Breath lets you install Ubuntu, Debian, or Arch Linux on most Chromebooks with x86 processors released since 2018. It uses the same forked Linux kernel as Chrome OS, so most hardware should be supported.
Recently the Arch Wiki was given a new layout and I think it looks pretty awful luckily for us though there is a mediawiki option to change it back.
Linux is so powerful. It gives you the ability to take down trillion-dollar corporations, collapse economies or even topple oppressive regimes. And best of all, installing and using Linux is so darn easy! Why isn't everyone using it?
**Swig** and **yasm** , concluding the **d** software series of Slackware.
1:30 Linux Innards 26:21 Vibrations from the Ether 33:13 Check This Out 35:44 Announcements & Outro
In our Innards section, we talk about our favorite command line tools
71-year-old Jon "maddog" Hall has been involved with Linux from the very beginning, and for Christmas shared two of the earliest recordings ever made of young Linus Torvalds speaking about Linux — recordings long thought to be lost.
Hall shares the story at Archive.org. In Februay of 1994 the chair of a user group for the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society "started sending emails (and copying me for some reason) about wanting to bring this person I had never heard about from Finland (of all places) to talk about a project that did not even run on Ultrix or DEC/OSF1.... After many emails and no luck in raising money for this trip I took mercy...and asked my management to fund the trip. I sat down to use it, and was amazed. It was good. It was very, very good."
As we approach the end of the year, here is a look back at some of the Mesa open-source 3D OpenGL/Vulkan driver development statistics for 2021 compared to prior years as well as a look at the top contributors to this crucial piece of the Linux desktop stack.
As of this morning when running GitStats on Mesa for a look at year-end numbers, this collection of open-source 3D drivers used on Linux and other platforms has seen 148,309 commits. Mesa is currently comprised of 7,871 files that amount to 3.63 million lines of code. There have been roughly 1,155 contributors to Mesa in its over two decade history.
Linux 5.16 just dropped a few days ago, and with it arrives some performance gains for laptops equipped with AMD's Ryzen CPUs with Radeon integrated graphics, according to Phoronix. In most of the benchmarks Phoronix tested, Linux 5.16 provides anywhere between 5%-14% more performance compared to previous Linux kernels, including 5.15 and 5.11.
Phoronix tested many different benchmarks, including Gravity Mark, Legacy, GLmark2, and more on two notebooks. On one of the notebooks equipped with a Ryzen 5 5500U (Zen 2), the most noticeable uptick in performance apps were GLmark 2 and Xonotic, which had a 14% performance improvement over Linux 5.16. Other benchmarks with a significant impact were Xonotic and Unvanquished, with a 10%-11% performance improvement.
On another notebook equipped with a Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U (Zen 3), Phoronix tested even more benchmarks, and the results are very similar to the Ryzen 5 5500U notebook. Some benchmarks did not benefit from the new Linux kernel, such as RealSR-NCNN and Waifu2x-NCNN. However, the number of benchmarks with this behavior is small, with most attaining small and significant performance gains.
I have explained before about how to create Onion services, this provides an easy solution to expose any service from inside of your home network to the Internet, in a secured manner (authorized services). But, in all of those examples I used an IP/port combination to expose/talk to the internal service. Instead you can also use unix sockets to do the same.
Get the latest version of R is a free programming language on Debian 11 Bullseye Linux using command terminal via its official repository.
R is a free programming language specially designed for statistical calculations and data visualization. It is one of the leading solutions for statistical data analysis and can be used for data mining or predictive analytics. R, which was developed in 1992 by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman in Auckland, is distributed as open-source software under the GNU General Public License by the Vienna-based R Foundation for Statistical Computing. R is based on the programming language S and is very similar to it. However, R is a free implementation.
In the standard distribution, R is supplied with an interpreter and command-line environment with simple graphic elements. The language has developed into a kind of standard language for statistical problems in science and business.
Few key features of R Language are Management of files and data; creation, checking, and adapting data structures; analysis, descriptive statistics, and more functions; editing and formatting of strings; conditional statements, loops, and branches; statistical tests; mathematical options, set operations, matrix operations and more…
In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to install the current stable release version of PHP 8.1 on Ubuntu 21.10.
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language suitable for web development. Most websites out there are programmed using PHP language because it is...
Go, or Golang, is an open-source programming language that Google created. It’s statically typed and produces compiled machine code binaries, and go language is a compiled language. This is popular amongst developers as it means you do not need to compile the source code to create an executable file. Developers that use Google’s Go language say it is the C for the twenty-first century when it comes to syntax.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install and configure Go (Golang) on Linux Mint 20.
TeamSpeak, commonly referred to as TS, is a proprietary VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) application that aids audio communication among users present on a chat channel. TeamSpeak is more similar to a conference or telephone call. Teams’ client software connects the users through a TeamSpeak server, enabling them to join the chat channels.
TeamSpeak is freely available to install on major operating system platforms such as macOS, Android, Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux distributions. TeamSpeak is a pioneer of the Discord platform. Discord is one of the widely used community communication platforms. This software has been of significant importance globally, including in the gaming world, as it allows text and speech communication.
This article shall cover the installation phases of the TeamSpeak client on major Linux distros such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and Arch Linux. Therefore, if you intend on using this application on your Linux PC, this is the best article for you. Stick around to learn more.
Chromium, the open-source mother of the best browsers in the market, including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave and so many others, is a great browser power packed with features.
Like many other distributions, Fedora also comes with Firefox as its default browser. But you can easily install Chromium on Fedora.
The simplest option is to open the software center application and search for Chromium. You’ll find the option to install Chromium there.
One of the most popular media players is the VLC ( VideoLAN Client) that always finds its way to be on the editorial list of best Open-source players. The key reason behind its wide acceptance is – VLC media player plays files of all important audio and video formats. A double click is enough, alternatively, you can load files into the VLC interface using drag & drop or tap a video DVD using the menu bar command.
The player supports MPEG and DivX streaming and can therefore also play videos during the download. You can also play files packed by ZIP without having to unpack them beforehand. Users can artificially increase the volume of the film up to 200 percent if the video is too quiet.
Common formats VLC supports are Formate: AAC, AC3/A52, ASF, AVI, DTS, FLAC, FLV, H.264, MIDI, MKV, MOV, MPG, MPEG (ES, MP3, MP4, PS, PVA, TS), MXF, OGG, OGM, Raw DV, Real (RAM, RM, RMVB, RV), WAV, WMA, WMV, 3GP.
Further, if the design of VLC is not the way you want then, it is possible to customize it with the help of various themes made available by the community.
I have given a try on wayland and it works in my notebook (Gigabyte p34v5) when using only the Intel gpu (/dev/dri/card0) and mesa. Now I have been trying to make it work with the Nvidia gpu (GeForce GTX 970M, /dev/dri/card1) using proprietary driver. The thing about that gpu is that is uses optimus and thus need the following command to work with X11...
When I was young, my mother asked me not to open the door unless the door knocked in a series of four which was only known to us. I think you all have done in their childhood or later.
That same concept I want to use in my Linux system, you are pondering what he is speaking? How and where will be a door on my system, and how to knock? I’m not understanding it, explain me this abstract concept.
In this tutorial, we discuss how you can convert audio files into different formats on Ubuntu with a neat tool called SoundConverter. Before the rise of music streaming services, people bought their music DRM-free. Meaning they bought the music and it was theirs to do whatever they wished to do with, transfer the file to any number of devices, and even share it with others for free. You can see how this wasn’t so good for the music companies but it definitely was convenient for the users. Most of our music is online these days, via various streaming services.
This is due to the shell not being able to properly map a window to an application. This breaks more things than just icons, but those are often the first thing that is noticed. Fortunately this is usually very easy to fix, particularly for Qt/KDE apps. I fixed a couple of those over the holidays and now I am writing down what needs to be done so you know what to do the next time you encounter such a case.
Window to application mapping is based on the desktop entry name. That is the filename of the application’s .desktop file in /usr/share/applications/ (without the .desktop extension). For KWallet that would be org.kde.kwalletd5. Make sure your application actually has such a .desktop file installed to /usr/share/applications/. Most graphical apps have one, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to lauch it from the application launcher. However things that are not traditional applications, like services (e.g. KWallet) or helper applications (e.g. the Gwenview importer) don’t always have one yet. To avoid those showing up in the application laucher include NoDisplay=true in the .desktop file.
Merry Christmas to all my dear readers! In this tutorial I’m going to introduce the new Ubuntu PPA for Geany IDE.
Geany is a free open-source lightweight IDE for BSD, Linux, macOS, Solaris and Windows. It supports many programming languages including C, C++, Java, PHP, HTML, LaTeX, Python, Perl, and more.
Geany does not provides official Linux packages. And, Ubuntu includes fixed versions in its repositories which are always old. For request, I created an unofficial PPA that contains the latest Geany 1.38 as well as its plugins, while the “Geany Developers” team PPA has not been updated for a year.
A variable is a given name to a location or an object where data is stored for future reference. Whereas the environment variable is used for storing dynamic values that can store a list of directories of a Linux system that you use for executing applications. In Linux, the environment variable is mentioned with a $ prefix and written in upper case PATH. It stores all the directories that the bash search for when we execute a command on the terminal shell in Linux. A fun fact about the $PATH is, you can add your own directory and create your own terminal command if you know how to set $PATH in Linux.
DayZ is a survival game developed and published by Bohemia Interactive. It is the successor to the ARMA 2 modification that bears the same name. Here’s how you can play DayZ on Linux.
Need to compress some images on your Linux PC to make them smaller? If so, check out E-mage. It’s a neat little tool with tons of features that can make compressing images on Linux like magic!
Finding out which processes are using the most memory isn't as simple on Linux as it is on Windows. Luckily, no matter what flavor of Linux you are using, the top command makes it easy to see how much memory each process is using.
The top command doesn't order by memory usage by default, though, making it hard to see what is using the most RAM. If you've resurrected an old PC with a lightweight Linux distro, you'll want to keep a close eye on what's eating up all your RAM!
Here's how to sort top processes by memory usage in Linux using the terminal top command.
If you're a long-time Mac or Linux user, you've almost certainly benefited from the work of CodeWeavers even if you've never heard of them. Founded in 1996, the company has been working for a long time now on making Windows applications run on first Linux, then Mac, and most recently, ChromeOS. CodeWeavers is the primary sponsor of the Wine project (a translation layer to run Windows programs on Linux), and Valve contracted the company to help with its Proton project that powers the Steam Deck and much of modern Linux gaming.
CodeWeavers sells a product called CrossOver, which is its primary consumer-facing product. CrossOver is a commercial piece of software that performs the same task Proton does, except with a more holistic approach rather than being purely gaming-focused. CrossOver is available for Linux and Mac, and currently it works well—as long as your application doesn't use DirectX 12.
This is how you can install and play the classic Snake Game in Linux Terminal.
Proton poked its head out three years ago like a hurricane. The compatibility layer based on Wine and promoted by Valve started very strong and rapidly improving its performance, but for a few months it seems that its progression has slowed down a bit, something logical if we take into account that at this point it is mainly resistant to games specific problems that give Wine and those that use an anti-cheat.
If in March we broke the news that 70% of the 50 most popular Steam games were capable of running on Linux thanks to Proton, that percentage, according to data that can be extracted from ProtonDB, has now risen to 79% counting the 100 most popular titles on the Valve platform. This means, making imprecise calculations, an increase of 9%, which is not bad at all. Even a few days ago the percentage reached 80.
After a year and a half of development , has been , the published release of the classic platformer SuperTux 0.6.3 , reminiscent of Super Mario in style . The game is distributed under the GPLv3 license and is available in assemblies for Linux (AppImage), Windows and macOS.
If you’re reading 9to5Linux.com regularly, you probably know already that the makers of the Debian-based Nitrux distribution also work on developing a set of in-house built apps created with the Maui Kit, called Maui Apps.
Well, today Nitrux introduces a brand new shell for the Linux desktop, called Maui Shell, which can be converged to also work on mobiles devices, such as Linux phones and tablets.
I know it has been a while since our last update, but I can assure you that we have not been twiddling our thumbs! For the holiday season, we are happy to bring a new release of Kalendar, which we have worked hard on to bring new features, better performance, and a bunch of bugfixes that should make Kalendar better than ever on those of you with shiny new machines. This release should land over the newt couple of days.
Earlier this year, Google took the bold step of updating existing 1st-gen Nest Hub smart displays from their Linux-based Cast OS to the company’s long-in-development Fuchsia operating system. This marked the official debut of the OS, though it was done largely without fanfare, if only to prove a point that Fuchsia could replace Linux under the hood on some devices without most people noticing. The launch wasn’t without its issues, but Google ultimately got things under control for Nest Hub owners.
The main difference is that Fuchsia won’t just be relegated to smartphones or tablets. Instead, it seems Google could actually be borrowing concepts from Samsung’s Tizen where it could be used to power a variety of smart products like phones, tablets, computers, home appliances, and more.
Let it not be said that all the fish is already sold, and it is that no matter how little the year remains, there is still time for such interesting releases as that of Manjaro 21.2, the most recent version of this rolling-A slow release that, however, usually includes new features for those who install new ones.
Manjaro 21.2 is a good example of this and the first change to comment on is in the Calamares system installer, which in this version presents improvements in the selection of the file system for automatic partitioning, or in the btrfs support with subvolume management and, more importantly, support for creating swap files, instead of a regular partition.
Regarding the generic internals of Manjaro 21.2, it is also worth mentioning the new version of the kernel used by default, Linux 5.15 LTS, as well as the most recent drivers. Besides, it is possible to install Linux 5.4 and Linux 5.10, both LTS versions, in the event that for support or stability issues it is the most recommended.
Coming only three weeks after Nitrux 1.7.1, which was the first release of the Debian-based distribution to ship with Linux kernel 5.15 LTS by default, Nitrux 1.8 is powered by the latest release at the moment of writing, Linux kernel 5.15.11 LTS.
Nitrux 1.8 also features the latest and greatest KDE Plasma software, starting with the KDE Plasma 5.23.4 desktop environment and continuing with the KDE Frameworks 5.89 and KDE Gear 21.12 software suites. However, this release drops the Plasma Wayland session from the default installation.
We are pleased to announce the launch of Nitrux 1.8.0. This new version brings together the latest software updates, bug fixes, performance improvements, and ready-to-use hardware support.
Nitrux 1.8.0 is available for immediate download.
In short, the Desktop version of Ubuntu is used for desktop PCs, and it has a graphical user interface by default. Ubuntu Desktop can be used for browsing, gaming, programming, and more. The Server version of Ubuntu is mainly used for servers – hosting websites, online applications, and various other software. It doesn’t have a GUI by default, but a control panel with a GUI can easily be installed. Technically, you can also use the Desktop version as a Server if you installed the right software and configured the distro properly. The 2 versions make it easy for you by including the right software and configurations by default when installing them.
Arch Linux is still around and has become one of the most popular distributions to run as a user. But it's not longer the "Commodore 64" of today's up and coming programmers. Containers and lightweight virtual machines have changed the game again. Now, a curious hacker might not even use Linux as their desktop or laptop OS. Instead, they might spin up ephemeral containers with a reproducible configuration like NixOS or run a minimal container-native operating system like alpine.
On the surface, Fedora Kinoite is a respin of Fedora with the KDE desktop. But once you crack through the surface, you find that it's so much more than that.
At the heart of Fedora Kinoite is Fedora Silverblue. What is Silverblue? First and foremost, it's an immutable operating system, which means the root filesystem is mounted read-only by default. Because of this, the likelihood of accidental damage and/or malicious attacks is dramatically decreased. So not only do you already have the inherent security of Linux but you partner that with a read-only root filesystem and you have a marked increase in the security offered by the operating system.
Another difference between Silverblue and other distributions is that updates are atomic. What does that mean?
elementary OS 6.1 is the latest release with many essential improvements and new features.
Of course, the choice of a Linux distro for your system varies on many levels. However, I think there are a few things in elementary OS that could have been done differently.
Here, I list some of the aspects that could use some improvements in elementary OS.
Another open-source project releasing on Christmas is LuxCoreRender 2.6 as a sizable feature update incorporating the better part of a year's worth of improvements to this physically based rendering software.
For this project that originally started out as LuxRender, the LuxCoreRender 2.x series continues advancing in a steadfast manner for greatly improving this open-source PBR renderer.
With LuxCoreRender 2.6 the parsing of mesh light sources is now about three times faster, partial multi-threaded support in pre-processing of light sources, expanded support for color spaces, and a variety of other core improvements and bug fixes.
Dark theme is getting popular even among non-developers. More and more operating systems, websites and applications are providing dark mode option.
When things don’t work out of the box, you could try finding a way to achieve it. I hope this little post here helped you to enjoy the dark theme in Brave.
Pgpool-II is a tool to add useful features to PostgreSQL, including:
- connection pooling - load balancing - automatic fail over and more.
GNU Nano 6 has been released with improvements including the ability to hide the title bar and status bar to provide more editing space. GNU nano is a command line text editor for Unix and Linux that aims to be simple and easy to use.
Nano was originally named Tip and was a free replacement for the Pico text editor, part of the Pine email suite that at the time was the most widely used email package on Unix. Nano is popular as an alternative to Vi and Emacs, and while few developers use it as their major editor, it offers a small, resource friendly editor for tasks such as editing batch files.
For the last 12 years the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been publishing its own Ethical Tech Giving Guide, now featuring its recommendations for the freest Android operating systems and app repositories, as well as the freest DRM-free media and ebooks (and the places to procure it).
The guide also recommends some truly geeky gifts, like the Taurinus X200 laptops that run free software all the way down its BIOS microcode, and the NeuG USB True Random Number Generator “for the cryptogeek in your life.” (Why settle for the inherent predictability of algorithm-generated numbers when your numbers could be derived from an actual physical process?)
A recent FSF blog post also made the delightful suggestion of upgrading some old hardware of the ones you love by installing some free software, giving them the gift of a shared learning experience and inauguration “into a worldwide community of users.”
But in addition, the foundation is also selling memberships to its organization, promising that “each new member exponentially increases our reach and our ability to make change”— which comes with several cool perks.
FSF’s specially-designed membership cards feature a fold-out USB connector and 16 gigabytes of storage that’s pre-loaded with the fully free GNU/Linux distribution Trisquel Live. (“Take it anywhere — sharing GNU/Linux on the go!”)
GnuCash is a personal and small business finance application, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. It’s designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible. GnuCash allows you to track your income and expenses, reconcile bank accounts, monitor stock portfolios and manage your small business finances. It is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports.
GnuCash can keep track of your personal finances in as much detail as you prefer. If you are just starting out, use GnuCash to keep track of your checkbook. You may then decide to track cash as well as credit card purchases to better determine where your money is being spent. When you start investing, you can use GnuCash to help monitor your portfolio. Buying a vehicle or a home? GnuCash will help you plan the investment and track loan payments. If your financial records span the globe, GnuCash provides all the multiple-currency support you need.
In addition to ordering the defendants to cease distribution of the software until it’s brought into compliance with the license, a fine of €100 (about $113 US) was levied for each day the defendants delay before bringing the software into compliance for the first 15 days, when the fine will increase to €300 ($339 US) daily and that they publish an excerpt of the order on a page of their website, as well as a reference on the site’s home page that’s displayed in double the normal character size of the site. The same rules apply to their Facebook page.
The court also ordered the defendants to pay the plaintiff’s litigation costs, an amount that exceeds €5,000.
In a first-time ruling by Italian courts on open source licensing, a software vendor has lost a civil case for failing to comply with open source license requirements. On December 13, the law court of Venice, Italy quietly affirmed the legal enforceability of open source software licenses in a case involving the GNU General Public License, perhaps the most well known open source license, in what was something of a test case within the country.
Open source software is important because it offers a way for software to be distributed freely and without cost, while allowing users to modify the software to suit their needs and distribute it to others.
“It [the ruling] represents an important step in the direction of strengthening the protection of intellectual works distributed through free software licenses in all their forms, a concrete progress for Italian jurisprudence on the subject and more generally for the country,” Ovation, an Italy-based limited liability company that was the plaintiff in the case, said in a press release it issued after the court ruling.
The case involved Ovation’s GPL licensed Dynamic.ooo software, which is a plugin for the open source Elementor platform for building WordPress websites. According to the company, two former employees (evidently Marco Poglie and Francesco Pesce, who were the defendants in the suit, along with Venezia Italy-based Nerds Farm, which is owned by Pesce) had redistributed the software, which is allowed under the GPL.
The issue was that the software was redistributed without including acknowledgment of the original work, including information about changes the defendants had made to the software, and with no mention of the software’s copyright holders.
Live Studio, TikTok’s new livestreaming app for Windows, supposedly uses code from the free livestreaming program Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) (via Protocol). This would typically not pose an issue when done properly because OBS is open source — however, TikTok purportedly fails to adhere to OBS’ licensing requirements.
The situation unraveled on Twitter after a user posted screenshots of what appears to be Live Studio’s code. The programmer who originally took the screenshots alleges that the app “is an illegal fork of OBS” and also claims that TikTok used OBS and then slapped its own user interface on top.
As another user points out, if TikTok does make use of OBS’ code, the platform is required to make the source code publicly available in accordance with the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2. If TikTok fails to do so, OBS could potentially take legal action against the platform.
Introduction
I don’t know how to introduce this post other than the question in the title: is it even worth working on Free and Open Source Software anymore?
I have been asking myself this for the past week or two, and it’s uncomfortable for me; I believe in the power of Open Source to empower users and to give them control over their machines.
Exploited FOSS
But that belief of mine has been severely shaken by several things happened this week, things which also made me reconsider things that happened further in the past as well.
In my spare time I've been chugging along on a piece of software, which I'm contemplating selling. In my case the commercial aspect is made more difficult because I also want to release the software with a GPL license.
This post describes the initial hurdles I'm encountering, next to just programming the software.
So the new era of ownership will be interesting. Will it restore balance to r = g? Or skew society further into r > g? Regardless, everything be securitized.
As you can see, this is the kind of thing that takes a little work to get right, and once someone does that, it would be nice to share it with the rest of the company. For that reason, I went looking into the "common" part of our code base to see what we had in terms of "directory creation utilities". Maybe we'd have something which did this already!
For me interactive programming is probably the most important advantage of Lisps and Emacs over other programming languages and editors. I cannot imagine any productive workflow without it!
This is my collection of utility functions, Autoconf macros, test programs, and other support infrastructure for my other packages.
DocKnot is my static site generator and software release management toolkit. It's what generates all of what you're reading.
DocKnot has always supported pointing to external files from inside its input tree and converting those files to HTML. This is how I include HTML conversions of POD documentation, CVS logs, text files, and other things in my web pages. This release starts the migration from an ad hoc text format for these pointers to YAML, which will permit a much richer configuration and a consistent format and extension for those external pointers.
Przemysà âaw DÃâ¢ba, security chief at Orange Poland, has taken to Twitter to highlight a security warning to telcos from P1 Security, a telecoms security software and services specialist. The company’s R&D unit, P1 Labs, today warned of Log4Shell, a “a zero-day vulnerability in Log4j, a popular Java logging framework, involving arbitrary code execution.”
Essentially, it exploits a vulnerability in signalling messages, and that puts telco core network systems at risk from attack, and The Apache Software Foundation, of which Log4j is a project, has given Log4Shell a “CVSS [Common Vulnerability Scoring System] severity rating of 10, the highest available score. It is estimated that the exploit affects hundreds of millions of devices,” according to P1. Check out the full explanation from P1 Labs here.
When using a RSS reader, you only get updates from the websites you have subscribed to. So you are not only in control of the amount of updates you get and also in control of what kind of information you collect.
Just like there are a few social media moguls the choice for web search engines is very limited. There also are dark algorithms at work, that control which sites are 'found' and which are not. These algorithms are completely out of our control and we have no idea of the powers behind it.
The long awaited James Webb Space Telescope has finally been successfully launched today. It is a Xmas gift for many people who have been waiting for it for many years.
The massive telescope is designed to capture infrared light, especially from galaxies so far away that their light has been traveling through space for almost the entire history of the universe.
"We are expecting to see the light from the first galaxies that formed some 100 [million], 200 million years after the Big Bang," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a pre-launch briefing. "It will deliver world-class science. It's a revolutionary technology that will study every phase of 13-and-a-half billion years of cosmic history."
What's more, he said, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study the atmospheres of planets beyond our solar system, to try to determine if they might be habitable — or maybe even inhabited.
The $10-billion observatory, billed as the successor to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, is designed to study the early days of the universe, roughly 100 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars flickered on in the cosmos.
The tennis court-sized observatory launched atop an Ariane 5 rocket at 7:20 a.m. ET from a European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The observatory’s liftoff had been postponed several times, including earlier this month to investigate a faulty data cable and more recently because of bad weather at the South American launch site.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, built to give the world a glimpse of the universe as it existed when the first galaxies formed, was launched by rocket early Saturday from South America's northeastern coast, opening a new era of astronomy.
The revolutionary $9 billion infrared telescope, hailed by NASA as the premiere space-science observatory of the next decade, was carried aloft inside the cargo bay of an Ariane 5 rocket that blasted off at about 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) from the European Space Agency's (ESA) launch base in French Guiana.
The flawless Christmas Day launch, with a countdown conducted in French, was carried live on a joint NASA-ESA Webcast.
The observatory was lifted skyward by an Ariane rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.
Its flight to orbit lasted just under half an hour, with a signal confirming a successful outcome picked up by a ground antenna at Malindi in Kenya.
Webb, named after one of the architects of the Apollo Moon landings, is the successor to the Hubble telescope.
With the fast-spreading Omicron variant now driving new Covid-19 cases up in the United States, public health officials are warning that just as South Africa did in early December, the country is seeing a surge in pediatric hospitalizations related to the disease.
The New York Department of Health reported Thursday that Covid-19 hospitalizations among children under the age of 18 began increasing four-fold the week of December 5 through the current week.
Just as worryingly, the number of deaths from unintentional injuries including drug overdoses and diabetes also ranked high, pushing life expectancy down as well. Diabetes alone caused over 100,000 deaths.
The number of drug overdoses in particular hit record highs, according to separate figures released by the CDC last month.
Infant mortality, on the other hand, fell to a record low of 541 deaths per 100,000 live births over the same period.
One Candie Frazier, a Las Vegas resident who’s worked as a TikTok content moderator since January of 2018, just recently submitted the class-action suit to a California federal court, naming as defendants both the short-form video-sharing app and Beijing-headquartered ByteDance.
The plaintiff has specifically accused the defendants of multiple counts of negligence (including “abnormally dangerous activity”) as well as violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law. But it bears noting at the outset that the filing party “has never been employed by ByteDance or TikTok in any capacity,” instead working for a company (and non-party to the action) called Telus International (NYSE: TIXT), per the suit.
More recently, drivers of boda bodas in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda are taking on a new title: public health champions.
Earlier this year, Africa Lion Advisory (ALA), a Kenyan financial advisory company, trained 3,595 Ugandan boda boda drivers on how to protect themselves, their customers and communities against COVID-19.
Hilda Wangari, communications lead for the trainings, said ALA’s aim was to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 by teaching drivers to spread health information, protective measures and safety tips instead.
Vulnerabilities in wireless chip designs could allow malicious [crackers] to steal data and passwords from devices, according to security researchers.
According to the group, from the Technical University of Darmstadt’s Secure Mobile Networking Group (Germany) and the University of Brescia’s CNIT (Italy), attackers could exploit "wireless coexistence" or shared component features on millions of mobile devices.
Wireless devices often use radio components with shared resources, combination chips or System on a Chip (SoC) designs. These SoCs are responsible for multiple radio interfaces, including Bluetooth, WiFi, LTE (4G) and 5G.
Apple has patched a nasty macOS bug that could have allowed malicious applications to circumvent the operating system's in-built security protections.
As reported by Bleeping Computer, the flaw was first discovered by Gordon Long, Offensive Security Engineer at Box. According to Long, the vulnerability could allow a specially crafted, script-based application to be launched on a Mac device without Gatekeeper (an antivirus service that verifies the authenticity of all downloaded apps) ever triggering an alarm.
Ubisoft didn’t provide details about how the breach occurred beyond describing it as a “misconfiguration,” nor did it say for how long its Just Dance servers were exposed.
web security flaw in an anti-cheating browser extension created a means to hack into the computers of university students and other users before they were recently patched.
The Proctorio Google Chrome browser extension was vulnerable to a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw, security researchers at Sector 7, the research division of Dutch security consultancy Computest, discovered.
MRIoA was hit with ransomware in November. And although they do not directly state that they paid ransom, it sounds like they did because their notification states that to the best of their ability and knowledge, they “retrieved and subsequently confirmed the deletion” of their information.
Cloudflare’s Year In Review ranks sites based on the traffic they receive over the course of a year, measured monthly. Last year, TikTok ranked number eight on the list. But Cloudflare’s 2021 traffic report reveals TikTok is the most visited site on the internet – unseating Google.
TikTok claimed the top spot from Google in February but slid back out in later months. It wasn’t until August that TikTok consistently claimed the top spot in terms of internet traffic.
TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, after it bought Musical.ly back in 2017. The social media service has seen massive growth throughout 2020 and 2021 as the coronavirus pandemic has continued.
That said, Mon Health further discovered that personally identifiable information in emails was compromised. Details stolen included health plan information and claims, addresses, dates of birth, patient account numbers, medical record numbers, dates of service, provider names, claims information and other medical information.
In August, U.S. President Joe Biden called cybersecurity a “core national security challenge” during a meeting with executives from Amazon.com Inc., Google LLC, Microsoft Corp. and other leading companies. The participating companies pledged to invest billions of dollars in cybersecurity-related initiatives over the next few years.
In a letter Thursday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan invited major players in the software industry to discuss initiatives to improve open-source software security, the official said. Dozens of open-source software projects have become crucial components of global commerce and are mostly maintained by volunteers.
The effort will start with a one-day discussion in January hosted by Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, according to the official.
“The SolarWinds and Hafnium incidents serve as recent reminders that strategic adversaries actively exploit vulnerabilities for malicious purposes,” Sullivan said in the letter.
To kick off this effort, the deputy national security advisor for cyber & emerging technology, Anne Neuberger, will host a one-day discussion in January with company officials responsible for open-source projects and security.
As EFF has long documented, local law enforcement agencies around the United States are amassing arsenals of surveillance technology to gather as much data as possible on the public. From automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that track our vehicles to real-time crime centers (RTCCs), where police analysts use algorithms to mine live camera streams and social media feeds, this technology has been spreading into communities often under the radar.
The EFF and Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno launched the Atlas of Surveillance in July 2020 as a literal effort to watch the watchers. Combining a variety of newsgathering tools--crowdsourcing, data journalism, and public records requests--the Atlas of Surveillance is an interactive database and map that reveals what surveillance tech is used by more than 4,500 law enforcement agencies nationwide.
The Atlas of Surveillance has two main aims:
2021 saw the 2-year anniversary of the Coalition Against Stalkerware, of which EFF is a founding member. In 2021, the Coalition continued to provide training, published tools and research, and worked directly with survivors of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence and the organizations that support them. EFF also took part in dozens of awareness-raising events, including EFF at Home’s Fighting Stalkerware edition in May and a talk on the state of stalkerware in the Apple ecosystem at 2021’s Objective by the Sea.
A 2021 Norton Lifelock survey of 10,000 adults across ten countries found that almost 1 in 10 respondents who had been in a romantic relationship admitted to using a stalkerware app to monitor a current or former partner’s device activity. The same report indicates that the problem may be worsening. Norton Labs found that “the number of devices reporting stalkerware samples on a daily basis increased markedly by 63% between September 2020 and May 2021” with the 30-day moving average blowing up from 48,000 to 78,000 detections. Norton Labs reported that 250,000 devices were compromised with more than 6,000 stalkerware variants in May 2021 alone, with many devices infected with multiple stalkerware apps. Meanwhile, antivirus vendor Kaspersky reported that in the first ten months of 2021, almost 28,000 of its mobile users were affected by the threat of stalkerware. The range in numbers between these two antivirus companies suggests that we may be comparing apples to oranges, but even Kaspersky’s significantly lower number of detections indicates that stalkerware remains a significant threat in 2021.
2021 was also the year that Apple chose to enter the physical tracker market, debuting the AirTag. Apple used all of the existing iPhones to create a powerful network that gave it a major advantage over Tile and Chipolo in location tracking, but it had also created a powerful tool for stalkers with insufficient mitigations. Aside from an easily-muffled beep after 36 hours (shortened after our criticism to 24), there was no way for users outside of the Apple ecosystem to know that they were being tracked. In December, Apple introduced an Android app called Tracker Detect to allow Android users to scan for Air Tags, but there is still a long way to go before iPhone users have the same notification abilities as Android users.
Today, noyb.eu filed a GDPR complaint against Airbnb. The online market place for vacation rentals downgraded the complainant’s rating as a host, solely through automated decision making. While everyone has the right not to be subject to automated decision-making, Airbnb relies on exactly these practices. By denying the opportunity for the complainant to contest the automated decision and to obtain human intervention, Airbnb acted in clear violation of the GDPR.
Though still rare, several thousand Swedes have opted to have an electronic implant inserted under the skin in recent years, eliminating the need to remember key fobs, business cards, public transport cards, and recently: vaccine passes.
The country that created the show "Real Humans" and its English language adaptation "Humans," is also a stronghold of so-called biohackers who are convinced that humans will become evermore entangled with technology in the future.
US-China relations have been at their lowest point in decades over a range of issues, including trade, Taiwan, Hong Kong, human rights, the South China Sea and the coronavirus.
China seized control of Tibet after its troops entered the region in 1950 in what it calls a "peaceful liberation."
Tibet has since become one of the most restricted areas in the country. Critics, led by the Dalai Lama, say Beijing's rule amounts to "cultural genocide."
Tibet’s education system has become primarily residential; official data shows that approximately 800,000 Tibetan children aged six to 18 – 78% of Tibetan students – are living in colonial boarding schools;
Tibetan parents are compelled to send their children to boarding schools due to a lack of alternatives and are unable to advocate for other options in Tibet’s repressive environment. Individual accounts show that intimidation and threats are used to coerce reluctant parents to send their children to such schools;
The vandalised plaque now reads solely: “Samuel Paty (…) Victim of Terrorism”. A highly political damage whose deeper meaning has not escaped Nicolas Gavrilenko: “The plaque that names the square adjacent to the Sorbonne after him has been vandalised and is a sign of the deliberate delusion of some”, writes the secular activist, insisting on the truth: “It is ISLAMIST terrorism to which Samuel Paty fell victim”. He concluded his message by calling on the mayor’s office of the 5th arrondissement (Libres, a movement founded by Valérie Pécresse) to restore the damaged plaque “as soon as possible”. So far, the mayor’s office of the arrondissement does not seem to have reacted.
When last we heard about Tariq Ramadan, at one time the most famous Muslim “public intellectual” in the Western world, he had fallen from grace. The curtain was pulled back and as one woman after another came forward to charge him with rape, he was revealed to be not only a serial rapist, but one who enjoyed humiliating – and physically hurting – his victims. He has been allowed out of prison, and awaits trial in Paris. He may also have to face trial in Geneva, with a different set of accusers. In the wake of these charges, he was relieved of his prestigious position at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His travels across the world to lecture eager audiences on “the ethics of Islam” also came to a halt. Few want to hear the serial rapist dilate upon “ethics” of any kind. For many, Ramadan has become an object of ridicule, scorn, and embarrassment. But he’s not withdrawn from public life; he’s still proclaiming his innocence, and still trying to keep himself in the public eye, even starting a new career as a singer of protest songs against the malevolent West.
The decades-old dispute over Western Sahara is causing rivals Morocco and Algeria to edge closer to conflict. The disagreement reignited when a cease-fire collapsed in November 2020 between Morocco and the Sahrawi independence movement known as the Polisario Front.
Polisario leader Brahim Ghali says they are at war. His group, backed by Algeria, has threatened to launch attacks against “air, land and sea targets” in Morocco.
The occupying Turkish state and allied gangs have been carrying out brutal attacks on the northern Syrian town of Zirgan in Heseke Canton since December 21. The latest attacks claimed the lives of 4 citizens, and 14 people were injured.
Speaking to ANHA, the people of Qamishlo remarked that the Turkish state intends to force local people to migrate but, it will be defeated against the determined struggle of North-East Syrian people.
Restrictive UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) or drone regulations in South Africa are holding the industry back, with major reforms needed, especially in the security sector.
This was the consensus from speakers at the first Security Drone Conference held at Emperor’s Palace at the beginning of December.
As North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile arsenals grow larger and more sophisticated, the United States could soon be faced with a terrible choice when Pyongyang attempts to coerce Seoul—risk an intercontinental nuclear war or abandon a key ally. To avoid such as scenario, Scowcroft Center nonresident senior fellow and former National Intelligence Officer for North Korea Markus Garlauskas recommends that Washington adopt a new strategy to proactively counter North Korea’s nuclear threat by impeding its nuclear and missile programs, investing to stay ahead of its arsenal, and adjusting military operations on the Korean Peninsula.
The retribution for their truth-telling has been fierce and unrelenting. WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is in a British prison, facing imminent extradition to the United States, where the chances of a fair trial are essentially zero. Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning spent seven years in a military prison. Former U.S. Air Force analyst Daniel Hale, who revealed murderous effects of U.S. drone warfare, is currently serving a 45-month prison sentence. They had the clarity of mind and heart to share vital information with the public, disclosing not just "mistakes" but patterns of war crimes.
Such realities should be kept in mind when considering how the New York Times framed its blockbuster scoop last weekend, drawing on more than 1,300 confidential documents. Under the big headline "Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes," the Times assessed U.S. bombing in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan — and reported that "since 2014, the American air war has been plagued by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and imprecise targeting and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children."
The result of a vote, on December 14, in the US House of Representatives regarding the combating of Islamophobia, may, possibly, appear to be a positive sign of change, that Washington is finally confronting this socio-political evil. However, conclusions must not be too hasty.
It is yet another example of special treatment for Muslims and Islam itself, with the office now being created to record instances of Islamophobia, including violence against and harassment of Muslims and vandalism of their mosques, schools and cemeteries WORLDWIDE. Isn’t that quite something?
The office will not be localized to dealing with acts of perceived hatred against Muslims in just the US but also worldwide, including India which is clearly a target of the bill. The narrative this feeds into is that Muslims are unique, unique victims of persecution around the world, and one of the main proponents of this persecution is India, particular Narendra Modi, the RSS, the BJP, all its supporters and Hindus who cannot critique the forces, rationale and political groupthink that underpins Islamist sponsored atrocities when they occur just because the likes of Omar do not agree with them.
Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale, who is serving a federal prison sentence in the United States, received a whistleblower award from the Blueprint for Free Speech, an international non-profit group based in Australia that promotes freedom of expression.
For example, the US public is continually being told that the movement of a large number of Russian troops is a major crisis-inducing provocation of the US and NATO over Ukraine. There is much speculation about whether or not Russia will attack Ukraine and how the US and NATO should react to an attack. This coverage portrays Russia as the initiator of this situation and that the US and NATO are being forced to react. Unsurprisingly, the US media fails to remind the public about recent history that provides vital context for current events.
A recent poll found that people today, especially younger people, feel helpless when it comes to fighting climate change.
“Climate change has destabilized the earth’s poles,” said a Washington Post headline on December 15, and it served as a reminder. The ice is breaking up. The waters are rising. The all-encompassing political question today is climate catastrophe. How can the nations and people of the world mobilize the social energy necessary to slow the process? This danger won’t be cut off by defunding, by fostering mindfulness and new sensitivities, or even by penalizing the jocular skepticism and quack science that tell us climate change is a hoax. The problem is with human nature: the way we are constituted—the most selfless as well as the greediest individuals.
The mystery deepens when we note that studies have repeatedly shown that limiting population growth is among the cheapest, most effective means to limit and help societies adapt to climate change. And unlike unproven technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration, or dangerous ones like solar radiation management, modern contraception has been proven safe and effective. Yet during the recent COP26 meetings in Glasgow, little was said about limiting population growth during negotiations, and nothing made its way into the final agreement.
All of this relies on an aquifer underneath the valley. This layer of rock and soil accumulated its moisture over tens of thousands of years—caught during the monsoon season, or as snow on the nearby mountaintop melted. For generations, farmers—and the many others who have migrated across the country to make this epic landscape their home—have greened their desert by digging wells a few hundred feet into the ground and tapping the groundwater below.
In the past decade, however, these wells have started to run dry. Travel beyond the homesteads and family-run farms you’ll see why—thousands of acres of neatly ordered trees bearing pecans and pistachios, vast fields of alfalfa and corn, huge dairy herds, and rows of greenhouses growing tomatoes cover the once-barren desert. This enormous carpet of industrial agriculture, with food grown for export to places around the world, takes deep wells to sustain. For every 100 acres or so, a corporate farm owner will dig a well as deep as 2,000 feet and pull up water from the ancient aquifer at up to 2,000 gallons per second, often 24 hours a day. The drilling rigs often resemble those used for oil.
Only five of 986 lakes and five of 109 coastal areas are in good ecological condition, according to the environmental protection agency, Miljøstyrelsen.
So the government is ready to pump 5.4 billion kroner into new initiatives dedicated to improving the situation.
According to The New Scientist, El Comisionado has collected over 50 examples of Bitcoin inexplicably going missing from Salvadoran Chivo wallets.
“The government has not responded, nor does it acknowledge the errors,” he told The New Scientist.
“It’s one of the things people are demanding, that they respond to their complaints. Many have waited several months for a response to get the money back,” he added.
According to The New Scientist, Zaira Navas—a member of the El Salvador National Civil Police—and Rogzy—a Bitcoin commentator—have experienced similar issues.
“I don’t think Chivo is secure and no one can verify it since the code is not open source,” Rogzy said. “Today very few people use Chivo, because many do not know how it works,” El Comisionado reportedly added.
An NTPC project, the site will utilise Bloom Energy’s solid oxide, hydrogen temperature electrolyser to generate green hydrogen from renewable electricity generation at a nearby floating solar farm.
Once produced, the produced hydrogen will then be converted into carbon neutral electricity without combustion through Bloom Energy’s hydrogen fuel cells and power NTPC’s Guest House, used by both employees and guests.
The loophole in question is the one that permits larger vehicles to pollute more, specifically by classifying vans, pickups, SUVs, and even some “crossovers,” depending on their characteristics, as “light duty trucks.” Not only does this category include obviously huge vehicles like the Chevy Suburban, Cadillac Escalade, or Ford F-150, but it also includes many smaller family vehicles like the Subaru Outback, Toyota RAV4, and Honda CR-V. Most absurdly, “medium duty passenger vehicles,” or MDPVs, are also categorized as “light trucks” for emissions purposes, even though they can weigh up to 10,000 pounds.
Some reindeer have travelled as far as 100km to the south, in search of ice-free lichen they can access under the snow.
Herders are having to track them through the forests of northern Finland and Sweden, some even using helicopters.
The takin also called cattle chamois or gnu goat, is a large species of ungulate of the subfamily Caprinae found in the eastern Himalayas.
Takin, one of the rarest mammals, was caught by a trap camera above 3,500 metres in East Kameng district in Arunachal Pradesh.
The takin also called cattle chamois or gnu goat, is a large species of ungulate of the subfamily Caprinae found in the eastern Himalayas. It is first photo of takin from East Kameng district, DFO Vikas Swami said. The takin is adapted to its mountainous environment in Asia.
In many ways, it’s hard to imagine our world of nearly 8 billion people and $85 trillion in annual goods and services without this water engineering. Cairo, Phoenix, and other large desert cities could never have grown to their present sizes. California’s sunny Central Valley would not have become such an abundant producer of vegetables, fruits, and nuts.
Yet when it comes to water, the past is no longer a good guide for the future. The heating of the planet is fundamentally altering the water cycle, and most of the world is unprepared for the consequences.
China has the world’s largest distant-water fishing (DWF) fleet and has targeted West Africa for years. Chinese industrial trawlers are notorious for illegally fishing in protected waters and using a range of illicit tactics to catch far more fish than allowed. China is the world’s worst illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing offender, according to the IUU Fishing Index.
China and Taiwan represented almost 60% of all global DWF activities in other countries’ waters from 2015 to 2017, with Japan, South Korea and Spain each representing about 10% of the DWF fishing, according to a report by the Stimson Center, a think tank.
China’s DWF fleet began casting nets around the globe after the country overfished its own waters, which didn’t quell its hunger for seafood. The nation of 1.4 billion people consumes 38% of global fish production and has one of the world’s highest consumption rates of fish and seafood at 37.8 kilograms per person annually, according to a Foreign Policy report.
Graphic media coverage of the current hunger in southern Madagascar is not wasting the opportunity to advocate climate justice. But nobody mentions there are now seven Madagascan mouths to feed for each one present in 1950. This denialism is not in the interests of the hungry, nor Madagascar’s disappearing wildlife, argues Madeline Weld.
Want something better? The key, discussed more below, involves interpreting our Constitution in an intergenerational way and shifting away from family planning systems that focus more on what parents want than what future children need.
This new approach involves a child-centric model that both recognizes the implications of our previous flawed family planning approaches as well as our obligations and duties to the children we are bringing into this world. If we don’t fix our fundamental conception of how we plan families, we will continue to create social and ecological crises that could have been averted. We can reframe the discussion away from population.
The Premier added that water and sanitation challenges in the Western Cape were exacerbated by issues such as land invasions and illegal informal settlements. He indicated that this was a “big issue that needs to be tackled smartly because we are unable to anticipate these growing trends and as a result, we fail to plan for them”.
For decades, Singapore has satiated a significant amount of its demand through agreements to import water from neighboring Malaysia. One of those agreements expired in 2011. The second—the one that enables the country to draw water from the Linggiu Reservoir—is ongoing.
It’s hard to believe, but billionaires pay almost no tax on their fortunes. Unlike the rest of us, they can avoid income tax entirely. Their wealth is typically in huge stock holdings, which grow in value every year. If they were to sell those stocks, they’d have to pay income tax on the gain.
But instead, billionaires borrow against their own wealth. That means they use their wealth as collateral to get bank loans that allow them to live as lavishly as they want without triggering any tax. That’s why we need a wealth tax.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has proposed a 1 per cent annual tax on fortunes over $10 million. People with less than that wouldn’t be affected at all. Even such a small wealth tax of 1 per cent a year could raise $10 billion a year, enough to fund a lot of affordable housing, public transit and climate action.
A court in Moscow said on December 24 that it was fining Alphabet's Google 7.2 billion rubles ($98 million) for what it said was a repeated failure to delete content Russia deems illegal, the first revenue-based fine in this kind of case in Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused social media platforms and other tech giants of flouting the country's Internet laws, including a push to force foreign firms to open offices in Russia and store Russians' personal data on its territory.
Many critics say the move is an attempt by Russian authorities to exert tighter control over the Internet and quell dissent.
A Moscow court on Friday slapped Google with an unprecedented fine of nearly $100 million, while Meta (formerly Facebook) received a fine of $27 million.
In recent years Russia has been piling pressure on Western social media giants, with President Vladimir Putin saying those companies were becoming as influential as elected governments.
Moscow has repeatedly taken legal action against them for allegedly not moderating their content properly and interfering in the country's affairs.
Of course, when one looks beyond the film’s narrative properties to the people involved, as the FBI did, the argument fails. The report names screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett as individuals known to be “very close to Communists,” and indeed other suspected affiliates, such as blacklisted penman Dalton Trumbo, were known to have taken uncredited passes at the script on its journey to the screen. But the two dominant personalities on It’s a Wonderful Life — director Capra and star Stewart — could not have been further from persons of interest.
Founded in January 1989, Memorial has built a database of more than 2.6 million victims of Soviet repression, identified perpetrators of Soviet-era political crimes, and defended victims of human rights abuses and political repression. For the past five years, the Russian government has designated the organization a foreign agent—a stigmatizing label requiring Memorial to declare this status before every public comment and undergo financial audits. It has also faced smear campaigns, police raids, and $82,460 in fines for allegedly violating the foreign agent law.
On Nov. 11, Russian prosecutors filed a case against Memorial’s sister organization, Human Rights Center, accusing it of extremist and terrorist activists for publishing a list of political prisoners, which the prosecutor argued is grounds for its dissolution. A second case threatens to ban Memorial for allegedly breaking the foreign agent law by failing to label some of its materials. Memorial said the charges are baseless and politically motivated.
Lieutenant Giovanni Trejo, public information officer for the Beverly Hills Police Department, elaborated: “If you put together the added police resources and the armed private security officers that we’ve sent into the area, you can say that security has increased by at least 50 percent. These crimes aren’t new, but the pace at which they are occurring seems to be accelerated.”
The report found that private security firms have seen a massive uptick in business as they rush to handle the wealthy’s requests for additional protections — an ominous data point about crime, but probably moreso about its perception by the most privileged members of society.
“It’s been crazy busy,” Aaron Jones, president and CEO of Malibu-based International Protective Security, told THR. “We understand the urgency of what’s going on. It’s nonstop… Business has quadrupled.”
The trio also has ties to the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely rebuked yet influential missive that encouraged governments to adopt a “herd immunity” policy letting COVID-19 spread largely unchecked, even as the virus has killed more than 800,000 Americans.
The academy is the newest initiative designed to provide intellectual cover to a nearly two-year campaign by right-wing and big business interests to force a return to normalcy to boost corporate profits amid a pandemic that is now surging once again thanks to Omicron.
In their book "Fake Facts," psychologist Pia Lamberty and civil rights activist Katharina Nocun explore the various reasons people might be attracted to conspiracy theories. Disappointment, fear and stress are just some of the feelings that may be involved.
Conspiracy theories might help people cope with their lives without having to delve deeply into their own issues, which in turn might raise unpleasant or even shameful feelings. Such theories help people find someone to blame for their own unhappiness: politicians, Big Pharma, the media. Holding others responsible makes it easier to cope with one's own emotional deficit.
Psychologist Sarah Kuhn from the University of Basel in Switzerland, whose research focuses on conspiracy theories and cognitive biases, suggests one might find out more about why a person is attracted to a dubious notion by asking a simple question like, "How have things been lately?"
In his op-ed, Hooper acknowledged, without going into detail, that Christians and Muslims “do have some differing perspectives on Jesus’ life and teachings.” But Hooper believed that the mutual love of Jesus by Christians and Muslims, and Jesus’ “message of love, peace and forgiveness,” would overcome those seemingly minimal differences and provide a “unifying force” for those two religions.
The reality is, as we have seen in this article, that there is a fundamental, irreconcilable difference in who Christians believe Jesus is, and who Muslims believe Jesus is. Christians believe Jesus is the Son of God, and Muslims believe Jesus is only a human prophet who will eventually return to earth and destroy Christianity while calling people to Islam.
Internet services were disrupted in the capital, Khartoum, and soldiers blocked roads early in the day, the witnesses said. Locals were also unable to make or receive calls domestically.
Despite the [Internet] being cut off, people were still able to post on social media, with images showing protests taking place in several other cities including Madani and Atbara.
“These extraordinarily harsh sentences, passed at the end of grossly unfair trials, are the severest that Belarusian courts have passed on media professionals this year,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “This persecution by the Belarusian justice system and the unprecedented severity of these sentences presage the worst for press freedom in Belarus in 2022. RSF calls for the immediate release of Eduard Palchys and Ihar Losik.”
One of Maher’s chief “crimes” is his view on the seventh and eighth century Arab conquests—a view based on a close and correct reading of both Muslim and non-Muslim sources: that Arabs conquerors invaded non-Muslim regions—specifically the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain—and engaged in atrocity after atrocity; that, while “spreading Islam” was the motive later Islamic historiography attributed to the Arabs, their true actions belied a lust for rape and rapine; and that they overthrew and supplanted much more advanced societies, to the region’s lasting regret.
Alongside colonialism, imperialism, and nation-building, “cancel culture” is the latest of toxic Western ideas to be foisted upon the Middle East. This past week, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad was the latest victim of the West’s cancel culture, as she was disinvited from a book event by Canada’s Toronto District School Board. This may sound trivial, but it’s a big deal.
Murad is a member of Iraq’s Yazidi ethno-religious minority. She was kidnapped at age 19 by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014. ISIS, at the ascendancy of its power, pillaged, executed, and sexually exploited locals with reckless abandon. In just her village, some 600 innocents – including her mother and six of her brothers – were summarily executed. Murad was taken to be one of 7,000 Yazidi women and girls enslaved.
A Somali-born pastor in Kenya is still in severe pain after ethnic Somali Muslims in northeastern Kenya beat him on Dec. 3 for leaving Islam, sources said.
The pastor, whose name is withheld for security reasons, said the four Kenyan-born, ethnic Somalis attacked him on a road near Wajir town, fracturing a bone in his leg, after he had led an underground prayer meeting with 13 new Christians of Somali descent. Wajir is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Somali border.
Kinzler, who is German, has been a professor of German language and culture at the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies, known colloquially as Sciences Po Grenoble, for a quarter century. In November of last year, working groups of teachers and students were tasked with organizing a U.S.-style “week for equality and the fight against discrimination.” Kinzler was a member of one of the groups, whose assigned topic was “Racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.” When, during the online exchanges among the group’s members, Kinzler challenged the inclusion of Islamophobia in this trinity, another professor was outraged. A third professor agreed with Kinzler that even if there could be said to be such a thing as Islamophobia, it shouldn’t be considered to be on the same plane as anti-Semitism or racism. Kinzler admitted that he isn’t particularly fond of Islam and that, in fact, like many French people, he’s rather unsettled by it. "Anti-Semitism,” Kinzler later told Die Welt by way of explaining his position, “has resulted in millions of deaths. Genocide without end. Then there is racism, slavery. That, too, has led to tens of millions of deaths in history….But where are the millions of deaths linked to Islamophobia?" Good question.
Strahl posted – Facebook declared that my ad to wish my constituents a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays “didn’t comply with their Discriminatory Practices policy.” The text with the ad literally said: “From my family to yours, have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!”We successfully appealed, however, this is a glaring example of censorship and overreach by tech giant companies who control so much of the online space. We must be vigilant to ensure that we always stand up for free speech and fight back against any attempts by these companies, or our governments, to stifle it.So, once again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from my family to yours. Ignore the Scrooges and Grinches who, incredibly, would try to shut you down for saying so.
Many Chinese Christians are lamenting that the winter of internet mission in China is entering its darkest and coldest hour.
This week, Chinese state media reported the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) has announced its “Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services,” which will come into effect on March 1 and will restrict online ministry to Chinese government-approved religious groups with special permits on government-approved websites.
In 2015, he was transferred to the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the party’s top law enforcement agency, where he was responsible for the online monitoring and policing of cults. He also played a key role in establishing a social media platform for the commission.
As deputy head of the Cyberspace Administration – China’s leading online watchdog – from 2012, Peng also had direct responsibility for regulating the [Internet].
We have been working with our solicitor in a last gasp attempt to save him from a hanging. Zafar in October gave up with his former legal counsel and sought our assistance . Today BACA may have found a solution to the ongoing saga regarding the false blasphemy allegation that has stolen almost ten years of his life.
The Taliban takeover’s impact on Afghanistan’s media has been dramatic, according to the survey by RSF and its local partner, the AIJA. More than four out of every ten media outlets have disappeared and 60% of journalists and media employees are no longer able to work. Women have suffered much more than men: 84% of them have lost their jobs. The figures for the previous situation come from a survey of the media and journalists operating in Afghanistan that was carried out before the Taliban took control of the country.
Taliban Takeover In Afghanistan: As many as 231 media outlets have had to close, according to the survey.
Not a single official in Biden’s administration was willing to comment or defend prosecuting Assange. For example, the Justice Department told Newsweek after the High Court decision, “We are pleased by the ruling and have no further comment.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked hours after the U.S. prevailed, “What is your response to the message in some quarters that prosecuting Assange is an assault on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, information, etcetera?”
Psaki would not answer the question. Instead, she pointed to the brusque and cocky statement the Justice Department gave Newsweek. Then she mentioned “freedom of media and press” was a “central component” of the Summit For Democracy.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has come under fire for failing to include Julian Assange on its list of jailed journalists for the third year in a row.
Writing in online publication The Dissenter, Kevin Gosztola strongly criticised the exclusion of the WikiLeaks founder from the committee’s annual report.
In the organization’s press release on the 2021 index, it states, “No journalists were jailed in North America at the time of the census deadline.” That may be true, but it obscures what the U.S. government is doing to keep a journalist detained in the United Kingdom.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), based in Paris, previously joined with CPJ on press freedom campaigns. They also keep an annual tally of journalists in detention, yet unlike CPJ, RSF included Assange in their 2021 round-up.
A ustralia’s Deputy Prime Minister has come to the defence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, calling on the UK not to extradite the Australian citizen to the US.
Barnaby Joyce one of the Australian government’s most senior ministers, said Mr Assange should be kept in Britain and tried there or returned to home nation.
The 50-year-old is facing extradition to the US over espionage charges relating to the publication of classified military information in 2010 and 2011 by WikiLeaks.
More than 300 doctors and medical professionals from around the world have issued an appeal for the immediate release of Julian Assange from prison in the UK because of the serious deterioration in his health indicated by the stroke he suffered in October during his UK High Court extradition hearing.
On December 22, Doctors for Assange released an open letter, published below, to Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, imploring him to seek the WikiLeaks founder’s urgent release on medical grounds. The letter makes that request based on Joyce’s recent statements suggesting that the US extradition request against Assange should now be dropped.
And that’s what WikiLeaks introduced to the World — a mechanism and technology that was as pivotal to educating, enlightening, and promoting corrective action as was previously achieved by the creation of Gutenberg’s printing press.
WikiLeaks destroyed the Masters in virtually every realm by providing the means to expose knowledge worldwide.
The genie was out of the bottle.
This year, however, reflected a different trend. While CPJ’s annual prison census documented a record 293 journalists jailed around the world because of their work, the Middle East and North Africa saw its regional number drop from 89 in 2020 to 72 as of December 1, 2021 – mainly as a result of releases in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. And for the first time in more than 20 years, CPJ confirmed just one case – Lebanese journalist Lokman Slim – of a journalist being murdered in relation to their work.
Even before the Taliban takeover this year, the family knew the risks of practicing journalism in Afghanistan. Dordana left the field in 2018 after receiving threats from warlords with ties to the Taliban because of the focus of the women’s magazine, she said.
More recently, her children also received threats, prompting the family’s decision to leave Afghanistan.
In May, two unidentified men wearing masks flashed a knife at Ghazal when she was outside the office of state-run Maarif TV, where she was a producer for an education program and a women’s talk show. They warned her to stop going to work and “campaigning for women’s rights,” she said.
In his absorbing profile of the writer Alex Haley (author of “Roots” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”) in the New York Times Book Review, Michael Patrick Hearn made a familiar mistake. He wrote: “Politically [Haley] he was a moderate, philosophically more Martin than Malcolm.”
Mrs Olujimi said the bill will “allow for the prohibition of all forms of discrimination against women and provide for the equality of all persons,” including people of determination in the society.
But some northern senators said the bill was not properly worded, especially its title that seeks equality rather than equity; while arguing strongly that it would contravene the tenets of Islam.
“This equality infringes on the Quran,” Abubakar Yusuf, representing Taraba Central Senatorial District, said at today’s plenary. “I will not support the passage of the bill until the word equality is removed. When you bring equality into it infringes on the Quran.”
I wonder how the domestic courier services space is going to look like in a few years. I would argue that e-commerce is actually becoming more commonplace in urban areas. It’s just that Zimbabwe’s version of e-commerce is a bit different from the American one for example.
With many small businesses either working with small courier service providers or actually delivering themselves, we shall see if the established and known upcoming players will be able to make inroads there.
The international market will never be the same after the pandemic. So, domestic courier is going to increase in importance. Tariff wars, trade wars and closed borders have not crippled couriers in other countries because of domestic courier increases. Instead, they have actually thrived. That has to be the case in Zimbabwe.
More specifically, companies that decide to go back to a fully on-site arrangement could lose up to 39% of their workforce, according to the 2021 Gartner Hybrid Work Employee Survey of 2,400 knowledge workers.
As a result employers need to practice “radical” work environment flexibility, the survey indicated, allowing employee performance to be determined not by how many hours they clock in, or when they’re in the office, but by their accomplishments.
An ðstanbul court has ruled for the reinstatement of 22 journalists fired from daily Hürriyet, one of the largest newspapers in Turkey.
The journalists, all of whom are members of the Journalists' Union of Turkey (TGS), were fired because of their union activities, the Bakñrköy 6th Labor Court concluded in yesterday's (December 23) ruling.
The court ordered the newspaper to pay the journalists a union compensation equal to their one year gross salary and a compensation equal to their four salaries for "idle time."
Overview: As AI becomes increasingly impactful to the world, the extent to which AI ethics includes the nonhuman world will be important. This paper calls for the field of AI ethics to give more attention to the values and interests of nonhumans. The paper examines the extent to which nonhumans are given moral consideration across AI ethics, finds that attention to nonhumans is limited and inconsistent, argues that nonhumans merit moral consideration, and outlines five suggestions for how this can better be incorporated across AI ethics.
To be clear, you absolutely can still run your own email infrastructure, getting email delivered to you, filtering incoming spam, sending email (with DMARC signatures and other modern email practices), providing IMAP access, and even run your own webmail setup. You can even do this with all open source software. But the email environment you get this way is increasingly what I called an artisanal one. It's cute, decent enough, and hand-crafted, but it doesn't measure up in usability, features, and performance to the email infrastructure that is run by big providers. Your IMAP access might be as good as theirs, but things like your webmail, your spam filtering, and almost certainly your general security will not be as good as they have.
In short, if you run your own email infrastructure, it will not be up to the general quality you could get from outsourcing to big providers (they can't really be called specialists). And you cannot fix this by trying harder, nor with the magical right choice of open source software, nor with the magical right choice of commercial software. Entirely "on premise" email is now an inferior thing for almost everyone.
IceCure Medical Ltd. (NASDAQ: ICCM) (TASE: ICCM) ("IceCure" or the "Company"), developer of minimally-invasive cryoablation technology, the ProSense€® System, that destroys tumors by freezing as an alternative to surgical tumor removal, today announced that it received notification from the European Patent Office (the "EPO") of an intention to grant a patent for IceCure's application entitled "Cryogen Pump". When issued, the patent will include protection for IceCure's proprietary cryogenic pump, with features that will enable IceCure's next generation of cryoablation systems. The patent will be in effect until 2041.
There is no international patent to provide global protection for an invention. Instead, a patent must be obtained in each country or region where protection is required as a patent holder is only able prevent another person from using the invention or importing a product that implements the invention in a country or region where a patent is held.
Fortunately, there are several options for applicants that make it easier to obtain patent protection in a number of countries or regions.
Amid reports of rising Covid-19 cases in parts of the Global South, Pope Francis on Saturday marked Christmas Day by repeating a call for vaccines to reach poor countries and noted that nearly two years after the coronavirus crisis was declared a global pandemic, the public health emergency has taken international attention from other crises affecting some of the world's poorest people.
"Through dialogue, mutual respect, and recognition of the rights and cultural values of every human being, the values of solidarity, reconciliation, and peaceful coexistence may prevail in the hearts of the peoples of the Americas."
Very few songs reach the billion-mark on Spotify. According to Spotify’s “Billions Club” playlist, just 190 songs have reached the 9-figure level. That is an incredibly low number compared to the tens of millions of tracks that comprise the Spotify catalog. Just recently, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek estimated that 70,000 tracks are uploaded to Spotify every day.
'Wandavision' is the most-pirated TV show released in 2021 on torrent sites. The popular Disney+ series decrowned 'The Mandalorian' which topped the chart last year. 'Loki,' another Marvel series, is listed in second place and 'The Witcher' completes the top three.
