Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 27/11/2022: Pinafore Born



  • GNU/Linux

    • DebugPointDebugPoint Weekly Roundup #22.14: Lunar Lobster Daily Build, Asahi Linux Updates + More

      We present the weekly roundup #22.14 featuring FOSS and tech updates across the web.

      Welcome to the DebugPoint Weekly roundup #22.14 where you can find all the happenings from this week, mainly from the Linux and open-source space.

      This week mostly concentrates on a bunch of key updates across Linux distributions and desktops. A few application updates as well. Mostly a mundane week, considering the Thanksgiving holidays.

      Here’s what happened this week.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • uni TorontoMoving our /var/mail to be local on our IMAP server has gone very well

        We have been operating our Unix environment for a very long time, and as a result we've accumulated what are now historical curiosities. One of them is that we put everyone's inboxes in a traditional /var/mail setup (including having them in mbox format), although almost all of our people now read their email only over IMAP. For a long time this /var/mail filesystem lived on our normal NFS fileservers, and the IMAP server accessed it over NFS, the same as everyone else (for example, our central mail server). Periodically we observed various things on the IMAP server, such as oddly elevated load averages, and certainly we had at least the perception that IMAP INBOX performance was periodically not great. Eventually we decided to try to improve things by making the IMAP server into another fileserver, with /var/mail local to it.

      • EarthlyUsing Portainer for Docker Container Management

        Docker’s CLI and API are powerful tools, but they can be unwieldy when you’re working with large container fleets or looking for a more visual experience. Portainer, a web-based Docker management system that provides a convenient graphical user interface (GUI), lets you take charge of your containers, images, volumes, and other resources, without memorizing long terminal commands.

      • Duncan LockAutomatically Publishing a Blogroll from an OPML File

        Inspired by a discussion the other day on HackerNews, I wrote a little script that asks Miniflux for a list of my feeds in OPML format and turns it into an AsciiDoc page, which I publish on here, as my BlogRoll & Links page: [...]

      • DebugPointHow to Create WiFi Hotspot in Ubuntu

        This quick guide explains how to create a WiFi Hotspot in Ubuntu (all supported versions).

        Internet connection sharing is not new. It was available as an operating system feature for some time. In Windows 10 or 11, creating a Hotspot with just a click of a button in Settings is straightforward.

        In Linux Systems, particularly in Ubuntu-based systems, it was a bit tricky from the beginning. However, in recent Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – it is very straightforward, and you can quickly set up your WiFi hotspot from a desktop/laptop.

    • Games

      • Andre Alves GarziaTroika Pocketfold Character Sheet

        I’ve just released a pocketfold-based character sheet for Troika! RPG game. Pocketfold is a remix of Pocketmod which is a foldable design that allows you to create cute booklets. Pocketfold is in my opinion specially suitable for creating character sheets as you can design it in a way that make accessing relevant information easy while still being pocket-friendly.

      • HackadayLEDs Put New Spin On A Sonic The Hedgehog Costume

        [Wentworthm] couldn’t say no to his son’s plea for a Sonic the Hedgehog costume for Halloween but also couldn’t resist sprucing it up with LEDs either. The end result is a surprisingly cool light up Sonic the Hedgehog costume.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • BSD

      • Data SwampPinafore: a light Mastodon web client

        This blog post is for Mastodon users who may not like the official Mastodon web interface. It has a lot of features, but it's using a lot of CPU and requires a large screen.

        [...]

        This being said, Pinafore doesn't target minimalism either, it needs javascript and a modern web browser.

      • Ruben SchadeRubenerd: From Tokyo one evening

        Back in January 2020 the biggest source of travel frustration in Australia was cancelled flights. That day, I’d flown up from Sydney to the Gold Coast in Queensland to present at the inaugural FreeBSD track at Linux.conf.au, and didn’t grant the travel second thought. It seems like another time ago, and one we won’t ever quite go back to.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • CNX SoftwareBrume 2 router review with WireGuard, OpenVPN, Tor, and Adguard Home

        We started the review of GL.inet GL-MT2500A security gateway, aka Brume 2, with an unboxing and teardown, and I’ve now had time to test the router in more detail so I’ll report my experience using the router with OpenVPN and WireGuard VPN, Tor, Adguard Home, and more. In a nutshell, it’s super easy to use, unless your ISP causes troubles, which it did in this case.

        [...]

        … and I got the Microsoft unusual activity…

        [....]

        The model I received is the GL-MT2500A with a metal enclosure, but I’m not convinced the $20 extra it costs is worth it compared to the lighter GL-MT2500 with a plastic case. The company did not bother adding a thermal pad on the processor to use the metal case as a heatsink since based on their testing it was not necessary. For reference, the enclosure temperature was around 40€°C in a round with an ambient temperature of around 28€°C.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Ken ShirriffA bug fix in the 8086 microprocessor, revealed in the die's silicon

        The 8086 microprocessor was a groundbreaking processor introduced by Intel in 1978. It led to the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and server computing. While reverse-engineering the 8086 from die photos, a particular circuit caught my eye because its physical layout on the die didn't match the surrounding circuitry. This circuit turns out to implement special functionality for a couple of instructions, subtlely changing the way they interacted with interrupts. Some web searching revealed that this behavior was changed by Intel in 1978 to fix a problem with early versions of the 8086 chip. By studying the die, we can get an idea of how Intel dealt with bugs in the 8086 microprocessor.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Programming/Development

      • PHP version 8.0.26 and 8.1.13 - Remi's RPM repository - Blog

        RPMs of PHP version 8.1.13 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 35 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky...) and in remi-php81 repository for EL 7.

        RPMs of PHP version 8.0.26 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 35 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky...) and in remi-php80 repository for EL 7.

      • Sean ConnerYou can program functionally in any computer language

        A few days ago I wrote a comment on The Orange Site that seemed to strike a chord there. The comment was about applying a few principles of functional programming in any language (well, maybe not BASIC from the 70s or 80s, but these versions of BASIC aren't used much these days). There's no need for functional application, functional composition, first class functions, monads, (“Monads! How do they work?”) or even currying. No, I feel like you can get about 85% of the way to functional programming by following three simple principles.

      • Daniel LemireMaking all your integers positive with zigzag encoding

        You sometimes feel the need to make all of your integers positive, without losing any information. That is, you want to map all of your integers from ‘signed’ integers (e.g., -1, 1, 3, -3) to ‘unsigned integers’ (e.g., 3,2,6,7). This could be useful if you have a fast function to compress integers that fails to work well for negative integers.

      • Lex Fridman#341 – Guido van Rossum: Python and the Future of Programming

        Guido van Rossum is the creator of Python programming language. [...]

      • RObservations #43 : Control Individual Label Positions In mapBliss With `_flex()` Functions

        After introducing the mapBliss package to the world, I was pleased to see that people started using it and were experimenting with making their own map art! On Github, the package got a few stars, some issues opened/closed and some improvements have been made since my last blog on the topic.

      • Carlos BeckerAnnouncing GoReleaser v1.13 — the November release

        Like the previous 2 releases, this is a beefy one: over 100 commits from 15 contributors!

  • Leftovers

    • Terence EdenStarting Up Vs Staying On

      A few years ago, I had a chance to work with an exciting tech startup. They had just become 5 years old. The day I went for an interview, about a dozen of the founding members announced they were quitting. Including the CEO.

    • HackadayHuman Vs. AI Drone Racing At The University Of Zurich

      [Thomas Bitmatta] and two other champion drone pilots visited the Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich. The human pilots accepting the challenge to race drones against Artificial Intelligence “pilots” from the UZH research group.

    • Science

      • The ConversationArtemis: why it may be the last mission for Nasa astronauts

        Advances in robotic exploration are exemplified by the suite of rovers on Mars, where Perseverance, Nasa’s latest prospector, can drive itself through rocky terrain with only limited guidance from Earth. Improvements in sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) will further enable the robots themselves to identify particularly interesting sites, from which to gather samples for return to Earth.

        Within the next one or two decades, robotic exploration of the Martian surface could be almost entirely autonomous, with human presence offering little advantage. Similarly, engineering projects – such as astronomers’ dream of constructing a large radio telescope on the far side of the Moon, which is free of interference from Earth – no longer require human intervention. Such projects can be entirely constructed by robots.

      • HackadayTesla Coil Makes Sodium Plasma

        Looking for a neat trick to do with your Tesla coil? [The Action Lab] uses his coil to make a metal plasma — in particular, sodium. You can see the results in the video below.

    • Education

      • Survivors Are Preserving the Dark History of Native Boarding Schools - Mother Jones

        Six-year-old Phyllis Webstand wore an orange shirt to her first day of school. It was shiny, she remembers, and laced up the front—more importantly, it was a gift from her granny.

        At the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School in Williams Lake, British Columbia, it was taken from her, as were all the personal belongings she had known and loved. None were ever returned. That year, 1973, Webstand became one of hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children in Canada and the US to suffer at state-run and religious boarding schools designed to assimilate by force. In the words of Richard Henry Pratt, the first superintendent of the infamous Carlisle Indian School, it was possible to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” often by coercive conversion to Christianity and the forbidding of Native language. Physical and sexual abuse were common.

    • Hardware

      • Linux GizmosIoT Gateway equipped with i.MX8M Plus processor and dual GbE ports

        Earlier this month, AAEON released an IoT Gateway targeting industrial edge gateway applications, Industry 4.0 and machine learning applications. The SRG-IMX8P is equipped with two GbE ports, 2x CAN-FD, 2x RS232/422/485 and support for wireless connectivity.

      • HackadayTurn Your Furniture Into A Light Show With Hyelicht

        There’s something about the regimented square shapes of the IKEA Kallax shelf that convinced [Eike Hein] it could benefit from some RGB LED lighting, and while he could have simply used a commercial solution, he decided instead to develop Hyelicht: an incredibly well documented open source lighting system featuring multiple control interfaces and APIs. We’d say it was overkill, but truth be told, we dream of a world where everyone takes their personal projects to this level.

      • HackadayBlackout Logger Keeps Track Of Power Outages

        [Dmytro Panin] lives in Kyiv, Ukraine where there have been rolling blackouts to stabilize the power grid. To help keep track of when the blackouts might happen, be they planned or emergency, and to get more information on how long the blackouts last, [Dmytro] has created a blackout logger.

      • HackadayDefeating A Cryptoprocessor With Laser Beams

        Cryptographic coprocessors are nice, for the most part. These are small chips you connect over I2C or One-Wire, with a whole bunch of cryptographic features implemented. They can hash data, securely store an encryption key and do internal encryption/decryption with it, sign data or validate signatures, and generate decent random numbers – all things that you might not want to do in firmware on your MCU, with the range of attacks you’d have to defend it against. Theoretically, this is great, but that moves the attack to the cryptographic coprocessor.

      • HackadayMagic Mirror – On A Low CPU Budget

        For quite a few hackers out there, it’s still hard to find a decently powerful Raspberry Pi for a non-eye-watering price. [Rupin Chheda] wanted to build a magic mirror with a web-based frontend, and a modern enough Raspberry Pi would’ve worked just fine. Sadly, all he could get was single-1 GHz-core 512MB-RAM Zero W boards, which he found unable to run Chromium well enough given the stock Raspbian Desktop install, let alone a webserver alongside it. Not to give up, [Rupin] gives us a step-by-step breakdown on creating a low-footprint Raspbian install showing a single webpage.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Proprietary

      • RTL188,000 WhatsApp accounts [cracked] in Luxembourg

        In Belgium, 3,188,584 numbers were [cracked], in France 19,848,559, and in Portugal 2,277,361. For the time being, it is unknown how the data was obtained, but it is currently for sale.

    • Security

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Pro PublicaThe Military Pledged to Remove Unexploded Bombs From This Island. Native Hawaiians Are Still Waiting.

        For the better part of two years, Liliu Ross had lived in a one-room tin-roofed shack in the rural outer reaches of Hawaii’s Big Island. It had no running water and no electricity. But it provided shelter for Ross as she raised sheep and grew crops on land that her Native Hawaiian ancestors once called home. From the open fields and gentle slopes of her five-acre farm lot, she marveled at the stunning views of nearby Mauna Kea, one of the world’s tallest island mountains. Still, there were challenges to living under such conditions. At night she read by candlelight, and during the day she bathed outside with water she warmed in a pot over a fire.

        So, in 2014, Ross secured a loan under a special program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help Native Hawaiians build or purchase homes on Native lands. An architect created drawings for a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house, complete with energy-efficient appliances and a covered lanai. And she even picked the location for the new home.

      • Declassified UKBritain’s secret propaganda campaign in the Vietnam war

        The British Foreign Office provided key propaganda support to the US during its war in Vietnam, chiefly through its Cold War propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD).

        Throughout the 1960s, this support involved helping the US-backed South Vietnamese regime to set up its own propaganda unit, and whitewashing Washington’s image over civilian bloodshed.

        It also entailed distributing material to hundreds of British political and media figures in order to sanitise US atrocities, and make the British public less critical of the war.

        Remarkably, Britain even offered to provide the US with “special” support during the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, which Washington used to cynically and dramatically escalate its war effort in Vietnam.

      • Declassified UKBritain’s secret role in the brutal US war in Vietnam

        During its war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s the US dropped more bombs than in the whole of World War Two, in a conflict that killed over two million people. The wholesale destruction of villages and killing of innocent people was a permanent feature of the US war from the beginning, along with widespread indiscriminate bombing.

        Britain’s role in the war has been largely buried and must be almost completely unknown to the public. When the UK media mentions the war now, reports often simply reference the refusal by Harold Wilson’s government to agree to US requests to openly deploy British troops.

        Although this was certainly a public rebuff to Washington, Britain did virtually everything else to back the US war over more than a decade, the declassified documents show.

      • Meduza‘Not decolonization but self-isolation’ How the Kremlin’s purported fight against ‘neocolonialism’ is destroying Russian science — Meduza

        One of the many forms of global inequality is inequality in the production of scientific knowledge. Countries in the Global South, many of which are former colonies, have tried to solve this issue by “decolonizing” academic processes: for years, intellectuals and scientists from non-Western countries have been asserting their autonomy and challenging the West’s “intellectual authority.” Sociologist Ivan Kislenko, a visiting scholar with the Dimensions of Europeanization project at Austria’s University of Graz, believes that Russian scientists and researchers could learn a lot from their colleagues in postcolonial countries. In this essay for Meduza, he explains that for all of the Russian authorities’ talk of wanting to take part in decolonization —€ and even to lead it — they’re actually doing the exact opposite. The Kremlin is burning the very bridges that would allow Russian public thought to prove its value and gradually take its rightful place in global intellectual life.

      • Project Censored#17 Former Neo-Nazi Leader Now Holds DOJ Domestic Counterterrorism Position - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        Michael German, a Brennan Center fellow who investigates neo-Nazis, told Christophi that it is “highly unlikely” that RISS or similar federal employers would have missed Houghton’s neo-Nazi ties while conducting a background check. As Christophi reported, many other white supremacists likely hold powerful positions in law enforcement agencies, especially since neo-Nazi leaders are encouraging their followers to take jobs in the police or military.

      • Project Censored#18 The Human Mind as “New Domain of War”: NATO Plans for Cognitive Warfare - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        The NAOC panel discussion was part of NATO’s Fall 2021 Innovation Challenge, hosted by Canada, which sought to enlist the expertise of private entrepreneurs and academic researchers “to help develop new tactics and technologies for the military alliance,” Ben Norton reported. (The NAOC, he noted, is technically a nongovernmental organization, but “its mission is to promote NATO.”)

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Declassified UKGolden Temple massacre: Probe into SAS role marred by nepotism

        Hundreds if not thousands of people were killed when Indian troops stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984.

        Thirty years later, I uncovered evidence the Thatcher administration had sent an SAS officer to advise Indian forces on the operation at the Sikh faith’s holiest site.

        My revelation in 2014 caused outcry and forced the then prime minister David Cameron to order an investigation by Britain’s most senior civil servant, Jeremy Heywood.

    • Environment

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Loss and Damage Fund as a Paradigm Shift

        The 27th Conference of Parties (COP27) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement, attended by 47,000 delegates, delivered on the promise of being an 'Implementation COP'. It was the third longest in the history of the annual climate summit, with parties working overtime thirty-six hours after the conference's scheduled closure. As dawn broke in Sharm el-Sheikh, the host city of this year's summit, located on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula and the coastal strip of the Red Sea, on 20 November, the landmark agreement on loss and damage was gavelled by COP27 president and Egypt's foreign minister Sameh Shoukry.

      • Project Censored#11 Wealthy Nations Continue to Drive Climate Change with Devastating Impacts on Poorer Countries - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        Fossil fuels release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, where it lingers for hundreds of years. CO2 locks in heat, and its gradual buildup warms the planet, leading to the melting of polar ice caps, rising sea levels, and catastrophic natural disasters such as wildfires and floods. But the primary emitters of carbon are often not the ones bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. As sea levels rise, people in small island countries, such as Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, will struggle to survive. In 2019, according to a Quartz Africa report by Tawanda Karombo in 2021, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Niger all experienced drastic, unpredictable changes in temperature and precipitation, causing food shortages, economic disasters, and hundreds of avoidable fatalities. “Many of these countries and communities bear little responsibility for the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. At the same time, they have the fewest resources available to protect themselves,” Klinsky observed.

      • Project Censored#4 At Least 128 Members of Congress Invested in Fossil Fuel Industry - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        According to Moore, some seventy-four Republicans, fifty-nine Democrats, and one Independent have interests in the fossil fuel industry. In both chambers, more Republicans than Democrats are invested in the industry, and the ten most heavily invested House members are all Republicans. However, the first- and third-most-invested senators, Joe Manchin (WV), who owns up to $5.5 million worth of fossil fuel industry assets, and John Hickenlooper (CO), who owns up to $1 million, are Democrats. Additionally, Senate Democrats own up to $8,604,000 in fossil fuel assets, more than double the Senate Republicans’ $3,994,126 in fossil fuel assets. Aside from Senator Manchin, and Representative Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN), who owns up to $5.2 million worth of stock in oil and gas pipelines, many of the other deeply invested congressional leaders are Texas Republicans, including Representative Van Taylor, who owns up to $12.4 million worth of fossil fuel assets.

    • Finance

      • Common DreamsOpinion | The Not Very Smart Elon Musk

        A good day's work for a good day's pay. Should this age-old wisdom apply to overpaid CEOs as well as their workers? A Delaware court will soon decide, a turn of events that must have the richest man in the known universe, Elon Musk, feeling more than a little bit uneasy.

      • Declassified UKPerverse priorities: Cut public spending, keep nuclear arms and warplanes

        The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is reported to be looking for €£35 billion across government in cuts. While vital services will continue to be deprived of urgently-needed resources, the government seems set to give the military a budget rise in cash terms from €£47.9bn this year to €£48bn in 2023 and €£48.6bn in 2024.

      • ScheerpostSilicon Valley Fake: Elizabeth Holmes and the Fraudster’s Motivation

        By Binoy Kampmark / CounterPunch It has been one noisy time for the paladins of big tech.€  Jobs have been shed by the thousands at Meta, Amazon and Twitter; FTX, the second largest cryptocurrency company, has collapsed.€  Then came the conviction of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the healthcare company Theranos, for fraud. Pursuing the steps […]

      • Project Censored#22 US Transportation System “Fuels” Inequality - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        According to Sen, this disparity disproportionately impacts Black and Latino communities, where personal vehicle ownership rates are much lower than in majority white communities. “Transportation policies prioritizing private vehicle use leave the poor and people of color behind,” Sen reported.

      • Project Censored#20 States Hoard Federal Assistance Funding Amidst Record Poverty Levels - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        Hannah Dreyfus reported in a December 2021 article that the number of approved applications for access to TANF funding has been cut in half since 2010 as guidelines to qualify become increasingly exclusionary, while reserved TANF funds have more than doubled in the same time period.

      • TruthOutHow Banks and Private Equity Cash In When Patients Can’t Pay Their Medical Bills
      • Common DreamsOpinion | Taxing the Rich Requires More Than Policy

        With numerous initiative campaigns around the country raising minimum wages, protecting abortion rights, and in the case of Massachusetts's Fair Share Amendment, taxing the rich to fund public services, the Left is finally waking to the power of ballot initiatives as tools to advance egalitarian and redistributive policy. Where legislators are either too timid or too compromised by corporate interests and wealthy donors, voters tend to back progressive policy, even voters who tend not to choose anyone with a D next to their name. Floridians in 2020 and Arizonans in 2016 both went for Trump and increased the minimum wage. Running ballot initiatives offers a path for the Left to organize around working-class demands without getting sucked into the depressing vortex of Democratic Party machinery and the partisan culture war.

      • Project Censored#2 Wage Theft: US Businesses Suffer Few Consequences for Stealing Millions from Workers Every Year - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        Wage theft includes a range of illegal practices, such as paying less than minimum wage, withholding tips, not paying overtime, or requiring workers to work through breaks or off the clock. It impacts service workers, low-income workers, immigrant and guest workers, and communities of color the most, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s “Cheated at Work” series, published from May 2021 to March 2022. An Economic Policy Institute study from 2017 found that just one form of wage theft—minimum wage violations—costs US workers an estimated $15 billion annually and impacts an estimated 17 percent of low-wage workers.

      • Project Censored#6 Corporate Consolidation Causing Record Inflation in Food Prices - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        Stancil’s article reported on new research by the Groundwork Collaborative that suggested price gouging was rampant in America’s oligopoly-controlled food industry. In a paradigmatic case, the beef industry is simultaneously among the most consolidated and the most impacted by inflation. The study found that with only four conglomerates controlling 80 percent of the market, the cost of beef had risen a startling 12 percent since 2020. The egg industry also saw a dramatic increase in prices that sparked investigations and lawsuits across the country.

      • Project Censored#9 New Laws Preventing Dark Money Disclosures Sweep the Nation - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        As Shaw outlined, ALEC “brings together corporate activists, lobbyists, and state lawmakers to partner up on the crafting of rightwing legislation and other initiatives.” The organization is commonly referred to as a “corporate bill mill” and has crafted other controversial laws, such as Stand Your Ground.

      • Project Censored#5 Dark Money Interference in US Politics Undermines Democracy - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        “It should worry us all that the groups leading the fight against Biden’s historic nomination of Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court are tied to the Jan. 6 insurrection and efforts to undermine confidence in the 2020 election,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, told Salon. “With American institutions and our democracy itself under constant attack from every direction, the importance of Judge Jackson’s swift and successful confirmation cannot be overstated.”

      • Project Censored#16 Dark Money Fuels Transphobic Opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and Equality Act - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        As Peck, Demirhan, and Bowen explained, “dark money”—funding used to influence policy, elections, and other significant political decisions whose precise donors are kept hidden from the public—“gives corporations and the wealthy undue sway in politics with little accountability.” Many of the funders of the Eagle Forum are unknown, Truthout reported, but the Eagle Forum and its related Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund have received “tens of thousands over the years from the Bradley Foundation and Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, which are both massive foundations with deep connections to the far right.”

      • Project Censored#19 Poor Infrastructure, a Legacy of Discriminatory Redlining, Inhibits Rural Black Americans’ Internet Access - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        Dominique Harrison, the JCPES study’s author, told Asher-Schapiro and Sherfinski in October 2021 that “despite constant conversations about rural access to broadband in the US, most of it is focused on white rural residents.” Harrison’s study found that, across 152 counties in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, Black Americans were ten times more likely not to have internet access than white Americans in those same counties. Specifically, 38 percent of Black Americans in those counties reported that they lacked home internet access, while only 23 percent of white Americans in those same areas said the same.

      • Michael West MediaCost of living data top of watch list - Michael West

        A key consumer price index will be closely watched for a further inflation spike as the Reserve Bank weighs up yet another cash rate hike.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • Tim BrayBye, Twitter

        Today I’m leaving Twitter, because I don’t like making unpaid contributions to a for-profit publisher whose proprietor is an alt-right troll. But also because it’s probably going to break down. Read on for details.

      • Common DreamsOpinion | I'll Support Him If He Does—But Joe, Please Don't Run
      • Project Censored#12 Facebook’s Blacklist of “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” Stifles Public Debate - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        The DIO policy not only bans specific individuals and groups from Facebook, it also selectively restricts “what other Facebook users are allowed to say about the banned entities,” Biddle reported. The rules are “a serious risk to political debate and free expression,” Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the Intercept.

      • Project Censored#7 Concerns for Journalistic Independence as Gates Foundation Gives $319 Million to News Outlets - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        Based on examination of more than 30,000 individual grants, MacLeod reported that the Gates Foundation provides funding for “many of America’s most important news outlets”—including NPR (which has received $24.6 million in Gates funding), NBC ($4.3M), CNN ($3.6M), and the Atlantic ($1.4M)—and “a myriad of influential foreign organizations”—such as the Guardian ($12.9M), Der Spiegel ($5.4M), Le Monde ($4M), BBC ($3.6M), El País ($3.9M), and Al Jazeera ($1M). MacLeod’s report includes a number of Gates-funded news outlets that also regularly feature in Project Censored’s annual Top 25 story lists, such as the Solutions Journalism Network ($7.2M), The Conversation ($6.6M), the Bureau of Investigative Journalism ($1M), and ProPublica ($1M) in addition to the Guardian and the Atlantic.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

      • Declassified UKRafael Correa: ‘They have already destroyed Assange’

        Declassified sits down with the former president of Ecuador who granted Julian Assange asylum in London. He talks about dealing with the British, how the US seeks to control his country and the lawfare campaign against him.

      • Declassified UK‘UK executive is wining and dining with people plotting the assassination of my husband’

        Declassified sits down with Stella Assange, the wife of the WikiLeaks founder, to talk about how he’s holding up in his fourth year inside Belmarsh prison—and how his case threatens the very core of freedom itself.

      • Project Censored#8 CIA Discussed Plans to Kidnap or Kill Julian Assange - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        Potential scenarios proposed by the CIA and Trump administration officials included crashing into a Russian vehicle carrying Assange in order to grab him, shooting the tires of an airplane carrying Assange in order to prevent its takeoff, and engaging in a gun battle through the streets of London. US officials asked “their British counterparts to do the shooting if gunfire was required, and the British agreed,” Yahoo News reported, on the basis of testimony by one former senior administration official. Senior CIA officials went so far as to request “sketches” or “options” detailing methods to kill Assange.

      • Project Censored#14 Repression of Palestinian Media - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        Since 2020, twenty-six Palestinian journalists based in the West Bank have been imprisoned for attempting to cover Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. According to an April 5, 2022, report by Yuval Abraham in the Intercept, Palestinian journalists who post footage or comment on Israel’s use of force are often placed in administrative detention for months at a time and experience harsh interrogations without ever being charged. After serving months of jail time, detainees are typically forced into entering guilty plea deals offered by Israeli military prosecution in order to be released.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Teen VogueThis One Page TTRPG is a Starbucks Union Fundraiser

        Here’s how you play: each round is 87 seconds, or roughly the same amount of time it takes a Starbucks worker to make a frappuccino; within that time, you must write up a description of a planet using a few default requirements such as name, color, type of planet, and any additional mandates demanded by your celestial managers. In order to unionize, the player will roll a six-sided die and tally up their result at the beginning of each round. Once that tally reaches 21, the player has successfully unionized and wins the game.

      • NPRFrontier Airlines drops its customer service line

        Frontier airlines will no longer let customers call a phone number in order to speak with a live agent. And while the budget airline is known for its cost-cutting measures, most major airlines still operate customer service lines.

        Customers will instead have to rely on other ways to contact the airline: a chatbot on its website, a live chat available 24/7, its social media channels and even WhatsApp, according to Frontier spokesperson, Jennifer De La Cruz, who confirmed the news to NPR on Saturday.

      • NBCMissouri 19-year-old can't watch her father's execution, judge rules

        "It's ironic that Kevin was 19 years old when he committed this crime and they still want to move forward with this execution, but they won't allow his daughter who's 19 at this time in because she's too young," Johnsons' lawyer, Shawn Nolan, told reporters Friday.

      • MeduzaRussian government to sell St. Petersburg's Kresty Prison — Meduza

        Most of the territory and buildings of St. Petersburg’s Kresty Prison will be put up for sale by the state corporation Dom.rf, according to RBC.

      • Pro PublicaAt Washington State Special Education Schools, Years of Abuse Complaints and Lack of Academics

        For years, the complaints languished with Washington state education officials.

        A therapist emailed about a teenage boy with severe autism, who had wailed for hours inside a locked room in her school, pleading to be let out. A local education official saw a teacher shove her foot in a student’s face as he lay on the ground and threaten to step on him. A special education director observed uncertified teachers struggling with no curriculum and urged the state to step in to protect “these extremely high-risk students.”

      • Common DreamsOpinion | Biden Must Demand That Al-Sisi Release Alaa Abd El-Fattah

        There are dictators in the world who wield absolute power, and then there are U.S. Senators. Very few understand the power these 100 individuals hold in the world's most powerful country. A single senator can effectively block any legislation. They don't need to give a reason, and often do it entirely in secret. President Joe Biden, who was a senator for decades, knows this and also knows he needs the vote of every Democratic senator to pass critical appropriations during Congress' current lame duck session.

      • ScheerpostDeath in Qatar, but No Just Compensation for Families Back Home

        Qatar’s migrant workers died, but their families struggle on.

      • TruthOutFor-Profit Abortion Telemedicine Start-Ups Are Proliferating in Wake of “Roe"
      • Project Censored#15 EARN IT Act Threatens Online Freedom of Expression Under Guise of Policing Child Pornography - THE TOP 25 MOST CENSORED STORIES OF 2022-2023

        The EARN IT Act of 2022 aims to hold tech companies responsible for the online spread of child pornography. As Mathew Ingram reported for the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), the Act would establish a national commission to develop “best practices for the elimination of child sex-abuse material (CSAM).” Under the act, “online platforms hosting such material would lose the protection of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives electronic service providers immunity from prosecution for most of the content that is posted by their users,” the CJR reported.

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • Torrent FreakBREIN Plans to Have Z-Library Blocked By ISPs if it 'Resurfaces'

          Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has revealed that one of its reports played a role in the criminal investigation of Z-Library. The report in question reportedly identified a number of suspects. Whether the resulting law enforcement actions will be effective in the long run is unknown but BREIN plans to seek a site-blocking order if the shadow library reappears on the surface web.

  • Gemini* and Gopher


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Newer is Not Better, Lunar Edition
Maybe in 57 years (2083, after all these wars) we'll managed to launch a capsule with a human and a dog above the stratosphere again
 
It Would be Good for Debian to Have a Female DPL, But...
Debian isn't exactly selecting people for quality or policing bad behaviour
IBM Insiders Say What's Wrong With IBM in Albany (and Yes, There Are Layoffs)
promotions boil down to what insiders now call "brown-nosing" and nepotism
After Killing OpenSource.org IBM Together With OSI Told Us It Would Carry on OpenSource.net, But the Site Has Been Essentially Dead for 9 Months (Effectively Abandoned)
OpenSource.org has been dormant for 4 weeks already and OpenSource.net last had a new page 9 months ago (it'll be 9 months tomorrow) [...] That's IBM in a nutshell
A Lot of What Happened to OSI is Because of Reporting by Techrights
Half a year since Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) "left"
Public Presentations by RMS Hardly Interrupted Anymore
We'll carry on covering those sorts of topics throughout the year
Links 07/04/2026: US Wants to Put Journalists in Prison for Reporting Facts, Artist ‘Bale’ Arrested Over Rape Allegation in Social Control Media
Links for the day
To IBMers, IBM Has Failed and is Fast Becoming a Book of Jokes and One-Word Punchlines
How else can one make it obvious that IBM is circling down the drain?
"AI Revolution" Was a Lie: Microsoft CEO Admits What He Calls "AI" is Sometimes Sloppy and Microsoft Admits That Slop is for "Entertainment Purposes Only" (Not for Any Serious Work)
if it gets "memory-holed", we can bring it up again and again
Social Control Media is Not a Viable Business Model
The future of the Web might not be the Web
From Datacentres Boom to Actual Booms That Target Datacentres, Now Struggling to Justify Humongous Energy and Water Consumption
Datacentres that are used for mindless "entertainment" (as Microsoft calls it) like slop are not a priority at this time
Gemini Links 07/04/2026: Aircraft Lift Force, Editor History, and Consumer Hardware Stagnation
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 06, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, April 06, 2026
What Matters is Software Freedom, Not the Brands
The important thing is to speak about Software Freedom
Wikileaks is About to Turn 20
~2 days ago it turned 19.5
The Cloud of Smoke
Will 2026 be the year that "The Cloud" openly confesses the risks it brings about?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 36 Out of 200: Claim KB-2024-003529 in a Nutshell (Microsoft Employee Does Terrible Things, Then Sues the Reporter in Another Continent)
It commences with more of an overview
Gemini Links 06/04/2026: Solar Panel Story and Centralisation
Links for the day
"Free Speech, Free Press": What the World Needs to Improve
Darkness breeds corruption
IBM prioritises a "lot of smoke and hype and use of trending buzzwords"
IBM can pretend all it wants things are fine
GAFAM Paying the Price for Pursuing US Military Money (Taxpayers' Money as 'Stimulus' With Strings Attached)
The "cloud" in cloud computing is a cloud of smoke
Observing Slop's Demise
If energy becomes more scarce, then one rare/side perk (or upside) will be slop companies screaming for lifeboats
Links 06/04/2026: Crackers Breached the European Commission, Why "Old Way of Campaigning Won’t Cut It Anymore"
Links for the day
Enron Versus NVIDIA (the Cost of Circular Financing, or Funding Your Own Customers to Buy Your Products) - “The Inventory Paradox” or “The Vibe Revenue Admission”
Round-tripping (finance)
You Know "The Economy" is Fake When 6 Months After Oracle Says Debt-Saddled 'Open' 'AI' (Slop) Will Pay It $300,000,000,000 Oracle Says It Must Lay Off 30,000 Workers at 6AM
Oracle is in deep debt, which increased at a pace of almost 4 billion dollars per month lately
Free Software Will Outlive GAFAM
GAFAM is overhyped
Techrights Was Further Decentralised Three Years Ago
In 2020 we began working on IPFS stuff
The Military Attacks on Dubai Internet City as Reminder That GAFAM Isn't Safe (Disregard the "Nobody Gets Fired for Buying GAFAM" Mindset)
These are all realistic and foreseeable scenarios that GAFAM sceptics have long warned about
The Wars Aren't Ending, Now We See GAFAM Facilities Being Bombed
This is becoming a tech issue
Links 06/04/2026: Turning 34, Throwing Things Away, and Printing in GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Links 06/04/2026: Ex-Microsoft Engineer Explains Why Azure Fails, Germany Prepares for War
Links for the day
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XI - EPO Strike Enters Its Second Week, EPO Sheds Off Qualified Staff to Make Way for Nepotists
More than six months ago the "Cocaine Communication Manager" got arrested for cocaine use
Another Microsoft Outlook Downtime
Microsoft has sloppy code, it's not something suitable for mission-critical things
Week 2 of April IBM Layoffs Accelerate Based on Rumours
"Heard about Layoff at IBM"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 05, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, April 05, 2026
Culture of Harassment Inside Microsoft, Says Former Director at Microsoft
listen to Microsoft insiders
Drone Strikes on Amazon (GAFAM) Datacentres Highlight Azure's Miniscule Share
Azure is failing
SLAPP Censorship - Part 35 Out of 200: How to Make ~10,000 Pound Sterling (13,220.50 United States Dollars) by Copy-Pasting and Editing 10 Pages
Today it's Easter Sunday, so we'll keep this part relatively short
Gemini Links 05/04/2026: Artemis II Mission Tracker, Meditation on Copyright, Alhena 5.5.5, "Gemini as the Final Frontier of Human Cognition"
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Low of ~60% in Switzerland, GNU/Linux Among Top Gainers
What will it take for mainstream media (not just geeks' site) to cover it?
Mainstream Media on "Practical Survivalism"
Suffice to say, panic buying begets more panic and price surges
Cloud Computing as a Cloud of Smoke (Your Hosting Provider is a "Legitimate" Military Target)
When a French datacentre went up in flames people joked that the "cloud" meant a cloud of smoke
Andreas Tille Congratulates Sruthi Chandran Before the Election for Debian Project Leader (DPL) is Even Over
Andreas Tille, the current Debian Project Leader (DPL) who has been in this role for nearly 24 months
When You Try to Change the World for the Better and Somehow They Find a Way to Say You Are the Villain
Don't be a fool. Don't fall for inversions of narratives.
Slop Was a Flop and Energy Crisis Will be Slop's Final Blow
Today we see no slopfarms in Google News
Links 05/04/2026: "Taiwanese Airlines to Hike Fuel Surcharges 157%" and Openly Racist Voter Suppression Starts in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/04/2026: Playing with Hyprland and Migrating Antenna Filters
Links for the day
Links 05/04/2026: "Confidential Computing" as Proprietary Bundle of False Promises and "The Web Is an Antitrust Wedge"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 04, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, April 04, 2026