GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • LWN ☛ Zoned storage and filesystems

    a discussion of a few issues around using zoned storage for filesystems.

  • LWN ☛ Cloud-storage optimizations

    discussion on I/O hints for cloud-based emulated block devices—and how to see them get implemented relatively quickly.

  • LWN ☛ Atomic block-write operations

    discussion on support for atomically writing data in sizes that are multiples of a device’s block size.

  • LWN ☛ Flexible-order anonymous folios

    the page cache can handle folios of multiple sizes; work is underway to bring the same flexibility to anonymous memory.

  • LWN ☛ Optimizing single-owner memory

    a proposal to optimize the management of memory that will never be shared.

  • LWN ☛ Mitigating vmap lock contention

    allocations in the kernel’s vmap area can be subject to significant lock contention; this session looked at the problem and a proposed way to improve the situation.

  • LWN ☛ Improving page-fault scalability

    the 2023 version of this regular LSFMM+BPF discussion.

  • LWN ☛ Code tagging and memory-allocation profiling

    for the second year in a row, the memory-management developers consider the code-tagging patches.

• Applications

  • Peter Czanik: Introducing sngbench: a shell script to performance test your syslog-ng

    One of the returning questions I receive is how many log messages can a given hardware handle. My typical answer is that it depends on the configuration. I have now an answer, or rather a tool to answer your question sngbench.sh. It is a shell script that runs from localhost and uses loggen, the bundled benchmarking and testing tool of syslog-ng. It comes with two configurations: a performance-optimized and a realistic one. You are also free to extend sngbench with your own configurations.

  • Peter ‘CzP’ Czanik ☛ Introducing sngbench: a shell script to performance test your syslog-ng

  • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ HPLIP 3.23.5 Released with Driver for Many More HP Printers & Scanners

    HPLIP, the HP developed Linux driver for HP printers and Scanners, released version 3.23.5 this Monday! The new release features many new HP devices support.

  • TechTarget ☛ Compare two Linux security modules: SELinux vs. AppArmor

    Use SELinux or AppArmor to protect Linux servers, but examine the differences between them. AppArmor is easier to use but does not give admins as much control as SELinux.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Share folder between Windows 11 guest and Fedora 38 host (KVM Hypervisor) using virtiofs

    Web Cockpit Console on Fedora 38 was used to manage Win11 KVM Guest

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install Elasticsearch on Fedora 38

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Elasticsearch on Fedora 38. For those of you who didn’t know, Elasticsearch is a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine built on top of the Apache Lucene library.

  • Michael Ablassmeier: updating to bookworm

    Just updated to bookworm. Only thing that gave me headaches was OpenVPN refusing to accept the password/username combination specified via “auth-user-pass” option..

    Mystery was solved by adding “providers legacy default” to the configuration file used.

  • TecAdmin ☛ SQL Queries to Change Domain Name for WordPress Site

    There are times when you might need to change the WordPress URL in your website’s database. This could be due to moving your site to a new domain, changing your domain’s structure, or fixing a broken site after an update.

  • Kifarunix ☛ Getting Started with Linux: Tips for Complete Beginners

    Linux is an open-source operating system that has gained significant popularity in recent years.

  • Make Use Of ☛ How to Secure Linux Systems Effectively Using YubiKey

    You’re not alone if you worry about the ever-increasing threat of hacking. While authentication prompts and 2FA are sufficient to ward off most would-be hackers, thousands of breaches still succeed every day.

    One of the most commonly touted solutions to the authentication issue is YubiKey. But what is YubiKey, and how does hardware authentication work? Can you secure your Linux PC with YubiKey?

  • Network World ☛ Waiting for things to happen on Linux

    There are always things to wait for on a Linux system—upgrades to complete, processes to finish, coworkers to log in and help resolve problems, status reports to be ready.

    Fortunately, you don’t have to sit twiddling your thumbs. Instead, you can get Linux to do the waiting and let you know when the work is done. You can do this with a script or you can use the wait command, a bash built-in that watches for processes running in the background to complete.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Dokku on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

    Dokku is a pioneering platform as a service (PaaS) solution, designed to streamline the software deployment process. Enabling developers to push their code directly to the server, it automates the process of building the application environment, removing the painstaking configuration typically associated with deployment. .

  • IT Pro Today ☛ How To Check Linux Disk Space Usage: Classic SysAdmin Tips and Commands

    This guide explains Linux commands and utilities for checking disk space and usage.

  • It’s FOSS ☛ Using tail Command in Linux

    The tail command is one of the several ways to display file contents or part of it. You can also live monitor changes made to files with it. Here are some common examples.

  • TecMint ☛ How to Backup and Restore a PostgreSQL Database in Linux

    In a production environment, no matter how large or small your PostgreSQL database may be, regular backup is an essential aspect of database management.

  • Linux Links ☛ Alternatives to popular CLI tools: lsof

    We explore free and open source alternatives to lsof, a utility that lists file information about files opened by processes.

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ What Is Parabola Linux and How to Install It

    Parabola is a Linux distribution that focuses on producing a secure and Libre version of Arch Linux. Unlike a regular distribution, Parabola distinguishes itself by only including software and libraries that you can inspect yourself.

  • Cloudbooklet ☛ Deleting Files and Directories in Linux: Step-by-Step Instructions

    Learn about the best practices and methods for deleting files on Linux. Explore various techniques, including the rm command, graphical file managers, and secure deletion methods. Regular file cleanup helps maintain system efficiency and data organization.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Grub Customizer on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

    Grub Customizer is an indispensible tool for Linux users, particularly those on Ubuntu-based systems. Acting as a comprehensive interface for managing the GRUB bootloader, this utility streamlines various processes, enabling users to tweak and adjust system startup options with precision and efficiency.

  • FOSSLinux ☛ Solving the ‘Cannot Find LVM Volume Group’ error in Linux

    Logical Volume Management (LVM) offers a flexible and efficient way of managing disk space in Linux, but it can sometimes throw perplexing errors. One such error is ‘Cannot find LVM volume group,’ which typically arises when the system can’t detect or access the LVM volume group during the boot process. Causes can range from an incorrectly defined boot configuration to problems with the physical volume.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install WebStorm on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

    In the realm of web development, WebStorm stands out as a powerhouse Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Developed by JetBrains, a company recognized globally for crafting quality software tools, WebStorm offers a highly specialized platform tailored to the needs of web developers.

  • How to Install a Debian File in Linux?

    If you are new to Linux Operating System and having issues installing new applications using their Debian package on your PC, this guide has got you all covered. Installing Applications and Packages in Linux can be done using the Software Center, which can be called the store for Linux. However, not every application is present in the software center. That is why, oftentimes, you need to download the “deb” package file of the application from their download center. But once the Debian file is downloaded, installing the application may seem daunting to new Linux Users.

  • Kifarunix ☛ Install NixOS with Gnome Desktop on VirtualBox

    In this tutorial, you will learn how to install NixOS with Gnome Desktop on VirtualBox.

  • Trend Oceans ☛ How to Extract initrd/initramfs to View Content in Linux

    It takes a few simple steps to extract the initramfs files on your Linux system to view their contents. There may be a couple of reasons why you need to extract initramfs or initrd images, such as to find the reason for boot issues or to explore what content is in them.

  • Seamless Sharing: Exchanging Data between Hosts and Docker Containers

    Docker containers are a form of virtualization that allows users to run applications on any environment, regardless of the underlying operating system. Containers are lightweight, portable, and can be easily moved across different hosts without requiring much configuration or setup.

  • Exploring Docker: A Comprehensive Introduction to Use Cases

    Brief overview of Docker and its popularity in the tech industry Docker is a platform that allows developers to easily create, deploy, and run applications in containers. Containers are lightweight virtualization units that package software and all its dependencies into a single unit, ensuring consistency across various environments.

  • Docker in Action: Streamlining Testing for Your Projects

    With the growth of software development, testing and delivering high-quality software has become increasingly important. Docker is one of the most popular tools in the field of software development that has made a significant impact on how developers build and deploy applications.

  • CI/CD Excellence: Leveraging Shippable and Heroku with Docker

    The software development process is a complex and ever-changing endeavor that requires continuous innovation and optimization to keep up with the demands of modern businesses. In recent years, CI/CD has emerged as a key strategy for achieving faster, more reliable, and cost-effective software deployments.

  • TravisCI Meets Docker: Enhancing CI/CD Workflows

    TravisCI is a popular continuous integration (CI) tool used by developers to automate the testing and building of software projects.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install CLion on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

    Specifically engineered for C and C++ developers, CLion has cemented its status as an industry favorite due to a potent combination of ingenious features and an intelligent design approach.

• Games

  • Neowin ☛ Steam Client Beta update fixes crashes on Linux when using Nvidia GPUs

    The latest Steam Client Beta update fixes a crash on Linux that was being caused by Nvidia GPUs when hardware acceleration was switched on. There were also a bunch of other non-related fixes.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Humble Bundle have a Pixel Pride Bundle up

    Here’s a collection of wonderful inclusive games to celebrate Pride Month, with Humble Bundle putting up the Pixel Pride Bundle. Here’s what to expect for compatibility on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Hearts of Iron IV: Arms Against Tyranny to focus on Scandinavia and Finland

    Scandinavia and Finland are a big focus in the newly announced Hearts of Iron IV: Arms Against Tyranny expansion releasing later this year.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ GOG made it simpler to publish on their store, plus their Pride Month celebration

    GOG announced today they’ve taken a step towards making it easier to get games onto their store, and more clear on what they won’t accept.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Roguelite vehicle combat game REDLINE CROOKS is pure chaos

    REDLINE CROOKS from developer Alexander Golke is a top-down 2D roguelite about smashing vehicles into more vehicles. It’s pure unfiltered chaos and I love the idea.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ GE-Proton 8-4 is out now with game fixes and other upgrades

    GE-Proton 8-4 is the latest release of the community-made compatibility layer for Steam Deck and desktop Linux gaming. Here’s what’s new and changed.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Bullet hell game Survivors of the Dawn features mini campaign, text events

    “Embark on a glorious odyssey where survival depends on tactically combining diverse weapon classes to annihilate the hordes. Beware of your choices traveling through the stars, the next combat can determine your destiny.”

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Using Kirigami built with Qt6 without kdesrc-build

      I have a few blog posts planned, but the one I wanted to post involving KDE color schemes isn’t finished yet (it’s enormous and tedious). So instead, today I’m showing you how simple it is to compile Kirigami with Qt6 so you can start playing with it ahead of time.

      Kirigami, KDE’s library that extends QtQuick, is a Tier 1 KDE Framework. The cool thing about it is that it has effectively no dependency on any KDE libraries.

    • KDAB ☛ Object Lifetime

      Last time we discussed Value Semantics. However, I missed one topic that is super important for a better understanding of basic building blocks of C++. Today, we are going to talk about an object. Without further ado, let’s dive deeper!

      Object

      What is an object? According to the C++ standard, part 3.9.8 under the name of [basic.types]

       An object type is a (possibly cv-qualified) type that is not a function type, not a reference type, and not a void type.

      Now is int i an object? Yes.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • postmarketOS // v23.06: From the GNOME Mobile 2023 Hackfest

      Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones

    • 9to5Linux ☛ Cinnamon 5.8 Desktop Released with Gestures, Dark Mode, Styles, and More

      The Cinnamon 5.8 desktop environment has been released and it’s already available in the stable software repositories of Arch Linux, so I wanted to give you guys a first look at the new features and improvements.

      There are several cool new features in Cinnamon 5.8 and one of them is XDG Desktop Portal support to provide better compatibility for Flatpak apps, as well as GNOME/libadwaita apps. This makes it possible for these apps to take screenshots.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Reviews

  • Russell Coker ☛ Russell Coker: PinePhonePro First Impression

    Hardware

    I received my PinePhone Pro [1] on Thursday, it seems in many ways better than the Purism Librem 5 [2] that I have previously written about. The PinePhone is thinner, lighter, and yet has a much longer battery life. A friend described the Librem5 as “the CyberTruck phone” and not in a good way.

    In a test I had my PinePhone and my Librem5 fully charged, left them for 4.5 hours without doing anything much with them, and then the PinePhone was at 85% and the Librem5 was at 57%. So the Librem5 will run out of battery after about 10 hours of not being used while a PinePhonePro can be expected to last about 30 hours. The PinePhonePro isn’t as good as some of the recent Android phones in this regard but it shows the potential to be quite usable. For this test both phones were connected to a 2.4GHz Wifi network (which uses less power than 5GHz) and doing nothing much with an out of the box configuration. A phone that is checking email, social networking, and a couple of IM services will use the battery faster. But even if the PinePhone has it’s battery used twice as fast in a more realistic test that will still be usable.

    Here are the passmark results from the PinePhone Pro [3] which got a CPU score of 888 compared to 507 for the Librem 5 and 678 for one of the slower laptops I’ve used. The results are excluded from the Passmark averages because they identified the CPU as only having 4 cores (expecting just 4*A72) while the PinePhonePro has 6 cores (2*A72+4*A53). This phone definitely has the CPU power for convergence [4]!

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • OpenSUSE ☛ Leap 15.5 Release Matures, Sets Up Technological Transition

    The release of openSUSE’s latest 15-series version marks years of maintenance and security that began more than five years ago..

    The maturity of Leap 15.5 comes into play as new technological changes of the last five years have been introduced, such as container technologies, immutable systems, virtualization, embedded development, and other high-tech advances.

    Entrepreneurs, hobbyists, professionals and developers use Leap as a go-to Linux distribution as seen by the increase in usage from each minor release. Traversing from legacy software to more modern systems is imminent.

  • LWN ☛ openSUSE Leap 15.5 released

    Version 15.5 of the openSUSE Leap distribution has been released. This is not intended as a feature release, but brings updated versions of many packages. The project has also announced that there will be one more 15.x release before that series ends and users have to migrate to whatever its successor will be.

  • OpenAPI 3.0.0 Specification for the Open Build Service HTTP API

    Starting today, the OpenAPI Specification presented through Swagger UI becomes the official API documentation for Open Build Service 🎉 Find it at https://api.opensuse.org/apidocs/ With OpenAPI we now provide an industry standard way to maintain the specification and with Swagger UI a tool that makes consuming the documentation easier for people who want to make use of the OBS API in their code. Now our journey to remake the API documentation has come to an end,…

  • SUSE’s Corporate Blog ☛ Digital Provenance Product Chronicle Arrives in SUSE Rancher Marketplace

    SUSE guest blog authored by: Csilla Zsigri, Chief Strategy Officer at BTP & Digital provenance is a force for good as it can bring trust and transparency to a wide range of markets.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • The Register UK ☛ Spend to save? [Ed: So The Register is not funded by a company it's supposed to be covering. Out goes unbiased coverage.]

    Sponsored by Red Hat.

  • Weekly status of Packit Team: June 2023

    Week 22 (May 30th – June 5th) # Packit will now filter the pull requests based on the target branch if the branch is specified in the particular job configuration. (packit-service#2074) Packit now supports manual_trigger in the configuration that allows you to make jobs run only when explicitly triggered by a comment. (packit-service#2069)

  • Filipe Rosset: Fedora rawhide – fixed bugs 2023/05

  • Remi Collet ☛ Remi Collet: PHP 8.3 as Software Collection

    Version alpha1 is planned to be released this week. It’s still in development and will enter soon in the stabilization phase for the developers, and the test phase for the users.

    RPM of this upcoming version of PHP 8.3, are available in remi repository for Fedora 37, 38 and Enterprise Linux 7, 8, 9 (RHEL, CentOS, Alma, Rocky…) in a fresh new Software Collection (php83) allowing its installation beside the system version.

    As I (still) strongly believe in SCL potential to provide a simple way to allow installation of various versions simultaneously, and as I think it is useful to offer this feature to allow developers to test their applications, to allow sysadmin to prepare a migration or simply to use this version for some specific application, I decide to create this new SCL.

    I also plan to propose this new version as a Fedora 40 change (as F39 should be released a few weeks before PHP 8.3.0).

  • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: Flock 2023 CfP open now until 20 June

    Flock to Fedora returns in-person again after four years. This year is in Cork, Ireland from 2-4 August 2023. The CfP is open now. Will we see you there? This article introduces the new Flock CfP system and how to submit your proposal as a presenter this year.

    Apply now for the Flock 2023 Call for Proposals (CfP) at cfp.fedoraproject.org. This year, Flock is using a new CfP system. If you have ever submitted a proposal for a DevConf event, it will feel familiar. The deadline to submit is by Tuesday, June 20th, 2023.

  • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: Community Blog monthly summary: May 2023

    This is the latest in our monthly series summarizing the past month on the Community Blog. Please leave a comment below to let us know what you think.

• Debian Family

  • OMG! Linux ☛ Armbian 23.05 Released, Based on Debian 12

    A new version of Armbian, a Debian-based Linux distro built for ARM and RISC-V hardware, is available to download.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Linux Mint Finally Receiving Support for Gestures

    If you use the Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop, you’ll be thrilled to know that 21.2 is getting support for gestures on touchscreen devices and touchpads.

  • The Register UK ☛ Oh Snap… Desktop Ubuntu Core to arrive in 2024

    Initially leaked in a forum comment, it has been confirmed in a blog post: Canonical will soon snappily jump aboard the immutable distro bandwagon.

    Lead Snap developer Oliver Grawert casually dropped the announcement in a comment in a story on the popular OMG Ubuntu site, but the news was confirmed the very next day in a lengthy and very detailed blog post by Ubuntu desktop product manager Oliver Smith. As of the next LTS release, which will appear next April, numbered as version 24.04, the standard Ubuntu desktop distro will be joined by a new immutable desktop version, based on the existing Ubuntu Core immutable distribution.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ GEEKOM launches AS 6 and AS 5 AMD-based mini-PCs

    The company GEEKOM launched today two mini-PCs built around the Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 AMD processors. The AS 6 supports DDR5 memory, 8K video output, up to 2TB of storage and multiple I/O ports. The product page states that these new products were co-developed with ASUS.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • 9to5Google ☛ Google releases Android TV 14 Beta, ditches Android 13

  • Android Police ☛ Android 14 Beta 3 is here with finalized APIs and the latest tweaks

  • 9to5Google ☛ Android 14 Beta 3 for Pixel phones rolling out, 7a included

  • SlashGear ☛ Unihertz Jelly Star Review: A Small Android Phone Made To Be Basic

  • The Sun ☛ Google issues official warning to all Android users over ‘battery problems’ that won’t go away – 4 steps to boost charge | The US Sun

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Imply Data gives Apache Druid schema auto-discover capability

  • Silicon Angle ☛ On theCUBE Pod: The MongoDB stock explosion and the continued AI debate

  • PostgreSQL ☛ pgAdmin 4 v7.3 Released

    The pgAdmin Development Team is pleased to announce pgAdmin 4 version 7.3. This release of pgAdmin 4 includes 5 bug fixes and new features. For more details please see the release notes.

    • Ensure that SSH Tunnel should work properly after upgrading to 7.2 from 7.1.
    • Ensure that the master password dialog should not be visible if the parameter MASTER_PASSWORD_REQUIRED is set to False.
    • Fixed an issue where Foreign Key with 3 or more columns are shown in the wrong order in SQL and Properties.
    • Fix an issue where editing a database object de-selects it on the browser tree.
    • Fixed an issue where pgadmin is unable to take the defined role.

• Content Management Systems (CMS)

  • Kiwi TCMS: Kiwi TCMS 12.4

    We’re happy to announce Kiwi TCMS version 12.4!

  • WordPress ☛ The Month in WordPress – May 2023

    May has been a month of celebrating WordPress and the open source community that makes it possible.

• Programming/Development

  • Rlang ☛ How to improve your storytelling with R

    Your success as a Data Scientist isn’t because of your coding skills. Your success is determined by how well you can persuade decision-makers to take action. And that’s a powerful skill that I’m going to help you with today: It’s called Storytelling.

  • Rlang ☛ Simplifying Data Transformation with pivot_longer() in R’s tidyr Library

    In the world of data analysis and manipulation, tidying and reshaping data is often an essential step. R’s tidyr library provides powerful tools to efficiently transform and reshape data. One such function is pivot_longer().

  • Rlang ☛ Meeting the Stars of the R-Universe: PEcAn, an Open Source Project to Take Care of the Planet

    A new post of our interview series “Meeting the stars of the R-universe”. We aim to introduce the teams and people behind the development of software and packages many of us use and which are available through the R-Universe.

  • Rlang ☛ Three useful (to me) R patterns

    I’m happy to report that I thought “oh but I know a better way to write that code!” a few times lately when reading old scripts of mine, or scripts by others.

  • Peter Hutterer: snegg – Python bindings for libei

    After what was basically a flurry of typing, the snegg Python bindings for libei are now available. This is a Python package that provides bindings to the libei/libeis/liboeffis C libraries with a little bit of API improvement to make it not completely terrible. The main goal of these bindings (at least for now) is to provide some quick and easy way to experiment with what could possibly be done using libei – both server-side and client-side. [1] The examples directory has a minimal EI client (with portal support via liboeffis) and a minimal EIS implementation. The bindings are still quite rough and the API is nowhere near stable.

  • Medevel ☛ 18 Open-source and Free Next.js Full-stack Starters For Enterprise and Startups

    What is Next.js?

    Next.js is an open-source React-based framework used for building server-side rendering (SSR) web applications. It provides an efficient and easy-to-use environment for developing web applications with minimal setup and configuration.

  • LWN ☛ Julia 1.9 brings more speed and convenience

    Version 1.9 of Julia, which is an open-source programming language popular in scientific computing, was released in early May. There are a number of interesting new features this time around, including more work addressing the startup-time complaints and a number of improvements to the package system. Beyond that, there are a few interesting features from the Julia 1.8 release to catch up on.

    Julia is a general-purpose programming language which is just-in-time (JIT) compiled by the LLVM compiler. Since its public release in 2012, it has rapidly been adopted for scientific research, due to execution speed similar to Fortran combined with the convenience of REPL-based development. Julia has an expressive syntax as well as a high degree of composability of library code.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Digital Music News ☛ American Car Companies Push Back on Proposed AM Radio Requirements

    Lobbyists in the U.S. auto industry are pushing back on lawmakers over proposed AM radio requirements in new vehicles. After bipartisan lawmakers introduced a bill requiring automakers to retain AM radio functionality in their 2024 model year vehicles, the lobbyist group Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AIA) is pushing back, arguing that the functionality is unnecessary.

Leftovers

• New York Times ☛ Miriam Silverman on Her Tony-Nominated Role in ‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window’

  In “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” the Tony Award nominee inhabits her character, a racist Upper Manhattan snob, in all her flaws.

• YLE ☛ Otkes: Many deficiencies in collapsed Espoo footbridge

  Many parts of the footbridge were weak, according to investigators.

• Vice Media Group ☛ ‘Your Balls Are Back Online:’ The $55 Semen Release ‘Ritual’ Where Bros Platonically Cum Together

  A look inside Will Blunderfield’s Manhood Academy session for “harnessing sexual energy” revealed a lot of dick-swinging, grunting, and vibrating of the balls.

• Dhole Moments ☛ On Furries and the Media

  Recently, there has been a lot of misinformation and propaganda flying around the American news media about the furry fandom. Unfortunately, this seems to be increasing with time. Consequently, there are a lot of blanket statements and hot takes floating around social media right now about whether or not furries should talk with journalists.

• RFERL ☛ Turkmen Students Forced To Buy Theater Tickets

  Students at the Turkmen Cultural Institute in Ashgabat have been forced by their teachers to go to theaters at least once a week.

• Science

  • Steinar H Gunderson ☛ Steinar H. Gunderson: Faster accurate range reduction

    Pretty much everybody who learns geometry and trigonometry starts off by representing angles in degrees. One circle is 360 degrees; it’s a bit of a strange number, but it’s highly composite (so a lot of fractions can be represented as whole numbers) and has traditions supposedly going back to the Babylonians.

    However, there’s nothing “natural” about 360; you could just as well use e.g. 3600 and nothing would really get easier or harder. When going into trigonometry, thus eventually most people will end up into radians, where one circle is 2π radians. This does have a natural justification; angles are represented by their arc lengths on the unit circle, and using radians for the argument means the Taylor series of sin(x) becomes x – x³/3! + x⁵/5! – …, which is pretty much as nice as it gets. (Both facts independently mean that sin(x) ≈ x for small angles, whereas for degrees, it would mean we’d get sin(x) ≈ πx/180; hardly as elegant!)

  • Vice Media Group ☛ OK, WTF Is Going on With the ‘Intact Craft of Non-Human Origin’ Allegedly Recovered by the U.S. Government?

    There are currently no public details on what evidence or documentation, if any, the whistleblower may have.

  • Vice Media Group ☛ Archaeologists Discover Remnant of Lost Village Buried Under the Ocean for 600 Years

    The main church of Rungholt, a Medieval settlement that has been called the “Atlantis of the North Sea” because it was wiped out in a flood, has been found.

• Education

  • The Straits Times ☛ Millions of Chinese students sit gruelling college entrance exams

    A record nearly 13 million students are registered to take the exams in 2023.

  • JURIST ☛ Oklahoma school board approves nation’s first religious charter school

    The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board voted on Monday to accept the application for the establishment of the Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The school will operate as a public charter school, paid for by taxpayer dollars.

• Hardware

  • Stacey on IoT ☛ ReelyActive is making Bluetooth sensors enterprise-friendly

    Middleware is so extremely boring that if I’m bothering to cover a company’s middleware product, it must be doing something pretty important. And in the case of ReelyActive, it really is. ReelyActive was formed in 2012 as a Bluetooth expert that built Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) location apps and services.

  • Russell Coker ☛ Russell Coker: Dell 32″ 4K Monitor and DisplayPort Switch

    After determining that the Philips 43″ monitor was too large for my taste as well as not having a clear enough display [1] I bought a Dell 32″ 4K monitor for $499 on the 1st of July 2022. That monitor has been working nicely for almost a year now, for DisplayPort it’s operation is perfect and 32″ seems like an ideal size for my use. There is one problem that both HDMI ports will sometimes turn off for about half a second, I’ve tested on both ports and on multiple computers as well as a dock and it gives the same result so it’s definitely the monitor. The problem for me is that the most casual inspection won’t reveal the problem and the monitor is large and difficult to transport as I’ve thrown out the box. If I had this sort of problem with a monitor at work I’d add it to the list of things for Dell to fix next time they visit the office or use one of the many monitor boxes available to ship it back to them. But for home use it’s more of a problem for me. The easiest solution is to avoid HDMI.

    A year ago I blogged about using DDC to switch monitor inputs [2], I had that running with a cheap USB switch since then to allow a workstation and a laptop to share the same monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Recently I got a USB-C dock that allows a USB-C laptop to talk to a display via DisplayPort as opposed to the HDMI connector that’s built in. But my Dell monitor only has one DisplayPort input.

    /blockquote>

  • Tom’s Hardware ☛ ‘TSMC Village’ Arizona Repeatedly Targeted by Hoodlums

    Reports of crime and poor security at these residential communities won’t be good for TSMC, which has reportedly had difficulty hiring engineers in Arizona.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ ‘Folded boy’ in China starts surgery in hopes of standing straight for the first time in 10 years

    Mr Jiang Yanchen has a disease that left him bending forward horizontally.

  • Quartz ☛ Subway plans to open 4,000 new locations in China

    Subway, one of the world’s largest fast-food chains, has announced a sprawling deal with a Shanghai development company to open nearly 4,000 new restaurants in mainland China over the next 20 years.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Missing Piece of the Foraging Renaissance

    My attempt to harvest hyperlocal produce led me to something perhaps even better.

  • New York Times ☛ What is the Air Quality Index? Here’s How to Stay Safe

    Here’s what we know about pollution and a few tips to protect yourself.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Avoiding coffee namespace collisions

    Speaking of coffee shops, I noticed something else fun recently.

    I was ordering takeaway for myself and a few others, like a gentleman. Two of them wanted a skim flat white, and another wanted soy. As the barista was writing the orders on the cups, she wrote B for me, S on two more, and Y on the other.

  • uni Michigan ☛ Weight-loss medications need to be affordable

    Weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic have been garnering a lot of attention lately. With recent events such as Saturday Night Live opening with a sketch poking fun at Ozempic (no pun intended) or 2023 Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel making jokes about the medication in his opening monologue, weight-loss drugs certainly have become a hot topic…

  • teleSUR ☛ AISR Says Influenza Cases Increase in Australia as Winter Comes

    “…children represent a significant part of the total number of infections…”

  • The Atlantic ☛ Get Phones Out of Schools Now

    They impede learning, stunt relationships, and lessen belonging. They should be banned.

  • Helsinki Times ☛ YLE: Arrival of Thai berry pickers to Finland in doubt this summer

    YLE on Thursday revealed that on 1 June not a single Thai worker had been confirmed to come to the country for the upcoming picking season. Finnish berry companies recruited nearly 4,000 pickers from Thailand in 2022.

• Proprietary

  • Light Blue Touchpaper ☛ Will GPT models choke on their own exhaust?

    Until about now, most of the text online was written by humans. But this text has been used to train GPT3(.5) and GPT4, and these have popped up as writing assistants in our editing tools. So more and more of the text will be written by large language models (LLMs). Where does it all lead?

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ The Apple Vision Pro: designed to make you less happy

    Creepy. Dystopian. And more than a little like a drug dealer.

  • Vice Media Group ☛ Apple’s Vision Pro Is a $3,500 Ticket to Nowhere

    A decade after Facebook bought Oculus, VR still has no appeal except as an expensive novelty toy.

  • Quartz ☛ Microsoft has been fined $20 million for retaining children’s data without parents’ consent [Ed: Small fine and not a single person sentenced to prison, so they can do it again (more secretly)]

    Microsoft, which wants to lead the AI revolution, is struggling with a children’s online privacy protection problem.

  • Reuters ☛ Microsoft to pay $20 mln to settle US charges for violating children’s privacy

    Microsoft will pay $20 million to settle U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that the tech company illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent, the FTC said…

  • Reuters ☛ Microsoft 365 services back up after hours of outage [Ed: The real news is that it was down for a very long time, not that it is "back up"]

    Microsoft Corp said on Monday that it had restored its online services after an outage affected thousands of users of its 365 software suite, including Teams and Outlook…

  • Techstrong Group ☛ Microsoft’s 9th Outage in 2023 ¦ RISE of RISC-V ¦ Meta Ends WFH

    First up this week: The yo-yo nature of Microsoft 365 is causing great dissatisfaction. How can you avoid emulating the same mistakes?

  • MoneyControl ☛ Over 1,000 applications but not 1 job offer: Tech engineer on life after Microsoft layoff [Ed: Nobody wants to hire Microsofters?]

    A former Microsoft employee, who was laid off last week, has shared how difficult it has been to secure a new job in the last two months. Nicholas Knowlton has been on the job hunt ever since the tech giant announced the first round of layoffs, but even after sending out more than 1,000 applications. On his last day at work, the cloud solution engineer from North Carolina, US, wrote, “Today is my official last day after being impacted by the Microsoft layoffs in March. I’ve been on a journey for the past two months, giving my all to secure a new job.

  • OSI Blog ☛ The AI renaissance and why Open Source matters [Ed: Microsoft staff still writing Microsoft propaganda pieces in the OSI’s Web site, falsely characterising chatbots as “AI”]

  • MoneyControl ☛ ‘Felt sad to see Meta, Google lay off friends. Then, Microsoft laid me off’

    Samantha Dorai was feeling bad about her friends at Google and Meta when the tech giants began their mass layoffs. Little did she know that soon, she too would be laid off by Microsoft. The executive assistant to the general manager at Microsoft Singapore then took to social media to share how “real” the job loss felt. “After hearing my colleagues turned friends at Meta affected by the Meta layoffs, and then hearing friends from Google being affected by the Google layoffs to my current colleagues at Microsoft affected by the Microsoft layoff, I felt so sad to see them go and the layoffs were affecting them all,” Dorai wrote on LinkedIn.

  • India ☛ Layoffs Continue: Now This Company Is Reducing 3% Jobs From Its Global Workforce

    ZoomInfo, a US-based marketing technology company, has announced plans to reduce its global workforce by around 3%. In a clear sign of the layoff trend that is being witnessed across the globe, the company in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), stated its employees about its intentions to streamline the organisational structure, expedite decision-making, and allocate resources to strategic growth opportunities while maintaining profitability.

  • India Times ☛ Reddit lays off 5% of its workforce, to reduce hiring

    Internet community discussion platform Reddit has laid off 90 employees, or about 5% of its workforce.

    The Wall Street Journal first reported the development, citing an email from chief executive Steve Huffman to his employees.

  • India Times ☛ Reddit to layoff 5% of its workforce, slow hiring process: Report

    Citing a report by Wall Street Journal, news agency Reuters said that company CEO Steve Huffman sent an email to employees saying that the layoffs will affect teams in multiple departments across the company.

• Security

  • Yahoo News ☛ Wind River Security Scanning Service for Linux CVEs Offers Path to Remediation and Long-Term Maintenance Through the Full Lifecycle

  • The Machine Keyring [Ed: Oracle attacking the freedom of Linux]

    UEFI Secure Boot provides a security feature that ensures only trusted digitially signed binaries are executed in the boot chain. Secure Boot validates each digital signature before allowing anything to load during boot. Linux kernel modules are one of the final components of the boot chain. To maintain the signing validation requirement, all kernel modules must be signed and validated. Linux distributions enforce integrity lockdown mode when booting with Secure Boot enabled. Within lockdown mode, kernel module signature validation is enforced. With the mainline kernel, users who wanted the extra flexibility to load their own kernel modules had to go through a complex process to enroll their own keys. This is a thing of the past, as there is now a much simpler process which this blog will explain.

  • LWN ☛ Security updates for Wednesday

    Security updates have been issued by Debian (c-ares), Fedora (curl and firefox), Oracle (cups-filters, kernel, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (emacs and kpatch-patch), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (kernel and openssl-1_0_0), and Ubuntu (firefox and libreoffice).

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ Barracuda says hacked ESG appliances must be replaced immediately

    Email and network security company Barracuda warns customers they must replace Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances hacked in attacks targeting a now-patched zero-day vulnerability.

    “Impacted ESG appliances must be immediately replaced regardless of patch version level,” the company warned in an update to the initial advisory issued on Tuesday.

    “Barracuda’s remediation recommendation at this time is full replacement of the impacted ESG.”

  • Data Breaches ☛ Perhaps victims shouldn’t be so quick to claim “no evidence so far…”

    In November 2022, Pearland ISD in Texas informed parents and employees about a breach and told them that ongoing investigation so far had shown no evidence that any sensitive information had been accessed by anyone outside of the district.

    In June 2023, Pearland sent letters to 55,486 people whose personal information had been accessed or acquired by the unidentified threat actor(s). The information affected may have included name, date of birth, address, and Social Security number.

  • Senate committee approves Phillips-Hill’s measure to protect student data, privacy

    The Senate Education Committee approved the Student Data Privacy and Protection Act, according to the measure’s sponsor Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-York).

    Senate Bill 565 modernizes Pennsylvania law to accommodate student information being stored online, as well as students learning and attending school online. As is currently stands, student-related data is being generated, collected, and stored within our school systems, with no current protocols.

  • Data on as many as 100,000 Nova Scotia healthcare staff stolen in MOVEit breach

    Data on at least 100,000 employees in Nova Scotia’s healthcare sector were stolen as the result of the vulnerability in Progress Software’s MOVEit file transfer application, the province said Tuesday.

    Data stolen includes Social Insurance numbers, addresses and banking information of employees of Nova Scotia Health, the public service and the IWK Health Centre, which is a major pediatric hospital and trauma centre.

    The provinces uses MOVEit for transferring payroll information. It has begun notifying victims.

  • NPR ☛ Ascension Seton reports data breach of websites

    The Austin hospital system Ascension Seton experienced a data breach of two websites earlier this year, potentially exposing the personal information of certain users.

    Ascension Seton issued a statement Tuesday saying its legacy websites — Seton.net and DellChildrens.net — were breached on March 1 and 2. The hospital system said it has been working alongside Vertex, the third-party vendor that managed the sites, to understand the scope of the security violation. Vertex also alerted law enforcement and hired a forensic investigator to study the event.

  • Data Breaches ☛ The 2023 Verizon DBIR is out — get your copy now

    74% of all breaches include the human element through Error, Privilege Misuse, Use of stolen credentials or Social Engineering

  • Mayberry clients urged to increase vigilance after cyberattack

    With no indication of the extent of a data breach and cyberattack at investment firm Mayberry, the company yesterday urged clients to take immediate steps to protect themselves “against any possible adverse consequences”.

    In its second notice to its clients since Friday night, Mayberry yesterday asked them to actively monitor all accounts and contact their financial institution if they notice any suspicious and/or unusual activity. They were also asked to change passwords to all accounts that they operate.
    […]

    Mayberry says the data breach resulted in unauthorised access and the stealing of data to include personal data. The company also confirmed that some clients data has been put on the dark web, an area of the Internet where fraudsters lurk as they trade in stolen data to the highest bidder.

  • ABC ☛ Houston ISD investigating how students’ personal documents ended up on the street

    Several students’ records were found scattered on the road and sidewalks outside an elementary school in southwest Houston on Tuesday. Houston ISD is now working to learn how paperwork with personal information like student addresses ended up there.

    Documents like report cards, folders of completed field trip forms, parent phone numbers, and students’ personal information ended up outside Red Elementary School in the Willow Meadows area.

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • WhichUK ☛ HMRC issues scam warning: how to spot a dodgy email or phone call

      Tax agency reports rise in scams ahead of tax credits renewal deadline

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Security Week ☛ Zoom Expands Privacy Options for European Customers [Ed: Zoom is the opposite of privacy; this is marketing junk at best]

      New options allow paid Zoom customers to specify certain data for meetings, webinars, and team chat to be stored within the EEA.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Straits Times ☛ ByteDance ‘god credential’ used to help China track Hong Kong activists: Former executive

    Bytedance also worked with the CPC to promote propaganda, said a former company executive in a court filing.

  • teleSUR ☛ DR Congo: Satisfaction of President’s Visit to China

    “Many things were done on the sidelines of this visit…”

  • RFA ☛ Philippine, US, Japanese coast guards carry out anti-terror drill in disputed waters

    The trilateral training focuses on collaborative mission planning – not China – Philippine Coast Guard says.

  • The Strategist ☛ How does northern Australia’s population affect the nation’s defence?

    In 2022, demographers demonstrated that parts of the north of Australia are among the most remote and sparsely populated areas in the world.

  • The Strategist ☛ Setting the scene for closer defence cooperation in the Indo-Pacific

    Being Australia’s foreign minister and then defence minister over six years gave Stephen Smith an opportunity to see changes coming in the region, and to assess the risks and opportunities they’d bring.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ How monarchies end

    Stephen R. Grand flips the analytical script on the spate of notable books covering “How Democracies Die.” Democracies can corrode and crumble, but so can autocracies. Why are there no books being published about how kings and queens, emperors and caliphs, cease to rule—either because their throne is transformed into a more ceremonial post or because they lose power entirely? For Arab monarchs, there are several apparent lessons to be learned.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Protesters call for arrest of white woman who fatally shot Black neighbor

    A Florida sheriff says detectives must investigate self-defense claims before any criminal charges can be brought against a white woman who fatally shot her neighbor last week in the violent culmination of what the sheriff described as a 2½-year feud. Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said Monday that he’s not legally able to arrest the shooter unless he can prove that she did not act in self-defense when she shot Ajike Owens, a 35-year-old mother of four last Friday night. The women lived in a neighborhood in the rolling hills south of Ocala in north Florida.

  • The Strategist ☛ China military watch

    During China’s high-level ‘two sessions’ (两会) meetings this year, defence ministry spokesperson Tan Kefei (谭克非) disclosed that ¥1.58 trillion ($338 billion) had been allocated in the 2023 national budget for defence [...]

  • Reason ☛ Stop Piling Charges on Mom of 6-Year-Old Shooter

    Plus: Michigan Supreme Court takes up case on warrantless drone spying, Obamacare legal battles continue, and more…

  • RFERL ☛ U.S. Levies Sanctions On Iranian, Chinese Companies Over Ballistic Missile Programs

    The United States has sanctioned seven individuals and six entities from Iran, China, and Hong Kong who the U.S. Treasury Department says have helped Tehran get key technology for ballistic missile development.

  • New York Times ☛ 7 Shot Outside High School Graduation in Richmond, Virginia

    Another five people were shot, the authorities said, and others were hurt in the ensuing chaos. A 19-year-old male suspect was in police custody.

  • ADF ☛ Ancient Sahel Trade Routes Used to Traffic Illegal Weapons, Drugs

    Crime organizations and terrorist groups have woven a complex trafficking network moving illicit goods such as assault-style rifles, ammunition, explosives and fake medicine throughout the Sahel region. Once used for legitimate trade, the routes cross porous borders in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.

  • ADF ☛ Both Sides in Sudan Fight Seek Additional Weapons

    Sudanese military officials reported on May 26 that they had intercepted a cache of weapons as they were being smuggled from an unspecified foreign country through the Red Sea region to rebels in the eastern part of the country.

  • ADF ☛ Guinea Junta Turns to Military to Face Protesters

    ADF STAFF Less than two years after Guinea’s military seized power from then-President Alpha Condé, the junta is facing a wave of protests. Violence erupted in the capital of Conakry in May with anti-junta demonstrators throwing stones and burning makeshift barricades and tires. Police opened fire with tear gas and bullets.

  • JURIST ☛ UK orders closure of all China-run ‘police stations’ and calls their operations ‘unacceptable’

    UK Minister for Security Tom Tugendhat updated Parliament on Tuesday about Chinese “overseas police service stations” on commitments made in parliamentary statements last November and reiterated by Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire Chris Philp in April.

  • RFA ☛ Rudd foresees ‘seamless’ AUKUS defense industry

    Australia’s new ambassador in Washington says the security pact is about more than submarines.

  • RFERL ☛ Kyrgyz Group Suspected Of Planning To Seize Power Apprehended, Officials Say

    Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee of National Security (UKMK) said on June 6 that a group of men and women suspected of plotting to seize power had been apprehended.

  • The Strategist ☛ Shaking Australia’s ‘state vs state’ attitude to innovation

    We need to address the elephants in the room. Yes, elephants. There are eight of them—each state and territory, and they are competing at the expense of improving Australia’s innovation economy and strategic objectives.

  • The Strategist ☛ The Shangri-La dialogues—20 years of agenda setting

    The Asia-Pacific’s premier defence dialogue uses the name of the mythical place ‘Shangri-La’, a utopia of peace high in the mountains in the 90-year-old novel Lost Horizon.

  • RFA ☛ Dwindling junta defections pose challenge for Myanmar opposition

    Defections are a key part of opposition strategy, while the junta works to stop troops from switching sides.

  • RFA ☛ Junta helicopter attacks school in Myanmar’s Sagaing region

    The military also shelled a nearby village, injuring locals.

  • teleSUR ☛ Kazakhstan is Interested in Joining BRICS: FM Umarov

    At the meeting of foreign ministers in the BRICS+ format, they discussed prospects for cooperation and joining the alliance.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong to review car plate searches after journalist wins final appeal against conviction over accessing info for doc.

    Hong Kong authorities will review the top court’s judgement that saw journalist Bao Choy’s conviction quashed to “improve” procedures related to accessing vehicle records, Chief Executive John Lee has said.

• Environment

  • New York Times ☛ A Summer Without Arctic Sea Ice Could Come a Decade Sooner Than Expected

    In a new study, scientists found that the climate milestone could come about a decade sooner than anticipated, even if planet-warming emissions are gradually reduced.

  • New York Times ☛ D-Day’s Historic Beaches Face a New Onslaught: Rising Seas

    As climate change speeds coastal erosion in France, can memory be preserved if the famous landing sites of the Allied invasion disappear?

  • Axios ☛ Uninsurable America: Climate change hits the insurance industry

    Decisions by two major insurers to stop offering new homeowner’s policies in California highlight the growing portion of America that’s becoming close to uninsurable.

    Why it matters: The threat of climate change-related disasters is a large factor driving up consumer costs and putting insurers out of business in parts of California, Florida, Louisiana and elsewhere.

    ---

    • It is also bedeviling regulators. “I never thought I would see in my lifetime houses that are flat-out uninsurable,” says Robb Lanham, chief sales officer for insurance brokerage HUB Private Client, which works with about 500 insurers.

    Driving the news: The recent moves by State Farm and Allstate to stop offering new homeowner insurance policies in California have kicked off a national conversation on insuring risk in an increasingly perilous climate.

  • Rlang ☛ Bridging Ecology, Statistics, and Data Science with R for Biodiversity and Climate Change Research

    Francisco Rodríguez Sánchez shared with the R Consortium how the R language has changed and improved his work as a computational ecologist, leading him to become a passionate advocate, professional,…

  • H2 View ☛ Shipping bodies team up to bridge digitalisation and decarbonisation gap [Ed: An exercise in greenwashing]

    The Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) has signed a Knowledge Partnership Agreement with the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) to help bridge the transparency gap between digitalisation and decarbonisation.

  • teleSUR ☛ Global Action Needed to Reduce Plastic Pollution: Guterres

    “…the annual global production of plastic exceeds 400 million tons…”

  • teleSUR ☛ Mongolia: Dried Lake Restored After Several Decades

    “The Khodon River changing its course due to a heavy flood in 1971 negatively impacted the ecosystem of a group of lakes in Darkhad Valley…”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • New York Times ☛ SEC Sues Coinbase, Accuses Crypto Platform of Breaking Market Rules

      The S.E.C. said the cryptocurrency platform allowed users to trade unregistered securities, a day after it accused the crypto platform Binance of mishandling funds.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Couchbase stock falls on wider loss and soft guidance

      Database company Couchbase Inc. beat expectations today thanks to solid revenue growth, but it offered light guidance for the coming quarter that sent its stock down after-hours. The company reported a wider loss for the first quarter of $21.8 million, compared with a loss of $19.8 million one year earlier.

    • Vice Media Group ☛ SEC Sues Coinbase for Violating Securities Law, Exposing Customers to ‘Significant Risk’

      The crackdown on crypto continues just one day after the SEC sued competitor Binance.

    • RFA ☛ Thai authority cuts electricity to 2 regions in southeastern Myanmar

      An armed ethnic Karen group threatened to close border crossings with Mae Sot in retaliation.

    • Erdoğan’s free gas pledge impacts inflation numbers, undermines wage negotiations

      TurkStat’s reported annual inflation rate of 39.6% in May will have implications for upcoming wage deal talks, a trade union asserts.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Natural gas reduced China’s urban pollution. Can it be a global climate solution?

      Greater uptake of natural gas has helped substantially reduce urban air pollution in Beijing. Ahead of COP28 discussions this year, the United States, China, and other countries should encourage responsible natural gas production as a solution for reducing global emissions and urban air pollution.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ SEC sues Coinbase alleging that it’s operating an unregistered exchange

      The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Coinbase Global Inc. today in the Southern District of New York, alleging that the cryptocurrency exchange has been operating as an unregistered securities exchange and broker. The SEC also charged Coinbase over its crypto asset staking rewards program, which it said the company failed to register with the regulator.

    • teleSUR ☛ No Immediate Risk to Zaporizhzhia Plant After Dam Damage: IAEA

      Earlier in the day, energy operator Energoatom said that the destruction of the dam may have negative consequences for the nuclear plant.

    • LRT ☛ Gas prices for consumers in Lithuania to decrease

      On Tuesday, Lithuania’s National Energy Regulatory Council approved plans to cut natural gas prices for households by 4-5 cents per cubic metre for the second half of the year.

    • Latvia ☛ Drop in cogeneration energy production in Latvia in 2022

      The latest data compiled by the Central Statistical Bureau show that 2 015.8 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity were produced by combined heat and power (CHP) plants in 2022, which is 974.4 GWh or 33 % fewer than in 2021.

    • Latvia ☛ Government mulls state aid in case of energy crisis

      If energy prices were to rise rapidly during the heating season, the government is planning support for households whose total expenditure on housing, including energy, exceeds 30% of household income per person declared, the government agreed on June 6.

    • H2 View ☛ US unveils National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap

      The US on Monday (June 5) unveiled its long awaited National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap, offering a framework in the hope to accelerate the production, processing, delivery, storage and use of the energy carrier.

    • Shirish Agarwal: Odisha Train Crash and Coverup, Demonetization 2.0 & NHFS-6 Survey

      Just a few days back we came to know about the horrific Train Crash that happened in Odisha (Orissa). There are some things that are known and somethings that can be inferred by observance. Sadly, it seems the incident is going to be covered up . Some of the facts that have not been contested in the public domain are that there were three lines. One loop line on which the Goods Train was standing and there was an up and a down line. So three lines were there. Apparently, the signalling system and the inter-locking system had issues as highlighted by an official about a month back. That letter, thankfully is in the public domain and I have downloaded it as well. It’s a letter that goes to 4 pages. The RW is incensed that the letter got leaked and is in public domain. They are blaming everyone and espousing conspiracy theories rather than taking the minister to task. Incidentally, the Minister has three ministries that he currently holds. Ministry of Communication, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEIT), and Railways Ministry. Each Ministry in itself is important and has revenues of more than 6 lakh crore rupees. How he is able to do justice to all the three ministries is beyond me…

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Federal News Network ☛ Why is it so smoky outside? Canada wildfires lead to air-quality alerts in northeastern US

      Canada is dealing with a series of intense wildfires that have spread from the western provinces to Quebec, with hundreds of forest fires burning. Wind has carried smoke from the fires southward, triggering air quality alerts throughout the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday issued a poor air quality alert for New England, a day after parts of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota received a similar advisory. Last week, U.S. officials as far south as Maryland, Baltimore, Virginia and Pennsylvania reported being impacted by the wildfires. Fine-particle pollution — known as “PM 2.5” — is what’s being measured. The tiny particles are small enough to get past airway defenses and cause breathing problems.

    • Axios ☛ Mayor urges vulnerable New Yorkers to wear masks as smoke from Canada’s fires chokes city

      Air quality across the northeastern U.S. and Canada has plummeted to unhealthy levels due to smoke from wildfires burning from Yukon to Nova Scotia, which caused a thick haze in New York and many other cities.

      Why it matters: Because of the smoke that drifted over Tuesday and other forms of air pollution, New York City, Detroit and Toronto had among the worst air quality of all cities around the world overnight.

      • People hundreds of miles away from wildfires can still be negatively affected by hazardous microscopic particles they produce, which can trigger inflammation in the lungs when inhaled and can worsen medical conditions like asthma and heart disease.

      Threat level: Air quality advisories were affecting up to 100 million across the U.S. Tuesday, from the U.S. Northeast to the Midwest and Texas.

    • CS Monitor ☛ In stronghold of Guinea-Bissau, endangered vultures soar again

      In rare good conservation news from the African continent, Guinea-Bissau’s hooded vulture population is slowly recovering.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania moves to ban fur farming

      On Tuesday, the parliament voted approved a proposal to ban the breeding, rearing and killing of animals for their fur, with a transitional period and compensation for businesses. Seventy-nine MPs voted in favour, 11 against and 30 abstained.

• Finance

  • New Yorker ☛ What if We’re Thinking About Inflation All Wrong?

    Isabella Weber’s heterodox ideas about government price controls are transforming policy in the United States and across Europe.

  • CS Monitor ☛ French pension protests enter day 14: Fatigue high, thousands remain

    French unions hope to reignite resistance to President Emmanuel Macron’s higher retirement age with what may be a final surge of nationwide protests and scattered strikes. Despite minor disruptions, turnout was much lower than in previous protests.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Get a job: After 100 years, states loosen child labor laws

    For the first time in history, both red and blue states are engaged in a nationwide discussion over relaxing rules around children’s work.

  • YLE ☛ Students in Finland worry about escalating debt: “I’ve fallen off the property ladder”

    Young adults face financial distress over their student loans in the face of rising interest rates and living costs.

  • ADF ☛ As Chinese Loans Come Due, African Borrowers Face Economic ‘Midnight’

    After more than a decade of heavy borrowing from China, the bill is coming due for some African countries that find themselves teetering on the brink of economic collapse. China ranks as the largest single lender to African countries, holding more than $73 billion in debt across the continent.

  • Turkey’s currency woes exacerbate following recent elections

    For the first time, the Euro/TRY exchange rate surpassed 23.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Peso hits new 7-year high against the US dollar

    The Mexican peso hit its strongest level against the U.S. dollar in more than seven years on Tuesday, reaching 17.37 pesos to the greenback.

  • LRT ☛ Expenses scandal broke Britain, will it also break Lithuania?

    British MPs were caught spending thousands on second homes, bath plugs, light bulbs, and even a “duck island”. At the time of the post-financial crash austerity, it resulted in a wave of anger, landing nine politicians in prison. Now, a scandal of a similar scale has reached Lithuania.

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Gold tokens have already surpassed gold coin sales, the interbank rate empowered to succeed and more monetary policy tweaks

    Day by day, the Zimbabwe government is admitting that the forex auction was a mistake. It is the main reason for the Zimdollar tanking. They won’t come out right and say that but their changing tune when it comes to monetary policy is revealing.

  • teleSUR ☛ UK Strikes Continue as Pay Disputes Escalate

    Households have felt the squeeze amid a worsening cost-of-living crisis. Widespread strikes broke out in summer 2022 and still continue.

  • After the Goldman Rush

    At Goldman Sachs, high-level departures are a normal course of business, and part of the reality of ascending Wall Street’s greasiest pole. But the firm is on its third round of layoffs since last September, and a number of recent exits have turned more heads than usual. Somehow, this feels different.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New York Times ☛ Hard Right Grinds House to a Halt, Rebuking McCarthy for the Debt Deal

    Members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus effectively shut down the House floor for several hours, calling the speaker’s fiscal compromise with President Biden a betrayal.

  • New York Times ☛ Mark Meadows Testified to Grand Jury in Trump Special Counsel Investigation

    Mr. Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, is seen as a potentially key witness in the documents and Jan. 6 inquiries.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Dog Drained My Pool to Try to Destroy Surveillance Video

    Jack Smith reportedly wants to know whether Trump’s long-time maintenance guy drained the swimming pool in an attempt to destroy surveillance footage.

  • New Yorker ☛ Does R.F.K., Jr., Need a Time-Out?

    He’s been a very naughty and disruptive scion.

  • New York Times ☛ From Tel Aviv to Riyadh

    My recent journey through the Middle East was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in a region that has long been my second home.

  • New York Times ☛ Through Ties to Saudis, Golf Deal Promises Benefits to Trump

    The new alliance between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf is the latest example of how the former president’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has yielded gains, and criticism, for both.

  • New York Times ☛ PGA Tour and LIV Golf Agree to Deal to End Fight Over Sport

    In a stunning announcement, the tour, along with the DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said the rivals had agreed to create a “new, collectively owned, for-profit entity.”

  • NYPost ☛ Senate Democrats rip PGA Tour-LIV Golf deal, call on regulators to examine merger

    Senate Democrats on Tuesday blasted the PGA Tour’s shocking decision to merge with the Saudi-funded LIV Golf league, calling on US regulators to probe the deal.

  • Quartz ☛ The PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger is anything but a win for competition

    In a stunning about-face, the PGA Tour is merging with LIV Golf, ending both the flamewar between the two tours and an ongoing antitrust battle over the PGA’s market dominance.

  • New York Times ☛ Grand Jury in Florida Hints at Unknown Complexities in Trump Documents Inquiry

    Prosecutors have started calling witnesses to a federal grand jury in Miami after months in which activity in the investigation was centered on a separate grand jury in Washington.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Stopping culture wars in their tracks: How one city did it

    In Middletown, Ohio, the day-to-day work of building trust in the community set the stage for defusing the culture wars confronting the city’s public schools.

  • New York Times ☛ Mike Johnston Declares Victory in Denver’s Mayoral Election

    Mr. Johnston, a former Colorado state senator, benefited from far more outside spending than his opponent, who conceded on Tuesday night.

  • teleSUR ☛ Iran Reopens Its Embassy In Saudi Arabia

    The two nations announced last March 10 an agreement to resume diplomatic relations.

  • RFERL ☛ Iranian Embassy Reopens In Saudi Capital

    Iran reopened its embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on June 6, Saudi media reported, months after the two regional rivals agreed to end a diplomatic rift under a China-mediated deal.

  • France24 ☛ US Secretary of State Blinken visits Saudi Arabia, meets Crown Prince Bin Salman

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived Tuesday in Saudi Arabia and later met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman amid strained relations between Riyadh and Washington.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ The US has learned to work with governments that the president isn’t close to. Saudi Arabia is no different.

    Given their different historical experiences, relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States will always be a work in progress.

  • ADF ☛ Eritrea’s Iron-Fisted Leader Marks Three Decades in Power

    Few countries are controlled as tightly by one man as is Eritrea. Having recently marked 30 years of independence, Eritrea has never held a national election and has only ever known one head of state

  • ADF ☛ Chinese Training for Foreign Police Raises Human Rights Concerns

    In 2021, Kenya launched a program to send 400 police officers each year to China for training, despite concerns that China’s authoritarian approach to policing conflicts with Kenyan laws protecting free speech and human rights. In recent years, China has signed policing agreements with 40 African countries to train thousands of law enforcement…

  • JURIST ☛ UK MP charged with racially-aggravated speech regarding statements to Bahrain national

    The UK Metropolitan Police Service confirmed Monday that they charged a conservative member of the UK’s Parliament (MP), Bob Stewart, with two public order offenses. Stewart is charged with racially-aggravated speech in relation to statements he made at an incident outside of a Bahraini embassy event in 2022.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ What the new US visa policy for Bangladesh means

    The US visa restrictions alone will not guarantee a free and fair election or restore democracy in Bangladesh. However, the new policy sends a loud and clear message.

  • RFERL ☛ Bulgarian Parliament Approves Coalition Government After Five Elections In Two Years

    Bulgaria’s parliament on June 6 approved a coalition government led by Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov, giving the Balkan member of the EU and NATO a new government after five elections within two years.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Silicon Angle ☛ FBI issues warnings about explicit deepfake images

      Deepfake still photos and videos have plagued the online world for several years, but now the stakes are getting higher.

    • France24 ☛ Why Macron is reading sci-fi thrillers to prepare for the wars of the future

      As parliament gears up for a vote Wednesday on plans to boost military spending, the French Armed Forces look set to continue hiring science fiction authors to imagine future threats to national security. So far, sci-fi novelists from the Red Team Defense project have written more than a dozen stories and published two books dealing with warfare based on mass disinformation, bioterrorism and a pirate nation – and even President Emmanuel Macron is reading them.

    • Axios ☛ Big Tech rolls back misinformation measures ahead of 2024

      Ahead of the 2024 election cycle, the world’s largest tech companies are walking back policies meant to curb misinformation around COVID-19 and the 2020 election.

      Why it matters: Social media platforms are arguing that the risk of harm no longer outweighs the benefits of political dialogue, drawing concerns from lawmakers and consumer advocacy leaders.

    • uni Michigan ☛ The epidemic of self-diagnosing

      Recently, I have been subject to a lot of conversations in which people announce that they have Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This declaration, however, is almost always prefaced or followed by, “I haven’t been diagnosed, but I definitely have it.” In the past few years, millions of people have sought comfort in social media posts…

    • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Loosening Its Paywall and Access to 20-Minute Videos

      TikTok is loosening its paywall and access to 20-minute videos with its Series functionality, initially open only to select creators. Users can charge money for access to exclusive content. TikTok is expanding access to its Series feature, initially unveiled in March and available only to select creators.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Reason ☛ Journal of Free Speech Law: “The New Gatekeepers?: Social Media and the ‘Search for Truth,’” by Prof. Ashutosh Bhagwat

    Just published as part of the symposium on Media and Society After Technological Disruption, edited by Profs. Justin “Gus” Hurwitz & Kyle Langvardt.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 2 arrested by Hong Kong national security police over alleged ‘seditious’ posts, forged signatures

    Six people have been arrested by Hong Kong national security police for allegedly conspiring to forge signatures, two of whom were also suspected of breaching the colonial-era sedition law over allegedly “seditious” online posts.

  • Neritam ☛ Example of Google censoring free speech

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Accounts of Hong Kong opposition party members terminated by HSBC and other banks, League of Social Democrats says

    Four members of the pro-democracy League of Social Democrats (LSD) party have seen their personal bank accounts terminated by Hong Kong’s HSBC, Hang Seng Bank and the Bank of China, the party has said. It came after the party said that HSBC closed three bank accounts they had used for receiving donations without specifying reasons.

  • AccessNow ☛ #KeepItOn: Community feedback on data collection and verification

    As the #KeepItOn campaign enters into its eighth year, Access Now is committed to revamping the Shutdown Tracker Optimization Project (STOP). In order to improve our collective advocacy and rapid

  • RFA ☛ Vietnam court sentences music teacher to 8 years in prison

    He was convicted of spreading propaganda after anti-corruption posts on social media.

  • RFERL ☛ Belarusian Prosecutors Seek 25 Years In Prison For Self-Exiled Activist

    Prosecutors have asked the Minsk City Court to sentence self-exiled opposition activist Vadzim Prakopyeu to 25 years in prison on multiple charges,/

  • RFERL ☛ Jailed Kazakh Journalist’s Father Joins Son’s Hunger Strike

    Jailed Kazakh journalist Duman Mukhammedkarim’s father, Almaz Tilepov, has joined his son’s hunger strike to demand his immediate release.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • RFA ☛ Hong Kong court quashes conviction of journalist who probed Yuen Long attacks

    Bao Choy had used license plate records to investigate perpetrators

  • CS Monitor ☛ Journalists walk out: Hundreds strike against major paper chain

    Hundreds of journalists across two dozen local papers owned by Gannett, the biggest newspaper chain in the U.S., went on strike on Monday. They demanded an end to painful cost-cutting measures and a change of leadership at their parent company.

  • New York Times ☛ A Reporter Investigated Sexual Misconduct. Then the Attacks Began.

    After publishing an exposé, journalists in New Hampshire faced broken windows, vulgar graffiti and a legal brawl, with important First Amendment implications.

  • ADF ☛ China Exporting State-Controlled Media Model to Africa

    As a journalist in Kenya, a doctoral student at the Communication University of China and a professor in South Africa, Dr. Bob Wekesa has decades of intimate experience with China’s media and information landscape.

  • JURIST ☛ Hong Kong court quashes conviction of award-winning journalist

    The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal quashed the conviction of journalist Choi Yuk-ling on Monday regarding her investigation into the 2019 Yuen Long attack. The court unanimously quashed Choi’s conviction by adopting a more liberal approach, which took into account Choi’s journalistic background.

  • RFERL ☛ Uzbek Supreme Court Denies Appeals Of Karakalpak Journalists

    The Supreme Court of Uzbekistan has rejected appeals by Karakalpak journalists Dauletmurat Tajimuratov and Lolagul Kallykhanova against the lengthy prison terms they were handed over mass anti-government protests in the country’s Karakalpak Autonomous Republic last year.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Straits Times ☛ Restaurant poster deemed misogynistic reignites debate about sexism in China

    Advertising laws in China ban gender discriminatory content, but enforcement remains challenging.

  • RFERL ☛ Iranian Students Say Authorities Ratcheting Up Pressure On Campus Over Dress Code

    Iranian student organizations have reported a significant wave of summonses at the University of Science and Technology in Tehran in a continued tightening of supervision of the dress code after months of unrest sparked by the death of a young woman for allegedly wearing a head scarf improperly.

  • New York Times ☛ There Is One Group the Roberts Court Really Doesn’t Like

    It is difficult to overstate the court’s hostility to organized labor and the rights of American workers.

  • ACLU ☛ How Housing Segregation Shaped America’s ‘Gayborhoods’

    For much of the last century, the “American dream” has centered on homeownership by married, white families. Alongside explicitly racist policies like racial segregation enforced by redlining, banks and realtors routinely rejected applications for mortgage loans and housing from single or divorced adults of any race, prizing the married heterosexual white man as the most “deserving” debtor and homeowner. The further away from this ideal someone happened to live — by virtue of their race, gender, marital status, or sexuality — the less likely they were to find housing outside of the country’s growing and strictly segregated urban centers.

  • Axios ☛ Atlanta’s “Cop City” approved after marathon city council meeting

    Atlanta’s controversial police and fire training center got the green light just before sunrise Tuesday as city council voted to approve $31 million in public funding for the project.

  • Off Guardian ☛ Moving Toward a Global Empire: Humanity Sentenced to a Unipolar Prison and a Digital Gulag

    David Skripac “COVID is critical because this is what convinces people to accept, to legitimize, total biometric surveillance.”

  • Mint Press News ☛ The Truth About Britain’s “Grooming Gangs,” with Ella Cockbain

    Dr. Ella Cockbain, associate professor at University College London, exposes the dangerous rhetoric behind British Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s false claims about Britain’s so-called “grooming gangs.”

  • JURIST ☛ North Macedonia police arrest 10 suspected members of international people smuggling ring

    The Police of North Macedonia announced Monday they arrested ten men who are suspected members of an international people smuggling ring. The arrests were the culmination of an investigation that lasted from July 2021 to May 2023. 

  • JURIST ☛ Protesters in Poland decry government’s recent actions as anti-democratic

    Large crowds gathered in Warsaw, Poland on Sunday to protest against the nation’s government. The protest, led by former Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his party the Civic Coalition (KO), gathered to protest a recently proposed law, the cost of living, inflation and women’s rights—among other issues.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese officials met Elon Musk to discuss AI risks, Tesla chief says

    Top Chinese officials told Elon Musk about plans to launch new regulations on artificial intelligence on his recent trip to the Asian giant, the tech billionaire said Monday, in his first comments on the two-day visit.

  • Supreme Court upholds decision stopping UberXL’s activities

    Uber will continue its activities with its taxi hailing application in Turkey.

  • Axios ☛ California’s Newsom threatens Florida’s DeSantis with kidnapping charges over migrant flights

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) accused Florida officials on Monday of misleading migrants over their transportation from the Texas border to Sacramento.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Adidas Quickly Selling Remaining Yeezy Stock, Analyst Reports

    Adidas is now selling through its remaining Yeezy stock at a rapid pace. It seems the rapper’s controversial statements and acrimonious split with several institutions haven’t put a damper on public demand. Adidas recently launched a website selling through its remaining Yeezy stock it produced in 2022 for 2023.

  • uni Michigan ☛ ULAM employee fired, alleges hostile work environment

    Erika Ventura, former animal husbandry technician at Michigan Medicine’s Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine, was terminated from her position on May 8. Ventura alleges the termination was a result of her discussing LGBTQ+ issues in the break room while at work.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico must expand radio spectrum to bridge digital divide, say experts

    High franchising costs are deterring investment in Mexico’s 5G network, and deepening the urban/rural technology gap, say experts.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Spam about emotional intelligence

    I got an email this morning describing a new management course. It was a bit eye opening:

    Emotional Intelligence (EI) is now widely recognised as the fundamental quality of effective leadership and management.

    Delegates explore topics that fall under the two main areas: social awareness and social facility. Within these two areas a range of EI competencies are explored such as empathy, attention, rapport building, understanding others, influencing, acting and more.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • New York Times ☛ Spotify Podcast Layoffs Will Affect Gimlet and Parcast Workers

    Spotify said it was cutting 2 percent of its work force and absorbing two popular podcast studios, Gimlet Media and Parcast, into Spotify Studios.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Podcasting Unions Slam Spotify for Parcast, Gimlet Mismanagement — ‘Whether Spotify Studios Has a Vision Remains to Be Seen’ [Ed: Spotify loses a billion dollars a year. Is this the beginning of the end?]

    Podcasting unions for Gimlet and Parcast slam Spotify mismanagement as the company lays off 200 employees: “Whether Spotify Studios has a vision remains to be seen.” Streaming giant Spotify announced Monday its plans to lay off around 200 employees, including workers at much-loved podcast studios Gimlet Media and Parcast.

• Monopolies

  • Patents/EU

    • UPC’s PPI to come into force for Slovenia [Ed: UPC is illegal. This law firms spent years lobbying for a crime and spread lies to mislead politicians into becoming participants in the crime.]

    • All local UPC divisions offer English as a language option [Ed: This is still unconstitutional. They're still trying to sell an illegal system that will explode and harm the EU's reputation on law.]

    • JUVE ☛ President of the Austrian Patent Office moves to the EPO [Ed: Europe's most corrupt institution, EPO, receives puff piece from a Team UPC-bribed publisher in Germany that spent years promoting a crime (UPC)]

      The Austrian Patent Office is looking for a successor for long-time president Mariana Karepova (53), who is moving to the European Patent Office as of July 1. She has held the position in Vienna since 2015, during which time she sustainably reformed the authority.

    • European Commission ☛ Opening statement at the 4th debate on rule of law issues “Pravo na pravdu”, Sarajevo [Ed: They have the audacity speak speak of "rule of law issues" after what they did with Unified Patent Court, in effect violating laws, constitutions and conventions in order to appease lobbyists. EU/EC has severe corruption issues of its own.]

      European Commission Speech Brussels, 06 Jun 2023 Distinguished guests [...]

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Nike’s Patent Saga Highlights Controversial PTAB Practices

      However, the case intrigue has recently heightened due to a somewhat chaotic saga involving the PTAB. Key figures involved include former PTAB Chief Judge Ruschke, current Chief Judge Boalick, and Judge Michael Fitzpatrick, who was recently justified as a wronged-whistleblower.

      The Supreme Court petition was submitted amidst revelations of secretive maneuvers within the Board. These questionable practices include an abrupt panel expansions and judge replacement without notifying involved parties. Specifically, in the Nike v. Adidas IPR, the Board panel was first expanded to include Chief Judge Ruschke and then Deputy Chief Judge Boalick after all parties had finished their arguments and opinion writing had begun.

    • Further Extension of Non-DOCX Filing Fee Date Highlights USPTO’s Lack of Compliance with Paperwork Reduction Act [Ed: Watchtroll is pushing USPTO to fine and financially penalise people who aren't Microsoft customers, using mindless greenwashing tactics; the Director of the USPTO used to work for Microsoft]

      Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark (USPTO) published a pair of documents in the Federal Register regarding due dates on new document formatting requirements for patent applications filed with the Office. The USPTO’s decision to delay the implementation of new filing fees for non-DOCX patent applications highlights issues that the agency has had in complying with the terms of the Paperwork Reduction Act by failing to properly represent to the Office of Management and Budget the burden that the USPTO’s proposed rule changes will have on agency stakeholders.

  • Software Patents

    • Unified Patents ☛ VDPP video codec patent challenged in reexam

      On June 5, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 9,699,444, owned and asserted by VDPP LLC, an NPE. The ’444 patent generally relates to processing image frames from a video stream and generating bridge frames for motion smoothing.

  • Trademarks

    • TTAB Blog ☛ TTABlog Test: Is EL BURRO BORRACHO Confusable WIth EL BURRO for Restaurant Services?

      El Burro, Inc. petitioned to cancel a registration for the mark EL BURRO BORRACHO, claiming priority and likelihood of confusion with its registered mark EL BURRO, both for restaurant services. Well, the marks are awfully close and the services identical, so this looks like a no-brainer, right? What do you think? El Burro, Inc. v. Knuckle Sandwich LLC, Cancellation No. 92075933 (May 26, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Frances S. Wolfson).
      

    • JURIST ☛ US Supreme Court takes trademark case on using names and likenesses of public figures

      The US Supreme Court announced Monday it will take up the trademark case Vidal v. Elster, to determine whether the application of Section 2(c) of the Lanham Act to political figures violates the First Amendment. 

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • The Garden

    I awake from my daily prayer sitting in my garden, the sun hitting my skin and covering me with its radiant warmth before it is pushed away by a passing breeze.

    The finches chirp overhead before the greedy jay bird chases them off, wanting all the riches of my feeder to herself. I tend to my plants, filling their cups until they can drink no more, plucking any sickly leaves, and ensuring their health.

  • 5k in 29:30 (wohoo!)

    today marks the first time i completed a 5k run without stopping. not just that, but even in suboptimal conditions, i managed to get a time below my target of 30 minutes. the sun had been blasting the soil for a couple weeks. we were only a couple degrees away from what i’d call proper summer weather. two days ago, it started raining and it hasn’t quite stopped. there’s a couple of hours of rain, broken by a couple hours of sunlight, rinse and repeat. so what we’re left with at the moment is a very humid heat which is, arguably, the worst kind of heat. i was sweating during my warmup at home and i was already thinking that i’d be happy hitting my 3k target at the very least.

• Science

  • “Schöner Thrombus”

    Blood clots… some patients know about them, and have a sense that blood clots can mean trouble. On the other hand healthcare workers, especially those dealing with acute illness, are on average positively horrified by this entity.

    There are arterial and venous clots. The former is something like what happens with many types of heart attacks and strokes, but can also travel to and block arterial blood flow in the kidneys, spleen, other organs, or the arms and legs. I will leave those for other discussions and the pertinent specialists (cardiologists, neurologists, vascular surgeons…).

• Technology and Free Software

  • Imitation

    Imitation is a common way to learn. An urge could be good, or bad. The experience could be educational, or might land you a job. Or it could go down the barren rabbit hole, again. One way to defuse fad following is to toss the task onto a TODO list and let the subconscious chew on it. If it’s still interesting after a while, or has been reinforced by something else, then give it a spin. You may also need to free up a block of time for dedicated study: no internet, no distractions. Or it could end up being deleted off the TODO list after a while.

  • Emacs: Bookmarks in Registers

    This sounds like just what you need. However, the problem with these is that if the buffer in-question changes, then running register-to-point will not take you where you want to go. E.g., if you run point-to-register inside an *info* buffer, and then move the buffer to some other info page, then this will not take you back to the original info page.

    Of course, you can just use a regular bookmark instead, but then you must name the bookmark, and then the bookmark clutters up your list of bookmarks. What I want is to be able to store an anonymous bookmark in a register, which is handy if you only need a bookmark for a little while.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Thoughts on Bubble

      So I’ve been away from geminispace for a while, only really using it to check the weather on my phone. I was busy with Game Boy Showdown (I placed roughly middle of the pack, but I’m just glad I finished a thing), and there’s always work (ugh), and the last couple of weeks I somehow talked myself into doing savage raiding in FFXIV (not sure if this was a mistake).

      But I have seen some chatter about Bubble, which looks like a neat project. The only complaint I have about it is that geminispace.org is way too similar a URL to geminispace.info.

      I get the concerns about centralization, but it would be really cool if multiple people ran their own Bubble instances for different interests. The Reddit-esque format is good for writing prompts, for example.

GNU/Linux

• Desktop/Laptop

  • Ubuntubuzz ☛ Collection of System76 Laptop Reviews 2015-2019

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • mintCast Podcast ☛ mintCast 413.5 – Git Some!

    In our innards, talk all things Git

    In “Check This Out” Londoner shared a cool tool for generating secure passwords; Joe sheres a couple links for getting started with Git
    No feedback this episode. Get in touch with us!
    Download

• Graphics Stack

  • DebugPoint ☛ OpenGL 3.1 is Now Available in Asahi Linux, Boosting Graphics Performance

    The Asahi Linux team has unveiled an exciting upgrade for Asahi Linux systems: the highly anticipated OpenGL 3.1 support. This leap in graphics drivers surpasses the previous OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL 3.0 versions, significantly boosting gaming experiences and overall application functionality. Additionally, the team has announced the elevation of OpenGL ES 2.0 support to OpenGL ES 3.0, opening doors to a whole new level of possibilities.

  • Alyssa Rosenzweig ☛ Alyssa Rosenzweig: OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

    Upgrade your Asahi Linux systems, because your graphics drivers are getting a big boost: leapfrogging from OpenGL 2.1 over OpenGL 3.0 up to OpenGL 3.1! Similarly, the OpenGL ES 2.0 support is bumping up to OpenGL ES 3.0. That means more playable games and more functioning applications.

    Back in December, I teased an early screenshot of SuperTuxKart’s deferred renderer working on Asahi, using OpenGL ES 3.0 features like multiple render targets and instancing. Now you too can enjoy SuperTuxKart with advanced lighting the way it’s meant to be:

    [SuperTuxKart rendering with advanced lighting]

    As before, these drivers are experimental and not yet conformant to the OpenGL or OpenGL ES specifications. For now, you’ll need to run our -edge packages to opt-in to the work-in-progress drivers, understanding that there may be bugs. Please refer to our previous post explaining how to install the drivers and how to report bugs to help us improve.

    With that disclaimer out of the way, there’s a LOT of new functionality packed into OpenGL 3.0, 3.1, and OpenGL ES 3.0 to make this release. Highlights include: [...]

• Applications

  • Linux Links ☛ Machine Learning in Linux: BackgroundRemover – remove backgrounds from images and video

    Our Machine Learning in Linux series focuses on apps that make it easy to experiment with machine learning.

    BackgroundRemover is a command line tool to remove the background from images and videos using AI. The AI is performed courtesy of U2Net, a machine learning model that allows you to crop objects in a single shot. Taking an image of a person, cat, etc. as input, it can compute an alpha value to separate the background from the panoramic view.

    U2Net is a neural network based on a two-level nested architecture. This offers two main advantages: the ability to capture information at different levels of scale and the ability to go deeper without increasing the computational cost too much. U2-Net’s authors aim to design a new neural network for salient object-detection that can be trained from scratch.

    BackgroundRemover is written in Python and published under an open source license.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Linux Handbook ☛ System Calls in Linux

    System calls are slightly different from what it suggests from its naming schema.

  • OSTechNix ☛ How To Dual Boot Fedora And Windows

    In this guide, we will explore the process of installing and configuring a dual boot setup with Fedora and Windows. We will cover the necessary steps to prepare your computer, partition the hard drive, install Fedora alongside Windows, and frequently asked questions about Dual booting Fedora with Windows.

  • TecMint ☛ 8 Best IP Address Management Tools for Linux Network

    If you are a network administrator, you surely know, how important it is to keep track of the leased IP addresses within your network and easily manage those addresses.

    For short the IP address management process is called IPAM. It is crucial to have a management tool to help you track allocation and classify your IP addresses, which can help you avoid network conflicts and outages.

  • TecMint ☛ 19 Best Linux Bandwidth Monitoring Tools for Network Analysis

    Are you having problems monitoring your Linux network bandwidth usage? Do you need help? It’s important that you are able to visualize what is happening in your network in order to understand and resolve whatever is causing network slowness or simply to keep an eye on your network.

    In this article, we will review 19 useful bandwidth monitoring tools to analyze network usage on a Linux system. The tools listed below are all open source and can help you to answer questions such as “why is the network so slow today?”.

  • TecMint ☛ Fixing “Failed to Load Module Canberra-GTK-Module” Error

    GTK, an abbreviation for GNOME Toolkit, is an open-source and feature-rich development toolkit used for creating GUI applications. It’s free and open-source and offers a rich set of UI tools for creating stunning and immersive desktop applications and UI elements for desktop environments and window managers. With GTK, you can develop standalone desktop apps to complete application suites.

    If you have been running Linux for a while, you might have bumped into the “failed to load module canberra-gtk-module” error on the terminal. This occurs on Linux desktops and, as you can infer, is caused by a missing GTK module known as the canberra-gtk-module.

  • TecMint ☛ 3 Ways to Find Out Which Process Listening on a Particular Port

    A port is a logical entity that represents an endpoint of communication and is associated with a given process or service in an operating system. In previous articles, we explained how to find out the list of all open ports in Linux and how to check if remote ports are reachable using the Netcat command.

    In this short guide, we will show different ways of finding the process/service listening on a particular port in Linux.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How to install Glances on Debian 11

    In this post, you will learn how to install Glances on Debian 11. According to the tool’s website Glances is a cross-platform system monitoring tool written in Python. It allows real-time monitoring of various aspects of your system such as CPU, memory, disk, network usage etc.

  • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install Fish Shell on Linux

    Guide on how to install the Fish shell on various Linux distros and how to build and install Fish from the source along with some basic usage of the Fish shell.

• Games

  • Techdirt ☛ Borked KOTOR 2 Switch Release Ends As It Began: A Shit Show

    Almost exactly a year ago, we discussed the train wreck release of Knights of the Old Republic 2 as a port for the Nintendo Switch. How big a screw up was this whole thing from the start? Well, if you’re not familiar with our previous post on it, we can just start with there being a bug that makes the game literally unfinishable and take it from there. Aspyr, the company that did the port, apparently didn’t do the sort of QC to uncover this itself, and instead only learned of the issue when many customers who bought the game got very angry on social media some two weeks after the game was released for purchase.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Transform creatures into tools in puzzle-platformer Transmogrify now with Linux support

    Released originally back in April, Transmogrify is a puzzle-platformer where you play as Chris — a janitor stranded at Future Perfect Labs where strange and deadly specimens have breached containment and overrun the facility. To help you get through it, you have access to the experimental Transmogrify device, which allows you to transform living creatures into tools and structures to get through various puzzles and platforming and hopefully escape the lab.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Claim a free copy of Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs on GOG

    To celebrate the release of the new Amnesia: The Bunker, GOG are giving away free copies of Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs.  All you need to do to claim it is be logged into GOG, scroll down a bit on the homepage and you’ll see the giveaway banner to add it to your library.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Proton Experimental fixes up Halo MCC, Ubisoft Connect, Creativerse

    Valve has released an update to Proton Experimental, bringing with it a few nice fixes for issues in various games so here’s a run over what’s changed.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Amnesia: The Bunker is stressful horror done the right way

    Amnesia: The Bunker is the latest in a series of horror games from Frictional Games, one that feels a lot like Alien: Isolation with a WW1 theme. Definitely not a game for the faint of heart — like me. Wow, this was a stressful game to play. Note: key provided by Evolve.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Humble Choice for June 2023 has Ghostwire: Tokyo and Remnant: From the Ashes

    Need even more games to fill up your Summer with? Humble Choice for June 2023 is out now with some fresh games and here’s a run over what to expect on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ A fully transparent Steam Deck mod is on the way

    We’ve had transparent backplates for the Steam Deck for a while now but what about the front? Well, they’re on the way from two different companies.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Dead Cells hits over 10 million sales

    Something that not many indie titles are able to do, Dead Cells has now managed to hit over 10 million sales and still going strong. This news was shared in a press release yesterday June 5th, via Tinsley PR.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Sandtrix is Tetris with sand – delightful, free and renamed after a DMCA

    Have a few minutes to kill here and there? Sandtrix could be what you need. It’s free, has a Linux version and got the attention of Tetris Holding, LLC under the previous name Setris so it got a DMCA takedown but now it’s back. But for how long?

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • 9to5Linux ☛ postmarketOS 23.06 Arrives for Linux Phones and Tablets with GNOME Mobile

      Based on the latest Alpine Linux 3.18 operating system, postmarketOS 23.06 is here as the first-ever version to ship the GNOME Shell UI (GNOME Mobile) graphical interface for supported phones and tablets. GNOME Shell on Mobile 44 is included in this release, which comes with a much-improved GNOME Software package manager.

      KDE Plasma Mobile 5.27.5, GNOME-based Phosh 0.27, and Sxmo 1.14.0 are among other graphical interfaces that are included by default and supported in the postmarketOS 23.06 release. Notable here is the fact that the Phosh 0.27 interface now comes with the Evince document viewer by default.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Barry Kauler ☛ Various little fixes

• BSD

  • Klara ☛ Linux vs. FreeBSD: FreeBSD or Linux – A Choice Without OS Wars

    In the world of operating systems, there are always loud voices complaining about one operating system or another, its lack of relevance, or wrong approach to a certain problem. Throughout the development of FreeBSD as an operating system there have been triumphs and setbacks, but ultimately both Linux and FreeBSD have evolved to be stable operating systems with very different philosophies and approach to start-up, set-up and usability. When choosing an operating system, it is important to consider the best tool for the job, rather than just what is most popular.

  • Data Swamp ☛ OpenKuBSD design document

    I got an idea today (while taking a shower…) about _partially_ reusing Qubes OS design of using VMs to separate contexts and programs, but doing so on OpenBSD.

    To make explanations CLEAR, I won’t reimplement Qubes OS entirely on OpenBSD. Qubes OS is an interesting operating system with a very strong focus on security (from a very practical point of view ), but it’s in my opinion overkill for most users, and hence not always practical or usable.

    In the meantime, I think the core design could be reused and made it easy for users, like we are used to do in OpenBSD.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • 9to5Linux ☛ openSUSE Leap 15.5 Releases with KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS, Xfce 4.18, and More

    openSUSE Leap 15.5 is here exactly one year after openSUSE Leap 15.4 and it’s built on top of binary packages from the SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP5 operating system. It’s powered by the same Linux 5.14 kernel as Leap 15.4 but with added drivers for better hardware support.

    openSUSE Project compares the Linux 5.14 kernel included in openSUSE Leap 15.5 with the upstream Linux 6.0 kernel series saying that the biggest changes are in the area of GPU drivers, supporting new graphics cards like AMD Radeon RX 7600, AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT/XTX, Intel ARC A380, Intel Arc A750, and Intel Arc A770.

  • OpenSUSE ☛ Project Announces Plans for Another Minor Leap 15 Release

    We’d like to announce that the openSUSE Release team plans to work on openSUSE Leap 15.6.

    openSUSE Leap 15.6 is expected to be released in early June 2024 and would reach its end of life by the end of the year 2025.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • The Register UK ☛ Red Hat to stop packaging LibreOffice for RHEL

    Red Hat is to stop packaging a native version of the LibreOffice suite for its enterprise Linux distro.

    According to a post on the Fedora Development mailing list, the official RPM packages for LibreOffice in RHEL have been orphaned — in other words, they no longer have an official maintainer. The official stated reason is that the company is switching manpower to fixing more critical issues, such as support for high dynamic range displays, and that uses of the RHEL workstation distro who need LibreOffice can install the Flatpak version instead.

    This doesn’t seem to be a direct result of the well publicised Red Hat layoffs back in April, which resulted in calls to unionize. The proximate cause seems to be that the Hatter who was the product’s lead maintainer, Caolán McNamara, has quit and gone to work for Collabora, the primary company behind the ongoing development of the FOSS office suite.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Supply chain challenges: Handling returns

    Evolving customer expectations have forced retailers to figure out how to better manage the ripple effects that the pandemic, increased online shopping and supply chain disruptions have created— including handling customer returns. On the surface, returns may seem like a fairly straightforward problem, but there are many nuances and tradeoffs to consider. 

    Customers want easy returns. For merchandise delivered to the home, the return experience can be a critical reason why consumers stick with a given retailer. Take Zappos, for example, their generous return policy for shoes—an item that’s tricky to buy without trying on—was one important ingredient in their early success.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Securing D-Bus based connections with mTLS and double proxy

    When we started the discussions on the requirements that led to the development of Hirte (introduced by Pierre-Yves Chibon and Daniel Walsh in their blog post), we explored using systemctl with its –host parameter to manage systemd units on remote machines. However, this capability requires a secure shell (SSH) connection between the nodes, and SSH is too large of a tunnel.

    Instead, Hirte was created using transmission control protocol (TCP) based manager-client communication between the machines. Since Hirte manages systemd units, it uses the D-Bus protocol and the sd-bus application programming interface (API), not only between hirte-agent and systemd, but also between hirte-manager and hirte-agent.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Getting to know Penny Philpot, Vice President, EMEA Partner Ecosystems, Red Hat

    Red Hat is delighted to welcome Penny Philpot as Vice President of the EMEA Partner Ecosystem. In this role, Penny will be responsible for Red Hat’s partner ecosystem business in EMEA, driving an ecosystem-first mindset and continuing to expand Red Hat’s footprint across the region through valued partners. 

    We caught up with Penny to find out more about her impressive career, why she chose Red Hat and her open approach to leadership.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ End of maintenance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is almost here

    It’s time to prepare for the end of maintenance support.

    It’s been almost ten years since the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7, and its maintenance support phase will come to an end in June 2024.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Own HowTo ☛ How to Install Kubuntu 23.04

    In this tutorial, you will learn how to install kubuntu.

    Kubuntu is basically Ubuntu, but instead of Gnome desktop environment, Kubuntu uses KDE Plasma as desktop environment. Even though both systems are the same, the desktop environments are different and each has its own pros and cons.

  • Ubuntu ☛ Meet Canonical at SmartNICs Summit 2023

    SmartNICs, the programmable network adapters that make data centre networking, security and storage efficient, scalable and modular, have started to play a significant role in the industry.

    Join Canonical at the second SmartNICs Summit in San Jose, California from June 13-15  to connect with engineers and managers who are interested in this field. 

  • Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu Blog: How telco companies can reduce 5G infrastructure costs with open source

    5G has the potential to revolutionise the telecommunications industry, offering high speed and connectivity for a wide range of devices ranging from radio access networks (RAN), user equipment (UE), and core networks. However, the high costs associated with 5G infrastructure have been a significant blocker for adoption, hindering innovation and growth in this area. 

    This blog discusses the primary challenges faced in the telecom industry and how open source technologies are helping to resolve them. 

• Devices/Embedded

  • Hackaday ☛ A Lightweight Smart Home Server

    Working towards automating a few things in a home often seems simple on the surface, but it’s easy for these projects to snowball into dozens of sensors and various servos, switches, and cameras strewn about one’s living space. The same sort of feature creep sneaks into some of the more popular self-hosted home server platforms as well, with things like openHAB requiring so much computing power that they barely function on something like a Raspberry Pi. [Paulo] thought there should be a more lightweight way of tackling a project like this, and set about building his own smart home server with help from some interesting software.

    [...]

    From here the major hurdle is that using the default software from these devices is fairly limiting, so [Paulo] reached for a Raspbee 2 Zigbee gateway for use with a Raspberry Pi and an extremely lightweight and customizable web server called Mako to make this happen. Using Lua as the high-level language to tie everything together he was able to easily deploy the server to control the Ikea hub and devices and automate them in any way he sees fit.

  • Hackaday ☛ Hackaday Prize 2023: Bluetooth Spell To Speak

    Have you ever known what you wanted to say but couldn’t figure out exactly how to say it? For some individuals, that’s all the time. The gap between intention and action can be a massive chasm. [Pedro Martin] is trying to help bridge that gap with a Bluetooth RPM letterboard.

  • Hackaday ☛ RetroPie, Without The Pi

    With most of these devices, a Linux environment is included running on top of an ARM platform. If that sounds similar to the Raspberry Pi, it turns out that a lot of these old Android TV sets are quite capable of doing almost everything that a Raspberry Pi can do, with the major exception of GPIO. That’s exactly what [Timax] is doing here, but he notes that one of the major hurdles is the vast variety of hardware configurations found on these devices. Essentially you’d have to order one and hope that you can find all the drivers and software to get into a usable Linux environment. But if you get lucky, these devices can be more powerful than a Pi and also be found for a much lower price.

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ OnlyTrains: for fans of trains, and only trains

    Jonathan M created Trainbot with a Raspberry Pi Camera. It watches a stretch of train track outside his home, detects trains, and stitches together images of them.

    Everyone else at Pi Towers said their favourite thing about the project is the Wes Anderson-esque aesthetic of the screen recording above. My favourite thing is that the tab for the train watching website says “Onlytrains”, because I am easily amused.

• Arduino

  • Arduino ☛ DIY marble solitaire board helps you solve the puzzle

    Solitaire is any tabletop game that can be played by just one person, and it can take the form of cards, pegs, memory, and in this case, marbles. As Mark Donners discusses in his element14 Presents video, marble solitaire is made of 33 individual divots and a total of 32 marbles that populate each one except the center with the goal of capturing every marble until the last one lands in the middle. Due to the pattern being somewhat difficult to memorize, Donners constructed a custom board that uses an Arduino Nano and LEDs to light the way.

  • Arduino ☛ This beer pong-playing robot uses sophisticated math to sink shots

    Beer pong is a classic party game involving skill, persistence, and alcohol tolerance. Participating in friendly games of beer pong is a great way to socialize with peers, but what if you aren’t very good at tossing ping pong balls into red Solo cups?

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ The Epi 32U4 is a miniature board compatible with Arduino

    Crowdsupply launched last month a tiny embedded board powered by an ATmega32 microcontroller. This open-source device features an USB Type-C port and it provides up to 23x IOs with support for serial protocols as I2C, SPI, etc.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android Authority ☛ Wallpaper Wednesday: Android wallpapers 2023-06-07 – Android Authority

  • Computer World ☛ The real secret to better Android battery life | Computerworld

  • Phone Arena ☛ So, Android Auto is broken again, but this is what you can try to fix it – PhoneArena

  • Dignited ☛ Best Keyboard app for Android in 2023 – Dignited

  • 9to5Google ☛ Google Photos for Android getting settings redesign

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Medevel ☛ Libre: Open-source Manufacturing Execution and Performance monitoring Solution

  Libre is an open-source manufacturing execution and performance monitoring tool that allows you to define your master data, push your machine metrics, and start collecting and analyzing your manufacturing data to improve your operations.

• OpenSource.com ☛ New developments at Opensource.com

  You may have noticed that it’s been quiet here on Opensource.com lately. That’s because there’s a new project in the works, and while there aren’t many specific details to announce yet, there’s plenty to talk about. What better way to start than with the entire internet?

• Web Browsers/Web Servers

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox Developer Experience: Firefox WebDriver Newsletter — 114

      WebDriver is a remote control interface that enables introspection and control of user agents. As such it can help developers to verify that their websites are working and performing well with all major browsers. The protocol is standardized by the W3C and consists of two separate specifications: WebDriver classic (HTTP) and the new WebDriver BiDi (Bi-Directional).

      This newsletter gives an overview of the work we’ve done as part of the Firefox 114 release cycle.

    • Firefox Developer Experience: Firefox DevTools Newsletter — 114

      Developer Tools helps developers write and debug websites on Firefox. This newsletter gives an overview of the work we’ve done as part of the Firefox 114 Nightly release cycle.

      Firefox being an open source project, we are grateful to get contributions from people outside of Mozilla:

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Walled Culture ☛ Here’s another important reason why academics should publish in open access titles: self interest

      But there’s another aspect that receives less attention, revealed here by a new paper that looks at how open access articles are used in a particular and important context – that of Wikipedia. There is a natural synergy between the two, which both aim to make access to knowledge easier. The paper seeks to quantify that: [...]

• Programming/Development

  • Geeks For Geeks ☛ Express Returns Servers HTML Error Page Instead of res.json Error Message

    ExpressJS is a backend web application framework built on top of NodeJS which helps us manage the server and routing. >

Leftovers

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ The Oldest Known Burial Site in The World Was Not Made by Our Species

    We aren’t the earliest mourners.

  • Science Alert ☛ Plants Can Clean Toxic Chemicals From The Air in Hours, Study Shows

    It doesn’t take long.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Beam Solar Power From Space to Earth in World First

    A higher power exists.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Found a New Way to Tell if Someone Is Truly Comatose

    A hidden sign of consciousness.

  • Science Alert ☛ Summer Sea Ice May Vanish From The Arctic in Just 10 Years, Scientists Warn

    Decades before predictions said.

• Education

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Almost 13 million Chinese students sit gruelling university entrance exams

    Millions of Chinese students sit for notoriously tough college entrance exams on Wednesday, the first since the country lifted zero-Covid rules that forced classes online for months on end. China’s education ministry says a record nearly 13 million students are registered to take the exams — known as “gaokao” — this year.

  • İstanbul Governorship allocates 237 schools to TÜGVA in the summer

    The foundation, with close ties to the government, will organize summer school programs for students using the buildings and all the facilities of the allocated schools in 38 of the 39 districts of İstanbul.

  • New York Times ☛ A Religious School That’s Also a Public School

    Oklahoma’s decision to allow the Catholic church to operate a public school continues a winning streak for religious conservatives.

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ UP Squared i12 is a compact Alder Lake-P single board computer

    AAEON’s UP Squared i12 is a single board computer with the same dimensions as the UP Squared (Apollo Lake) and UP Squared V2 (Elkhart Lake) boards, and mostly the same ports layout, but powered by a more powerful 12th generation Intel Alder Lake-P processor from a Celeron 7305E up to an Intel Core i7-1270PE.

  • Hackaday ☛ Billion Year Clock Is LEGO Genius Or Madness

    If you are a fan of LEGO bricks or Rube Goldberg, you should have a look at [Brick Technology’s] billion-year LEGO clock. Obviously, it hasn’t been tested for a billion years, and we wonder if ABS would last that long, but the video below is still worth watching.

  • Hackaday ☛ Op Amp Contest: This Lighthouse Sculpture Flickers In The Rhythm Of Chaos

    Op amps are typically used to build signal processing circuits like amplifiers, integrators and oscillators. Their functionality can be described by mathematical formulas that have a single, well-defined solution. However, not every circuit is so well-behaved, as Leon Chua famously showed in the early 1980s: if you make a circuit with three reactive elements and a non-linear component, the resulting oscillation will be chaotic. Every cycle of the output will be slightly different from its predecessors, and the circuit might flip back and forth between different frequencies.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Beyond sushi: Japan expands vegan options to tempt tourists

    Japan is on a mission to show its renowned gastronomy is not off-limits to those who do not eat meat.

  • Latvia ☛ Agriculture Ministry plans supermarket closures on Sundays

    To stop the rise in food prices, one of the action plans prepared by the Agriculture Ministry is the closure of supermarkets on Sundays. This will encourage more low-price fights on working days and the opportunity on Sunddays for small businesses to earn, Latvian Radio and Latvian Television reported on June 6.

  • Latvia ☛ Agriculture Minister: no reason to declare dairy sector emergency

    Minister of Agriculture Didzis Šmits (United List) does not see a reason for announcing a state of emergency in the dairy sector, as farmers have requested, but hopes for additional European Union (EU) support for the sector, as well as plans a special program for restructuring dairy farmers’ activities to other agricultural sectors, LSM reports on June 6.

  • France24 ☛ ‘The air is unbreathable’: Congolese living near a foundry say they are being poisoned

    For weeks now, Cyrille Traoré Nbembi has been filming video after video of the black smoke coming out of an old foundry and factory located just a few metres from his home in Vindoulou, an area on the outskirts of Pointe-Noire, in Congo. As his family and neighbours continue to suffer health problems, Nbembi reached out to the FRANCE 24 Observers team – and is calling on the government to take action

  • France24 ☛ Continuing wildfires in Canada prompt air quality warnings in northeastern US

    Intense Canadian wildfires are blanketing the northeastern U.S. in a dystopian haze, turning the air acrid, the sky yellowish gray and prompting warnings for vulnerable populations to stay inside.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ‘Phenomenon’ behind organ donor withdrawals similar to 2019 ‘black riots,’ says Hong Kong’s John Lee

    Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee has likened the “phenomenon” behind the recent uptick in withdrawals from the city’s organ donation registry to the “black riots” in 2019, after four people were arrested over suspicious cancellations.

  • Las Vegas Won’t Save the Water It Needs by Just Removing Lawns

    Drought-plagued Nevada pledged to do away with 3,900 acres of grass in the Las Vegas area within six years, but a ProPublica analysis found that the state grossly overestimated how much of that grass would likely be removed.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Sterilizing Cats, No Surgery Required

    A single shot might someday replace spaying as a tool for cat-population control.

  • Science Alert ☛ This Common Artificial Sweetener Can Break Down DNA, Scientists Warn

    The artificial sweetener sucralose (marketed as Splenda) is widely used and found in products like diet soda and chewing gum. According to a new study, it’s also capable of damaging the DNA material inside our cells.

    As DNA holds the genetic code controlling how our bodies grow and are maintained, that’s a serious problem that could lead to multiple health issues.

  • Science Alert ☛ These Companies Kept Silent About ‘Forever Chemicals’ For Decades

    We never knew.

  • Defence Web ☛ Funding shortfall means military health patients face complications and possibly death

    A presentation by the Director: Military Health Planning of the SA Military Health Service (SAMHS) left Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Defence (JSCD) under no illusions about the poor health of the national defence force’s healthcare facilities

  • [Repeat] RFA ☛ Grieving mother who lost son kills herself after cyberbullying, official warnings

    A Chinese woman killed herself in late May after her first-grade son was fatally struck by a teacher’s car on school property, sparking outrage among residents and netizens who blamed cyberbullying and government pressure for her death.

    The specific reason for her death remains unclear, but in a video recorded before she died, the woman, surnamed Yang, said that national security officers had told her to keep quiet about her son’s death.

  • The Register UK ☛ US govt now bans TikTok from contractors’ work gear

    The US federal government’s ban on TikTok has been extended to include devices used by its many contractors – even those that are privately owned. The bottom line: if some electronics are used for government work, it better not have any ByteDance bits on it.

    The interim rule was jointly issued by NASA, the Department of Defense and the General Services Administration, which handles contracting for US federal agencies. The change amends the Federal Acquisition Regulation to prohibit TikTok, any successor application, or any software produced by TikTok’s Beijing-based parent ByteDance from being present on contractor devices.

  • Return of the revenge of “vaccines permanently alter your DNA”

    Last week, I discovered a new antivax scientist named Kevin McKernan, whose message had been recently amplified by long time quack tycoon Joe Mercola. At the time, his false claim was that SV40 promoter sequences in plasmid DNA contaminating the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines were somehow putting people at risk for cancer. In my deconstruction, I pointed out that this claim was an even more ridiculous variation on an old antivax claim that oral polio vaccines from the late 1950s to 1963 that had been discovered to be contaminated with SV40 virus were responsible for a wave of cancer. They weren’t, but this antivax claim keeps coming back from the grave (going back a decade, at least), ready to party. This time is no different, except that the claim is even more ridiculous than the movie from which I adapted that tagline to describe it. Why? Because it’s almost as though McKernan, his background in microbiology and (apparently) genomics, either does not know the difference between a promoter sequence and an actual gene or, more likely, knows the difference but knows that his audience doesn’t know the difference but is aware of the polio vaccine/SV40 story.(Take your pick.)

  • Hackaday ☛ Reverse Engineering A Better Night’s Sleep

    All you want is a decent night’s sleep, so you decide to invest in one of those fancy adjustable beds. At first, it’s fine — being able to adjust the mattress to your needs on the fly is a joy, and yet…something isn’t quite right. Something nags at you every night, thwarting your slumber and turning your dreams of peaceful sleep into a nightmare once you realize your bed has locked you into a vertically integrated software ecosystem from which there’s no escape.

• Proprietary

  • Terence Eden ☛ Google Alerts told me I’m dead…

    Thankfully, this isn’t a Buttle/Tuttle mix-up. Just a reminder that no one is ever as unique as they think they are.

  • Game World Observer ☛ 343 Industries loses another experienced dev as Halo game designer David Ellis leaves studio after 13 years [Ed: Tons of executives leave XBox this year. Will Microsoft shut down XBox within months?]

    Experienced game designer David Ellis is another developer to leave 343 Industries after working on the Halo franchise for more than a decade. This comes a few months after the studio’s restructuring and the departure of other veteran employees.

  • Arab News ☛ US fines Microsoft $20 million over child data violations

    Microsoft will pay $20 million to settle government charges that it collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent, officials said Monday.
    The Federal Trade Commission alleged that from 2015 to 2020 Microsoft collected personal data from children under age 13 who signed up to its Xbox gaming system without their parents’ permission and retained this information.
    To open an account, users had to provide their first and last names, an email address, and date of birth.
    The FTC said Microsoft violated a law called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Austria’s SPÖ shares wrong leadership poll winner after Excel error

• Security

  • Security Week ☛ KeePass Update Patches Vulnerability Exposing Master Password

    KeePass 2.54 patches a vulnerability allowing attackers to retrieve the cleartext master password from a memory dump.

  • Announcing Istio 1.17.3

    This release contains bug fixes to improve robustness. This release note describes what is different between Istio 1.17.2 and Istio 1.17.3.

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Service Rents Email Addresses for Account Signups

    One of the most expensive aspects of any cybercriminal operation is the time and effort it takes to constantly create large numbers of new throwaway email accounts. Now a new service offers to help dramatically cut costs associated with large-scale spam and account creation campaigns, by paying people to sell their email account credentials and letting customers temporarily rent access to a vast pool of established accounts at major providers.

  • Security Week ☛ Verizon 2023 DBIR: Human Error Involved in Many Breaches, Ransomware Cost Surges [Ed: Microsoft Windows TCO]

    Verizon’s 16th annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) provides data on ransomware costs, the frequency of human error in breaches, and BEC trends.

  • Security Week ☛ Google Patches Third Chrome Zero-Day of 2023

    Google has released a Chrome 114 security update that patches CVE-2023-3079, the third zero-day vulnerability patched in the browser in 2023.

  • Security Week ☛ Several Major Organizations Confirm Being Impacted by MOVEit Attack

    Major companies have confirmed being impacted by the recent MOVEit zero-day attack, including BBC, British Airways and Zellis.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • AntiWar ☛ It Was All in Vain: Edward Snowden’s Sacrifice 10 Years On

      This week marks the 10th anniversary of the first story featuring National Security Agency (NSA) contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden’s initial revelation: the role of Verizon in aiding NSA’s telephone metadata mass surveillance program.

    • Vice Media Group ☛ ‘Night Fury’: Documents Detail DHS Project to Give ‘Risk Scores’ to Social Media Users

      Internal DHS documents reviewed by Motherboard provide more detail on a DHS plan to monitor social media for content related to terrorists, the illegal opioid trade, and foreign interference bots.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft cops $20M slap on the wrist for mishandling kids’ Xbox data: Pocket change, in other words

      Microsoft is being fined $20 million by the US Federal Trade Commission for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by illegally gathering kids’ personal information and retaining it without parental consent.

      Along with paying the rather small fine (slightly more than a tenth of a percent of Microsoft’s most recent quarterly profit), the FTC is also requiring the company to update its account creation process for children to prevent collection and storage of data, and extend those responsibilities to third-party publishers that Microsoft shares such data with.

    • The Register UK ☛ Police use of PayPal records under fire after raid on ‘Cop City’ protest fund trio

      This evidence, according to Patterson’s arrest warrant [PDF], included reimbursements from the Network for Strong Communities, a state-registered nonprofit, for expenses including “gasoline, forest clean-up, totes, COVID rapid tests, media, yard signs and other miscellaneous expenses.” These expenses totaled nearly $7,000 over about two years.

      The police somehow obtained and used PayPal records as evidence of those reimbursements. The cops suspect charitable donations to the Network for Strong Communities were passed to Kautz et al, who then used the cash, as board members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, to support those protesting against Cop City. Those protesters included the Defend the Atlanta Forest group, which Homeland Security considers violent domestic extremists, according to the police.

    • Scheerpost ☛ ‘The Whole World Is Watching’: Atlanta City Council Approves Cop City Funding

      “We’re here pleading our case to a government that has been unresponsive, if not hostile, to an unprecedented movement in our City Council’s history,” one opponent of the police training facility said.

    • Democracy Now ☛ Cop City: Atlanta City Council OKs $67M for Facility Despite Mass Protests & Armed Raid on Bail Fund

      Residents in Atlanta shattered the record for turnout at a city council meeting Monday, as thousands lined up to voice their opposition to the construction of a massive police training facility known as Cop City. Ultimately, the Atlanta City Council voted 11-4 to approve $30 million in additional funding for the project, bringing the total to $67 million — more than double the original estimate. The contentious vote comes after a SWAT team raided the Atlanta Solidarity Fund last Wednesday and arrested three people who had been raising money to bail out protesters opposed to Cop City, charging them with money laundering and charity fraud. Forty-two protesters still face charges including domestic terrorism for opposing Cop City, and activists continue to demand answers over the fatal police shooting of environmental activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán in January. For more on Cop City, we speak with Reverend James Woodall from the Southern Center for Human Rights, who spoke at the City Council meeting, as well as Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizer Marlon Kautz, one of the three people arrested in last week’s SWAT raid. Kautz says the charges are “malicious political prosecutions” with the intent to “suppress a political movement.”

    • The Nation ☛ Atlanta Is Trying to Crush the Opposition to “Cop City” by Any Means Necessary

      In the early morning of Wednesday, May 31, a heavily armed joint task force of officers from the Atlanta Police Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation raided the Teardown House, a long-standing community center in Edgewood—a historically Black, rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Atlanta—that doubles as a home for community organizers.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Snowden Revelations: Ten Years On

      It would take much more than a blog to outline all of what we learnt over the next year and more. Javier Ruiz, Policy Director at ORG wrote a comprehensive analysis, Collect it all, describing what specifically learnt about surveillance in the UK, which included the following: [...]

    • Michael West Media ☛ Japan, Australia, US to fund Micronesia undersea cable

      Japan has joined the United States and Australia in signing a $US95 million ($A143 million) undersea cable project that will connect East Micronesia island nations to improve networks in the Indo-Pacific region where China is increasingly expanding its influence.

      The approximately 2250-kilometre undersea cable will connect the state of Kosrae in the Federated States of Micronesia, Tarawa in Kiribati and Nauru to the existing cable landing point located in Pohnpei in Micronesia, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

    • The Nation ☛ Get Ready for AI Surveillance at the 2024 Paris Olympics

      After some initial public enchantment with artificial-intelligence (AI) technologies, people have been ringing alarm bells with increasing fervor. In Hollywood, concerns that AI will be used as a worker-replacement contraption has helped animate the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike. Katrina vanden Heuvel noted in The Nation that although AI could usher in “an era of unprecedented human health and happiness,” the bundle of technologies also “has the potential for massive economic disruption, weakened national security, and the erosion of personal privacy.” In other words, because we, the people, don’t control AI, it is in the hands of the 1 percent, and it could come to control us.

• Defence/Aggression

  • CS Monitor ☛ Fattah unveiled: Iran’s new hypersonic missile fuels tensions with US

    Iran claims it has a hypersonic missile capable of reaching speeds 15 times faster than sound amid tense United States-Iran relations over its nuclear program. The missile, named Fattah, has a moveable nozzle that makes interception more challenging.

  • ADF ☛ As Sahel Violence Spreads, Coastal Nations Call for Funding, Cooperation

    During a United Nations Security Council meeting in mid-May, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Africa Martha Pobee lamented the failure of international, regional and state peacekeeping efforts to prevent the Sahel’s violence from spreading.

  • France24 ☛ Iran unveils its first hypersonic ballistic missile, state media reports

    Iran presented what officials described as its first domestically-made hypersonic ballistic missile on Tuesday, the official IRNA news agency reported, an announcement likely to heighten Western concerns about Tehran’s missile capabilities.

  • Digital Music News ☛ The Chinese Communist Party Used TikTok Data to Identify and Track Hong Kong Protesters, Former ByteDance Exec Says

    Last week, a report indicated that TikTok had stored creators’ sensitive financial information on servers in China – where government officials can unilaterally demand access to companies’ records. Now, a former ByteDance executive says the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) previously accessed the TikTok data of protesters in Hong Kong.

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korean youth group donates rocket launchers to military: State media

    Korean Children’s Union members are known for their red scarfs.

  • Federal News Network ☛ US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman amid strained relations between Riyadh and Washington. Blinken’s trip to Saudi Arabia that began Tuesday is his second since becoming America’s top diplomat. It also comes after Saudi Arabia under Prince Mohammed has become more willing to disregard the U.S. in striking its own decisions. However, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab nations still rely on the U.S. to be the security guarantor for the region as tensions over Iran’s nuclear program spill over. Blinken will also meet with other Saudi officials, attend an anti-Islamic State meeting in Riyadh and meet with foreign ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council.

  • Latvia ☛ Applications open for January draft into Latvia’s defense service

    The second draft of the mandatory State Defense Service (VAD), which will start in January next year, can be applied for voluntarily until July 15. At the moment, the activity is low, head of the VAD recruitment and selection center, Major Rihards Rozenbaums, told Latvian Television on June 6.

  • JURIST ☛ UN alleges human rights violations against Guantanamo Bay Prison detainee

    The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention released a report alleging that Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Thailand, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US all participated in human rights violations against Abd al-Rahim Hussein al-Nashiri, a man accused of assisting in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

  • France24 ☛ France’s last surviving D-Day commando joins 79th anniversary commemorations

    Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of the French commandos who stormed the Normandy beaches defended by Hitler’s troops in 1944, on Tuesday joined President Emmanuel Macron at a seafront ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

  • France24 ☛ Finland: Inside the world’s first ‘nuclear graveyard’

    A vast network of tunnels 400 metres underground that has been under construction for nearly 20 years will soon begin operating as the world’s first spent nuclear fuel disposal facility – locking away radioactive uranium deep beneath the Earth’s surface for thousands of years. It is hoped the Onkalo facility in Finland will provide a solution to the problem of how to safely store the world’s nuclear waste.

  • Federal News Network ☛ 7 wounded in shooting after high school graduation ceremony in Virginia capital

    Authorities in Richmond, Virginia, say seven people were shot following a high school graduation ceremony held at a downtown theater near Virginia Commonwealth University. Interim Police Chief Rick Edwards said at a news conference that two suspects were taken into custody after Tuesday’s shooting. Edwards said officers inside the theater heard the gunfire and radioed to colleagues outside, who found multiple victims. Four had injuries that were not life-threatening. School board member Jonathan Young told Richmond TV station WWBT that graduates and other attendees were exiting the theater when they heard about 20 gunshots in rapid succession. That prompted a rush to get back inside that he likened to “a stampede.”

  • AntiWar ☛ The End Stage of American Empire

    Originally posted at TomDispatch. All around us things are falling apart. Collectively, Americans are experiencing national and imperial decline. Can America save itself? Is this country, as presently constituted, even worth saving? For me, that last question is radical indeed.

  • AntiWar ☛ Deconstructing Israel’s Propaganda Machine

    Most mornings as I prepare for my run, I tune in to BBC news. Of late, the newscaster has presented, in sober British-fashion, the number of Palestinians killed the night before by the Israeli army in its near-nightly raids on homes and refugee camps in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

  • Defence Web ☛ Why are military coups returning to Africa?

    Coup attempts were frequent in Africa in the post-independence and Cold War periods. By comparison, the past 20 or so years have been quiet. From 2011 through 2020, the continent averaged fewer than one completed coup per year.

  • France24 ☛ Senegal shuts overseas consulates after attacks in several cities including Paris and Bordeaux

    Senegal has temporarily closed its consulates abroad following attacks on diplomatic missions in Bordeaux, Milan, Paris and New York among others, the foreign affairs ministry said on Tuesday.

  • Common Dreams ☛ We Still Haven’t Learned the True Price of War

    The Russian aggression against Ukraine shows that we have not learned the lessons of history and are paying a high price for it. Future generations will also pay a significant price for our generation’s sins: fractured and destroyed families; poor social and health services; and a polluted environment. Children with mental and developmental problems are the clearest examples of the intergenerational effects of war.

  • The Nation ☛ Olaf Stapledon’s Cosmology of Peace

    The scientific quest for advanced aliens is about imagining not just who might be out there but also how we might find them. The physicist, mathematician, and polymath Freeman Dyson thought we shouldn’t expect anyone to try to signal us, but instead could look for what came to be known as Dyson spheres—massive spheres, or more likely swarms of satellites, that would surround a star so that an advanced civilization could catch and make use of all the star’s power. This is an excerpt from The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos.

  • The Nation ☛ America Needs to Break Its Addiction to Global Intervention

    Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow. And as it happens, he’s positively bullish about the prospect of Ukraine handing Russia a decisive defeat in its upcoming, widely anticipated, sure-to-happen-any-day-now spring counteroffensive.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Palestinian Toddler Muhammad Tamimi Dies Days After Israeli Forces Shot Him in Head

    “What accountability will there be for the Israeli soldier(s) who opened fire into a Palestinian community and shot a two-year-old in the head?” asked one journalist. “The track record isn’t promising.”

  • War in Ukraine

    • Scheerpost ☛ Clinging Bitterly to Guns and Religion

      The End Stage of American Empire.

    • Scheerpost ☛ As US Considers Reoccupying Haiti, History Shows Occupation Is the Root Problem

      The tragedy unfolding in Haiti is a direct result of over a century of U.S. political, military and economic coercion.

    • Quartz ☛ Is Russia buying back missile parts from India for use against Ukraine?

      Russia may be buying back military components it exported to India so as to use them in its war against Ukraine.

    • Scheerpost ☛ Patrick Lawrence: First There Were Neo-Nazis, Then There Were No Nazis, Then There Were

      I tell you, serving as a New York Times correspondent these days cannot be easy. You have to convey utter nonsense to your readers while maintaining a straight face and a serious demeanor. You have to suggest the Russians may have exploded a drone over the Kremlin, that […]

    • Scheerpost ☛ Biden Ignored Intel About Nord Stream Sabotage Three Months Before It Happened

      New intelligence report from Jack Teixeria’s Discord leaks reveals CIA, Europe knew about plot to blow up the pipeline.

    • European Commission ☛ Ukraine: Statement by High Representative Josep Borrell and Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič on the destruction of the Kakhovka dam

      European Commission Statement Brussels, 06 Jun 2023 Russia’s attacks against Ukrainian civilian critical infrastructure reached an unprecedented level today with the destruction of the dam…

    • European Commission ☛ Commission further integrates Ukraine into EU Single Market through the Connecting Europe Facility for infrastructure funding

      European Commission Press release Brussels, 06 Jun 2023 Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean and Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine and Minister for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development Oleksandr Kubrakov, today signed an agreement in Lviv, associating Ukraine to the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme…

    • Latvia ☛ Latvian-Russian border area drowns in garbage

      There is an unsolved problem with the lack of garbage cans and toilets at the border inspection post Grebneva in the Latvian-Russian border area. The war started by Russia in Ukraine exacerbated the situation, with people waiting for several days on the border, and the mountains of garbage on the roadside continues to grow, Latvian Radio reported on June 6.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvia to give millions more to Ukraine’s army via NATO assistance package

      On June 6 2023, the Latvian government (Cabinet of Ministers) adopted a decision on the allocation of funding for contributions to NATO’s Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine worth EUR 2 million in 2023, and approved matching contributions in the two following years, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed.

    • AntiWar ☛ The Ukrainian Army Is Run Not by the Generals but by the PR Department

      What can you expect from a government headed by a comic actor named Zelensky?>

    • AntiWar ☛ A Plea Not To Risk Nuclear War

      As the West pours more advanced weapons into Ukraine that have the range to strike, not only inside Russian occupied territory in Ukraine, but inside the internationally recognized territory of Russia itself, the risk of nuclear war looms.

    • Democracy Now ☛ Catastrophic Flooding Feared as Critical Ukrainian Dam Is Destroyed; Zaporizhzhia Nuke Plant at Risk

      Evacuation efforts are underway in southern Ukraine, where floodwaters are rising after a dam on the Dnipro River was breached overnight in the Ukrainian city of Nova Kakhovka. The breach has created an additional humanitarian disaster in an area that’s seen heavy fighting since Russia’s invasion. Ukraine’s government says floodwaters are threatening 80 towns and villages, as well as the city of Kherson, home to 300,000 people. The breach could also limit drinking water supplies across Kherson and Crimea. Ukrainian officials accused Russia’s military of deliberately sabotaging the dam, calling it an act of “ecocide,” while Russian officials blamed Ukrainian artillery fire for the breach. The disaster has raised fears of a nuclear accident at Europe’s largest nuclear power station, the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia plant, which is upstream of the dam breach and relies on a reservoir formed by the dam for critical cooling systems. We go to Kyiv to speak with Olexi Pasyuk, deputy director of the Ukrainian NGO Ecoaction, to discuss the environmental implications.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Three questions (and expert answers) about the dam collapse in Ukraine

      Atlantic Council experts answer pressing questions about the broken Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine, including what it means for the ongoing war and if damaging it amounts to a war crime.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Is China preparing for a post-Putin Russia?

      Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have famously proclaimed a “friendship without limits” but the Chinese leader may be looking to a post-Putin Russia and cultivating ties with Putin’s PM Mikhail Mishustin, writes Anders Åslund.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive is a key moment but long-term resolve remains crucial

      Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive is an important moment in the war with Russia but it is critical to maintain a sense of perspective and underline the need for long-term Western backing, writes Tennyson Dearing.

    • France24 ☛ 🔴 Live: Evacuations continue following attack on major Russian-held dam in Ukraine

      Ukraine is continuing to evacuate thousands of people Wednesday after an attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam, a major Russian-held dam in southern Ukraine, unleashed a torrent of water, flooding two dozen villages and sparking fears of a humanitarian disaster. Follow our live blog for the latest updates on the war in Ukraine. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

    • France24 ☛ Nova Kakhovka dam breach in Ukraine: What we know and why it matters

      The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine has sent a torrent of water gushing through the breached facility, creating a new humanitarian disaster at the heart of the war zone and stoking fears of a nuclear escalation.

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine evacuates 17,000 people from flooded areas after dam destroyed

      Kyiv on Tuesday said it is evacuating over 17,000 people from flooded areas following the partial destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine. Ukraine accused Russian forces of blowing up the major hydroelectric dam, which represents a significant resource for the wider region by supplying water to a host of communities and Europe’s largest nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia. Follow our live blog for the latest updates on the war in Ukraine.

    • France24 ☛ Belarus’ Sabalenka defeats Ukraine’s Svitolina to reach French Open semis, comes out against war

      Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, the world tennis number two, said on Tuesday she did not want her country to be in any conflict and did not support the war in Ukraine.

    • France24 ☛ ‘Last French player standing’: Roland Garros crowd adopts Ukraine’s Svitolina

      Elina Svitolina’s fairy-tale run at Roland Garros, her first Grand Slam tournament since becoming a mother, has inspired and enthralled a French Open crowd stripped of home players. With war still raging in her home country, she hopes her feats on the Paris clay can bring a little joy to Ukrainians, too.

    • JURIST ☛ Ukraine dispatch: Kakhovka hydroelectric dam destruction is also an attack on international humanitarian law

      Ukrainian law students and young lawyers are reporting for JURIST on developments in and affecting Ukraine. This dispatch is from Polina Dvornikova, a law student at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University in Kharkiv, Ukraine. 

    • LRT ☛ Has Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive finally begun? Maybe

      For weeks now, along the nearly 1,000-kilometre Ukrainian frontline that stretches from the northeastern city of Kharkiv south to Donetsk and then west to the mouth of the Dnieper River, there’s been a noticeable uptick in clashes, skirmishes, and full-fledged combat between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

    • LRT ☛ Five more Lithuanians join the fight in Ukraine

      Five more Lithuanians have left to fight in Ukraine and have already reached their military unit, the 15min.lt news website reported on Tuesday.

    • RFERL ☛ Sabalenka Says She Does Not Support War, Lukashenka After Defeating Ukrainian At French Open

      Belarusian tennis star Aryna Sabalenka says she does not want her country to be in any conflict and she does not support the war in Ukraine or its authoritarian ruler.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Member Of Kazakh Team Suspended For Backing War In Ukraine

      The International Cycling Union (ICU) has suspended Savely Laptev, a member of Kazakhstan’s Astana Qazaqstan DT cycling team, over his online support of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Kazakhstan Hands Prison Term To Woman Who Called For Region To Join Russia

      A Kazakh court has sentenced a woman to three years in prison for saying online that Russia should “take over North Kazakhstan and its capital, Petropavl, like it took Crimea” from Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine Brands Russia ‘Terrorist State’ To Open Hearings In Case At Top UN Court

      A top Ukrainian diplomat called Russia a “terrorist state” on June 6 as he opened his country’s case against Moscow at the United Nations’ highest court, and lawyers argued that Russia bankrolled a “campaign of intimidation and terror” by separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Activist From Crimea Jailed By Russia For 15 Years On Terror Charges

      A Russian court on June 6 sentenced Ukrainian activist Bohdan Zyza from Russian-occupied Crimea to 15 years in prison on terrorism charges.

    • teleSUR ☛ Russia Denounces To UN Kiev’s Attack On The Kakhovka Dam [Ed: Russian lies from Russian site? Blaming the victim?]

      Ukrainian authorities have blamed Russian forces for the destruction of the dam.

    • teleSUR ☛ Kakhovka Dam Breach is Ukrainian Sabotage: Russia [Ed: Russian site relaying lies from the Kremlin. Kiev has no incentive to do this.]

      One of the purposes of this terrorist action is to deprive Crimea of water, Kremlin spokesperson Peskow said.

    • Helsinki Times ☛ Finland to expel nine staff members of Russian Embassy in Helsinki

      NINE PEOPLE WORKING at the Russian Embassy in Helsinki will be expelled from Finland, as per a decision made on Tuesday by President Sauli Niinistö and the Ministerial Committee on Foreign and Security Policy.

    • CS Monitor ☛ In Germany’s east, a hard rethink of relations with once-close Russia

      How does one respond when a once-trusted friend turns out to be an aggressive threat to its neighbors? That’s what eastern Germans are wrestling with after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Ukraine isn’t Europe’s only front-line battle

      The fighting spirit of Ukrainians has emboldened the European Union to ensure its member states – such as Poland – uphold democratic values.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Ukraine dam collapses, flooding villages. Who’s responsible?

      The wall of a major dam controlled by Moscow in southern Ukraine has collapsed, threatening Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and drinking water supplies. Both sides of the conflict are evacuating residents and blaming the other for damages to the dam.

    • New York Times ☛ Internal Blast Probably Breached Ukraine Dam, Experts Say (Cautiously)

      With Russia and Ukraine blaming each other for the collapse of the Kakhovka dam, experts say that an external attack or even structural failure might explain the disaster, but that it is not likely.

    • New York Times ☛ An Endgame for Ukraine

      Membership in the E.U. A security pact with America. And a restoration of borders, minus Crimea.

    • New York Times ☛ Destroyed Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine Floods War Zone and Forces Evacuations

      Experts suspect an explosion collapsed the dam on the Dnipro River. Kyiv and Moscow blamed each other, and residents downstream were forced to evacuate to escape the cascading waves.

    • New York Times ☛ Destroyed Dam Sends Ukrainians Fleeing for Shelter

      Many Ukrainians have learned to live with occupation and shelling. On Tuesday a new menace began lapping at their doors.

    • New York Times ☛ Storming a Trench Is Treacherous Business. Here’s How It’s Done.

      Assaults on trenches can be stealthy, or deafeningly loud. Either way, they are nerve-racking. Here’s how one Ukrainian unit says it carried out a successful attack earlier this month.

    • New York Times ☛ Your Wednesday Briefing

      The destruction of a major dam in Ukraine.

    • New York Times ☛ Your Wednesday Briefing: A Dam Destroyed in Ukraine

      Also, a victory for the Saudi-backed golf tour.

    • New York Times ☛ U.S. Was Aware of Ukrainian Plan to Bomb Nord Stream Pipeline Before Attack

      The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of plans to attack the Nord Stream pipelines three months before thwy were bombed.

    • New York Times ☛ Dam Destruction Threatens Crimea’s Water Supply, Russia Warns

    • Axios ☛ UN chief says Ukrainian dam collapse a “monumental humanitarian, economic and ecological catastrophe”

      Thousands of Ukrainians who were already on the front lines of the war in Ukraine now face a “monumental humanitarian, economic and environmental catastrophe” after the destruction of a key dam on the Dnipro River, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Tuesday.

      The big picture: The collapse of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam unleashed floodwaters downstream, destroying the homes of at least 16,000 people, threatening drinking and irrigation water supplies in the region, and raising concerns about the potential consequences for the massive Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

    • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ In New Ukrainian Attacks, U.S. Officials See Signs of a Counteroffensive

      Kyiv has not formally announced the start of operations. But on Tuesday, Ukraine said the Russians had blown up a dam on the Dnipro River, potentially imperiling residents and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

    • New York Times ☛ Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine Destroyed: What to Know

      A dam in southern Ukraine was split in half, but it is unclear what caused the damage. Thousands are being evacuated as dangerous volumes of water gush downstream.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China and Russia conduct air patrols over waters bordering Japan, Korean peninsula and Taiwan

      China and Russia conducted joint air force patrols over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea on Tuesday, as South Korea said it had deployed fighter jets in response to warplanes near its airspace.

    • LRT ☛ Man detained in Vilnius after throwing trash at Russian Embassy

      A man who threw a bag with trash into the territory of the Russian Embassy was detained in Vilnius, police reported on Tuesday.

    • RFERL ☛ Finland To Expel Nine Russian Embassy Employees Over ‘Intelligence’ Activities

      Finland will expel nine diplomats from the Russian Embassy in Helsinki for “acting in an intelligence capacity,” the Finnish president’s office said on June 6.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Anti-War Activist Deported From Kyrgyzstan Charged With Arson Attack

      Russian anti-war activist and anarchist Aleksei Rozhkov was deported from Kyrgyzstan in late May and is currently in pretrial detention in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg for allegedly setting the building of a military recruitment center in the town of Beryozovsky on fire in March 2022.

    • RFERL ☛ Poisonous Cider Death Toll In Russia Rises To 30

      Russian authorities said on June 6 the number of people killed by tainted cider in the regions of Ulyanovsk, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, and Udmurtia had risen to 25.

    • Spiegel ☛ Norway and Russia Face Off in the Far North: The Shadow War

      Russian trawlers appear to be angling for more than fish, sailors are taking an interest in bridges and spies are being uncovered: In the far north of Europe, the Kremlin appears to be increasing its activity, and Norway is paying close attention.

    • YLE ☛ Finland expels 9 Russian embassy workers over espionage concerns

      The matter was decided by the Finnish government’s foreign and security policy ministerial committee and President Sauli Niinistö.

    • YLE ☛ MPs join calls for Finland to close Russian consulate in Mariehamn

      The presence of Russia’s consulate in Mariehamn on the demilitarised Åland islands has generated much political and public debate in recent weeks.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Snowden Ten Years Later

    In 2013 and 2014, I wrote extensively about new revelations regarding NSA surveillance based on the documents provided by Edward Snowden. But I had a more personal involvement as well.

    I wrote the essay below in September 2013. The New Yorker agreed to publish it, but the Guardian asked me not to. It was scared of UK law enforcement, and worried that this essay would reflect badly on it. And given that the UK police would raid its offices in July 2014, it had legitimate cause to be worried.

    Now, ten years later, I offer this as a time capsule of what those early months of Snowden were like.

  • Digital First Media ☛ Detroit police in leaked memo: Stop leaking information to media

    The May 23 teletype, titled “Releasing Information to News Outlets Without Proper Authority,” advised that unauthorized leaks to reporters would “not be tolerated. Any member found to be engaging in this behavior will be subject to discipline up to and including termination.”

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: No, Sweden is not holding a ‘sex championship’

    A headline on the website for The Times of India, one of India’s most popular and reputable newspapers, reads that “Sweden Will Soon Host the European Sex Championship.”

    According to the report, Sweden has officially recognized sex as a sport and, to determine who’s best at it, would host a tournament in which contestants would engage in daily encounters lasting up to six hours.

    The competition was apparently scheduled to begin June 8 in the city of Gothenburg.

• Environment

  • France24 ☛ Earthquake kills several people in Haiti following deadly floods

    An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.9 struck southern Haiti early Tuesday, killing at least four people and injuring 36 others, authorities said.

  • France24 ☛ Scores dead and thousands displaced after flooding, landslides in Haiti

    At least 42 people were dead and 11 missing in Haiti after heavy rains at the weekend triggered flooding and landslides, civil protection officials said Monday.

  • YLE ☛ Alleged Finnish-Estonian environmental crimes case goes to court

    An investigation by the National Bureau of Investigation in cooperation with Estonian authorities uncovered evidence that thousands of tons of waste were illegally transported between Finland and Estonia.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Now Fully Normalized: Sportswashing the Bonesaw with Golf

    Golf as a professional sport now has completely lost its way with the merger of PGA with LIV. Apparently blood money makes the greens greener.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Treasurer heads to New Zealand for economic talks

    Climate action and economic development will be on the agenda as Treasurer Jim Chalmers visits New Zealand.

    Dr Chalmers heads to Wellington on Wednesday as the two countries mark 40 years of the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement, known as the CER.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Climate change risk added to banking watchdog’s beat

    Australia’s banking regulator will push banks, insurers and superannuation funds to properly account for climate risks under an updated charter.

    The Albanese government on Wednesday released an updated Statement of Expectations for the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

  • Pro Publica ☛ Climate Crisis Has Stranded 600 Million Outside Most Livable Environment

    Climate change is remapping where humans can exist on the planet. As optimum conditions shift away from the equator and toward the poles, more than 600 million people have already been stranded outside of a crucial environmental niche that scientists say best supports life. By late this century, according to a study published last month in the journal Nature Sustainability, 3 to 6 billion people, or between a third and a half of humanity, could be trapped outside of that zone, facing extreme heat, food scarcity and higher death rates, unless emissions are sharply curtailed or mass migration is accommodated.

    The research, which adds novel detail about who will be most affected and where, suggests that climate-driven migration could easily eclipse even the largest estimates as enormous segments of the earth’s population seek safe havens. It also makes a moral case for immediate and aggressive policies to prevent such a change from occurring, in part by showing how unequal the distribution of pain will be and how great the improvements could be with even small achievements in slowing the pace of warming.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • H2 View ☛ Japan plans $107bn of hydrogen investments under strategy revision

      The Japanese Government plans to invest ¥15 trillion ($107.67bn) in hydrogen over the next 15 years under a revision of its Basic Hydrogen Strategy, according to Japanese media.

    • Quartz ☛ Ford is recalling 125,000 hybrid SUVs and pickup trucks after finding a risk of engines catching fire

      Ford Motor Co. is recalling 125,322 SUVs and pickup trucks in the US, after the discovery that leaked engine fluids and fuel vapor could cause fires, according to a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

    • Quartz ☛ India’s worst train crash in 20 years shows how its railways mis-spent safety funds

      An old report by the country’s official auditor, now in focus following a deadly train crash, indicates “mis-spending” of funds by Indian Railways while safety suffered.

    • Hackaday ☛ Harvesting Rechargeable Batteries From Single-Use Devices

      The price of lithium batteries has plummeted in recent years as various manufacturers scale up production and other construction and process improvements are found. This is a good thing if you’re an EV manufacturer, but can be problematic if you’re managing something like a landfill and find that the price has fallen so low that rechargeable lithium batteries are showing up in the waste stream in single-use devices. Unlike alkaline batteries, these batteries can explode if not handled properly, meaning that steps to make sure they’re disposed of properly are much more important. [Becky] found these batteries in single-use disposable vape pens and so set about putting them to better use rather than simply throwing them away.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Federal News Network ☛ Drug treatment, wildfire response and new jobs: Oregon Democrats cite bills at risk amid GOP walkout

      Oregon Democratic lawmakers stood at state Capitol and implored boycotting Republican senators to return and vote on bipartisan bills that are at risk of failure because of the month-long political stalemate. Among the bills cited are ones aimed at reducing drug overdoses, mitigating wildfire risks and shoring up seismically vulnerable dams. But neither side is budging on a bill on protections for abortion and transgender care, with Democrats saying it isn’t negotiable and minority Republicans insisting it die or be changed. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Tim Knopp blamed Democrats for the impasse and called their agenda “extreme.”

    • Latvia ☛ C’est si bon – Latvian bear cub is doing well in France

      A Latvian bear cub rescued from the side of the road is doing well at its chic new home near Paris, reports LTV show ‘Environmmental Facts’.

    • France24 ☛ Brazil’s Lula unveils plan to eliminate deforestation in the Amazon by 2030

      Brazil’s government on Monday unveiled how it plans to meet a pledge to eliminate deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, using strengthened law enforcement against environmental crimes and other measures in the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

    • New York Times ☛ An Ancient Egyptian Mural Offers an Exquisitely Detailed View of Several Bird Species

      A 3,300-year-old palace mural offers an exquisitely detailed view of several bird species, and presents an artistic mystery.

    • Science Alert ☛ ‘Virgin Birth’ Ability Discovered in Crocodiles For The First Time Ever

      Astonishing!

    • Gannett ☛ Are lightning bugs going extinct? A visual guide to why the firefly is fighting off a dimming of its light

      More than 170 species of Lampyridae, or light-emitting beetles, light up North America’s nights. Worldwide, there are more than 2,000 types – many that have been around for millions of years.

      But some species are threatened with extinction.

      Habitat loss, overuse of pesticides, climate change and increased light pollution threaten some fireflies. Yet, these hazards have varying effects on species depending on their genetics and environments.

    • Michael West Media ☛ Has Tanya Plibersek watered down Scott Morrison’s already weak koala protection policy?

      Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has removed the Koala Referral Guidelines, replacing them with a weaker and far more complex system, again dependent on self-referral. Suzanne Arnold reports on the ‘Nature Repair Market Bill’ to establish a voluntary market for “biodiversity credits”.

      Increasingly, the likelihood of koalas surviving on Australia’s east coast is grim.

• Finance

  • Scheerpost ☛ For Media, Giving in to Debt Limit Blackmail Was a Triumph of Bipartisanship

    Media legitimizing the GOP’s economic hostage-taking allowed the party to stick with it without fear of massive political blowback.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ The Hungarian economy will have to transition to an existence without EU funding – Márton Nagy

    The price freezes will not be lifted for the time being, but why should they be, and inflation will be down to single digit figures by the end of the year, Márton Nagy, Hungarian Minister for Economic Development, told Világgazdaság in an interview evaluating his past year on the job. The paper also asked about the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) and whether it can replace EU funds, and the Minister for Economic Development said that it can, and is even better than EU funds.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Hungary sees biggest drop in retail sales in EU

    Among EU member states, Hungary saw the biggest year-on-year decline in retail sales in April, Portfolio reports.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Contentious Australia-first rent bidding revamp shelved

    An Australia-first proposal to make rent bidding transparent has been shelved after warnings of even worse inflation were aired by tenant and landlord advocates.

    Designed to help level the playing field for tenants and assist with the costs of renting, a ban on secret rent bidding would spark legal rental auctions and further push up prices, an inquiry into the proposal heard late last week.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Labor rejects claim wage rise to blame for rates hike

    The federal government has rejected claims the latest hike in interest rates was partially driven by its decision to back wage rises for low-paid workers.

    The Reserve Bank of Australia on Tuesday hiked the key cash interest rate to 4.1 per cent in another blow for mortgage holders.

  • New York Times ☛ World Bank Projects Weak Global Growth Amid Rising Interest Rates [Ed: Growth in what? The currencies lose their value rapidly.]

    A new report projects that economic growth will slow this year and remain weak in 2024.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Inflation-beating pay rises can’t be widespread: RBA [Ed: The banksters are starving the poor]

    The wages of the lowest-paid workers should be protected from the rising cost of living but not everyone should expect a pay rise that eclipses inflation, the central bank head says.

    Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe has clarified his thinking about swelling pay packets and the inflationary outlook after the RBA’s interest rate decision on Tuesday.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Australia on ‘narrow path’ to bring down inflation: RBA

    Australia is still on track to bring inflation down without triggering a recession but this “narrow path” is littered with risks, Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe says. 

    Tuesday’s interest rate hike – the 12th in a particularly assertive tightening cycle – will ensure inflation comes back within its two-to-three per cent target range in a “reasonable timeframe”.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Failure of the US Monetary System and the Solution

    The debt-ceiling crisis that recently played out in Washington between budget-cutting Republicans and the further explosion of debt under the Biden administration highlights again the failure of the US monetary system to provide effective liquidity for the world’s largest economy. 

  • Michael West Media ☛ World Bank lifts 2023 growth forecasts, cuts outlook

    The World Bank has raised its 2023 global growth outlook as the US, China and other major economies have proven more resilient than forecast but says higher interest rates and tighter credit will take a bigger toll on next year’s results.

    Real global GDP is set to climb 2.1 per cent this year, the World Bank said in its latest Global Economic Prospects report – up from a 1.7 per cent forecast issued in January but well below the 2022 growth rate of 3.1 per cent.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Jenny Craig to cease trading, employees made redundant

    Weight loss giant Jenny Craig will immediately cease trading from stores across Australia with employees to be made redundant after the company failed to sell its Australian and New Zealand operations of the brand.

    FTI Consulting took the reins of the weight management service’s Australian and New Zealand operations last month after they slipped into voluntary administration.

  • Michael West Media ☛ US debt ceiling talks rekindle feud over Ukraine funds

    The battle to raise the $US31.4 ($A47.2) trillion US debt ceiling has rekindled debate in Congress over funding for Ukraine, as House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he has no immediate plans to take up legislation to boost defence spending beyond what was in the deal.

    McCarthy’s comments could signal a tougher road through Congress when President Joe Biden next asks for additional funds for Ukraine. 

  • Quartz ☛ Singapore will shut down its oldest and only racecourse to build more homes

    Amid a housing crunch, Singapore’s only racecourse is being cleared to make way for more homes.

  • France24 ☛ Nationwide protests against pension reform see lowest turnout since January

    A mere 300,000 people participated in demonstrations in Paris on Tuesday according to the CGT union, the lowest since protests against the government’s deeply unpopular pension reform started in January, while police put turnout at 31,000. Despite the low numbers, French unions remain determined in their fight againt raising France’s retirement age. Read our live blog to see how all the day’s events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

  • New York Times ☛ French Pension Plan Protests Erupt Again

    After months of widespread protests failed to budge the government, opponents acknowledge that the chances of turning the tide now are slim.

  • JURIST ☛ France unions stage potentially last nation-wide protests against pension reforms

    French union activists and protesters once again took to the streets Tuesday to protest the controversial pension reform bill, which first sparked mass protests back in January. While tens of thousands of people still turned out to protest, the turnout—as of the time of this report—is lower than previous protests.

  • The Nation ☛ Congress Is Sticking Students With the Check

    As centrist Washington rallies around the Fiscal Responsibility Act—the GOP austerity bill blessed by the Biden White House as a shining example of elegant, difference-trimming compromise—student debtors are facing a far less pleasing lesson in bipartisan lawmaking. The debt agreement abolishes the pandemic-era pause on student debt repayments—a senselessly punitive reversal that comes as the US Supreme Court is preparing to decide a right-wing challenge to President Joe Biden’s own student debt-relief plan, pledging $20,000 in debt forgiveness per borrower. It will almost certainly rule in favor of the plaintiffs seeking its overthrow. In this charged atmosphere, Biden’s mishandling of the debt crisis is a stunning repudiation of yet another bold claim that Biden has made about his egalitarian record: commitment to relieve “unsustainable debt” for college students seeking basic middle-class economic security, and to “fix a broken system” of spiraling tuition and debt for college students.

  • La Quadature Du Net ☛ Family Branch of the French Welfare System: technology in the service of exclusion and harassment of the most vulnerable

  • Yahoo News ☛ Reddit to Lay Off 5% of Workforce, Citing Company Restructuring

    Reddit confirmed it was laying off approximately 5% of its workforce, or 90 employees, on Tuesday — in line with most other noteworthy tech companies — to make 2023 a year of layoffs and cost-cutting measures.

    The Wall Street Journal broke the news, revealing that Reddit’s laying off employees and looking to cut down on costs in an effort to break even next year. Furthermore, the company’s previous projections of hiring 300 people by the end of 2023 have been slashed down to 100.

  • The Wall Street Journal ☛ Reddit Laying Off About 90 Employees and Slowing Hiring Amid Restructuring

  • CNN’s Licht Apologizes To Newsroom, As Critics’ Dire Predictions Intensify

    “CNN is not about me,” he said, according to multiple reports based on a transcription, and inside sources. “I should not be in the news unless it’s taking arrows for you.” Licht also vowed to “fight like hell” to earn back the newsroom’s trust.

  • Android Headlines ☛ T-Mobile lays off almost 70% of its notable customer service team

    Several tech companies are dropping their workers like ballasts as they struggle to take on the diminishing economy. Job cuts are affecting major companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, Etc. T-Mobile is no stranger to this as the company has dropped several hundred more employees. According to The Mobile Report, T-Mobile laid off nearly 70% of its notable T-Force customer service team.

    If you are unfamiliar with what T-Force is, it’s T-Mobile’s very notable team of customer service specialists. They were introduced back in 2018 when John Legere was the CEO. The consisted of several call centers full of waiting customer service representatives to help people with their troubles.

  • Quartz ☛ What happens if the SEC’s Coinbase lawsuit lands at the Supreme Court?

    The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has the potential to significantly diminish either the crypto industry’s presence in the US, or the power of the SEC.

  • Quartz ☛ The SEC is finally making good on its threats to rein in crypto

    The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued the crypto company Coinbase, one day after filing a lawsuit against Binance. Nearly a year after SEC chair Gary Gensler asserted that most cryptocurrencies are, in fact, securities, the agency is finally trying to bring the crypto industry into compliance.

  • Latvia ☛ Latvia ranks low in EU for social protection spending

    New data published by Eurostat May 5 shows that Latvia is close to the bottom of the list in the European Union when it comes to social protection expenditure.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia wins appeal against partial award in $20b claim by sultan’s heirs

    The decision, which is final and binding, is a decisive victory for Malaysia, the law minister said.

  • Craig Murray ☛ The Framing of Jeremy Corbyn

    On Sunday I spoke alongside Jeremy Corbyn and others at a packed meeting in Oslo to discuss freedom in the modern world, with particular reference to Julian Assange and to Guantanamo. It was a truly inspirational event.

  • The Nation ☛ Cornel West’s Presidential Run Is Already Shaking Up the 2024 Race

    After decades of challenging the Democratic Party from within and without, professor and progressive activist Cornel West announced on Monday that he is running for president in 2024 as the candidate of the independent progressive People’s Party.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ The latest from Arte Weekly: A look at the lasting scars the pandemic left on the mental health of Europe’s youth, and the political gamble of Spain’s socialist party

    Spain’s socialist leader Pedro Sanchez is betting his party’s survival on voters’ desire to keep the far right out of government. Although the pandemic is officially over, it has had a lasting impact on the mental health of young people across Europe. The Afghan artist Kubra Khademi’s bold artwork of the female body explores politics, culture and the patriarchy.

  • The Nation ☛ Spain’s Left Is in Turmoil—and Now It’s Facing a Huge Electoral Test

    Is Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez a political chameleon, a phoenix, or a kamikaze? This is the question running through the minds of many on the left in Spain after May 29, when, less than 12 hours after his Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) was humiliated in local and regional elections across the country, Sánchez suddenly announced that he was dissolving the parliament and calling a general election for July 23—a full five months earlier than expected.

  • The Nation ☛ The GOP Is Not Gaining Black Voters

    Increasingly, Republicans are going after Black candidates for higher office. The GOP has fielded multiple Black nominees for statewide office and encouraged South Carolina Senator Tim Scott to run for president. Although these are mainly cynical attempts to peel away some Black support from Democrats, these developments do pose a threat to the party—but not for the reason many pundits think.

  • Techdirt ☛ Welcome To Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, No One Wants To Advertise On Your Terrible Platform Any More

    On Monday of this week, new CEO Linda Yaccarino officially became CEO of Twitter. Of course, basically no one believes that she’s actually the CEO. Everyone knows that Elon Musk, who in the past has mocked the “CEO” title anyway, is still in charge. He still owns the company and is executive chairman, meaning that he can still fire Yaccarino whenever he wants. And he’s still managing the company and its products. Any honest look at what’s happening here would recognize that Yaccarino’s role is somewhere between “VP of Marketing & Advertising” and “the person we sent to meetings when Elon has pissed off someone important.” At best, she’s poised atop that glass cliff, awaiting the inevitable shove from Elon.

  • New York Times ☛ Bolsonaro to Face Trial Over Electoral Fraud Claims

    Brazil’s former president is accused of spreading false information about the nation’s election systems. A conviction would block him from office for eight years.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Reason ☛ First (?) Libel-by-AI (ChatGPT) Lawsuit Filed [Ed: It had to happen. Just a matter of time. Microsoft making libel and plagiarism machines, then MARKETS them as INTELLIGENT!]

      “Every statement of fact in the summary [provided by ChatGPT] pertaining to [plaintiff] Walters is false.”

    • India Times ☛ Is it real or made by AI? Europe wants a label for that as it fights disinformation

      The European Union is pushing online platforms like Google and Meta to step up the fight against false information by adding labels to text, photos and other content generated by artificial intelligence, a top official said Monday.

      EU Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said the ability of a new generation of AI chatbots to create complex content and visuals in seconds raises “fresh challenges for the fight against disinformation.”

    • Techdirt ☛ Possible Reasons Why YouTube Has Given Up Trying To Police 2020 Election Misinfo

      Judging by the number of very angry press releases that landed in my inbox this past Friday, you’d think that YouTube had decided to personally burn down democracy. You see, that day the company announced an update to its approach to moderating election misinformation, effectively saying that it would no longer try to police most such misinformation regarding the legitimacy of the 2020 election:

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong pollster axes release of Tiananmen anniversary survey results, citing gov’t ‘suggestions’

    A Hong Kong pollster said it has cancelled the release of survey results on Hongkongers’ views of the Tiananmen crackdown, citing “suggestions” made by “relevant government department(s).” The findings of the annual survey, conducted by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI), were originally scheduled to be announced on Tuesday.

    [...]

    PORI published a statement hours before the slated release, saying that it was advised by “relevant government department(s)” to cancel the sharing of its June 4th Anniversary Survey Report based on a “risk assessment.”

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Why I lit a candle

    On Sunday, June 4, I went to Victoria Park to light a candle. In Poland, that’s how we commemorate the dead. That’s how we pray for the dead who lost their voice, and the living. Having made friends here during my exchange, I was made aware that Hong Kong used to have a similar tradition.

    [...]

    When I entered Victoria Park, the truth is, I was scared, very scared. I thought I would be arrested, probably even deported. But if that’s what it meant – that in 24-hours I might be on the plane to the safety of home – it was a risk worth taking. My Hong Kong friends don’t have the same luxury.

    In the end, I had nothing to lose as an exchange student, but the action felt important. I wanted to show that the exchange students are aware of what Hong Kong is going through. We know. We might be foreigners, but we are not foreign to Hong Kong’s struggle.

  • [Repeat] Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ‘To care, to express our sorrow’: Taiwan hosts Tiananmen crackdown remembrance vigil

    Hundreds gathered in Taiwan’s capital on Sunday to mark the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown – a show of solidarity as Beijing continues to censor all trace of the 1989 incident.

    The annual vigil took place outside Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, with speakers including Chinese human rights lawyer Chen Jiangang, Taiwanese NGO worker Lee Ming-che, Danish artist Jens Galschiøt via video link, and ex-Tiananmen student leader Zhou Fengsuo — who spoke from New York, home to the world’s only museum about the crackdown.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Gov’t seeks to ban protest song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’, including from internet

    The government is seeking a legal injunction, and interim injunction, to ban unlawful acts relating to the 2019 protest song Glory to Hong Kong, the lyrics of which contain a slogan that has been deemed a call for secession.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong police remove ‘seditious’ Tiananmen crackdown candle banner from Sai Kung shop

    The store owner Debby Chan, a former district councillor, told HKFP that a banner was hung on the gate on Sunday. The date marked the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

    On Monday morning, some neighbours sent her photos of several police officers outside her store before the banner was removed and a notice was put on the gate, Chan told HKFP.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong law is ‘clearly stated,’ John Lee says when asked about arrests over Tiananmen crackdown anniversary

    Hong Kong’s law is “clearly stated,” Chief Executive John Lee has said when asked to explain the reason behind a number of arrests made in relation to the Tiananmen crackdown anniversary.

  • The Register UK ☛ Hong Kong tries to outlaw uploads of unofficial and anti-Beijing anthem

    The government of Hong Kong has sought an injunction to prevent performance and distribution, including online, of a song that has been mistaken for its national anthem.

    The song is titled “Glory to Hong Kong” and was composed as part of protests against the winding back of democratic freedoms in the Chinese territory.

    The ditty became popular among protestors and was widely shared – so widely shared that Google’s search engine often produces results naming it the Special Administrative Region’s (SAR) official anthem.

  • Reason ☛ Someone Trying to Vanish My Article About People Trying to Vanish Articles

    In 2021, I published Shenanigans (Internet Takedown Edition) in the Utah Law Review; the article is about people using various schemes—some of which included forgeries and frauds—to get material vanished from Internet search results. (You can read the Introduction below.)

    Yesterday, I saw that someone tried to use a different scheme, which I briefly mentioned in the article (pp. 300-01), to try to deindex the Utah Law Review version of my article: They sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice to Google claiming that they owned the copyright in my article, and that the Utah Law Review version was an unauthorized copy of the version that I had posted on my own site: [...]

  • El País ☛ China on the anniversary of Tiananmen massacre: Between oblivion and silence

    “Oblivion and silence,” sums up a European diplomatic source based in Beijing. Thirty-four years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, those two words are what best define the mood on the anniversary of the bloody repression of June 4, 1989 against peaceful protesters who had spent weeks in Tiananmen Square demanding political reforms from the Chinese government.

    For several years now there has not even been an official ceremony in Hong Kong. The island, returned by the United Kingdom to China in 1997, was for decades the only stronghold in the People’s Republic where massive vigils were organized annually in memory of the victims of the 1989 student protests. But a growing crackdown on freedoms in the former British colony, where a harsh National Security Law has been in force since 2020, has resulted in another year of forgetfulness.

  • RFA ☛ Young overseas Chinese mark 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre

    Chinese students in Britain, the United States and elsewhere outside their homeland led vigils and rallies over the weekend marking the anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre despite threats and potential violence from agents and government supporters.

    A group of overseas students in London called the “China Deviants” staged a rally in Trafalgar Square on Sunday, displaying posters and photos of the massacre, alongside plastic tanks and other props.

    In actions that imitated the banners, headband slogans brought by the young people who once congregated in their thousands on Tiananmen Square 34 years ago, the students’ slogans also spoke eloquently to their own generation in the wake of the “white paper” protests of November 2022.

  • [Repeat] JURIST ☛ Russia bans ‘unfriendly countries’ journalists from economic gathering

    A spokesman for the Kremlin Dmitri Peskov announced on Sunday that journalists from ‘unfriendly countries’ were banned from covering St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) which is scheduled for mid June. The ban, announced just days before the event, effectively prohibits independent media organizations and critical journalists from reporting on one of Russia’s most prominent economic gatherings. No journalists from Western countries will be accredited to attend for the first time in history. Peskov stated “Yes, indeed. It was decided not to accredit media outlets from unfriendly countries to the SPIEF this time.”

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Narendra Modi Is Developing a New Template for Authoritarian Control of the Internet

    Many journalists have been jailed for reporting on issues that displeased Modi’s government. The Indian authorities have raided the offices of human rights organizations like Amnesty International and frozen their bank accounts, accusing them of money laundering. In February of this year, there were raids on the BBC’s local offices after the British channel broadcast a documentary that criticized Modi’s handling of the 2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat when he was the state’s chief minister.

    Most of the Indian media supports Modi and has either misrepresented this crackdown or ignored it altogether. New Delhi Television (NDTV) was one of the last remaining news channels that maintained a semblance of neutrality and reported on uncomfortable issues. However, a wealthy Gujarati businessman and Modi supporter, Gautam Adani, recently purchased NDTV in a hostile takeover. Many of NDTV’s leading news anchors resigned after the takeover, anticipating a change in its editorial policies.

    With near-total control of the conventional print and broadcast media, one can only find unbiased and critical reporting in the independent news platforms that are available online. But Modi and the BJP are now seeking to crack down on the space offered by the [Internet] for dissenting voices. The moves it is making could establish a wider template for authoritarian control of online space and platforms.

  • The Nation ☛ Like It or Not, Cancel Culture Is Free Speech

    When I wrote a cover ­story about the so-called “father of gynecology,” J. Marion Sims, for the November 2017 edition of Harper’s Magazine, I wanted to take him down. To ruin his reputation and topple the statues of him. I didn’t realize it would make me an apologist for cancel culture.

  • Techdirt ☛ Techdirt Podcast Episode 353: Moderator Mayhem!

    Last month, in partnership with Engine, we launched our new browser game that puts you in the shoes of a frontline content moderation worker at a growing online platform: Moderator Mayhem. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can play it in your browser on mobile or desktop. The response to the game has been great, and this week Mike is joined on the podcast by myself, our game design partner Randy Lubin of Leveraged Play, and Engine executive director Kate Tummarello who spearheaded the project, to discuss how we built Moderator Mayhem and the impact it’s been having so far.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Twitter Files Extra: How the World’s ‘No-Kidding Decision Makers’ Got Organized

    The Atlantic Council is hosting its 360/0S Summit at RightsCon this week, and Twitter Files documents tell us more about how this VIP-room-within-a-VIP-room was formed.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • [Repeat] teleSUR ☛ US Gannett Journalists Go on Strike

    On Monday, hundreds of journalists joined a strike to demand a change in management at Gannett, a business group that controls newspapers like USA Today.

    Their protest coincides with Gannett’s annual meeting of shareholders who have been asked by protesters to withdraw their trust from CEO Mike Reed.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong police urged to give explanation after journalist taken away on Tiananmen crackdown anniversary

    The move of putting veteran journalist Mak Yin-ting in police custody in Causeway Bay on Sunday without giving any reason amounted to “seriously hindering reporting,” the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) said in a statement issued on Monday.

  • RFERL ☛ European Rights Court Slams Russia’s Failure To Adequately Investigate Navalny Poisoning

    The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Russian authorities failed to adequately investigate the poisoning in 2020 of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, thus violating his right to life and a proper investigation under the European Convention of Human Rights.

  • RFERL ☛ Journalists Not Allowed To Attend Navalny’s New Trial Inside Russian Prison

    The administration of a prison in Russia’s Vladimir region has barred journalists from entering the facility, where the preliminary hearing into a new criminal case against already jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny is set to start on June 6.

  • teleSUR ☛ Russia-South Africa Mass Media Partnership’s Prospects Are Huge [Ed: Russia exporting lies]

    The BRICS Africa Channel editor-in-chief tells TV BRICS about the opportunities in the South African media market.

  • Axios ☛ Chaos looms over CNN

    CNN is on edge following a chaotic weekend of media reports and headlines suggesting CEO Chris Licht’s days at the network are numbered.

    Why it matters: The network was already under enormous stress following years of corporate mergers, product pivots and evaporating cable viewership.

  • EFF ☛ To Save the News, We Must Open Up App Stores

    When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad in 2010, he didn’t just usher in a new kind of computing device – the first mainstream touchscreen tablet – he also promised a new model for internet-based publishing: paid subscriptions.

    Jobs railed against the world of advertising-supported web publishing, correctly identifying it as the pretense for the creation of a vast, dangerous unaccountable surveillance system that  the private sector would build, but which cops and spies enjoyed unfettered, warrantless access to.

    Jobs promised a better internet: he promised publishers that if they expended the capital to build apps for his new tablets, that he would free them from the increasingly concentrated and aggressive surveillance advertising sector. Instead of paying for journalism with ads, Jobs promised that publishers would be able to sign up subscribers who’d pay cash money, breaking the uneasy coalition between surveillance and journalism.

  • Democracy Now ☛ “Enough Is Enough”: Australian PM Throws Support Behind Movement to Free Julian Assange

    A growing number of politicians, including Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, are calling on the United States to drop its case against WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange, who has been locked up for four years in London’s Belmarsh prison awaiting possible extradition to face espionage and hacking charges for publishing leaked documents about U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among Assange’s supporters is Australian human rights attorney Jen Robinson, who has been a legal adviser to Assange since 2010. She joins us from London, where she calls for the case against Assange to be dropped and warns that continuing his prosecution “threatens free speech around the world.”

  • Scheerpost ☛ 15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists

    By Caitlin Johnstone / CaitlinJohnstone.com If you watch western news media with a critical eye you eventually notice how their reporting consistently aligns with the interests of the US-centralized empire, in almost the same way you’d expect them to if they were government-run propaganda outlets. The New York Times has reliably supported every war the US […]

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFERL ☛ Speculation Rises Over Death Of Iranian Ex-Policewoman After Her Release From Custody

    A former member of Iran’s police force who resigned in protest against the suppression of demonstrators, is said to have died under what colleagues say were suspicious circumstances.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Fleeting Utopia: Navigating The Euphoria Of New Digital Communities

    Joining a new digital community can be an exhilarating and empowering experience. This has been observed on numerous occasions when people join new platforms such as Nostr, BlueSky, Farcaster, Post.news, Tribel, and many others, as well as older social media platforms such as blogs, Usenet, LiveJournal, Xanga, AOL, Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

  • Quartz ☛ Two planes of migrants landed in California within a week—both flown by the same air charter company

    Days after a planeload of Latin American migrants arrived on a private jet at a small Sacramento airport, a second such group has landed in California’s capital.

  • Latvia ☛ Rīga Mayor: pride flag above city council was a one-person decision

    Riga Mayor Mārtiņš Staķis told Latvian Radio June 6 that the decision on hanging the pride flag at the City Council building was taken by himself alone, to express solidarity with the LGBT+ community.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Racist message, dead raccoon left for Oregon mayor, Black city council member

    Authorities say someone left a dead raccoon and a sign with “intimidating language” outside an Oregon city mayor’s law office. The Redmond Police Department says the raccoon and the sign were found Monday and named both Redmond Mayor Ed Fitch and Redmond City Councilor Clifford Evelyn, who is Black. The Bulletin reports that Fitch characterized the sign’s language as “racially hateful.” Evelyn described the act as a hate crime in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting. He says he has confidence in the police investigation.

  • NYPost ☛ Southern Poverty Law Center adds parental rights groups to ‘hate and extremism’ report

    “Schools, especially, have been on the receiving end of ramped-up and coordinated hard-right attacks, frequently through the guise of ‘parents’ rights’ groups,” the SPLC’s report argues.

  • New York Times ☛ The Immigrant Experience in a Danish Butter Cookie Tin

    Ubiquitous in immigrant households, the cookie tin might be a more apt metaphor for our journeys than the melting pot.

  • Onur Yaser Can case: Police officers receive lenient sentences in prolonged trial

    Onur Yaser Can, a 28, took his own life in 2010 following alleged torture by narcotics police. After years of legal proceedings, four officers were ultimately convicted of “tampering or destroying official documents.” The plaintiff’s lawyers will appeal the decision, urging for the officers to be face trial for torture.

  • Reason ☛ Women-Only Naked Spa Lacks Constitutional Right to Exclude Transgender Patrons with Pensises

    From Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein’s opinion yesterday in Olympus Spa v. Armstrong (W.D. Wash.): The Olympus Spa is a Korean spa “specifically designed for women,” and the services offered there “are closely tied to the Korean tradition,” meaning patrons are “require[d] … to be naked” during certain services.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Customer ran amok in a restaurant in Malaysia after being called ‘pak cik’, say cops

    Mr Wan Azlan said the authorities are tracing the suspect’s whereabouts.

  • [Repeat] teleSUR ☛ 77 Schoolgirls Poisoned in Afghanistan

    The Taliban have banned secondary and higher education for women since they came to power on August 15, 2021. Other gender-related restrictions include mandatory face coverings, segregation by sex, and requiring women to travel accompanied by a male relative.

  • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ Nearly 90 Afghan Schoolgirls Were Poisoned, Officials Suspect

    In March last year, the Taliban administration barred girls from attending high schools and in November, it prohibited women from attending university. Women have also been barred from going to many public places like gyms and parks, traveling any significant distance without a male relative and working in most fields outside of the private sector and health care.

  • NL Times ☛ Hundreds of young Dutch people at risk of forced marriage during summer holiday

    Hundreds of young Dutch people are at risk of forced marriage and abandonment abroad during the summer period because they often miss signs of danger. They are blind to these issues, often out of loyalty to their family, so that a seemingly innocent family visit abroad can end in a “one-way trip,” claimed the LKHA, a Dutch information center specialized in research and policy regarding forced marriage and abandonment.

    Victims realize only afterwards that there were signs, such as a sudden departure or a lack of control over their passport, visa or tickets. “For example, victims are kept out of certain conversations, or no return ticket has been booked for the victim,” the LKHA said.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Task force to bring aged care back from the brink

    The unanswered question of the royal commission into aged care will be tackled by a new expert group seeking to lift standards, improve funding models and put people’s rights at the centre of the system. 

    Aged Care Minister Anika Wells will lead a task force of economic, finance, public policy, First Nations and consumer advocacy representatives who will provide the federal government with the next steps in sector reform.

  • The Nation ☛ Country of Immigrants

  • The Nation ☛ How Black Women Writers Got It Done

    In the early 1980s, two Black women sat at a table, a tape recorder between them. One, Margaret Walker, was an elder, a trailblazing writer and educator who had endured untold obstacles since her career began in the 1940s. The other, Claudia Tate, was a young academic hard at work on her first book: a study of Black women writers who, like Walker, had found success in spite of the misogynoir of the American literary landscape. “People think that [Richard] Wright helped me and my writing,” Walker told Tate, the hurt and indignation in her voice. “But I was writing poetry as a child in New Orleans. I had published in The Crisis even before I ever met Wright…. Do you believe I was just being introduced to literature by Wright?” Though Tate had never suggested that, decades of snubs and indignities animated Walker’s defensiveness. Eventually, though, she softened. “Here’s one of Wright’s letters,” she said, and I can imagine Walker rummaging through an armoire, or a filing cabinet, to deliver these precious yellowed memories into Tate’s lap. It is a beautiful thing to picture her, after shadowboxing her invisible detractors, realizing that the young Black woman sitting in front of her can be trusted.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Progressive Groups Sue Mississippi Over ‘Unconstitutional’ Anti-Protest Law

    “We should not have to risk arrest and imprisonment for exercising our constitutional rights, including freedom of speech and equal protection under the law,” asserted one of the plaintiffs.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Former Prisoner of 48 Years Reviews John Oliver’s Report on Solitary Confinement

    Mansa Musa, who spent 48 years in prison, talks about what John Oliver’s recent Last Week Tonight segment on solitary confinement gets right and what it leaves out, including the fact that solitary was used to isolate Black Panthers and other radicals entering the prison system in the ’70s.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Nominations now open for NRO NC election 2023

    Submit a nomination now for the open seat on the NRO NC. Nominations close on 7 August 2023.

  • APNIC ☛ IPv6: A retrospective look

    A look at current IPv6 numbers, anomalies, and outliers around the region.

  • APNIC ☛ Event Wrap: RIPE 86

    Geoff Huston presented on DNSSEC and resolver use at RIPE 86, held from 22 to 26 May 2023 in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

  • APNIC ☛ Event Wrap: BKNIX Peering Forum 2023 and ThaiNOG 5

    Wita Laksono gave an update on APNIC measurements and products at the BKNIX Peering Forum 2023, held in conjunction with ThaiNOG 5, in Bangkok, Thailand from 15 to 16 May 2023.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • TechStory Media ☛ Spotify to lay off 200 workers in podcast division – TechStory

    On Monday, Spotify Technology SA said it would slack off 200 employees in its podcast division, which is about 2 per cent of the audio streamer’s global workforce.
    The company has complied to aggressive methods of expansion to compensate for its earnings from music streaming with other revenue-generating formats including podcasts, spending more than $1 billion on them and adding popular names such as Joe Rogan and Meghan, Duchhess of Sussex, to its brand campaign.

  • Techdirt ☛ Disney Gets A Nice Fat Tax Break For Making Its Streaming Catalog Worse

    We just got done discussing how, as the streaming video space consolidates and grows, it’s starting to behave more and more like the unpopular, consolidated cable and broadcast companies they once disrupted. Cory Doctorow’s theory of enshittification has come to streaming, in a big way.

• Monopolies

  • The Nation ☛ AI Doesn’t Pose an Existential Risk—but Silicon Valley Does

    A coalition of the willing has united to confront what they say is a menace that could destroy us all: artificial intelligence. More than 350 executives, engineers, and researchers who work on AI have signed a pithy one-sentence statement: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.” But like the target of the last infamous coalition of the willing—Saddam Hussein and his mythical “weapons of mass destruction”—there is no existential threat here.

  • EU/EC

    • European Commission ☛ Political agreement on new Anti-Coercion Instrument to better defend EU interests on global stage [Ed: The same EC that helped EPO and patent profiteers break the law, violate constitutions, to the detriment of "EU interests on global stage" with the insane Unified Patent Court]

      European Commission Press release Brussels, 06 Jun 2023 The European Parliament and the Council have today reached a final political agreement on the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI).

    • European Commission ☛ €2.2 million from European Globalisation Adjustment Fund to support 600 dismissed workers in Belgium [Ed: While at the same time attacking all Belgium SMEs by unlawfully bringing Unified Patent Court into force]

      European Commission Press release Brussels, 06 Jun 2023 Today, the European Commission proposed to support 603 workers dismissed by a logistics company in Belgium with €2.2 million from the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund for Displaced Workers (EGF).

    • Telex (Hungary) ☛ OLAF opened 15 investigations into suspected fraud in Hungary last year [Ed: EU says it cracks down on fraud. So why does EU PARTICIPATE in the EPO fraud? Why did it start a fraudulent court illegal and unconstitutionally? Where does "fraud" seem acceptable?]

      The EU’s Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has published its annual report, which shows that in 2022 it opened 15 investigations into suspected fraud in Hungary, and in ten of these, the office proposed some kind of financial consequence. The investigation didn’t just compare EU member states, but included other countries where EU funds are used as well, Hvg.hu reports.

  • Trademarks

    • Reason ☛ S. Ct. Will Decide “TRUMP TOO SMALL” Trademark / First Amendment Case

      The government, on the other hand, argues that the trademark registration scheme should be treated like government subsidies, which can generally be distributed in content-based but reasonable and viewpoint-neutral ways. (For instance, the charitable tax exemption can be limited to groups that don’t use the exemption to advocate for or against candidates, because the exemption is a subsidy and the no-electioneering condition is viewed as reasonable and viewpoint-neutral.) The Court will presumably hear the case this Fall, and will decide it by June 2024.

  • Copyrights

    • Public Domain Review ☛ In the Mind of Marie: A Haunting Encounter in the Gardens of Versailles (1913)

      Time travel with a hairpin twist: two women land in the psyche of Marie Antoinette in 1792, while she is thinking about 1789.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Stray Kids Smashes K-Pop Record with More Than 5 Million Album Pre-Sales

      K-pop boy band Stray Kids smashes records with five million-plus album pre-sales and more than two million copies sold on day one in South Korea. On the day of its release, Stray Kids’ comeback album 5 Star quickly became one of the bestselling titles in South Korea this year.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Manga Publishers Seek Google Analytics Data to Back $14m Piracy Damages Claim

      Manga publishers Kodakawa, Shogakukan, and Shueisha hope to recoup millions of dollars in damages from the operator of Mangamura, which was once the largest manga piracy site. To assist in their legal battle in Japan, the publishers went to a U.S. federal court this week, requesting traffic stats and personal data from the site’s accounts at Google and Cloudflare.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Dodgy RARBG Knockoffs Thrive as Former Users Seek Refuge

      While the shutdown of RARBG is bad news for former users, scammers are happily exploiting the confusion to boost their own traffic. One copycat in particular, which has been around for years, has sneakily managed to convince some people that the site hasn’t been shut down. RARGB is working just fine! Oh, wait…

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Rightscorp Taps Indie Labels to Fuel New Wave of Piracy Settlement Action

      After somehow managing to survive years of losses that pushed the company ever closer to bankruptcy, Rightscorp’s piracy settlement model suddenly underpinned recording industry lawsuits against ISPs in the United States. After joining the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), Rightscorp hopes that the Indie sector will reinvigorate its fortunes.

    • Creative Commons ☛ Ellen Euler — Open Culture VOICES, Season 2 Episode 18

      Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage. Ellen is a Lawyer and Cultural Heritage professional who is currently a Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam where she teaches about open access in the Library and Information Sciences department.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • Looking out or in?

    I really do miss writing. For whatever reason I’ve been in a major dry spell for the last several months, and it’s hard to understand. Self-doubt is likely contributing, but that’s always been there, and it doesn’t seem like it’s any worse these days than at any other point.

    There’s certainly a degree of “what” involved (as in, what I want to write about). On the one hand, I was bolstered recently by a quote from Alan Moore (he of many great comic books), that a writer’s job isn’t to tell people what to think, but rather to make them think. At the least, I’m encouraged by the idea that I don’t necessarily have to figure out a problem to talk about it, especially since so many solutions (that I can come up with, at least) boil down to “be less terrible.”

  • 🔤SpellBinding: DLNOSUY Wordo: INEP

  • Hybrid Shadows – Watched, Waterfall

    Following is the next screen to Hybrid Shadows. With this one I wanted to bring out Kendra’s and Matthew’s personalities more, as well as to further develop their relationship.

    This scene took a while for me to write. It it supposed to be a fun scene before things start to get more serious in the story.

    This might happen with all authors, I don’t know, but as I write stories, I keep wanting to put in more and more character and relationship building, and I get the idea that after a while I need to cut things off. Otherwise, my story will be 90% relationship and 10% action. Which kinda sounds fun, but I do want the story to proceed, and not be a million words long

• Technical

  • OpenKuBSD design document

    I got an idea today (while taking a shower…) about _partially_ reusing Qubes OS design of using VMs to separate contexts and programs, but doing so on OpenBSD.

    To make explanations CLEAR, I won’t reimplement Qubes OS entirely on OpenBSD. Qubes OS is an interesting operating system with a very strong focus on security (from a very practical point of view ), but it’s in my opinion overkill for most users, and hence not always practical or usable.

    In the meantime, I think the core design could be reused and made it easy for users, like we are used to do in OpenBSD.

  • Install OpenBSD in Qubes OS

    Here is a short guide explaining how to install OpenBSD in Qubes OS, as an HVM VM (fully virtualized, not integrated).

  • alternative input methods

    Yesterday I watched a bit of the Apple announcement and remembered a project I was working on in my last year of college. nowadays not just VR/AR but smartphones and other devices can just listen to spoken commands and accurately recognize the words, but in 2009 speech recognition was not good, specially with non native English speakers or people with non standard accents.

    Visually impaired users had a couple options: mobile devices with physical keyboards (but blackberry was going the other way, to all screen devices) or alternative input methods. I was developing a braille based software keyboard for touchscreen devices, but of course there were many approaches. Having the braille layout on top of the screen and tapping on it as if it were a chorded keyboard was one way.

  • Qubes OS dom0 files workflow using fossil

    Since I’m using Qubes OS, I always faced an issue; I need a proper tracking of the configuration files for my systemthis can be done using Salt as I explained in a previous blog post. But what I really want is a version control system allowing me to synchronize changes to a remote repository (it’s absurd to backup dom0 for every change I make to a salt file). So far, git is too complicated to achieve that.

    I gave a try with fossil, a tool I like (I wrote about this one too ), and it was surprisingly easy to setup remote access leveraging Qubes’qvm-run.

    In this blog post, you will learn how to setup a remote fossil repository, and how to use it from your dom0.

  • Qubes OS dom0 files workflow using fossil

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Charting the Cosmos

      Cosmos has been up and running since the start of 2022, collecting gemlog posts and other feed entries around Geminispace. I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at the data.

      [...]

      * The coverage may favor more distant past because sometimes aggregators will surface multiple past entries from a feed that haven’t previously been discovered (for instance, CAPCOM may do this). Does this account for the dip? Probably not, but one would have to compare the data against a more thoroughly crawled index to see if all entries from all known feeds are actually present.

GNU/Linux

• ZDNet ☛ Linux distro hopping is a fun way to find the perfect desktop operating system | ZDNET

  I’ve been using System76′s Pop!_OS Linux for about five years now. Prior to that, my distribution of choice was elementary OS. Why the change? Mostly because I purchased System76 desktop machines (first the Leopard Extreme and then the Thelio) and Pop!_OS was the default distribution. I took to Pop!_OS almost immediately. Essentially, it was System76′s take on GNOME, which offered a few extras that made perfect sense.

  But over time, a couple of things happened. First off, System76 started focusing on its own in-house OS, Cosmic desktop, with the goal of creating something altogether new. The problem with that was updates started to become few and fewer and then System76 decided to skip the 23.04 update completely. Of course, that’s not a terrible thing, as 23.04 was not an LTS (Long Term Support) release. And Pop!_OS 22.04 was still getting security updates.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ There Is No Distro | LINUX Unplugged 513

    We attempt to swap Linux distributions live on our production server, to prove that new tooling makes the Linux distro model obsolete.

  • WordPress ☛ WP Briefing: Episode 57: The Power of WordPress Mentorship

    Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 57th episode of the WordPress Briefing as she discusses the Contributor Mentorship Program to help increase the success of new contributors over time.

• Graphics Stack

  • Mike Blumenkrantz: Blogs

    I’ve been monitoring the issues everyone’s been reporting for GAMES THAT DON’T RENDER GOOD, and before I got sucked into doing this (huge) thing that I’m totally gonna talk about at some point, I was actually organizing some of the reports into tables and such. And investigating them. And one of the ones I was looking at was some broken sampling in Wolfenstein:

    Some weird grid lines being rendered there. And so I took out my trusty

    chainsaw renderdoc, and I looked at the shaders, and, well, I’m not about to bore you with the details, but they were totally unreadable. It turns out that all the “free” bitcasting zink does during SPIRV translation isn’t actually free when you gotta read it.

• Applications

  • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ KeePass 2.54 Released! How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

    The KeePass password manager released version 2.54 few days ago. Here are the new features and PPA repository for all current Ubuntu releases. KeePass 2.54 now uses the enforced configuration file for the triggers, global URL overrides, password generator profiles and a few more settings. See more about enforced configuration.

  • Linuxiac ☛ Angie 1.2.0 Web Server Released with Sticky Sessions Support

    The third stable release of Angie, a drop-in replacement of the popular Nginx web server, comes with some exciting new features.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Image Manipulation Made Easy: Working with Docker Images via APIs

    From advertising to e-commerce, images play a crucial role in attracting and engaging customers. However, manipulating images can be a complex and time-consuming process that requires specialized skills and tools.

  • DebugPoint ☛ How to Install Latest Kernel in Ubuntu, Linux Mint

    Here are two ways to install the latest mainline Kernel in Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Ubuntu releases (including LTS) and Linux Mint usually ships stable mainline Linux Kernel, whichever is available before the change freeze during the development phase.

  • Linux Foundation’s Site/Blog ☛ Linux Foundation & RISC-V International Launch RISC-V Fundamentals Course

  • It’s FOSS ☛ How to Prevent Ubuntu from Going into Sleep Mode

    Leave the system for five minutes and it goes into sleep mode? Here’s what you can do to get rid of this annoyance.

  • TecAdmin ☛ Setting Up Angular on Ubuntu: Step-by-Step Guide

    In an increasingly digitized world, the demand for efficient, scalable, and interactive web applications is on the rise. As a result, developers across the globe are turning to powerful tools and frameworks to build these applications.

  • Data Swamp ☛ Declaratively manage your Qubes OS

    As a recent Qubes OS user, but also a NixOS user, I want to be able to reproduce my system configuration instead of fiddling with files everywhere by hand and being clueless about what I changed since the installation time.

  • TecAdmin ☛ Git Switch: Functionality and Practical Examples

    Since its creation, Git has become an essential tool for programmers worldwide. It aids in source code management, collaborative development, and version control, among other things.

  • TecAdmin ☛ Git Restore: Functionality and Practical Examples

    In the wide array of commands offered by Git, a popular version control system, git restore stands as a crucial command for developers worldwide. Introduced in Git 2.23 as a new experimental command, it has become widely used for discarding changes in the working directory and the staging area.

  • SlashGear ☛ How To Use The Raspberry Pi Imager

    With the incredible versatility of the Raspberry Pi, it’s no longer surprising how popular this single-board computer is. It’s at the core of tons of cool and weird projects, like the Raspberry Pi-based Waldo finder, International Space Station tracker, and even drive-thru signages.

    But it’s not only the board’s versatility that makes it a go-to choice among hobbyists and professionals alike. Both beginner and advanced learners love how generally easy it is to start developing with Raspberry Pi. It features a user-friendly OS with a setup wizard. There are also tons of guidebooks and official tutorials available, on top of a starter kit that comes complete with everything you’d need to build a basic Raspberry Pi desktop.

    Read More: https://www.slashgear.com/1301035/how-to-use-the-raspberry-pi-imager/

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • ZDNet ☛ The best tiling window managers for Linux, and what they can do for you

    If you ever want to up your efficiency game in Linux, a tiling window manager might be the ticket. Here’s how these mysterious desktop GUIs work.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Adriaan de Groot ☛ Build the stack on RISC-V

      There’s a little RISC-V board on my desk – little in size, but it has 8GB of RAM and 1TB of storage – which is going to do some KDE build work.

      For some background, The Register
      has a bit on what the Linux Foundation is doing in this space.

      It’s a modern-ish Linux kernel: [...]

Distributions and Operating Systems

• New Releases

  • Barry Kauler ☛ EasyOS Kirkstone-series version 5.3.2 released

    Version 5.3.1 was released on May 24:

    https://bkhome.org/news/202305/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-531.html

    5.3.2 release notes:

    http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.3.2/release-notes.htm

    …if updating from an EasyOS installation prior to 5.3, please read the 5.2.4 release notes.

    An extra note about the prior-5.3 update process:
    After downloading the 5.3.2 difference-file, and subsequently reboot, there may be a dropout to the console early-bootup. Just type “exit” to continue the bootup.

  • Linuxiac ☛ EndeavourOS Released a Refreshed Cassini Nova R2 ISO

    EndeavourOS Cassini Nova R2 brings Calamares bugfixes, Linux kernel 6.3, and an updated package base. The Galileo release is on the horizon.

  • Cassini Nova R2 refresh ISO and a small insight on our development

    It’s been a while since we have been in touch with you, so I thought it was time to give you a small update on what is happening behind the scenes.

  • OSMC’s June update is here with Kodi v20

    We’ve been very busy behind the scenes and we’re now happy to announce the availability Kodi v20 for all OSMC supported devices. All devices supported by OSMC on Kodi v19 remain supported for Kodi v20.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Business Wire ☛ TuxCare’s KernelCare Enterprise Now Supports Red Hat EUS Kernels

    Extending the unmatched coverage of TuxCare’s live patching solution, this new development enables organizations to further enhance security and minimize vulnerability exposure across their Linux systems. KernelCare Enterprise delivers automated live patching for all popular enterprise Linux distributions, uniquely eliminating the need for reboots, downtime, or scheduled maintenance windows.

  • Red Hat Insights Expands Beyond Analytics to Provide Simplified Linux Management

    Red Hat, Inc., a provider of open source solutions, is introducing an expanded set of management capabilities to Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, designed to help reduce enterprise Linux complexity across the hybrid cloud without slowing innovation.

  • Red Hat ☛ How to create an EC2 instance in AWS using Ansible workflow [Ed: Red Hat on outsourcing to Amazon (proprietary)]

    In our previous article, we demonstrated how to automate the process of creating an EC2 instance on AWS using the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. We demonstrated how Ansible Automation Platform can streamline the process of deploying virtual machines (VMs) in AWS, making it more efficient and less error-prone. In this final installment, we will take things a step further by exploring how to simplify the process of creating EC2 instances in AWS using workflow templates.

    Workflow templates can help standardize the process of creating instances and reduce the amount of manual intervention. In this article, we will dive into the details of how to use a workflow template to further optimize our infrastructure management in AWS.

    If you are following along with our series, you may recall that we previously discussed the importance of an execution environment and setting up credentials. These are essential steps to complete before deploying a workflow template. In case you missed the previous articles, we recommend you to check them out to ensure you are ready to move forward with the next steps.

  • Red Hat ☛ How to create an EC2 instance in AWS using Ansible automation

    In our previous article, we explored how to use the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform CLI to create an Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in Amazon Web Services (AWS). This time, we will take things a step further and leverage the power of the Ansible Automation Platform to automate the process. Ansible Automation Platform is a powerful tool that enables you to manage your infrastructure more efficiently with less manual intervention.

    Part 1: How to create an EC2 instance on AWS using Ansible CLI

    Part 2: How to create an EC2 instance in AWS using Ansible Automation

    Part 3: How to create EC2 instance on AWS using Ansible workflow

• Debian Family

  • The Register UK ☛ Debian 12 is nearly ready, and reassuringly boring • The Register

    Debian 12 “Bookworm” should arrive in a little over a week from now, with a raft of updated components – and no nasty surprises.

    Debian 12, code-named Bookworm after one of the more obscure Toy Story characters, is scheduled for release on June 10. The developers have put out Release Candidate 4 of the new version’s installation medium, and it seems to be working pretty well, so at this point there shouldn’t be any big changes before the ship date.

    Generally, around the time that a new Linux distribution ships, we try to do a preview story which highlights some of the exciting new features in the forthcoming version. Unfortunately for us, that approach doesn’t work so well for Debian, because “exciting” is not really what Debian does.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • ZDNet ☛ Ubuntu Mate is one of the most popular Ubuntu spins for a reason

    If you’re looking for a Linux distribution with a decidedly old-school feel, Ubuntu Mate might be the ticket.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Lifewire ☛ Android 14: News and Anticipated Price (Free), Release Date, Features and Other Rumors

  • Phone Arena ☛ Leak indicates performance gap between Pixel 8 and Android flagships is going to widen – PhoneArena

  • Engadget ☛ Acura ZDX EV gets Android Auto and built-in Google apps | Engadget

  • 9to5Google ☛ Android Auto disconnects for some following updates

  • Android Central ☛ Best MagSafe accessories for Android phones 2023 | Android Central

  • Gadget Bridge ☛ Top 7 Ways to Fix An Android Device That Won’t Connect To Wi-Fi

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• James G ☛ selfcare.tech Bot on Mastodon

  I subscribed to the selfcare.tech bot on Mastodon a few days ago. The bot has provided messages that have been of particular meaning at a time when, on reflection, I have been a lot harder on myself than I should be.

• Medevel ☛ File centipede: All-in-one Multi-Protocol File Download/ Upload Manager

  File Centipede is a multifunctional internet file manager that offers a comprehensive set of features to satisfy all your file management needs. This all-in-one solution allows you to easily upload and download files, and provides support for a wide range of protocols, including BitTorrent, WebDAV, FTP, and SSH.

  In addition

• Medevel ☛ Ketchup: One of the First CMS Systems with Go Language

  Ketchup is a free and open-source developer-first CMS written using the Go programming language. It uses React for the frontend.

  * BYO (bring your own) version-controlled templates. Develop your templates outside of Ketchup, and pull them in with built-in support for git.

• Medevel ☛ GoBlog Is an Open-source Free Blogging System written with Go

  GoBlog is a fantastic and user-friendly blogging system that is written in the Go language. It is open source and free to use for anyone. One of the amazing features of GoBlog is that it uses a powerful SQLite database to store most of the data, such as posts, comments,

• Silicon Angle ☛ Solid earnings beat and strong forecast send GitLab’s stock soaring [Ed: Fails to mention mass layoffs in the company this year]

  GitLab Inc.’s stock was riding high in extended trading today after the DevOps company posted strong first-quarter results that topped expectations, offered a strong forecast for the coming quarter and raised its full-year guidance.

• Web Browsers/Web Servers

  • Mozilla

    • 9to5Linux ☛ Firefox 115 Beta Brings Cookie Banner Reduction, Quick Actions in Address Bar

      Now that Mozilla officially released the Firefox 114 web browser earlier today, which will be coming soon to the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distributions, it’s time to take a closer look at the next major release, Firefox 115, which entered public beta testing today.

      Firefox 115 looks to bring two new features that were supposed to land in Firefox 114, but, for some reason, they didn’t make it. I’m talking about Cookie Banner Reduction, a feature implemented in the Privacy & Security panel that, when enabled, tries to reject cookie requests on cookie banners on supported websites automatically.

    • Henrik Skupin: My 20th Bugzilla account anniversary

      It’s somewhat scary how fast the time flies by. I can remember that I wrote a post for my 15th Bugzilla anniversary (as it feels not that long ago). But now the next mark has been reached with using Bugzilla for 20 years! A lot has happened in those last 5 years, and I’m sure that the 25th anniversary will come as well.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • LibreOffice project volunteers receive tribute from Mexican institute

    By Gustavo Pacheco Early 2023 , all TDF members in the 2022 Latin America LibreOffice Conference meeting organization received at home a beautiful tribute to the success of the event: a piece in wood and mosaic glass made in Mexico especially created for this homage.

• GNU Projects

  • GNU ☛ GNU Guix: From development environments to continuous integration—the ultimate guide to software development with Guix

    Guix is a handy tool for developers; guix shell, in particular, gives a standalone development environment for your package, no matter what language(s) it’s written in. To benefit from it, you have to initially write a package definition and have it either in Guix proper, in a channel, or directly upstream as a guix.scm file. This last option is appealing: all developers have to do to get set up is clone the project’s repository and run guix shell, with no arguments—we looked at the rationale for guix shell in an earlier article.

• Programming/Development

  • Medevel ☛ Hull: Headless Next.js Starter for Shopify and Headless CMS with Sanity.io

    Hull is a free open-source Next.js starter for anyone who is interested in building a content rich eCommerce shop with full SEO support.

    It is easy to deploy on Vercel platform, and simple to setup. Developers can also deploy it on Sanity or their own servers.

  • Rlang ☛ Mastering file download in shiny

    You can read the original post in its original format on Rtask website by ThinkR here: Mastering file download in shiny

  • Medevel ☛ Next.js Enterprise Boilerplate For Serious Developers

    The Next.js Enterprise Boilerplate is an incredible open-source template designed specifically for enterprise projects. This powerful template is packed with amazing features and functionalities, carefully selected and curated to help you build high-performance, maintainable, and enjoyable applications that are both scalable and efficient. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or

  • Rlang ☛ Stan class at NYR Conference in July (in person and virtual)

    I (Jonah) am excited to be teaching a 2-day Stan workshop preceding the NYR Conference in July. The workshop will be July 11-12 and the conference July 13-14.  

Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ Music Monday: Paul McCartney, Take it Away

  It’s worth its own post, but Clara and I were chuffed at the number of incredible second-hand music stores in Japan, especially vinyl. We got immaculate Japanese Odeon pressings of Rubber Soul, and Paul McCartney’s 1982 masterpiece Tug of War, for half of what JB Hi-Fi in Australia are charging for a single re-issue! There’s something special about having an English album with Japanese inserts and sleeves.

• New Yorker ☛ Art War! A Vigilante Battles Zabar’s Over a Banksy

  An obsessed fan, claiming the grocer wasn’t properly cleaning New York’s last public Banksy, took matters into his own hands. But could he be won over with babka?

• Ruben Schade ☛ Getting frustrated at inanimate IT objects

  I had a bit of an epiphany today. I’m not frustrated at my computers for not doing what I want, or for behaving unexpectedly, or for having increasingly-hostile interfaces and design. I’m frustrated at the people who designed them, made them, and/or signed off on them.

• Quartz ☛ Airlines are dealing with a sharp uptick in unruly passengers

  It’s going to be a busy summer season air travel. It could also be extraordinarily unruly.

• France24 ☛ In Peru, the reopening of La Oroya foundry sparks controversy

  A city in Peru is debating the reactivation of its foundry. With a population of 33,000 and an altitude of 3,750 metres, La Oroya is South America’s former smelting capital. It was also formerly one of the most polluted cities in the world. Closed in 2009, the metallurgic complex found new owners last year, when 1,270 former workers became shareholders. The new owners intend to reactivate the site in coming months. La Oroya’s residents are now divided between dreams of renewed prosperity and fears of a return to life in a massively polluted environment. Report by Juliette Chaignon and Guillaume Gosalbes.

• Latvia ☛ ‘Latvians There’ – research sheds light on the lives of Latvians in Britain

  Doctor of Communication Science, Mārtiņš Kaprāns, recently published some fascinating research into the lives of Latvians living in the United Kingdom.

• Science

  • New York Times ☛ Ancient Human Relatives Buried Their Dead in Caves, New Theory Claims

    Homo naledi, despite having tiny brains, may have lit fires and decorated walls around the graves of their dead, according to controversial new research.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Are Looking For Alien Signals From The Heart of The Milky Way

    Hello? Is anyone out there?

  • Vice Media Group ☛ NASA Finds Organic Molecules in 12 Billion-Year-Old Galaxy, and a Mystery

    The James Webb Space Telescope spotted complex organic molecules in a galaxy that existed only 1.5 billion years after the birth of the universe.

  • CER ☛ Participatory Design to Support University to High School Curricular Transition/Translation in FIE 2022

    Here’s my second blog post on papers we presented during the first year of PCAS. Emma Dodoo is an Engineering Education Research PhD student working with me and co-advised with Lisa Lattuca. When she first started working with me, she wanted a project that supported STEM learning in high school.

  • Science Alert ☛ It’s One of History’s Most Famous Experiments. The Drawings Are Hilarious.

    So many things are wrong!

  • Science Alert ☛ Complex Molecules Detected in Ancient Galaxy Near The Dawn of Time

    Holy smokes!

• Education

  • New York Times ☛ Oxford Business College and Others Make Millions Off Immigrant Students

    Oxford Business College and others like it make millions, largely by recruiting immigrants. They operate in an opaque corner of the British education system.

  • New York Times ☛ Oklahoma Approves First Religious Charter School in the U.S.

    The school will offer online, Roman Catholic instruction funded by taxpayers. Its approval is certain to tee off a legal battle over the separation of church and state.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Guaranteed transfers for community college? California may chart a path.

    What’s the best way to help community college students who want a four-year degree? In California, a proposal hopes to offer transfer students access to universities that have typically been out of reach.

  • Reason ☛ How School Choice Can Mitigate Harmful Culture War Policies in Public Education

    Current culture wars are just one more manifestation of the reality that public education routinely devolves into indoctrination and imposition of majoritarian ideology on dissenters. But school choice can help mitigate that problem.

  • Latvia ☛ Concerns about future school availability in eastern Latvia

    A tenth of Latvian schools could be closed or ‘reorganized’ in Latvia in the coming years. This is provided for by the draft action plan of the Ministry of Education and Science (IZM). In Latgale, this causes concerns that only three high schools might be left in the eastern border area, Latvian Radio reported on June 5.

• Hardware

  • Tom’s Hardware ☛ TSMC Has Plans for Price Hikes up to 6% Next Year, Says Report

    TSMC has been discussing price rises with many large clients, indicating that those agreeable to the rises will be better placed to reserve production.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Hales on PCIe over USB (or lack thereof)

    Last Friday I talked about the potential to repurpose Wi-Fi card slots on motherboards for other uses. This would be silly on a regular motherboard, but on a slot-constrained environment like Mini-ITX it offers a rare potential for internal expansion.

  • CNX Software ☛ $200 CHUWI LarkBox X gets Processor N100 option

    Initially launched with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U mobile processor last year, the CHUWI LarkBox X mini PC is now available with an Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N CPU and sold on Amazon for $199. The mini PC also got its RAM bumped from 8GB DDR4 to 12GB RAM, and its storage capacity has been doubled with 512GB NVMe SSD. The rest of the specifications look to be identical with triple 4K display support, two Ethernet ports, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2, as well as four USB 3.0 ports.

  • France24 ☛ France to invest nearly €3 billion in semiconductor factory to boost local production

    France is ploughing 2.9 billion euros ($3.1 billion) of public money into a factory to make microchips, officials said on Monday, heating up a global race for the lucrative market.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Quartz ☛ Paid sick leave for workers could prevent 40% of restaurant food poisonings

    Every year in the US, nearly 50 million people are affected by food-borne disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those incidents lead to almost 130,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.

  • PHR ☛ New Assessment: Survivors of Sexual Violence in Kenya Have Inadequate Access to Mental Health Services

    NAIROBI– Survivors of sexual violence in Kenya face barriers to quality mental health services in their communities, according to a new assessment co-published today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Survivors of Sexual Violence in Kenya Network (SSVKenya), which is convened by the Wangu Kanja Foundation.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s John Lee vows to bolster mental healthcare after mall murder

    Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee has vowed to enhance mental healthcare in the city after two women were killed in a brutal stabbing at a Diamond Hill mall last Friday. A 39-year-old man with the surname Szeto was arrested soon after the incident, in which two women aged 22 and 26 died.

  • uni Michigan ☛ U-M receives $3.1M to transform post-stroke mobility treatment

    Supported by a $3. 1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, U-M researchers will focus on how stroke affects two fundamental properties of the ankle joint during human walking.

  • New York Times ☛ For These Bird Flu Researchers, Work Is a Day at the Very ‘Icky’ Beach

    The H5N1 virus poses “a great unknown threat” to birds and humans alike. Understanding and thwarting it begins with excrement collection.

  • Off Guardian ☛ OffG’s Quick Take: Lockdown was NOT a “policy mistake”…It was murder.

    Yesterday, the Telegraph reported on “new research” which claims that lockdowns saved only 1700 lives in England and Wales. A “drop in the bucket” compared to the harms done: The science of lockdowns is clear; the data are in: the deaths saved were a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs imposed.”

  • Video ☛ Lockdowns

  • Video ☛ Astonishing rise in atrial fibrillation says BHF

    Number of UK people with heart rhythm condition rises by 50% in a decade

  • Federal News Network ☛ US judge yanks approval for Idaho mine after finding that federal agency violated environmental laws

    A federal judge has yanked the U.S. government’s approval for a phosphate mining project in southeastern Idaho. The decision comes five months after the judge ruled the U.S. Bureau of Land Management violated environmental laws when it approved the Caldwell Canyon Mine in 2019. Those include a failure to consider the indirect impact of processing ore at a nearby plant and the impact on sage grouse. The mine has been proposed by P4 Production, a subsidiary of German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG. Bayer says vacating the approval was excessive and it is considering its next steps.

  • CS Monitor ☛ A hot, tomato-and-cheese solution to anguish

    I was unaware of pizza’s therapeutic value until I had kids, our essayist writes. But now I firmly believe in the “pizza cure.”

  • YLE ☛ Researcher: Many Finnish men think meat is manly, avoid vegetarian food

    “For some reason we’ve found ourselves in a situation where many people think masculinity requires a certain amount of steak on a plate,” the researcher noted.

  • Science Alert ☛ Antidepressant Psychedelics With No Hallucinations May Finally Be Possible

    The potential is huge.

• Proprietary

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Latest Windows update causing problems for many, uninstall or hold off on installing – here’s how [Ed: Tell your readers to install GNU/Linux instead; Windows is an unmitigated mess for years already]

    Ah, the Windows update. Normally people love software updates because they bring new features with them on top of fixing bugs. However, the Windows update has never been popular, especially with techies, for various reasons. One of those reasons is that they seem to break stuff more often than not.

• Linux Foundation

  • Fudzilla ☛ Linux foundation pushes micro-grids [Ed: And composed using proprietary software]

    The Linux Foundation has published its best seller The Open Source Opportunity for Microgrids: Five Ways to Drive Innovation and Overcome Market Barriers for Energy Resilience. The punchy-titled research explains how microgrids could be the next big thing.

• Security

  • Security Week ☛ Gigabyte Rolls Out BIOS Updates to Remove Backdoor From Motherboards

    Gigabyte has announced BIOS updates that remove a recently identified backdoor feature in hundreds of its motherboards.

  • Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in May 2023

    Welcome to the May 2023 report from the Reproducible Builds project

    In our reports, we outline the most important things that we have been up to over the past month. As always, if you are interested in contributing to the project, please visit our Contribute page on our website.

    Holger Levsen gave a talk at the 2023 edition of the Debian Reunion Hamburg, a semi-informal meetup of Debian-related people in northern Germany. The slides are available online.

  • Security Week ☛ Zyxel Urges Customers to Patch Firewalls Against Exploited Vulnerabilities

    Zyxel urges customers to update ATP, USG Flex, VPN, and ZyWALL/USG firewalls to prevent exploitation of recent vulnerabilities.

  • TechRadar ☛ Top NAS Devices Are Being Targeted by This Dangerous Malware

    IoT cybersecurity company Sternum has identified a security vulnerability affecting Zyxel Networks’ Linux-operated NAS drives, including NAS326, NAS540, and NAS542 models, running on firmware version 5.21.

  • Security Week ☛ Ransomware Group Used MOVEit Exploit to Steal Data From Dozens of Organizations

    The recent MOVEit zero-day attack has been linked to a known ransomware group, which reportedly stole data from dozens of organizations.

  • Security Week ☛ SBOMs – Software Supply Chain Security’s Future or Fantasy? [Ed: Anti-FOSS lobbying by graft giants (back doors) led to this phony solution]

    If after eighteen months, meaningful use of SBOMs is unachievable, we need to ask what needs to be done to fulfill Biden’s executive order.

  • Security Week ☛ What if the Current AI Hype Is a Dead End?

    If we should face a Dead-End AI future, the cybersecurity industry will continue to rely heavily on traditional approaches, especially human-driven ones. It won’t quite be business as usual though.

  • Security Week ☛ Dozens of Malicious Extensions Found in Chrome Web Store

    Security researchers have identified over 30 malicious extensions with millions of installs in the Chrome web store.

  • Valtteri Lehtinen ☛ Ripping Off Professional Criminals by Fermenting Onions – Phishing Darknet Users for Bitcoins

    In 2018, I read about the perfect crime of stealing the money of credit card fraudsters by making fake carding sites.

    At the time, this felt genius to me; the attackers were apparently making a decent living while nobody was presumably coming after them. (Except maybe now someone will, as they got Krebs’d by Brian).

  • Silicon Angle ☛ New ways to reduce the chances of ransomware attacks [Ed: Don't use Windows. But this site gets money from Microsoft.]

    Just this past week, ransom attacks have hit a major Spanish bank, a Canadian university and a legal software-as-a-service platform. So it’s good timing that two reports released in the past month from IBM Corp. and Amazon Web Services Inc. are providing guides to how to combat the terrible tide.

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ New tool scans iPhones for ‘Triangulation’ malware infection

    Although the malware analysis is still underway, the cybersecurity firm noted that the ‘Operation Triangulation’ malware campaign uses an unknown zero-day exploit on iMessage to perform code execution without user interaction and elevated privileges.

    This allows the attack to download further payloads to the device for further command execution and information collection.

    It should also be noted that the FSB, Russia’s intelligence and security service, linked the malware to infections of high-ranking government officials and foreign diplomats.

  • Fudzilla ☛ Linux-based System76 prefers to shut off the Intel Management Engine

    Open Sauce outfit worried about the closed firmware

    Linux computer vendor System76 has said that it prefers to disable the Intel Management Engine wherever possible to reduce the amount of closed firmware running on System76 hardware.

    Phoronix reports that the move will “benefit their latest Intel Core 13th Gen ‘Raptor Lake’ wares and prior generation devices.”

    Intel ME is disabled for their latest Raptor Lake laptops and most older platforms, with some exceptions, like having a silicon issue with Tiger Lake.

  • LWN ☛ Security updates for Tuesday

    Security updates have been issued by Debian (linux-5.10), Red Hat (cups-filters, curl, kernel, kernel-rt, kpatch-patch, and webkit2gtk3), SUSE (apache-commons-fileupload, openstack-heat, openstack-swift, python-Werkzeug, and openstack-heat, python-Werkzeug), and Ubuntu (frr, go, libraw, libssh, nghttp2, python2.7, python3.10, python3.11, python3.5, python3.6, python3.8, and xfce4-settings).

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ Malicious Chrome extensions with 75M installs removed from Web Store

    Google has removed from the Chrome Web Store 32 malicious extensions that could alter search results and push spam or unwanted ads. Collectively, they come with a download count of 75 million.

    The extensions featured legitimate functionality to keep users unaware of the malicious behavior that came in obfuscated code to deliver the payloads.

  • The Register UK ☛ British Airways, Boots, BBC payroll data stolen in MOVEit supply-chain attack [Ed: Microsoft is to blame, but of course Microsoft blames Russia (or China) to change public opinion. Microsoft executives need to be arrested for the security failings (deliberate), not approached for advice on security and even paid for their time.]

    British Airways, the BBC, and UK pharmacy chain Boots are among the companies whose data has been compromised after miscreants exploited a critical vulnerability in deployments of the MOVEit document-transfer app.

  • Data Breaches ☛ Pacific Union College was attacked on March 27. When will they publicly admit personal info was compromised?

    That Pacific Union College (PUC) experienced a cyberattack is not a secret. The college even posted a notice on their website on April 7 stating that they were experiencing “Additional complications relating to the ongoing cybersecurity issue, which has recently affected some of our internal networks, phone systems, and web services. The remainder of the notice provided the status of various types of systems and services and assured the community of updates “as new information becomes available.”

  • Data Breaches ☛ Coincidence or is something up in the courts?

    On June 5, 2023, in the U.S. case against Diogo Santos Coelho (“Omnipotent” of RAIDForums), Lauren Pomerantz Halper was added as an attorney for the U.S.

    On June 5, 2023, in the U.S. case against Conor Brian Fitzpatrick (“Pompompurin” of BreachForums), Lauren Pomerantz Halper was added as an attorney for the U.S.

    That the same prosecuting attorney would be involved in both cases is no surprise given how the forums were run and the alleged interactions between Coelho and Fitzpatrick. But why was Halper’s appearance announced yesterday in both cases? Is something up or about to be announced?

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Latvia ☛ airBaltic flight Rīga-Split turns around due to technical issues

      On Monday, June 5, morning, shortly after taking off from the Rīga International Airport, an airBaltic flight on its way to Split in Croatia, returned to Rīga after identifying a technical defect, Latvian Television reported.

    • SANS ☛ Brute Forcing Simple Archive Passwords, (Mon, Jun 5th)

      [Guest dairy submitted by Gebhard]

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Straits Times ☛ Elon Musk says China detailed plans to regulate AI

      They are his first comments on his two-day visit, which saw him meet senior officials in Beijing.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Mirror: No evidence Harry was hacked, Prince Diana claim ‘total speculation’

      Prince Harry’s individual case against Mirror Group Newspapers opened on Monday.

    • La Quadature Du Net ☛ Criminalization of encryption : the 8 december case

      This article was written on the basis of information relating to the so-called “8 December” case.

• Defence/Aggression

  • RFA ☛ Suicide spike in North Korea prompts Kim Jong Un to issue prevention order

    Disclosure of suicide notes criticizing country shocks officials, source tells RFA

  • Mint Press News ☛ Thirst Trap Nation: How E-girls Are Luring Young Boys Into Joining Army, with Alan MacLeod

    MintCast co-host Alan MacLeod reveals how the military exploits teens’ horniness, exposing the military’s influence in video games, movies, and partnerships with influencers. Unveiling a hidden agenda in this eye-opening discussion.

  • teleSUR ☛ Armed Attacks on Nigerian Villages, 30 Killed

    “…the vigilante group visited the Azam village to caution the residents…”

  • teleSUR ☛ Somali, AU Forces Step Up Joint Operations Against Al-Shabab

    The government forces have intensified their attacks against al-Shabab since President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declared an all-out war against the militants in August 2022.

  • RFA ☛ Myanmar’s junta has sentenced 156 civilians to death since coup

    Military seeks to instill fear in those who oppose its rule.

  • The Strategist ☛ AUKUS: three partners, two pillars, one problem

    Much of the AUKUS discussion to date has focused on Pillar 1, the trilateral effort to support Australia acquiring conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines.

  • AntiWar ☛ The Biden Administration’s Latest Tone-Deaf Foreign Policy Positions

    U.S. leaders rarely have been noted for being able to gauge changing sentiment in the international arena and adjusting their foreign policy accordingly. The Biden administration, however, may be setting new records for the tone-deaf quality of its policies. Three incidents in the past few weeks illustrate the problem.

  • RFA ☛ Grieving mother who lost son kills herself after cyberbullying, official warnings

    Woman’s son was hit by teacher’s car – and then blasted online

  • RFA ☛ Young overseas Chinese mark 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre

    “Don’t let the truth be hidden in the dust.”

  • RFA ☛ Senior US officials visit Beijing in search of thaw

    The trip comes amid an uptick in near-collisions between the two militaries.

  • France24 ☛ Bandits kill 30 villagers in northern Nigeria in protection-money reprisal attack

    Armed men killed 30 people in weekend raids on six villages in Nigeria’s north, a region regularly hit by criminal violence and clashes between communities, local  police have said.

  • Defence Web ☛ SA DoD delegation on US mission

    The third South African government group to visit the United States (US) in a short space of time touches down on Wednesday (7 June), but not much should be expected from it, a defence expert cautions. Unlike those before it, this group is not on a lobbying mission.

  • War in Ukraine

    • LRT ☛ Purpose of NATO summit is to address problems, not to promote Lithuania – president

      The essential purpose of the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius is to address geopolitical problems, not to increase Lithuania’s visibility, President Gitanas Nauseda has said.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • American Oversight ☛ Wisconsin Court Grants Temporary Injunction, Confirms Office of Special Counsel Is Obligated to Retain Public Records

• Environment

  • France24 ☛ German police raids on Last Generation climate activists spike recruitment

    Pressure is mounting in Germany on the Last Generation climate collective, whose members specialise in gluing themselves to tarmac. Following a series of police raids last month, activists say they are being unjustly criminalised but that the police action has led to a recruitment spike. As the international community marks World Environment Day, FRANCE 24 reports on a group sparking controversy in Germany.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Brazil’s Lula lays out plan to halt Amazon deforestation, make country “global reference” on climate

    Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has unveiled a plan to end illegal deforestation in the Amazon, a critical step in addressing the country’s significant carbon emissions from the region. This strategy, set to be implemented over four years, provides a roadmap to achieve the ambitious goal of halting illegal deforestation by 2030. Lula also announced his government will return Brazil’s international carbon reduction commitment to that set in 2015 during the Paris Agreement. At the time, Brazil committed to reducing carbon emissions by 37% by 2025. Lula’s predecessor, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, had scaled back Brazil’s commitments.

  • France24 ☛ Brazil’s Lula unveils plan to eliminate deforestation in Amazon by 2030

    Brazil’s government on Monday unveiled how it plans to meet a pledge to eliminate deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, using strengthened law enforcement against environmental crimes and other measures in the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ UN World Environment Day: Hong Kong must step up climate leadership to meet carbon goals, says NGO

    The government must step up climate leadership to achieve its carbon neutrality goal, an environmental NGO has said, amid a heatwave in the city that has seen the death of a 66-year-old construction worker. “Extreme weather is becoming an unwanted new normal under climate change,” Friends of the Earth said in a statement last Thursday…

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico City joins global plastic waste reduction commitment

    The UN-backed scheme aims to reduce the amount of plastics in the capital, as well as increase demand for recycled plastic.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 19 people killed in landslide in China’s Sichuan province

    All 19 people caught in a landslide in southwestern China’s Sichuan province on Sunday have been confirmed dead, state media reported, announcing the end of rescue efforts. Part of a mountain collapsed at around 6 am (2200 GMT Saturday) near a state-owned forestry station in Jinkouhe, near the city of Leshan, state broadcaster CCTV said.

  • New York Times ☛ At Least 42 Are Dead and Thousands Are Displaced After Flooding in Haiti

    Officials said that western portions of the country appeared to be the most affected by the flooding caused by heavy rain over the weekend.

  • France24 ☛ At least 42 dead and thousands displaced after flooding in Haiti

    At least 42 people were dead and 11 missing in Haiti after heavy rains at the weekend triggered flooding and landslides, civil protection officials said Monday.

  • France24 ☛ Ten statistics on global plastic addiction and its consequences

    The UN’s annual World Environment Day on Monday comes days after negotiations on an international treaty against plastic pollution concluded Friday in Paris with 170 nations agreeing to produce a first draft of an accord by November. FRANCE 24 takes a look at the scale of the problem and its implications through 10 crucial statistics.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Atlantic hurricane season 2023 is underway. Here’s what to expect.

    The 2023 Atlantic hurricane season began June 1. Forecasters and experts are predicting 12 to 17 named storms could form, with five to nine developing into hurricanes. Here’s what residents along the U.S. southeastern coastline should know.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • H2 View ☛ Hydrogen produced from seawater at Chinese offshore project

      Hydrogen has successfully been produced via the electrolysis of seawater on a floating offshore platform in east China’s Fuijan Province, according to multiple sources.

    • New York Times ☛ India’s Trains Resume Service Near Deadly Crash in Balasore

      The restoration of service could help more families reach the area to identify the dead. Officials said about 100 victims were still unclaimed.

    • France24 ☛ Probe into deadly Indian rail disaster opens, trains resume service

      India’s official investigation into its deadliest rail crash in over two decades began on Monday, after preliminary findings pointed to signal failure as the likely cause for a collision that killed at least 275 people and injured 1,200.

    • New York Times ☛ SEC Accuses Binance of Mishandling Funds and Lying to Regulators

      The S.E.C. said the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange mixed billions of dollars in customer funds and secretly sent them to a separate company controlled by Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ SEC sues Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao over securities law violations

      The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Binance Holdings Ltd. and founding Chief Executive,Changpeng Zhao with violating securities laws.  The SEC has also named a Binance affiliate, BAM Trading Services Inc., in the lawsuit. It helped the company operate the U.S. version of its cryptocurrency exchange.

    • Quartz ☛ Why the SEC is suing Binance

      The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, alleging that the company sold unregistered securities in the US.

    • Quartz ☛ Venture capital funding for crypto firms has plummeted in 2023

      Fundraising in the cryptocurrency world has slowed to a crawl in the first half of this year. Just eight venture capital funds focused on crypto had raised a combined $500 million globally as of May 16, according to a report from Fortune citing PitchBook data.

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Virginia plane crash investigators ask when pilot became unresponsive and why aircraft flew its path

      The pilot of the business jet that flew over Washington and crashed in Virginia appeared to be slumped over and unresponsive, the fighter jet pilots reported, according to three US officials briefed on the matter. The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the military operation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Authorities say four people were killed in the crash in a remote part of Virginia Sunday. The identities of the four people weren’t immediately released. Federal investigators say it will take a few days to solve the mystery of why the plane veered off course and slammed into a mountain.

    • Federal News Network ☛ Unresponsive pilot seen slumped over before deadly Virginia plane crash, officials say

      The pilot of the business jet that flew over Washington and crashed in Virginia appeared to be slumped over and unresponsive, the fighter jet pilots reported, according to three US officials briefed on the matter. The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the military operation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Authorities say four people were killed in the crash in a remote part of Virginia Sunday. The identities of the four people weren’t immediately released. Federal investigators say it will take a few days to solve the mystery of why the plane veered off course and slammed into a mountain.

    • France24 ☛ US fighter jets chase plane over Washington airspace before it crashes in Virginia

      The United States scrambled F-16 fighter jets in a supersonic chase of a light aircraft with an unresponsive pilot that violated airspace around Washington D.C. and later crashed into the mountains of Virginia, officials said.

    • teleSUR ☛ India’s Railway Services Reinstated After Collision in Odisha

      “…Ashwini Vaishnaw, has been camping at the location of the railway accident…”

    • H2 View ☛ Decommissioned Tasmanian power station set to become green methanol production site

      Bell Bay Powerfuels has signed a term sheet with Hydro Tasmania for the sale of a decommissioned power station that is set to serve as the site for a A$1.2bn ($790m) green hydrogen and green…

    • The Bitcoin Dollar & Crypto-Colonialism with Mark Goodwin

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • New York Times ☛ American Kestrels Are in a Puzzling Decline

      The number of American kestrels has dropped sharply. That goes against the trend for birds of prey, broadly seen as a conservation bright spot.

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ Portrait of a movement: mural tells of struggle to save native corn

      Mexico’s legal and political fight to save more than 1,000 varieties of native corn from commercial farming has been a passionate one.

    • teleSUR ☛ Canada Experiences Unprecedented Wildfire Season

      According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada is expected to have enough resources to cover the summer months.

    • teleSUR ☛ Fishing Accident in Canada, 4 Children and 1 Man Drowned

      “…divers and Canadian Armed Forces personnel are providing…”

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Air quality alert extended into Tuesday for Twin Cities, other areas of the state

      The alert is in response to smoke particles coming from wildfires in Quebec, Canada, on Friday and Saturday.

    • New York Times ☛ In Search of Iceberg Alley’s Spectacular Show

      Each spring, opalescent icebergs from the Greenland ice sheet pass through Iceberg Alley, off the eastern edge of Canada, on a slow-motion journey southward.

    • uni Stanford ☛ Inside the secret lives of Hoover Tower’s peregrine falcons

      Peregrine falcons have been spotted at Stanford since 2011, but biologists have yet to observe a successful nesting season. Although incredibly urban-tolerant birds, the falcons still face the challenges of human disturbances.

    • Federal News Network ☛ One year after their killing, loved ones pay tribute to duo slain in Amazon rainforest

      A year after the killing of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon rainforest, loved ones are gathering in several Brazilian cities to honor their memory. Dozens of people showed up on Monday at demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, capital Brasilia and Bahia state’s Salvador. Gatherings also took place in London, U.K. and in the small Amazonian town of Atalaia do Norte, where both men were killed. Phillips had been conducting research for his book that was years in the making. Ahead of the first anniversary of Phillips’ disappearance, his family and friends have launched a fundraiser to complete his work.

• Finance

  • France24 ☛ Official Turkish figures show inflation dips under 40% for first time in 16 months

    Turkey’s annual inflation rate dropped below 40 percent in May for the first time in 16 months, pushed down by a temporary offer of free gas to households, official data showed on Monday.

  • LRT ☛ Despite millions in debt, US fugitive Khawaja lives in luxury Vilnius hotel

    Ahmad Khawaja, a former billionaire wanted by the United States, was detained in Lithuania in 2020. Released on a record-high bail, he is now living in a luxury hotel in Vilnius.

  • LRT ☛ As Lithuania’s furniture sector falls, workers plead for help

    The furniture production sector in Lithuania is shrinking, with companies putting staff on furlough. Raimundas Beinortas, director of the Association Lithuanian Forest, says the tools to help the sector are at the government’s disposal.

  • Federal News Network ☛ California insurance market rattled by withdrawal of major companies

    Two insurance industry giants have stepped back from the California marketplace. They say that wildfire risk and soaring construction costs have prompted them to stop writing new policies. State Farm announced last week it would stop accepting applications for all business and personal lines of property and casualty insurance. Allstate announced in November it would pause new homeowners, condo and commercial insurance policies in the state. California’s unsettled market aligns with trends across the country. Insurance companies are boosting rates, limiting coverage or pulling out completely from regions susceptible to wildfires and other natural disasters.

  • France24 ☛ French protestors left in last-ditch bid to stop pension overhaul

    France’s left-wing forces and labour unions will stage another day of strikes on Tuesday to try to derail President Emmanuel Macron’s pensions overhaul, insisting that the fight to thwart the changes is not over even after it became law.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Boosting jobs: From coding camps to streamlining for startups

    Progress roundup: From Argentina to Benin, governments and industry boost employment with free education and by smoothing the path to entrepreneurship. And, we highlight a discovery for the future of electricity

  • Vice Media Group ☛ Uber Is Running Bizarre Ads Either For Or Against Congestion Pricing

    The ads sound hostile to congestion pricing but Uber claims to support it.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Get Rid of the Debt Ceiling Once and for All [Ed: That's like telling someone to borrow as much money as possible without ever checking the ability to pay back]

    Regularly putting the entire economy at risk is in no way “fiscally responsible.”

  • RFERL ☛ Pakistan’s Prime Minister ‘Hopeful’ For Deal With IMF This Month

    Pakistan’s prime minister said he is “very hopeful” of finalizing a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in June.

  • Federal News Network ☛ USPS rural carriers frustrated with new pay system leading to pay cuts on most routes

    The Postal Service is telling lawmakers that rural carriers have the resources they need to ensure fair compensation under a new pay system that’s been in the works for more than a decade.

  • Latvia ☛ Industrial production down 7% in Latvia

    Data published on June 5 by the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia show that, compared to April 2022, in April 2023 industrial production output reduced by 7.0 % (according to calendar adjusted data at constant prices).

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ MN Attorney General sues St. Paul’s largest downtown property owner for worker overtime pay

    Six whistleblowers came forward alleging they worked as many as 142 hours in two weeks without time-and-a-half pay.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Profile: Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s long-serving intelligence chief, becomes foreign minister

    Given his extensive experience in intelligence and relations with foreign countries, Fidan’s appointment indicates a continuation of Turkey’s assertive foreign policy.

  • NYPost ☛ Democrats: I am not your human shield, and it’s not anti-Asian to criticize Beijing’s dangerous regime

    More and more people are realizing the People’s Republic of China is not America’s friend.

  • The Strategist ☛ Biden’s battle for technology standards

    Last month, the White House quietly released the United States government national standards strategy for critical and emerging technology, a new whole-of-US-government approach to addressing China’s expanding influence in international technology standards-setting bodies.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Investors have been “de-risking” from China for years

    The bottomline from Washington is clear: putting money in China is going to become riskier, and de-risking is only going to become more commonplace.

  • New York Times ☛ Jacinda Ardern Is Now a Dame, Recognized for Service to New Zealand

    Ms. Ardern, who stepped down as prime minister in January, said she had considered declining the title, but accepted it as a way to show gratitude.

  • New York Times ☛ Republicans, Escalating Attacks on F.B.I., Vow to Hold Director in Contempt

    F.B.I. officials briefed lawmakers on an unsubstantiated bribery allegation against Joe Biden when he was vice president, but did not let them leave a secure area with a document detailing it.

  • New York Times ☛ Trump Lawyers Visit Justice Dept. as Classified Documents Inquiry Nears End

    Three lawyers representing the former president spent nearly two hours there after requesting a meeting to discuss their concerns about the department’s handling of the investigation.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Dishonest and Incompetent FBI Work John Durham Learned to Love

    The evidence submitted in the Michael Sussmann trial showed that those in the Cyber Division who first assessed the anomalies made clear errors and unconvincing claims about their awareness of the DNC’s involvement. And yet, John Durham covered that up.

  • New York Times ☛ Robert Hanssen, F.B.I. Agent Exposed as Spy for Moscow, Dies at 79

    Mr. Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison in 2002, bringing to a close one of the most lurid and damaging espionage cases in American history.

  • New York Times ☛ Trump Asks Judge to Stop E. Jean Carroll’s Defamation Case

    Former President Donald J. Trump told a judge that he could not have defamed E. Jean Carroll by denying her rape accusation because a jury had found him liable only for sexually abusing her.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Alden discusses US-EU relations to commemorate Europe Day

    On May 9, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative nonresident senior fellow Alexander Alden was hosted by the Rome-based Center for American Studies to discuss United States-European Union relations on the occasion of “Europe Day”.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Enhancing market size, scalability, and regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean

    To sustain the ongoing recovery against short-term headwinds and boost inclusive, productive, and sustainable development in the long term, governments cannot, and should not, act alone. The private sector can strengthen the hard and soft infrastructure supporting Latin America and the Caribbean’s economies, while drawing them closer together through trade, regulatory, and other integration.

  • JURIST ☛ France far-right party linked to Kremlin by new parliamentary report

    A French Parliamentary report leaked to the French press Thursday claimed Marine Le Pen’s far-right party “Rassemblement Nationale” knowingly spread Kremlin talking points. Le Pen called the report “sectarian, dishonest and politicized,” despite the fact that it was Le Pen herself who demanded an investigation into foreign interference in French politics.

  • France24 ☛ French court sentences two men who attacked Brigitte Macron’s relative to jail

    A French court on Monday sentenced two men to jail after convicting them on charges of beating up the great-nephew of French first lady Brigitte Macron last month outside her family’s chocolate shop.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ Robert Kennedy Jr., With Musk, Pushes Right-Wing Ideas and Misinformation

      Mr. Kennedy, a long-shot Democratic presidential candidate with surprisingly high polling numbers, said he wanted to close the Mexican border and attributed the rise of mass shootings to pharmaceutical drugs.

    • France24 ☛ Doctored photos show Indian wrestlers smiling during their arrest

      Two Indian sisters who are professional wrestlers were arrested on May 28 during a protest against the wrestling federation chief, who is accused of sexual harassment. The wrestling chief, however, is also a prominent member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s ruling party. In the wake of the arrest, BJP supporters criticized the women for staging their arrest, circulating, as proof, a photo of the two women smiling in a police van. However, it turns out that this photo was digitally altered using a mobile application.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFA ☛ In China, AI cameras alert police when a banner is unfurled

    The surveillance technology is just one example of the proliferation of ‘predictive policing’ in the country.

  • RFA ☛ Hong Kong police arrest activists marking 1989 Tiananmen massacre anniversary

    A British flag-waving protester and an opposition party leader are arrested and a journalist is held

  • Vice Media Group ☛ Reddit in Mass Revolt Over Astronomical API Fees That Would Kill Third Party Apps

    Hundreds of moderators are shutting down their massive subreddits in protest of new fees that threaten apps like Apollo, Narwhal, and BaconReader.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Huge police deployment thwarts Tiananmen crackdown commemorations as Hongkongers detained over candles, clothes, slogans

    Hong Kong police have deployed en masse at key sites on the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, apprehending several people in Causeway Bay, including Tsui Hong-kwong, who was among the organisers of the Tiananmen vigils, unionist Leo Tang and chairperson of pro-democracy group the League of Social Democrats (LSD), Chan Po-ying.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 1 arrested, 23 taken away for investigation by Hong Kong police over Tiananmen crackdown commemorations

    A 53-year-old woman has been arrested for allegedly obstructing police officers after she refused to show her identity card outside Victoria Park, the site where annual candlelight vigils for victims of the Tiananmen crackdown were once held, on the 34th anniversary of the crackdown.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Overseas Hongkongers, mainland Chinese hold Tiananmen crackdown vigils as city’s tribute suppressed

    Vigils to remember those who died during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown have been held in cities across the world, as the Hong Kong and mainland Chinese diaspora marked the 34th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong police urged to give explanation after journalist taken away on Tiananmen crackdown anniversary

    A Hong Kong press group has urged the city’s police to provide an explanation after its former chairperson was led away by officers while she was reporting on the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • New York Times ☛ Chris Licht of CNN Faces a Crisis. Here’s Why.

    Mr. Licht, the network’s chief executive, said on an internal call on Monday that he would “fight like hell” to win back the trust of the network.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Pakistan’s embattled Imran Khan faces blackout on local media

    Khan has long been the most televised politician in Pakistan.

  • Latvia ☛ Watchdog requests Latvian public media financing at 0.16% of GDP

    In order to ensure independent, adequate and predictable funding for public service media – Latvian Television (LTV) and Latvian Radio (LSM is also part of the public media framework) – at the European average level, the Public Electronic Mass Media Council (SEPLP) urges the Saeima to raise public media funding to 0.16% of the gross domestic product (GDP).

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • New York Times ☛ I’m in High School. I Hope Affirmative Action Is Rejected and Replaced With Something Stronger.

    Asian students lose out with this college admissions system, but so do low-income ones.

  • The Atlantic ☛ No One Knows What ‘Race Neutral’ Admissions Looks Like

    How should colleges and universities replace affirmative action if the Supreme Court does indeed strike it down?

  • Digital Music News ☛ Snoop Dogg & Dr. Dre Postpone Hollywood Bowl Shows in Solidarity with WGA Writers Strike

    Snoop Dogg announces postponing his 30th anniversary ‘Doggystyle’ shows with Dr. Dre at the Hollywood Bowl shows in solidarity with the WGA writers’ strike. Snoop Dogg postponed plans to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his legendary album Doggystyle with two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl now rescheduled in solidarity with the WGA strike.

  • teleSUR ☛ US Gannett Journalists Go on Strike

    Currently, many U.S. journalists earn so little that they need public assistance and private charity to make ends meet.

  • RFERL ☛ Belarusian Poet Sarokin Dies In Police Custody

    Belarusian poet Dzmitry Sarokin, 37, has died in police custody in the country’s western city of Lida.

  • SDG16: Part 1 — Building the Global Police State

    The United Nations claims that the purpose of Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG16) is to promote peaceful and inclusive societies and to provide access to justice for all. Hiding behind the rhetoric is the real objective: to strengthen and consolidate the power and authority of the “global governance regime” and to exploit threats—both real and imagined—in order to advance regime hegemony.

  • Federal News Network ☛ ‘Stop Cop City’ activists pack Atlanta City Hall ahead of crucial vote

    Hundreds of activists are at Atlanta’s City Hall ahead of a council vote over whether to approve tens of millions in public funding for a police and firefighter training center. Monday’s meeting is a culmination of nearly two years of activism against the project that activists decry as “Cop City.” The training center was approved by the City Council in September 2021 but requires an additional vote for more funding. More than 350 people signed up to speak by early Monday afternoon, with hundreds more unable to sign up in time, including a large crowd prevented from entering City Hall due to capacity concerns.

  • RFERL ☛ Turkish Forces Arrive In Kosovo To Bolster NATO-Led Peacekeepers After Recent Violence

    The Turkish commando battalion requested by NATO arrived on June 5 in Kosovo to assist in quelling recent violent unrest in the Balkan country.

  • JURIST ☛ New UK Police code of conduct recommends recording non-crime hate incidents ‘only when necessary’

    A new Code of Practice for UK Police came into effect Saturday that will ensure officers document hate incidents that do not constitute crimes only when absolutely necessary. The new law introduces a threshold whereby, once reached, police must record the personal information of someone for a non-crime hate incident.

  • uni Stanford ☛ The importance of youth activism and art depicted in ‘GROWTHesque’

    Leeth Singhage ’26, who has been awarded “Best Emerging Actor” by the United Solo Theater Festival, performs his solo play, the coming-of-age story of a Sri Lankan youth amid political instability. The play makes one question the meaning of community-specific art outside its original context, writes Kongtaveelert.

  • uni Stanford ☛ From the Community | After death threats against its Vietnamese community, Stanford stayed silent.

    “Repeated online threats culminated in the physical presence of a suspect on campus,” write Britney Tran, Dwight Hua and Kyle Nguyen. “However, despite the severity of the event, Stanford has yet to issue a University-wide announcement about what occurred or denounce this act of racial hate and intolerance.”

  • Federal News Network ☛ Commission: Florida judge should be reprimanded for conduct during Parkland school shooting trial

    A Florida commission says the judge who oversaw the penalty trial of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz should be publicly reprimanded for showing bias toward the prosecution. The Judicial Qualifications Commission said Monday that Circuity Judge Elizabeth Scherer sometimes allowed her emotions to overcome her judgement and violated several rules governing judicial conduct in her actions toward Nikolas Cruz’s attorneys. Those included unfairly chastising them after they rested their case. It will now be up to the Florida Supreme Court to decide her punishment. She is retiring June 30. Cruz received a life sentence at the conclusion of the six-month penalty trial for murdering 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.

  • New York Times ☛ As California Accuses Florida of Shipping Migrants, More Arrive in Sacramento

    As California officials accused Florida of shipping migrants to its capital city last week, about 20 more people, mostly from Venezuela, arrived on Monday on the same chartered plane.

  • NYPost ☛ Second plane carrying migrants arrives in California, state officials blame Florida

    A plane transporting more than a dozen migrants landed in Sacramento, Calif., on Monday, according to state officials, who say it appears the flight was organized by Florida.  Monday’s flight, which arrived in California’s capital city with 20 migrants from Texas, is the second instance of a private plane transporting migrants to the Golden State…

  • Federal News Network ☛ California officials: Florida picked up asylum-seekers on Texas border and flew them to Sacramento

    California officials say the state of Florida has twice picked up asylum-seekers on the Texas border and flown them by private jet to California’s capital. The latest flight arrived Monday with about 20 migrants. It follows the earlier arrival Friday of 16 others from Colombia and Venezuela. They are the latest apparent instances of a Republican-led state transporting migrants to one controlled by Democrats. DeSantis and other Florida officials have not confirmed their involvement in the transport. California officials are investigating the migrants’ arrival while local officials and faith-based groups seek to provide them food and shelter.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Moms behind bars: Are separated families punished, too?

    The number of mothers incarcerated dropped during the pandemic, but as prison regulations return, families are once again being separated. Some programs such as the Reunification Ride hope to strengthen family connections by supporting monthly visits.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Poland Is Not Ready to Accept a New McCarthyism

    On Sunday, half a million Poles marched to defend the country’s democracy against a ruling party that has just granted itself ominous new powers.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Is Poland’s democracy eroding? Big crowds protest government.

    A march on Sunday drew hundreds of thousands of Poles to the nation’s capital to protest a conservative government that critics say has eroded democratic norms. The march was held on the 34th anniversary of the country’s first democratic elections in 1989.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Racist abuse in international soccer: Time for real change?

    Racist insults toward Real Madrid soccer player Vinícius Júnior expose a persistent worldwide problem in the sport, but federations are slow to sanction teams for racism. Education and stricter penalties are needed to tackle this issue, experts say.

  • CS Monitor ☛ The liberation of Iran’s women athletes

    In contrast to women leading mass protests for rights, female sports teams provide a model for freedom and equality.

  • JURIST ☛ Protesters in eastern Germany clash with police over activist convictions

    Police in Leipzig, Germany on Saturday broke up a protest orchestrated by left-wing groups involving over 700 people over the sentencing given to one of four far-left activists who attacked Neo-Nazis over a period of two years. More demonstrations are expected despite local court bans on protests.

  • teleSUR ☛ German Far-Right Leader Indicted for Use of Nazi Vocabulary

    Previously, Bjorn Hocke has also called for the removal of articles criminalizing incitement to racial hatred and Holocaust denial from the German penal code.

  • New York Times ☛ Missouri Governor Says Execution Will Proceed After Jurors Waver on Death Sentence

    Michael Tisius, convicted in the murders of two jail guards, is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday.

  • New York Times ☛ ‘Compassion Guy’ Popular in Davis, California Before Fatal Stabbing

    After graduating from Stanford, David Breaux struggled to find his path — until he found his calling as “the Compassion Guy.”

  • RFA ☛ Myanmar shutters 700 mobile bank accounts suspected of funding anti-junta forces

    While some may have funded the resistance, many belong to civilian business owners.

  • RFA ☛ Wife of Vietnamese music teacher on trial calls for his release

    She says her home is under surveillance and questioned whether she would be able to attend.

  • RFERL ☛ Ten Arrested In North Macedonia In People-Smuggling Raids

    Authorities in North Macedonia on June 5 said 10 men were arrested as suspected members of an international people smuggling ring following an investigation that lasted nearly two years.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Quartz ☛ An Indian state is offering free hi-speed internet to 2 million of its poor

    Fourteen thousand poor households and 30,000 government offices of the southern Indian state of Kerala today (June 5) were provided with high-speed internet. But the aim is higher.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Announces 200 Podcasting Layoffs, Combines Parcast and Gimlet, and Revives Spotify Studios Amid Push for ‘A Valuable, High-Margin Business’

    Amid an aggressive push for podcasting profitability, Spotify has announced yet another round of layoffs – affecting about 200 individuals working in and around its “global podcast vertical.” The Stockholm-headquartered platform unveiled the personnel reduction today, towards the end of a lengthy “adaptation of an internal update” penned by podcast exec Sahar Elhabashi.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Spotify lays off 200 employees amid shift in podcast strategy

    Spotify Technology S.A. is letting go 200 employees, or about 2% of its workforce, as part of an effort to revamp its podcast business. The company announced the layoffs today. The move comes a few months after Spotify detailed plans to cut about 600 roles in a bid to reduce operating costs.

  • Quartz ☛ Spotify’s latest layoffs target its podcast business [Ed: Spotify loses a billion dollars a year and paying Rogan $100,000,000 was an epic, costly failure]

    Spotify is laying off 200 employees in its podcast division. The downsizing, announced on Monday (June 5), affects roughly 2% of the streaming service’s in-person workforce.

• Monopolies

  • Patents

    • New York Times ☛ Poland Rejects E.U. Ruling, Restarting a European Feud [Ed: As long as the EU stands behind the illegal, unconstitutional UPC, in violation of international conventions, Poland (which opposes UPC on economic ground) isn't more lawless than the EU. This behaviour by the EU will harm its goals.]

      Poland’s justice minister called the E.U. court of justice “corrupt,” after it ruled a judicial overhaul was illegal. He vowed not to comply, though that could cost Poland billions.

    • JURIST ☛ Top EU court rules against Poland in judicial independence case

      The Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) ruled Monday that Poland’s 2019 court reforms violated EU laws on effective judicial protection, judicial independence and the rule of law. The court sided with the EU Commission, which launched infringement proceedings against Poland over the reforms in 2019.

    • France24 ☛ Justice minister rejects ‘corrupt’ EU court’s ruling against Poland’s judicial reform [Ed: EU is, indeed, highly corrupt, judging by what it has just done with the Unified Patent Court; this is going to cost the EU]

      Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro on Monday denounced the Court of Justice of the European Union as ‘corrupt’ and rejected its ruling that a controversial Polish judicial reform violated EU law.

    • JUVE ☛ Klaus Grabinski, the man without bias [Ed: What disgusting, awful propaganda from Team UPC, published by the site that Team UPC keeps bribing. This illegal, unconstitutional kangaroo court is run by a friend of the criminals at the EPO. This is a stain on the EU. Corruption clear for all to see. With the UPC, African nations can mock EU for corruption, nepotism, and lawlessness. Publishers funded by UPC profiteers praising the UPC, which is illegal, is what one might expect in unruly dictatorships.]

    • European Patent Office hosts special event celebrating launch of Unitary Patent system [Ed: The Unitary Patent system is patently illegal. They are in effect celebrating their own crimes.]

      Distinguished European speakers hail a new era for innovation in Europe.

    • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ UPC: brief thoughts from a French “UPC Representative” [Ed: UPC is illegal and blogs controlled by Team UPC treat illegality as the normal now, at the expense of the reputation of the EU]

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Judge Newman on Saving Patent Law [Ed: Senile judge thinks she is "Saving Patent Law"; she protects trolls and monopolists]

      Washington Post has published a long article titled, “Colleagues want a 95-year-old judge to retire. She’s suing them instead,” by Rachel Weiner.  Judge Pauline Newman, the oldest active federal judge in the country, has been embroiled in controversy as she resists her colleagues attempts to urge/force her to retire. The article ends with a noteworthy quote from Newman that rings true to her characteristic resilience and dedication: “I want to spend my last five years correcting my colleagues’ mistakes.” In a career spanning four decades and more than 300 dissenting opinions, Newman’s resolve is clear.

    • Unified Patents ☛ Fitistics fitness tracking patent challenged in reexam

      On May 31, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 11,185,738, owned and asserted by Fitistics, LLC, an NPE. The ‘738 patent is generally directed to tracking exercise using a handheld device to obtain data from an exercise machine or body monitoring device. The patent has been asserted against Huawei and Fossil.

    • Unified Patents ☛ Fortress IP entity Entropic Communications packet transmission patent challenged

      On May 31, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,228,910, owned by Entropic Communications, LLC, an NPE and a Fortress IP entity. The ’910 patent relates to aggregating packets for transmission to a destination node and has been asserted against Comcast, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, and Dish.

  • Trademarks

    • TTAB Blog ☛ TTAB Sustains Opposition to “PET C COLA” for Animal Supplements, Finding Likely Diluton of . . . . Guess What Famous Mark?

      This quixotic attempt to register PET C COLA, in standard form, as a trademark for animal supplements was swept aside by Opposer PepsiCo, owner of the “exceedingly famous” mark PEPSI-COLA for soft drinks. Applicant’s “test mode”  website indicated that it would be marketing itself as “the pet drink specialist” and it asserted that “Pet C Cola is the nutritional and super tasty drink for dogs and cats.” “Applicant’s adoption of a color, font, and stylization with virtually identical elements to those used by Opposer for its PEPSI-COLA script mark is ‘eyebrow raising,’ … and is strong evidence of Applicant’s intent to copy and create an association with Opposer’s mark.” And so, the Board sustained Pepsico’s Section 43(c) dilution-by-blurring claim.  PepsiCo, Inc. v. Pet C Cola Corporation, Opposition No. 91255530 (June 1, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Robert H. Coggins).

    • JURIST ☛ US Supreme Court takes up case dealing with the use of public figures’ names and likenesses in trademarks

      The US Supreme Court announced Monday it will take up the trademark case Vidal v. Elster, to determine whether the application of Section 2(c) of the Lanham Act to political figures violates the First Amendment. 

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ The Fugees Reunite at Roots Picnic as Pras Faces 20-Year Prison Term

      The Fugees reunited during Lauryn Hill’s headlining set at the Roots Picnic music festival for what may be the group’s final performance as Pras Michel faces a 20-year prison term. Concertgoers were in for a special treat during Lauryn Hill’s headlining performance at the Roots Picnic music festival.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • Duolingo Progress

    Finished the first section in my Irish course on Duolingo. I’m still woeful, but I can read a bit of Irish. To a lesser extent, understand it when spoken. I’m a long ways from being able to read stuff outside the application, but, I’m getting there? It feels like progress, and it feels good to make progress on something which, if I’m being honest, is kind of a useless goal. Would it be better for my career to grind the rust off my French? Absolutely. Am I doing something else instead? Absolutely. I can talk about owls and beer (ulchabhan agus beoir). Say “I like Irish” (Is maith leom an Gaeilge). Important things.

  • Tanana River Trail Photos 2023-06-06 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

    I took these photos yesterday during my lunch-break walk.

  • The Laundry Asymmetry

    When preparing for a longish trip I packed six sets of socks, underwear and t-shirts, so I could do the laundry weekly (six plus the clothes I was wearing). Sadly, I miscalculated.

  • Going to the Psycho Ward

    A married man with children goes and visits his wife’s family. He tells the people there about the trip in the south of the country to which he goes by his car in the morning. Old Gruffandgrim*, his father in law, reminds him that he needs to work so he can make a living and have enough money for his trips.

  • Dory progress and Misfin thoughts

    I guess I’d call this a milestone achieved. I’ve successfully sent a couple of Misfin messages to the reference server with a small binary that uses Dory under the hood. Getting there was a little more difficult than I expected, as these things often go.

  • Taking the Measure of the Place

    A weary and dusty traveler shuffles into the bar, slips a business card back into his jacket pocket, and takes a look around to get the measure of the place. A motley crew of vagabonds, salesmen, entertainers, writers, and freethinkers fill the Midnight, chatting in small groups over lukewarm beer. Among the various patrons of the bar, one particularly odd creature stands out, balancing upright on long tentacles with constantly moving eyestalks scanning the scene.

  • Contextual Pizza

    I’ve been finally losing weight after years of simply refusing to deal with the problem. It was nothing too terrible–just an extra 40 pounds and change, but it definitely made itself felt in my feet and knees when running or doing tai chi. After about 4 months I’m finally getting close to the target weight I set, which upon reaching I promised myself a single piece of pizza. I shouldn’t have done that.

    [...]

    Conflating the symbolic representation with the actual is fraught in so many unexpected ways.

• Technical

  • OpenKuBSD design document

    I got an idea today (while taking a shower…) about _partially_ reusing Qubes OS design of using VMs to separate contexts and programs, but doing so on OpenBSD.

    To make explanations CLEAR, I won’t reimplement Qubes OS entirely on OpenBSD. Qubes OS is an interesting operating system with a very strong focus on security (from a very practical point of view ), but it’s in my opinion overkill for most users, and hence not always practical or usable.

    In the meantime, I think the core design could be reused and made it easy for users, like we are used to do in OpenBSD.

  • Pixel 7a & GrapheneOS

    I’m testing a phone for work, and it’s an Android, which is new to me. I swapped the OS for GrapheneOS, which is a security-focused minimalist Android distribution, and the phone hardware is a Pixel 7a. Here’s how someone fairly familiar with iPhones views a current-generation Android phone as their daily driver…

  • New order in /dev/pts

    Previously, I had one global session of terminal multiplexer, and that was where everything lived — plain text accounting, news, blogging, different personal and $dayjob projects. Since you can have only so much tabs before it turns into complete mess, context switching meant closing them all and opening ones relevant to task at hand.

    [...]

    Actually, it is even more than that. Ever saw “normies” to struggling to put two browser windows side-by-side? Well, I can’t do any better on their soil. But I can use tiling window managers, and they don’t. The same satisfying feeling. I found my highground.

  • Striking mods

    First Reddit, now Stack Overflow; moderators are fed up with the admins of the sites they dedicate their labor to. Unpaid labor, to be exact. After decades of witnessing social media platforms rise and “fall” – some underwent a significant revamp and shrank to a healthy size, others shut down permanently, few just became plain irrelevant to former users, yet still exist – and how people react to such things, the latter in particular has become ridiculously predictable, for the sole reason that too many people merely decide to be vocal, rather than vote with their feet in a quiet manner.

  • The Search For An OSR System

    NOTE: I started writing this around New Years not long before the whole WotC OGL situation got started. I was holding off on publishing it because I wanted to find a happier ending to send it off with. The longer I wait, the more certain parts are going to make less sense, so I’m going to get it out faster.

  • Programming

    • The Urge

      One of the unhelpful things that I commonly experience when I read things about software (and very occasionally other things, but usually software) is the urge to make my own version of whatever the thing is.

    • things i wanna do (in no order)

GNU/Linux

• Server

  • 2023 Benchmark Kubernetes Report: 6 K8s Reliability Missteps

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Destination Linux 326: Immutable OS Explained: What They Are & Should You Use One?

    FULL SHOW NOTES ►► https://tuxdigital.com/podcasts/destination-linux/dl-326/

  • Tux Digital ☛ Destination Linux 326: Immutable OS Explained: What They Are & Should You Use One?

    This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we discuss the concept of Immutable OS, what is it and do you need it? Then we discuss why it’s time for you to RISE for RISC-V. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those […]

  • Late Night Linux – Episode 232

    The future of containerised applications and immutable desktops looks more and more like the present, what looks like the Steam Deck moment for audio production, open source voice assistants suddenly seem possible, and more.

• Applications

  • Fedora Magazine ☛ Fedora Magazine: 4 cool new projects to try in COPR for June 2023

    Copr is a build-system for anyone in the Fedora community. It hosts thousands of projects for various purposes and audiences. Some of them should never be installed by anyone, some are already being transitioned to the official Fedora Linux repositories, and the rest is somewhere in between. Copr gives you the opportunity to install 3rd party software that is not available in Fedora Linux repositories, try nightly versions of your dependencies, use patched builds of your favorite tools to support some non-standard use-cases, and just experiment freely.

  • Linux Links ☛ Resonance – Rust-based music player

    Resonance is an intuitive music player application written in Rust (with a smattering of Python), built with a clean user interface using GTK4 / Libadwaita.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Data Swamp ☛ Install OpenBSD in Qubes OS

    Here is a short guide explaining how to install OpenBSD in Qubes OS, as an HVM VM (fully virtualized, not integrated).

  • University of Toronto ☛ The Linux kernel will fix some peculiar argv usage in execve(2)

    In a conventional call to execve(2), the argv argument is a pointer to an array that will become the executed program’s argv, with the array terminated with a NULL element (in the grand C fashion, there is no explicit ‘length’ parameter passed). The first (0th) element of this array is the nominal name of the program and the remainder are the command line arguments. Since all programs have some name, this array is normally at least one element long. However, the execve(2) interface (plus C) allows for two additional variations on the value of argv here.

  • TecMint ☛ 10 Practical Examples of Using the Gzip Command in Linux

    Compression is a very commonly performed operation by users to save disk space as well as reduce time and bandwidth while transferring large amounts of data over the network using gzip utility.

    gzip stands for the GNU zip and it is a very popular compression and decompression utility. One of the primary reasons for its popularity is its high compression ratio and speed, which means the compressed data remains the same after decompressing.

  • TecMint ☛ How to Use Bash For Loop with Examples in Linux

    In programming languages, Loops are essential components and are used when you want to repeat code over and over again until a specified condition is met.

    In Bash scripting, loops play much the same role and are used to automate repetitive tasks just like in programming languages.

  • TecMint ☛ How to Fix “bash syntax error near unexpected token” in Linux

    Bash (Bourne Again Shell) is a command-line program that accepts commands provided and executes them. It takes Linux commands directly typed into it interactively from a keyboard or from a shell script file.

    Bash is used in Linux and Mac systems to run the system and it is the default shell in a majority of modern Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Rocky Linux, and AlmaLinux to mention a few.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install Flatpak on Fedora 38

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Flatpak on Fedora 38. For those of you who didn’t know, Flatpak is a universal package manager designed to work seamlessly across various Linux distributions. It enables users to install, update, and run software applications in an isolated environment, known as a sandbox.

  • Cloudbooklet ☛ How to Change Directory in Linux Using cd Command

    Discover how to change directories in Linux using the powerful cd command. Master absolute and relative paths, and navigate the file system effortlessly.

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ How to Get Wayland to Work on Nvidia Graphics Cards

    Although Nvidia has theoretically had full support for Wayland since they released their drivers in late 2021, the road hasn’t necessarily been smooth.

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ How to Comment Multiple Lines in Vim Editor

    Vim is one of the most popular and influential command-line text editors.

  • The Top 10 Lesser Known Linux Power Commands That You Won’t Be Able to Live Without

    Intro As Linux system administrators, we continuously delve into the boundless ocean of Linux commands to manage and control systems with precision. Some commands are pretty standard and widely known. However, a few lesser-known Linux power commands can make life significantly easier for sysadmins.

  • Hidden Treasures: Managing Secrets with Kubernetes

    Kubernetes has become the dominant container orchestration system for deploying and managing containerized applications. It provides a wide range of features and functionalities that enable DevOps teams to deploy, scale, and manage applications easily.

  • Seamless Blogging: Deploying WordPress on Kubernetes Clusters

    Blogging has become an important tool for businesses and individuals to reach their audience. It’s an effective way to share ideas, market products, and connect with people.

  • Embracing PaaS: Setting up OpenShift Origin for Your Docker Projects

    In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies need to be agile and responsive to changing market needs. One way to achieve this is by leveraging cloud computing and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings.

  • Expand and Contract: Scaling Your Kubernetes Cluster Effectively

    Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It has become increasingly popular in modern software development due to its ability to automate the deployment and management of scalable, distributed systems.

  • From Code to Deployment: Building and Launching Apps on OpenShift with Docker

    Building and launching applications has become a complex process in today’s digital world. The rise of containerization has made it easier to package an application and its dependencies into a single container that can run on any platform.

  • Discovering Docker APIs and SDKs: A Comprehensive Introduction

    Docker is a powerful containerization technology that allows developers to bundle their applications and dependencies into portable containers that can be run anywhere, regardless of the underlying hardware or operating system.

  • Streamlined Construction: Building Docker Images Using APIs

    Docker has revolutionized the way modern software is developed and deployed. It is a containerization platform that allows developers to package their applications along with their dependencies into a single, portable unit called a Docker image.

  • Seamless Deployment: Launching Docker Containers with APIs

    Docker Containers have revolutionized the way we deploy and manage applications. Unlike traditional Virtual Machines that require a full-fledged operating system and consume heavy resources, Docker Containers enable us to package applications into portable, lightweight, and self-sufficient units that can run anywhere.

  • Mastering Container Management: Performing Operations Using Docker APIs

    In today’s fast-paced and dynamic world of software development, containerization has become an essential practice for managing applications. Containerization allows developers to create and deploy applications more quickly, efficiently, and securely.

  • TecAdmin ☛ Converting UTC Date and Time to Local Time in Linux

    When managing a Linux system, you may frequently come across timestamps recorded in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Understanding and converting these timestamps to your local time can be essential, particularly when troubleshooting system events or running time-specific commands.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ dig and nslookup commands on Linux

    Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn the basics of the dig and nslookup commands on Linux. These commands, although simple, are part of powerful network utilities. Introduction to dig and nslookup commands The tools for querying network actions are important for testing solutions and troubleshooting in everyday system use.

• Games

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Diablo 4 on Steam Deck is quite magnificent (and desktop Linux too!)

    Diablo 4 is just about to release for everyone, and after blasting through the Early Access I’ve been thoroughly impressed by how it runs on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Quasimorph is a brutal sci-fi extraction roguelike

    Quasimorph is a classic turn-based roguelike with an ‘extraction’ twist: you deploy into each mission with your clone, level up and collect equipment, then finish the mission to extract with your clone and loot.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ TailQuest Defense is a charming mix of exploration and tower defense

    After being in development for 5 years, TailQuest Defense is finally here as one of the most ambitious early Godot Engine games. Starting off when Godot 2.0 was fresh, you can read a brief bit of their history here.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Try the demo of Lueur and the Dim Settlers, a minimalist and relaxing survival builder

    With a minimalist art style and a more casual setting, Lueur and the Dim Settlers is a genuine little delight to play for those after a city-builder with survival elements but there’s a more relaxed game mode too. Mentioned here on GOL recently, there’s now a demo available for you to give it a try and I think this one is truly worth some of your time. 

Distributions and Operating Systems

• [Repeat] Systemd Free ☛ A new low for the systemd gang and what it may mean (libblockdev udisks2 udiskie)

  The struggle continues, it is not over till we say it is over.

  The reasons which code will change without a version number shift, in this case nearly abandoned and complete projects, are to be speculated upon. Till now it didn’t seem to be a need for such maneuvering. So why such snicky way of changing code without bumping a version number? Because it has already been audited? The version has. … You draw your own conclusions on this one, we just brand it a “new low” for systemd crap pumped out at an alarming rate to trully be audited for security.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

  • PCLOS Official ☛ Kernel Updates Available

    The following kernel updates are available for PCLinuxOS. kernel-5.4.245-pclos1-1-1pclos2023kernel-5.10.182-pclos1-1-1pclos2023kernel-5.15.115-pclos1-1-1pclos2023kernel-6.1.32-pclos1-1-1pclos2023kernel-6.3.6-pclos1-1-1pclos2023

  • PCLOS Official ☛ Qbittorrent 4.5.3

    A Bittorrent client with a polished Qt5 user interface. It aims to be as fast as possible and to provide multi-OS, unicode support.

  • PCLOS Official ☛ Bitwarden 2023.5.0

    Open source, cross platform password manager that sync passwords but also allows accessing passwords offline.

  • PCLOS Official ☛ Dropbox 175.4.5569

    Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers and also allows one to share files with other dropbox users.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • OpenSUSE ☛ Project Announces Plans for Another Minor Leap 15 Release

    We’d like to announce that the openSUSE Release team plans to work on openSUSE Leap 15.6.

    openSUSE Leap 15.6 is expected to be released in early June 2024 and would reach its end of life by the end of the year 2025.

    This decision was based on recent discussions at SUSE Labs and openSUSE Conference, and it reflects recent changes, progress on individual projects, and our new distribution architect.

    This will also enable us to provide SUSE customers with an updated Package HUB module, as both SLES 15 SP5 and Leap 15.6 would be considered a feature release based on our tick-tock release model.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • [Repeat] IT Wire ☛ Red Hat says it will drop LibreOffice from RHEL and Fedora

    However, the downside is that “we are pivoting away from work we had been doing on desktop applications and will cease shipping LibreOffice as part of RHEL starting in a future RHEL version. This also limits our ability to maintain it in future versions of Fedora”.

    Red Hat was acquired by IBM in 2018 for a sum of about US$34 billion.

    Less than 18 months later, the company killed off CentOS, a distribution that contained everything in RHEL minus the trademarks, which made it usable by all and sundry without payment.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu Fridge ☛ The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 790

  • Ubuntu News ☛ Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 790

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 790 for the week of May 28 – June 3, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Canonical planning an immutable desktop version of Ubuntu

    This could be very interesting and exciting. Canonical has confirmed they’re working towards an immutable version of Ubuntu for desktop users based on all the work they’ve done with Ubuntu Core.

  • Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu Blog: Ubuntu Summit 2023 – Call for Proposals

    Do you have a revolutionary project that’s pushing the boundaries of the open source landscape?

    Are you an inspiring community leader who’s building a sustainable coalition for the future?

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ GEEKOM launches AS 6 and AS 5 AMD-based mini-PCs

    The company GEEKOM launched today two mini-PCs built around the Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 AMD processors. The AS 6 supports DDR5 memory, 8K video output, up to 2TB of storage and multiple I/O ports.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ dbrand bring out a universal mount for Steam Deck Killswitch

    Do you have the Killswitch case for your Steam Deck? Well dbrand have come up with their own universal mount so you can strap anything you want to the back of it.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Purism ☛ DHS Security Report: Data Security & Privacy At The OS Level

    Data security and end user privacy requires focusing on the operating system (OS) that supports smartphones, tablet PCs, connected products, IoT/IIoT devices, wearable tech, and PCs.

    [...]

    Intrusive app and social media developers, plus nation-state hackers, know that one of the largest gateways to the smartphone or PC end user is through the operating system which means that Google, Apple, and Microsoft are selling access to their OS end users to intrusive app and social media developers worldwide.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Armbian and DietPi May-June news

    Armbian launched in May their latest Linux distribution “Armbian 23.05 Suni” with various updates for the Debian community. Similarly, DietPi v8.18 has provided enhancements for the Quartz64 SBC and PiHole support for the RISC-V architecture.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Make Use Of ☛ Why Google’s Focus on the Pixel Is Holding Android Back

  • Android Police ☛ Android’s distribution numbers remain as depressing as ever

  • Giz China ☛ 5 new features in iOS 17 were available on Android a long time ago

  • Gadget Bridge ☛ How to Enable Virtualization on PC to Support Android Emulator? (Intel and AMD)

  • SamMobile ☛ Android 14 (One UI 6.0) release date for Samsung devices tipped – SamMobile

  • Android Authority ☛ Android 13 continues to add more users worldwide – Android Authority

  • Nokia Power User ☛ Nokia T20 – Nokia C12 receive new Android 12 Builds, Nokia G11 Plus only May security update [Markets] – Nokiapoweruser

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Programming/Development

  • Rlang ☛ Tidying the Freedom Index

    I needed to create a few plots by using the Civil Liberties and Political Rights scores from the Freedom Index. However, the data provided in Excel format was not in an easy to use presentation. This blog post shows how I reshaped the data to make it easier to work with.

    There is an excellent post, Cleaning Freedom House indicators, by Marta Kolczynska that I used as reference. The post is four years old, so here I am using some updated functions and I tried to make some steps more general.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Getting frustrated at inanimate IT objects

    I had a bit of an epiphany today. I’m not frustrated at my computers for not doing what I want, or for behaving unexpectedly, or for having increasingly-hostile interfaces and design. I’m frustrated at the people who designed them, made them, and/or signed off on them.

  • Undeadly ☛ Game of Trees 0.89 released

    Version 0.89 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated): [...]

  • Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Units in Go and Rust show philosophical differences

    Let’s compare how Go and Rust represent units of time! Specifically, we’ll look at how they represent durations of time for things like thread sleeps. For this, we’ll look primarily at the standard library; other libraries may do it differently, but this is a somewhat “blessed” path, and the world of libraries is so vast. The standard libraries also are more likely to represent idiomatic usage.

  • Chris ☛ Scales of Plan-Driven Development

    Balancing Agility and Discipline talks a lot about the contrast between agile development and plan-driven development. We will briefly look at the contrast at the end of this article, but first an insight that I think is much more fundamental.

  • Earthly ☛ Building Golang With Bazel and Gazelle

    In this article, you’ll learn about the basics of building Go using Bazel and Gazelle. You’ll learn how to prepare a workspace, run, and test it; and how to develop a basic application using Bazel. To follow along, you must be familiar with the basics of Golang and how the Golang build process works. You also need to have the latest version of Go installed on your system.

  • Fernando Borretti ☛ Why Lisp Syntax Works

    Lisp’s unusual syntax is connected to its expressive power. How? Not because of “homoiconicity”, a word that has no meaning but leaves people somewhat impressed, because it sounds fanciful and mathematical. It’s because of uniformity.

  • Bogomil Shopov – Bogo: Me, Myself, and DevOpsDays 2023 Prague

    It’s early Tuesday morning, and I am again in the metro, going to a location in Prague I have never been to before. People are quiet on the train, thinking about their lives. I saw just a few people not looking at their phones. Have we become humanity addicted to some shiny devices and so-called “technologies”? That could be another topic. Now, I am going to the second day of DevOpsDays2023 Prague.

    The hotel welcomes me with many tobacco smokers outside and a strange facade. I am in the right place because I saw familiar faces and heard someone talking about Jenkins. 

    I took the elevator to the conference area and headed to the registration. A lovely girl said hello to me after I got my welcome pack. I said hello back. I told myself something was wrong. See, sweet girls never say hello to me like that. 

    Then I remembered I am in a friendly company because DevOps is not only about technologies but also about the mindset of being nice to others.

    I met a few great people I worked with and then went to the conference room. I expected more attendees. The room was 80% full. It may be too early.

    I was just on time for the first speaker.

Leftovers

• Terence Eden ☛ Why did Usenet fail?

  My university experience was dominated by Usenet. It was where nerds went to socialise. I bought and sold computer equipment, published terrible poetry, and learned about LGBT matters. I lurked in the comp.lang.* hierarchy until I was confident enough to ask my Prolog questions without making it look like I was asking for help with my university assignments.

  And then, one day, I just stopped.

  There are three main reasons that I remember.

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ The Printing Of Pi

    It really isn’t necessary, but there is some geek cred to learning pi to some bizarre number of digits. One way to do that is via a piem — a mnemonic device that is easy to remember and gives you the digits. Don’t know any? [Roni Bandini] has you covered with the PiemPi machine. It prints a random piem on a thermal printer and calculates each digit on the fly. You can watch the machine in action in the video below.

• Education

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Meet Brian Corteil: CamJam event runner

    “I am part of the team that has taking over organising CamJam from Mike Horne and Tim Richardson,” Brian tells us. “[They] organised the last couple of CamJams before 2020. Early this year, I had realized that it had been over three years since the last CamJam and I decided to it was time for CamJam to return, and the only way it would happen is if I organised it. So, I pitched the idea to hold the jam at Cambridge’s Makespace to both Mike, Tim, and Makespace. Luckily, everyone thought it was a great idea.”

  • Arjen Wiersma ☛ Perfectionism leads to procrastination and paralysis

    It’s often said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In my quest for the ‘just right’ words to articulate my thoughts, I found this saying to be glaringly accurate. The ticking clock became a dull backdrop to my cerebral scavenger hunt. My concentration started to drift and instead of zeroing in on my research proposal, I found myself fixated on, of all things, the color scheme of my desktop environment.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Increasing System Memory With The Flick Of A Switch

    There’s an apocryphal quote floating around the internet that “640K ought to be enough memory for anybody” but it does seem unlikely that this was ever actually said by any famous computer moguls of the 1980s. What is true, however, is that in general more computer memory tends to be better than less. In fact, this was the basis for the Macintosh 512k in the 1980s, whose main feature was that it was essentially the same machine as the Macintosh 128k, but with quadruple the memory as its predecessor. If you have yet to upgrade to the 512k, though, it might be best to take a look at this memory upgrade instead.

  • Hackaday ☛ Microsculptures 3D Printed With Advanced Macromolecular “Inks”

    When we think about 3D printing, our mind often jumps to hot nozzles squirting out molten plastic. Other popular techniques include flashing bright light into resin, or using lasers to fuse together metal powders. All these techniques are great at producing parts with complicated geometries at desktop scales.

  • Hackaday ☛ This Vending Machine Is For The Birds

    The early bird may get the worm, but [Stephen Chasey’s] birds only get to eat if they are smart. He’s created a vending machine for bird feeding. While this is a classic and simple exercise for a microcontroller, [Stephen’s] design is all op amps and 555 timers. The feeder comes on when it detects a warm body and waits for something to drop through a hole. Birds don’t have coins, so the hole will accept anything that will trigger the IR sensor within. In response, it dispenses a few peanuts. Rodents and squirrels won’t figure out the machinery, and so they can’t pilfer the peanuts meant for the pigeons — or other birds, even if they don’t start with the letter P.

  • Hackaday ☛ Op Amp Contest: Generate Spirograph Shapes Using Only Op Amps And Math

    If you’re a child of the ’80s or ’90s, chances are you’ve spent hours tracing out intricate patterns using the pens and gears of a Spirograph kit. Simple as those parts may be, they’re actually a very clever technique for plotting mathematical functions called hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. [Craig] has spent some time analyzing these functions, and realized you can also implement them with analog circuits. He used this knowledge to design a device called Op Art which generates Spirograph shapes on your oscilloscope using just a handful of op amps.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • RTL ☛ California’s honey bees await the famous sunshine

    But with temperatures in the Los Angeles area topping out around 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) most days right now, and the area’s famously blue skies hidden by a blanket of cloud, it all adds to the impression that the weather is just not being very Californian this year.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Pokie numbers cut amid ongoing gambling health concerns

    The Northern Territory government has lowered the number of poker machines allowed across the region as it continues to acknowledge the significant harm caused by problem gambling.

    The cap on gaming machines in community venues has been reduced from 1699 to 1659, excluding machines at the NT’s two casinos which are covered by separate agreements.

  • Democracy Now ☛ Ed Bisch Fights to Hold Sacklers Accountable for Opioid Epidemic 22 Years After Son Died of Overdose

    The Sackler family, the billionaire owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, have secured immunity from all current and future civil litigation related to their role in fueling the opioid epidemic. The legal shield was granted last week by a federal appeals court in exchange for the family agreeing to pay up to $6 billion to thousands of plaintiffs in various lawsuits that are now suspended as part of the deal. While the Sacklers appear safe from further civil litigation, they could — and should — be criminally charged, says Ed Bisch, who lost his son Eddie to an OxyContin-related overdose in 2001 at age 18. “Fines without any prosecutions, there is no deterrent. They look at it as the cost of doing business,” says Bisch. We also speak to Christopher Glazek, the investigative reporter who was the first to publicly report how the Sackler family had significantly profited from selling OxyContin while fully aware that the highly addictive drug was directly fueling the opioid epidemic in America. “The Sacklers lied about how addictive the drug was, in order to convince doctors and patients that it wasn’t dangerous,” says Glazek.

• Proprietary

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ The Software-Defined Car

    Developers are starting to talk about the software-defined car.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Elon Musk says China will initiate AI regulations

    The Chinese government will seek to initiate artificial intelligence regulations in its country, billionaire businessman Elon Musk says after meeting with officials during his recent trip to China.

    Musk did not elaborate further and made his remarks in a Twitter Space with Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr on Monday.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Is Outlook down? Thousands of users report problems with Microsoft’s email platform

    Thousands of Microsoft Outlook users reported issues with accessing and using the email platform Monday morning. Microsoft 365 outage and problem reports peaked at almost 18,000 shortly after 11 a.m. ET Monday morning, according to outage tracker Downdetector.

  • India Today ☛ Ex-Microsoft employee says he did not get any job offers even after applying to more than 1000 places

    An ex-Microsoft employee took to LinkedIn and revealed that he has been looking for a new job since he got laid off but even after applying to more than 1,000 places, he could not secure any position.

  • Microsoft Is Deprioritizing Third-Party Ad Tech Amid Reorgs And Layoffs

    Microsoft’s purchase of Xandr from AT&T in late 2021 might have looked like an embrace of third-party ad tech.

    But while parts of the Xandr tech are considered valuable by Microsoft, the future of Xandr as an SSP integrated with thousands of outside publishers is in doubt.

    Since completing the acquisition in June of last year, Microsoft Advertising has shifted its focus to first-party products and integrations to win and secure key accounts, such as Netflix, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of recent changes within the group.

    [...]

    Yet because layoffs have affected every part of Microsoft, there are fewer people to handle support tickets.

    Due to the layoffs and restructuring, there are also “more demands” on the Xandr group now, said one Microsoft Advertising employee who’s been with AppNexus since 2015. Those demands come from internal stakeholders such as Microsoft Azure, Bing and other high-priority units in the company.

  • Windows TCO

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft battles through two 365 outages in one day

      At the time of writing, the Outlook email service has been in trouble since 1830 ET (2230 UTC).

      An earlier incident took out multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Site36 ☛ Whistleblower of the hearts: Ten years ago, Edward Snowden exposed secret mass surveillance

    • Techdirt ☛ Locked Out Of NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware, DEA Purchases Exploits From Its Non-Union, Israeli Equivalent

      First off, let’s just clear one thing up: the headline is a Simpson’s reference, not a dog whistle aimed at unions and/or the Jewish population of Israel.

    • BBC ☛ Microsoft to pay $20m for child privacy violations

      Microsoft will pay $20m (£16m) to US federal regulators after it was found to have illegally collected data on children who had started Xbox accounts.

      The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reached a settlement with the company on Monday, which also includes increased protections for child gamers.

      Among other violations, the FTC found that Microsoft failed to inform parents about its data collection policies.

    • ABC ☛ Microsoft will pay $20M to settle U.S. charges of illegally collecting children’s data

      Microsoft will pay a fine of $20 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it illegally collected and retained the data of children who signed up to use its Xbox video game console.

      The agency charged that Microsoft gathered the data without notifying parents or obtaining their consent, and that it also illegally held onto the data. Those actions violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the FTC stated.

    • MWL ☛ Organized Freebies

      The pedantic will note that these books aren’t truly free. You must make an account somewhere to get them. And–yes, that’s true. I’m a business. Giving me money requires making an account somewhere. Meet me in a dark alley and slip me $20 and I’ll hand over a brown paper bag containing a book, sure, but online commerce requires accounts. For what it’s worth, my store’s privacy policy is the one I would like other retailers to use, and you can delete accounts in my store.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Paks II to be fast-tracked

    “More, important preparatory work on expanding the Paks nuclear plant will soon be underway, and the amended contractual framework will ensure faster progress while fully respecting safety rules”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said, according to the Hungarian State News Agency, MTI.

  • The Nation ☛ Gun Response Apps

  • Techdirt ☛ Another Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Gang Member Admits The Department Has Plenty Of Gang Members

    The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department doesn’t have a great track record. In addition to the usual stuff expected from law enforcement agencies (biased policing, zero accountability, civil rights abuses, excessive force deployment), the LASD has been home to deputy gangs pretty much since its inception.

  • War in Ukraine

    • The Gray Zone ☛ VIDEO: Rep. Jamal Bowman supports military aid for Ukraine but is unfamiliar with the Donbas and Crimea

    • Meduza ☛ Explosion at Nova Kakhovka dam threatens Ukraine’s Kherson region with devastating floodwaters — Meduza

      Ukraine’s Operational Command South has confirmed that an explosion on Tuesday morning destroyed the Nova Kakhovka dam, which guards the Kherson region’s coastal cities against a reservoir with water levels currently at a 30-year high. In a statement on Facebook, the Ukrainian military accused Russian occupation forces of blowing up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. The loss of the dam is expected to unleash flood waters downstream and exacerbate Ukraine’s energy shortages after months of Russian missile strikes targeting power generation and grid facilities across the country.

    • Meduza ☛ European Union sanctions nine Russian citizens in connection with sentencing of Vladimir Kara-Murza — Meduza

      On Monday June 5, the Council of the European Union announced sanctions against nine Russian citizens who it says are responsible for the sentencing and subsequent imprisonment of opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza. On April 17, a Moscow court sentenced Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison.

    • Meduza ☛ Ukraine’s military intelligence reports Russian colonel killed in Belgorod — Meduza

      Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate reports that Andrey Stesev, a colonel in the Russian Army, was killed in the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka, in the early hours of June 5. The agency posted a military ID bearing that name.

    • Meduza ☛ Belgorod governor says local authorities ‘cannot enter’ village of Novaya Tavolzhanka, which pro-Ukraine ‘partisans’ claim to control — Meduza

      Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, said during a livestream on Russian social media network VKontakte that regional authorities “cannot enter” the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka. 

    • Meduza ☛ Ukraine says ‘offensive actions’ underway ‘in several areas’ — Meduza

      Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar said on Telegram Monday that Ukraine’s military has begun conducting “offensive actions in several areas.”

    • Meduza ☛ Seeing is believing: A close reading of combat videos from Velyka Novosilka suggests a possible course for the impending Ukrainian counteroffensive. But it can all change, and quickly. — Meduza

      Russia’s Defense Ministry and the pro-war Telegram channels are circulating combat footage from Velyka Novosilka, claiming that it heralds nothing less than the start of a large-scale Ukrainian counteroffensive. But is this really true? Meduza’s military analysts take a close look at the evidence, the “known unknowns,” and what plausible scenarios might arise in the balance.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Fast Company ☛ Inside Snopes: the rise, fall, and rebirth of an internet icon

    Trolling was named after the fishing practice in which anglers bait hooks and pull them on lines through the water. Online, the bait was a bit of bad info, and a “‘good’ troll,” according to AFU, was “obviously facetious/sarcastic to anyone who has a sense of humor and some intelligence.” But because of pomposity or because people were gullible or stupid, they’d leap to correct a poster who’d spoken in jest. So they were reeled in and informed that they’d “lost.” They’d been trolled. They weren’t worthy company.

    In 1993, AOL began providing Usenet access to its subscribers, and tens of thousands of newbies were dumped onto the electronic bulletin board in what became known as “Eternal September.” Trolling became meaner. It became even more of an “insider’s game,” says the user experience designer Michele Tepper, an AFU alumna and author of the first academic paper on trolling. (It would mutate later, of course, into something else—something dark—and the whole web would become its playing field.) But newcomers to AFU were offered “survival guides” and warned against arguing with Mikkelson, a legend, in particular.

• Environment

  • The Revelator ☛ ‘We Found Plastic on the Seabed in Antarctica and I Just Cried’

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Michael West Media ☛ Minister taken to court over ‘mega’ coalmine approvals

      An environmental group has mounted a legal challenge to federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek after she did not accept calls to consider the impact of global warming when assessing three coalmine applications in NSW and Queensland.

      The Environment Council of Central Queensland has filed in the Federal Court seeking a judicial review of Ms Plibersek’s decisions, claiming she has refused to accept the global warming risk associated with proposals.

    • Michael West Media ☛ Off-grid hydrogen box could replace diesel generators

      Millions of diesel generators could switch off across Australia if work sites, councils and isolated communities opt for a new hydrogen “power bank”.

      Governments may want to export hydrogen to Asia over the next decade but a Brisbane-based startup says it has technology ready to go now for local use by farms, mines and eco-tourism operators or remote mobile phone towers and water treatment plants.

    • Hackaday ☛ Linear Power Supply’s Current Limiter Is A Lesson In Simplicity

      Here at Hackaday we really like to feature projects that push the limits of what’s possible, or ones that feature some new and exciting technology that nobody has ever seen before. So what’s so exciting about this single-voltage linear power supply? Honestly, nothing — until you start looking at its thermally compensated current limiting circuit.

    • New York Times ☛ India Train Crash: What We Know About the Deadly Accident in Odisha

      Three trains, with more than 2,200 people onboard, were involved in the crash in Odisha State, the deadliest such disaster in decades. The death toll approached 300.

    • New York Times ☛ Amsterdam Train Service Resumes After Disruption

      The cause of the problem, which prompted widespread travel delays starting Sunday, had still not been determined.

• Finance

  • Pro Publica ☛ Complaint: True the Vote Leaders Used Donations for Personal Gain

    Conservative activists Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips used the nonprofit True the Vote to enrich themselves, according to a complaint filed to the IRS.

    On Monday, the nonprofit watchdog group Campaign for Accountability called for an investigation into True the Vote, which has made repeated false claims about voter fraud in elections. The complaint said True the Vote may have violated state and federal law when the charity used donations to issue loans to Engelbrecht, its founder, and lucrative contracts to Gregg Phillips, a longtime director. The organization also failed to disclose the payments to insiders in its tax returns, including excessive legal bills paid to its general counsel at the time, who filed election-related lawsuits in four states, the complaint said.

  • Democracy Now ☛ David Sirota: Working Class Will Be “Deeply Harmed” by Biden’s “Big Win” on Debt Ceiling

    President Joe Biden on Saturday signed a debt ceiling deal into law that averts a catastrophic default by the United States through January 1, 2025, hailing it as a “big win” for the country. Critics say the agreement protects wealthy corporations and tax dodgers while imposing new cuts on key social programs and expanding work requirements for some recipients of food stamps. The legislation has also been called a “dirty deal” by climate activists because it rolls back environmental regulations and fast-tracks the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia, a pet project of powerful Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. “The working class of this country was deeply harmed by this bill,” says investigative journalist David Sirota of The Lever. He also faults Democratic leaders for not raising the debt ceiling after the midterm elections, when the party still had control of Congress. “What you see is a picture of a party that wanted this outcome,” says Sirota.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Veterans’ homelessness to cost billions if unaddressed

    Veterans are almost three times as likely to end up on the street but three times less likely to ask for help, a new report has found.

    In the past year, almost 6000 or 5.3 per cent of Australia’s half a million veterans were on the streets, a rate almost three times higher than the general population.

  • Michael West Media ☛ New blow for home owners as interest rates rise again

    Mortgage holders have been slugged with another 0.25 percentage point interest rate rise.

    The Reserve Bank board has opted to keep pressure on borrowers as it grapples with still-high inflation.

  • Michael West Media ☛ New bargaining system for workers kicks into action

    The first multi-employer bargaining case will be brought to the industrial umpire under new federal laws allowing workers from different businesses to band together to negotiate higher pay rises.

    Unions representing workers at 20 different early childhood education employers across NSW, the ACT and Victoria will bring their case before the Fair Work Commission on Tuesday – the first day the new laws come into effect.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Reserve Bank gears up for another close cash rate call

    The Reserve Bank board is set to make another tough interest rate decision in the fight against persistent but tempering inflation.

    Board members will weigh up strong but somewhat unreliable monthly inflation data – which came in at 6.8 per cent in April, up from 6.3 per cent in March – as well as signs of an easing but still robust jobs market.

  • Michael West Media ☛ Council rates shake up, as NSW lags behind other states

    Council rate hikes could be different across rural, regional and city areas under proposed changes, but it will be up to the NSW government to bring local funding up to speed with the rest of Australia.

    NSW local government leaders have long been calling for an overhaul of the rate pegging system, which sets an annual limit on increased income from ratepayers.

  • YLE ☛ Police suspect young man of hundreds of payment fraud crimes

    The man allegedly duped more than 400 people into revealing their banking details and stole more than one million euros from them.

  • Latvia ☛ Affordable housing project in Latvia gets hit by inflation

    Due to a substantial increase in construction costs, the affordable rental housing project announced last year has been cut from 700 to 467 apartments. In planning other similar programs, calls are made to reduce the fragmentation of housing policy, Latvian Radio reported on June 4.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New York Times ☛ Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

    But Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times. The company has regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent, the document said.

    That performance is unlikely to improve anytime soon, according to the documents and seven current and former Twitter employees.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ New Twitter boss Linda Yaccarino starts her job today at a difficult time

    Prior to taking the post, Yaccarino had worked for four years as head of NBCUniversal Media LLC’s advertising and partnership team. Back in December, Musk polled Twitter users, asking them if he should stay or go, and 57.5% said he should go. That he did, later explaining he’d like to hire a new CEO so he can concentrate on Tesla Inc. and other ventures.

  • Techdirt ☛ Twitter Admits in Court Filing: Elon Musk Is Simply Wrong About Government Interference At Twitter

    It is amazing the degree to which some people will engage in confirmation bias and believe absolute nonsense, even as the facts show the opposite is true. Over the past few months, we’ve gone through the various “Twitter Files” releases, and pointed out over and over again how the explanations people gave for them simply don’t match up with the underlying documents.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Chris Hedges: Dr. Cornel West Announces He Is Running for President

    Dr. Cornel West, in his first interview since deciding to enter the U.S. presidential race, explains why he is a candidate.

  • Democracy Now ☛ David Sirota: Florida Lawmakers Help Ron DeSantis Shovel More Cash to Wall Street

    David Sirota of The Lever talks about how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s fundraising for his 2024 presidential bid could be hindered by a federal pay-to-play rule that restricts campaign contributions from financial executives to state officials who control pension investment decisions.

  • Techdirt ☛ Blizzard’s ‘Diablo 4’ Q&A With Fans Got Real Weird, Real Fast

    Usually when we’re talking about companies engaging in astroturfing, it takes the form of companies or industry groups inputting comments supposedly from “the public” to support whatever thing they’re trying to accomplish. Utility groups creating a shell advocate organization to stifle reforms. Telecom companies employing astroturfers to smear an FCC nominee. Amazon cosplaying as a series of small businesses pretending to advocate against antitrust reforms. These are the types of things you think about when we talk about astroturfing.

  • H.K.G. case: The request that H.K.G herself should be directly heard at the court was rejected

    Antep MP of the Labour Party Sevda Karaca said before the hearing, “There are now those in the parliament who do not want women in their corridors. We know that this new Parliament wants to justify child abuse. We are here today. H.G.K. is not alone.”

  • New York Times ☛ Millennials Just Keep Voting

    They are voting at higher rates than younger adults once did, helping the Democratic Party.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Meduza ☛ Putin’s ‘martial law’ address broadcast in 3 Russian regions. The Kremlin says radio stations were hacked, denies authenticity of recording. — Meduza

      A state-of-emergency address by Vladimir Putin was broadcast on the radio in three regions of southern Russia: Rostov, Belgorod, and Voronezh. Listeners heard Putin declare martial law in response to an alleged “incursion” of the Ukrainian armed forces into Russia.

    • NBC ☛ Is it real or made by AI? Europe wants a label for that as it fights disinformation

      E.U. Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said the ability of a new generation of AI chatbots to create complex content and visuals in seconds raises “fresh challenges for the fight against disinformation.”

      She said she asked Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and other tech companies that have signed up to the 27-nation bloc’s voluntary agreement on combating disinformation to work to tackle the AI problem.

    • Troy Patterson ☛ Plea for Action

      A friend came to me asking for help. This friend’s Facebook account has been hacked. The hackers are now asking for money using the compromised account. This is particularly effective since this is an account that lots of people have interacted with for quite a while. So, friends and relatives are responding to requests for money. Since this is a “known” account, the request has more import. The hackers are benefitting since people are sending money.

    • Vice Media Group ☛ Stack Overflow Moderators Are Striking to Stop Garbage AI Content From Flooding the Site

      “Stack Overflow, Inc. has decreed a near-total prohibition on moderating AI-generated content… tacitly allowing the proliferation of incorrect information (“hallucinations”) and unfettered plagiarism on the Stack Exchange network,” reads an open letter written by the moderators, who are all volunteers elected by the community.

      “This poses a major threat to the integrity and trustworthiness of the platform and its content. Effective immediately, we are enacting a general moderation strike on Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange network, in protest of this and other recent and upcoming changes to policy and the platform that are being forced upon us by Stack Overflow, Inc.”

    • International Business Times ☛ EU wants tech companies to clearly label AI-generated content

      European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova told reporters on Monday that advanced AI tools including ChatGPT can effortlessly create complex, seemingly realistic content and visuals in a few seconds. Jourova also pointed out that people can use image generators to make realistic pictures of events that never took place.

      “Voice generation software can imitate the voice of a person based on a sample of a few seconds,” she added. In fact, Spotify is reportedly prepping to use the AI-trained voices of popular hosts with the help of similar technology.

      Jourova also warned of Russian disinformation, which is spreading like wildfire in Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, she noted that machines did not have “any right” to freedom of speech. Jourova has asked the 44 signatories of the European Union’s code of practice against disinformation to help users identify AI-generated content. “The labelling should be done now — immediately,” she insisted.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • NPR ☛ He took away the country’s top AAA rating in 2011. He ended up fearing for his life

    Chambers was the public face of the downgrade. He defended it on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and MSNBC’s Morning Joe. And before long, he started receiving serious threats.

  • The Nation ☛ How CNN Went From Bad to Worse

    One way to make yourself look good is to keep pointing out the faults of your predecessor. Like Elon Musk at Twitter, CNN’s CEO Chris Licht loves to denigrate the previous management of his company. With both Musk and Licht, this is clearly an attempt at covering up their own failures.1

  • VOA News ☛ Moscow Bans ‘Unfriendly’ Journalists From Economic Forum

    Those who have opted to stay face escalating risks, including arbitrary detention. American reporter Evan Gershkovich, who works for The Wall Street Journal, has been detained for over two months in Russia on espionage accusations that he and the U.S. government deny.

  • Project Censored ☛ The Project Censored Newsletter—May 2023 – Newsletters

    At the risk of sounding biased, we suspect State of the Free Press 2024 may develop into the best volume yet in the Project’s venerable yearbook series. You’ll be able to judge for yourself in December when the book drops. Meanwhile, stay tuned in the coming months for more details and sneak peaks. And, if you’re wondering why the May newsletter is arriving at the very end of the month? Well, let’s just say we’ve been busy researching and writing!

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ Breakthrough In Lawsuit Against Alleged CIA Spying On Assange Visitors

  • NPR ☛ Journalists at Gannett newspapers walk out over deep cuts and low pay

    According to Jon Schleuss, the president of the NewsGuild, corporate executives have eliminated 54% of the combined workforce of Gannett Co. since it merged with GateHouse Media four years ago to make a newspaper behemoth. Financing for the merger loaded up the new Gannett Co. with debt that led to hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts.

  • New York Times ☛ Hong Kong Court Overturns Conviction of Journalist Bao Choy

    A court ruled that “substantial and grave injustice” was done to Choy Yuk-ling, an investigative journalist who also goes by the name Bao Choy.

  • CS Monitor ☛ ‘Nowhere to hide’: After murders in Amazon, local journalists at risk

    The tragic murder of a reporter and environmentalist in the Amazon last year underscores the invisibility of many of the forest’s risks.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Techdirt ☛ Not Everything Is Bigger In Texas: Latest Dumbass Anti-Drag Bill Appears To Outlaw Breast Enhancements

    I cannot even begin to understand the unfettered amount of dumbshittery being passed off as legislating in the public’s interest by politicians far more performative than any drag queen I’ve had the pleasure of observing.

  • New York Times ☛ Kathleen Folbigg Is Pardoned; Australian Official Cites ‘New Evidence’

    An Australian jury found that Kathleen Folbigg had smothered her children. But scientists now say that they probably died from natural causes.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Nation ☛ Why the Internet Hates Gay People

    For kids whose formative years fell in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when home computers ebbed with the widespread availability of portable screens, the practice of covertly spelunking into salacious corners of the Web—often while our parents weren’t home—was something like a rite of passage. Chat rooms like ChatRoulette or Omegle, the old Tumblr, and, of course, porn sites, offered a window into the most mysterious aspect of adult life: sex. In my case, poking around the Internet helped me realize that the range of possible self-expression and sexual desire was much bigger than what I was taught to believe in the classrooms and hallways of my suburban Ohio school.

  • Techdirt ☛ Broadband Usage Caps Now Drive MORE Broadband Usage, Study Finds

    We’ve noted for years how broadband usage caps are a pointless, unnecessary cash grab by telecom monopolies looking to nickel-and-dime consumers who already pay too much for broadband.

  • Techdirt ☛ Supreme Court Declines To Review Important 9th Circuit Section 230 Win

    Would you believe it? We’ve got some more good news from the Supreme Court on Section 230. Remember that, before Gonzalez v. Google, a few of the Justices seemed to be begging for cases that would let them destroy Section 230. But then they (surprisingly) took the Gonzalez case, had to deal with many dozens of amici briefs explaining why 230 is so important, and seemed positively spooked when they actually realized that maybe this was more complex than they thought, leading them to punt on the issue.

• Monopolies

  • Trademarks

    • Hollywood Reporter ☛ Can a Phrase That Trolls Trump Be Trademarked? The Supreme Court Will Decide

      The Supreme Court on Monday said it will decide whether a California lawyer has the free speech right to trademark the phrase “Trump Too Small,” a reference to a taunt at the former president during the 2016 presidential campaign. In reviewing the case, the Supreme Court will revisit the constitutionality of restrictions on trademark registrations.

  • Copyrights

    • Creative Commons ☛ A Journalist’s Guide to Creative Commons 2023

      Whether you work for a smaller newsroom seeking high quality, newsworthy photos that are free to use, or are part of a larger operation, like Propublica, that CC licenses all news to increase access and spread, CC licenses are free, powerful tools at your disposal.

      Yet, some journalists may not be aware of the potential and ease of these tools. Open Newswire and Creative Commons partnered to offer a practical primer on Creative Commons for journalism, and how to make the most of CC licenses. Enjoy!

    • New Yorker ☛ The Case for and Against Ed Sheeran

      Music copyright, which became law in the United States in 1831, allows composers to establish the “metes and bounds” of their intellectual [sic] property [sic], just as mechanical inventors do in obtaining patents. But a patent is granted only after examiners have determined, by way of an investigation, that an invention is truly new and useful. A music copyright is more like a virtual rubber stamp that a musician gets automatically as soon as a song is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” If the song is a hit and the musician is sued—because “where there’s a hit, there’s a writ,” as an old adage goes—it is up to the courts to figure out how original the work is.

      Copyright makes it commercially viable to be an artist. But painters can’t claim ownership of a color, and songwriters can’t monopolize notes or, for that matter, common chord progressions, modes, or rhythms. A composer is entitled to own only a particular expression or arrangement of a musical idea, not the idea itself. (The concept of an arpeggio, or of counterpoint, cannot be copyrighted.) The question is how to legally separate the two. The law, which represents the Apollonian side of human experience—the rational, analytical, and intellectual—is a leaky sieve for containing the Dionysian elements of music: the irrational, abstract, and emotional parts.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Setback for Bell Canada in $400m Movie Piracy Lawsuit

      Canada’s ‘Notice and Notice’ regime requires ISPs to forward infringement notices to subscribers, typically those linked to the sharing of movies via BitTorrent. U.S. movie companies say that since Bell Canada failed to forward around 40,000 notices, they are now entitled to CAD$400m in damages. Bell’s response included allegations of copyright misuse, abuse of process, champerty and maintenance and unlawful means conspiracy. That hasn’t gone according to plan.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • The Tracker Arrives…

    A weary traveler stands outside the pub, dusting off his clothes and checking his pockets nervously. He pulls a worn and slightly crumpled business card from his left jacket pocket, turning it over in his hand to examine both sides. The embossed logo of a door with a moon in the center stands out clearly in the dim light of the alleyway. Looking again at the front door of the Midnight, he raises a fist and knocks three times.

  • train of thoughts

    as a kid i was enamored of many things: succulents, rubik’s cubes, computers and also trains. the larger-than-life feeling of entering the hall of a train station, the incomprehensible announcements through the tinny speakers, the neverending onslaught of wagons dragged by freight trains, the ridiculous speeds at which these massive metal worms drag people from point a to b. unfortunately i never got around to traveling by train much as a kid. then and now going by train isn’t exactly the cheapest way to get around, and since my family was perfectly happy going everywhere by car, i didn’t have a choice.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: CINORTY Wordo: BRIMS

  • Wigs and Sandals

    Hearing someone disapprove of socks and sandals, or wearing pyjamas outdoors may be the fastest way to identify an idiot. The recategorization happens instantly, and they find themselves unknowingly in the company of every Victorian man who might have chided someone for not wearing a wig, or powdering their face enough.

  • Neutral News

    “News sources are biased”, and “everyone lives in a bubble”, we all hear constantly (or perhaps that’s just my bubble). But what would a non-biased news source look like?

    Taking a strict middle-ground gives immediately ridiculous conclusions. Perhaps the UK’s food banks suggest some problem, but not much of a problem? This seems less wrong than saying food banks don’t suggest any problem, but still wrong. And should this neutral position exist on a per-country basis – so all the countries can have balanced, and unbiased, but totally different news stories – or planet-wide? ( – I can’t even imagine what madness that would summon)

  • Apple vs VR

    Facebook’s hardware efforts on the other hand have landed pretty well—the Oculus does what people want at a good price point. Their “Metaverse” software is failing because it’s not what people want at all, but we’re getting on just fine by ignoring it completely.

    With Google going “too cheap” and Facebook hitting “just right”, the idea of Apple entering the fray at a ridiculously high price point—$3500—is both fitting and hilarious.

• Politics

  • Auto Eugenics

    Once in a while I hear of someone who’s decided to not have children because of bad ideas. I don’t want to argue that anyone should or should not have children, but I do want to remove those bad ideas.

• Technical

  • Will I outlive NetBSD?

    I was recently reading a detailed account of Apple UNIX, a Macintosh-compatible UNIX operating system published by Apple for Macintosh computers with m68k CPUs. The account appeared to have been written in 2001, based on one screenshot of the author’s PC desktop. The account concludes by recommending that operators of m68k-based Macintosh computers who wish to run UNIX on their machines find an alternative to Apple UNIX for a number of reasons. They recommend NetBSD.

    [...]

    Oh. Zsh came out in 1990; it’s older than Linux. Huh.

  • Building a Meme in Under a Month

    People have parroted the phrase ‘depends on the threat model’, so often, so quickly, and so vacuously, that I find my toes curling at the sound of it. But after a run-in with the mods on Reddit’s /r/privacy, some noteworthy gaffs came up which I think I can give a non-vacuous example of where the threat model really matters.

  • Pens Must Die

    I’ll miss pens when they go. I like how they feel. I like that handwriting is almost impossible to fake. I like that when I receive a letter, I can tell who sent it just from how they write the address. But it all has to go.

    Pens have some advantages over computers. One can generally access a pen-record faster – just open the notepad and it’s there. Modern software is so badly programmed that it’s often easier to find a page in a notepad than to open a text document. And it’s resilient – even if rain doesn’t do paper any favours, anyone can still read a page which has been rained on. Taking out a computer in the rain is just madness.

  • Falling off the Edge of the World

    Here is a simple dice game for y’all.

    Everyone needs four pawns or markers, and then you need three dice, and then make a board that has ten spaces numbered four through thirteen, plus a little starting area before the “4” space where everyone’s pawns start out, and also make sure that the “13” space is right next to the edge of the board.

    This is a roll-and-move game of the misère variety since you lose when you move your last piece off the board, and you win by hanging on the longest.

  • Death of the Duckling – My new D&D Campaign

    My role-playing group has 3 Game Masters, and we rotate week-to-week on who is running their campaign. I’m using the more generic ‘Game Master’, because we wander away from and back to Dungeons & Dragons, though ‘DM’ would be appropriate right now, because right now all campaigns are using the D&D system.

    It is usually between two Dungeon Masters, as it has been a couple of years since I ran adventures consistently. But that is changing I have been putting a lot of effort in developing a new campaign, named ‘Death of the Duckling’. There is a story behind the name, but it didn’t stop the players from creating characters based on the name of the theme, with increasing references to cartoon characters such as ‘Darkwing Duck’.

  • Science

    • Long Covid Meta Analysis, Jan 2023

      A massive review of what we currently know about #LongCovid has been published today. Below are the highlights that jumped out at me, you can read the whole thing at nature.com[1].

    • Cloud spotting blues

      tfurrows wrote a phlog post yesterday centred mostly around responding to severe weather advisories and warnings. Right at the end he mentions participating in “weather spotter / Skywarn training”, something provided by the US National Weather Service. This seems to basically be a program to “crowdsource” early detection of heavy weather (what did we call “crowdsourcing” before that became a term?). I would certainly be interested to read more about this experience!

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Out with the junk and clunk, in with open web protocols

      I always hear (usually from bloggers) “everybody needs a blog”, or “everyone needs a Web page”. Fair. But what everyone sort of “needs” is e-mail, which is why Gmail was such a smash hit in 2004 (and beyond). @yahoo.com and @aol.com e-mail accounts really were overzealous in their presence online (I mean, not a lot of alternatives at one point).

      But before 2004, in 1998-ish, people wanted a different thing altogether. Not JUST a different platform (for search, Yahoo – for chat, AOL) but a different way of using the WWW that wasn’t JUST that. Essentially, a self-made, en masse invention of Internet usage/culture.

    • Migration of html2gmi API done

      My previous hosting provider changed their pricing plan so it was time to move. If I’d known people were using it I would have tried to ensure minimal downtime but until just now I hadn’t realised this, so I took my time about it. There was an evening of wasted effort trying to shoehorn it into AWS Lambda before I decided to just add it to the VPS running this site.

    • Speed up your internet by caching DNS queries for longer – nscd.conf

      Every time you access a web page there will be a few dozen network requests to a few different servers. Before every network request can run there will be a connection made to a DNS server to look up the IP address of the website server.

      If you visit the same website again soon after your computer will remember the result of the previous DNS query and not need to ask the DNS server for the IP again. However I’ve noticed that this cache expires fairly quickly and that network requests to the same server, often only minutes later, involve a DNS query that seems redundant – DNS settings don’t change all that often.

    • [Old] How will the fediverse pay the bills when it is 10x bigger?

      In the early days of the fediverse user numbers (aka hosting costs) were low and enthusiasm was high.

      Admins made their instance because they wanted to. Moderators volunteered because it felt meaningful (or whatever). We all had similar values and vibes were good. When the hat was passed around everyone happily threw a few bucks into it. Setting up a small instance can be done fairly easily by using a pre-configured docker image so only basic linux skills were needed.

    • Migrating Gemini Servers

      I’m in the process of preparing to migrate Gemini servers. This is a journey for me to learn how to do this, so I’m chronicling some things that I learned here. When all is ready, playonbsd.com will move from the current Vultr server to OpenBSD Amsterdam – for more storage space and more “OpenBSD-ness” of the whole project.

  • Announcements

    • Bubble v4.0: Muting, Tag Filters, Monthly Archive

      bbs.geminispace.org has been upgraded to Bubble v4. This week’s feature update adds some useful new tools and fixes several bugs.

      [...]

      You can now mute posts, subspaces, and individual users to hide them and notifications related to them. Together with follows, this allows tailoring what one sees in their Bubble feeds with quite a lot of precision.