental plans in the U.S., serving private employers, individuals and families through a range of Medicare, long-term and commercial plans.
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Security
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Multiple vulnerabilities in PrinterLogic’s enterprise management printer solution could expose organizations to various types of attacks.
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PyPI will require all accounts that maintain a project to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) by the end of 2023.
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Security updates have been issued by Debian (connman and kamailio), Fedora (texlive-base), Mageia (cups-filters, postgresql, qtbase5, tcpreplay, tomcat, and vim), Slackware (openssl), SUSE (amazon-ssm-agent, cni, cni-plugins, compat-openssl098, installation-images, libaom, openssl, openssl-1_0_0, openssl-1_1, terraform, terraform-provider-helm, tiff, tomcat, and wireshark), and Ubuntu (batik, flask, linux-oem-5.17, linux-oem-6.0, linux-oem-6.1, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, mozjs102, nanopb, openssl, openssl1.0, snapd, and texlive-bin).
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As commercial storage becomes increasingly expensive, more and more of the Education vertical is looking at Open Source solutions for storage. In this article, we discuss the value of OpenZFS for Universities and how system administrators can best leverage it to their benefit.
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A recently launched hacking site has published the member database of RaidForums, a notorious hacking forum taken offline in 2022. Founded in 2015, RaidForums operated on the regular internet and was a popular hacking and data leak forum. Although it offered various illegal services, it was best known for trading stolen credentials.
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An Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity project looks to study hackers’ psychological weaknesses and exploit them.
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Building a custom cracking rig for research can be expensive, so penetration tester Max Ahartz built one on AWS. In this Help Net Security interview, he takes us through the process and unveils the details of his creation.
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An April ransomware attack on a biotech company resulted in the compromise of test information and personal data of nearly 2.5 million people, according to regulatory filings.
Enzo Biochem, a New York-based biosciences and diagnostics company, said that on April 6 it experienced a ransomware attack that involved the “unauthorized access to or acquisition of clinical test information of approximately 2,470,000 individuals.”
The company was able to maintain operations but discovered on April 11 that names, test information, and approximately 600,000 Social Security numbers were accessed, “and in some instances, exfiltrated from the Company’s information technology systems,” the company said in an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It added that it would notify affected individuals and regulators, as required by law.
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An investigation determined the Hillsborough County Supervisors of Elections Office underwent an illegal data breach in early May, exposing more than 50,000 people’s voter information.
An unauthorized user appeared to have illegally accessed and copied files containing personal identification information, such as social security or driver’s license numbers, the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Office said in a news release. The user was able to gather the information from files used to conduct voter registration list maintenance.
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Ukrainian hackers have breached the systems of Skolkovo Foundation, the agency which oversees the high-tech business area located on the outskirts of Moscow. The Foundation was founded and charged by Russian former President Dmitry Medvedev to rival Silicon Valley in the U.S.
According to Skolkovo’s statement, the hackers managed to gain limited access to certain information systems of the organization, including its file hosting service on physical servers.
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A local clinic was forced to close its doors temporarily following a cyberattack on its computer systems on Monday morning. A local hospital is also redirecting it’s emergency services to other area hospitals.
It’s not clear how it happened or when the issue will be resolved, but Mountain View Hospital spokesman Brian Ziel tells EastIdahoNews.com the IT team “identified the attack quickly.” They’re working “around the clock” to solve the problem as quickly as possible.
[…]
Idaho Falls Community Hospital is redirecting emergency services to nearby hospitals, but it remains open.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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India is rapidly digitising. There are good things and bad, speed-bumps on the way and caveats to be mindful of.
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The Central Crime Branch (CCB) Monday arrested a cyber centre owner in Bengaluru who was into changing the date of birth in the Aadhar cards of youths so as to make them eligible for government schemes, including old age pension, the police said.
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The trial is due to take place in January 2024.
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Defence/Aggression
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Burkina Faso’s prime minister on Tuesday ruled out negotiations with jihadist insurgents who control swathes of the country, while suggesting that security risks could delay the country’s return to civilian rule.
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Serbia put its armed forces on the level of combat readiness and sent its forces along the administrative line.
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Clashes in Kosovo with Serb protesters resulted Tuesday in the injury of 30 NATO-led peacekeepers. Shortly after the incident, NATO announced it would deploy additional forces to the region. This has all occurred amid rising tensions over the appointment of Albanian mayors in the country’s northern region.
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The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Tuesday, condemning clashes in Kosovo between Serb protesters demanding the removal of recently elected ethnic Albanian mayors and NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo (KFOR).
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The Kosovo Tennis Federation has accused Serbia’s Novak Djokovic of aggravating an already tense situation after the world No. 3 wrote that Kosovo was “the heart of Serbia” on a camera lens following his first-round win at the French Open.
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The battle came after Al-Shabaab ambushed Eritrean-trained government forces, which were recently deployed in the area. The attack began with explosions.
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Individuals with experience from the worlds of cyber threat intelligence and cyber policy share their insights and career advice.
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On 29 May, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) marked the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers, paying tribute to the brave men and women who have served and continue to serve in United Nations peacekeeping operations.
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With less than 18 months to go before the next edition, the organisers of the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) exhibition are gearing up for the September 2024 event.
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When the head of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council removed his deputy, it was not a surprise. The two men are at war with each other in a conflict that is quickly tearing the country apart.
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ADF STAFF Soldiers with the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) in early May killed several terrorists and recovered a cache of weapons during an operation near Lake Chad in northeast Nigeria.
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Today is the 137th anniversary of Randolph Bourne’s birthday. Antiwar.com named its parent institute for this early 20th century antiwar activist. Read Jeff Riggenbach’s biography of Bourne.
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The semitruck driver involved in a crash on Interstate 5 in Oregon earlier this month that left seven farmworkers dead has been indicted on charges of manslaughter. Court documents show that a grand jury in Marion County Court on Tuesday indicted Lincoln Smith on 12 counts, including manslaughter and driving under the influence. His court-appointed defense attorney said she couldn’t comment on the open case. Seven farmworkers died and four more were injured when Smith’s semitruck crashed into their van on Interstate 5 near Albany in western Oregon on May 18. PCUN, a farmworkers union in Oregon, has raised over $70,000 to help support the victims’ families.
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ADF STAFF As violence has escalated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), an array of African forces entered the country with promises of restoring peace. The latest addition, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), agreed on May 8 to deploy a regional force.
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One not impressed by suggestions that the Department of Defence (DoD) and National Treasury (NT) “engage” as regards budgetary constraints, irregular expenditure and the South African military salary bill is respected defence analyst Helmoed Heitman.
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Recent negotiations fit into some of the larger battles being waged across the country.
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NATO has decided to deploy 700 more troops to Kosovo to help stop violent protests in the north of the country and the United States canceled Kosovo’s participation in ongoing NATO exercises after clashes broke out between ethnic Albanian authorities and local ethnic Serbs.
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NATO countries are in the middle of Arctic military maneuvers, vowing on May 30 to defend their newest member, Finland, which is hosting its first joint NATO exercise since becoming the 31st member of the Western alliance in April.
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Four civilians, including an 11-year-old, were killed by heavy artillery and airstrikes.
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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WASHINGTON, DC – May 30, 2023 – The Atlantic Council Global Energy Center (GEC) will hold the eighth annual Central and Eastern European Energy Security Conference on Thursday, June 15, 2023, in Washington, DC, in partnership with the Slovak V4 Presidency of the Visegrad Group. This year’s conference will be held in person at the Atlantic Council headquarters, while also streaming to a global virtual audience.
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Port of Aberdeen, in partnership with Subsea7, has secured a £150,000 ($185,300) grant from the Scottish Government to explore the feasibility of subsea hydrogen storage at the new Aberdeen South Harbour.
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The Australian Government has granted A$20m ($13m) of funding to support a front-end engineering and design (FEED) study for a large-scale renewable hydrogen project in Queensland.
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Bitcoin prices on the Australian arm of Binance, the world’s largest crypto-currency exchange, have sold at a 20 per cent discount to rival exchanges in a sign customers are seeking to exit their positions quickly.
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Wildlife/Nature
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European Commission Press release Brussels, 30 May 2023 Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič announced today the doubling of the rescEU aerial firefighting fleet for this year’s wildfire season while speaking at the 10th anniversary of the EU’s Emergency Response Coordination Centre.
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In order to promote the conservation and recovery of the population of the critically endangered species – the eagle owl (Bubo bubo) – in Latvia, the Latvian Ornithology Society (LOB) continues to install artificial nests in the forests. Some have already been populated with young owlets, reported LOB.
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“…no reports of missing individuals or injuries had been received…”
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Finance
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The share of the shadow economy in Latvia decreased by a measly 0.1 percentage point last year – to 26.5% of gross domestic product (GDP), said Arnis Sauka, director of the Stockholm School of Economics in Rīga’s Sustainability Business Center at a conference on Tuesday, May 30.
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Data published by the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (CSB) May 30 show that in Q1 2023 the average gross wages and salaries for full-time work amounted to EUR 1 462.
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Data published by the Central Statistical Bureau on May 29 show that in April 2023, compared to April 2022, the level of construction costs in Latvia increased by 7.4 %.
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Under fire from conservatives, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is hunting for votes from fellow Republicans for the debt ceiling deal. The Republican speaker urged GOP skeptics Tuesday to look at “the victories” in the package he negotiated with President Joe Biden. Hard-right conservatives are criticizing the deal, while liberals decry new work requirements for older Americans in the food aid program. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the package reduces deficits by $1.5 trillion over the decade, although food stamp changes end up costing $2.1 billion. The House Rules Committee voted 7-6 Tuesday to advance the bill to the full House, which is expected to vote Wednesday.
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Eyes will be trained on the Reserve Bank of Australia governor during a parliamentary hearing ahead of the June cash rate call. Philip Lowe will take questions at a Senate estimates hearing on a variety of matters but the pathway for interest rates will likely dominate discussions.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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European Commission Press release Brussels, 30 May 2023 Today, the Commission adopted a Communication on the monitoring of the EU’s visa-free travel regimes setting out a consultation process.
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Latvia’s digital nomad visa was launched in April of 2022. After a year of its being in force, what has changed? Do we have a wave of digital nomads now residing in Latvia?
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Nebraska lawmakers have advanced a bill to comply with a voter ID requirement mandated by voters last November. Passage of the bill will come down to the wire, with lawmakers scheduled to take up final debate on the bill Thursday. That’s the same day lawmakers plan to adjourn the session. The bill was cobbled together by Republicans, but is facing pushback from some far-right conservatives who say it doesn’t go far enough. The measure is expected to pass; it’s backed by the Republican governor and the secretary of state who oversees elections. It advanced Tuesday despite a filibuster by Sen. Julie Slama, who has sought far-reaching requirements.
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Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the controversial but democratically elected Turkish president, will continue at the helm of his country for the next five years.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan just won another five-year term in office. Atlantic Council experts share their insights on the pressing issues his administration faces.
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“In the coming days, we will be negotiating with the other parliamentary forces in order to be able to form a regular government,” Denkov said.
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Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov says the government has no plans to invite former President Kurmanbek Bakiev to the country, but if he does try to come back he will be arrested given there is an outstanding criminal case against him.
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The Chairman of the Civic Party Alan Leong announced Saturday the pro-democracy party will disband. Leong said that since there was no valid nomination for a new chairman and no one else to take over leadership, the party would not be able to continue.
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The organiser of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum has the ‘responsibility to invite members to attend,’ Chief Executive John Lee has said, without directly answering as to whether he will go to November’s APEC meeting in the US. Lee is still under sanctions by Washington.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Hong Kong leader John Lee has failed to give a yes-no answer over the legality of mourning the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown ahead of its anniversary on Sunday. Residents must obey the law and consider the consequences of their actions, he said.
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Roger Waters has posted a lengthy statement on social media after imagery from his Berlin concert caused a stir. The statement follows news that Berlin police are investigating the former Pink Floyd frontman for his use of Nazi imagery during his concert on May 17.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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A prominent Pakistani television journalist who went missing last week, apparently because of his public support for former Prime Minister Imran Khan, returned home early on May 30 after being released by his captors.
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To date, the Charity Commission has awarded charity to status to just one local journalism provider.
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Content warning: Mentions of gun violence and school shootings. When I’m home, I go to the same coffee shop every day. Two weeks ago, I was sitting in that coffee shop alone, working silently on my virtual orientation, preparing to transfer to the University of Michigan.
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Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) has devised a set of guidelines for releasing statements on press freedom issues, which includes seeking legal advice and contacting government departments ahead of publishing. Keith Richburg, whose tenure as president of the club came to an end during the FCC’s annual general meeting on Monday…
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Civil Rights/Policing
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EDRi and 45 organisations call on the European Parliament to better protect those who face digitally facilitated gender-based violence.
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Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo has signed a bill enshrining existing protections for out-of-state abortion patients and in-state providers. The move on Tuesday marks a rare occurrence of a Republican governor approving measures that are part of Democrats’ vow to make the western swing state an abortion safe haven. The bill codifies former Gov. Steve Sisolak’s executive order from last year. Sisolak lost reelection to Lombardo. The executive order bars state agencies from assisting other states in out-of-state investigations that could lead to prosecution of abortion patients. It also ensures medical boards and commissions that oversee medical licenses do not discipline or disqualify doctors who provide abortions.
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Some corporation had to show how woke marketing could cost an iconic American brand dearly in terms of its image, its sales and its market capitalization.
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We have come to Cape Cod for a few days to forget the man-made world that is too much with us. I have asked my forgettery to get to work. As my childhood friends used to say to me, “Eddy spaghetti, use you forgetty.” The adults had no idea what they meant.
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An Iowa mayor says five Davenport residents are missing, including two people who could still be in the wreckage of a partly collapsed apartment building. Davenport Mayor Mike Matson and the police chief confirmed the numbers at a news conference on Tuesday. Critics have accused the city of moving too quickly toward demolishing the building after it partially collapsed Sunday evening. Before the collapse, tenants had been allowed to remain in the building while repairs were being done. A woman was rescued Monday after authorities initially said no one was left inside. No fatalities have been reported. Dozens of people gathered outside the wreckage on Tuesday night and held a candlelight vigil.
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Multilingual relationships are a crash course in putting yourself out there.
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“…approximately 90 percent of the workforce demonstrated in favor of the strike…”
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Tens of thousands of striking Romanian primary and secondary school teachers marched to the government building in downtown Bucharest on May 30, calling for better pay, more investment in education, and a reform of the country’s education system.
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More than 150 Tajik migrants workers have been detained by Moscow police, several of the laborers told RFE/RL, saying they were being held in the courtyard of a police station.
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Police say it has 16 locations and about 500 followers in a northern province.
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Supporters say the apology was forced and that Theng Savoeun is a ‘victim of the justice system.’
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The junta claims she had a document connecting her to the shadow National Unity Government.
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Many are still living under tarps more than 2 weeks after Cyclone Mocha destroyed homes.
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Monopolies
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Copyrights
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This silent picture offers a glimpse into the early activities of the Denishawn dance school.
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The R&B legend discusses masculine vulnerability and how he brought Hotlanta to Vegas.
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I realised that whenever I’m awake I’m consuming some media content, one way or the other. It’s ridiculous. There’s an argument that dreams are actually media and if that’s the case then I don’t really have an off switch.
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Posted in News Roundup at 8:19 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Contents
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal
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A very important thing, which made up large parts of my private life for the last decade, has been taken from me. Nothing life-threatening or dangerous in any way, just leaving a big hole.
Granted, I was thinking about removing it from my life voluntarily a couple of times, but never took any action. Or, better, not stopping what I was doing.
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Results from “Composing with Constraints: 100 Practical Exercises in Music Composition” by Jorge Variego, for better or worse.
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Pleasant day. We rehearsed a bit for a show on the 3rd. Hashed out some interpersonal abrasions that had been dogging us. Hit a winery and a couple “dispensaries”. Should be good to go for a couple months. I’m hoping the low grade stuff we acquired solves a specific pain issue for my wife.
I guess I’m just never going to feel energetic again, post COVID. There’s a weariness that just plain doesn’t go away no matter what chemicals I forego, no matter “how well I eat”, etc.
I mean, I’m sure age is a non-trivial factor at this point. But just a year ago we were both “killing it” in terms of still holding down jobs and getting gobs of other shit done (e.g. take care of a couple short term rentals). Now it seems I have to stop and rest after every form of even middle-of-the-road exertion.
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Like many others in the smolnet scene I was very nonplussed about the NYT acquisition of Wordle. I think we all knew exactly where that was headed eventually. Luckily so many people telegraphed what would happen that there is a plethora of ways to play wordle on a TON of different platforms without having to involve the NYT at all. This is far from an exhaustive list of Wordle clones. There are far too many to keep track of but these are the ones I play or at least have tried and enjoyed.
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Politics
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I’ve been re-reading some of David Foster Wallace’s essays and journalism in the collection ‘Consider the Lobster and Other Essays’ (2005). Last night, I couldn’t sleep until the small hours – and years of insomnia have taught me that the thing to do is accept it, get up and read (rather than, say: stay laying down in a state of somewhat wakefulness, conscious of the night, of the silence, of the changing cadence of the street outside (this can drag for hours, and almost never leads to sleep)). So I spent a few hours of the night getting absorbed in Wallace’s piece of journalism ‘Up, Simba’, originally written for Rolling Stone magazine; an account of the 2000 Republican nominee campaign trail following John McCain, who at the time was up against his main competitor and now ex-President George Bush Jr.
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Technical
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I tested several combinations and followed various ancient and modern workarounds, none of those worked out; eventually I found my recipe, perhaps many steps are even unnecessary, however this combination seems to have the highest rate of reliability.
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I had to think about it for a bit. I certainly used to dream about computers. I used to dream in ASCII, the dream rolling down the insides of my closed eyelids like letters on a flickering CRT. And then I’d wake up, make coffee,and check Usenet on my 386, dialed into either the CS department Sun server, or a community UUCP provider, at 2400 baud. Probably even for a while after that, when I was setting up auto-dial and dynamic DNS on my 486 and 56k modem, and porting Unix software to OS/2 instead of working my dissertation proposal, completely unrelated to computers.
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Science
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I want you, the reader, for the length of this post, to ignore the “Holy Shit!” implications of “enabling Web browsing and telepathy” as a linked pair and instead let’s just focus on Autism.
I have always been different. I’ve always known that I was different, too. But it took me much of my lifetime to gain insight into what made me different. At least part of the difference is Autism.
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Programming
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First, non-technical folk vastly over estimate how much computer scientists and software engineers know what they’re doing. We’re all just making it up as we go along and especially when it comes to machine learning we haven’t a clue of how any of it works, nor what’s even with the scope of possibility. We’re figuring all this stuff out with the rest of society.
Another thing is the level of understanding of software technologies in the general population. Most people have a general baseline of understanding of cancer; they understand that cancers can be life threatening, and that treatments are difficult and fraught with complications. When it comes to software, the average persons knows nothing: they think that programmers wear hoodies, sitting in basements, with falling green text projected onto their faces. We see this in the ludicrous questions that elected officials ask of executives, and in turn the almost as ludicrous answers that those executives give in response.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.
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Posted in News Roundup at 1:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Contents
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GNU/Linux
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Run Ubuntu at lightspeed with our guide to taking the world’s most popular distro to the next level by stripping it back, running light desktops, dumping Snaps and customising the server build to your own needs.
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Applications
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An important feature of machine learning is the ability to scour data at speed and scale far outclassing human analysts. This enables the discovery of patterns or anomalies to derive cogent insights and automate all kinds of laborious or mundane tasks that humans used to have to perform manually.
While AI falls short of human intelligence in many applications, there are areas where it vastly outshines. Machines can identify trends and patterns hidden across millions of documents, and this ability improves over time. Machines also behave consistently, in an unbiased fashion, without committing the kinds of mistakes that humans inevitably make.
PhotoPrism is an AI-powered photos app for the decentralized web. It uses modern technologies to tag and find pictures. The software can be run at home, on a private server, or in the cloud. It’s free and open source software.
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Instructionals/Technical
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This blog is the first in a series of blogs in which we are going to look at the disk layout of the ext4 filesystem. We will be looking at different types of on-disk structures in newly created ext4 filesystems and understand their importantance.
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Want to let ‘Open in Terminal’ context (right-click) menu option work for another terminal emulator? Here’s an extension to do the similar job for Nautilus. When right-clicking on either a folder or blank area in file manager, there’s an ‘Open in Terminal’ menu option to launch system default terminal with that folder as working directory.
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This article spotlights alternative tools to dig. This is a DNS lookup utility.
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One of the most valuable utilities offered by Unix and Linux-based systems is the wc command. This versatile command stands for “word count” and offers you a simple, yet powerful way to analyze text files. By comprehending the full scope of wc, you’ll increase your proficiency with command-line operations, making your interaction with Unix or Linux systems more productive and efficient.
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If you are planning to install Docker on Ubuntu or Debian-based system then you can either use the APT package manager or Snap which is a Universal package installer. However, what is the difference between having Docker from Apt and Snap, here we discuss that.
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Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to enable Bash autocompletion in Debian-based distributions. Bash is a very versatile shell, but many newcomers to Linux may find it a bit complex. This is not the case, but for them, any help is important.
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[New to Gemini? Have a look at my Gemini FAQ.] This article was bi-posted to Gemini and the Web; Gemini version is here: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/kraileth/neunix/2023/cbsd_pt5.gmi This article is about creating jails right from the command line. This time we will also build an example jail that is somewhat useful.
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Here are various ways you run Linux commands inside Docker Containers, with or without entering them. Moreover, learn how to do that from any directory in Linux.
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This simple tutorial shows how to install brave browser via the new apt source policy in Ubuntu 23.04 & 22.04. Due to security issue, Debian changed its policy for adding apt sources. Ubuntu is changing the rules too. Since Ubuntu 22.04, it uses more secure key files with digital signature for system repositories and PPAs.
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Comprehensive tutorial on the uses of prompt with the “read” command in the Bash script and the benefits of using a prompt message with the “read” command.
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In this tutorial, you will learn on how to easily install Solaris 11.4 on VirtualBox. Oracle Solaris is the trusted business platform that is known for its scalability, security, and reliability, making it a popular choice for enterprise environments. Install Solaris 11.4 on VirtualBox Follow the steps below to install Solaris 11.4 on VirtualBox.
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Red Hat OpenShift includes an abundance of technologies out of the box that are necessary for effectively managing a fleet of devices at the edge. One of those components, the scheduler, enables these services to be efficiently co-located onto a single platform.
In addition, OpenShift manages many of these services via an Operator, meaning a non-technical team doesn’t need to understand all the specific details about the service. OpenShift, in a sense, helps make managing devices at the edge simpler and cost-effective.
This article details how to go about building this configuration on a single-node OpenShift cluster. Keep in mind that you can apply these same concepts to a 3-node compact and full OpenShift cluster as well.
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In this tutorial, we will show you the method to enable Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) on Ubuntu. PPP is a standard protocol that allows for the transmission of network data over phone lines, modems, or Ethernet connections.
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In this blog post, we will explain how to install Jenkins on AlmaLinux 9 OS. Jenkins is an open-sourced automation software used to automate the process of the developers. It is used for building, testing, and deploying the apps with the process of continuous integration and continuous delivery.
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Welcome to the magnificent world of Stellarium.
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Diving deep into the workings of NGINX, one facet that demands attention is its capability to perform URL rewrites. In the world of NGINX, URL rewriting essentially means modifying either a part or the entire URL as requested by a client. A primary reason for such URL rewriting in NGINX is to inform clients when the resources they’ve been seeking have changed their location. Simultaneously, NGINX URL rewriting provides enhanced control over the execution flow of pages.
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Games
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DeckyLoader is a little piece of software that adds an extra menu in the side bar of your Steam Deck.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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You changed the default wallpaper and window theme of your distribution, but your desktop doesn’t look much different. It’s because of the icons! You can find many icon sets to radically change your desktop’s looks, especially when you combine them with a matching wallpaper and window color theme. Let’s take a look at some of the best Linux icon themes that will upgrade your OS’s look.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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I can’t believe it’s already the end of May! This month turned out a little meatier than last month I think, but I still have a large backlog of merge requests and TODOs to go through.
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Not a moment after I had walked out the door to catch a train to Berlin
for the KDE e.V. board sprint (May 2023), there was a local power failure which took down my in-house IT. That wouldn’t be so bad, except it did not come back up. Cue gnashing of teeth from the people who stayed at home (but, really, should have been able to hack into the router to fix it).
[...]
In rc.conf
there are dozens of system-configuration variables that you can set. It’s still old-school SysV initialization, and I like it like that.
Here is what I added to /etc/rc.conf
:
varmfs=YES
varsize=256M
varmfs_flags='-S -k /var.md/'
The configuration says to use a memory-disk for /var
, that it should be 256MiB large (plenty, and still acceptable within the 3GiB memory size of the H6), without softupdates (a BSD UFS tweak) and using /var.md
as “skeleton”. That means that the memory disk is populated from the contents of /var.md
when it is created.
With this setup, I have writable storage that is not persistent and that does not wear our the SD card, with minimal impact on the rest of the system – and it is simple to switch back if necessary.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Coming a little over a month after the GNOME 44.1 point release, GNOME 44.2 is here to add another layer of bug fixes and improvements to make your GNOME 44 desktop experience better, smoother, and more stable.
In GNOME 44.2, the devs update the GNOME Software package manager to improve support for Flatpak apps, check for updates when automatic updates are disabled, better handle multiple background jobs, prevent rpm-ostree updates from being downloaded when only checking to see if any updates are available, and reduce background resource consumption when the app is idle.
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The latest version of GNOME Software uses fewer resources when idle.
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In this post, I want to sum up the latest events regarding GSoC and FlatSync, and what’s been done to reach our project’s MVP goal.
Latest GSoC Updates
We participants were invited to a Contributor Summit where tips and tricks regarding GSoC and open-source involvement were shared. We heard talks from previous contributors, mentors as well as Google employees regarding OSS and its development flow. Alongside many other topics, the importance of communication was highlighted a lot. But other than just keeping up-to-date with our mentors, we were encouraged to also engage in a wider range of communication, so e.g. within the org’s community, be that through chats like Matrix rooms, project issues and MRs or blogging. Many other topics were being discussed as well, but this would probably go a little too far for this blog entry.
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Distributions and Operating Systems
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New Releases
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The latest beta of the popular Mageia distribution now includes the latest kernel and plenty of updated applications.
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Fedora Family / IBM
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for SAP Solutions is a secure and scalable platform tailored to the needs of SAP workloads, such as SAP NetWeaver, SAP S/4HANA, and the SAP HANA platform. As SAP Business Suite will be out of standard support by 2027, it is essential for developers and administrators to plan for a smooth migration to the SAP S/4 HANA platform.
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Join the Fedora community this weekend on Friday, June 2nd and Saturday, June 3rd to celebrate the final release of Fedora Linux 38 with a virtual Release Party. Please register on Hopin and join us on June 2nd & 3rd for a short program of informational sessions and social activities. Make sure to save the dates, share the registration, and show up to celebrate with Fedora Friends, old and new!
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Debian Family
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Coming three months after Armbian 23.02, the Armbian 23.05 release is the first to be created on a completely refactored build framework and based on the soon-to-be-released Debian 12 “Bookworm” operating system series, providing users with some of the latest features and updates from the Debian GNU/Linux community, such as the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel series.
This release also brings support for the i3 tiling window manager, which is now Armbian’s fourth officially supported graphical environment, updates the Ubuntu-based desktop images for x86 computers by removing unnecessary “Ubuntu Advantage” services and removing web browsers in the Snap format.
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The Apache OpenOffice suite has been uploaded to Sparky repos now. What is OpenOffice? Apache OpenOffice is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers.
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Canonical/Ubuntu Family
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If you’ve ever wanted to run Ubuntu on the AMD-Xilinx Versal AI Core Series VCK190 Evaluation Kit, Canonical now provides optimized Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) images for the VCK190 Evaluation Kits (non-ES) models.
The AMD-Xilinx Versal AI Core Series VCK190 Evaluation Kit features the VC1902 Versal AI Core series ACAP, promising high throughput AI inference and signal processing for cloud, edge, and network applications.
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Continuing its tradition to offer commercial support in the form of Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) for Ubuntu LTS releases that reach the end of standard support after five years of maintenance, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) now joins the Ubuntu 16.04 ESM offering, which will end on April 2024.
Released five years ago, on April 26th, 2018, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will now be supported by Canonical with critical bug and security fixes for five more years, until April 2028, through the Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) package of the Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure and Applications offering.
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Devices/Embedded
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LILYGO T-FPGA development kit is comprised of an M.2 module with an ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth wireless microcontroller and a Gowin GW1NSR-4C FPGA with 4,608 LUTs, and a carrier board that gives easy access to I/Os and comes with a 18650 battery holder.
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NXP has just unveiled the NXP i.MX 91 single-core Cortex-A55 processor following the introduction of the i.MX 93 in 2021, and designed for cost-optimized edge devices running Linux. The NXP i.MX 93 processor comes with up to two Cortex-A55 cores, a Cortex-M33 real-time core, and an Ethos U65 microNPU, but targeting entry-level Linux systems, the NXP i.MX 91 processor does without the real-time core and the AI acceleration, while still integrating NXP EdgeLock Secure Enclave, and the company highlights support for multiple wireless connectivity options through companion chips such as the IW612 that supports Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, 802.15.4, and the new Matter protocol.
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Open Hardware/Modding
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The 4xMacropad is a low-cost, open-source hardware 4-key mechanical macro keyboard based on WCH CH552G 8051-compatible USB microcontroller and whose keys can easily be configured from a web browser generating an Arduino sketch.
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The “Arduino Project of the Month” competition continues to bring out the best in our community! We are happy to highlight inventive projects and creative solutions, as well as the generous users who share everything they’ve learned along the way. So let’s hear it for the three entries selected for the month of March!.
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I was fortunate enough to learn about and acquire a copy of Kyle Rankin’s latest publication The Best of Hack and /: Linux Admin Crash…
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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AnExplorer or Another Android Explorer (File Manager) is an All-in-One Open source file manager. AnExplorer File Manager (File Explorer) is designed for all android devices including Phones, Phablets, Tablets, Chromecast, Wear OS, Android TV and Chromebooks. It’s a fully designed with Material guidelines by Google.
It is Simple, Small, Fast,
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Silicon Angle ☛ Spyware discovered in 101 Android apps downloaded 421M times [Ed: A lot of "legit" Android "apps" are also spyware, buy we're meant to "trust" the spies because they're connected to the government and wear in suits in public]
A previously unknown form of Android spyware has been discovered in a marketing software development kit used in 101 applications that have been downloaded an estimated 421 million times.
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Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
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“Sigma File Manager” is a free, open-source, quickly evolving, modern file manager (explorer / finder) app for Windows and Linux.
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TinyFileManager is a web-based PHP file manager that is a great solution for users who want a simple, fast, and compact file management system. Its small size makes it easy to download and install, and its single-file PHP format makes it easy to integrate into any folder on your server.
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Programming/Development
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The latest patch release for Android Automotive 6.5.1 is just released. This release is based on Qt LTS 6.5.1 with more than 350 bug fixes, security updates, and other improvements on top of Qt 6.5.
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Python
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The “kdeplot()” method in Python is used to create “KDE” plots that show the distribution of continuous variables in one or more dimensions.
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To find the last occurrence in the string the “rfind()” method, “rindex()” method, “str.rpartition()” method, and “for” loop are used in Python.
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A legend is automatically added to seaborn graphs by default. However, to add it manually, “plt.legend()” function of “matplotlib” library is used in Python.
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Learn how to apply two different techniques to solve the SciPy Bessel Functions, a type of second-order differential equation, with some sample problems.
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“scipy.signal” module of “scipy” library provides various functions in Python used to apply different operations on the signal i.e., convolution of two arrays.
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In Python, the “odeint()” function of the “scipy.integrate” module is utilized to solve a system of ordinary differential equations by integrating them.
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To create a multiline string various methods such as “using triple quotes”, “using escape characters” and “using the join()” are used in Python.
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The “string.isascii()” method in Python checks whether a string contains an “ASCII” (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) character or not.
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In Python, the “string.rindex()” method is utilized to determine the last occurrence of a particular character in a given string.
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The “tight_layout()” function of the “matplotlib.pyplot” module is utilized to adjust the spacing and padding of the plots.
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To replace characters or strings in the string the “string.replace()” method, “re.sub()” method, “String Slicing” technique, or “for“ Loop is used in Python.
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The series of “if-else” statements, the “Dictionary” and a newly introduced method “match-case” is used to implement the “Switch Statement” in Python.
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The built-in “ord()” function in Python is employed to convert a specific character into its corresponding Unicode code.
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The “AttributeError” is caused due to various reasons such as “misspelled attribute name”, “incorrect namespace or scope” and “incorrect object type”, etc.
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To count unique values in the Python list the “set()” function, the “collections” module, the “for” loop, and the “Numpy” library are used in Python.
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Python’s “Matplotlib” library provides the “matplotlib.pyplot.specgram()” function that is used to draw a spectrogram in Python.
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In Python, the “-1” special list index shows the usage of negative indexing, which means the last object of the specified list.
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Leftovers
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With a retrospective in Philadelphia, the artist is still seeking to capture a mysterious moment with a stranger.
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Residents of Davenport, Iowa, protested plans to quickly remove the damaged building. Rescue workers pulled one resident to safety hours after officials said they were unaware of anyone still trapped.
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Gen Z graduates seek pathways into work marked more by values than material considerations.
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Comment on his Power Centre video
If you didn’t laugh you’d have to cry
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Plans to build apartments have sparked a fight between progressive newcomers and nostalgic old-timers — with surprising allegiances in a writer’s hometown.
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Despite the fact that more popular European pollinators are where the money is, Yaxcabá, Yucatán locals keep an ancient tradition alive.
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A Yucatán judge has ordered a halt to logging work related to almost the entire Caribbean section of the Maya Train project.
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Science
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We owe our very existence to this.
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Don’t panic.
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Don’t look at me like that.
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Australia’s national science agency CSIRO will develop the country’s ‘first’ mobile hydrogen generator to help the country reach Net Zero emissions by 2050.
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The Michigan Aeronautical Science Association successfully launched Clementine — the United States’ largest student-built rocket May 14. Clementine is a 20-foot tall liquid bipropellant rocket constructed and launched by MASA, an engineering project team that aims to give members experience with high-power rocketry through the designing, building and launching of rockets.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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A letter from Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos may have helped the pharmaceutical industry kill drug pricing reforms—and documents reveal officials wanted to keep it hidden
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European Commission Statement Brussels, 30 May 2023 Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Stella Kyriakides marked World No Tobacco Day on 31 May by stating…
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California has become the first US state to ban food additives used in candies, cake mixes, and protein shakes, due to concerns linked to cancer and other health issues.
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On May 30, the government supported the reform of the hospital network launched by the Ministry of Health (VM), taking note of the VM report presented to the government. A new, updated report has to be prepared by the ministry by mid-August, with detailed criteria for each hospital.
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While heavy winter storms alleviated California’s years of “megadrought,” experts say that capturing the rainwater presents a challenge and opportunity. One solution to harnessing the resource could be the recharging of underground water systems.
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One of the children was the son of a family of seasonal agricultural workers and two were Syrian refugees.
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The first generation to grow up in independent Lithuania is unwilling to take up responsibility and tends to postpone family planning, Laima Žilinskienė, associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of Vilnius University, has found.
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Various so-called ‘superfoods’ have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years for their supposedly sensational health benefits. A recent feature from LSM’s Latvian language service examined whether various traditional Latvian dishes qualify as superfoods.
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Part of the additional EUR 140 million needed for the health sector could be reallocated from the surplus of the heating aid program, the Minister for Health, Līga Meņģelsone, told Latvian Television on May 30.
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The decision gives the Purdue Pharma owners long-sought protection, but it is a major step toward releasing billions of dollars from their fortune to states and communities to help cope with the costs of addiction.
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A nightmare with lasting consequences.
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A family in the Netherlands has a rare and perplexing brain condition that helps explain how we recognize color.
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It matters more than you think.
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The oldest cases ever found in Britain.
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The announcement by the Carter Center came just over three months after it said that Jimmy Carter, 98, had entered hospice care at the couple’s home in Plains, Ga.
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A chemical used in underwater construction and medical procedures was used to dye parts of the channel bright green, but the authorities still don’t know how it got there.
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In August, an Albany county court ruling allowed Cuomo to keep the proceeds from his book after the since-disbanded Joint Commission on Public Ethics ordered him to surrender the cash to the state.
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And why it’s the perfect time to role-play the next one
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The disgraced founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos, who was convicted of fraud, turned herself in at a minimum-security prison in Texas.
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Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes entered a Texas prison Tuesday where she could spend the next 11 years for overseeing a blood-testing hoax that became a parable about greed and hubris in Silicon Valley.
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Italian authorities have partially solved the mystery of the substance that changed the color of Venice’s canal water.
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Proprietary
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New York Times ☛ Would Large Language Models Be Better If They Weren’t So Large? [Ed: Microsoft SPAM carries on in NYTimes; Desperate to hype up chatbots, as Microsoft's share price depends on this lie. Ponzi scheme in the making, now tied to a resurrected old buzzword.]
Teaching fewer words to large language models might help them sound more human.
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Leaders from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic and other A.I. labs warn that future systems could be as deadly as pandemics and nuclear weapons.
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An Indian High Court judge used AI chatbot ChatGPT to summarize case law. The use of AI chatbots in the legal system is growing, with proponents praising their potential to streamline processes while critics warn of biases and false results.
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Top artificial intelligence (AI) executives including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday joined experts and professors in raising the “risk of extinction from AI”, which they urged policymakers to equate at par with risks posed by pandemics and nuclear war.
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Windows TCO
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One of the most powerful pieces of malware began with the efforts of three American teens who were motivated by playing ‘Minecraft’ in 2014. Called Mirai, it would go on to crash Germany’s largest internet provider, knock Dyn’s Domain Name System servers offline and disrupt all of Liberia’s internet connections.
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Linux Foundation
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Omkhar Arasaratnam is a veteran cybersecurity and technical risk management executive with more than 25 years of experience leading global organizations. Omkhar began his career as a strong supporter of open source software as a PPC64 maintainer for Gentoo and contributor to the Linux kernel, and that enthusiasm for OSS continues today.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Fraudsters lurk on Age UK, Mind and Good Grief Trust posts
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Data and content is being weaponised to criminalise people without cause. The police and criminal justice authorities are increasing using tech, data and AI to identify people who they believe are at ‘risk’ of committing crimes. These flawed tactics, which include the Met’s gang matrix, the data mining of social media and the Prevent programme…
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The CNDH said their investigation found no evidence of espionage by this government, despite media reports implicating the military.
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Defence/Aggression
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The Finnish military’s Defence Command has suggested raising the age limit for reservists to 65 from the current level of 60 for officers and 50 for enlisted personnel.
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A Chinese fighter jet performed ‘an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver’ near an American jet, the U.S. said.
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A rare meeting between the U.S. and China’s top commerce officials last week was followed by a failed attempt to get the countries’ defense chiefs together, underscoring the difficulty of getting the two superpowers back on speaking terms.
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While Sudan’s conflict between rival military leaders is being fought largely in the streets of Khartoum, experts say the fighting could shift to the Darfur region should the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) drive the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) out of the capital.
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With fighting between Sudan’s rival generals showing no signs of abating, experts are paying close attention to the possibility of the conflict spilling over into the Central African Republic (CAR) and Chad.
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“…negotiations started on May 6 under the auspices of Saudi Arabia and the United States…”
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North Korea’s attempt to put the country’s first spy satellite into space has failed. Wednesday’s failed launch is a setback to leader Kim Jong Un’s push to boost his military capabilities. After its unusually quick admission of failure, North Korea vowed to conduct a second launch after learning what went wrong. A satellite launch by North Korea is a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Tuesday’s launch prompted brief evacuation alerts in South Korea and Japan. South Korea’s Defense Ministry released photos of a salvaged white, metal cylinder suspected to be part of the crashed North Korean rocket.
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Luis Alberto Urrea’s latest novel “Good Night, Irene” honors the Clubmobile Corps, popularly known as the Donut Dollies, who supported the morale of soldiers during World War II.
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Robert Bowers went on trial Tuesday in Pittsburgh for an attack that killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. He could face the death penalty if he is convicted of some of the 63 counts he faces.
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The project’s first phase will begin in early June.
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They face imprisonment for up to three years for ‘resisting the police and opposing demonstration laws’ during the 9th Pride Parade at Boğaziçi University on May 20, 2022.
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The U.S. government is still sorting out what’s secret in an Indonesian bombing case more than two decades after the attack.
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Destruction is part of “sinicization” of religion under Xi
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China deployed hundreds of police and made arrests in a mostly Muslim southwestern town after clashes erupted over the planned partial demolition of a mosque, witnesses told AFP.
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The rate of Hispanics killed by law enforcement officers jumped nearly 45% in the last decade, according to newly released data reviewed by Axios.
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Discovery of relics come amid recent reports of scavengers plundering two British shipwrecks.
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The Philippines is asserting its maritime rights more boldly in the face of Chinese action.
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Analysts say Aman Youyi-2023 will be smaller than similar U.S. exercises.
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Elon Musk said Tuesday he was willing to expand his business in China, as he met Foreign Minister Qin Gang in Beijing on his first trip to the country in over three years.
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North Korea says it will attempt to launch a spy satellite sometime before June 11, after warning nearby Japan about potential rocket debris.
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‘I’m trying to figure this out,’ said the journalist who had just phoned. ‘Why is South Korea holding a summit with Pacific leaders?’
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North Korea has confirmed it will launch a reconnaissance satellite in June, saying it is needed to monitor military movements of the United States and its partners in real time, state media reported Tuesday, citing a senior defence official.
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Rocket believed to be carrying spy satellite fell into the Yellow Sea after an ‘abnormal’ flight.
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The launch prompted brief evacuation warnings in South Korea and Japan, which were then withdrawn.
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The North’s rocket was said to carry a spy satellite, enabling it to watch its enemies more closely. But it said Wednesday that the launch had failed.
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A mobile alert called for evacuation, until the city authorities sent another saying it was a false alarm.
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A North Korean satellite launch on Wednesday ended in failure, sending the booster and payload plunging into the sea, North Korean state media said, and the South’s military said it had recovered parts of the launch vehicle.
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Human rights group Amnesty International said it had spoken to Uyghur student Abuduwaili Abudureheman, who was recently reported missing after landing at Hong Kong’s airport. Abudureheman told the group he had not entered Hong Kong, a claim that was also disputed by his South Korean professor and the city’s government.
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Young South Koreans’ enthusiasm is fuelling a rebound in demand for Japanese consumer products.
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Serbian world No. 3 Novak Djokovic risked stirring up a political controversy at the French Open on Monday, after writing a message about Kosovo on a camera lens following his first-round victory.
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Clashes in northern Kosovo that injured dozens of ethnic Serbs and NATO soldiers are the latest flare up in a long-running standoff between Kosovo and Serbia.
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At a time of rising racial violence, Latinos are potential perpetrators and potential victims.
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ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) has handed over the second Meko A200EN frigate ordered by Egypt during a ceremony in Bremerhaven, Germany, with two more to be delivered. During the handover ceremony on 25 May, the Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Navy, Vice Admiral Ashraf Ibrahim Atwa, named the vessel Al-Qahhar, meaning The Irresistible Subduer.
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Berlin is taking steps to increase the number of German brigade troops in Lithuania, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in Vilnius on Tuesday.
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War in Ukraine
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Also, hard-right Republicans balk at the debt deal. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Environment
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Why the next few months may be hotter than normal.
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The second meeting on a possible international treaty on plastic pollution takes place this week at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Recycling is often touted as a solution to reducing plastic waste, but recent studies show the process poses its own risks and is no match for soaring plastic production.
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There are many opportunities to meet climate-related challenges through cooperation, expertise sharing, and the exchange of ideas in MENA.
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Severe impact was reported in Karlıova, Bingöl, following heavy rainfall.
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Energy/Transportation
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The new rail line lets travelers leave the city’s tourist-clogged core and embark on fast, inexpensive journeys to fascinating outer-London destinations, from a bustling market town to a hub of South Asian culture.
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A decaying tanker holds about four times the amount of oil leaked in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. Experts have warned that it is an ecological time bomb that could explode or disintegrate at any moment.
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The new 25-point scale will mean passengers can get a good deal if they book in advance, but same-day departures during peak times could cost more than the price of a flight along the same route.
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In failing to defeat a ‘serial’ corporate lobbyist, Rachel Notley suffers her ‘Hillary Clinton moment’
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If the plans go ahead, three hydrogen production plants would be built in Kokkola, Kristinestad and Porvoo, leading to the creation of around 1,000 direct jobs and over 3,000 indirect jobs.
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France will launch its first battery factory for electric cars on Tuesday, taking a big step in its race to build up a sector dominated by China.
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China’s first domestically built passenger jet flew its maiden commercial flight on Sunday (May 28), in what state media celebrated as the first step towards breaking the aircraft manufacturing duopoly of Boeing and Airbus.
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ExxonMobil Corp. will face the heat on climate change at the oil giant’s annual shareholder meetings—scheduled for May 31—with activist investors proposing several carbon emissions resolutions.
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Climate activists are livid over a provision in the debt limit agreement that orders federal agencies to issue permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline — and says courts can’t review them.
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Scientists are lugging sophisticated sensors into homes in 10 cities to measure and track the pollution from gas stoves as it drifts from room to room.
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The investment wave has the potential to drive a more rapid and efficient decarbonization of the economy while increasing the supply of clean energy.
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PLUG POWER, a fuel-cell company headquartered in Latham, New York, on Tuesday unveiled a tentative plan worth an estimated 5.6 billion euros to build three hydrogen plants in Finland – in Kokkola, Kristiinankaupunki and Porvoo.
The American company is expected to make a final investment decision on the projects in 2025–2026.
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Wildlife/Nature
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Just don’t ask it to run.
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The young animal will be reintroduced to its natural habitat once it has completed its rehabilitation.
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Wildfires in Nova Scotia have heightened the sense of unease as blazes also burn in the west of the country.
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Wildfires in Canada’s Atlantic coast province of Nova Scotia have caused thousands to evacuate.
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European Commission Questions and answers Brussels, 30 May 2023 The fire risk in Europe and the rest of the world is expected to continue increasing due to climate change and this wildfire season will likely be increasingly characterised by massive fires that cost lives and burn areas that take longer to fully recover.
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Overpopulation
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Systemic problems in infrastructure and the worst drought seen since 1997 have combined to create a dire shortage of running water on the island of Mayotte, a French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean. Residents currently face having their water shut off from 5pm to 7am three times a week, a situation likely to become even worse when the summer arrives.
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Problems caused by rapid population growth, environmental degradation and climate disruption are harming human welfare and the natural world. These problems are largely addressed separately, with little common understanding or integration of efforts.
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Finance
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With youth unemployment at a record, the Communist Party is trying to reset expectations about social mobility by talking up the virtue of hardship.
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Despite growing Republican opposition, a key committee voted to move the bill forward to the House floor.
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If House Republicans were trying to create a draconian new fiscal framework that would dominate American politics for the next decade, they failed to achieve their goal.
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Right-wing furor over the debt ceiling deal reached a boiling point Tuesday, producing the first public threats to Kevin McCarthy’s speakership since he secured the gavel in January’s tortured, 15-ballot election.
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The Turkish lira slipped to a fresh record low against the US dollar today (May 30), in reaction to the re-election of the country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday (May 28).
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YouTuber LaTasha Kebe files for bankruptcy following $4 million Cardi B defamation judgement, saying she has less than $60,000 to her name.
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State Farm, the largest property insurer in the US, will no longer accept new applications for home insurance in California, citing the risks of apocalyptic wildfires as well as the exorbitant costs of construction.
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Legislation brokered by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to lift the $31.4 trillion US debt ceiling and achieve new federal spending cuts passed an important hurdle late on Tuesday, advancing to the full House of Representatives for debate and an expected vote on passage on Wednesday.
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Inflation is having a significant impact on the summer plans of Finnish individuals this year. According to a recent survey conducted by If, a leading insurance company in Finland, more than 40% of Finns stated that inflation has influenced their upcoming summer vacation plans. The primary effect of inflation is a reduction in travel, with many individuals opting for less frequent trips or seeking more affordable alternatives.
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Plus: Artificial intelligence and jobs, how government caused a lifeguard shortage, and more…
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Which? analysis of savings rates highlights the long-term gap between the high street giants and their smaller competitors
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The details of the deal between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are out. The 99-page bill produced from their agreement Sunday would avoid a federal default while limiting government spending. But the two leaders still have to persuade Congress to pass the bill. Both sides can point to some victories in the package. It includes provisions to fund medical care for veterans, change work requirements for some recipients of government aid and streamline environmental reviews for energy projects. But some conservatives are concerned that the compromise doesn’t cut future deficits enough. And Democrats have been worried about proposed changes to work requirements in programs such as food stamps.
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As pressure grows to phase out fossil fuels and meet emissions-reduction targets, Australia is well placed to harness clean, affordable and virtually unlimited space-based solar power.
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Why is Texas rejecting renewable energy?
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A recent study conducted by researchers Mari Vaattovaara and Pekka Vuori sheds light on significant changes in housing construction in the Helsinki metropolitan area and Tampere between 2015 and 2021. The study, titled “Changes in Housing Construction in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area and Tampere, 2015-2021,” reveals a surge in the construction of predominantly small rental studios and one-bedroom apartments.
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The free trade deal between Australia and the UK has one major exporter buzzing with excitement. Queensland-based agribusiness Capilano – one of the largest suppliers of pure honey in the world – is hopeful of making some inroads under the agreement, which comes into force on Wednesday.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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CHP Group Deputy Chairperson Özel said that they will develop and announce their new road map after the evaluation by the president and the supreme board of the party.
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>
The study also found Parti Islam SeMalaysia and its president Hadi Awang to be the prime proponents of racial rhetoric.
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Erdogan’s manifest failures as a leader didn’t stop his re-election.
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The corrupt state that President Erdoğan built essentially guaranteed his reëlection.
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In winning another term as Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was propelled to victory in part by the fervent support of an often underappreciated constituency — conservative religious women.
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When the president labeled the Kurdish politician a “terrorist” during his speech, the crowd responded by chanting slogans demanding his execution.
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An office of the main opposition party in the Gaziosmanpaşa district was targeted in the attack. The authorities are investigating the incident.
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The documentary screenings and festival events in the 16th edition of the Istanbul Documentary Days will be held in five different venues between June 10 and 15.
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The head of the Cinema Organization of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has warned the country’s film industry that dissent will be dealt with harshly after several people from the sector participated in the Cannes Film Festival without obtaining permission from Tehran.
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French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday contradicted a remark by his prime minister that the far-right party of Marine Le Pen were the heirs of Nazi-era collaborators, saying they had to be defeated on policy issues, not with such moral arguments.
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President Faustin Archange Touadéra of the Central African Republic called for a constitutional referendum Tuesday that would allow him to seek a third term in office. This call was quickly followed by the Central African Republic’s Electoral Body decreeing that a vote on the proposed changes to the constitution would occur on July 30.
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But the United Conservative Party will hold substantially fewer seats in the legislature, in an apparent rebuff of the politics of its outspoken leader.
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Tensions in the three-party government have built for months. But the latest sniping is unusually fierce, raising fresh questions of dysfunction.
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While admitting that he was saddened by the election results, İmamoğlu said “we must acknowledge the existence of unfair circumstances.”
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A joint mission comprising the OSCE and PACE has released its findings based on observations made during the presidential runoff vote in Turkey.
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The two leaders reportedly discussed the potential selling of F-16 warplanes to Turkey and Sweden’s NATO membership bid.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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“The times and challenges that greet you are greater than those faced by Jonathan [Larson] or myself or anyone in history,” the “Hamilton” producer said.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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A former Hong Kong leader has urged police in the UK to investigate the organisers behind a planned event involving children’s books that were the subject of a sedition trial in the city last year.
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Laws against displaying Nazi-esque iconography are well-intended, but they pose a threat to free speech and the principles of a free society.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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A court in Iran on May 30 began the closed-door trial of a female journalist on charges linked to her coverage of a Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, whose death in custody last year sparked months of unrest.
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The media outlets under investigation “engaged in “hurling insults and launching attacks that belittle our nation” during their broadcasts, according to the media regulatory body.
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After his previous conviction was overturned, Fethi Gümüş has been handed the same sentence.
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Seven women say that a star columnist groped them or made unwanted sexual advances. But Britain’s news media has a complicated relationship with outing its own.
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Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai is expected to face an 83-day national security trial, a court has heard. The media tycoon did not appear in court on Tuesday.
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Irina Alleman, who covered the dual elections in Turkey on May 14, was denied entry to the country when she arrived for the runoff vote.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Seven people were detained following yesterday’s police raids on houses, including two children.
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The police seized a substantial quantity of diverse narcotics in a week, according to an official statement.
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A municipal official has been injured in an assault during the demolition of a cafe. The municipality has condemned the incident.
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Striking screenwriters carry placards such as “Alexa will not replace us.” But if some view AI the way Sarah Connor in “The Terminator” did, others are embracing the technology.
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The labour dispute, chiefly concerning salary issues, will also prompt workers at privately-run elderly care facilities to join the strike.
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Women with minority backgrounds experienced more harassment than other groups last year, according to the Harassment Barometer.
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In “Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden,” readers glean not only gardening tips but observations about history, Black culture, and parenting.
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The airline said this is “essential to the safe and efficient operation of the aircraft”.
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A new wave of protests is sweeping across Iran as retirees and workers demonstrate against harsh living conditions and skyrocketing inflation in the country, which has been hit hard by international sanctions over the government’s nuclear program and its suppression of human rights.
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After a year and a half of rising prices, Lithuania is reporting a tiny deflation in May. In addition to giving a reprieve from last year’s double-digit inflation, this, says an adviser to the prime minister, could be a harbinger of a coming recession and the country should prepare for rising unemployment.
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Uganda’s president has signed into law new anti-gay legislation supported by many in the East African country but widely condemned by rights activists and others abroad. The version of the bill signed by President Yoweri Museveni doesn’t criminalize those who identify as LGBTQ, a key concern for rights campaigners, who condemned an earlier draft of the legislation as an egregious attack on human rights. However, the new law still prescribes the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” which is defined as cases of sexual relations involving people infected with HIV as well as with minors and other categories of vulnerable people.
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The US has harshly criticized Uganda over its recent legislation known as the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
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Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko alleged on Tuesday he was being “illegally held” by security forces and urged the public to protest.
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Australians will soon be another step closer to having their say on an Indigenous voice to federal parliament, as lower house MPs prepare to vote on the referendum’s final form.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Dale Aluf analyzes China’s campaign to make countries in the region more dependent on Chinese networks, while reducing its own dependence on foreign cables. China’s growing presence in the Middle East and North Africa’s cable industry is significant because Beijing has the power to shape the route of global internet traffic by determining when, where, and how to build cables.
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Monopolies
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Patents
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JUVE ☛ From seed to tree: A timeline of the UPC [Ed: Thus publisher is taking a lot of bribes from Team UPC to lie about the UPC and promote it despite it being illegal. We no longer have legitimate press in this domain.]
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On May 22, 2023, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 10,820,147, owned and asserted by Traxcell Technologies, LLC, an NPE. The ‘147 patent is generally directed to providing navigation information to a wireless mobile communications device while also allowing the user to set preference flags to prevent tracking of the wireless mobile communications device.
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On the way to a paperless patent granting process [Ed: This is illegal. EPO staff already pointed out that this is in violation of the EPC. The EPO isn't just lawless. It commits crimes with impunity and laughs at the law.]
How we are transforming the way we interact with our users.
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Software Patents
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On May 26, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 10,390,013, owned by Velos Media, an NPE. The ’013 patent generally relates to encoding syntax elements that indicate tile information into a slice header.
Unified is represented by in-house counsel Ellyar Barazesh and Jessica L.A. Marks.
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On May 24, 2023, just under two months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,473,478, owned and asserted by Datanet, LLC.
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Trademarks
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The Board reversed a refusal to register “trade dress consisting of a three-dimensional building in the shape of a guitar” (shown below), for “casinos” and “hotel, restaurant and bar services,” finding the proposed mark to be inherently distinctive. The examining attorney had accepted the Seminole Tribe’s alternative claim of acquired distinctiveness under Section 2(f), but the Tribe chose to pursue its claim that the building shape is an inherently distinctive source indicator. In re Seminole Tribe of Florida, Serial No. 87890892 (May 25, 2023) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Melanye K. Johnson).
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Copyrights
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Following a lengthy investigation into the economics of music streaming, the UK government has officially “agreed to establish an industry working group” designed “to explore issues around fair pay for creators in the music streaming industry.”
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Singaporean singer Stefanie Sun’s voice has taken off in China. The only problem is the songs are AI-generated fakes. The release of her debut album Yan Zi in 2000 helped Sun become a household name in China and Hong Kong.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal
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I’ll have an Espresso, please! And make it exquisite. Lots of foam. Only the best quality barista will do today. I need a real “pulling” to get through this lovely fucked-up morning.
Let my Lady go this weekend. To a gentle dude from the southwest. A working man. A typical young Swede with one eye closed and one eye exposed (fully, to a slick utopian future that doesn’t really exist, other than in a Philip K. Dick dystopian mist). In his early 40s. Enthusiastic. Big eyed. Curious.
It was his first ride on a Harley, his first stride into a larger world – trying to get ahead of Charlie and the good old Brits. He was amazed by her scintillating wits, her good grace, her soft roar, the big angry boar I’d tatooed on her back. The smile on his face said it all. The rare mood. No need to get into a bare(-knuckle) brawl, about cash, hash or what have you, when the deal was made. A handshake, a contract under seal, some coffee and cake… then they left.
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Technical
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Internet/Gemini
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I have Things To Say about the Gemini protocol and spec, but like others I have decided to rate limit my posts about Gemini.
There’s time.
To switch metaphors: we’re all in the same boat, but let’s not spend too much time talking about the boat.
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I use a string of tools on the server to post tinylogs by email:
- getmail to download the email
- ripmime to extract mime parts for the email, I get one file per part
- imagemagick to rotate the images
- exiftool to remove the exif data
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, Protocol at 12:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Notice the sharp bump in the graph on the right:
Summary: In the month of May we had zero downtime (no updates to the system or outages in the network), which means Lupa did not detect any errors such as timeouts and we’re on top of the list (the page was fixed a day or so after we wrote about it); Gemini continues to grow (chart by Botond) as we’re approaching the 4th anniversary of the protocol

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Posted in News Roundup at 5:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Contents
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GNU/Linux
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Graphics Stack
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NVIDIA has released the 535.43.02 Beta driver for Linux today, bringing with it support for multiple newer Vulkan extensions and extends Wayland support further.
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Instructionals/Technical
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There are two ways you can run Linux commands inside Docker containers: you use the Docker exec command to run it from outside the container or you enter the running container first and then run the command like you do it in a regular Linux terminal.
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XWiki is a free and open-source wiki platform software written in Java. It was initially released in 2003 under an LGPL license. XWiki runs on a servlet container like Tomcat, JBoss, Jetty, etc. It enables you to deploy a simple web platform. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install XWiki on AlmaLinux 9.
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This step-by-step guide will take you through the process of installing Ubuntu alongside Windows operating system. Dual booting Windows and Ubuntu opens up a world of possibilities for users seeking to embrace the strengths of both operating systems. With this approach, users can seamlessly switch between Windows and Ubuntu, enjoying the benefits of Windows and Ubuntu.
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Games
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Iron Gate mentioned recently they’ve been getting many questions on their stance of modding Valheim, so they wrote a post to give their thoughts including the subject of paid mods.
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Summer Trip Cruise looks like a fun little game, giving you control of a cruise ship that you need to keep afloat while avoiding various obstacles with on-screen controls. In a way, the idea looks little like Frick Inc.
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The Outlast Trials released from Red Barrels on May 18th was something a bit special, with it Steam Deck Verified and working great on desktop Linux with Proton.
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Sony PlayStation, Insomniac Games and Nixxes Software are bringing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart to Steam as Sony continue bringing more console games to PC.
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Made with Godot Engine with full Native Linux support planned, Circle of Kerzoven is an upcoming settlement-building strategy game with some heavy simulation going on.
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Distributions and Operating Systems
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New Releases
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Quick off the mark from previous 10 year anniversary, Kali Linux 2023.2 is now here. It is ready for immediate download or upgrading if you have an existing Kali Linux installation.
The changelog highlights over the last few weeks since March’s release of 2023.1 is: [...]
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Kali Linux 2023.2 ethical hacking and penetration testing distro is now available for download with PipeWire support to the Xfce edition and overhauled i3 desktop.
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SUSE/OpenSUSE
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Open-source projects and contributions have brought remarkable advancements in technology by enabling communication and collaboration among people worldwide.
One such example of this is the openQA testing tool, which has collectively benefited the Linux ecosystem.
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Open Hardware/Modding
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As SparkFun reaches a significant milestone – its 20th anniversary – we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the journey that brought us here. We owe our success not only to the remarkable products and services we offer but also to the dedicated employees who have been with us through it all.
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For this to work, the machine needs to be able to move an embroidery hoop in two axes on a plane perpendicular to the sewing needle. To do that, SpaceForOne used hardware similar to what you’d see on a 3D printer. The structure is aluminum extrusion and the axes ride on linear rails. Stepper motors move the axes and an Arduino Uno board controls those using a GRBL-compatible CNC shield that accepts standard G-code created in whatever software the user prefers.
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A couple of years ago I acquired an Acorn A3010 which I restored in this blog. Along with the machine came an Acorn branded monitor (which I have donated) and an Acorn JP150 printer. Today I have finally turned my attention to this printer.
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If you can think of it, “you can probably do it on a Raspberry Pi,” believes 17-year-old Fady Faheem, who saw a broken vending machine for sale online and decided to give it a tech upgrade. Fady wanted to use his tech chops to benefit his community in Fort Worth, Texas, and the refurbished vending machine seemed an ideal gift to his local church – “the best place I knew” – which could do some micro fundraising too. The project has kick-started his career: “If I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be where I am today, working as a software engineer at 17.”
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Librem Server v2 isn’t cheap at $2999 USD, and the servers aren’t touting the very latest tech either, being built around 9th Gen Core CPUs which are more than a few years old.
But like all of Purism’s hardware, cost isn’t the USP — open source compatibility, security, and privacy are
Purism say the Librem Server v2 is “the most secure server on the market”. This is because the device ships with Intel Management Engine disabled, and runs PureBoot, their homespun value-add of Coreboot.
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The new Librem Server features a 9th generation Intel Core i7 processor with 8 Cores and 12MB of cache. It can get up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM. It also features 6 USB 3.2 ports, a slim optical disk drive, 2 internal drive bays, and 4 “hot-swap” 3.5 SATA 3.0 bays directly accessible from the front panel.
We’ve taken some of the best server hardware and hardened it with PureBoot, our fully-auditable secure boot process that replaces the existing BIOS with coreboot, disables the Intel Management Engine, and adds tamper detection for the BIOS, kernel, and all files related to the boot process using keys fully in the owner’s control. Combined with our Librem Key at boot time, tamper detection is foolproof with an LED (designed to be bright enough to view over a security camera) that continually blinks red if the BIOS is tampered with.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
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While I long since moved off WordPress for my own blog, I’ve mentioned that I still maintain various installs for others. This has prompted a few of you to ask if it’s worth it for a personal blog.
I’d say so. If you’re not tempted by static site generators, or prefer running server-side software (as I keep being tempted back to), it works fine. There are so many benefits to hosting your own material if you can, regardless of what you use. In the words of my late mum: stop worrying about the chisel, and get carving!
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Web Browsers/Web Servers
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There is again a pull-request submitted to the curl project to bring support for the Gemini protocol. It seems like a worthwhile effort that I support, even if it is also a lot of work involved and it might take some time before it reaches the state in which it can be merged. A previous attempt at doing this was abandoned a while ago.
This renewed interest made me take a fresh tour through the current Gemini protocol spec and I decided to write down some observations for you. So here I am. These are comments based on my reading of the 0.16.1 version of the protocol spec. I have implemented Internet application protocols client side for some thirty years. I have not actually implemented the Gemini protocol.
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I think there are a few browser-related features that, collectively, we simply ignore. They’re built-in to the browser for our use, and yet it has become an almost knee-jerk reaction to immediately override them.
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This is the second follow-up patch release in the 8.1.x series due to regressions and bugs that are too annoying to leave lingering around.
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Programming/Development
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This is important to keep in mind if you’re building an open-source tool, but it’s even more important if you’re working in a production codebase with other humans. Especially ones that have less experience than you.
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Leftovers
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AR and VR developer [Skarredghost] got pretty excited about a virtual blue cube, and for a very good reason. It marked a successful prototype of an augmented reality experience in which the logic underlying the cube as a virtual object was changed by AI in response to verbal direction by the user. Saying “make it blue” did indeed turn the cube blue! (After a little thinking time, of course.)
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I have some ambitions about where I want to take combine.social over time. It starts with taking the old toottail repository and moving it into a Github organization.
I want to make it easier to adopt combine.social into your workflow, to trust that the code does what it says it does and nothing else. I already created a privacy policy specifically to mitigate any privacy concerns.
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Back in February I talked about how I mentally map things, and admitted I was using spreadsheets more. A few of you asked if I could provide some examples, so that’s what I’m (finally!) getting to here. I use LibreOffice, but other graphical spreadsheets have equivalent functionality.
In summary, I tend to think of things in terms of matrices. Turns out, a spreadsheet is a giant, beautiful, flexible canvas upon which to build them! I can can fill out, sort, filter, and search for things using this glorified database, and change things easily.
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Ever since I read media scholar Julie Turnock’s The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light & Magic and the Rendering of Realism, I haven’t been able to watch a movie or TV show that contains special effects without focusing on the wrong things. Instead of dragons or landscapes from the past, I see particles everywhere: fog and dust and mist and dirt and shrapnel and rain. These digital details are meant to provide the texture of reality, but now I see them as a constant blanket of static coating the action. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, so if you enjoy admiring the realism of elven villages, don’t read this book.
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Education
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I got some anonymous feedback a while back asking if I could do an article on how to become a systems engineer. I’m not entirely sure that I can, and part of that is the ambiguity in the request. To me, a “systems engineer” is a Real Engineer with actual certification and responsibilities to generally not be a clown. That’s so far from the industry I work in that it’s not even funny any more.
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Last year, Tammy Shreiner and I published an article in the British Journal of Educational Technology, “The information won’t just sink in: Helping teachers provide technology-assisted data literacy instruction in social studies.” (I haven’t been able to blog much the last year while starting up PCAS, so please excuse my tardiness in sharing this story.) The journal version of the paper is here, and our final submitted version (not paywalled) is available here.
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I’m currently in Dallas for the Parks Associates Connections conference, where it’s clear that the smart home industry is laser-focused on five big topics. And while the mood here is fairly grim with regards to the short term, it is optimistic when it comes to the long term.
The five big topics of conversation both onstage and offstage have been smart energy, senior living, the Matter smart home interoperability standard, generative AI, and privacy. Smart energy and senior living offer the greatest hope for service revenue while Matter and generative AI have provoked both confusion and disappointment. The vibe around privacy, meanwhile, has been one of begrudging acceptance. Yes, this is something the industry needs to care about.
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There’s much more to say about Descript, which by the way deployed a significant upgrade in the middle of my project, but for now I’ll just say: Thank you! It’s a brilliant piece of software that enabled me to revisit one of my most treasured conversations and bring it to life in a way that people can now search for and read, as well as hear, with maximum fidelity. DayJet folded in 2008; it was a remarkable tale of innovation; here’s hoping Ed’s dream will come true.
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- Anna Donáth, Momentum MEP said at the party’s campaign launching press conference in front of the cordons at the Prime Minister’s office.
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Hardware
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If you take someone with intermediate knowledge of computing in the right areas, and ask them how an x86 machine boots, they’ll probably start telling you about how the CPU first comes up in real mode and starts executing code from the 8086 reset vector of FFFF:FFF0. This understanding of how an x86 machine boots has remained remarkably persistent, as far as I can tell because this basic narrative about the boot process has been handed down from website to website, generation to generation, largely unchanged.
It’s also a pack of lies and hasn’t reflected the true nature of the boot process for some time. It’s true the 8086 reset vector is still used, but only because it’s a standard “ABI” for the CPU to transfer control to the BIOS (whether legacy PC BIOS or UEFI BIOS). In reality an awful lot happens before this reset vector starts executing.1 Aside from people having vaguely heard about the Intel Management Engine, this modern reality of the boot process remains largely unknown. It doesn’t help that neither Intel nor AMD have really gone out of their way to actually document what the modern boot process looks like, and large parts of this process are handled by vendor-supplied mystery firmware blobs, which may as well be boxes with “???” written in them. Mainly we have the substantial assistance of assorted reverse engineers and security researchers to thank for the fact that we even have a decent picture of what the modoern x86 boot process actually looks like for both Intel and AMD. I could write a whole article about that process — but instead, I’d like to focus on something else.
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How do you approach your robot designs? Maybe, you do it from a ‘oh, I have these cool parts’ position, or from a ‘I want to make a platform on wheels for my experiments’ perspective. In that case, consider that there’s a different side to robot building – one where you account for your robot’s influence on what other people around feel about them, and can get your creations the attention they deserve. [Jorvon ‘Odd-Jayy’ Moss]’s robots are catchy in a way that many robot designs aren’t, and they routinely go viral online. What are his secrets to success? A combination of an art background, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration, and a trove of self-taught electronics skills helped him develop a standout approach to robot building.
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For as long as the United States Postal Service (USPS) has had scanners, the government has been able to obtain information about senders and recipients. Under the Third Party Doctrine, information shared with third parties (in this case, shared with the government directly) is the government’s to have. No warrant needed.
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[Stephen Carey] had previously relied on an Insteon garage door controller, only to have it perform poorly and fail at integrating with Alexa properly. Thus, he did what any good hacker would do, and built his own system instead.
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When science fiction authors imagined robots in the 20th century, many of them were huge imposing steel automatons. [Shane]’s designs for the Pretty Small Robot are quite contrary to that, being tiny in stature and cute in affect.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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After NEDA workers decided to unionize in early May, executives announced that on June 1, it would be ending the helpline after twenty years and instead positioning its wellness chatbot Tessa as the main support system available through NEDA. A helpline worker described the move as union busting, and the union representing the fired workers said that “a chatbot is no substitute for human empathy, and we believe this decision will cause irreparable harm to the eating disorders community.”
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Sick employees are major contributors to the spread of foodborne illnesses at restaurants and other food establishments, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Tuesday.
From 2017 to 2019, the report found, around 40% of foodborne illness outbreaks with known causes were at least partly associated with food contamination by a sick or infectious worker. In 2017, for instance, Chipotle attributed a norovirus outbreak at its restaurant in Sterling, Virginia, to an employee who came to work while ill.
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Measuring local rainfall has real practical uses, especially in agriculture, but most of us will have to admit that it’s at least partly about drawing cool graphs on a screen. Whatever your motivation, you can build this open source electronic rain gauge designed by [Sebastian] of Smart Solutions for Home, and integrate it with Home Assistant.
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Everyone likes an easy day at the office. Cops are no exception. They like easy excuses to disregard the Fourth Amendment. Pretextual stops are how cop business has been done for years. Any missing tail light or (subjectively) too dark window tint is enough to initiate a traffic stop and apply pressure on drivers to submit to a so-called “consensual” search of their car.
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For those with strokes or other debilitating conditions, control over one’s eyelid can be one of the last remaining motor functions. Inspired by [Jeremiah Denton] blinking in Morse code on a televised interview, [MBW] designed an ESP32-based device to decode blinks into words.
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We had just recently written about the American Psychological Association’s very thorough and detailed report going through much of the research about the impact of social media on the mental health of kids. That report was careful, and nuanced, and basically said that there is little evidence that social media is inherently bad for kids. It noted that studies suggested social media actually seems to be beneficial for many kids, and in the cases where it’s harmful, there are often other, extenuating circumstances. It had many recommendations, focused mainly on better educating children about how to use social media appropriately, rather than any sort of moral panic about it (of course, as we noted, the media still misrepresented the study and claimed it “warned of social media’s potential harm to kids.”)
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Australia’s winter crop is on target to exceed last year’s planting but overall production could be significantly lower than last year, a Rabobank report shows.
In its annual Australian winter crop outlook the agribank forecasts 23.48 million hectares will be planted this year, up 0.3 per cent on last year.
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Proprietary
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Comparing an A.I. language model to a Shoggoth, @TetraspaceWest said, wasn’t necessarily implying that it was evil or sentient, just that its true nature might be unknowable.
“I was also thinking about how Lovecraft’s most powerful entities are dangerous — not because they don’t like humans, but because they’re indifferent and their priorities are totally alien to us and don’t involve humans, which is what I think will be true about possible future powerful A.I.”
The Shoggoth image caught on, as A.I. chatbots grew popular and users began to notice that some of them seemed to be doing strange, inexplicable things their creators hadn’t intended. In February, when Bing’s chatbot became unhinged and tried to break up my marriage, an A.I. researcher I know congratulated me on “glimpsing the Shoggoth.” A fellow A.I. journalist joked that when it came to fine-tuning Bing, Microsoft had forgotten to put on its smiley-face mask.
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The primary task of a security analyst or threat hunter is to ask the right questions and then translate them into SIEM query languages, like SPL for Splunk, KQL for Sentinel, and DSL for Elastic. These questions are designed to provide answers about what actually happened. For example: “Identify failed login attempts, Search for a specific user’s login activities, Identify suspicious process creation, Monitor changes to registry keys, Detect user account lockouts, etc.”
The answers to these questions will likely lead to even more questions. Analysts will keep interrogating the SIEM until they get a clear answer. This allows them to piece together a timeline of all the activities and explain whether it is a false positive or an actual incident. To do this, the analysts need to know a bunch of things. First, they need to be familiar with several types of attacks. Next, they need to understand the infrastructure (cloud systems, on-premises, applications, etc.). And on top of all that, they must learn how to use these SIEM tools effectively.
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Over the last few months, we’ve written a bunch about DoNotPay, the company run by Joshua Browder, claiming that it is the “world’s first robot lawyer” — that is until people take him to court for various things, at which point he says the term is just meant to be for marketing, and not to be taken seriously.
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Windows TCO
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The data breach, which occurred between February 26 and March 7, impacted both current and former members of certain state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs, the company says in the notification letter, a copy of which was submitted to the Maine Attorney General’s Office.
During the incident, an unauthorized party accessed multiple systems within MCNA’s network, infected them with malware, and stole personal information stored on them.
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It said the distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks aimed at overwhelming the platform occurred for a second consecutive day Tuesday. The attack involved computers from 114 countries, causing outages and delays in high school exams but failing to incapacitate the system, the ministry said.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Depending on the model, the attack takes between 40 minutes and 14 hours.
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EFF welcomes the intention of the legislation, but the proposed law will penalize open source developers who receive any amount of monetary compensation for their work. It will also require manufacturers to report actively exploited, unpatched vulnerabilities to regulators. This requirement risks exposing the knowledge and exploitation of those vulnerabilities to a larger audience, furthering the harms this legislation is intended to mitigate.
Open source software serves as the backbone of the modern internet. Contributions from developers working on open source projects such as Linux and Apache, to name just two, are freely used and incorporated into products distributed to billions of people worldwide. This is only possible through revenue streams which reward developers for their work, including individual donations, foundation grants, and sponsorships. This ecosystem of development and funding is an integral part of the functioning and securing of today’s software-driven world.
The CRA imposes liabilities for commercial activity which bring vulnerable products to market. Though recital 10 of the proposed law exempts not-for-profit open source contributors from what is considered “commercial activity” and thus liability, the exemption defines commercial activity much too broadly. Any open source developer soliciting donations or charging for support services for their software is not exempted and thus liable for damages if their product inadvertently contains a vulnerability which is then incorporated into a product, even if they themselves did not produce that product. Typically, open source contributors and developers write software and make it available as an act of good-will and gratitude to others who have done the same. This would pose a risk to such developers if they receive even a tip for their work. Smaller organizations which produce open source code to the public benefit may have their entire operation legally challenged simply for lacking funds to cover their risks. This will push developers and organizations to abandon these projects altogether, damaging open source as a whole.
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A number of Discord communities focused on cryptocurrency have been hacked this past month after their administrators were tricked into running malicious Javascript code disguised as a Web browser bookmark.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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On 15 and 16 May the judges of the Court of Justice of the European Union heard the French government, several French NGOs, the European Data Protection Supervisor and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity in a case whose outcome will significantly strengthen or weaken, respectively the privacy of more than 447 million EU citizen’s activities on the Internet. (See case C‑470/21)
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The revelation about the 2022 scheme comes as the State Department joins the intelligence community, the Justice Department, and the White House in pushing for Congress to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before its sunset at the end of this year.
While other officials have focused primarily on the surveillance tool’s importance in combatting nation-state threats, Brett Holmgren, the State Department’s assistant secretary for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, emphasized how crucial the tool is to diplomatic efforts.
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Consider a repeat offender: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Last week, the FBI was caught using its power to hoover up communications without a warrant, ostensibly to monitor foreign threats, to plunder the privacy of many thousands of US citizens whose revulsion at a brutal killing of a Black man by white cops marked them as activists.
This is nothing new. Search for “FBI abuse of powers” – replacing FBI with other state agencies to taste – and you’ll be scrolling for a year. It’s actually quite cheering that democracies still have safeguards to bring this stuff to light, and yet it keeps happening. If you live in a part of the world where such protection is diluted or absent, you won’t need telling how bad it can get.
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We’ve mentioned for years how there’s now an absolute ocean of telecoms, services, apps, and other companies that are busy collecting all manner of sensitive location, health, mental health, browsing, and sexual preference data, then selling access to it to a massive array of dodgy and poorly regulated data brokers. Despite this, we consistently refuse to pass any sort of competent internet privacy law or competently regulate said brokers.
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The ad-tech industry is incredibly profitable, raking in hundreds of billions of dollars every year by spying on us. These companies have tendrils that reach into our apps, our televisions, and our cars, as well as most websites. Their hunger for our data is insatiable. Worse still, a whole secondary industry of “brokers” has cropped up that offers to buy our purchase records, our location data, our purchase histories, even our medical and court records. This data is continuously ingested by the ad-tech industry to ensure that the nonconsensual dossiers of private, sensitive, potentially compromising data that these companies compile on us are as up-to-date as possible.
Commercial surveillance is a three-step process:
This data-gathering and processing is the source of innumerable societal harms: it fuels employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and is a pipeline for predatory scams. The data also finds its way into others’ hands, including the military, law enforcement, and hostile foreign powers. Insiders at large companies exploit data for their own benefit. It’s this data that lets scam artists find vulnerable targets and lets stalkers track their victims.
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EFF is thrilled about this decision, given that we have been advocating for a warrant for border searches of electronic devices in the courts and Congress for nearly a decade. If the case is appealed to the Second Circuit, we urge the appellate court to affirm this landmark decision.
U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) asserts broad authority to conduct warrantless, and often suspicionless, device searches at the border, which includes ports of entry at the land borders, international airports, and seaports.
For a century, the Supreme Court has recognized a border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, allowing not only warrantless but also often suspicionless searches of luggage and other items crossing the border.
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The FBI has fucked around and now it’s on a collision course with Finding Out. The NSA likes its Section 702 collection — an upstream collection authorized to gather communications in bulk from foreigners as well as US persons communicating with foreigners.
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What is it that compels us about a secret door? It’s almost as if the door itself and the promise of mystery is more exciting than whatever could lay beyond. In any case, [Scott Monaghan] is a lover of the form, and built his own secret door hidden in a bookshelf, as all good secret doors should be.
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Defence/Aggression
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The European Union levied new sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards last week over a brutal crackdown on protesters. But some experts question the effectiveness of sanctions, saying they risk pushing Tehran closer to other sanctioned states, namely Russia and China. Instead, they advocate the creation of a special task force similar to the one hunting down Vladimir Putin’s oligarchs.
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Recently, I drove from Washington, DC, to New York and passed through Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey on the way while scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Crossing all those state lines got me thinking about Montana and its recent ban on TikTok, the massive social media app owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance.
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America’s Continuing Quest to Hide Torture.
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The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) contacted The Grayzone to dispute our characterization of their organization as a CIA cutout. Listen to our highly revealing conversation with the NED’s communications director.
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Two sources close to the Putin administration have told Meduza that Tuesday morning’s drone attack on Moscow and the Moscow region was “predictable” after the smaller drone attack that hit the Kremlin on May 3.
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A new curricular module called “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” will soon become a graduation requirement in Russia’s colleges and universities. Russia’s Higher Education Ministry has forwarded the course guidelines to schools, expecting that students will take 72 hours of instruction in the new subject, starting next fall. The syllabus was designed under the immediate supervision of the Kremlin’s inner “political bloc,” headed by Deputy Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko, with the apparent aim of reshaping Russia’s undergraduates into a “patriotic intelligentsia,” in the words of the program description itself. Among the learning objectives of the course, the guidelines name a “developed sense of civic responsibility and patriotism” that students should acquire, together with a sense of belonging to the so-called “Russian civilization.” Meduza has reviewed the curriculum guidelines published on an official Federal Education Standards website. Here’s the gist of how the Kremlin wants young Russians to think.
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President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are urging lawmakers to support a deal to suspend the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025, in order to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt for the first time in history. The two leaders reached a tentative agreement over the Memorial Day long weekend, but it must still be approved by Congress before a June 5 deadline, when the government is expected to run out of money to pay its bills. Both progressive lawmakers and members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus have expressed some opposition to the deal, which calls for nondefense discretionary spending to remain mostly flat while boosting military spending by about 3%. New work requirements would be established for some recipients of federal aid programs, and it cuts funding to the IRS and lifts a moratorium on student loan payments in place since the pandemic. The deal also speeds up the approval and construction of the proposed $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia. We speak with Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative and a former policy adviser to Senator Elizabeth Warren.
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We speak in depth with journalist Jonathan Eig about his new book, King: A Life, the first major biography of the civil rights leader in more than 35 years, which draws on unredacted FBI files, as well as the files of the personal aide to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to show how Johnson and others partnered in the FBI’s surveillance of King and efforts to destroy him, led by director J. Edgar Hoover. Eig also interviewed more than 200 people, including many who knew King closely, like the singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte. The book has also drawn attention for its revelation that King was less critical of Malcolm X than previously thought.
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Malaysia’s maritime agency says a detained Chinese barge likely plundered two World War II British shipwrecks in the South China Sea after discovering 100 old artillery shells on it.
Malaysian media reported that illegal salvage operators are believed to have targeted the HMS Repulse and the HMS Prince of Wales, which were sunk in 1941 by Japanese torpedoes days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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It is unclear why 100-year-old Henry Kissinger has been elevated by Western intelligentsia to serve the role of the visionary in how the West should behave in response to the Russia-Ukraine war.
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Picking sides isn’t an option for humanitarian aid workers.
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At least eight drones were intercepted, the Kremlin said, but the foray raised questions about Russian air defenses.
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Strained US-Chinese relations require “mutual respect”, China’s foreign minister has said during a meeting with Elon Musk, reassuring the Tesla Ltd CEO that foreign companies are welcome.
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War in Ukraine
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European Commission Speech Brussels, 30 May 2023 Ladies and gentlemen,
Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Mr. Klymenko [...]
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At least one person was killed, several wounded, as Russia launched a fresh wave of drone attacks on Kyiv in the pre-dawn hours of May 30. According to authorities, 29 out of 31 Iranian-made drones were shot down by air defenses; however, falling debris caused fires in several districts of the Ukrainian capital, including a high-rise apartment block. Its upper floors were decimated, windows shattered throughout, and parked cars damaged below.
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Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda is urging a stronger NATO presence on the alliance’s eastern flank as Russia’s war on Ukraine continues.
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This is the second part of a three-part series on our recent trip to Russia. Read part one.
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One man told The Wall Street Journal that he had never held a gun before he was sent into the battle.
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The Russian military launched the latest in a series of drone attacks on Kyiv on Monday night. Ukraine’s Air Force Command reported that a total of 31 Iranian-made Shahed “kamikaze” drones were used in the assault and that the city’s air defense forces managed to shoot down 29 of them.
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It should not come as a surprise that U.S. officials and members of the foreign policy establishment have falsely portrayed Ukraine as a noble democracy. Such deceptions in pursuit of assorted US foreign policy objectives around the globe are nothing new.
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UK participation in the Ukraine conflict is far-reaching, involving military and intelligence support, arms supplies and information warfare. But as Ukraine makes gains on the battlefield, Whitehall sees the war not only as a way to defend Kyiv but to ensure the strategic defeat of its rival, Russia – a dangerous strategy.
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As Ukraine’s ‘shaping’ activities continue across Russian-occupied Ukraine—and parts of Russian territory—ahead of its much-anticipated counteroffensive, the global political environment is gradually, but significantly, shifting in Ukraine’s favour.
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Ukraine’s Diia app is widely seen as the world’s first next-generation e-government platform, and is credited with implementing what many see as a more human-centric government service model, writes Anatoly Motkin.
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The invasion of Ukraine has left Russia greatly diminished on the world stage and earned Putin a place in infamy alongside history’s greatest criminals. Instead of emulating Peter the Great, he has become Putin the Pariah, writes Peter Dickinson.
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KYIV, UKRAINE – May 30, 2023 – In recognition of his historic leadership during the Ukrainian people’s brave defense of their freedom, Atlantic Council Chairman John F.W. Rogers and President and CEO Frederick Kempe today presented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the Atlantic Council’s highest honor, its Global Citizen Award, a recognition conferred on unique individuals who contribute toward improving the state of the world.
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A number of countries have increased their trade with Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, including non-aligned countries and even some EU members.
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Ukraine denied involvement in unprecedented drone attacks in Moscow on Tuesday that caused minor damage to buildings but no casualties. The Kremlin maintains the drones were Ukraine’s response to Russian strikes on its territory. A pre-dawn attack on Kyiv killed at least one person and injured four after falling debris hit an apartment building.
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They say they are also gaining combat experience in case China invades their island
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One person was killed and two injured in the Belgorod region of Russia as a result of shelling of a temporary shelter for civilians, the governor of the region said on May 30.
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An International Monetary Fund mission has completed its first review of a $15.6 billion loan program for Ukraine, and the country has met the required conditions, paving the way for a payout of around $900 million.
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Bulgaria’s Supreme Court has rejected a request for political asylum by 27-year-old Russian Aleksandr Stotsky, who fled Russia immediately after the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
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The greater the cost of Russia’s invasion, the less likely it is that China will take similar steps.
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Our latest Monitor Breakfast: Taiwan’s representative to the U.S. talks of tensions with China, defensive preparations, and a Ukraine effect on attitudes.
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A drone attack took place in Moscow on the morning of May 30, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel.
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Russia launched a fresh wave of drone strikes on Kyiv on May 30 killing at least one person and wounding several others, but Ukrainian authorities said most of the drones were shot down by the capital’s air defenses, while Moscow was subjected to a rare drone attack that damaged several buildings.
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In Moscow, it can be easy to ignore the devastating but faraway war in Ukraine. But that changes quickly when drones and anti-aircraft missiles start exploding in the skies overhead one morning.
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The Kremlin says the Defense Ministry responded well to the attack, but critics argue that the assault shows a lack of leadership from a government that promised only a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
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Moscow came under attack from at least eight drones early Tuesday morning, Russian officials said, signaling that the Russian capital is no longer entirely shielded from the war in Ukraine.
Driving the news: Russia’s Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of carrying out the “terrorist attack,” but said all eight drones were shot down or had their systems jammed. Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky, claimed Ukraine was not “directly involved” but was “watching with pleasure.”
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The monument to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin has been collected from Kronvalda Park in Rīga, according to a Twitter entry by Rīga Vice-Mayor Linda Ozola on May 30.
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South African opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA) called Tuesday for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin should he enter the country for the upcoming BRICS Conference. Since March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has had an outstanding warrant for Putin’s arrest, which the DA now seeks to enforce.
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A number of big Lithuanian companies and state institutions came under DDoS attacks on Tuesday. Some of the cyber attacks were carried out from Russia.
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Lithuania has added 15 Russian law enforcement officers responsible for the persecution of Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza to its list of undesirable persons, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
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Norwegian authorities say a beluga whale, which was first spotted in Arctic Norway four years ago with an apparent Russian-made harness and alleged to have come from a Russian military facility, has been seen off Sweden’s coast nearly 2,000 kilometers to the south.
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Authorities in Latvia’s capital, Riga, have moved a statue of 19th-century Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin from a downtown park to a warehouse, local media reported on May 30.
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A Moscow court on May 30 rejected requests by theater director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriichuk have their pretrial detention changed to a different form of restraint such as house arrest.
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“Those who are supposed to protect the local Serb majority from the arbitrariness of Kosovars have ended up siding with Pristina’s xenophobic aspirations,” Maria Zakharova said.
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“It is quite clear that we are talking about Kiev’s response to our very effective attacks against one of its command centers,” Kremlin spokesman Peskov said.
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Finland ultimately plans to build a fence that will cover stretches totalling about 200 kilometres of the 1,300-km-long border with Russia.
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Russia’s Defense Ministry said that at least eight drones had targeted Moscow and the surrounding region.
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Despite promises of security, new data shows that when Wagner Group mercenaries enter a country violence comes with them. Civilian deaths are rising in the Central African Republic (CAR) where the group has operated since 2018, and Mali, where it has operated since late 2021.
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For over a year, Russia’s leaders have been justifying their full-scale invasion of Ukraine by claiming that it’s part of an effort to “protect” their own citizens as well as the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas. They also frequently bring up the fact that the U.S. and NATO have invaded other countries before, saying this makes their criticisms of Russia’s actions hypocritical. French philosopher Cécile Fabre, an expert on military and political ethics and a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University’s All Souls College, spoke to Meduza about why these arguments fail to justify Russia’s war against Ukraine.
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Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that Russian troops hit a U.S.-made Patriot missile defense system in Kyiv “in recent days,” the state news agency RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.
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Meduza has learned from sources within Russia’s state-run and pro-government media agencies how the Putin administration has instructed them to frame Tuesday morning’s drone attacks on Moscow and the Moscow region.
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A garrison military court sentenced eight draftees from Russia’s Kaliningrad region to long-term imprisonment for desertion. They reportedly fled a camp in the Luhansk region of Ukraine where they had been stationed by the Russian army. According to Mediazona, they were found guilty of desertion and not fulfilling orders during their period of mobilization.
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Three apartment buildings – on Leninsky prospekt and Profsoyuznaya street in Moscow, as well as on Atlasova Street in New Moscow – were struck by drones on May 30. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that several buildings in the city sustained “minor damage” as the result of the drone attack but that “nobody was seriously injured.” “All emergency services are at the affected sites. They’re investigating the circumstances of the incident,” he wrote on Telegram. He later added that two people sought medical care but that nobody required hospitalization. Some residents of the buildings which were hit by drones had to evacuate. A criminal case has been opened under Article 205 of the Criminal Code (an act of terrorism).
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Russian president Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for a Tuesday morning drone attack on Moscow, calling the attack retaliation for a Russian strike on Ukraine’s military intelligence headquarters reportedly carried “two or three days ago.”
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Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, says that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have shelled a temporary civilian shelter for citizens evacuated from the Shebekinsky district.
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A Ukrainian woman who came to Russia “on the orders of the Save Ukraine foundation” was detained in Moscow, reports Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. One of the news agency’s sources claims that the Save Ukraine foundation works with Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and that the detainee arrived in Russia to bring back orphans who had been deported from the occupied territories.
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A Donetsk court sentenced a 23-year-old citizen of Kazakhstan to nine years in prison for fighting as a mercenary, reports the Ukrainian outlet Grati.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Another glaring, but overlooked, difference between Teixeira’s leaks and Snowden’s is the question of how each man viewed his actions. Teixeira bragged about breaking the rules, the sensitivity of what he had access to, and the “f**k ton of information” he possessed about U.S. intelligence on countries considered among America’s greatest enemies, such as Syria, Iran and China.
Snowden, in contrast, was concerned about the U.S. breaking its own rules through mass domestic surveillance and bulk collection of Americans’ phone records — a concern later vindicated by an appeals court. Snowden did not boast about his disclosures or seek credit for them. That’s why he initially blew the whistle anonymously under the pseudonym “Citizenfour.”
The most significant differences, however, are that Snowden made his disclosure to independent journalists who could vet the information, not to gamer buddies he was trying to impress, and that Snowden’s revelations were clearly in the public interest.
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“It now appears that vital evidence has gone missing,” said Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader.
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Environment
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A recent research article published in the Earth’s Science edition of Advancing Earth & Space Science suggested that New York City could sink under its own weight in the near future. The article published earlier this month shows how the island burdened by skyscrapers is subsiding by 2mm per year.
The scientists have termed this research the most difficult task because the rate of this subsidence is comparatively new when measured against the urban load of buildings and people, which has been happening for a bigger period. Despite that, they have done thorough research comparing the surface geology of the place from different satellite image sources including GPS or the Global Positioning System and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar.
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Energy/Transportation
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To do this right, we need to hear from as many people who work in the system as possible. This means railroaders in all positions, managers and people familiar with the Federal Railroad Administration.
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Fossil-fuel companies are being shown the red card on their sponsorships of sporting and arts events as industry bosses face pressure to ditch the lucrative deals under a voluntary code.
Leading environmental advocacy group the Climate Council will launch the code for sports clubs and arts institutions in response to pressure from athletes, artists, fans and punters for action to protect the planet.
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The First Nations Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) is plugging into the booming renewable energy industry.
Attracting delegates from industry and business, the organisation’s inaugural summit kicked off in Gladstone on Wednesday with a focus on Indigenous jobs and economic development.
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Wildlife/Nature
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Finance
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You can measure the depth of a civilization by how it treats its poor, very young, elderly and mentally ill. By any such metric, ours here in the Exceptional Empire is barbaric. Take New York City mayor Eric Adams and his pronouncements on the homeless destitute.
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It is the season of annual shareholder meetings for giant corporations when CEOs go through the motions of elections for their Board of Directors and approval of other resolutions. People who own stock in General Motors (GM) receive the “GM Meeting Information” in an envelope emblazoned with this disingenuous message: […]
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Two men emerged from the Oval Office. One of them, President Joe Biden, said of the deal they’d just reached that it “reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone.”
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Asia’s stockmarkets slid toward a second month of losses in a row on Wednesday as weak Chinese factory activity fed growing doubts about the post-pandemic recovery in the world’s second biggest economy.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell one per cent in early trade and is down 2.4 per cent in a month where hopes for robust Chinese rebound have run dry.
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The banking regulator is alert to mortgage stress as interest rates rise and borrowers face a looming deadline on cheap fixed-rate home loans, but won’t ease the rules.
Refinancing a mortgage has hit the highest level in 20 years, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) chair John Lonsdale said on Wednesday.
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The head of the Reserve Bank has issued a warning about weak productivity growth as it continues its fight against high inflation with interest rate hikes.
Philip Lowe told a parliamentary committee that wages growth, in isolation, was not the problem.
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Populating the new monetary policy board solely with economists would be a backward step, Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe says.
The governor favours a diverse board that includes business people and labour market experts.
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While PwC is struggling to contain what might be its very own Enron moment, the ATO, Treasury and the Senate are trying to figure out why nobody did anything about what everybody seemed to know. It’s now a scandal too big to go away, Kim Wingerei reports on what might be next.
Fresh out of business school in Norway in 1980, this writer joined the illustrious Arthur Anderson, one of the then “Big 8” audit and consulting firms. At an internal meeting discussing proposed legislative changes to the tax benefits of limited partnerships, the local firm’s tax consulting partner was asked how it would affect some of our big clients. His answer was as succinct as it was cynical:
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A lack of competition in the supermarket sector is making it easier for major players to charge shoppers more.
The consumer watchdog has a close eye on the big supermarkets to make sure they aren’t using their market position to charge much higher prices for groceries.
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A key body involved in investigating the PwC tax advice scandal says there are thousands of documents relating to the matter that are yet to be released.
Tax Practitioners Board chief executive Michael O’Neill told a Senate estimates hearing there might be thousands of documents relating to the confidentiality breach case that went beyond already publicly released emails.
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The Reserve Bank governor has labelled the confidentiality breach scandal embroiling PwC a disgrace and says the central bank will not sign new contracts with the firm until appropriate action has been taken.
Philip Lowe also confirmed the bank has contracted the troubled consultancy giant to assist it in correcting staff underpayments.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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“I felt safe and I felt heard and I felt respected,” Reade said of getting off the plane in Russia.
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Years after accusing President Biden of sexual assault, Ms. Reade told a Russian outlet that she had moved in order to feel safe.
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The CRTC’s Bill C-11 consultations are off to a rocky start with mounting concern over short deadlines that may limit public participation and reduce the quality of the submissions. A dozen groups have asked the Commission to extend the deadlines with more groups joining in the call. The deadline for comment on the extension ended yesterday and I navigated an exceptionally difficult consultation process (more on that shortly) to submit the comments posted below. I support the extension but argue that a better approach would be to wait until the government’s policy direction process is final and there is certainty on support for public interest group participation.
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“I see this as a way for companies like Open AI to control the narrative and move public attention away from things like data consent, the legality of their systems, and the false and misleading information that they produce (and how all of these can impact our livelihoods). Essentially, it is a misdirection of public attention away from what matters towards that which suits their narrative and business model,” Luccioni added.
“The whole thing looks to me like a media stunt, to try to grab the attention of the media, the public, and policymakers and focus everyone on the distraction of scifi scenarios,” Emily M. Bender a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington, told Motherboard. “This would seem to serve two purposes: it paints their tech as way more powerful and effective than it is and it takes the focus away from the actual harms being done, now, in the name of this technology. These include the pollution of the information ecosystem, the reinforcement and replication of biases at scale, exploitative labor practices and further gigification of the economy, enabling oppressive surveillance such as the ‘digital border wall’ and theft of data and creative work.”
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Everyone is talking about AI, it seems. But if you feel overwhelmed or uncertain about what the hell people are talking about, don’t worry. I’ve got you.
I asked some of the best AI journalists in the business to share their top tips on how to talk about AI with confidence. My colleagues and I spend our days obsessing over the tech, listening to AI folks and then translating what they say into clear, relatable language with important context. I’d say we know a thing or two about what we’re talking about.
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Among the gamblers there’s excitement: Just who will face the next indictment? Will it be Trump, will it be Rudy Who finds himself in deeper doody?
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was planning to launch his presidential campaign as this issue of The Nation went to press, is accruing leadership credentials in a party that no longer exists. DeSantis has used his supermajority in the Florida Legislature to launch a head-spinning array of salvos in the right-wing culture wars—from an anti-trans surveillance regime in public schools and rolling book bans to an improbable assault on Disney as the avatar of all things woke.
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The drumbeat for Senator Dianne Feinstein to resign has reached a kind of dull fever pitch. Aside from the open secret of her cognitive decline, the California Democrat was “working from home” for three months straight due to shingles, holding up President Biden’s judicial nominees in Washington, D.C., at a time when women are dying like it’s 1973 all over again. Now Feinstein is back in the Senate, looking and sounding completely decrepit. There’s absolutely nothing feminist about defending her nonexistent “right” to remain in office, no matter what Kirsten Gillibrand tries to argue on CNN. Yet there is a double standard at work here, and leftist men in particular would do well to check themselves.1
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So Succession reached its finale, with both a bang and a whimper.
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Controversial powers criticised for being one of the most undemocratic election systems in Australia are set to be ditched, the NSW government says.
Businesses in the City of Sydney have had twice the voting power of ordinary residents in council elections since 2014.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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So now on to M*A*S*H. It’s hailed as a masterpiece of comedy. But, really, it’s an exercise in military propaganda.
The first season is genuinely hilarious and, at times, moving. But there’s no disguising just how fun it makes war look.
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The whole debacle was a testament to how realistic AI can create phony events and how such events can, in some way, even if just for a short time, rock the world. There has been a lot of talk in the last few years about the danger of deepfake technology in the age of information warfare. Recently, an image of the Pope dressed like a rap star went viral. Though harmless, it was so well done that one can only imagine the chaos this technology will cause now and in the near future.
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“FYI there’s a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on her official account Tuesday, referring to Twitter owner Elon Musk. “It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread. I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see.”
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Censorship/Free Speech
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A man accused of making death threats online has been ordered to stay away from former political staffer Brittany Higgins and her fiance.
David William Wonnocott, 49, appeared in a northern NSW court on Wednesday for the first time since his April arrest over social media threats of violence.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Turkish authorities should investigate multiple incidents of journalists being attacked or obstructed from reporting during the country’s recent election, and the media watchdog RTÜK should treat all outlets equally regardless of political stance, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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The general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board issued a memo on Tuesday stating that overly broad non-compete agreements violate the National Labor Relations Act by barring workers from opportunities to get new jobs. The memo is the latest of multiple governmental actions to address the problem of non-competes, including a proposed ruling by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year to ban them completely.
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Mary Rickert opens her iPad, clicks on her hate-mail folder, and shows me some of the screeds she has received over the past three years. One begins: “I’d like to fuck Mary Rickert in the face with a brick.” Another has the subject line “Going, going, gone, dead woman walking.” She closes the folder, shudders, and says, “I have PTSD because of this, just from the insanity of it all. I have nightmares all the time. Watching the county just crumble is absolutely devastating for me… watching it being taken over by a far-right group.”1
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Jon Wiener: When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a lot of our friends immediately sent a check to Planned Parenthood—because Planned Parenthood is known to all as the organization that provides abortion services and defends abortion rights. But it turns out some of the affiliates are less willing to provide abortion services than others. And in many places, independent abortion clinics do a lot of the work, and face a lot of the threats from violent anti-abortion activists: for example, in Montana.
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Arabesques, the first and only novel by the acclaimed Palestinian writer Anton Shammas, was originally translated into English 35 years ago, in 1988. It was a time of great turmoil and hope, with the Palestinian Intifada entering its second year, and it was also a time when the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian solidarity seemed to show more promise than they had at any other time. As though in confirmation, Shammas’s novel appeared, with its array of Israeli and Palestinian characters reflecting on one another and their relations in a wide range of locales. Perhaps most important, the novel managed to narrate the story of the Nakba in Hebrew to a Jewish Israeli public. When I read it back then, it represented a bold and promising departure suitable to the revolutionary times that Palestine was going through.1
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Kenzie Roller took a deep breath as they approached the stage microphone. It was Wednesday, March 29, and Roller, a high school senior from Louisville, Ky., had traveled to the state capitol in Frankfort so that they could be here, on this stage, to kick off the rally that they had spent the last 19 days planning. The message they had to share was as clear as day: Senate Bill 150—legislation that dramatically limits the rights of queer and trans youth in Kentucky—would harm them, their closest friends, and their entire community.
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The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana may have violated the civil rights of a 16-year-old autistic boy when deputies pinned him to the pavement, handcuffed and shackled, as officers sat on his back for more than nine minutes, according to a “statement of interest” filed this month by the Department of Justice as part of a civil rights lawsuit against JPSO.
The teen, Eric Parsa, died on the scene in January 2020. The sheriff’s office has also recently faced a number of other lawsuits alleging wrongful death, excessive force and racial discrimination by deputies. The sheriff’s office was the subject of a yearlong investigation by ProPublica and WRKF and WWNO starting in 2021, which disclosed evidence of racial discrimination and violence by deputies; after the first story ran, the American Civil Liberties Union called on federal prosecutors to investigate the department.
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Iranian Australians say they are at breaking point and fed up with government inaction as family members are executed, tortured and imprisoned back home.
Australian-Iranian leaders want the government to step in and go harder against the theocratic and authoritarian regime, which has begun executing protesters.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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In a frontal assault on net neutrality, the European Commission wants to force websites and apps to pay fees to broadband companies like Telefonica, Orange and Deutsche Telekom, and it just closed its call for comments on the proposal.
Network fees like this have never existed in the EU. They violate the EU’s net neutrality law, and, if put in place, would be a radical departure from how the internet has operated and flourished over the last 30 years.
While reporting solid profits and telling their investors everything is going great, European internet service providers (ISPs) have seemingly convinced the European Commission that the normal rise in online traffic is overwhelming and that, without the government requiring online companies to pay them, they’ll be unable to roll out 5G and fiber fast enough to meet EU goals.
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Monopolies
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Trademarks
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Issue 21 of Hello World is filled with inspiration and practical ideas for teaching computing in primary school, for all educators.
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Copyrights
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The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) & (c). Since the first sale doctrine never protects a defendant who makes unauthorized reproductions of a copyrighted work, the first sale doctrine cannot be a successful defense in cases that allege infringing reproduction.
Further, the privileges created by the first sale principle do not “extend to any person who has acquired possession of the copy or phonorecord from the copyright owner, by rental, lease, loan, or otherwise, without acquiring ownership of it.” See 17 U.S.C. § 109(d). Most computer software is distributed through the use of licensing agreements. Under this distribution system, the copyright holder remains the “owner” of all distributed copies. For this reason, alleged infringers should not be able to establish that any copies of these works have been the subject of a first sale.
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Five men behind pirate IPTV service ‘Flawless’ were sentenced to more than 30 years in prison today, after a private prosecution by the Premier League. A FACT test purchase in 2017 led to the involvement of four territorial police forces, three regional Trading Standards units, and the arrest of service kingpin, Mark Gould, in 2018. In less than two years, Flawless served over 50,000 UK households while generating millions in revenue.
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The U.S. Government’s Patent and Trademark Office will host a public roundtable to discuss future anti-piracy and counterfeiting strategies. The agency notes that piracy causes billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy each year. No concrete proposals are mentioned but rightsholders will likely suggest pirate site blocking as an option.
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As anyone who reads this site regularly will know, DMCA abuse happens all the time. Typically you see this sort of thing resulting from clear attempts to hobble a competitor, or to silence content someone doesn’t want to see, or pure trolling for the purposes of producing mayhem. But we also see this kind of “abuse” stemming from entities, foreign and domestic, that simply don’t know the strictures under which DMCA and copyright law actually operate.
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“Opening up cultural artifacts from African organizations might change how we’re represented in online spaces” says Kirsty von Gogh from Johannesburg. She also shares how increasing production of culturally, linguistically, and contextually aware and relevant content can ensure a more representative digital space for Africans, and how open licensing increases accessibility to this content.
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Contents
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Personal
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In Monaco the marshalls are pretty good at getting crashed cars off the track despite the lack of space. Cranes lift wreckage out of the way to be collected later. This year in practice and qualifying we had some clear views of the underneath of a couple of cars, a part that designers would prefer kept secret. Here’s a web site with a couple of good photos.
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Had a shockingly busy weekend as I actually went places where there were people.
I had to wear my kf94 the whole time: on public transit, in the open air market because it was crowded, inside the theatre, &c. but community transmission is low enough at the moment that wearing the mask the whole time pretty much means that it was safe.
So what all did we do?
Well on friday I actually saw coworkers in person, grabbing food while spread out at an outdoor table and kvetching about internal politics of [college we work for]. Since I almost never talk to any of these people outside the context of a structured meeting, it was nice to feel like I’m recognized as being a person outside what I do for them as the coordinator on this project.
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Technical
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Me too, but with emphasis on his having created a tool I couldn’t have lived online nearly so happily without. I’m not at all interested in opinions on Gemini’s technical details.
[...]
I’ve found plenty of wonderful writing in Gemini spaces, and rather enjoy that the people writing so often tend to be command line types. I also rather enjoy how aggregation volume such as seen at Antenna these days gives me the sense of something new starting.
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I’m enjoying just having one class to worry about right now. Gives me more time to focus and digest.
I just finished a project in which I had to implement a Bayes filter in a virtual robot. I won’t delve into the math here, as exciting as that would be, but the gist is that it’s a way to estimate unknowns using knowns and probability.
The robot has a map of the world but doesn’t know its location in the world. By following movement commands and detecting walls with its sensors, it can start to get an idea for its location. The fun part is that sometimes it’ll randomly ignore movement commands and go a different direction, and its sensor readings are only correct most of the time.
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I’m still doing my YouTube experiment [1], but it’s slightly paused as I spend time learning Davinci Resolve. Davinci Resolve is a completely free video editing tool for Apple Macs. I’ve spent the past week watching videos of Davinci Resolve techniques.
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Programming
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Inspired by Ravi’s program (see my last phlog), I decided to give programming Wordle a try. To make it “more fun”, I’m coding in Swift on my Mac. The version I’m writing is just for the command line, but if I get comfortable with Swift, I may just try to implement it as a GUI.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.
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Posted in Europe, Finance, Fraud, Patents at 1:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: It seems like EPO staff is starting to have doubts about the safety of EPO pensions after Benoît Battistelli sent money to reckless gambling (EPOTIF) — a plot that’s 100% supported by António Campinos and his enablers in the Council, not to mention the European Union
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