Brian Benchoff is an embedded engineer who has graced us with unique, whimsical devices like the RGB Gaming Coaster and the Zip Drive Tower. Now he’s back with a decidedly more practical design: a fully-functional Linux computer — screen and keyboard included — that costs a mere $15.
Well, sort of. . .
The self-described “Linux Swiss Army Knife” PC packs a surprising amount of functionality. With its 2.5-inch IPS display and 47-key silicone membrane keyboard (which feels like an older TV remote control), you can bust it out and run scripts, compile code, or even transform it into a crypto wallet.
Mars 15 is the latest Linux-powered laptop from Juno Computers. Featuring AMD Ryzen 5000X series of processors, a 15.6-inch Full HD (1920x1080p) matte display with 240Hz refresh rate, the Mars 15 notebook is powered by the Ubuntu operating system. Mars 15 can be ordered right now from Juno Computers’ website.
The big disruption that looks like a bust, a security issue you need to pay attention to, and some great news for the Steam Deck.
Joel and his raccoon buddies eat walleye.
ACM: It takes a community, Don’t use discord for OSS projects, Unix in a browser tab, OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.10 available, Omni OS CE v11 is out, and more.
This will hopefully be the year that PipeWire becomes commonplace on the Linux desktop across all major distributions for audio/video stream management. But for as good as PipeWire is already, frequent point releases continue evolving the functionality and ironing out compatibility improvements for existing JACK and PulseAudio integration. PipeWire 0.3.44 is out today as another step in the right direction.
I'm announcing the release of the 5.16.3 kernel.
All users of the 5.16 kernel series must upgrade.
The updated 5.16.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.16.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
thanks,
greg k-h
The DirectFB library had been a popular option for embedded systems in running off the Linux frame-buffer to avoid the full overhead of an X11 server. But a number of years ago DirectFB disappeared and ultimately stopped being maintained. Meanwhile Wayland has been making lots of inroads into mobile/embedded and areas once popular for DirectFB use. But now it turns out DirectFB2 is in development as a fork of the original DirectFB.
[...]
Some of the early changes made to DirectFB2 has been making use of the Meson build system, limiting DirectFB2 to being a pure C implementation, and modularizing the existing source code. DirectFB2 also supports interfacing with DRM/KMS directly rather than just frame-buffer devices.
Not only is OpenGL working with DirectFB2, but Vulkan is also possible per the FOSDEM abstract though seemingly limited to CPU-based acceleration using SwiftShader.
Since Intel's Alder Lake launch one of the test requests to come in a few times has been about the Intel P-State CPU frequency scaling driver and how its performance differs with the various governor choices available for altering the CPU frequency scaling behavior. Now that Linux 5.16 stable is out and running in good shape on Alder Lake, here are some Core i9 12900K benchmarks looking at various CPU frequency scaling choices and their impact on raw performance as well as CPU thermals and power consumption.
With Alder Lake having seen fixes in Linux 5.16 as well as ADL-S graphics being enabled by default on this new kernel, it's a good target for carrying out the P-State testing. The main reader inquiry has obviously been about how how well these new Intel hybrid processors perform if moving from P-State "powersave" as is often the default governor on most distributions to instead using the "performance" governor that tends to keep the CPU in its higher performance states more aggressively than powersave.
Neousys unveiled two embedded PCs based on Intel’s 12th Gen S-series with up to 64GB DDR5-4800: The “Nuvo-9000” has up to 6x GbE with optional PoE+, 5x USB 3.2 Gen2 (including a 2Ãâ2 port), M.2 with PCIe Gen4, and up to 2x PCIe x16. There is also a smaller, fanless “Nuvo-9531.”
Neousys has announced two of the first embedded computers based on Intel’s 7nm 12th Gen Alder Lake processors. Both the PCIe x16 equipped Nuvo-9000 and more compact Nuvo-9531 use the high-end Alder Lake S-series processors.
In addition to this week seeing Raptor Lake S support added for Mesa 22.0, the Alder Lake N additions have also been merged for this quarter's Mesa update.
Given the insignificant changes from the driver perspective for the existing Alder Lake (S) support, the Alder Lake N support is namely just adding new PCI IDs and identifying them as Alder Lake family while having "Display13" for the display capabilities.
With the release of Intel's 12th Gen Core Alder Lake series of CPUs, it was discovered that performance for the new CPUs was more efficient in Microsoft Windows 11 than in the Linux operating system. This is due to Linux not having adequate support for Intel's Thread Director technology that allows for the operating system to access high-performing Golden Cove cores and the energy-efficient Gracemont cores properly. Intel's Thread Director is created from the Enhanced Hardware Feedback Interface or HFI.
We have all read stories about people who have experimented living without spending any money whatsoever. By growing their own food, washing in the river, using a solar panel to provide electricity, and bartering for certain goods and services, these adventures have met with limited success. However, for us mere mortals the simple fact is that we need money. Money to buy food, to purchase clothes, to pay our bills, as well as indulging in our other infinite wants and desires.
While it can be a struggle to make ends meet, it is possible to make life easier through better money management. Financial management is about planning income and expenditure and making informed decisions that enable you to survive financially.
Higher education institutions are actively looking for ways to adapt to rapidly improving technology and enable students to use advances in computing to study, collaborate, and learn in new ways. Many institutions have been using open source software to exchange knowledge more easily, ensure a better learning experience, and handle administration with fewer worries.
Demand for open source software in higher education is drastically increasing especially as the need for remote learning grows. Universities usually have complex and unique systems. From a technological point of view, this makes it harder for universities to adopt technologies not built with their specific requirements in mind.
Linux should be the first choice for students and teachers as a free alternative to the commercialised Operating Systems. But, useful programs that are widely available on Mac and Windows often isn't to be found on Linux.
We have addressed 5 such software that are already replacing your favourite program on Linux, and which is replacing traditional homework.
Docker Engine is an open containerization program for Linux and other platforms. Docker Engine manages self-contained “containers” that operate similar to virtual machines. In this guide, we’ll go over how to install Docker Engine on CentOS.
Docker Engine only supports CentOS 7 and 8. Therefore, if you are using an older release of the operating system, you must upgrade before attempting to install Docker on your CentOS system.
Terraform is a framework for building and configuring infrastructure as code, with a command-line interface and DSL language. Terraform can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions to build and configure complete distributed data centers.
The Terraform Command Line Interface (CLI) lets you use Terraform without having to write any code or configuration files. It's an ideal way to prototype infrastructure changes with your team before writing code, deploying configurations locally on your machine, or pushing them into production. The CLI builds off of the terraformspec file format that was created for this purpose by third parties such as HashiCorp Nomad CLI Toolkit.
The CLI toolkit implements a JavaScript DSL to define the infrastructure and uses the same configuration format in both Terraform and the CLI. The CLI toolkit also provides commands to generate infrastructure templates, compose infrastructure components into complete solutions, and manage changes. The entire Terraform workflow is driven by stateless functions that are defined in code and executed by Terraform every time you make a change. This allows you to think about your infrastructure as a single design that can be easily modified at runtime without reloading your configuration or modifying your codebase.
A number of IT professionals and companies use the Terraform command-line interface to manage and even create new infrastructure or new cloud infrastructures. The terraform command-line interface can provide a more robust method for automating changes that would take too long to perform by hand. It is a powerful tool for managing infrastructure.
Are you tired of installing Slack, Discord, and many other productivity tools on your Linux system? Do you wish they could all be combined into one easy-to-use program? If so, you must check out Ferdi.
Ferdi is a helpful tool for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It consolidates programs like Slack, Discord, Twitter, Google Calendar, and many other apps. Here’s how to get Ferdi working on Linux.
Here we go again! Today we will see how to install Nomachine to manage remote machines.
With the help of NX Technology, the remote service enables fast remote access. The service gives an experience which you have never had before. Admins can connect any OS-based remote machine fast, and highest quality speed with no lagging. Specifically during this pandemic situation where IT Admins are supposed to provide support for end-users as well to manager servers. Sometimes users are not having a good internet speed, in such cased lightweight remote access utility can help a lot. Above all The utility is not only your own server but ensures secure remote access too. And Yes! that utility is totally free.
assetfinder is a Go-based tool to find related domains and subdomains that are potentially related to a given domain from a variety of sources including Facebook, ThreatCrowd, Virustotal and more.
Container technology is not exactly new, but it is a big topic in IT. Many enterprise Linux distributions do their best to let you know that they also have all the tools for you to be successful with container technology. If you want official description and documentation, please see the Reference Articles at the end of this tutorial. I will use my own words to give you a brief description of Docker containers. Also, I will be focusing on the basics of Docker and Docker-Compose here, not going into the more enterprise tools such as Kubernetes.
[...]
Now that we had a quick look at the PROs and CONs, it is time to move on and see what the common questions about Docker might be. I had a few when I started, so I took down some notes and I am going to go through the very same questions, hoping that by now I have found a decent answer to those.
This particular blog post is not going to be about Linux memory managements and its safety or how to write a safety critical software but will touch on the topic that all safety critical software must address properly. This topic is Freedom From Interference (FFI).
All Debian-based distributions. like Debian, Ubuntu and Linux-Mint utilize the Deb installation package format.
Thousands of deb packages are available in the Ubuntu repository, that can be installed via Ubuntu Software Center or the apt and apt-get programs from the command line.
Unfortunately, not all applications are available through Ubuntu or third-party repositories. Those applications must be manually downloaded and installed from the developer's websites. You should especially be cautious when installing deb packages from unauthorized sources to avoid cyber threats.
In this article, you will learn all the different ways you can install the deb packages on your Ubuntu system.
Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure as a code software tool developed by HashiCorp.it allows you to manage your infrastructure by Codifying APIs into declarative configuration files.
This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to download terraform and install Terraform on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04, Debian 10, Fedora 35, and Rocky Linux 8.
This tutorial is about the How to Install Gitlab on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal fossa Linux. We will try our best so that you understand this guide. I hope you like this blog How to Install Gitlab on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal fossa Linux. If your answer is yes then please do share after reading this.
Rclone has a wealth of features. Generally, Rclone is used to copy files from the local drive to a cloud storage provider like Dropbox or Google Drive and vice versa. How about copying files between two different cloud providers? Yes, It is also possible! In this brief guide, we will see how to transfer files between Dropbox and Google Drive with Rclone in Linux.
As you may already aware, Rclone doesn't use the local drive while synchronizing files between two different cloud providers. Rclone employs server-side transfers to minimize the local bandwidth use and transfers the data from one provider to another without using local disk. Hence, it reduces disk writes and local network bandwidth significantly.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Putty SSH Client on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, PuTTY is an open-source, lightweight, and free (MIT license) terminal emulator, serial console, and network file transfer application. It supports various protocols including SSH, telnet, SCP, rlogin, etc.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Putty SSH Client on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
Discord is a well-known communication (messenger) program. Discord can be used to communicate via text, images, video, and audio.
It was created with gamers in mind, but the service has grown in popularity among non-gamers to the point where it is now regarded as a Slack alternative for team and community collaboration. Chat rooms and voice chat platforms make servers in Discord. Various open-source projects use Discord to communicate with users and project members.
Discord runs on a variety of platforms, including desktop Linux. This tutorial shows three different ways to install Discord on Ubuntu 20.04 and newer: Discord Installation on the command-line, Discord Installation via Ubuntu Desktop GUI, and finally Discord Installation via SNAP package manager.
Following one of my previous projects where I built a weather station dashboard using InfluxDB and Grafana on the reTerminal, I had quite a few requests to do a more in-depth tutorial on how to get each part set up and running. So in this tutorial, I’m going to be going through each part of the process, step-by-step, so that you can get a similar setup running on your Raspberry Pi.
In this example, we’re going to use an ESP32 as our data collection node to collect temperature, humidity and pressure readings from some attached sensors. It’ll then post these readings to an InfluxDB database and we’ll then use Grafana to visualise the data. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what these are or how they work together just yet, I’ll explain them each in more detail as we work through them.
This is the second episode in a series of articles I am writing about using Slackware as your private/personal ‘cloud server’ while we are waiting for the release of Slackware 15.0. Below is a list of past, present and future episodes in the series. If the article has already been written you’ll be able to access it by clicking on its subject. The first episode also contains an introduction with some more detail about what you can expect from these articles.
Personal Identity Verification (PIV) is a standard proposed by the US government for identification and now is supported by various smart cards and USB secure tokens. FreeIPA have supported authenticating with PIV certificate but is not enabled by default. In this article, I’ll cover how to use PIV authenticate from user perspective with an existing FreeIPA that enabled the corresponding support.
In this article, I’m using a CanoKey Pigeon with the ykman command from Yubico. It should work exactly the same with Yubikey (just omit the -r canokeys from all my following commands). If you use other secure token for storing your certificate, you should consult your token provider.
This is the last article of a series focused in Gnu Bash scripting. On the first article we’ve just created a simple script with commands, one after another. We also saw some variables use.
The second article covered some bash control structures. The third one covered redirections, pipes, and command substitution. On this last (for now) one, I will show how to create user interfaces with dialog in our scripts.
It used to be that you needed a well-equipped expensive new beige-box PC if you wanted to play Doom at all. Now, you can do so in a form factor with a footprint smaller than a credit card, as demonstrated by this nifty little build from Adafruit.
The build relies on the Retro-Go firmware for ESP32 devices, which can emulate a range of machines, from the Nintendo NES and Game Boy to the NEC PC Engine, Atari Lynx, and, yes, Doom itself. It can even run Doom mods, via the WAD architecture used by the game.
So Valve has decided to break the silence and has announced that the Steam Deck will officially release on Feb 25th for consumers. On that day, if you were one of the first pre-orders, you will receive an email from Valve to complete your payment and you will have three days to act on it. If you complete your order, the first unit will ship on the 28th and be a few days later in the hands of the first happy gamer.
Egosoft continue upgrading their space sim X4: Foundations with the big 5.00 version now in Beta, readying up for the new X4: Tides of Avarice expansion. This free update should release in full with the expansion, and further advances their game engine to provide a better space travel experience.
For some of what to expect in the free update you will see a series of new big capital ships, improved ship models and the big one for fans of performance is the introduction of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). New game mechanics will also come along including ship salvaging and recycling, plus an overhaul to your headquarters. That's just a small slice of what to expect (there's plenty more). Want to test it early? You can! Find out how on their official forum.
For those of you who stick to GOG.com, you can now grab another quality cartoony point and click adventure game with Zniw Adventure now available. A good excuse to remind you of this absolute little gem.
Inspired by adventure games and edutainment titles from the 90's, Zniw Adventure is a 2D point and click title full of cartoon dinosaurs. It features a comic book-esque art style, frame-by-frame animation, and unlockable goodies like concept art and minigames. The in-game encyclopedia fills as you encounter prehistoric creatures allowing you to read more about them. Enjoy the prehistoric world in an unique cartoony style.
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is one of the most important pieces of open source for Linux gamers, as it's the tech used by various game engines and games. It's also about to continue changing the game for the Linux desktop in the upcoming version.
What does it actually do? It's a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware.
The latest report is out from Valve on what was popular and sold well during December 2021. Let's take a look at what to expect from the list in terms of basic compatibility on Linux and the Steam Deck.
Each month Valve goes over the previous month to show off games doing well, with it including titles across different genres and both Early Access titles and full releases. As usual, it's a mix between native Linux games and those that require running the Windows version through Steam Play Proton.
The upcoming "I Love Free Software Day" will focus on Free Software Games. One of the most famous Free Software Games is "0 A.D.: Empires Ascendant". In this Episode Bonnie Mehring talks with Stanislas Dolcini, the project leader of 0 A.D. about the game itself, the project, as well has how the game became Free Software.
This podcast episode takes you on a journey through the games development and it's history of becoming one of the most famous Free Software games. You can also learn about how to participate and contribute to 0 A.D. Discover together with Stanislas and Bonnie how the community behind one of the best known Free Software games works, where support is needed, and the different types of developers and contributors. Bonnie and Stanislas also tell the success story of releasing 0 A.D. under a Free Software licensed and talk about the positive side of developing a Free Software game.
The openSUSE community received cheerful news today after Leap release manager Luboš Kocman updated the community on the desktop environment expected for the next minor release.
Leap 15.4, which is in the alpha phase of the software release cycle, is planned to have updated desktop environments.
Kocman’s email “KDE Plasma 5.24 LTS will be in Leap 15.4” informed contributors on the Project’s Factory mailing list that all the “dependencies are already submitted” to SUSE Linux Enterprise. Leap is built with the same source code and exact same binary packages as SLE.
Right now, OSD bubbles in GNOME Shell look a lot like this...
Although macOS uses big boxy pop-ups when a user bashes the volume, brightness, etc key both Windows 11 and ChromeOS use modestly sized on-screen indicators, as do most mobile OSes. Those are just as useful as GNOME’s current toasts but don’t obscure as much of the screen.
With some mockups in hand, GNOME devs got to work on creating a set of subtler OSDs. Now a merge request opened by Florian Müllner that contributes the code needed to implement them. He shares a screenshot of design changes in his merge request, which you can see below...
Well, before hopping into the list of Linux distros, let’s first understand what exactly is the rolling-release distribution.
It is a distribution that releases the updates of each of the programs that it includes at the moment that it is proven that the program is in a stable version. To clear it, let’s take the example of Arch and Ubuntu. Arch is a rolling release Linux distro because its developers offer the latest upgrade & updates of kernel and software as soon as their least stable versions are available.
Nix 2.6.0 has been released!
Nix is a tool that takes a unique approach to package management and system configuration. Learn how to make reproducible, declarative and reliable systems.
The modernisation of IT infrastructure is picking up speed, but most companies still see a lot of room for improvement in their digital transformation. This is the conclusion of a recent study conducted by IDG Research Services in collaboration with SUSE. Even if in some cases the extent of implementation differs significantly, the companies surveyed from Germany, France and the UK agree on one point: the time to deploy cloud-native technologies is now.
openSUSE begins an image design contest for the openSUSE Conference 2022 today. The design will be used for the conference poster and t-shirt.
Submitted images must meet certain requirements listed below and on the contest wiki page. Designers are encouraged to use open-source graphic editing software like Inkscape, Gimp or Krita.
Submitted designs should be licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 and allow everyone to use it without attribution. Designs submitted must be original and should not include any third party materials conflicting with CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Technological innovations are often considered to be ideas and solutions that take off immediately. But the evolution of Linux tells a different story: From humble beginnings in the 1990s, Linux has grown slowly and steadily to become a leading operating system in the business world, and now a business-critical operating system to run SAP. During this time, Fujitsu and SUSE have continued to innovate together, helping businesses everywhere to realize the benefits of Linux by running their SAP applications on it. I caught up with Jürgen Ellwanger and Martin Werner at the Global Fujitsu SAP Competence Centre to find out more about how Fujitsu and SUSE supported the evolution of Linux through a partnership of collaboration and innovation.
Archinstall as the quick and easy-to-use installer for the Arch Linux distribution is out with a new point release delivering a few worthwhile enhancements to the text-based OS installer.
Over the past year Archinstall has evolved into a great option found on the Arch Linux install media for providing a timely and somewhat default configuration (at least easily reproducible) of an Arch Linux installation. Archinstall is great for quickly deploying an Arch Linux install without the hassles or without resorting to the various desktop-focused Arch downstreams like Manjaro and EndeavourOS.
In April last year, Arch Linux started including a command line based guided installer called Archinstall.
If you think that’s not much when compared to the graphical installer of Ubuntu, Manjaro or other distributions, you are right. But you should also know that something is better than nothing. Before the inclusion of Archinstall, you were totally on your own for installing Arch Linux and that’s not pretty if you don’t refer to a guide.
Archinstall makes things a bit easier by suggesting the installation steps even though it is completely command line based. It’s just a script after all.
The increasing popularity of DevOps software development methodologies has led to shorter and more agile life cycles, in which software is released and deployed in minutes or hours rather than the days, weeks, or even months required under traditional practices. However, many development teams still experience delays in getting releases into production due to the security considerations that are traditionally brought to bear at the end of the life cycle. To address this, organizations are more and more frequently adopting a DevSecOps approach.
I’ve announced in the Mindshare, Design and Ambassadors mailing lists that I will try to revive the Marketing team.
Previously the marketing team was in charge of several tasks related to how the Fedora Project displays information to the public, working closely with Design, that produces assets, and Ambassadors, who attend events promoting Fedora Linux and the Fedora Project. The work of the team mostly focused on communicating the changes and new features in each release as bullet points that Ambassadors could use in their events.
I woke up this morning and heard about the latest vulnerability in my news feed. Today it was polkit/pwnkit, a couple weeks ago it was something else. (And another will be along shortly, no doubt.) When these come out the impact on IT teams are huge and for anyone responsible for managing systems, one of your first thoughts is "am I exposed and to what extent?"
If you are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), you can use Red Hat Insights to find out what systems are exposed, and to what extent.
In exciting news for Java developers, Java 18 forked off from the main line at the end of last year and has entered Rampdown Phase Two. This article highlights some of the features that developers can look for in the upcoming Java 18 release, including the new simple web server module, a more sophisticated way to annotate your Javadocs, and the –finalization=disabled option, which lets you test how a Java application will behave when finalization is removed in a future release. See the end of the article for where to download Java 18 in early access builds.
While many organizations’ IT teams have toiled away in obscurity for years, the last two decades have increasingly shined a spotlight on the critical role they play. IT has become a zeitgeist in the business world, especially since the pandemic.
An increase in remote workers over the last two decades and the pandemic have accelerated greater demand for faster, better, more secure IT practices and infrastructure. Today, employers and employees alike have lofty and varied expectations for their organizations’ technology.
BigTreeTech BTT SKR Pico V1.0 is a 3D printer controller board based on Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU, compatible with Raspberry Pi Linux SBC’s, and specially designed for the compact Voron 0 3D printer, but also working with other models.
The board comes with four TMC2209 motor drivers covered by a heatsink for cooling, as well as interfaces for temperature sensors, and a USB Type-C port to connect to the host computer, usually a Raspberry Pi board running Linux.
Vu, India’s popular online smart TV brand has announced a new TV under the Premium series. The company has unveiled the Vu Premium TV 32-inch in India today. Previously, the company had announced Vu QLED Premium TV in India with Android 11, Dolby Vision, and 40W speakers. The newly launched Premium TV 32-inch comes with features like a premium bezel-less design, Linux OS, and more for under Rs 15,000.
Detecting motion inside a monitoring area, such as security area or home restricted place, requires monitoring all the object moves within thas perimeter. The PIR sensor (HC-SR501) with Arduino is a good and cheap option, as it has ability to measure up to 7 meters
After searching everywhere for an affordable ride-on fire truck toy for his daughter this past Christmas season YouTuber Jason Altice (AKA CodeMakesItGo) had nearly given up, but luckily enough was able to locate a free Grave Digger Power Wheels that he could modify into one. In its current condition, the vehicle was in bad shape so it had to first be almost completely disassembled, which led to the discovery of a bad switch that was causing the troubles.
Upon removing each panel and meticulously painting it with coats of primer and bright red paint, Altice moved onto the next step of including a loud siren and some lights for additional realism. He took an Arduino Nano, loaded some sounds in the form of tone melodies, and then ran the outputted signal from the digital pin to an amplifier and onwards to the horn.
For people who are recovering from a major surgery or those who have a disability, ensuring proper posture while lying down for extended periods of time is vital for reducing joint pain and other ailments that come about from a lack of movement, including pressure sores. Rodrigo Mejiasz’s project aims to solve the issue by using a small device that monitors how long a patient has been lying down in one position and alerts a caregiver when it’s time to adjust them.
One of the joys of being a Maker and Hacker is solving problems and filling needs. When you can do both, well, that’s something special. [rodrigo.mejiasz]’s project surely fits into that special category of solving a problem and filling a dire need with his Bedridden Patient Monitor.
While [Rodrigo]’s project page does not specify his motivation for creating this project, one only needs to look as far as their local hospital ward or senior care facility to understand why this device is so wonderful. Healthcare workers and caregivers are stretched paper thin, and their attention is being constantly interrupted.
This year's edition will be kicked off by a talk of Masafumi Ohta, teaching on Free Software license and compliances at the University of Electro-Communications in Japan at 13:00 CET. In his talk, Ohta addresses the issue on "How to teach OSS licenses and compliances at a university".
At 13:30 CET, Italo Vignoli, a well-known Free Software advocate and a marketing and public relations consultant, gives a presentation on "Why the pandemic could help FOSS, but was a win for proprietary software".
While typically taking place in Brussels, Belgium, FOSDEM 2022 will take place online just like FOSDEM 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions. The good news is that it means anybody can attend it live from anywhere in the world, and makes it more like “FOSDIM”, replacing European with International, in “Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting”.
FOSDEM 2022 will take place on February 5-6 with 637 speakers, 718 events, and 103 tracks. I’ve made my own little virtual schedule below mostly with sessions from the Embedded, Mobile and Automotive devroom, but also other devrooms including “Computer Aided Modeling and Design”, “FOSS on Mobile Devices”, “Libre-Open VLSI and FPGA”, and others.
Brian Kernighan has written many popular books about programming, computers, and technology. My own bookshelf includes several books authored or co-authored by Kernighan, including The C Programming Language, Unix: A History and A Memoir, The AWK Programming Language, and others. I just added another book by Kernighan, Understanding the Digital World: What You Need to Know about Computers, the Internet, Privacy, and Security, Second Edition, published in 2021 by Princeton University Press.
I am going to start a new Linux focused FOSS online meeting for people in Australia and nearby areas. People can join from anywhere but the aim will be to support people in nearby areas.
To cover the time zone range for Australia this requires a meeting on a weekend, I’m thinking of the first Saturday of the month at 1PM Melbourne/Sydney time, that would be 10AM in WA and 3PM in NZ. We may have corner cases of daylight savings starting and ending on different days, but that shouldn’t be a big deal as I think those times can vary by an hour either way without being too inconvenient for anyone.
Note that I describe the meeting as Linux focused because my plans include having a meeting dedicated to different versions of BSD Unix and a meeting dedicated to the HURD. But those meetings will be mainly for Linux people to learn about other Unix-like OSs.
In a previous article, Kimberly Sereduck told us about Updates to Warm Page Load Tests and how we are continuously working to make our tests more representative of real user behavior. Besides that, we are working on automating the process of recording the website’s page load.
“It’s not about the destination, but about the journey.” I’m sure data and privacy are the furthest from your mind when you hear this popular saying. However, after a year of virtually sharing Mozilla’s Lean Data Practices (LDP), I’ve realized this quote perfectly describes privacy, LDP, and the process that stakeholders work through as they apply the principles to their projects, products, and policies.
[...]
There is an appetite to understand how we as consumers can hold companies accountable. One of the biggest surprises for me came when I would field questions at the end of a presentation, and people would ask about their rights as consumers and how they can hold companies accountable. For example, people wanted to understand their rights and recourse options if companies contacted them without permission, didn’t honor their unsubscribe requests, or did something else frustrating. I teach LDP for individuals to apply it in a business context, but we are all also consumers and customers. LDP can help us better understand how our own data should be handled and improve our understanding of what organizations are doing. We can then remember how we feel about certain situations and then ensure we are doing things in a more consumer-friendly way within our organizations.
Lean Data Practices is a journey. For many there won’t be an ultimate destination because it is an iterative process. If you try to apply all the principles across your entire organization at once, you will find yourself overwhelmed and likely unsuccessful. To maximize your chance of success, my advice — which is the same advice we give when we present — is to just start somewhere. Choose one aspect of your business and focus on that, one pillar at a time. Once you’ve successfully applied the principles, go to a different business unit and do the same. Remember to review and adapt as products and business needs (or data!) change as well. You may likely never reach your destination, but you will see your company improve in its practices along the way.
Tor and VPN have unique ways to ensure user privacy on the Internet. They’re fundamentally very different yet have many similar aims. Due to the overlap in features, you may be weighing the pros and cons of using one over the other. Or maybe they can be treated equally but with separate purposes. This guide digs into everything you need to know about which software should be used for more Internet anonymity.
Tor Browser 11.5a2 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.
This version includes important security updates to Firefox.
WordPress 5.9 marks the introduction of the next generation of themes that allows greater customization and simpler building.
Every year, everyone is waiting to see what the next version of the most popular CMS on the planet is going to bring. WordPress 5.9 “Josephine” is the first WordPress release of 2022. It is named in honor of Josephine Baker, an international jazz singer. The new version brings improvements to WordPress that will change the way many people build their websites.
We announced in 2021 that Hyundai Motor Company has selected Qt as their key HMI technology partner for all Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands. Since then, they have released their new electric luxury SUV Genesis GV60, and we love it!
The td package for accessing the twelvedata API for financial data has been updated once more on CRAN and is now at version 0.0.6.
The release comes in response to an email from CRAN who noticed (via r-devel) that I was sloppy (in one spot, it turns out) with a logical expression resulting in an expression of length greather than one. Fixed by wrapping an all() around it—and the package was back at CRAN minutes later thanks to automated processing over their end.
Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 950 other packages on CRAN, downloaded over 22.9 million times (per the partial logs from the cloud mirrors of CRAN), and the CSDA paper (preprint/vignette) by Conrad and myself has been cited 451 times according to Google Scholar.
This release brings another upstream update 10.8.0, and first bug fix release 10.8.1. As updates by Conrad can come a little quicker than the desired monthly cadence CRAN aims for, we skipped the 10.8.0 release for CRAN only but of course generally provide them via the Rcpp drat repo as well as via general updates to the repo, and full reverse dependency testing (for which results are always logged here).
The stage name? Meat Loaf. For Crying Out Loud. OK. How’s this for a pitch in 1977 to record companies for the breakthrough hit, Bat Out Of Hell? It’s a song about a guy on a motorbike crashing, dying, with his heart leaving his body like a bat. That song will give the album its title, then we’ll have a song about a guy rejecting his girl by telling her there ain’t no way I’m ever going to love you and another about a man who wants to end the relationship and is praying for the end of time so I can end my time with you. What record producer in their right mind would consider such an outlandish proposal? Remember, this was the late seventies. The Carter presidency. Music was polarized. In the blue corner, disco. In the red, punk. Bruce Springsteen and Queen were fighting the good fight but the dross seemed overwhelming.€ Rudely flapping its wings along comes the Bat Out of Hell album with its Wagnerian overtones and sense of Gotterdammerung and an overweight singer named after a dish not known for its gastronomic appeal. T-bone steak, roast lamb, leg of pork, roast potatoes maybe, but Meat Loaf?
After a slow burn, something happened, word of mouth and radio play resurrected it and soon, say 1978, no high school or college dance was complete without a track or two, especially Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad. This was before MTV. It’s still appealing to young and not-so-young romantics with global sales in excess of 40 million and the album sales hit 200,00 a year.
Move forward to the year 1920, and none other than Winston Churchill gave us a more modern conspiracy theory when saying, “the movement among the Jews … this worldwide conspiracy [is] for the overthrow of civilization [it] has been steadily growing.” During the 1930s, Churchill’s antisemitism was, of course, out-gunned by German Nazism inventing the scientific hallucination of a Jewish Race.It sought to legitimize the Holocaust. In the 1950s, US Senator Joe McCarthy believed, “this government [will] deliver us to disaster … this must be a product of a great conspiracy.”
Conspiracy theories are more like fantasies. They are not theories in our scientific understanding. In short, a theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural or social world that has been repeatedly tested, and verified in accordance with scientific methods relying on accepted protocols of observations, measurement, and a critical evaluation of the findings produced. None of this is the case when it comes to conspiracy theories.
Shortly after the spectacular collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the global recession that came tumbling after it, an Italian playwright named Stefano Massini began working on a fictionalized account of the men who’d founded the eponymous firm a century and a half earlier. I Capitoli del Crollo, or Chapters of the Fall, saw its first productions in 2010 on Italian stages, followed by performances on national radio. And then the play took off in various translations across Europe, drawing acclaim throughout the 2010s in France, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere. Despite its title, the play is mostly about the rise of Lehman Brothers; it follows three generations of Lehman men to tell a giddy tale about the growth of their bank and, by extension, rapacious American capitalism. In 2016, Massini published a 760-page expanded version, Qualcosa sui Lehman (Something About the Lehmans), which was billed as a novel and, like the playscript, was written in a sort of Homeric free verse befitting the epic ambitions of the project.
No doubt, part of the appeal of Massini’s work for directors was the open-ended nature of the play. Written in the third person, with no lines assigned to particular characters, it left theater artists free to shape their productions as they wished, even as they hewed to Massini’s script. Some European stagings used seven actors to play the Lehman men across the 164-year saga, as well as the dozens of other people they encountered; others used four or as many as 12.
The atmospheric wave pattern close to the eruption was quite complicated, but thousands of miles away it appeared as an isolated wave front traveling horizontally at over 650 miles an hour as it spread outward.
NASA’s James Garvin, chief scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, told NPR the space agency estimated the blast was around 10 megatons of TNT equivalent, about 500 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World Word II. From satellites watching with infrared sensors above, the wave looked like a ripple produced by dropping a stone in a pond.
Humanity has been wondering about whether life exists beyond our little backwater planet for so long that we’ve developed a kind of cultural bias as to how the answer to this central question will be revealed. Most of us probably imagine that NASA or some other space agency will schedule a press conference, an assembled panel of scientific luminaries will announce the findings, and newspapers around the world will blare “WE ARE NOT ALONE!” headlines. We’ve all seen that movie before, so that’s the way it has to be, right?
Probably not. Short of an improbable event like an alien spacecraft landing while a Google Street View car was driving by or receiving an unambiguously intelligent radio message from the stars, the conclusion that life exists now or once did outside our particular gravity well is likely to be reached in a piecewise process, an accretion of evidence built up over a long time until on balance, the only reasonable conclusion is that we are not alone. And that’s exactly what the announcement at the end of last year that the Mars rover Perseverance had discovered evidence of organic molecules in the rocks of Jezero crater was — another piece of the puzzle, and another step toward answering the fundamental question of the uniqueness of life.
Despite the existence of safer alternatives, toxic "forever chemicals" linked to a wide range of health problems are found in most products labeled stain- or water-resistant, from rain jackets and hiking pants to mattress pads, comforters, napkins, and tablecloths.
"We need urgent action at the state and federal levels to solve the PFAS crisis, including by quickly stopping its use in products we wear and use in our homes."
By the time he was assassinated, he (and the movement) were calling for an end to the barbarous war against the people of Vietnam, a universal guaranteed annual income, with€ public housing and healthcare as an economic right for everybody. Feel free to check. In 1967, a year before he was struck down in Memphis supporting the striking “sanitation workers” and organizing for the Poor People’s Campaign, he gave a speech at New York’s Riverside Church: “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
He announced, “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘people-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” He named the United States as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
What if we told you American taxpayers funded the invention of a highly successful prostate cancer medication, but if they need it, American prostate cancer patients are forced to pay far more than people living in similar nations?
As the House Democratic leadership prepared to fast-track a vote to provide $500 million in additional military aid to Ukraine, a small contingent of congressional Democrats argued that the federal government's immediate attention should be on the United States' flagging pandemic response—particularly on the global stage.
In a letter to President Joe Biden on Tuesday, nine Democratic lawmakers warned that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is "a little over a month away from running out of money" to finance its global vaccination efforts as coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths remain elevated worldwide.
The documentary “Takeover,” which chronicles the radical actions of the Young Lords, was recently shortlisted for an Academy Award. In 1970, the Puerto Rican collective took over a condemned hospital in the South Bronx to demand the construction of a new hospital, free healthcare for all, and more. “I’m still amazed there’s been so much interest in what we did as youngsters more than 50 years ago,” says Democracy Now! co-host and Young Lords founding member Juan González. “I hope that some of the lessons of what we did right and what we did wrong will resonate with younger people these days.”
Around 11:30 am on December 15, a Northeastern University student was found unresponsive in Snell Library, one of the main libraries on campus. Boston Fire and EMS arrived on the scene. Just a few hours later, the Northeastern University Police Department gave the library an “all clear.” The student was pronounced dead in an apparent suicide. The university administration’s response? Sending an e-mail to all students that read, “The university is making counseling and other mental health services available to everyone in the university community who needs support.” Finals week proceeded as normal, and students began shuffling into the library again. This story was produced for Student Nation, a program of the Nation Fund for Independent Journalism, which is dedicated to highlighting the best of student journalism. For more Student Nation, check out our archive or learn more about the program here. StudentNation is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation. If you’re a student and you have an article idea, please send pitches and questions to [email€ protected].
As new cases of the highly infectious Omicron variant continue to climb in undervaccinated parts of the world, we speak to the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about how vaccine inequity could lead to even more variants of the coronavirus. Dr. John Nkengasong says only 10% of the population is fully immunized in Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people, and millions of vaccines donated by COVAX went unused because of their short shelf life. Meanwhile, several countries in Africa have begun manufacturing their own vaccines. “We have to shift our focus to vaccinating — that is, making sure that vaccines that are arriving at the airport actually get into the arm of the people,” says Dr. Nkengasong.
An easily exploited flaw in a program found in every major Linux distribution is the latest serious security issue that has arisen in the open-source space in recent weeks.
Researchers at cybersecurity vendor Qualys this week disclosed the memory corruption vulnerability in polkit’s pkexec, which if exploited by a bad actor can enable an unprivileged user to gain full root privileges on a system, giving the unprivileged user administrative rights.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-4034, has “been hiding in plain sight” for more than 12 years and infects all versions of polkit’s pkexec since it was first developed in 2009, Bharat Jogi, director of vulnerability and threat research at Qualys, wrote in a blog post.
Polkit’s (formerly PolicyKit) pkexec is a component used to control system-wide privileges in Unix-like operating systems, enabling non-privileged processes to communicate with privileged processes in an organized fashion. It also can be used to execute commands with elevated privileges using the command pkexec followed by the command intended to be executed with root permission.
LockBit is the latest ransomware gang whose Linux encryptor has been discovered to be focusing on the encryption of VMware ESXi virtual machines.
[...]
While ESXi is not strictly Linux, it does share many of its characteristics, including the ability to run ELF64 Linux executables.
An essential component of the analysis and cleanup of websites infected with malware is viewing and evaluating the log files. However, even here there are things to consider that might seem odd at first glance.
Security updates have been issued by CentOS (polkit), Debian (uriparser), Fedora (cryptsetup, flatpak, flatpak-builder, and polkit), Gentoo (polkit), Mageia (virtualbox), Red Hat (httpd24-httpd, httpd:2.4, and parfait:0.5), SUSE (clamav, log4j, python-numpy, and strongswan), and Ubuntu (vim).
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released a Private Industry Notification (PIN) that provides a historical overview of Iran-based cyber company Emennet Pasargad’s tactics, techniques, and procedures to enable readers to identify and defend against the group’s malicious cyber activities.
Two reminders about security related package updates in my repositories.
We've discussed supply-chain attacks in the past, and now it's time to see an actual example that happened recently. However, this particular incident is especially unique as the libraries in question were allegedly poisoned by the actual developer. In this episode, Joao and Jay discuss the recent sabotage regarding two very popular NPM libraries.
May court records related to orders requiring a travel reservations company to provide real-time updates to the U.S. government whenever a “person of interest” makes reservations for flights or other travel€ be kept secret from the public, the press, and other travel companies including the airlines on which the target plans to travel?
That issue is now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Forbes Media and Thomas Brewster vs. the United States (Court of Appeals Docket #21-35612).
The legal question before the 9th Circuit is whether courts can keep their own actions secret. That’s important, but the the underlying facts raise other issues as well.
Ahead of the release of a key document laying out the administration's nuclear doctrine, President Joe Biden is facing a fresh call from Democrats in Congress to firmly reject what they see as former President Donald Trump's misguided and dangerous policies on atomic weapons.
"It is your best chance to take bold steps that reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons, elevate arms control, and, retire President Trump's new, unnecessary warfighting nuclear weapons."
Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Barbara Lee, two top members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, implored the Biden administration on Wednesday to urgently pursue a diplomatic outcome in Ukraine, warning that "there is no military solution" to surging tensions with Russia.
"Diplomacy needs to be the focus," Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the CPC, and Lee (D-Calif.), the head of the caucus' Peace and Security Taskforce, said in a statement.
Gun control advocates on Wednesday sharply condemned an Illinois-based company for recently unveiling the JR-15, a long rifle inspired by the AR-15 but marketed for children.
"The marketing of children's assault rifles... can only increase the threat of gun death and injury to children."
A group of 12 House Democrats is urging President Joe Biden to suspend a contract that keeps Saudi warplanes maintained and able to cause "untold suffering" on the people of Yemen.
The letter to Biden, led by Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), comes amid an escalation in the Saudi-led coalition's bombing of Yemen and on the same day United Nations officials warned that the civilian death toll from the bombing campaign could break records this month.
The U.S. State Department on Tuesday approved a sprawling $2.5 billion arms sale to Egypt even as the Biden administration continues to withhold a far smaller sum of military aid—$130 million—over expressed concerns about human rights abuses by the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a disconnect that critics said makes a mockery of U.S. leaders' rhetoric.
Authorized on the 11th anniversary of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the weapons sale includes 12 Super Hercules C-130 transport aircraft as well as $355 million worth of air defense radar systems.
With the AUKUS arrangements being firmed up, US and UK sailors, personnel and miscellaneous staff are being readied for more time Down Under, ensuring that Australia becomes a staging ground for future forward military operations.€ Canberra has relinquished much say in this; the song sheets and blueprints are coming from elsewhere.
The UK, reprising its long history of using Australia for its own military adventurism, is keen to massage the recently minted AUKUS agreement.€ Last week, the UK Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss met Dutton and Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne in Sydney for annual AUKMIN talks.€ The meeting had a distinctly nostalgic note to it: maternal Britannia, dropping in to see its rather (territorially) large offspring.
Incredibly, even long before this most recent tragedy, the majority of police surveyed were in favor of people carrying guns legally (“Police Gun Control Survey: Are legally-armed citizens the best solution to gun violence?”€ Police1, April 8, 2013). The line of reasoning in the arming of civilians is that armed people will stop armed criminals, or act as a deterrent to potentially armed wrongdoers.
This discussion will not review the number of police shootings of mostly people of color in the US that is a well-documented issue. The insanity of guns in the US always returns to the Second Amendment and its underpinnings in the wild west and colonial history. The Second Amendment to the Constitution gave citizens the right to bear arms and the right to form militias and is about as useful today as someone planning to travel across the US by Conestoga wagon. Part of the Second Amendment also became a means to enforce racism throughout US history. Segregation and racism were targeted through the barrel of a gun as civil rights workers found out in Mississippi in 1964. Black leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were treated similarly. Medgar Evers was summarily sentenced to death at the end of a rifle for his work with the NAACP, and teenager Emmett Till was tortured and gunned down before being cast into a river. The list is endless!
The world watches as the squabble between US and Russia heats up.€ Russia moves troops around its territory. Washington insists Moscow has no right to move those troops near Russia’s border with Ukraine.€ The Pentagon is moving some of its forces closer to Russia’s borders: into Poland, Latvia, Lithuania among others.€ Meanwhile, Kyiv continues to take its orders from Washington—which helped create the current political reality there when it openly intervened in the electoral process in 2014 as part of its expansion eastward via NATO after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.€ The US conveniently insists that Cold War-style regions of influence are a relic of the past and that countries should be able to choose their own alliances. In other words, the US should be able to expand its empire wherever it wishes.€ Moscow, for obvious reasons, disagrees.€ The current debate over Ukraine is not about freedom for the Ukrainian people, but also about Moscow expanding its influence into Europe at Washington’s expense.€ A prime example of this struggle is the Nordeast 2 natural gas line that enables Russian energy firms to transport and sell their resource to Germany and other European nations at a much cheaper rate than US energy firms can sell their product in the same markets.
Then there’s NATO.€ The fact of its continued existence reveals much about its true intent. NATO is a tool of US empire; a military means to keep the nations in the alliance under D.C.’s dominion. € Like the Monroe Doctrine is unofficially to Latin America, NATO is to Europe.€ Masquerading as a benevolent protector and equal alliance of nations, its true purpose is to engage other capitalist nations in Washington’s pursuit of hegemony.€ While Washington continues to pretend that NATO exists to defend freedoms that only the United States can dispense, NATO continues to be part of the US empire’s armed wing.€ This is truer now than at any time since the 1980s, when the Reagan White House moved nuclear missiles into Europe despite massive protests.
But isn’t presenting your position on what is non-negotiable part of negotiations? Just as 100,000 Russian troops on the eastern border of Ukraine are part of the negotiations, Blinken’s statement about non-starters is part of the general negotiating process.
The meeting in Geneva was part of a classic negotiation at the highest levels with much at stake. Ever since Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton published Getting to Yes in 1981 after establishing the Harvard Negotiating Project, negotiating has become a big international business. The book has been translated into 35 languages. Paul Meerts of the Clingendael Institute and the Swiss Robert Weibel among others spent years training diplomats in negotiation in the newly independent countries following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Negotiation simulations regularly take place in the private sector as well.
Granted, during the years of schooling that preceded my deployment there, I had amassed all sorts of facts, some of them at least marginally relevant to the matter at hand. Yet despite the earnest efforts of some excellent teachers, I had managed to avoid acquiring anything that could be dignified with the term education. Now, however haltingly, that began to change. A year later, when my tour of duty ended, I carried home from Vietnam the barest inkling of a question: How had this massive cockup occurred and what did it signify?
Since that question implied rendering judgment on a war in which I had (however inconsequentially) participated, it wasn’t one that I welcomed. Even so, the question dogged me. During the ensuing decades, while expending considerable effort reflecting on America’s war in Vietnam, I never quite arrived at a fully satisfactory answer. At some level, the entire episode remained incomprehensible to me.
In what one gun control advocate called "a victory for gun safety," the San José City Council voted Tuesday to advance a measure that would make the city the first in the nation to require firearm owners to carry liability insurance and pay a yearly fee.
"Whether you're pro-guns or anti-guns, no one can argue that we have substantial injury in our community and substantial issues that need to be addressed."
We speak to award-winning journalist Jonathan Katz about his new book “Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire.” The book follows the life of the Marines officer Smedley Butler and the trail of U.S. imperialism from Cuba and the Philippines to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Panama. The book also describes an effort by banking and business leaders to topple Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government in 1934 in order to establish a fascist dictatorship. The plot was exposed by Butler, who famously declared, “War is a racket.” The far-right conspiracy to overthrow liberal democracy has historical parallels to the recent January 6 insurrection, says Katz.
In mid-December, some 114 members of Congress sent a forceful letter to President Joe Biden calling for “immediate humanitarian actions” to lift the economic sanctions “that prevent food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance from reaching the Cuban people.” With Cuba struggling to emerge from a dire, Covid-generated economic crisis, the congressional representatives are pushing the White House to end the restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on remittances and travel and restore the Obama-era policy of engagement with the island nation. “Engagement,” the members concluded, “is more likely to enable the political, economic, and social openings that Cubans may desire, and to ease the hardships that Cubans face today.”1
Environmentalists and progressives on Wednesday cheered a decision by the Biden administration to cancel a pair of mining leases in northern Minnesota that critics warned would threaten the pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.€
"Some places are simply too special to € mine."€
Although oil and gas production increased in the United States from 2010 to 2020, new research out Wednesday reveals that last decade's boom coincided with a decline in drilling and fracking jobs—giving lie to the fossil fuel industry's claims about its positive impact on employment.
"Outlandish jobs claims have one goal: to hype the scope and impact of the oil and gas industry."
Our politicians, flush from millionaire/billionaire campaign “contributions,” like to pretend that the cost of dealing with the climate and biodiversity crises is prohibitively expensive and pretend that we should wait until the cost of solutions come down before we act, but is this really true?
With the federal moratorium on student loan repayments set to end in less than 100 days, dozens of Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday implored President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to cancel at least $50,000 in student debt per borrower.
"We can and must provide this relief to millions of borrowers and their families."
The following is based on an email sent to supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday, January 26, 2022:
Reports that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer plans to retire prompted progressives Wednesday to urge€ President Joe Biden to fulfill a campaign promise and nominate a progressive Black woman who will counter the high court's right-wing supermajority and protect democracy, human rights, and the climate.€
"The status quo is failing all of us, so Biden's choice is crucial."
Moreover, he said hardly a word about his sketchy corporate past, beyond declaring he had been a “financier” or worked in “the financial sector”. Of course these designations cover a myriad of types—from jailed junk bond kings in the 1980s, to creators of slash-and-burn “financial instruments” behind the 2008 crash (who escaped jail, how times change), to bankers who oversee the provision of microcredit for the poor. Youngkin is definitely not among the latter.
Youngkin took office as Virginia’s governor on 15 January. Two days later he gave his inauguration speech. Here are some key points from Youngkin’s address:
FOX News is exultant! Not only have they found a new Senate hero in Joe Manchin—a Democrat no less—but also in one of the Democratic party’s past policy stalwarts, Harvard Professor Larry Summers. In addition to having briefly served as President of that supposed bastion of American liberal thought, Summers has served as Secretary of The Treasury under President Clinton, and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank, which, for Trump world, is an instrument for strengthening big government globally and, God forbid, multilateralism!
The threat Sen. Joe Manchin poses to the planet by refusing to back ambitious climate legislation has not gone unnoticed by people in parts of the world that are most at risk for destruction from global heating, according to new reporting.
As The Guardian reported Wednesday, the right-wing Democrat who represents West Virginia has gained infamy in the Global South, including in the Marshall Islands, where 96% of the capital city of Majuro is at risk for frequent flooding due to rising sea levels.
Democrat Nina Turner announced Wednesday she's running again to represent Greater Cleveland in U.S. Congress, bringing back an agenda of priorities like Medicare for All, a living wage, and recurring federal relief amid the ongoing pandemic, and a fresh promise to be a fighter for "a progressive future that works for all."
"Greater Cleveland needs... a leader who knows poverty is a policy choice."
Project Censored has received a grant from the Free Press to support our media literacy educational programs. The grant will fund at least three new, paid summer internships, enhancements to the weekly radio show, and expansion of the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program, which includes our critical media literacy curriculum and educator development. Stay tuned for more details as we put this welcome support to work.
It's never been a secret that for all of the public claims about how Donald Trump's upcoming social network "TRUTH Social" will be for "free speech" that this was never actually the plan. We noted right up front that its terms of service appeared to be way more restrictive than all the competitors it was criticizing -- and even said it would be a violation of terms to "annoy" anyone working for the site. When Rep. Devin Nunes -- who has a long history of suing people for criticizing and mocking him (i.e., no friend of free speech) -- announced he was retiring from Congress to become CEO of Trump's social network, we noted that he'd be quick to ban people on the site.
More than four dozen consumer advocacy, media justice, and privacy rights groups on Wednesday urged the Senate and House Judiciary Committees to hold hearings on the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act—a bill meant to curb warrantless mass surveillance—as soon as possible.
"This legislation would stop this flagrant abuse of our privacy and shut down a clandestine business sector that trades away our essential rights for profit."
To make a long story much shorter, it’s no news to anyone that Montana and national property values have skyrocketed in the last few years.€ The median price for a home in the U.S. right now is $375,000. In€ Montana the median price is $359,678. The incredible increase in the cost of owning a home is great for the speculators, investors, and flippers who just want to make a killing and pocket the profits. But it’s not so great for those who are facing property taxes based on the sky-high prices — especially those who have been living in their homes for a long time, are elderly, on fixed incomes, and have no intention of selling them.
Comes now a replay of a successful citizen’s initiative from the 1980s that capped property tax increases€ — but was almost immediately overturned by the Legislature. This time around, a group called Cap Montana Property Taxes wants to gather signatures for CI-121,€ a constitutional initiative that would amend Montana’s constitution to revert tax valuations back to 2019 levels, cap rates on residences at 1% and limit increases in assessed valuations to either 2% or the inflation rate, whichever is lower.€ Being a constitutional amendment, it couldn’t be overturned through legislative action.
The longer we live, the more we become accustomed to cop fiction.
A few weeks ago, we warned that Congress should not include the ridiculously dangerous SHOP SAFE bill in the expected USICA bill. Unfortunately, Congress did not listen.
Ten years ago a coalition of strange bedfellows came together to thwart one of the most problematic pieces of legislation in tech policy history. In the process they made history, rekindled waning optimism about the health of democratic process, forged longstanding new alliances across activism, politics, academia, and industry, and redefined what's possible in the tech policy arena and the halls of Congress. Not bad for a day's work.
Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition are appalled by the internet shutdowns at the hands of authorities and telecommunications providers in the first weeks of January 2022. Through an open letter to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the coalition is demanding action, and the assurance of open, accessible internet for all across Kazakhstan.
“It was a disgraceful start to 2022 — shutting down the internet when people needed it most,” said Anastasiya Zhyrmont, Eastern Europe & Central Asia Regional Outreach Coordinator at Access Now. “These prolific attacks on freedom of speech and access to information must not set a precedent for the year ahead in Kazakhstan. The #KeepItOn coalition is demanding the nation set a better standard.”
Twitter reports record number of government requests to remove content.
As the one year anniversary of the military’s illegal coup in Myanmar nears, the junta’s methodical efforts to achieve ultimate control over civic space are continuing. The recently revived draft Cybersecurity Law will effectively extinguish any remaining avenues for dissent and expression against an increasingly violent regime, and must be immediately withdrawn.
On January 13, leaked documents revealed the military’s attempts to reintroduce a notorious and oppressive law, previously shut down by Access Now and other civil society and industry stakeholders. The latest draft — an unofficial English version of which was shared with Access Now through partners — appears to resurrect all the major fears around suppression of freedoms that were enshrined in the original iteration. It is expected to pass as early as next week after a two-week token consultation.
The latest draft confers overbroad powers to the junta to censor expression online and undermine data protection, with no prospect for independent oversight or effective remedy. Military-controlled ministries will be granted powers to implement the law — including the Ministry of Defence (Ch. 1) with its decades-long history of human rights abuses, including serious international violations amounting to crimes against humanity and genocide.
If passed, this bill will enshrine in law the death of online civic space in Myanmar — throttling any remaining rights of the people of Myanmar to freedom of expression, association, information, privacy, and security. The redrafted text is designed to commandeer control of cybersecurity, electronic communications, cybercrime, data protection, and VPN services in not only an illegitimate, but also practically impossible manner.
Of the 270,000 photographs commissioned by the US Farm Security Administration to document the Great Depression, more than a third were “killed”. Erica X Eisen examines the history behind this hole-punched archive and the unknowable void at its center.
