Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 01/09/2022: Nitrux Linux 2.4.0 Released and Microsoft Burned by Systemd



  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

      • Linux LinksBest Free and Open Source Software – August 2022 Updates

        We’ve also published new articles in the fields of graphics, games, system administration, education, productivity and internet/networking.

        As always, we welcome suggestions for new articles or additional open source software to feature.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • EarthlyGrafana & Prometheus Kubernetes Cluster Monitoring
      • Manuel MatuzovicParents counting children in CSS

        I’ve built a demo to illustrate what can be done. If you click on the element, start typing and press Enter, the parent element tells you how many items you should add.

      • uni TorontoA thought on presentational versus semantic HTML

        One of the realities of life is that as people, we care about how things look, partly because in practice you can't divorce content from presentation. This means that most people are always going to care about how their HTML looks. If you write semantic HTML, making your HTML look right is a two step process; first you write carefully taxonomized ('semantic') HTML, and then you get it to look right with CSS or whatever. If you write presentational HTML, you have only one step; you write your HTML (and CSS) and directly tweak things if necessary.

      • uni TorontoZFS DVA offsets are in bytes, not (512-byte) blocks

        In ZFS, a DVA (Device Virtual Address) is the equivalent of a block address in a regular filesystem. For our purposes today, the important thing is that a DVA tells you where to find data by a combination of the vdev (as a numeric index) and an offset into the vdev (and also a size). However, this description leaves a question open, which is what units are ZFS DVA offsets in. Back when I looked into the details of DVAs in 2017, the code certainly appeared to be treating the offset as being in bytes; however, various other sources have sometimes asserted that offsets are in units of 512-byte blocks. Faced with this uncertainty, today I decided to answer the question once and for all with some experimentation.

      • Dan Langilleda12 in my FreeBSD zfs array disappeared at :02 and came back at :04

        Details about this host (disks, zpool, gpart, etc) are in this post.

      • Jan SchaumannThe Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

        Take the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), for example. Seems pretty straight forward, right? If you're, say, a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) for a popular public email service, and a new connection is made to you trying to deliver mail, you perform a few checks and, by way of SPF, determine whether or not you should even bother to accept the mail: [...]

      • H2S MediaHow to install Thinkorswim on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Linux

        Thinkorswim was launched in 1999 as an options brokerage platform. However, later it was acquired by TD Ameritrade, although Thinkorswim’s brokerage services were shut down, the trading platform is still active and distributed by TD Ameritrade for its clients. Besides the trading feature, Thinkorswim users also have access to trading and analysis tools, online courses, etc.

        Unlike TradingView which can be linked to the trading accounts of many different brokers, Thinkorswim is only used by TD Ameritrade clients.

        Thinkorswim allows users to freely set alerts based on parameters of technical indicators and price movements. Meanwhile, TradingView allows users to receive only 12 different alert conditions. However

        Thinkorswim is a bit more complicated for beginners. It is confusing even for many experienced traders. However, the platform has a fairly detailed and comprehensive system of study guide documents that users can use when they need to study.

        Thinkorswim is completely free for customers, which is a big plus. For traders with TD accounts, Ameritrade has provided extensive knowledge for traders who want to learn about trading and investing.

      • OpenSource.comUse Tracee to solve for missing BTF information | Opensource.com

        Tracee is a project by Aqua Security for tracing processes at runtime. By tracing processes using Linux eBPF (Berkeley packet filter) technology, Tracee can correlate collected information and identify malicious behavioral patterns.

      • TecMintHow to Install Rocky Linux 9.0 Step by Step

        Rocky Linux 9.0 was made generally available on July 14, 2022. It comes with a boatload of new features and improvements and will enjoy support and maintenance until May 31, 2032. The previous release, Rocky Linux 8, will still continue to receive support until May 31, 2029.

        In this guide, we will walk you through the installation of Rocky Linux 9.0.

      • OSTechNixConvert Arch Linux Packages To AppImage Format - OSTechNix

        We already have discussed how to convert a DEB package to an Arch Linux package format with Debtap utility. We also have seen how to use Alien tool to convert Linux packages to different formats. Today, we will be discussing yet another Linux package converter tool named Arch2appimage. In this guide, we will see a brief introduction to Arch2appimage, and how to install Arch2appimage in Linux and how to convert Arch Linux packages to AppImage format with Arch2appimage application.

      • ID RootHow To Install XanMod Kernel on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install XanMod Kernel on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, XanMod is a popular Linux kernel modification that provides enhanced performance and stability for gaming, streaming, and other resource-intensive tasks Compared to the stock Linux Kernel found in many other Linux distributions, you will find some custom settings and new features enabled to enhance your experience with it.

        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 the step-by-step installation of the XanMod Kernel on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

      • ID RootHow To Install Zoom on Linux Mint 21 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Zoom on Linux Mint 21. For those of you who didn’t know, Zoom is a communications technology platform that provides video telephony and real-time online chat services through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform. Zoom is not only used as a platform for audio or video conferencing but is also used for chats, and conducting several webinars. It is available on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS systems.

        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 the step-by-step installation of a Zoom video conference on Linux Mint 21 (Vanessa).

      • LinuxOpSysHow to Install Ubuntu on a USB Flash Drive (Solution)

        Ubuntu is one of the most widely used Linux operating systems among home users and enterprises. Ubuntu is normally installed by booting from a USB.

        Installing the entire Ubuntu on a USB Flash drive is simple and straightforward. We need a bootable usb and another USB to which complete Ubuntu to be installed.

        You can use ubuntu installed USB as a portable computer and bootable device. In this tutorial, we learn how to install the entire Ubuntu on a USB Flash Drive.

      • TechRepublicHow to install Webmin 2.0 on Ubuntu Server 22.04 | TechRepublic

        Jack Wallen demonstrates how to install the latest version of the powerful Webmin web-based admin tool for Linux.

    • Games

      • GamingOnLinuxArcane Waters is an upcoming open-world pixel-pirate adventure game

        Want to sail the high seas? Love pixel artwork? Check out the upcoming game Arcane Waters which will let you do some pirating adventures alone or online with others too but it's mainly an online focused game.

      • GamingOnLinuxSteam Deck Tips and Tricks Part 2

        Since a lot of people liked the first set of tips and tricks for the Steam Deck, here's a Part 2 with just a few more that some of you might find useful. Some done before in other videos or articles but this is an easy reference for you.

      • GamingOnLinuxThe Zachtronics Solitaire Collection releases September 6

        Okay so perhaps Last Call BBS being their actual final game was a sweet little lie from Zachtronics. Well, sort of, as The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection is technically not exactly a new game.

      • GamingOnLinuxFuturistic drift-racer Neodash is out now on Steam and looks wild

        Neodash is a fresh Native Linux racing game that combines futuristic bright neon visuals with crazy-fast drifting. What you get is something that clearly resembles the awesome racing-platformer Distance, but pumped up on some serious steroids and a little Trackmania too even.

      • ViceNavy Looking for Gamers After Disastrous Esports Launch

        Goats and Glory, the U.S. Navy’s esports team, is looking for new sailors to refresh its roster of Twitch streamers. According to an August 22 admin memo, Goats and Glory needs new sailors to play games in front of a camera to help with the military’s recruitment effort.

      • The VergeChinese tech giant buys Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream

        NetEase is a China-based internet technology company with a growing division dedicated to PC, console, and mobile games. It first became a minority shareholder in Quantic Dream in 2019, shortly after the release of Detroit: Becoming Human. Quantic Dream joins a growing list of game companies that NetEase has acquired and marks its first studio located in Europe.

      • GamingOnLinuxInfinity Engine reimplementation GemRB continues improving Icewind Dale 2

        Classics like Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and more running on the Infinity Engine should live on forever thanks to open source reimplementations like GemRB.

      • GamingOnLinuxSokoChess combines Chess with the Sokoban block-pushing formula

        SokoChess is certainly an intriguing game blending together two very different types of gameplay, to create something that's a little peculiar but quite fun. Note: key provided by the developer.

      • GamingOnLinuxValheim gets patched to prevent the world resetting

        Quite an important update has rolled out for the open-world survival game Valheim, with a bunch of changes related to the saving system to prevent some big problems. For a little while some people have unfortunately seen their worlds getting reset, which this patch solves.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • New Releases

      • LinuxiacNitrux Linux 2.4.0 Released, XanMod Kernel Is Now the Default

        Nitrux OS has released a new 2.4.0 version, bringing us the latest software updates, bug fixes, and performance improvements.

        Nitrux is a free, beautiful, open-source, desktop-oriented Linux distro. It’s powered by Debian, KDE technologies, and Qt, emphasizing aesthetics, user efficiency, and portable universal app formats.

        The distro features a modified version of the KDE Plasma desktop called NX Desktop. On top of that, Nitrux Linux comes with a set of applications that are not typical KDE apps. Instead, a large number of these are MauiKit-based. So, as a result, it is a very different type of desktop Linux distribution.

    • BSD

      • “OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems” Status Report

        I just finished the ‘non-native filesystems’ part of “OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems.” I wouldn’t say I’ve finished the hard part, but I have finished the “intertwined to an unholy degree” part.

    • Fedora / Red Hat / IBM

      • Red Hat Official4 things to know about programming using Ansible | Enable Sysadmin

        Maybe this isn't new information for you, or perhaps you've just never thought about it. Ansible works really well, so what does it matter whether it's a programming language?

      • Enterprisers Project5 ways data can make you a better IT leader

        All successful organizations require strong leadership, whether it comes from a captain on a baseball team, officers in the military, or a founder/CEO at a tech startup. We’ve all seen first-hand how poor leadership results in inefficiencies, lack of organization, poor collaboration, and overall lack of innovation. Today, all companies rely on software and tech, so effective IT management can make or break an organization.

        Future-ready CIOs, CTOs, and other IT leaders require certain skill sets to run teams efficiently and effectively, no matter the size or scope of the project. Some of these skills are soft skills such as empathy, compassion, and open communication, but data also plays a key role. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and data is essential to measuring anything – including IT leadership quality.

      • OpenShift vs. AWS product mapping - formicapunk

        OpenShift is Red Hat’s Kubernetes distribution: it is basically the upstream Kubernetes delivered with monitoring, logging, CI/CD, underlying OS, tested upgrade paths not found with a manual kubernetes.io kubeadm install.

      • Red HatMy advice on why you should build containers on your PC | Red Hat Developer

        In this article, I will present options for building containers that will run in Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift. There are many reasons against development in the environment that will ultimately run the container, such as cost, speed, tooling, and so on. Creating a container that works on your PC requires a local development environment that gives you the complete experience of coding, building, debugging, and running—and then pushes all pieces of the container to a host or cloud service. The best way to describe this process is tantamount to encapsulating your entire software building experience into one file and then sending it off to a server.

        Container development offers a new way of thinking about software development. It is an application development model in which you decide which operating system and runtimes run your application, and which libraries to include. A software container holds the application, libraries, runtimes, operating system, as well as specifications for the network port, environment variable values, and more.

      • Fedora ProjectF37 Pre-Beta release validation kicks off - Fedora Community Blog

        Fedora Linux is foremost a community-powered distribution. Fedora Linux runs on all sorts of off-the-shelf hardware. The QA team relies on looking at bugs and edge cases coming out of community-owned hardware, so testing pre-release composes is a crucial part of the release process. We try to fix as many of them as we can! Please participate in the pre-beta release validation test week now through 7 September. You can help us catch those bugs at an early stage.

      • Red Hat3 essentials for writing a Linux system library in Rust | Red Hat Developer

        Learn how to implement 3 practices for writing Linux system libraries: backward compatibility, event-driven asynchronous programming, and logging. (Part 1 of 4)

    • Debian Family

      • Jeff Geerlingapt_key deprecated in Debian/Ubuntu - how to fix in Ansible

        This way of adding apt keys still works for now (in mid-2022), but will stop working in the next major releases of Ubuntu and Debian (and derivatives). So it's better to stop the usage now. In Ansible, you would typically use the ansible.builtin.apt_key module, but even that module has the following deprecation warning: [...]

      • Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities August 2022

        This month I didn't have any particular focus. I just worked on issues in my info bubble.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • 9to5LinuxCanonical Accepts Ubuntu Unity as Official Ubuntu Flavor Starting with Ubuntu 22.10

        Ubuntu Unity (formerly Ubuntu Unity Remix) saw the light of day a few years ago as part of the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) operating system series, but as an unofficial flavor because Canonical abandoned its beloved Unity7 desktop environment more than five years ago.

        It was hard to believe that Ubuntu Unity will be recognized one day as an official flavor considering Canonical’s past with the Unity7 desktop environment, but today, the miracle happened and Canonical will recognize it as an official Ubuntu flavor starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu) release in late October 2022.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • CNX Software$5 CH347 board is a USB 2.0 bridge to I2C, SPI, UART, JTAG, and GPIO - CNX Software

        MuseLab USB-HS-Bridge is an inexpensive ($5) board based on WCH CH347 chip with a USB 2.0 Type-C interface that acts as a bridge for I2C, SPI, UART, and JTAG interfaces, as well as GPIOs.

        It’s notably useful to debug and download bitstreams to FPGA development boards, but it can also be used to connect various peripherals such as I2C sensors, SPI flash devices, UART devices to basically any host with a spare USB 2.0 host port.

      • SparkFun ElectronicsA Day for Oscilloscopes - News - SparkFun Electronics

        I was rummaging in the basement of SparkFun HQ and came across an ancient oscilloscope. With my interest piqued, I thought it’d be entertaining to dive into its history and see how this device has evolved into the modern-day oscilloscope. This measurement tool has been a tremendous asset in its contribution to SparkFun’s success, so let's take the time to understand its birth and evolution. Let’s get started…

      • CNX SoftwareArducam ToF camera adds depth sensing to Raspberry Pi for $30 (Crowdfunding) - CNX Software

        Arducam has launched of Time-of-Flight (ToF) camera module for Raspberry Pi that enables depth sensing by capturing 3D data (at 240×180 resolution) at a distance of up to 4 meters.

        Arducam has launched several cameras for Raspberry Pi boards over the years, more recently the Arducam Pi HawkEye 64MP camera, but the Arducam ToF camera is quite different, as while it still connects to the MIPI CSI connector of the SBC, it is used to measure distances and depth and display 3D data.

      • Linux GizmosICP releases low cost industrial router with 4G LTE/3G support

        The UR32L Lite is an industrial router with automated failback between ethernet and cellular connectivity. This router integrates a single ARM Cortex A7 processor, two 10/100Mbps LAN ports and a SIM slot. The UR32L is available for 109,80€.

        According to the UR32L datasheet, the industrial-grade processor featured is a single ARM Cortex-A7 with a maximum frequency of 528MHz along with 180MB of DDR3 RAM and 128MB of flash.€ 

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Hillel WayneSoftware Mimicry

      Mimicry is when software X reimplements at a higher level a core feature of software Y. The produced facsimile has some, but not all, of the same properties, enough to “look like” it’s the same thing but missing many of the nuances. This exists in every kind of software. One language can mimic another, a library can mimic a language, a database engine can mimic a product, etc.

    • OpenSSHCommit signing for portable OpenSSH

      We are in the process of converting the portable OpenSSH repository to require signed commits, tags and pushes, using git's recent ssh signature support. So far it's gone very smoothly, and we hope to have it enforced for all commits soon.

      We maintain our own git repository for portable OpenSSH, that is automatically mirrored to github. We use "pre-receive" and "update" hooks to check for signed pushes and tags/commits respectively, using an in-repository allowed_signers file.

    • MJ FransenTexinfo as Personal Knowledge Base

      As soon as you start capturing information for your personal reference, it is time to start thinking about a Personal Knowledge Base.

      A Personal Knowledge Base helps to structure the information, store it, and make sure you can retrieve the information later on.

      One of the use-cases for a Personal Knowledge Base are all tasks you have to perform only once in a while, f.e. like installing a new server (if that is not your daily job).

      You can document all the necessary steps, in the right order, and additional information you might need, and so on.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • What is Miklos hacking - Cropped video for media shapes in Impress

        Impress now supports cropped videos in slide edit mode and during slideshow for documents imported from PowerPoint.

        [...]

        The first problem was that the Impress preview was picked from the 3rd second of the video (presumably to avoid a black preview in many videos that start with a short black fade-in), while PowerPoint can store an explicit preview from the video (seems to be the first frame), so no matter what effects you apply, the previews were just different as the source bitmap was different. This could be fixed by looking for an explicitly provided bitmap for the video first, and only then asking the various avmedia/ backends to produce a preview.

        Once the preview's initial bitmap was OK, it was necessary to take cropping into account. This was first done for the preview bitmap, and then also for the gstreamer backend (the relevant one for Linux, as a start) of avmedia/, which is responsible for the actual video playback. The gstreamer bits were done by first creating a videocrop element and then connecting that to the existing playbin.

    • Education

      • [Old] The Good Research Code Handbook

        I’ve tried to write this book in a progressive manner: some content is targeted at complete novices, other to programmers who are farther along on their journey. However, I generally assume that you have some familiarity with the following:

        Python: this intro is Python-centric. You can write good code for Matlab, R, or Julia, but we won’t cover that here. You don’t need to be a Python expert, but you’ll get the most out of this if you’ve been using Python on a regular basis for at least a month, and if you have some passing familiarity with the python data science ecosystem (numpy, matplotlib, pandas, etc.).

        Git & Github: a lot of the practices introduced here will require you to change your code, which could cause existing functionality to break. You might even accidentally delete something important! Mastering git and github means you will have a time machine for your code, so you can revert to an earlier state. There’s a great intro to git for beginners from software carpentries.

        The command line: You will need to run some commands on the command line to implement some of the advice in this book. I’m going to assume that you have some familiarity with running commands from a Unix-style shell (e.g. bash). There’s a great intro to the unix shell from software carpentries. If you’re using Windows, you will still be able to run many tools from the Windows command prompt. Long term, your life will be easier if you install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) which will give you access to a Unix-style shell.

    • Programming/Development

      • Lee Yingtong LiRobust Poisson regression in medical biostatistics

        Robust Poisson regression, on the other hand, seems harder to justify. Under the usual parametric view of generalised linear models, it seems to assume a Poisson distribution for a binary outcome, which is incorrect, as a Poisson-distributed variable can take any non-negative integer value, but the outcome can only either happen or not.

        It turns out that robust Poisson regression can be justified under a quasi-likelihood framework.

      • RlangPython is superior to R for writing quality codes

        Python is superior to R for writing quality codes!. R is good for short and dirty analysis, but Python is better if you want to perform significant work, we frequently hear or read.

        We vehemently disagree with this claim because it is entirely feasible to develop production-quality code in R; we have done it, and others can do it as well.

      • Matt RickardDesign in OSS

        A key advantage of open source is the ability to customize the application to your needs (through interfaces, design systems, or even modifying the code). While this method covers most use cases, it will suffer from being the least common denominator API – you can't make everyone happy.

      • Cobol-mode (Emacs Mode for editing COBOL code) version 1.1 (stable) released on 29 August 2022
      • GCCC++: add -std={c,gnu}++{current,future}
      • How to Check an Array Is Empty in PHP - Pi My Life Up

        In this tutorial, we will take you through some of the ways you can check if an array is empty in PHP. We will touch on using the not operator, the empty and count function. These will come in handy if you use many arrays in your code.

      • MedevelBullet Train is an Open-source SaaS Platform Builder for Ruby on Rails

        Bullet Train is a free open-source SaaS building bundle that aid developers set their SaaS platform in no-time.

        It comes with dozens of outstanding features fit for building a scalable large enterprise-ready SaaS apps.

        Bullet Train is built on top of Ruby-on-Rails framework, so it inherits all of its amazing features as scaffolding, organization and more. It also plays well with the popular Ruby packages and gems.

        The project offers two editions: the first one is a free open-source project that is released under the MIT license. The other one comes with more pro/ enterprise features as payment workflow, chat and messaging options, auditing, task management, and Kanban boards.

    • Standards/Consortia

      • OpenSource.comUsability and accessibility starts with open communication | Opensource.com

        Amazing though it may seem, we each experience the world differently. That's one reality with over 6 billion interpretations. Many of us use computers to broaden our experience of the world, but a computer is part of reality and so if you experience reality without, for instance, vision or sound, then you also experience a computer without vision or sound (or whatever your unique experience might be.) As humans, we don't quite have the power to experience the world the way somebody does. We can mimic some of the surface-level things (I can close my eyes to mimic blindness, for example) but it's only an imitation, without history, context, or urgency. As a result of this complexity, we humans design things primarily for ourselves, based on the way we experience the world. That can be frustrating, from an engineering and design viewpoint, because even when you intend to be inclusive, you end up forgetting something "obvious" and essential, or the solution to one problem introduces a problem for someone else, and so on. What's an open source enthusiast, or programmer, or architect, or teacher, or just everyday hacker, supposed to do to make software, communities, and processes accessible?

  • Leftovers

    • Counter PunchLiving in a Sci-fi World

      If you want a bizarre image, just imagine him in the company of Abraham Lincoln. I mean, really, what’s happened to us?

    • Counter PunchThe Law of Proximity

      Notes.

    • Counter PunchThe Best Defense . . .

      Sadly, missing from these gimmicky TV spots is the self-evident truth that women who become pregnant—whether they plan to or not—are also human and have value. Women are not simply baby-makers whose reproductive functions need to be controlled by patriarchal politicians and self-appointed religious busy bodies. Importantly, pregnant women have the constitutional right to determine for themselves whether or not to bear a child.

    • Counter PunchThe Dance of Sympathy

      This was just one of the issues raised last week.

    • The NationThe NFL Disrespects Women. What Else Is New?

      The NFL finds itself in a familiar place: trying to convince women, who make up as much as 47 percent of the league’s fan base, that they should give a damn about it. This has been an ugly off-season for the league. First, quarterback Deshaun Watson—who has been accused of coercive, “improper contact” with countless massage therapists in behavior as compulsive as it is repugnant—signed a deal for the most guaranteed money in the history of the sport. In a statement that reads as if it were ghostwritten by a PR flack at a men’s rights meeting, owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam apologized if anyone was “triggered” by the news. Watson is now suspended for the first 11 games by Commissioner Roger Goodell, but only after outrage after an independent arbitrator, former US district judge Sue L. Robinson, handed him only a six-game suspension.

    • Counter PunchShaq Dunks the Voice

      Opponents and sceptics have been lingering in the bushes, but the appearance of Shaq provided grist to the mill.€  While movie stars, tartlets and personalities find their mark in the politics of some countries (the Philippines comes to mind), Australia remains unaroused by the tinsel and bling.€  Generally speaking, the celebrity factor duds when it comes to proposing substantive political change.

    • The NationThe Secret Powers of William Klein

      One of photography’s secret powers is to turn time inside out. It takes a constellation of happenings that occupied a fraction of a second and makes it available to attention over a long span of time. And yet the picture always collapses back into instantaneity. This is something that William Klein has thought about. “A picture is taken at 125th of a second,” he once observed. That means that when you see 125 images by any photographer, you’re seeing one second of their life. “The life of a photographer, even a great photographer as they say: two seconds.” That’s about what’s encompassed by the photographs alone in the current exhibition at New York’s International Center of Photography, “William Klein: YES: Photographs, Paintings, Films, 1948–2013.” But even with some 300 works on view—two and a half seconds of life!—the ICP exhibition, curated by David Campany and on view through September 12, left me hungry for more; every one of those tiny morsels of time encapsulated in his imagery is so teeming with energy, with life. The brash optimism of the three-letter upper-case affirmation in the show’s title reflects the enthusiasm that permeates all of Klein’s endeavors: His willingness to try anything, his will to experience everything, his determination not to miss out on witnessing and participating and fighting, are just what we need in these most discouraging of times.

    • Science

      • HackadayThe Cheat Way To Perfectly Split An Oreo

        Believe it or not, much research has been done in how to perfectly split Oreos with an even amount of cream on both sides. Early studies suggested it simply wasn’t possible, with one side always getting the majority of the cream.€  However, [Ian Charnas] has now found a sneaky workaround.

      • HackadayWater Level Sensor Does Not Use Water Level Sensor

        When interfacing with the real world, there are all kinds of sensors available which will readily communicate with your microcontroller of choice. Moisture, pH, humidity, temperature, location, light, and essentially every other physical phenomenon are readily measured with a matching sensor. But if you don’t have the exact sensor you need, it’s sometimes possible to use one sensor as a proxy for another.

    • Education

      • Jim NielsenTrying

        Ultimately, I don’t think any of my words helped much. What did help, I think, was just being there alongside him as he went through it.

      • Eesti RahvusringhäälingMaria Mölder: Free use of libraries a basic human right

        We have to admit that not everyone can afford to buy books (or will in the near future) and that the use of public libraries is still an integral aspect of education in society, and hence a constitutionally protected human right. The introduction of fees for library lending as a means of solving the issue of compensation is inconceivable, writes Maria Mölder in a comment originally published in Estonian in Sirp magazine last Friday.

      • ScheerpostWant More Teachers? Start Valuing Education

        Too many lawmakers are happy to dole out subsidies for the rich and corporations while resisting pay increases for educators.

    • Hardware

      • The HillCommerce secretary urges states to compete for semiconductor funds: ‘This is a race’

        Raimondo gave remarks while touring a microchip manufacturing facility at the university with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law earlier this month, providing more than $50 million in incentives for semiconductor manufacturers to build domestic plants.

      • HackadayConverting An Old ATV To Electric Drive

        [RCLifeOn] happened upon an old petrol-powered ATV that had seen better days. He decided it was the perfect candidate for a conversion to electric drive.

      • HackadaySolar Cells As Art Form

        When most of us approach a project, we have a certain problem to solve. 3D printing, microcontrollers, batteries, and all kinds of technologies are usually tools to accomplish some task. This is not necessarily true in the art world, though, where the intrinsic nature of these tools can be explored for their own sake rather than as a means to an end. The latest one that came across our desk is this light-powered sound generator.

      • HackadayMH-Z19-like NDIR CO2 Sensor HC8 Found And Explored

        While on the search for an alternative to directly buying the fairly expensive MH-Z19 CO2 sensor, [spezifisch] came across a ‘BreeRainz’ branded gadget (also found under other brands) that claimed to use an NDIR (Non-Dispersive Infrared) sensor for measuring CO2 levels, while costing only €25. This type of sensor allows for CO2 levels to be measured directly, rather than inferred, making them significantly more precise.

      • HackadayBackup Camera, Digital Dash, Road Assist… In 1969?

        If your friend told you their car had a backup camera, a digital dashboard, climate control, could scan for radio stations, and even helped stay on the road, you wouldn’t think much about it. Unless the year was 1969. The car — the Hurricane by Australian automaker Holden — was never a production vehicle. But it was way beyond the state of the art in 1969 and isn’t too dated, even today.€  The concept car was actually found in 1988 and restored by 2011. Honestly, it still looks great.

      • HackadayHackaday Prize 2022: A Sun-Chasing Robot

        There’s plenty of power to be had from the sun, but you need to be out of the shade to receive it. [Dennis] built a robot by the name of Sun Chaser that has the smarts to go where the sun is shining.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • TruthOutLife Expectancy in US Drops for Second Straight Year
      • NPRAn ode to city parks: a climate refuge under pressure

        At the same time, climate change demands ever more attention from parks departments, and dozens of cities have added new positions to meet those demands.

      • Terence EdenYou can't smile in the Metaverse

        The current range of VR headsets have to be strapped tight to your face. In order to prevent your eyes going out of alignment with the lenses or the focus suddenly changing, the mask clings tight to your face. Sure, it has a foam/rubber seal to soften the pain, but it can still be pretty uncomfortable.

      • Democracy Now“We Can’t Go It Alone”: Jackson, Miss., Mayor Lumumba on Water Catastrophe in Majority-Black City

        We get an update on the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, from Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, where more than 180,000 residents of the majority-Black city are without running water. President Biden declared a federal emergency on Tuesday. Water has been cut off since the main water treatment plant flooded amid torrential rains. Lumumba says the emergency is the result of three decades of disinvestment from the state. “We’ve been investing the money that we have,” says Lumumba, who took office in 2017 and started alerting the state government of the challenges with the water system starting in 2018. “We can’t do it alone. We don’t have a billion dollars’ worth of resources to make it happen.”

    • Security

      • The VergeA ‘high severity’ TikTok vulnerability allowed one-click account hijacking

        The bug and its resulting attack, labelled a “high severity vulnerability,” could have been used to hijack the account of any TikTok user on Android without their knowledge, once they clicked on a specially crafted link. After the link was clicked, the attacker would have access to all primary functions of the account, including the ability to upload and post videos, send messages to other users, and view private videos stored in the account.

      • California18Azure: Ubuntu VMs paralyzed by systemd update, Kubernetes services disrupted

        A recent systemd update creates an error when resolving DNS requests on virtual machines with Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (version 18.04). Systemd version 237-3ubuntu10.54 contains a bug that causes network connections to drop. The automatic installation of the update on VMs in Azure led to various failures. The Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in particular is severely affected globally. The Ubuntu and Azure teams are working to fix the bug and its impact. The problem is limited to Ubuntu 18.04.

      • Krebs On SecurityFinal Thoughts on Ubiquiti

        Last year, I posted a series of articles about a purported “breach” at Ubiquiti. My sole source for that reporting was the person who has since been indicted by federal prosecutors for his alleged wrongdoing – which includes providing false information to the press.

      • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

        • Terence EdenWhat's the most malicious thing you can do with an injected HTML heading element?

          While fuzzing around with the input, I made an interesting mistake. I mistyped <svg> as <sgv>. That invalid element was added to the page's HTML! That means there's a parser somewhere which is stripping out only the elements it knows about. Browsers typically ignore elements they don't understand - so there's no danger to users there. But it points to the idea that there may be some elements the sanitiser doesn't know about.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • Pro PublicaInside a Million-Dollar Instagram Verification Scheme

          Jugenburg’s physician-influencer tendencies led to a six-month suspension of his Ontario medical license in 2021 after he admitted to filming patient interactions and sharing images of procedures without consent. He apologized for the lapse and is currently facing a class-action lawsuit from female patients who say their privacy was violated.

        • NBCSurviving Monkees member Micky Dolenz sues the FBI, asks for files on him and his bandmates

          "If I had to guess, it would pertain to who they hung around with within the counterculture, anti-war and drug entertainment community," he said in a statement to NBC News.

        • ViceFTC Sues ‘Massive’ Data Broker for Selling Location Info on Abortion Clinics

          The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sued Kochava, a large location data provider, for allegedly selling data that the FTC says can track people at reproductive health clinics and places of worship, according to an announcement from the agency.

        • Bert HubertTracker Beeper

          The video above beeps only on Google, and it shows how the official Dutch government jobs site (which also advertises for the intelligence and security services) sends your every click to Google - despite never asking for your permission to do so. It also reports to Google if you clicked the button “apply for this job”, or even “call us for information”. Nice.

        • YLEFinland set to introduce digital ID cards

          An upcoming reform is set to allow electronic identification in Finland, making proving one's identity possible directly from a phone using a mobile app, alongside traditional identification with a passport or ID card.

          A draft law on the digital identity cards will be presented to Parliament in autumn by the Ministry of Finance.

        • EFFFog Data Science Puts our Fourth Amendment Rights up for Sale

          This post explains that the Fourth Amendment sharply limits how police use Fog. At a minimum, the Fourth Amendment prohibits police from using Fog’s device search feature without first obtaining a warrant from a judge. Additionally, the Fourth Amendment likely bars Fog’s dragnet searches—in which police request information about any mobile device in a geographic area— even when police get a warrant.€ 

        • EFFInside Fog Data Science, the Secretive Company Selling Mass Surveillance to Local Police

          Troublingly, those records show that Fog and some law enforcement did not believe Fog’s surveillance implicated people’s Fourth Amendment rights and required authorities to get a warrant.€ 

        • EFFHow Law Enforcement Around the Country Buys Cell Phone Location Data Wholesale

          In our first post about Fog Data Science, we described how Fog’s Reveal service works, where its data comes from, and why it is so dangerous. In this post, we will examine the records received by EFF to better understand how Fog Data Science’s service is actually used. We will also dive deeper into the legal issues at stake and discuss how lawmakers and platform developers can shut down Fog’s business model once and for all.

        • TechdirtFTC Sues Data Broker Over Location Data, But May Face Steep Uphill Climb

          The reversal of Roe is resulting in dramatic new pressures on privacy reform, given how easily consumer location data can be weaponized against abortion seekers and those helping them. Not just by authoritarian-leaning state governments, but potentially by vigilantes who’ll find little trouble buying such data on the cheap from a wide array of irresponsible data brokers.

        • EFFHow Ad Tech Became Cop Spy Tech

          You can probably guess where this is going.

        • EFFFog Revealed: A Guided Tour of How Cops Can Browse Your Location Data

          Fog Reveal offers law enforcement a powerful and incredibly invasive tool for sifting through huge datasets of phone location data. Reveal’s workflow allows cops to perform “geofenced” device searches, i.e. a search for all devices in a specified region on a map, and then find all other locations those devices were at other times. A powerpoint presentation we received from the Chino Police Department describes how cops use these features to identify so-called “bed-down” locations and build up “patterns of life” for device’s owners. These features clearly undercut Fog’s claim that their product only contains “anonymized” data with “no PII [personally identifiable information]”.

        • EFFWhat is Fog Data Science? Why is the Surveillance Company so Dangerous?

          This means that police can open up their Fog map and do a number of things. They can draw a box and see identifiers representing every device within that geographical area at a given time frame. They can also use a device’s ID to trace that device’s precise location history over months or even years. Fog does not require police officers to obtain a warrant or other court order before acquiring this location data (unlike communication service companies that hold their customers’ location data and generally do require a court order). Likewise, many police departments that use Fog do not require their officers to get a warrant.

        • TechdirtWikimedia, ACLU, Knight Institute Ask Supreme Court To Hear Challenge Of NSA Bulk Surveillance

          More than nine years of news cycles ago, the initial Snowden leak dropped. The next few years were filled with lawsuits, extensive news coverage, reform efforts (some better than others), the unplanned retirement of one bulk collection program, and an uptick in public outcry against large-scale government surveillance programs.

        • TechdirtThe Downside Of Apple’s Lockdown Mode: Websites Call Tell If You’re Using It

          Israeli exploit developer NSO Group has drawn a lot of heat over the past several months after it was revealed its malware had been deployed by its customers to target dissidents, journalists, opposition leaders, and other people governments don’t like but aren’t normally considered to be terrorists or criminals.

        • EFFThe SECURE Notarization Act Will Create a Race to the Bottom for Privacy

          If passed as written, the SECURE Notarization Act would require states to recognize out-of-state notarizations that do not comply with potentially stronger state standards. This encourages a race to the bottom. States will have a clear incentive to establish the weakest possible standards in a bid to attract notary businesses to their state. Not only does this diminish the rights of consumers, but it would also create significant enforcement problems, as states do not have regulatory oversight of out-of-state notaries.

        • PIAThe Patriot Act: Mass Surveillance Before and After 9/11

          Anti-terrorism legislature was introduced left and right. It didn’t take long to pass the US Patriot Act, which provided the government with broad surveillance capabilities. Now, any group, individual, or entity known to be conspiring with terrorists could be monitored legally. It was the solution and comfort Americans needed at the time.€ 

        • TruthOutUS Government Sues Data Broker, Saying It Sold Abortion Clinic Visitors’ Data
        • TechdirtFrance Uses AI To Find Swimming Pools For Tax Purposes

          As humanity marches on towards the expansion of artificial intelligence, we are finding many ways to use this technology while waiting for it to get smart enough to kill us all and bring on the Age of the Robot. Platforms have attempted to solve the impossibility of moderation at scale by employing AI, with no real success. The UK tried to employ AI to make decisions for when to charge certain people with crimes based on a likelihood to re-offend… largely based on where they live. And, of course, there are those that have used AI to create intellectual property in order to throw the IP world into chaos over whether AI can claim IP rights or not.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • SalonTrump's Truth Social rants against the FBI inadvertently undercut his main January 6 defense

        To be certain, this is just more confirmation of what was already obvious, that Trump knows he's lying when he says he's the rightful winner of the 2020 election. As Dan Friedman at Mother Jones reported in July, a leaked tape shows Trump's close friend and advisor Steve Bannon outlining the plan to a group of associates: "What Trump's gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He's gonna declare victory. But that doesn't mean he's a winner. He's just gonna say he's a winner."

      • The Sunday Times UK‘Western spy’ took Shamima Begum to Syria

        An inquiry was demanded last night as it emerged that Canada knew about the teenagers’ fate but kept silent while the Metropolitan Police ran a frantic, international search for the trio. Canada privately admitted its involvement only when it feared being exposed, and then successfully asked the British to cover up its role, the book claimed.

      • MedforthFrance: A literature teacher in a Paris suburb anonymously reports on the penetration of Salafism into the school, an Islamist ideology that has been affecting his teaching for about ten years now

        In the Paris suburbs, most high schools are schools of social decline. The first problem is the ethnic mix: there is no mixing. In my première class, for example, all the pupils have an immigrant background. They feel forgotten and abandoned by the Republic and, in response, they turn to Salafism. They are looking for meaning and find it in this all-encompassing religion that has an answer to everything or almost everything. The Muslim Brotherhood is proselytising, some communities are proving compliant. And conversion to Islam is easy and quick. What is the outcome? For the last ten years or so, the school, which is a mirror image of society, has become permeable to these religious zealots. The abaya – a veil that covers the whole body except the face, hands and feet – has become commonplace there. More and more girls dress in it, sometimes even putting on Saudi-style hoods and gloves when they leave school. Fifteen years ago, this kind of clothing did not happen.

      • TruthOutWhat Can We Expect From Biden's Speech on the Rise of Fascism Among Republicans?
      • Medforth“80 fascists killed”: Islamo-Leftists mock the victims of the Islamist terrorist attack in Nice, France

        Such statements come just a few days before the start of the trial for the July 14 attack. Eight defendants are due to appear before Paris’ special jury court in connection with the attack, which took place on the Promenade des Anglais in 2016 and killed 86 people and injured more than 400. The perpetrator, a 31-year-old Tunisian named Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlelqui, will not stand trial. On the evening of July 14, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlelqui was shot dead by police after firing at the security forces himself. He had just driven a 19-tonne truck into the crowd that had gathered on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice to watch the fireworks.

      • The HillFive of the biggest takeaways from FBI’s Trump, Mar-a-Lago filing

        A new filing released late on Tuesday casts more light on a case that exploded into public view when the former president’s Florida estate was raided on Aug. 8.

      • RTLSecret files 'likely concealed' at Trump home to block FBI probe

        Top secret documents found at Donald Trump's Florida home were "likely concealed" to obstruct an FBI probe into the former US president's potential mishandling of classified materials, the Department of Justice said in an explosive new court filing.

      • The HillDOJ: Classified documents at Mar-a-Lago ‘likely concealed and removed’

        Among the details revealed by the filing were that classified documents were found in Trump’s own desk during the search, as they recovered some 33 boxes containing more than 100 classified records when agents searched Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8.

      • Counter PunchUkraine's Imperiled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Complex: What Could Go Wrong

        How safe was the Zaporizhzhia power plant before the Russian attack?

      • MeduzaInternational Atomic Energy Agency mission arrives in Zaporizhzhia for nuclear plant inspection — Meduza

        A delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has arrived in Zaporizhzhia, according to the Ukrainian state energy company Enerhoatom. The representatives, led by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, plan to travel from the Ukrainian-held city to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to conduct an inspection.

      • MeduzaRussian authorities to hold 'referendum' in Zaporizhzhia region in September as planned — Meduza

        A “referendum” on whether to join Russia will be held in the occupied parts of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region in September, according to Alexander Saulenko, the Russian-appointed mayor of Berdyansk.

      • Meduza‘The entire country is being held hostage’: Human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov on why the Russian authorities are targeting ex-journalist Ivan Safronov — Meduza
      • MeduzaA Soviet Hamlet Scholar Artemy Kalinovsky suggests a Shakespearian perspective on Mikhail Gorbachev’s legacy — Meduza
      • The NationGorbachev’s Legacy

        On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union. Within a few weeks, the full-scale reformation he attempted to carry out both inside his country and in its Cold War relations with the West, particularly the United States, began to unfold. Perestroika (“restructuring”)—as Gorbachev called his reforms—officially ended with the Soviet Union and his leadership in 1991. The historic opportunities for a better future it offered Russia—and the world—have been steadily undermined ever since.

      • The Gray ZoneJon Stewart and the Pentagon honor Ukrainian Nazi at Disney World
      • Counter PunchThe Stained-Glass Teddy Bear

        I had intended to write a column this week about the nature of the U.S. security state and the country’s trillion-dollar, only minimally challenged annual “defense” — actually, offense — budget, but then I came upon a journal entry I wrote in 1988, when my daughter, who is a stained-glass artist and poet living in Paris, was 2 years old.

      • Counter PunchThe Missing “Peace” in the $13.5 Billion Military Package

        The latest announcement from the DOD brings the total in weapons, ammunition and military training to escalate the war in Ukraine to at least $13.5 billion dollars.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | The Missing 'Peace' in $13.5 Billion of Military Aid to Ukraine

        The Department of Defense recently announced it would send nearly $3 billion more in weapons and assistance to Ukraine. The White House news of the largest Ukraine arms package yet—rockets, drones, 350,000 rounds of ammunition—was drowned out by President Biden's announcement to cancel federal student loan debt for almost half of the country's 43-million debt-saddled people. So while our nation debated whether U.S. citizens should be burdened with huge predatory interest for seeking an education; predatory weapons of war were given the greenlight for Ukraine, even though there's no accountability for who will receive those weapons, including the neo-Nazi Azov Batallion, an official wing of the Ukrainian military.

      • Common DreamsOutrage After Ohio Cop Kills Unarmed Black Man Donovan Lewis in Bed

        "Columbus police shot Donovan Lewis within a second of opening the door to his room, and then, while he was dying, told him to 'stop resisting.'"

      • Democracy Now“Freedom Dreams”: Historian Robin D. G. Kelley on 20th Anniversary of His Book & Why Movements Matter

        On the last day of Black August, as President Biden calls for an assault weapons ban and more funding for police, we speak with UCLA professor Robin D. G. Kelley, who recently published the revised and expanded 20th anniversary edition of his book “Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination,” with an added foreword by poet Aja Monet. The new edition was inspired by the Black Lives Matter uprisings in 2020 and covers topics from critical race theory to state militarism that Kelley says “continues to this day.” Kelley says the book’s legacy conveys that “we don’t have the luxury to just fight for reform. We can’t survive that way. We’ve got to fight for revolutionary change.”

      • Democracy Now“Total Terror” in Iraq: Muqtada al-Sadr Supporters Fight Rivals in Baghdad Amid Political Deadlock

        At least 30 people were killed and hundreds more injured in Iraq after armed supporters of the powerful Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed with security forces in the capital of Baghdad following the cleric’s announcement Monday he would be quitting politics. The violence comes after months of political turmoil in Iraq that has seen politicians unable to form a government since parliamentary elections in October, and the prime minister said Tuesday he would “vacate his post” if the complicated political situation in the country continues. “The political parties that came to power are in reality just militias who cannot talk politics, do not understand democracy, do not understand what it means to step down once you did not win,” says Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, who joins us from Baghdad. Mohammed says the fighting fueled by the political parties “held the totality of the Iraqi people in ransom” for almost 24 hours, forcing people to stay at home “because it felt like a civil war.”

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Failure of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference Leaves Humanity Increasingly Vulnerable

        The failure of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference to adopt a final conference statement adopting specific goals and deadlines for further disarmament weakens humanity’s ability to defend itself against the existential and increased danger of nuclear war. (The conference was held at the United Nations in New York, August 2-26)

      • TruthOutAlabama Hides the Horrors of Its Executions by Classifying Them as Homicides
      • TechdirtAlabama Town Disbands Police Force After Racist Text Message Surfaces

        Were you ever so terrible at your job that your entire place of employment was put out of business?

      • The NationThe ACLU Fights for Minneapolis

        Minneapolis, Minn.—In the 16 months since Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, the streets of Minneapolis have only occasionally been filled by protesters. The police killings of 22-year-old Amir Locke and 20-year old Tekle Sundberg this year sparked outrage, though to a lesser degree. Despite dwindling boots-on-the-ground action, however, the fight over policing in Minneapolis rages on.

      • The NationHarlem Beauty
      • Counter PunchWestern Sahara Conflict: Analyzing the Illegal Occupation (1973-Present)

        Zunes talks about how this foreign policy and human rights issue is to play out since the election of Biden as he further unpacks Western Sahara-Morocco-US relations in terms of a thematic bipartisan consensus. He breaks down MINURSO (the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara) and provides to the reader the background, proposed goals, and the state of the political situation, or dialogue, at the institutional level.

      • Counter PunchBaiting Tigers and Poking Dragons – A Kungfu Perspective on China and Taiwan

        Communist China regards Taiwan as a renegade province. Some say China has a legitimate claim, and maybe that’s true. As far as I’m concerned, the claim of any state has about as much moral weight as the claim John Wayne Gacy had to the children he raped and murdered. The Right of Might has inspired many imperial powers to occupy Taiwan, from the Dutch to the Japanese. I get it that there are strategic reasons why China won’t consider Taiwanese independence—particularly considering how cozy Taiwan’s government has always been with the U.S.—but strategy is not the same as morality. Regardless, my basic feeling on the China vs. Taiwan matter is that it’s none of my business. Then again, I’m not the CIA.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Common DreamsDOJ Releases Photo of 'Top Secret' Documents Seized From Trump's Home

        The heavily redacted photo, which shows documents clearly marked "secret" and "top secret" sprawled out on carpet, accompanied a new 36-page filing in which the Department of Justice said it compiled evidence that "efforts were likely taken to obstruct" its investigation, a finding that puts members of Trump's team and potentially the former president himself in even more legal jeopardy.

      • Counter PunchThe Mar-a-Lago Dumpster

        Law enforcement by the Democrats under President Joe Biden is treating Trump as if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, illustrating Garland’s repeated admonition that no one is above the law. Trump said when running for president in 2015 that he could shoot someone on that busy street, a positive symbol of New York City, and still remain popular. We’ll see, as he used to say.

      • TruthOutTrump Mocks Image From DOJ Showing He Kept Classified Docs in Unsecured Places
      • Internet Freedom FoundationDigital Transparency: A Right to Information Report for August 2022

        For the month of August 2022, IFF has filed 45 Right to Information (“RTI”) applications, 3 first appeals and appeared in 1 second appeal before the Central Information Commission.

    • Environment

      • Energy

      • Wildlife/Nature

        • Counter PunchThe Forest Nearest Me

          Consider that the snow on the needles of the hemlocks in the last cold storms is lit by that peculiar angular light that only occurs in these latitudes in spring and fall (light never seen in summer, when the high sun oppresses and flattens).€  The sight of snow on the needles is a miraculous enveloping almost spiritual thing, such that you can stare at it for a time and forget who you are and enter if only fleetingly a kind of consciousness of light on ice and snow on the evergreen branches.

    • Finance

      • India TimesInternet shutdowns hit cash-strapped Lebanon due to strike

        Internet shutdowns rippled through cash-strapped Lebanon on Tuesday after employees of the country's state-owned telecom company went on strike, demanding higher wages. It was the latest reflection of one of the world's worst economic disasters, which has pulled three quarters of Lebanon's 6 million people into poverty.

      • Common DreamsBehind Starbucks Union-Busting Stands CEO Who Got $940,000,000 Richer During Pandemic

        Compiled by the progressive group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), Billion-Dollar Union Busters: How Starbucks and Its Rich CEO Are Stifling Worker Organizing was published as the nationwide unionization drive at the coffee chain continues to grow in the face of increasingly brazen opposition from management, with more than 200 locations voting to join Workers United since December 2021.

      • TruthOutCEO Who Got $940 Million Richer in Pandemic Is Behind Starbucks Union-Busting
      • Common DreamsPandemic, Profit-Driven Healthcare System Blamed for Historic Decline in US Life Expectancy

        "Has our failure to provide universal healthcare access contributed to many unnecessary deaths? Yes... Is it finally time to build an effective public health system? Yes."

      • Common DreamsIn UK Speech, Sanders Says 'Stand Together and Tell the Oligarchs They Cannot Have It All'

        "Our job right now, internationally, is to stand together."

      • Common DreamsGreen Group Blasts Biden for Backing Big Oil's California Offshore Fracking Push

        "It's incredibly disappointing to see the Biden administration doing the oil industry's bidding."

      • How Visibility Can Ease the Pain of Long Chassis Return Times | SupplyChainBrain

        After a year of steady increases in freight prices, the U.S. trucking industry is experiencing a cooldown in demand, with linehaul rates declining significantly from their highs at the start of 2022. Trucking capacity has loosened considerably, thanks to new space entering the system, and a plateauing of consumer demand across major geographic markets.

        The rise in trucking capacity also has to do with an improvement in efficiency across different nodes in the end-to-end supply chain, be it at ports, intermodal yards or warehouses. Transportation networks work in partnership, meaning that any tangible improvement in efficiency within one logistics segment has ripple effects on the efficiency of other segments.

      • CoryDoctorowTory Britain is crashing and burning

        After 43 years of Tory policies (including the 12 years of Tory-lite Blairism), Margaret Thatcher has been vindicated – there truly no longer is "any such thing as a society." As Thatcher predicted, "there are individual [ultra-rich] men and women, and their families [whom they pass vast inheritances on to]."

        [...]

        What has Brexit delivered? Well, it led to deregulation of the water system (which Tories had largely privatised), permitting water companies to flush raw sewage into Britain's rivers and coastal waters, rendering them unsafe to swim in. To be fair, even if they wanted to treat the sewage, they'd couldn't, because Brexit stopped water-treatment at the border.

        There's runaway energy prices everywhere, but Britain's version is extra-special, with contracts coming in at 400-1000% higher than last year, triggering a wave of small business closures. Care homes are warning that they might have to turn off the heat this winter.

        But even if they manage to keep paying their bills, it might not help, because energy experts are forecasting unscheduled, UK-wide rolling blackouts this winter. The Tories' backup plan is to import energy from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, these being three countries that are slowing or halting energy exports.

        SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has proposed re-nationalising the energy companies (36% of Scots households are headed to fuel poverty by October). The Tories have categorically rejected this, which is great news for anyone hoping to convince Scotland to leave the UK.

        Tory rule – starting with Thatcher's airdrop of the nation's stock of public housing – destroyed the nation's capacity to supply housing to working people, and what affordable housing remained was turned into deathtraps after it was sheathed in highly flammable cladding.

        Conservative ideology has produced a country that can't provide shelter, or food, or water, or energy. But what about health-care? The NHS is OK, right?

        Yikes. England's NHS – a patchwork of underfunded public providers and hollowed out, private providers – has suffered from worsening annual winter crises for years. This year's winter crisis arrived early – in the summer, with overflowing A&Es and hospitals out of beds.

      • Positech GamesYou are unimportant. This is ok. - Cliffski's Blog

        How psychopathic narcissist CEOs teamed up with money obsessed statisticians to trick gamers into thinking they are heroes

        [...]

        Twitter is currently in a furious legal dispute with Elon Musk over whether or not twitter lies about how many of its accounts are bots, and therefore likely fake. Some bots are to be expected… but more than 5%? Some say its vastly higher, and when you think about it, twitter has a huge vested interest in artificially inflating follower counts. Why on earth would you bother tweeting when you know you have 0 or 2 followers? Give a man 1,000 followers and they will feel special. Give them 10,000 followers and they will feel amazing.

        Last time I looked I had about 10k followers, but I’m determined not to care. If they swept out fakes and it turns out I have 100 followers I’d just find it funny. I’m just a middle aged dude who makes computer games and plays guitar as a hobby. How do I have *any* followers? I’m not a famous philosopher or the prime minister. Why should anybody care about my life unless they actually know me? Do you REALLY want to know what meal I ate yesterday? or what I think of some new TV show? Why?

        [...]

        Game CEOs: Please get some fucking therapy. Not everyone wants to be you, not everyone is you, not everyone wants a thousand spotlights on them, not everyone daydreams about being on the cover of Newsweek. Blame that private school education that gave you an overinflated ego, and an inability to understand other people.

        Yes. This is a rant, as all my blog posts turned into, but its a rant from the heart from a gamer who just despairs at how the industry he is a tiny tony (and happy to be so) part of has been ruined so dramatically.

      • Common DreamsGOP Attacks on Social Security Makes Popular Program Key Midterm Issue

        "This November 8, our earned benefits are on the line."

      • Common DreamsOpinion | A Hot Topic for Labor Day: Extreme Heat Kills Workers

        Here's a hot topic for Labor Day: heat.

      • ScheerpostCraig Murray: Marx Was Right
      • Counter PunchBehind the ‘Economic Policy’ Façade, It’s Class War

        “Quantitative easing” (QE) intoned Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, repeating what Fed Chair Jerome Powell had said while offering a policy solution to recession. The technical-sounding phrase simply referred to the Federal Reserve’s particular economic policy to slow or stop the sharp economic downturn that had started in 2020 and was worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. That Fed policy created a vast new amount of money and provided it, via loans and security purchases to big banks and other large financial institutions. To be clear here, the Fed made vast new monetary resources available to some of the largest and richest financial employers. The stated goal was to stimulate “the economy.” The Fed hoped that the financial employers it enriched would find it profitable to use this money to lend more to non-financial employers who would then hire unemployed workers. Note that QE favors the employer class. It works first and foremost to enrich the top 1 percent and then “hopes” the latter’s gains trickle down to the other 99 percent. Note further that the fresh new money is not provided to the mass of workers with the hope that they spend it thereby generating sales and profits for employers. Such a “trickle-up” approach to “stimulate the economy” would favor workers. That is why it is rare and almost never the primary focus of “expansionary monetary policy.”

      • Counter PunchWhy Talk about Loans?

        The 1960s and early 1970s seemed to promise greater progress.€  But then the Empire struck back.

      • ScheerpostThe Federal Reserve Is Wrong: Corporations Should Pay To Stop Inflation, Not Workers

        The Federal Reserve says wages should go down to get inflation under control. What if we just stopped corporate profiteering and the lax rules that make it possible?

      • The NationDemocrats Need to Start Talking About Class

        After a year and a half of doomsaying about Democratic prospects for the 2022 midterms, a certain anticipatory hush has come over the sanctums of the center left. The Biden White House has reeled off an impressive and mostly unexpected run of major policy wins—from the passage of the landmark climate change package in the Inflation Reduction Act to a substantive and far-reaching student-debt-relief program. Unemployment is low, inflation is subsiding, and Biden’s approval rating is ticking steadily upward. The fallout from the Supreme Court’s disastrous Dobbs ruling also seems likely to elevate Democratic turnout, particularly among the coveted swing constituency of white suburban women. Meanwhile, Trumpian conspiracy-mongering over bogus election fraud—together with Trump’s latest venal forays into sedition—already appears to be dampening GOP primary turnout and right-wing confidence alike.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Young Voters in America Are Our Best Hope for Saving the Planet

        For America’s young voters, famished for positive action on climate change, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is cause for celebration. The passage of this landmark legislation is a signal to young climate activists across the countrythat unprecedented progressive change is possible.

      • Counter PunchBailing Out Corporate Higher Education: What is Really Wrong with the Biden Student Debt Relief Plan

        For many students and parents, paying off student debt is a life-time experience, forcing them into long term debt that precludes them from€  being able to buy a home, start a family, or take public service jobs that may not pay a lot but which may be personally satisfying or socially useful.€  College education may be critical to the American dream for many, but pursuing it may also be a nightmare.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Counter PunchHow Mikhail Gorbachev Became the Most Reviled Man in Russia

        As with nearly all of the Soviet Union’s leadership, Gorbachev had provincial origins, in his case born in 1931 in Stavropol Krai just southeast of Ukraine. His maternal grandparents were ethnic Ukrainian. He rose through the party ranks with a reputation for hard work and finding solutions to vexing challenges. By 1979 he was in the USSR’s highest governing body, the Politburo, and by 1985, selected to the country’s highest post as General Secretary to lead the Soviet Union out of its economic stagnation.

      • Counter PunchFlorida Gubernatorial Election: Swamp Monster Cage Match

        Fried, a former lobbyist, spent her entire term as the state’s only statewide elected official (agriculture commissioner) issuing “oh no you didn’t” press releases every time DeSantis so much as yawned, and pulling stupid tricks like adding her photo to the inspection stickers on every Florida gas pump as publicly funded campaign ads (the legislature nixed that one in short order).

      • Telex (Hungary)Far right party Mi Hazánk unveils bust of controversial Miklós Horthy in Parliament Office
      • Counter PunchMake Congress Accountable

        Our 1972 Congress Project provides a context for measuring the decline of Congress, both in its near abandonment of its constitutional powers vis-à-vis the executive branch and its collective subservience to the many forces of corporatism over the people’s necessities.

      • Counter PunchThe Most Important Election in the Americas is in Brazil

        The book release took place during Lula’s campaign for president against the current incumbent—and€ deeply unpopular—President Jair Bolsonaro. Lula is now in the€ lead€ in the polls ahead of the first round of Brazil’s presidential election to be held on October 2.

      • Counter PunchLet’s Revive FDR’s Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter

        As it happens, “appeasement” is the only road humanity can take in the nuclear age.€  It is the road that our ancestors mapped in the UN Charter, when “we the people” demanded measures to spare succeeding generations from the scourge of war. Our leaders, however, are simultaneously provoking two nuclear powers with vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons and means to deliver them.€  This is highly undemocratic, because people do not want war and do not consent to needless provocation.€  People want and are entitled to peace and prosperity. It is the corporate “elites”, the military-industrial-financial complex who want war. Indeed, there are too many war profiteers around us.

      • Counter PunchFPOTUS and Rare Liberals Stoking the Schedule F Burn Pit

        Within a couple days the long New York Times Magazine feature piece on the Jones Day law firm identified Jones Day partner and former Detroit Emergency Manager Fascist (EMF) Kevyn Orr as “a rare liberal” in their rightwing dog pen.

      • Counter PunchA Firm Grasp of the Obvious

        It would be one thing if we could simply say “well, it’s a dry year in the West” — but that’s a great simplification given lie by the equally dire conditions afflicting major rivers across the globe. The€ great Yangtze River in China, the third longest river in the world at 3,975 miles, is drying up. The Yangtze provides water to an estimated 400 million Chinese (more than the entire population of the U.S.) but is so low it’s “affecting hydropower, shipping routes, limiting drinking water supplies, and even revealing previously submerged Buddhist statues.” The reason? Higher than normal temperatures and “record-breaking drought.”

      • Misinformation/Disinformation

        • New York TimesElon Musk Cites Whistle-Blower Report as Reason to Scrap Twitter Deal

          The requests, revealed in regulatory and legal filings on Tuesday, are an effort by the billionaire to incorporate Mr. Zatko’s allegations in the coming trial that will determine whether Mr. Musk must complete the purchase. On Tuesday, Mr. Musk asked a judge to delay the trial for one month while his lawyers investigate the whistle-blower claims.

          Mr. Zatko has accused Twitter of years of “material misrepresentation and omissions” about security and privacy protections built into its platform. Twitter executives have strongly rejected Mr. Zatko’s claims.

        • Common DreamsFar-Right Floods Chile With Misinformation Ahead of Vote on New Constitution

          Even though Chileans voted€ by a 4-to-1 margin during a historic October 2020 plebiscite to create a new constitution to replace the neoliberal charter imposed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship, the resulting document is at risk of being rejected in Sunday's referendum, polls have consistently shown.

        • ScheerpostFactchecking the Factchecker on Chomsky, Russia and Media Access

          Millions of people in the Soviet Union, including virtually all intellectuals, had access to and tuned into Western media in the 1970s.

        • ScheerpostWe’re Being Trained to Worry About ‘Russian Propaganda’ While Drowning in US Propaganda

          The entire western world is being trained to freak out about "Russian propaganda" — which barely exists in the west€ — while ignoring the fact that we are spending every day marinating in billions of dollars worth of€ US empire propaganda.

        • The NationHow Emmett Till’s Death Led to the Invention of the “Liberal Media”

          It was on an early morning in late August 67 years ago that Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milan abducted Emmett Till from his great uncle Mose Wright’s home in Money, Miss. Till, who was visiting from Chicago, had reportedly whistled at and flirted with Bryant’s wife, Carolyn, at the couple’s grocery store.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • TruthOutVirginia Judge Throws Out Republican Attempt to Ban Book About LGBTQ People
      • Index On CensorshipSaudi woman's "death sentence" for using her voice

        On the 15th of every month (she was initially arrested on 15 January 2021), we will tell her story. Shining a light on her plight. And in the coming months we will work with partners both in the UK and across the world to make sure her case doesn’t get forgotten as just another case of human rights abuse by Saudi Arabia.

      • Norbert Preining[Repeat] Debian complaining to KDE …

        So now some Debian boohoos are complaining about my blog which is aggregated at Planet KDE, directly to KDE, how nice. They were bothered by the following statement:

        Usual disclaimer: (1) Considering that I don’t have a user-facing Debian computer anymore, all these packages are only tested by third parties and not by myself. Be aware! (2) Funny to read the Debian Social Contract, Point 4. Our priorities are our users and free software, obviously I care a lot about my users, more than some other Debian members.

      • NPRA Saudi woman gets a 45-year prison sentence for social media use that remains unclear

        A Saudi court has sentenced a woman to 45 years in prison for allegedly damaging the country through her social media activity, according to a court document obtained Wednesday. It was the second such sentence that has drawn scrutiny of the kingdom this month.

        Little is known about Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, who hails from one of the biggest tribes in Saudi Arabia and has no apparent history of activism. An official charge sheet seen by The Associated Press and human rights groups describes her case as involving her social media use, though Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment.

      • Middle East EyeSaudi woman sentenced to 45 years in prison over social media posts

        A Saudi court has sentenced a woman to 45 years in prison for using social media to express her opinions, a rights group said on Tuesday.

      • The Times Of Israel2nd Saudi woman jailed for decades for social media posts — rights group

        Nourah al-Qahtani received the heavy sentence on appeal after she was convicted of “using the internet to tear the [country’s] social fabric” and “violating public order” via social media, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) said.

        She was convicted under the kingdom’s Counter-Terrorism and Anti-Cyber Crime Law, DAWN added.

      • TheNewArabSaudi Arabia: Woman receives 45 years prison sentence over social media use

        An official charge sheet seen by The Associated Press and human rights groups describes her case as involving her social media use, though Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment.

      • Irish ExaminerSaudi woman gets 45 years in prison for social media use

        It remains unclear what al-Qahtani posted online or where her hearing was held. She was taken into custody on July 4 2021, according to the Washington-based human rights watchdog Democracy for the Arab World Now, which is critical of the kingdom.

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • VOA NewsIn covering violence in Tijuana, Mexico, the city’s journalists give voice to a community demanding change.

        Outside of war zones, Mexico ranks as the most dangerous place for journalists, with at least 60 slain in connection with their work since 1992, the year the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, started to track those killed.

        Covering organized crime presents the greatest risk, according to CPJ data. And official efforts to ensure media safety fall short, reporters say.

        As one of the first female journalists assigned to cover Tijuana’s violence, García has witnessed some of the worst brutality that humanity can offer. But she has also seen how shining a light on the city’s problems can effect positive change.

      • ScheerpostPatrick Lawrence: When Correspondents Came Home, Part 2

        September 11 was a paradigm shifting moment in American journalism.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • AccessNowU.S. must stand up to human rights abuses in MENA

        U.S. President Joe Biden has ignored activists and civil society groups’ call to address the extreme human rights abuses perpetrated by leaders from the Middle East and North Africa during a recent visit to the region. Access Now stands in solidarity with civil society organizations demanding an end to the unconditional support by the U.S. and other governments given to oppressive regimes in MENA.

        “The MENA region doesn’t need a savior, it needs consistency and respect,” said Marwa Fatafta, MENA Policy and Advocacy Manager at Access Now. “We cannot continue to hear companies and world leaders publicly condemn human rights abuses, then keep silent when an oil deal is on the table. U.S. President Joe Biden had the opportunity to look Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the face and demand accountability. He chose not to.”

        Since Biden’s visit, Saudi Arabia has continued its civil society persecution, handing a 34-year prison sentence to Salma al-Shehab, a UK-based PhD student and human rights defender, for simply re-tweeting and following dissidents and activists on her personal Twitter account. Salma’s online activities led to what is considered the “longest prison sentence ever for a peaceful activist.” This ruling sends a chilling message from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) on how peaceful activism will continue to be dealt with in the Kingdom.

      • MeduzaNavalny associates announce plans to release 'Smart Vote' recommendations for September elections — Meduza

        Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny's team of anti-corruption activists announced the launch of its “Smart Vote” initiative for this year’s Moscow municipal elections, which will take place from September 9–11. The team announced on Twitter that the recommendations will focus on municipal elections in Moscow.

      • GeorgeWhy Remote Works

        After working remotely for 4 companies over 5 years, interviews with hundreds of others, managing fully remote teams, interviewing hundreds of employees for remote roles, chatting with thousands of remote workers, and voyeuring the activities of many amazing remote teams, I concluded that, to my surprise, I need to write a different take about why, when and how remote work is worth it.

      • DNA IndiaIn another barbaric move, Taliban restricts female students from leaving Kabul for studies

        Around 80 percent of women working in the media have lost their jobs, it said adding that almost 18 million women in the country are struggling for health, education, and social rights.

      • ScheerpostCorporate Media Has Failed to Report on the Threats to Women’s Reproductive Rights

        In the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned€ Roe v. Wade, the corporate media has been saturated with analyses and reports about the implications of the ruling for women’s lives and health. Legal observers have weighed in on the conservative majority’s reasoning in the case. The impact of the ruling on the 2022 midterm elections has been discussed endlessly.

      • TruthOut“Roe” Overturn Has Driven Spike in Young People “Very” Motivated to Vote
      • Common DreamsFetterman Vows to Fight for Reproductive Rights After Oz Calls Abortion 'Murder'

        "Oz would be a rubber stamp to criminalize abortion and send doctors, nurses, and patients to jail."€ 

      • Common DreamsOpinion | This US City Is Creating a Model for Fighting Mass Incarceration

        In the late spring and summer of 2020, protests for racial justice erupted in response to the police murder of George Floyd. Mobilizations spread throughout the country and continued for months, producing what scholars identified as arguably the largest wave of mass protest in U.S. history.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Calling the GOP Semi-Fascist Is Half Right

        In an August 25 speech€ in Rockville, Md., aimed at drumming up support for Democrats ahead of the midterms, President Biden tarred Donald Trump and the MAGA movement€ with the dreaded "F" word.€ 

      • Counter PunchThe Blank Check Protection Program: a Religious Experience

        The amounts are shocking, but perhaps the most astounding numbers are the five separate donations from the Archdiosese of Kansas City, Kansas. The amounts are as follows: $1,250,000, $850,000, $380,000, $350,000, and yet another $350,000. In excess of 3 million dollars spent, not on charity, not on helping infants be fed, not on paying for obstetrical care. No, this was over 3 million spent trying to get Kansans to allow a path for the Republican legislature to deny reproductive freedoms. When I saw this colossal amount of cash, I had to marvel at the donations that individuals must have extended to the church. And I wondered how many must have left their estates to the church to allow such a large amount of money to be used in such a manner. This, by an institution that I imagine is financially taxed not by the government, but financially taxed by having to pay out an awful lot of lawsuits for some downright horrifying criminal behavior.

      • Counter PunchMother's Love for the Motherland

        Indeed, there have been many women who have invoked versions of this sentiment, from€ Julia Ward Howe€ to€ Jane Addams€ right down to a persecuted union of€ Russian and Belarusian women€ leading a dangerous, principled opposition to Putin’s invasion right now.

      • Counter PunchWho Should Forgive Who?
    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • TechdirtChattanooga’s City-Owned ISP Pushes 25 Gbps Broadband

        Chattanooga, Tennessee is one of a growing number of U.S. cities to build its own broadband network. The ISP, tacked on to the city’s existing EPB electricity utility, has routinely delivered speeds faster and more affordable than the services provided by regional utilities like Comcast.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent FreakHDFilme & xCine Latest to Fall in Relentless ACE Anti-Piracy Campaign

          The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has added the scalps of more pirate streaming sites to its growing collection. Earlier distress signals suggested that HDFilme and xCine might be in trouble, but their domains diverting to ACE leaves no doubt. Importantly, both sites were operated from Vietnam, an increasingly big player in global piracy that has the MPA worried.

        • Torrent FreakCourt Orders Telegram to Disclose Personal Details of Pirating Users

          The High Court in Delhi ordered Telegram to share the personal details of copyright-infringing users with rightsholders. The messaging app refused to do so, citing privacy concerns and freedom of speech, but the court waved away these defenses, ordering the company to comply with Indian law.

        • Torrent FreakFake 'YouTube' DMCA Notices Exploit Suspension Fears to Install Malware

          To make their victims more compliant, online scammers often imply that something of value is under threat if immediate action isn't taken. Bank accounts are often mentioned but nothing is off limits. A scam currently doing the rounds warns of copyright strikes on genuine YouTube accounts, but after targeting a security researcher, the scam's secrets are now public.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

    • Technical

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Browsers and life choices

          For the last few days, I've been trying out three new web browsers — amfora (cli), bombadillo (cli) and Min (gui) — and have become very heartened at how simple and fast they are.

          No joke, when I alt-tab from anything to Firefox these days, there's a 1-2 second delay before the application loads up. Until last week I'd convinced myself I made the right choice switching from Chrome to FF, but I'm getting the sense that the Big 5 browsers might all be kinda same-same but different.

          Maybe it's the same story with the Big 5 anything anywhere — social platforms, tech companies, creative agencies, SMEs. When you're competing for widespread adoption, there are certain sacrifices you have make in order to maintain a competitive advantage. And competitive business culture means you make it. And those sacrifices just happen to include speed, simplicity and performance... and maybe sometimes privacy, freedom and humanity too.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

A Free Software Foundation (FSF) Led by Dr. Richard Stallman Can Still Raise a Lot of Money
Give people more time (e.g. until end of January) and maybe hit the target
Good Gains for Android for GNU/Linux in New Zealand This Year
Notice that GNU/Linux rose to its highest point (this month)
2024 a Record Year for Android (Almost 50% "Market Share"), Which is Now Bigger in Europe Than Microsoft Windows
a look at Europe
Wishing for a Wikileaks Renaissance in 2025
as a site that facilitates whistleblowers, hosting large leaks
[Meme] Getting Banned From Social Control Media 2 Days or Two Weeks Before Leaving Office
Seems like interference using dinners with an insurrectionist
Jimmy Carter on Globalisation of "Tech"
Carter's legacy in the area of science (and technology)
The True Importance of Diversification
Monopoly or monoculture breed fragility
This New Talk Helps Explain Why Crimes at the European Patent Office (EPO) and Patent Policy Deficits Remain Unaddressed by the European Commission
Corporations write and enforce the law
Enshittification is Everywhere
Computer Science has been reduced to just "computer" (spyphone)
Move to GNU/Linux and Save the Planet, CCC Talk Explains
video of the talk
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Tells Us All to "Keep Putting Pressure on Microsoft"
"Grassroots organization against a corporation as large as Microsoft is never easy"
 
Links 30/12/2024: Fentanylware (TikTok) Concerns and Aftermath of Cut Cables
Links for the day
Is Microsoft's Plundering of Africa Coming to an End?
Microsoft had many layoffs in Africa this year
Microsoft Windows Down From 23% to 20% This Year in Asia (Android Up From 54% to Almost 60%)
Less and less of Windows, more of the Linux-powered Android
15 Years Ago Mozilla Firefox Had Over 50% of the Slovakian Market, Now Google's Chrome Has Over 70%
Peaked at 72.4% earlier this year
Remembering When Photography Meant Realistic Captures of Reality, Not "Hey Hi" (AI) and 'Instagrammed' (Filtered, Manipulated)
Fake pictures predate the "hey hi" hype; Instagram in particular was full of these
Apple's Main Stronghold (North America) at Risk From GNU/Linux
Apple had several rounds of layoffs in the US this year
statCounter: Microsoft Windows Down a Percent This Year in South America, GNU/Linux Up to 3.2%
Microsoft down, freedom up
The Threat of Googlebombing and LLMs
There are many Carters, but search engines and LLMs lack the "logic" (or common sense) to tell the difference
Social Control Media (Not Just TikTok) is a "Modern Challenge" to Democracy
Society is worse off with Social Control Networks
IBM's Bad Leadership is a Threat to GNU/Linux
We worry that since Red Hat controls so much of the GNU/Linux stack difficulties at IBM will result in divestment
Putting Some Eggs in the Geminispace Basket
Do not bet on the future of the Web
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 29, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, December 29, 2024
Gemini Links 30/12/2024: Countdown to New Year, Tinylogging, and LLM Hype
Links for the day
Incredible! Beta'News' Now Runs Ads as 'Articles' About 'Hey Hi' (AI), Written by LLMs
Does it get any more rogue than this?
Our Most Relaxing Christmas Ever?
this Christmas was our most calm every (in recent memory at least)
Bad Year for Microsoft in India (and Another All-Time Low, Windows at 12% "Market Share")
Microsoft is the next Intel
Keeping Online Even During Wars
the Internet is still quite robust
Fascistic Regimes and Their Justices Will Leverage Social Control Networks to Their Advantage (Power Grab), They Won't Protect Constituents From Them
"controlling the voices and all the narratives, including the press because they too buy into the lies that it is a communications medium"
New Year's Resolution for Techrights: No More Very Short Posts
If we publish memes, as above, then we'll try to at least contextualise them somewhat
Links 29/12/2024: Phytium Sells Chinese CPUs and Landing Gear Malfunction Crashes Plane in Korea
Links for the day
Links 29/12/2024: Facebook Wants More Bots and Slop, Whistleblowers and Bloggers Under Attack
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 28, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, December 28, 2024
Gemini Links 29/12/2024: Supernatural Mystery and Mechanical People
Links for the day
Links 28/12/2024: Standards Emphasised, Putin Implicitly Admits Taking Down Passenger Plane
Links for the day
Links 28/12/2024: BRICS-Controlled Social Control Media Defended by GOP, "Paper Passport Is Dying"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 27, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, December 27, 2024
Links 28/12/2024: Having Bosses, Ada's Dependent Types
Links for the day