GNU/Linux

• Server

  • John Goerzen ☛ John Goerzen: Using Yggdrasil As an Automatic Mesh Fabric to Connect All Your Docker Containers, VMs, and Servers

    Sometimes you might want to run Docker containers on more than one host. Maybe you want to run some at one hosting facility, some at another, and so forth.

    Maybe you’d like run VMs at various places, and let them talk to Docker containers and bare metal servers wherever they are.

    And maybe you’d like to be able to easily migrate any of these from one provider to another.

    There are all sorts of very complicated ways to set all this stuff up. But there’s also a simple one:Yggdrasil.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • The BSD Now Podcast ☛ 492: Feeling for NetBSD

    Writing your own operating system, Continuous Integration and Quality Assurance Update, feeling for the NetBSD community, Testing wanted: execute-only on amd64, GCC uses Modula-2 and Rust, do they work on OpenBSD, Unix is dead; long live Unix, and more

• Graphics Stack

  • Free Desktop ☛ mesa 23.0.0-rc4

    Hi list,
    
    I'd like to announce the availability of mesa 23.0-rc4. since the last
    RC we've seen the addition of several blocking issues, and as such we're
    having another RC. Hopefully be next week we can have all of these
    issues resolved.
    
    Cheers,
    Dylan
    

• Applications

  • Linux Links ☛ 26 Best Free and Open Source Music Players

    There’s a huge raft of free and open source music software available on the Linux platform which is both mature and sophisticated. Linux has many music tools which offer enhanced functionality and integration with internet music services. With most desktop environments having several audio players, together with cross-platform applications, integrated media players, there is a plethora of music players to choose from.

    Like many types of software, the selection of a favorite music player is, to some extent, dependent on personal preferences. Nevertheless, we are confident that the applications featured in this article represent the most appealing music players.

    All music libraries are different, and the right open source music player can make a world of difference – especially if you’ve a large collection.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Valhalla’s Things: How To Verify Debian’s ARM Installer Images

    Thanks toVagrant on the debian-arm mailing listI’ve found that thereisa chain of verifiability for the images usually used to install Debian on ARM devices.

  • TecAdmin ☛ How to Install Mate Desktop on Debian 11

    The Mate desktop is a popular and lightweight graphical user interface (GUI) for Linux systems. It provides a traditional and easy-to-use interface that can run on both high-end and low-end computers.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How To Recover Linux Grub Boot Loader Password on RHEL 9

    Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to Recover Linux Grub Boot Loader Password on RHEL 9. We know that security is important, but accidents often happen, and it is possible to forget the root password of this item.

  • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Install Unity Desktop on Arch Linux

    As you may know, the classic desktop environment Unity Desktop was dropped by Canonical in favour of the GNOME desktop in 2017.

  • TechRepublic ☛ How to install and use the Taskwarrior command-line todo list

    If you want a very efficient way to keep track of your task lists from the command line, Taskwarrior is the tool to use.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • My work in KDE for January 2023

      This is a non-comprehensive list of all of the major work I’ve done for KDE this month of January. I think I got a lot done this month! I also was accepted as a KDE Developer near the start of the month, so I’m pretty happy about that.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • OMG Ubuntu ☛ This GNOME Extension Makes the ‘Activities’ Label More Useful

      It’s not useless, of course: you click the “Activities” label to enter the “activities” overview — or the ‘workspace switcher’ as I tend to call it.

      But most of us (empirically speaking; I did a survey and you did take part) tend to enter the workspace switcher/activities overview by tapping the super key.

      Anyhow, there’s a new GNOME extension out called Replace Activities Label that —deploy your faux shocked faces now— replaces the ‘Activities’ label with something a little more useful.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• New Releases

  • ZDNet ☛ Elementary OS 7 is now available and it’s the same old desktop goodness

    The newly released seventh iteration of the popular Elementary OS is as impressive as you’d expect.

• Arch Family

  • Say Goodbye Xubuntu, Welcome Archcraft Linux

    This is purely from my experience using Linux Distros. I’m using Xubuntu from version 18.04, until 22.04. 2 upgrades(18.04 to 20.04, 20.04 to 22.04). I feel disappointed with the full upgrade, which always has errors and trouble. The worst is some error icon display problem from 20.04 to 22.04. 2 upgrades(18.04 to 20.04, 20.04 to 22.04). I feel disappointed with the full upgrade, which always has errors and trouble. The worst is some error icon display problem from 20.04 to 22.04. I’m a fan of the LTS version of Ubuntu. But the upgrade is useless. Because the error that appears has not been able to get a solution, even though I have tried browsing the relevant forums to find a solution to the problem.

  • ArchLinux ☛ Call for participation: Git packaging POC

    Hi everyone!

    Levente and I have been busy preparing a test environment for the new git
    package workflow, which is going to replace the svn repository.

    To test the new git package setup install `devtools-git-poc` from the
    [community] repository and use the new `pkgctl` utility. Please check each time if there is a new upgrade before playing around.

    The goal of the testing is to figure out UX issues, bugs and larger issues that
would need to be dealt with before a git migration can happen. It's therefor
very important that people sit down and play around …

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ 4 ways to transform customer service in enterprise IT

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ 4 articles CIOs should read about open source in 2023

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Linux Mint ☛ Monthly News – January 2023

    Thank you for your donations and for your support. As we mentioned last month, following the release of Linux Mint 21.1, the donations for December were at an all-time high. Many thanks to all the people who support our project.

• Devices/Embedded

  • CNX Software ☛ FOSSBot open design 3D printed educational robot is made with Raspberry Pi and off-the-shelf parts

    FOSSBot is an “open design” 3D printed educational robot comprised of a Raspberry Pi SBC and various off-the-shelf modules, as well as open-source software that can be used for education purposes.

    The FOSSBot DIY robot has been developed by the Harokopio University of Athens and the Greek Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) community, and builds upon the “GSOC 2019 – A DIY robot kit for educators” with the main goal being to have a platform to “familiarize teachers with modern education models based on the S.T.E.A.M approach. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics)”.

  • CNX Software ☛ Qualcomm-based Open-Q 2290CS and 4290CS SIPs target industrial IoT and machine vision applications

    Latronics has just unveiled two new System-in-Packages (SiP) with the entry-level Open-Q 2290CS SIP based on Qualcomm QCS2290 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor designed for industrial IoT applications and safety vehicle equipment control, and the pin-compatible, mid-range Open-Q 4290CS SIP based on Qualcomm QCS4290 octa-core Kryo 260 CPU for applications requiring artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Purism ☛ Try AweSIM with Your Own Pre-Configured Librem USA phone

    Get 30 days of AweSIM free with a new Librem 5 USA phone. Use the coupon code TRYAWESIM after you opt-in to the AweSIM plan. A special pairing that gives you ultimate peace of mind as soon as you unbox! Ensure that your personal data is secure, and not sold to third parties.

  • Arduino ☛ Arduino Day turns 10, but you are a 10!

    Tune in on March 25th and celebrate 10 years of Arduino Day with us! This year marks the 10th anniversary of Arduino Day – and what a great milestone to celebrate together.

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ The Rock 5 B is not a Raspberry Pi killer—yet

    Radxa’s Rock 5 model B is an ARM single board computer that’s3x fasterthan a Raspberry Pi. And that’s just the 8-core CPU—with PCI Express Gen 3 x4 (the Pi has Gen 2 x1), storage is7x faster! I got over 3 GB/sec with a KIOXIA XG6 NVMe SSD.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Nokia Power User ☛ Nokia X30 – Nokia G60 get new Camera feature & Android 12 build with January Security update – Nokiapoweruser

  • Android Police ☛ Android 13 QPR2 Beta 3 preps some smart changes for how you choose wallpapers

  • Phone Arena ☛ Android 13 QPR2 Beta 3 is now available for Pixel devices – PhoneArena

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ How to Sign a PDF Document on Android – Make Tech Easier

  • CNET ☛ Samsung Galaxy S23 Specs vs. Google Pixel 7: Android Phones Compared – CNET

  • Make Use Of ☛ No Permission to Enable Voice Typing on Android? Here’s How to Fix It

  • 9to5Google ☛ What it’s like to use Matter on Google Home for Android

  • CNX Software ☛ Qualcomm-based Open-Q 2290CS and 4290CS SIPs target industrial IoT and machine vision applications – CNX Software

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• FSF

  • FSF ☛ FSF Blogs: January GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Nineteen new GNU releases!

  • FSF ☛ FSF Events: Free Software Directory meeting on IRC: Friday, February 24, starting at 12:00 EST (17:00 UTC)

    Join the FSF and friends on Friday, February 24, from 12:00

    to 15:00 EST (17:00 to 20:00 UTC)

    to help improve the Free Software Directory.

  • FSF ☛ FSF Events: Free Software Directory meeting on IRC: Friday, February 17, starting at 12:00 EST (17:00 UTC)

    Join the FSF and friends on Friday, February 17, from 12:00

    to 15:00 EST (17:00 to 20:00 UTC)

    to help improve the Free Software Directory.

  • FSF ☛ FSF Events: Free Software Directory meeting on IRC: Friday, February 10, starting at 12:00 EST (17:00 UTC)

    Join the FSF and friends on Friday, February 10, from 12:00

    to 15:00 EST (17:00 to 20:00 UTC)

    to help improve the Free Software Directory.

• Programming/Development

  • Glibc 2.37

  • Go 1.20 Release Notes – The Go Programming Language

    The latest Go release, version 1.20, arrives six months after Go 1.19. Most of its changes are in the implementation of the toolchain, runtime, and libraries. As always, the release maintains the Go 1 promise of compatibility. We expect almost all Go programs to continue to compile and run as before.

  • Daniel Stenberg ☛ curl’s use of many CI services [Ed: Daniel outsourced curl to proprietary compiler controlled by the NSA and Microsoft. Nothing to brag about here.]

    In the beginning and for many years, the curl project used no CI services at all. It instead used a distributed build and test systems where volunteers ran machines that pulled the latest code repeatedly, built curl, ran the tests and reported back the results to a central server.

  • Dirk Eddelbuettel ☛ Dirk Eddelbuettel: RInside 0.2.18 on CRAN: Maintenance

    A new release 0.2.18 ofRInsidearrived onCRANand inDebiantoday. This is the first release in ten months since the 0.2.17 release.

Leftovers

• Science

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ Removing RF interference from a cell phone from audio recording

    Thinking I could just use the nice feature of the Wireless Go II’s built-in recording, I grabbed the track off the body pack itself—but found that it, too, had the RFI sound, meaning the iPhone’s interference made it into the mic circuit itself, not just the wireless mic signal to my camera!

    I tried Final Cut Pro’s built-in voice isolation, and that helped mute the noise between speech, but during speech it was omnipresent.

• Education

  • Medical School withdraws from U.S. News annual rankings

    The Medical School has announced it will no longer participate in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings of medical schools. The magazine’s criteria to rank medical schools has long been a concern at U-M.

  • Reason ☛ Robert Pondiscio: Why Our Kids Can’t Read

    A former teacher says there are bigger problems in K-12 education than CRT and wokeness—and that school choice may not fix them.

  • NCAC ☛ New library collection policy at McKinney (Texas) Independent School District cause for concern

    The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to McKinney Independent School District in McKinney, Texas, concerning a recent change to district policy.  The District has amended Board Policy EFB Local to exclude books from school libraries that contain material that appeals to “the prurient interest of a minor in sex, nudity, or excretion”

• Hardware

  • Engadget ☛ Sony has now shipped over 32.1 million PS5s following blockbuster holiday sales

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ A two-day wait for a bed in Malaysian government hospitals

    With the emergency department at some Malaysian government hospitals bursting at their seams, some doctors have said that the wait for beds can stretch to two days or more.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong firms rejecting Covid-positive customers could breach anti-discrimination law, watchdog says

    Restaurants and clinics that refuse to serve people testing positive for Covid-19 could breach Hong Kong’s anti-discrimination law, the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) has said. Speaking on an RTHK radio show on Thursday morning, EOC chairperson Ricky Chu said the Disability Discrimination Ordinance protects people with infectious

  • The Straits Times ☛ Thick haze blankets Bangkok as air pollution hits unhealthy levels

    Unsafe levels of dust are expected to last until Friday.

  • Latvia ☛ Latvia number one in Europe for household booze spending

    While it’s sometimes nice to be number one in Europe, this may not be one of those times. Fresh statistics published February 1 by Eurostat are likely to lead to a hangover.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Pandemic Never Ended, WHO Warns

  • Science Alert ☛ Fungal Pathogens May Be Adapting Dangerously to Global Warming

• Security

  • PowerDNS ☛ PowerDNS Recursor 4.8.2 Released

    We are proud to announce the release of PowerDNS Recursor 4.8.2. This release is a maintenance release, fixing some issues, in particular: Please refer to the change log for the 4.8.2 release for additional details.

  • Security Week ☛ Ransomware Leads to Nantucket Public Schools Shutdown [Ed: Microsoft shutting down schools?]

    Nantucket’s public schools shut its doors to students and teachers after a data encryption and extortion attack on its computer systems.

  • Security Week ☛ 30k Internet-Exposed QNAP NAS Devices Affected by Recent Vulnerability

    Censys finds 30,000 internet-exposed QNAP appliances that are likely affected by a recently disclosed critical code injection vulnerability.

  • Fedora Magazine ☛ Fedora Magazine: Automatically decrypt your disk using TPM2

    This article demonstrates how to configure clevis and systemd-cryptenroll using a Trusted Platform Module 2 chip to automatically decrypt your LUKS-encrypted partitions at boot.

  • APNIC ☛ Slammer: 20 years after

    Guest Post: Where were you when SQL Slammer nearly broke the Internet? Could it happen again?

  • APNIC ☛ [Podcast] Is my Internet Down?

    Measuring Internet outages with Google Trends.

  • Security Week ☛ Malicious NPM, PyPI Packages Stealing User Information

    Security researchers are warning of a new wave of malicious NPM and PyPI packages designed to steal user information and download additional payloads.

  • Anders Borch ☛ Sandboxed NPM

    I recently started a new project, and all the anxiety around someone running peacenotwar or other similar malicious code which would simply wipe my computer is coming up again.

  • Security Week ☛ 98% of Firms Have a Supply Chain Relationship That Has Been Breached: Analysis

    A new report found that 98% of organizations have a relationship with a third party that has been breached, while more than 50% have an indirect relationship with more than 200 fourth parties that have been breached.

  • Security Week ☛ Dutch, European Hospitals ‘Hit by Pro-Russian Hackers’

    Dutch cyber authorities said several hospital websites in the Netherlands and Europe were likely targeted by a pro-Kremlin hacking group because of their countries’ support for Ukraine.

  • Security Week ☛ VMware Confirms Exploit Code Released for Critical vRealize Logging Vulnerabilities

    VMware confirms the publication of exploit code and urged VMware vRealize Log Insight users to implement mitigations immediately.

  • IT Wire ☛ Microsoft tells users to patch – even if it breaks their systems

    From time to time, people from Microsoft come up with stupid takes to divert attention from the fact that the products put out by their company are full of security holes. The tech world is chock-full of spin and Microsoft is not reluctant to indulge in it.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Infamous North Korean hacking group Lazarus targets research organizations

    A new campaign from the infamous North Korean hacking group Lazarus has been found to be actively targeting public and private sector research organizations, the medical research and energy sector and their supply chain.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Splunk and Rivian cut jobs amid biggest layoffs since the end of the dot-com bubble

    Data analytics firm Splunk Inc. and electric car maker Rivian Automotive Inc. announced layoffs today amid what is shaping up to be the biggest job cuts in the tech industry since the end of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Quartz ☛ Snap’s pandemic stock gains have been completely erased

      Snap Inc. posted another rough quarter of financial results on January 31, showing that its advertising challenges are far from over. The Snapchat parent company, whose stock hit an all-time high of $83 per share in September 2021, has seen its share price plummet in recent months.

• Defence/Aggression

  • YLE ☛ MP Harkimo to HS: Russian cooperation was “mistake”

    Hjallis Harkimo sold the Helsinki arena to Russian-Finnish businessmen Gennadi Timchenko and Roman Rotenberg in 2013 for 35 millions euros.

  • Helsinki Times ☛ Marin: Appointment of premier’s security policy advisor likely to be postponed

    The office of the prime minister has been preparing to set up the advisory position, but the notion has come under heavy criticism from the office of the president, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Defence Command of the Finnish Defence Forces.

  • JURIST ☛ Myanmar dispatch: two years after the military coup, Myanmar people stage a ‘silent strike’

    Myanmar law students are reporting for JURIST on challenges to the rule of law in their country under the military junta that deposed the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.peared first onJURIST – News.

  • The Strategist ☛ Report from 1945 holds lessons for defence strategic review team

    What defence forces should Australia maintain at a time of strategic uncertainty and rapid technological change?

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Ukrainian SMEs hold the key to the country’s economic revival

    There is still no end in sight to the Russian invasion of Ukraine but the international community must not delay efforts to revive Ukraine’s economy by supporting the country’s vibrant SME sector.

  • YLE ☛ Turkish Foreign Minister: We will stick to our Nato demands, even if security situation deteriorates

    Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said Wednesday that a separate application by Finland would be evaluated more positively than would Sweden’s.

  • CNN ☛ CNN goes into the trenches with Ukrainian troops fighting Russian soldiers

    CNN’s Fred Pleitgen gets a firsthand look at how Ukrainian troops are fighting against Russian soldiers in the eastern part of Ukraine.

  • CNN ☛ Fighting Wagner is like a ‘zombie movie’ says Ukrainian soldier

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  • ADF ☛ Burkina Faso Inches Closer to Wagner Mercenaries

    ADF STAFF As it seeks to expand its presence in the Sahel region, Russia appears to be following the same playbook in Burkina Faso that it used to embed itself into Mali’s security apparatus.

  • Latvia ☛ Group of Ukrainian criminals tried to enter Latvia: Border Guard

    On January 30, a group of 14 Ukrainian nationals at the border inspection post of Grebneva was refused entry to Latvia. Border guards found during checks that these men have committed crimes in Ukraine and may not have received their punishment, Latvian Television reported on January 31.

  • AntiWar ☛ The Legacy of George W. Bush and His Torturers

    In the days and months following the attacks of 9/11, the government laid the blame for orchestrating the attacks on Osama bin Ladin.

  • AntiWar ☛ The US Is Making Billions Being Warlords in Yemen

    One of Biden’s promises during his presidential campaign was to immediately move to end all support for the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen.

  • AntiWar ☛ Has the War in Ukraine Reached Its Climax?

    On January 25, the US announced that it would send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. The M1 Abrams is the US’ primary battle tank and is among the most advanced and powerful tanks in the world.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ America’s Exceptionalism in Mass-Shooting and Its Culture of Rugged Individualism

    Amid an unrelenting surge of gun massacres, many have wondered why the United States- the world’s leading country in mass shootings over the last century, is more prone to mass shootings than any other country.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Russia restored Syrian air base for joint use

    Russia and Syria have restored the ‘Al-Jarrah’ military air base in Syria’s north to be jointly used, Russia’s Defence Ministry said. “Russian and Syrian military personnel restored the destroyed al-Jarrah airfield,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ NATO tanks for Ukraine provoke contradictions in the alliance

    After a drawn-out back and forth between Ukraine, the U.S. and European NATO countries, the first deliveries of Western-made tanks for the Ukrainian military have been announced, informs MSN.

• Environment

  • Copenhagen Post ☛ Denmark soaks through wettest January in over 150 years

    Historical dating back to 1874 data shows that winters in Denmark are becoming, not only wetter, but warmer as well

  • Axios ☛ Deadly ice storm coats roads, airport runways from Dallas to Memphis as power outages mount

    Ice storm warnings are in effect for 12 million people across large portions of Texas, including the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, western Tennessee, northern Mississippi and much of Arkansas.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Women and Climate Change in South Asia

    Over the past decade, climate change has emerged as a major non-traditional security threat that demands an urgent response. South Asia has been identified as particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change according to the sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Quartz ☛ Exxon’s record $56 billion profit has renewed the White House’s outrage at oil companies

      ExxonMobil raked in $55.7 billion in annual profits, shattering a 2008 record of $45 billion and setting a new goalpost for American and European fossil fuel companies.

    • YLE ☛ Finland consumed 10% more coal last year compared to 2021

      Use of the fossil fuel increased during 2022 due to the energy crisis, but consumption has long been in decline.

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico shuts down solar geoengineering projects

      Mexico will shut down solar geoengineering projects in the country following an unauthorized experiment carried out in Baja California Sur.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian ministry says businesses are responsible for increased Russian LPG imports

      Following a recent report by Reuters that the Baltic countries have doubled their purchases of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Russia in the past year, Lithuania’s Ministry of Energy assures that the country’s energy infrastructure is not used for such imports.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ Rare bee sighted in Denmark following an absence of 50 years

      For the first time in more than 50 years, two specimens of the vulsed mask bee – which gets its name because of a bulge (tumor) around the chest

    • The Local SE ☛ How jellyfish in Gothenburg’s archipelago reveal impact of climate change

      A global increase in jellyfish sparked by climate change is impacting communities in the Gothenburg archipelago, with local restaurants and fishing reporting the effects.

• Finance

  • teleSUR ☛ Half a Million British Workers Strike Over Pay

    Over the last year, Britain has seen record-high inflation, while wages have failed to keep up. Since last summer, Britain has been in the grip of a wave of strikes.

  • teleSUR ☛ French Unions Call for New Strikes Over Pension Reforms

    The controversial reform would progressively raise the legal retirement age by three months yearly, from 62 to 64 by 2030.

  • teleSUR ☛ Brexit Deals Blow to UK Economy, Says Expert

    Iain Begg described Brexit’s effect on the British economy as “incremental, small, bit by bit, drip by drip,” but mainly negative.

  • Quartz ☛ Hundreds of thousands of UK workers will strike in response to new labor law

    Workers from across the UK’s public sector will walk out en masse on Feb. 1.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Meta announces huge share buyback and efficiency plans and its stock soars [Ed: Meta embezzlement. FAKING its worth to enrich dumb investors.]

    Shares of Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms Inc. soared in extended trading today as the company revealed the impact of recent cost-cutting measures it has implemented. It also guided for higher revenue in the coming quarter than what analysts had forecast, while promising more share buybacks and further improvements in operational efficiency.

  • New York Times ☛ Assessing Political Spin in the Debt Ceiling Fight

    Republicans have wrongly suggested that President Biden and his party are solely responsible for the situation, while Democrats have overstated former President Donald J. Trump’s role.

  • New York Times ☛ Biden and McCarthy Discuss Debt Limit as Financial Crisis Looms

    The meeting, which did not appear to yield a breakthrough, highlighted the differences between the White House and the Republicans who now control the House.

  • Helsinki Times ☛ Finland’s house prices fell 2.5%, sales decreased 38% in December

    The data indicates that the prices of old dwellings in housing companies declined by 2.5 per cent year-on-year and 0.2 per cent month-on-month in December 2022, translating to a year-on-year decline of three per cent for the period between October and December.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Axios ☛ The fractious GOP is consolidating around a “protect the children” platform for 2024

  • Consulate-General of Germany in Istanbul closed today ‘for security reasons’

    The decision followed those made by the Consulate-Generals of Great Britain and the Netherlands in İstanbul, both of which are temporarily closed, and warnings that “risk of terror attacks” could follow the Qur’an burning demonstrations in Sweden and Denmark.

  • Let’s BeReal: Two takes on social media realism

    The French social media app, BeReal, took the world by storm shortly after its 2020 launch. The app’s tagline, “Your friends for real,” was inspired by Founder Alexis Barreyat’s mission to solve the problem of influencers’ lives not being as glamorous or accessible as portrayed online.

  • Helsinki Times ☛ Important reminder for voters: Almost one million Finns receive a notification of their right to vote in general elections electronically

    Already nearly one million voters will receive a notification of their right to vote in general elections electronically this year. The notification comes electronically to all those entitled to vote who use Suomi.fi Messages. However, not all recipients of an electronic notification remember or notice that they receive the notification electronically.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Councils against data discrimination

    Data discrimination occurs when individuals or groups are treated unfairly because of characteristics or traits identified through the collection and analysis of their data. This can take many forms, such as denying individuals access to certain services or opportunities because of their race, gender, age, or other personal characteristics.

  • ACLU ☛ Making Black History, Building Black Futures

    As we honor leaders in Black history this month, the battles they lead for civil rights may seem like relics of a past era. But there is more progress to be made to achieve systemic equality for Black people, particularly in the realm of voting rights, economic justice, housing, and education; as well as ending police brutality and eradicating racism and discrimination in the criminal legal system. Those battles continue under the leadership of Black activists, lawmakers, athletes, actors, and others — many working side by side with the ACLU — who are pursuing true equality to this day. This year, we’re recognizing both.

  • The Kent Stater ☛ 100 Plates event celebrates MLK Week with lunch and group discussion

    The MLK commemorative committee celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission to achieve a “beloved community” with a lunch and discussion.  “He believed there were three barriers to achieving a beloved community,” said Shana Lee, assistant dean of students and director of parents and families engagement.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Reason ☛ Review: ‘How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex’

    Samantha Cole’s book is marred by vague animosity toward tech companies.

  • Michael Geist ☛ “This Law Will Be One of Scapegoating All Those Who Do Not Fit Into What Our Bureaucrats Think Canada Should Be”: Bill C-11 is Back with Stunning Rebuke From Senator David Adams Richards

    Senator David Adams Richards, an acclaimed Canadian author who has won Governor-General Awards for both fiction and non-fiction as well as a Giller Prize, provided the most memorable Senate speech for the ill-fated Bill C-10,stating on the Senate floorin June 2021 that “I don’t think this bill needs amendments; I think, however, it needs a stake through the heart.”

• Monopolies

  • Patents

    • Quartz ☛ Pfizer is expecting its covid windfall to end in 2023 [Ed: Stealing public money using patents on products that do not even work as advertised and not properly tested either]

      Then covid happened, and for the pharmaceutical companies that came up with vaccines against it, in particular Pfizer and Moderna, it was a bonanza. Billions of people globally needed one—no, two; actually, three; or four!—shots.

    • Tell us your views on the latest EPC and PCT-EPO Guidelines [Ed: EPO keeps violation the EPC with impunity while pretending to harvest "input" about it (that's about optics, not substance)]

      Users have until 4 April 2023 to provide their input on the Guidelines published today.

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Cancelling a Patent Claim

      The pending case ofJump Rope Systems v. Coulter Venturesis fascinating to me as someone who teaches both property and civil procedure. The basic questions: (1) As an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding draws to a close – toward cancellation – at what point are the claims no longer enforceable? (2) What is the effect of cancellation, in particular, is it like canceling a magazine subscription where the former subscriber isn’t off the hook for past-due bills; or, is it like an annulment – anAbInitioExtinguishment?  The case also (3) raises a straight-up due process challenge to the IPR system.

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ White House Pushes Legislation Targeting ‘The Huge Service Fees That Companies Like Ticketmaster Slap Onto Tickets’

      In November, the day after Live Nation reported its “highest quarterly attendance ever,” the White House pledged to crack down on “processing fees on concert tickets.”

    • Digital Music News ☛ Biden Administration Lists Largest Content Piracy Hubs — RIAA Responds

      Biden Administration releases the annual list of the largest content piracy hubs affecting the US — RIAA responds. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has released its annual Notorious Markets Report, highlighting the importance of enforcing copyright in the continuously worrying trends in online piracy.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Technical

  • 48656C6C6F2C20776F726C64210A

    The clever trick here is to place a string somewhere that can be executed by a CPU but just before that string place a call to somewhere else, and in that call the return address (the next instruction after the call, or here also a string) is popped and used as the address to print via write.

  • RE: StackSmith: I got a new tablet

    I currently own a Pine64 RockPro64 and a Quartz64. I recently bought the 7 inch LCD display with the Playbox enclosure and Wifi/Bluetooth module. This would enable me to turn either the RockPro64 or Quartz64 into a tablet. The current OS options available for RockPro64 are a stock Android 9 rom, postmarketOS with various UI options, or I could run Manjaro ARM and install Plasma Mobile. For the Quartz64, the only OS options currently available are a development version of an Android 11 ROM or Manjaro ARM.

    It would be really nice if LineageOS supported these devices but that does not appear to be in their future plans. I ran LineageOS on my previous tablet, which was a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (Wifi version), but it died abou a year ago.

GNU/Linux

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Tux Digital ☛ 49: From the Ashes

    This week, Linux Out Loud chats about open-source projects rising from the ashes. Welcome to episode 49 of Linux Out Loud. We fired up our mics, connected those headphones as we searched the community for themes to expound upon. We kept the banter friendly, the conversation somewhat on topic, and had fun doing it.

  • mintCast Podcast ☛ 404.5 – 2022 Distro Rundown

    This week in our Innards, We do a rundown of our favorite distros of 2022
    In “Check This Out” we talk about a graphical tool Londoner shared that makes light work of scheduling a shutdown or reboot. Moss shares his experience with the Flatpak of a favorite game of his; and we share an article postulating the death of Unix.

    Download

• Graphics Stack

  • Mike Blumenkrantz: Fastlink

    I previously wrote a post talking about some optimization work that’s been done with RADV to improve fast-link performance. As promised, that wasn’t the end of the story. Today’s post will be a bit different, however, as I’ll be assuming all the graphics experts in the audience are already well-versed in all the topics I’m covering.

• Applications

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ Best Linux Software for Kids: Apps, Distros, and Games

    Linux is a very powerful operating system, which is why it powers most of the servers on the Internet. While this OS may not have a reputation for popular games such as FIFA or PES, it offers the best educational software and games for kids. These are eight of the best Linux educational software to keep your kids ahead of the game.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ How to Enable Minimize button in Elementary OS 7 App Windows

    Elementary OS 7 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. It was released on Tuesday with many improvements on its core applications as well as desktop experience.

  • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install WP-CLI on Linux for WordPress

    Managing a WordPress website can be a time-consuming and complex task. From updating plugins and themes to creating backups and managing databases, many tasks must be performed regularly to keep your website running smoothly. This is where WP-CLI comes in.

  • TecAdmin ☛ Running a Crontab as www-data User in Linux

    In a Linux system, the cron daemon is used to execute scheduled commands or scripts. By default, cron jobs run as the root user. However, sometimes it is necessary to run cron jobs as a non-root user, such as the www-data user.

  • TecAdmin ☛ A Quick Reference Guide to Uptime Command in Linux

    The uptime command in Linux is a simple utility that displays the system uptime or the amount of time that the system has been running since its last reboot.

  • FOSSLinux ☛ Install Duplicity on Ubuntu: A Quick and Easy Guide

    Backing up data is one of the most critical duties for a system admin. As such, one must be well-versed in software that can ease data backing up. Not only must an admin be aware of data backing, but also, as an individual, you must be able to back up your data without struggle. One of the most renowned backup tools that will help you do this is Duplicity.

  • FOSSLinux ☛ How to renew Let’s Encrypt certificate on Ubuntu

    Access to a reliable and secure online environment is no longer a luxury. Nothing seems impossible now that the internet connects all corners of the globe. The internet and its numerous protocols have spurred the creation of e-learning, video conferencing, gaming, and other platforms that link people from all over the world. Regardless of how much we laud the internet, its legitimacy is meaningless without security.

  • TecAdmin ☛ How To Install Wine from Source Code on Debian-based System

    As an avid user of Windows programs, you might have found that at times you need to use a particular program on your Ubuntu system.

  • Trend Oceans ☛ Silencing the Noise: A Guide to Redirecting Output to /dev/null in Linux

    If the unnecessary output of your script bothers you, dump it to /dev/null. While developing a script to automate a task, you might find that the output is printed even though it actually doesn’t require it at all, and because of this, your terminal becomes crowded with unneeded text.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install Discourse on Rocky Linux 9

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Discourse on Rocky Linux 9.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install Zeek Network Security Monitor on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Zeek Network Security Monitor on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Zeek, formerly known as Bro, is a free and open-source software network security monitor.

  • Ubuntubuzz ☛ Download elementary OS 7, Verify Its Checksum, and Install It on Computer

  • Ubuntubuzz ☛ How To Make Course Marketing Flyer with LibreOffice Writer

    This tutorial will help you create course marketing using LibreOffice Writer. This can also be used for other marketing purposes such as culinary and medical. We have already prepared the pictures and text and you can download them then try the exercises at home step by step to achieve the final product. We make this as avid users of Ubuntu and fans of Canonical. Happy writing!

  • [Fixed] bash: add-apt-repository: command not found

    If you get the message “bash: add-apt-repository: command not found” while trying to use the add-apt-repository command in Ubuntu, it means that the software-properties-common package that has this command is not installed on your system.

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to fix this error by installing the software-properties-common package.

  • TecMint ☛ How to Install and Set Up Headless Linux Server

    A vast majority of Linux users are familiar with a Linux desktop PC which provides a graphical environment with which you can interact with the system. However, unlike a Linux desktop, a headless server is an operating system that runs without a GUI (Graphical User Environment).

    It is installed on hardware that is not connected to any peripheral device such as a monitor, keyboard, or mouse during its operation (although these are required during the initial setup).

  • [Fixed] Http Error Uploading Image to WordPress

    “HTTP Error when uploading image to WordPress” is a common issue faced by many WordPress users. This error message appears when you try to upload an image to your WordPress site and can be frustrating as it prevents you from adding images to your posts or pages. The good news is that there are several methods you can use to resolve this issue.

    In this article, we will discuss some of the most common reasons for the “HTTP Error” message and provide step-by-step instructions on how to fix it. By the end of this tutorial, you should have a clear understanding of how to resolve this error and successfully upload images to your WordPress site.

  • useradd Vs. adduser

    Linux is a popular open-source operating system that runs on a variety of hardware platforms, including desktops, servers, and smartphones. One of the key features of Linux is the command-line interface (CLI), which allows users to perform a wide range of tasks using text-based commands.

    In this article, we’ll discuss the two commonly used commands for managing users in Linux, useradd and adduser. While they perform similar functions, they have some important differences that are important to understand.

    useradd is a standard Linux command that is used to create new user accounts. It is available in all popular distributions of Linux, including Red Hat, Fedora, and Debian. The syntax for the useradd command is straightforward and easy to use. For example, to create a new user account with the username “sandy”, you would use the following command:

    This will create a new user account with the default settings, including the default home directory, shell, and group. To customize the user account, you can use additional options with the useradd command. For example, to specify a different home directory, you can use the -d option:useradd -d /home/sandy sandy

• Games

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Big new Stable Update for Steam Deck and Desktop Steam

    Valve has today released a major update for the Steam client on Steam Deck and for Desktop users too. There’s absolutely masses new including small new features, along with plenty of bug fixes to make the experience smoother overall, as usual a whole bunch of it is shared between Desktop and Steam Deck.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ These were the most popular Steam Deck games for January 2023

    Valve has done their monthly thing, giving out a list of what was the most played games on Steam Deck through January 2023. Yes it’s already February, no I can’t believe it either.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Ubisoft just broke their games on Linux desktop and Steam Deck

    Update 21:17: Looks like Proton developers have updated the “bleeding-edge” Beta for Proton Experimental, that works around the issue. Note: using it can cause other issues, the Beta doesn’t have a lot of testing, you’ve been warned.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Proton Hotfix improves Dead Space, Proton Experimental tweak for Tiny Tina’s Wonderland

    In addition to the below, Valve did another Proton Experimental update after some recent Ubisoft Connect breakage I highlighted that includes:

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past gets a reverse-engineered clone

    The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the 1991 classic from Nintendo has been reverse-engineered to bring it natively to more platforms. Nintendo are no doubt warming up their lawyers. Available on GitHub under the MIT license, it notes the game is fully playable from start to finish and it does need the original ROM for the resources, so it doesn’t include the copyrighted assets.

  • 9to5Linux ☛ Latest Steam Client Update Enables New Big Picture Mode by Default, Adds Linux Fixes

    The biggest change in the new Steam Client update is the enablement of the new Big Picture mode, the one that resembles Steam Deck‘s UI, by default. So, after this update, say goodbye to the old Big Picture mode and welcome the new and fancy one on your Steam for Linux client.

    Those who don’t like the new Big Picture mode will still be able to access the old one by using the -oldbigpicture command-line option. However, Valve noted the fact that the old Big Picture mode will be removed for good in a future update.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Budgie 10.7 sounds like a great desktop to use on Linux

    Budgie 10.7 is out now, refreshing many parts of this Linux desktop environment to improve the UI across many parts. Originally created for the Solus Linux distribution, nowadays it lives as an independent project and continues to impress.

  • 9to5Linux ☛ Xfce’s Apps Update for January 2023: New Releases of Thunar, Xfce Panel, and Whisker Menu

    The January 2023 issue of my exclusive “Xfce’s Apps Update” monthly roundup is here to inform fans of the lightweight Xfce desktop environment about the latest releases of their favorite Xfce apps, plugins, tools, and more.

    January 2023 was quite busy for the Xfce developers as they kicked off the development cycle of the next major release of the desktop environment, Xfce 4.20, which will finally bring Wayland support. As expected, the Xfce 4.20 development cycle takes place under the Xfce 4.19 umbrella, and several components are already available for early adopters.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• New Releases

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ elementary OS 7 ‘Horus’ is out now with major AppCenter upgrades

    elementary OS, probably one of the absolutely slickest looking Linux distributions around, has released version 7 with some major upgrades.

• BSD

  • SANS ☛ DShield Honeypot Setup with pfSense, (Tue, Jan 31st)

    I recently decided to update my home router and thought it was a great opportunity to dig into using pfSense

  • Klara ☛ OpenZFS – Auditing for Storage Performance

    OpenZFS and storage in general is a complex and important part of any project’s architecture. It should be planned thoughtfully and ideally, ahead of time! In this article, we’ll talk about how to understand, measure, and plan for your storage performance needs.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Set up GitLab CI and GitLab Runner to configure Ansible automation controller

  • Venture Beat ☛ Red Hat gives an ARM up to OpenShift Kubernetes operations

    Red Hat announced the general availability of OpenShift 4.12, bringing new capabilities to its hybrid cloud application delivery platform.

• Debian Family

  • Sparky GNU/Linux ☛ Sparky news 2023/01

    The 1st monthly Sparky project and donate report of the 2023…

  • Simon Josefsson ☛ Simon Josefsson: Apt Archive Transparency: debdistdiff & apt-canary

    I’ve always found the operation of apt software package repositories to be a mystery. There appears to be a lack of transparency into which people have access to important apt package repositories out there, how the automatic non-human update mechanism is implemented, and what changes are published.

  • Jonathan McDowell: Enabling retrogaming with Kodi on Debian

    For some reason my son has started to be really into watching playthroughs of Mario and similar games on Youtube. I don’t understand the appeal, but it’s less distracting as background than Paw Patrol, so I’m not complaining. He’s not quite at the stage he’s ready to play the games himself, but it’s coming. So I figured it would be neat to sort out some retrogaming bits ready for when that happens.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Make Use Of ☛ 8 Discontinued Ubuntu Features and Products You May Have Missed

    
    Ubuntu has been around since 2004. During that time, Canonical has experimented with a number of Ubuntu-specific features and Ubuntu-related products. Some are still around, while others have faded with time.

    Here are some nuggets of Ubuntu’s past to tickle your nostalgia. Some no longer serve a purpose. Others may make you yearn for what could have been.

  • Julian Andres Klode ☛ Julian Andres Klode: Ubuntu 2022v1 secure boot key rotation and friends

    This is the story of the currently progressing changes to secure boot on Ubuntu and the history of how we got to where we are.

  • Ubuntu ☛ Multipass 1.11 brings enhanced performance for Linux on Mac and Windows | Ubuntu

    Multipass 1.11 is here!

    This release has some particularly interesting features that we’ve been wanting to ship for a while now. We’re excited to share them with you!

• Devices/Embedded

  • CNX Software ☛ Arduino Plant Watering Kit combines Nano RP2040 Connect with moisture sensor and submersible pump

    Arduino Plant Watering Kit content: Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect board (ABX00053) with Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU, ESP32 module for WiFi, and Bluetooth LE connectivity.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Fresh Android 13 Beta Build Hits Pixel Phones

  • XDA ☛ Android 13 QPR2 Beta 3 is now available for Google Pixel smartphones

  • Android Police ☛ Android 13 QPR2 Beta 3 has arrived for Google Pixel phones

  • 9to5Google ☛ Android 13 QPR2 Beta 3 now available for Pixel phones

  • 9to5Google ☛ Samsung making XR device powered by Android and Qualcomm

  • The Sun ☛ People are only just realizing there’s an Android feature that makes getting deliveries so much easier | The US Sun

  • The Sun ☛ Six fake Android apps to be aware of or risk losing thousands from your bank account | The Sun

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• OpenSource.com ☛ A guide to fuzzy queries with Apache ShardingSphere

  Apache ShardingSphere is an open source distributed database and an ecosystem users and developers need for their databases to provide a customized and cloud-native experience. Its latest release contains many new features, including data encryption integrated with existing SQL workflows. Most importantly, it allows fuzzy queries of the encrypted data.

• OpenSource.com ☛ What’s your community thinking pattern?

  This article is the second and final part of a discussion of the research by Dave Logan, Bob King, and Halee Fischer-Wright.  If you haven’t read the first part yet, you can do so here. These researchers defined five cultural thinking patterns in communities. In part one, I explained the first three of five thinking patterns. These communities are 20-150 people. I also suggested the responsibilities of an introducer-in-chief. This environmental thinking also refers to how the group behaves and how members talk to each other. To the researchers, each pattern has a identifying perspective:

  In this article, I continue with their impressions of community thinking pattern #4 and conclude with thinking pattern #5 (the most optimistic).

• Purism ☛ The Danger of Focusing on Specs

  Many years ago I was a sysadmin for a medium-sized tech company, and a fringe benefit of that role was getting first choice at stacks of “obsolete” computers that were about to be thrown away. They say that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and that is even truer when the first man ran Windows, but you run Linux. It has long been known among the Linux community that a Windows computer that was “too slow to use” and about to be thrown away, could be transformed into a brand new computer simply by installing Linux on it. While my Windows-using colleagues were replacing computers every two or three years as they grew slower and slower with age, I found my Linux-using friends and myself were often using the same hardware (even second-hand hardware) for at least twice as long. Even when I replaced hardware with something new, I found that the old hardware still performed, for the most part, as well as it did when I started using it. The hardware specs didn’t matter nearly as much as the software that ran on it.

  Even today, many people still fall into the trap of relying solely on specs to gauge whether hardware is “fast” or “slow” and forgetting the giant role software has to play in performance. Both hardware and software companies incentivize this mentality, as it means more frequent sales for hardware vendors, and customers who are more likely to blame their “old” hardware than bloated software for poor performance. In this article I will discuss some of the consequences that come when you only assess hardware by specs.

• Call for Community-Led Tracks at FOSSY

  We’re looking for organizers who can give us a really good idea of what we can expect from their track. The description should give a detailed explanation of the topic, ideally along with some of the issues you expect to cover. Example talks you expect, what kind of audience are you aiming for, and how this topic fits into the larger FOSS ecosystem are good things to mention.

• Events

  • PostgreSQL ☛ PGConf.BE 2023: Call for Papers & Sponsors

    Announcing the Belgian PostgreSQL Conference

    PGConf.be 2023is the third Belgian PostgreSQL conference in Haasrode, Leuven.

    The conference will take place onMay 12th, 2023. Registration for the conference will be opened later.

    TheCall for Papersis open until March 30th. Submit your talks by mail with the subject ‘I love Elephants’.

    The Call for Sponsors is open onpgconf.be

    See you in Leuven in May!

  • PostgreSQL ☛ PostgreSQL Conference Germany 2023

    PGConf.de 2023 is the next iteration of the German PostgreSQL Conference.
    It takes place in the “Haus der Technik” in Essen.

    https://2023.pgconf.de/

    The conference will take place on June 27th, 2023.

    Registration for the conference will be possible well in advance. Talks will be in German or English language. Tickets must be purchased online. For sponsors, we have put together a package that includes among other things, a number of free tickets.

    The Call for Papers is open now:www.postgresql.eu/events/pgconfde2023/callforpapers/

    Note that this event takes place in the same week asSwiss PGDay 2023. As a speaker you should be able to travel from one conference to the other in the day between the two conferences.

    See you in Essen in June 2023!

• Web Browsers/Web Servers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla ☛ Mozilla: How to talk to kids about the news

      As the father of a teenager, I find myself worrying – and not just about their grades and how quickly they’re growing up. Dating? Driver’s permit? I’m not ready for this! I also worry about how my child, through the internet, is experiencing the world at a much quicker pace than I did.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ OnlyOffice Desktop Editors 7.3.0 Released! Native Dialogs & Better Flatpak/Snap Support

    OnlyOffice announced the new 7.3.0 release for its desktop editors office suite one day ago. For Linux users, the new release now use native dialog windows (e.g., file manager and print).

• Programming/Development

  • Godot Engine ☛ Dev snapshot: Godot 4.0 beta 17

    We’re now just days away from the Release Candidate, working at full capacity on finalizing as many of the remaining high priority issues as we can. This beta adds audio blending in AnimationTree, fixes GDScript typed arrays, and refactors high quality texture import to enable ASTC support.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Serializing IPs quickly in C++

    On the Internet, we often use 32-bit addresses which we serialize as strings such as 192.128.0.1. The string corresponds to the Integer address 0xc0800001 (3229614081 in decimal). How might you serialize, go from the integer to the string, efficiently in C++?

• Standards/Consortia

  • H2 View ☛ Norwegian consortium targets maritime hydrogen value chain

    A new Norwegian consortium has set sights on developing a complete hydrogen value chain for the maritime sector.

Leftovers

• MIT Technology Review ☛ Who gets to be a tech entrepreneur in China?

  We live in an age where the concept of being an entrepreneur is increasingly broad. It’s often hard to slot occupations—hosting a podcast, driving for Uber, even having an OnlyFans account—into the traditional definitions of employment vs. entrepreneurship. Of course, this is not a strictly Western phenomenon; it’s happening all over the world.

• Science

  • uni Stanford ☛ Gripping like geckos: Stanford lab develops the world’s “stickiest non-sticky” material

    Stanford’s Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab has developed a dry adhesive tape inspired by gecko feet. The adhesive was recently featured in an informational video on the popular YouTube channel Veritasium.

• Education

  • Reason ☛ Did Ron DeSantis Really Just Change the AP African American Studies Curriculum?

    The College Board says these changes were already in the works. But even if that’s true, they may have just opened a new front in the culture wars.

  • Reason ☛ After Repeatedly Opposing Marijuana Banking Reform, Cory Booker Says It Is Urgently Needed

    The senator bemoans the “cannabis crisis” he helped maintain by blocking the SAFE Banking Act.

• Hardware

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Intel lowers manager and executive pay after earnings miss

    Intel Corp. is cutting the base pay of some managers and its executive team as part of an effort to lower expenses by up to $10 billion annually.

  • David Revoy ☛ My tablet history log: a listing of all the tablet I tested since 2002 (update: 2023)

    This article details my experience with all the graphic tablets I used since 2002. This article started a decade ago and receives constant updates and new paragraph along the years of practise

  • The Next Platform ☛ Datacenter And Xilinx Power Through In Q4 And Beyond For AMD

    Imagine, if you will, how troublesome AMD’s chip business would be at the end of 2022 had it not decided way back in 2015 to re-enter the datacenter with its Epyc processors.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Golf tournament on China’s Hainan Island cancelled over ‘ongoing Covid-related matters’

    The Blue Bay LPGA tournament in China has been cancelled for the third time in four years because of “ongoing Covid-related matters”, tour organisers said Wednesday.

  • Off Guardian ☛ Coronavirus Fact-Check #17: Masks STILL Don’t Work

    Both the US and UK have seen the (attempted) re-introduction of facemask mandates amid “surging Covid cases” in the New Year.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Johnson and Johnson’s bankruptcy gambit fails (01 Feb 2023)

    The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has foiled Johnson & Johnson’s plan to use a bankruptcy scam called the Texas Two-Step to escape paying 40,000 women who were injured when the pharma giant sold them asbestos-tainted talcum powder to dust over their vulvas, leading to gruesome cancers…

  • JURIST ☛ Johnson and Johnson bankruptcy strategy rejected in talcum powder lawsuit

    The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Monday ruled against Johnson and Johnson’s (J&J) attempt to resolve its multi-billion dollar litigation over claims that its talcum-based powders were carcinogenic.

  • Covid-19: Denmark decides against additional booster this winter

    No additional booster vaccination against Covid-19 will be offered this winter, the Danish Health Authority confirmed on Wednesday.

• Security

  • Port Swigger ☛ Researcher drops Lexmark RCE zero-day rather than sell vuln ‘for peanuts’

    Printer exploit chain could be weaponized to fully compromise more than 100 models

  • SequoiaPGP ☛ Happy SHA1 Rejection Day

    Today is the day Sequoia’sStandardPolicystarts rejecting SHA1-based signatures by default. This change will affect existing programs based on Sequoia, as the SHA1 deprecation has been committed to and baked into the code three years ago. Therefore, all programs usingsequoia-openpgpversion 0.15 and up will now reject SHA1-based signatures by default.

  • USCERT ☛ VMware Releases Security Update for VMware vRealize Operations

    Original release date: February 1, 2023

    VMware released a security update that addresses a cross-site request forgery bypass vulnerability affecting VMware vRealize Operations. A malicious user could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Vulnerabilities could let hackers remotely shut down EV chargers, steal electricity

    The emerging market’s uneven response to fix the flaws suggests cybersecurity could be a growing concern in electric car charging networks.

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ GitHub revokes code signing certificates stolen in repo hack

    GitHub says unknown attackers have stolen encrypted code-signing certificates for its Desktop and Atom applications after gaining access to some of its development and release planning repositories.

    So far, GitHub has found no evidence that the password-protected certificates (one Apple Developer ID certificate and two Digicert code signing certificates used for Windows apps) were used for malicious purposes.

    “On December 6, 2022, repositories from our atom, desktop, and other deprecated Github-owned organizations were cloned by a compromised Personal Access Token (PAT) associated with a machine account,” GitHub said.

    “Once detected on December 7, 2022, our team immediately revoked the compromised credentials and began investigating potential impact to customers and internal systems. None of the affected repositories contained customer data.”

  • SANS ☛ Detecting (Malicious) OneNote Files, (Wed, Feb 1st) [Ed: Everything Microsoft touches becomes a security problem]

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Passwords Are Terrible (Surprising No One)

    This is the result of a security audit:

    [...]

    In the first 90 minutes of testing, auditors cracked the hashes for 16 percent of the department’s user accounts…

  • Scoop News Group ☛ GoodRx will settle claim it shared sensitive health data with advertisers

    The telehealth and discount drug provider promised health data would remain confidential and then allowed it to be used for targeted ads.

  • Data Breaches ☛ FTC Enforcement Action to Bar GoodRx from Sharing Consumers’ Sensitive Health Info for Advertising

    The Federal Trade Commission has taken enforcement action for the first time under its Health Breach Notification Rule against the telehealth and prescription drug discount provider GoodRx Holdings Inc., for failing to notify consumers and others of its unauthorized disclosures of consumers’ personal health information to Facebook, Google, and other companies.

  • Internet Freedom Foundation ☛ Supreme Court directs WhatsApp to allow users to continue using WhatsApp without accepting its 2021 Privacy Policy

    WhatsApp’s 2016 and 2021 privacy policy have been the subject of a long standing court challenge before the Delhi High Court. Today, the petition has been heard after 4 months.

  • Gizmodo ☛ Meta Is Spending More Than $1 Billion per Month on the Metaverse

  • CNET ☛ After Mass Layoffs, Zuckerberg Says Meta Focused On Efficiency – CNET

    The social media giant’s top priorities include the metaverse and artificial intelligence.

  • Gizmodo ☛ Elon Musk Sets Account to Private in Latest Twitter Experiment

  • AccessNow ☛ Two years of dangerous occupation: international community must protect rights in Myanmar

    After two years of a violent coup in Myanmar, the international community must condemn the junta’s abuses and surveillance infrastructure.

  • AccessNow ☛ Resist Myanmar’s digital coup: International community must dismantle military dictatorship — or reap repercussions

    International community must dismantle military dictatorship, resist the coup, and push back against surveillance in Myanmar.

  • JURIST ☛ Oil companies continue operating in Myanmar despite human rights abuses and sanctions

    A human rights agency reported Wednesday that some of the world’s largest energy providers continue operating in Myanmar after the military’s attempted coup. The Myanmar military junta staged a coup in February 2021, and has killed thousands of citizens since taking power.

Defence/Aggression

• RFA ☛ US defense chief visits troops, discusses anti-terror cooperation in Philippines

  Lloyd Austin III is expected to meet with his Filipino counterpart to discuss South China Sea concerns.

• Vice Media Group ☛ Russia Is Refusing to Let the US Inspect Its Nukes, Officials Say

  Russia is violating its last remaining nuclear treaty with the US as the war in Ukraine drags on, State Department officials said.

• RFA ☛ Under the gun in Myanmar

  Life has gone from bad to horrific for many in the country since the military’s February 2021 coup.

• RFERL ☛ Bulgarian Parliament Passes Resolution Declaring Soviet-Era Famine Genocide

  The Bulgarian National Assembly has approved legislation declaring the 1932-33 famine caused by the policies of the Soviet government led by Joseph Stalin a genocide.

• LRT ☛ Baltics are too reliant on US for security, warns former French leader

  Some European countries, notably the Baltics and the Scandinavians, may be too reliant on the United States for their security, François Hollande, former president of France, said in an interview for Politico.

• LRT ☛ Moscow declares Lithuania-based Free Russia Forum ‘undesirable’

  The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has declared the activities of the Lithuania-based Free Russia Forum as undesirable within the territory of Russia, according to the statement on the prosecution service’s website.

• LRT ☛ What are Lithuania’s goals and chances for NATO’s Vilnius Summit?

  Preparations are in full swing for what will undoubtedly be the most important event for Lithuania this year: the NATO Summit in July. Vilnius, which will host the leaders of the world’s most powerful military bloc, has set itself ambitious goals. But security experts interviewed by LRT stress that although Lithuania is organising the summit, this does not

• Defence Web ☛ Meeting of 37 States on UN nuclear ban treaty underway

  The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) Deputy Minister, Alvin Botes, on Monday, opened the African Regional Seminar on the Universalisation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which is currently underway in Pretoria.

• Modern Diplomacy ☛ Ukraine war’s first anniversary and beyond

  The first anniversary of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine falls on February 24. The Russian strategy of attrition war has not yet produced the desired political outcome but has been a success nonetheless, writes Indian Ambassador and prominent international observer M.K. Bhadrakumar.

• The Kent Stater ☛ US says Russia is violating key nuclear arms control agreement

  CNN — Russia is violating a key nuclear arms control agreement with the United States and continuing to refuse to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities, a State Department spokesperson said Tuesday. “Russia is not complying with its obligation under the New START Treaty to facilitate inspection activities on its territory…”

• France24 ☛ Mourners call for end to police brutality at Tyre Nichols funeral in Memphis

  The relatives of Black people killed by police in cities across the United States came to Tyre Nichols’ funeral in a Memphis church on Wednesday to offer comfort to the family of the Black 29-year-old, who was fatally beaten by officers last month.

• France24 ☛ Pope Francis excoriates ‘brutal atrocities’ in DR Congo

  Pope Francis on Wednesday slammed “brutal atrocities, which bring shame upon all humanity” in eastern DR Congo, after hearing testimony from victims of the conflict in the capital Kinshasa.

• France24 ☛ Live: Ukraine lauds French gift of radar system as ‘cherry on the cake’

  Ukraine’s defence minister said Wednesday that Ukrainian lives will be saved by a sophisticated air-defence radar that France is supplying and which is powerful enough to spot incoming missiles and exploding drones in the skies over all of Ukraine’s capital and its surrounding region. Follow FRANCE 24’s liveblog for all the latest developments. All times are in Paris time (GMT+1).

• teleSUR ☛ Police Brutality in US Violates Human Rights, Says Cuban FM

  Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez on Tuesday said that law enforcement brutality is one of the most serious and systematic violations of human rights in the United States.

Environment

• NYPost ☛ Underwater volcano erupts in Vanuatu

  The East Epi volcano erupted on Wednesday for the first time since 2004.

• Energy/Transportation

  • Gizmodo ☛ Tesla Lost $140 Million on Elon Musk’s Bitcoin Bet Last Year

  • Silicon Angle ☛ UK government introduces plans to regulate crypto industry ‘robustly’

    The United Kingdom’s government has detailed what it calls “robust” plans to regulate the crypto industry, with new rules surrounding trading platforms, market abuse, lending and tokens.

  • The Strategist ☛ Australia must boost investment to ensure strategic fuel security

    Ten years ago, retired Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn released a landmark study that revealed the fragile state of Australia’s liquid-fuel security.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • The Scientist ☛ Geneticists Light Up Debate on Salmon Conservation

    Splitting Chinook salmon into two groups based on their DNA could aid conservation efforts. But some researchers argue that this would be a misuse of the data.

Finance

• Danish government accused of breaking promises on tax cuts

  Critics of the Danish government say it is failing to meet promises on tax cuts made in the coalition policy agreement because of a plan to apply a special tax to energy firms and use it to assist individuals struggling with high living costs.

• JURIST ☛ France protest draws millions opposing increased pension age

  Protests broke out across France Tuesday in the latest backlash against France’s reform plan to raise the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64. According to the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), a federation of trade unions in France, approximately 2.8 million people demonstrated across the country.

• France24 ☛ ‘We need money now’: UK teachers, civil servants join biggest strike in decade

  Up to half a million British teachers, civil servants, and train drivers walked out over pay in the largest coordinated strike action for a decade on Wednesday, with unions threatening more disruption as the government digs its heels in over pay demands.

• France24 ☛ Pension reform poses biggest challenge to Macron’s legacy as a reformer

  A feeling of déjà-vu pervaded the French capital on Monday as hundreds of thousands of protesters unfurled their posters nationwide and strikes paralysed public transport in opposition to the government’s announced pension reform. The proposed changes are a cornerstone of Macron’s reform agenda but are also a high-stakes test of his reputation as a reformer.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Mexico News Daily ☛ Social media ‘challenge’ blamed for young students’ intoxication

  Cofepris issued a warning about a viral game called “the last one to fall asleep wins” where participants take a prescription tranquilizer.

• Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

  • Vice Media Group ☛ This TikToker Is Highlighting Horrifying Conditions in NYC Public Housing

    “Some of the worst that I have seen has been here,” Kwajo Tweneboa said on a visit to New York City.

Censorship/Free Speech

• MIT Technology Review ☛ How the Supreme Court ruling on Section 230 could end Reddit as we know it

  When the Supreme Court hears a landmark case on Section 230 later in February, all eyes will be on the biggest players in tech—Meta, Google, Twitter, YouTube.

• Engadget ☛ Twitter opens public appeals for suspended accounts

  “Account suspension will be reserved for severe or ongoing, repeat violations of our policies.”

  Twitter added that appeals would be “evaluated under our new criteria for reinstatement.” But it didn’t elaborate on what that criteria would be, or how long the process might take. The company says it expects to receive a “high volume” of requests and that reinstated requests are expected to “follow our

• Off Guardian ☛ Incentivizing Censorship: A Snitch in Every Skull

  Helen Buyniski An informational iron curtain is coming down across the West, and its architects are determined to make examples out of those who refuse to pick a side.

• AccessNow ☛ After years in the dark, Tigray is slowly coming back online

  For many, the years-long shutdown in Tigray continues, and those regaining access are largely struggling with slow speeds and limited 2G services.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Press Gazette ☛ BDG Media shutters revived Gawker and lays off 8% of staff

  The company’s CEO said it cannot “push millions of dollars into a pre-monetisation product”.

Civil Rights/Policing

• JURIST ☛ Transparency International releases 2022 corruption index

  Transparency International (TI) Tuesday released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index, a comprehensive measure of corruption throughout the world. TI is a global NGO made up of legal experts and businesspeople who report on the levels of corruption throughout the world’s governments.

• HRW ☛ South Korea Cancels Plans to Update Definition of Rape

• JURIST ☛ Filings reveal Starbucks paid over $11M to former legal chief amid unionization efforts

  The Starbucks Corporation Monday disclosed in US Securities and Exchange Commission filings that former General Counsel Rachel Gonzalez’s pay amounted to nearly $11.7 million in 2022, including $7.1 million in severance pay.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Posts Record User Growth — And An Increased Operating Loss — In Q4 2022 Earnings Report

  Spotify stock (NYSE: SPOT) has surged after the Stockholm-headquartered company disclosed that it had added a record high of 33 million users during Q4 2022 – including about 10 million subscribers. The audio entertainment service, which laid off approximately 6% of its employees earlier in January, posted the fourth-quarter financials today.

• Gizmodo ☛ Everyone’s Confused About Netflix’s New Password Sharing Restrictions

  As much as Netflix account holders were dreading the day the company finally cracked down on password sharing, the streaming giant’s first taste of what it has in store for users was both confusing and concerning.

Monopolies

• Silicon Angle ☛ Court reportedly rejects FTC request to block Meta’s Within Unlimited acquisition

  A federal court has reportedly rejected a request from regulators to block Meta Platform Inc.’s proposed acquisition of Within Unlimited Inc. for $400 million.  Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported the development today.

• Public Knowledge ☛ NTIA Offers Blueprint for Mobile App Competition in Line with Public Knowledge’s Recommendations

  New report finds that the current mobile app store model harms users and software developers while restraining digital competition.

• Software Patents

  • Unified Patents ☛ Open source rules engine for patent prosecution, PATCEPTA, kick off on Feb 9

    Patcepta is a new open source rules engine for improving patent prosecution and management through automation.

  • Unified Patents ☛ IP Edge entity Invincible IP cloud computing patent likely invalid

    On January 27, 2023, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified againstU.S. Patent 9,635,134, owned and asserted by Invincible IP LLC, anIP Edgeentity.

• Copyrights

  • Public Domain Review ☛ John H. White’s Photographs of Black Chicago for DOCUMERICA (1973–74)

    As part of the DOCUAMERICA project, which sought to produce a visual record of the 1970s US, John H. White took stunning photographs of Black Chicago.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • Folk D&D

• Gemini

  • Gemini and Google

    My guess is that out of these three scenarios, Google would be least like to implement the first, precisely because it’s the most difficult to monetize. I see them playing out the second scenario to test their ability to scrape Geminispace, and were they to implement Gemini search as a full feature, they would probably opt for the third scenario, at least to start with.

    The second scenario is most likely to me if Google were ever to implement Gemini support in Chrome. While implementing such a feature would surely increase engagement with Gemini by several orders of magnitude, it would not be a healthy phenomenon for Geminispace as it current exists. More people–especially more people who treat the Internet flippantly–means more scammers and spammers, less meaningful and productive discourse, more bot abuse, greater potential for organized harassment or DDOS attacks, and massive strain on an infrastructure largely built on small, independent capsules.

  • year-review

    Created the Spookbench site and this Gopherhole, also managed to NOT abandon them after a month. I find writing to be very soothing, should do it even more often in 2023.

  • A Tour of Gemspace

    HTTP and HTML have been powering the internet for the last 50 years. If you have used a web browser you have used them, knowningly or not. HTTP is the protocol which transfers data between your browser and the web server, and HTML is the file format used to render web pages. Together, along with JS and CSS, they form the foundation of the modern internet.

  • Added a Ton of Phlogs

    Sorry for the spam on the Comitium feed, I added a ton of Phlogs because I want to read more Gopher content.

  • What I am doing in the 2023?

    In January I had my first Gopher anniversary, so I’m here for one year!

• Technical

  • Internet/Gemini

    • SSL certs

      It looks like the SSL cert for midnight.pub is expired. Hopefully ~m15o is aware of it.

  • Programming

    • How to Learn Rust

      I have been a Go developer since even before Go 1.0 was released. I was immediately taken by the simple but useful type system, strong standard library, concurrency primitives, and minimal feature-set of the language. It reminded me greatly of Erlang in those respects, with the added bonus of compiling to a binary on virtually any platform.

GNU/Linux

• Desktop/Laptop

  • LinuxInsider ☛ How To Run a Full Linux Desktop on a Chromebook

    Do you want to run a full Linux desktop installation on your Chromebook without giving up ChromeOS? This alteration will give you access to both complete operating systems running simultaneously so you can move between them with a keyboard shortcut.

    You may already use the “Crostini” partition to run individual Linux apps alongside ChromeOS. That method forces users to rely mainly on the command line without the added functionality a full Linux desktop environment offers. So installing a complete Linux distribution — desktop and all — may be a better option for you.

    A few years ago, I played around with a halfway measure to run a KDE desktop on a Chromebook within the Crostini environment. That method, however, was buggy. Before that, I toyed with running GalliumOS from a USB drive to turn Chromebooks into Linux boxes without removing ChromeOS.

  • ID Root ☛ Ubuntu Linux vs Windows [Comprehensive Comparison]

    The battle of the operating systems has been raging for decades, with die-hard fans on both sides.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • WordPress ☛ WP Briefing: Episode 48: What Does Concluding a Gutenberg Phase Really Mean?

    Gutenberg’s second phase is ending. Join Josepha as she reflects on what concluding a phase means in the project.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Where Did All the Podcasts Go? — New Show Creation Down 80%

    Podcast creation has reached an all-time low since it exploded in 2020 during the pandemic. Is the luster of this audio format wearing off for creators? According to data compiled by Chartr, fewer podcasts were created in 2022 than the two years prior. The number of new shows created dropped 80% between 2020 and 2022.

• Kernel Space

  • LWN ☛ Linux 6.1.9

    I'm announcing the release of the 6.1.9 kernel.
    
    
    All users of the 6.1 kernel series must upgrade.
    
    
    The updated 6.1.y git tree can be found at:
            git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-6.1.y
    and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:
    
    https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
    
    thanks,
    
    
    greg k-h
    

  • LWN ☛ Linux 5.10.166

  • LWN ☛ Linux 5.15.91

• Applications

  • Linux Links ☛ Revisited: termusic – terminal-based music player

    When we reviewed termusic back in April 2022 we lamented that this music player was a strong candidate for someone looking for a terminal-based music player with one exception. The software lacked gapless playback.

    Shortly after our review, the developer of termusic informed us that he’d added gapless playback. Regretfully we never revisited the software. Let’s put that right now!

    We originally evaluated the software under Ubuntu. This time, we tested the software in Manjaro, an Arch-based distro. There’s a package in the Arch User Repository (AUR) for the latest version of termusic (at the time of writing that’s v0.7.8). The software built with no issues.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install Nano Text Editor on Rocky Linux 9

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install the Nano text editor on Rocky Linux 9.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Use PPA on Ubuntu Linux [Complete Guide]

    If you’re an Ubuntu Linux user, you’re probably aware of the fact that installing software can be a bit of a challenge.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install OpenVAS on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenVAS on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, OpenVAS is an open-source vulnerability assessment tool used for performing security assessments on computer systems and networks.

  • molecule and systemd and cgroupns

    It’s Hackweek and I’m back at working on the GeekOops project. One of the more annoying tasks that I have been postponing already since some time is to adjust the molecule workflow to work with cgroups 2.

  • Manuel Matuzovic ☛ Day 92: relative color syntax

    With the relative color syntax we can modify existing colors using color functions. If an origin color is specified, each color channel can either be directly specified, or taken from the origin color and modified.

  • Manuel Matuzovic ☛ Day 91: a previous sibling selector with :has()

    I’ve already shown much appreciation for the :has() pseudo-class in this series, but that we can use it as a previous sibling selector tops it all of.

    Since this is not an official selector, but more something like a hack, it can be hard to read and interpret. So, let’s start nice and easy.

  • University of Toronto ☛ One reason I still prefer BIOS MBR booting over UEFI

    Old fashioned BIOS MBR booting is very simplistic but it’s also very predictable; pretty much the only variable in the process is which disk the BIOS will pick as your boot drive. Once that drive is chosen, you’ll know exactly what will get booted and how. The MBR boot block will load the rest of your bootloader (possibly in a multi-step process) and then your bootloader will load and boot your Unix. If you have your bootloader completely installed and configured, this process is extremely reliable.

  • TechRepublic ☛ How to install the Neo4j graph database on Ubuntu Server 22.04

    If you’re looking for a graph database to use for your next project, Neo4j is an open-source option that can encode and query very complex relationships.

  • TechRepublic ☛ How to cap the number of users allowed to log into your Linux servers

    If you have Linux servers that allow remote connection via SSH, you might want to limit the number of users allowed to log in.

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ How to Use Troff to Format PDF Documents in Linux

    Troff is a minimal yet powerful document text processor for Linux systems. It allows you to easily create print-ready documents by compiling source files from the command line. UnlikeLaTeX, Troff is incredibly lightweight and is preinstalled on most Linux systems.

  • Linux Journal ☛ Monitoring Oracle Servers With Checkmk

    In this tutorial, I will give a quick guide on how to monitor Oracle Database with Checkmk, a universal monitoring tool for all kinds of IT assets. Oracle Database is one of the most common database management systems (DBMS) for relational databases and Checkmk comes with a great preconfigured Oracle monitoring, so it will only take you a few minutes to get started. This will not only ensure the best performance of your databases, but also give you the option to find optimization opportunities.

  • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Find Uptime of Particular Linux Process

    Along with the system uptime, it’s also possible in the Linux operating system to check the uptime of a particular Linux process or service.

  • H2S Media ☛ What is Sourcetree and Bitbucket?

    In this article, we discuss quickly and understand what exactly is the difference between Sourcetree and Bitbucket. This helps beginners to start with these two Git tools. What is SourceTree?

  • H2S Media ☛ How to check OS version in Linux – Ubuntu, Redhat, CentOS etc.

    Checking the operating system version of your Linux installation is useful when you want to see what distribution you are running, the version number, and the kernel version information. This will clue you into what exactly your system is running under the hood.

  • H2S Media ☛ How to open Vimtutor in Neovim and Vim text editors?

    Learn the command to open Vimtutor on your existing NeoVim installed in Ubuntu, Windows, Linux Mint, MacOS, RHEL, and others. What is Vimtutor?

  • H2S Media ☛ 3 Ways to install NeoVim on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04

    Let’s try an advanced VIM-based Text editor on Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 Linux by installing NeoVIM with the help of the command terminal.  Neovim text editor was created in 2014 and is a fork of the popular VIM editor that comes with modern features.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ Linux cmp Command Tutorial for Beginners (7 Examples)

    Pretty much regardless of your role, if your regular work involves doing stuff on the command line in Linux, you may find yourself in a situation where-in you’d want to compare two files using a command line utility. There are several command line tools that let you do this, and one among them is the ‘cmp’ command.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Zeek Network Security Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu 22.04

    Zeek is a free, open-source, and worlds leading security monitoring tool used as a network intrusion detection system and network traffic analyzer. This post will show you how to install the Zeek network security tool on Ubuntu 22.04.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install OpenSearch on Debian 11

    OpenSearch is a community-driven project by Amazon and a fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana. In this tutorial, you’ll deploy OpenSearch – an open-source search, analytics, and visualization suite – to the Debian 11 server.

  • How to Secure your Raspberry Pi

    In a smart home system, anyone having access to your Raspberry Pi can have full control over your whole house if you’re not careful. Luckily, it’s easy to secure your Raspberry Pi and make it hacker-proof. Here are a few things you can do to secure your Raspberry Pi and keep all the bad guys away from your smart home.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Discourse Forum with Nginx on Rocky Linux 9

    Discourse is an open-source community discussion platform built using the Ruby language. In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Discourse Forum with the Nginx server on a server running Rocky Linux 9.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install ionCube Loader on Debian 11

    This tutorial will explain how to install ionCube Loader on a Debian 11 server. IonCube is a PHP extension that can decode secured encrypted PHP files at runtime.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ Linux pidof Command Tutorial for Beginners (5 Examples)

    Linux command line offers a lot of utilities that work with processes. Once such tool is pidof, which – as the name suggests – gives you the process ID of an already executing process. In this tutorial, we will discuss the basics of pidof using some easy to understand examples.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Clear Bash History on Linux

    If you’ve ever used the command line on a Linux machine, chances are you’ve got a long history of commands logged. If you want to clear this history, there are a few simple steps that can help you do just that.

  • FOSSLinux ☛ Install AnyDesk on Fedora: A Quick and Easy Guide

    AnyDesk is a German proprietary desktop app distributed by AnyDesk Software GmbH. The tool offers platform-independent remote access to personal PCs and other devices running the host app. It allows remote control, VPN functionality, and file transfer, among other outstanding functionalities.

  • FOSSLinux ☛ Epic Games on Linux: A Comprehensive Guide to the Launcher

    Linux gaming is continually evolving, owing to the community and companies concentrating more on open-source gaming software. Epic Games is a well-known digital gaming retailer best recognized for providing Windows games to millions of consumers worldwide. However, not everyone knows that the Epic Games client may also be installed on Linux.

  • FOSSLinux ☛ How to install Google Chrome on Linux Mint

    We all have to agree that web browsers are the most important and frequently used apps on all or nearly all operating systems to access search results and browse the Internet. Linux Mint, one of Linux’s distros, ships with Mozilla Firefox as the default web browser; however, many users nowadays prefer to set up Google Chrome because of its valuable and advanced features.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ Two ways to change the screen resolution in Ubuntu 22.04 / 20.04

    Hello, friends. Talking to some friends who have just installed Linux, I noticed how something as simple as changing the screen resolution can be a bit complicated to do. So in this post you will learn how to do it both from the graphical interface and from the terminal.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How To Install TaskBoard on CentOS Stream 9 /Rocky Linux 9/ AlmaLinux 9

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install TaskBoard on CentOS / AlmaLinux/ RockyLinux systems. TaskBoard is a free and open source used in track keeping of important tasks to be done. TaskBoard enables one create unlimited projects and boards to keep track of tasks to be done. It is easily customizable.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How to Install Terraform on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

    In this guide, we will show you how to install Terraform in Ubuntu systems. HashiCorp Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you define both cloud and on-prem resources in human-readable configuration files that you can version, reuse, and share.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How To Install Thunderbird Mail on CentOS 9/ Rocky Linux 9/ Alma Linux 9

    In this guide, we will install Thunderbird Mail on CentOS / Alma Linux & Rocky Linux systems. Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How To Install Netdata Agent on AlmaLinux 9

    In this guide, we will show you how to install Netdata Agent on AlmaLinux 9 Netdata is an open source tool designed to collect real-time metrics, such as CPU usage, disk activity, bandwidth usage, website visits, etc., and then display them in live, easy-to-interpret charts.

  • UNIX Cop ☛ How To Install Terraform on CentOS 9 / Rocky Linux 9 / Alma Linux 9

    In this guide, we will show you how to install Terraform in CentOS, Alma Linux and Rocky Linux. HashiCorp Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you define both cloud and on-prem resources in human-readable configuration files that you can version, reuse, and share.

• Games

  • DebugPoint ☛ 3 NES Emulators to Play Old NES Games on Linux

    A quick look at 3 NES Emulators to play old NES games in Linux. Also, we provide an Installation guide and features. If you want to play the old retro games such as Super Mario, Pokemon, etc in the latest Ubuntu, Linux Mint versions, there are plenty of emulators available.

  • Godot Engine ☛ Godot XR update – January 2023

    Updates on various things XR in Godot as per January 2023. New Godot XR Tools, new documentation for Godot 4, new supported renderers and devices.

  • Hackaday ☛ SteamDeck: Become Printer

    Wonderful things happen when we read the documentation. For instance, we’ve all seen a Raspberry Pi work as an Ethernet adapter over USB, or a ESP32-S2 presenting as a storage device. Well, [parkerlreed] has made his Steam Deck work as a USB printer after reading the Linux kernel docs on the USB gadget configuration, and all it took was some C code and a BIOS setting change.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Memory vs Reason

    I’ve always relied more on memory than reason—I remember a chess club game back when I was new and lost every game and had no idea what I was doing, except… there was this one game that was pretty memorable. I was playing black and I had asked a friend what opening my opponent liked. Queen’s Gambit. So I sit down the night before and memorize several branches of the Berlin defense. Just jam them into medium term memory, it’d be forgotten a week later, just “cramming for the test”. Come game day and sure enough, guy is playing D4 and I go into the Berlin. Remember, I had lost every single game at that club up to that point. But. He is playing right into the trunk of what I had memorized, I’m making my replies right away, playing as fast as it were blitz while we’re in an hour-long ladder game, and he is pondering every move weighing them carefully. Friends take me aside and say “you’ve got to play slower” but I keep on jamming because every single move is according to script. Now, I have no idea what I’m doing or the purpose of the moves. Back then, I didn’t understand positioning or development or prophylactic moves (a.k.a. reverse sente). But, while the opening tree I had learned had many branches that were short detours, he kept playing straight into the longest branch every single move. This was decades ago before the engines (pros used “Fritz” but I was relegated to commentary such as “black should be stronger here”.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • It’s FOSS ☛ System76′s Upcoming COSMIC Desktop is Gearing Up With Big Changes

    The developers of Pop!_OS started working on their Rust-based desktop environment ‘COSMIC’ back in 2021.

    The goal was to make something familiar to what you already get with Pop!_OS but provide you with a faster and more extensible desktop environment.

    System76 also chose not to release Pop!_OS 22.10 to focus on its development.

    Not to forget, one of our community contributors gave an early build a try, which looked pretty promising.

  • Systemd 76 ☛ More On COSMIC DE To Kick Off 2023!

    For those of you who don’t know, System76 is moving the feel and front-end functionality of Pop!_OS to a faster codebase, giving you a familiar, but snappier, experience. And I’m here to update you all on the new features and designs the System76 team is building along the way. Once we have a date for you to try out this new desktop environment in a public alpha, I’ll give you that too

Distributions and Operating Systems

• DebugPoint ☛ 10 Lightweight Linux Distributions for your Old Hardware in 2023 [Ed: Old but updated for the year]

  We highlight a list of 10 lightweight Linux Distributions ideal for your older PC in 2023. We give you their features and what makes them perfect for reviving older hardware. We believe that you should not throw away any hardware, especially PC and its components. Ideally, well-designed software should always run on any hardware.

• New Releases

  • DebugPoint ☛ elementary OS 7 “Horus”: A List of Best Features

    Iam sure you are excited to try out the shiny new elementary OS 7 “Horus”, which was released recently. This release is coming after more than a year of developments. The elementary OS project underwent a leadership change during this entire period, and many events happened.

    Let’s take a look at the best feature of this release.

• BSD

  • Dan Langille ☛ R730-01

    There will be more drives. These aren’t necessarily the drives to be used.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • OpenSUSE ☛ Tumbleweed Snapshots Update Mesa, Remmina, More

    Several snapshots have updated in openSUSE Tumbleweed before and during Hack Week.

    Leading up to FOSDEM, more packages are arriving, but this blog will give a small overview of the snapshots that have arrived since the last Tumbleweed blog.

    Three packages landed in the 20230130 snapshot. One of those packages was C library libHX 4.10. The package plugged a memory leak in the formatter and provided some multiplatform-directory handling. A Python Package Index that implements a text object that escapes characters, so it is safe to use in HTML and XML was updated. This python-MarkupSafe package updated to version 2.1.2 provides a striptags addition that does not strip tags containing newlines. An update of yast2-trans in the snapshot added multiple translations to include several for Macedonian and Georgian languages.

• Slackware Family

  • TuMFatig ☛ Install Slackware Linux with Full Disk Ecryption on a UEFI system

    On some previous post, I installed Slackware Linux on a ThinkPad T460s . This was my first time back on Slackware for a long time and, after reading and experimenting, it seems to me that there is a better / smarter / simpler way to install Slackware using FDE on an UEFI system.

    There seem to be a very cleavage point when adressing the need to encrypt the /boot partition. Long story short, keeping /boot unencrypted lets your computer opened to various attacks. I looked at how various distributions were configuring FDE. And it seems this point is half religious and half a software issue ; mostly around what Grub can or can’t do. Distributions like Fedora or Linux Mint configure FDE while keeping /boot unencrypted. Arch Linux documents three or four ways to achieve FDE ; some with, some without encrypted /boot. Pop!OS and Manjaro offer a complete encrypted system ; although using different bootloaders.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • The Register UK ☛ Oracle cozies up to IBM, adds Red Hat Enterprise Linux

    Oracle may offer its own Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compatible operating system, but clearly not all public cloud developers are happy with the company’s “Unbreakable” kernel and would prefer the real thing.

    On Tuesday the two companies announced a joint agreement to offer RHEL and support as an image on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

    Until recently Oracle Linux has been the only modern RHEL-compatible operating system available on the platform. Oracle does offer images for CentOS 6, 7, and 8, which up until the release of CentOS 9 was essentially a community supported build of the community operating system. But, with Red Hat’s decision to transition CentOS to an upstream variant, many have migrated to alternatives like Rocky or Alma Linux which are based on RHEL’s source code.

  • Unicorn Media ☛ Red Hat Beds With Oracle in New Cloud Deal

    Red Hat on Tuesday announced that it’s partnered with Oracle to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

    Although this doesn’t surprise me at all, 10 years ago this is something I absolutely wouldn’t expect to see.

  • Building flatpaks and Freedesktop SDK from scratch

    Flatpak applications are based on runtimes such asKDEorGnomeRuntimes. Both of these runtimes are actually based onFreedesktop SDKwhich contains essential libraries and services such as Wayland or D-Bus.

  • Caolán McNamara: Firefox, VA-API and NVIDIA on Fedora 37

    Some time ago I got borrowed NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 from my employer (Red Hat) and I finally managed to put it to a workstation instead of my own AMD RX 6600 XT.

  • Kevin Fenzi: error: rpmdbNextIterator: skipping in Fedora 38+

    I’ve seen this question enough times recently to decide to just write up a blog post on it and point people here.

• Debian Family

  • Junichi Uekawa: February.

    February. Working through crosvm dependencies and found that cargo-debstatus does not dump all dependencies; seems like it skips over optional ones. Haven’t tracked down what is going on yet but at least it seems like crosvm does not have all dependencies and can’t build yet.

  • Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities January 2023

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Neowin ☛ Linux Mint 21.2 will be known as “Victoria”, due at the end of June

  • DebugPoint ☛ Linux Mint 21.2 Code Name Announced, Arriving on June 2023

    In the January 23 monthly update, the Mint team announced that the upcoming release of Linux Mint 21.2 code name would be “Victoria”. This aligns with the female-centric names in alphabetical order for each Mint release (the prior one was 21.1 “Vera”).

    In addition, a few details emerge about the new features and enhancements of this upcoming release which is planned on June 2023.

    Here’s what ot expect.

  • Ghacks ☛ Ubuntu Pro is now available: here is what you need to know

    Ubuntu Pro, a subscription-based version of Ubuntu that offers ten years of security updates and optional support, is now available publicly.

    Originally launched in October 2022, Ubuntu Pro entered general availability on January 26, 2023. Ubuntu Pro is available for the Long Term Support releases Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS at the time of writing.

    Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 machines. The limit is raised to 50 for official Ubuntu community members.

• Devices/Embedded

  • CNX Software ☛ Winlink E850-96Board SBC is powered by Samsung Exynos 850 Octa-core Cortex-A55 SoC

    The Winlink E850-96Board currently supports Android 10 (AOSP) with Linux 4.14 kernel and LittleKernel bootloader, but we are promised Android 13 support with Linux 5.4.kernel in the future, and Linux distributions are shown as TBD. The obvious reasons for Android support and the relatively outdated Linux kernel are that the mobile processor is used in various smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy A21s or Galaxy A04s, and it was first announced in 2020.

    While the company claims “full compliance” with the Linaro 96Boards CE Extended standard, and the board is most likely compliant, it’s interesting to note they have not placed the Ethernet RJ45 port in one of the recommended locations, but instead in the free-for-all zone. Software and hardware documentation is currently limited, but you can still find instructions to get the Android image and build everything from source on the 96Boards website.

    The price of the board will be disappointing to many, as the Winlink E850-96Board sells for $399 on PlusFour, a Korean company set up to make and distribute 96Boards SBCs and accessories. The SBC should probably be viewed as a development board suitable for companies planning to create IoT or Smart Home devices based on the Exynos 850 processor, as few people will select this board for integration into their personal project(s), and Android app developers can purchase a cheaper Exynos 850 phone.

  • CNX Software ☛ XGO 2 – A Raspberry Pi CM4 based robot dog with an arm (Crowdfunding)

    XGO 2 is a desktop robot dog using the Raspberry Pi CM4 as its brain, the ESP32 as the motor controller for the four legs and an additional robotic arm that allows the quadruped robot to grab objects.

    An evolution of the XGO mini robot dog with a Kendryte K210 RISC-V AI processor, the XGO 2 robot offers 12 degrees of freedom and the more powerful Raspberry CM4 model enables faster AI edge computing applications, as well as features such as omnidirectional movement, six-dimensional posture control, posture stability, and multiple motion gaits.

  • CNX Software ☛ STM32Cube.AI Developer Cloud generates AI workloads for STM32 microcontrollers

    STMicroelectronics has just announced the STM32Cube.AI Developer Cloud opening access to a suite of online AI development tools for the STM32 microcontrollers (MCUs) allowing developers to generate, optimize, and benchmark AI working on the company’s 32-bit Arm microcontrollers.

  • KDAB ☛ KDAB at Embedded World 2023

    We will have a great show for you this year at our booth in Hall 4-302 at Embedded World 2023. As every year, we will present our latest demos, showcasing outstanding performance on cost-effective hardware featuring Qt, C++, Slint, Rust and Flutter.

  • CNX Software ☛ FOSDEM 2023 schedule – Open-source Embedded, Mobile, IoT, Arm, RISC-V, etc… projects

    After two years of taking place exclusively online, FOSDEM 2023 is back in Brussels, Belgium with thousands expected to attend the 2023 version of the “Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting” both onsite and online. FOSDEM 2023 will take place on February 4-5 with 776 speakers, 762 events, and 63 tracks.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • [Old] Simson Garfinkel ☛ NeXTCube Serial Number AA001032

    When NeXT announced that the first NeXT Cube was made of cast magnesium, I am sure that I was not the only person who imagined what fun could be had by setting it ablaze. Of course, at more than seven thousand dollars each, I doubted that anybody would ever actually carry out the experiment.

    Anyway, during the fall of 1991, I interviewed Rich Page, NeXT’s then vice-president for hardware, for an article which we later ran in NeXTWORLD Extra. At the time, I asked Mr. Page if he could get me an empty NeXT Cube case for the purpose of having such a burning. Page smiled and said that he thought something could be arranged. A few days later, he called me up and said that I could pick up an empty cube at NeXT’s Freemont factory.

  • J Pieper ☛ Resistive heater dummy load

    While testing moteus controllers, it is often necessary to experiment with high power conditions. For short durations, any decent sized brushless motor can work, as the windings have a non-zero thermal mass and take a little bit to warm up. However, when testing at high power for extended duration, it can be hard to find a way to get rid of all output energy. Even blowing a fan directly onto a motor only gets you so far when you are trying to get rid of 1kW.

  • Ken Shirriff ☛ Understanding the x86′s Decimal Adjust after Addition (DAA) instruction

    I’ve been looking at the DAA machine instruction on x86 processors, a special instruction for binary-coded decimal arithmetic. Intel’s manuals document each instruction in detail, but the DAA description doesn’t make much sense. I ran an extensive assembly-language test of DAA on a real machine to determine exactly how the instruction behaves. In this blog post, I explain how the instruction works, in case anyone wants a better understanding.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Phone Arena ☛ Google TV got itself an Android widget. Sort of. – PhoneArena

  • Why you need to delete 3 apps right now if you have an Android | Fox News

  • Computer World ☛ 5 hidden settings for a smarter Google Assistant Android experience | Computerworld

  • India Times ☛ OnePlus confirms to offer four years of Android updates, 5 years of security updates for OnePlus 11 – Times of India

  • Android Police ☛ Google Maps could get an ingenious Android Automotive feature for your EV

  • Phone Arena ☛ Google Meet on Android may soon allow you to listen to YouTube music in a group call – PhoneArena

  • SamMobile ☛ Samsung Galaxy A13 gets Android 13 update in the US – SamMobile

  • Express ☛ Samsung’s Galaxy S23 may have big advantage over its Android rivals | Express.co.uk

  • Make Use Of ☛ Is It Safe to Disable Android System Intelligence?

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Libre Arts ☛ Introducing Mayo

  So you have a 3D design file and you only need to view it, you don’t like the idea of launching an entire 3D CAD program like FreeCAD, and you are on Linux. What do you do?

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • PostgreSQL ☛ Subject: pgDay Paris 2023 — Schedule Published

    We are excited to announce that we have published the schedule for this year’s pgDay Paris. The 2023 edition of the popular PostgreSQL conference will be held on March 23, 2023 in the French capital.

    We’ve had so much interest that this year, we have two tracks of talks and are proposing various training sessions on March 22. All of the talks will be in English, and you can choose training sessions in French or English.

  • PostgreSQL ☛ pg_ivm 1.5 released

    IVM Development Group is pleased to announce the release ofpg_ivm 1.5.

    Changes since the v1.4 release include [...]

    • Add CTE support (Yugo Nagata)

      Simple CTEs (WITH queries) which do not contain aggregates or DISTINCT are supported similarly to simple sub-queries.

• Content Management Systems (CMS)

  • WordPress ☛ People of WordPress: Daniel Kossmann

    Daniel’s adventure into WordPress began in 2009 when he needed a way to publish and share articles on films. From that small spark, he now enjoys an interesting and varied career in Brazil and beyond, and an ever-expanding community network.

    Following WordPress and its new features fascinates Daniel and he is always looking for ways to share what it has to offer with others. His initial focus on WordPress for content publishing soon became a wider appreciation of the platform’s capacity for building communities and careers.

    Daniel has served as a community organizer for seven years in Curitiba, Brazil and co-organized four annual WordPress Translation Day events in the city. Community building initiatives, like these, bring in new volunteers and help spur on local user groups.

    Now working as a software engineer manager, Daniel maintains his interest in supporting the WordPress community through a newsletter in Brazilian Portuguese.

  • Andre Franca ☛ Website version 4.0

    For the fourth time, I decided it was time to go static again. I still don’t post frequently, so I can’t justify my wish to manage content I don’t produce in a more “powerful” way. Also, I found out that I can simply write using any editor I like and push it to the web when I’m at my computer and have time available. And that is okay after all.

  • Medevel ☛ 12 Free Static Gallery Generator, Convert Photo Folders to Websites

    Static website generators are outstanding tools that allow you to create a quick website in no time, without the need to worry about database setup or even complex server configuration.

    Static Gallery Generators are basically the same thing, with a little twist, It aids photographers to create a creative, interactive

• GNU Projects

  • GNU ☛ health @ Savannah: GNU Health Federation community server updated

    Dear community

    The GNU Health federation community server (federation.gnuhealth.org) has been updated! These are some of the main improvements:

    - NGINX and WSGI: The Hospital Management component instance is now running behind uWSGI and NGINX.

    - HMIS 4.2 Release Candidate 2: We are very close to HMIS 4.2 stable. This pre-release version will help us to test the upcoming features and find bugs before the release.

    - Secure connection: You can test the demo web client using TLS. Please check the demo database section on the GNUHealth Wikibooks.

    - Thalamus, the GNU Health Federation message and authentication server still runs on Gunicorn, also using https.

    More info and resources:

    • Wikibooks: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GNU_Health
    • GNUHealth documentation portal: https://www.gnuhealth.org/docs/
    • Mastodon:  https://mastodon.social/@gnuhealth
    • Matrix: https://app.element.io/#/room/#gnuhealth-space:matrix.org

    Happy and healthy hacking!
    Luis

• Licensing / Legal

  • Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Does technology have a right to exist? (No.)

    This was manifest recently in Heather Meeker’s article “Is Copyright Eating AI?”. In it, she argues that we need clear legal rules that “neural networks, and the outputs they produce, are not presumed to be copies of the data used to train them” (emphasis mine) or else we’ll kill the industry and stifle innovation. Specifically, she believes that generative AI in particular is at risk of being brought down by copyright lawsuits.

    And let’s be clear: she isn’t just arguing that this is the consequence if there’s not such a legal rule. She’s arguing clearly that it would be good if the legal rule existed, saying “let’s hope this nascent field doesn’t sink”.

• Programming/Development

  • Antipope ☛ An AI app walks into a writers room

    Third use case: ChatGPT is currently trained on an English language text corpus. It would be very interesting to see what it could do by way of translation with a sufficiently large input corpus of translated texts—like the huge trove of EU and UN documents that Google Translate was trained on.

  • Jack Kelly ☛ Monoids in the Category of…

    The meme words have become an annoying blot on the fringes of the Haskell universe. Learning resources don’t mention it, the core Haskell community doesn’t like it because it adds little and spooks newcomers, and it’s completely unnecessary to understand it if you just want to write Haskell code. But it is interesting, and it pops up in enough cross-language programming communities that there’s still a lot of curiosity about the meme words. I wrote an explanation on reddit recently, it became my highest-voted comment overnight, and someone said that it deserved its own blog post. This is that post.

    This is not a monad tutorial. You do not need to read this, especially if you’re new to Haskell. Do something more useful with your time. But if you will not be satisfied until you understand the meme words, let’s proceed. I’ll assume knowledge of categories, functors, and natural transformations.

  • Chris ☛ Poor Man’s Logistic Regression

    We own a B2B online store, and we want to boost conversion rates by improving our search functionality. We a/b test with a SaaS provider, giving us results11 On the first row are sessions that went to the SaaS provider. On the second row are sessions that went to our existing solution. The first column are sessions that lead to a purchase, and the second column those that did not.: [...]

  • Rlang ☛ Tips for organising your R code

    Keeping your R code organised is not as straightforward as one might think. Just think about the libraries, variables, functions, and many more. All these objects can be defined and later rewritten, some might get obsolete during the process.

    This process is proven to be even more crucial when you are part of a larger group of engineers, and scientists, who collaborate with you.

  • Rlang ☛ December 2022: “Top 40” New CRAN Packages

    One hundred sixteen new packages stuck to CRAN in December 2022. Here are my “Top 40” selections in thirteen categories: Computational Methods, Data, Ecology, Epidemiology, Genomics, Machine Learning, Mathematics, Medicine, Networks, Signal Processing, Statistics, Utilities, and Visualization.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Move or copy your strings? Possible performance impacts

    You sometimes want to add a string to an existing data structure. For example, the C++17 template ‘std::optional’ may be used to represent a possible string value. You may copy it there, as this code would often do…

  • MaskRay ☛ All about UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer

    UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer (UBSan) is an undefined behavior detector for C/C++. It consists of code instrumentation and a runtime. Both components have multiple independent implementations.

    Clang implemented the first instrumentations in 2009-12, initially named -fcatch-undefined-behavior. In 2012 -fsanitize=undefined was added and -fcatch-undefined-behavior was removed. GCC 4.9 implemented -fsanitize=undefined in 2013-08.

    The runtime used by Clang lives in llvm-project/compiler-rt/lib/ubsan. GCC from time to time syncs its downstream fork of the sanitizers part of compiler-rt (libsanitizer). The end of the article lists some alternative runtime implementations.

  • Phil Eaton ☛ Lessons learned streaming building a Scheme-like interpreter in Go

    I wanted to practice making coding videos so I did a four-part series on writing a basic Scheme-like language (minus macros and arrays and tons of stuff).

    I picked this simple topic because I wanted a low-stakes way to learn what I did not know about making videos.

    Here was the end result (nothing crazy): [...]

  • Jack Kelly ☛ Deriving Simple Recursive Functions

    I used to teach Haskell to first-year university students, and many of them struggled to write their first recursive functions. It really isn’t obvious why you can solve a problem using the function you’re in the process of defining, and many students have difficulty making that leap. There is no shame in this. I remember taking a long time to grok proof-by-induction, which has a similar conceptual hurdle: how can you use a statement to prove itself?

  • Git Templates

    Git is a powerful tool for managing and tracking changes in code projects. However, as projects grow and become more complex, it can be difficult to keep everything organized and make sure that everyone is on the same page. This is where Git templates come in.

  • Git: Querying the existing configuration

    Git is a powerful tool for managing code and collaborating with others. One of the most important things when working with Git is understanding how to query the existing configuration.

  • Git: Configuration targets

    Git is a powerful and versatile tool for managing and tracking code changes. One of the key features of Git is its ability to configure various settings and options at different levels, depending on your needs.

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ 10 comics about Linux and programming and stuff.

    I have a disease where I can’t stop telling Linux jokes. Doctor says it’s terminal.

  • Medevel ☛ droppy, The Self-hosted File Storage development has ceased

    droppy is a self-hosted file storage server with a web interface and capabilities to edit files and view media directly in the browser. It is particularly well-suited to be run on low-end hardware like the Raspberry Pi.

    Features

    * Responsive, scalable HTML5 interface

    * Real-time updates of file system changes

    * Directory and…

  • Python

    • Developing the Hello, Word! Program in Python

      Welcome to the world of programming! If you’re just starting out, you’re probably eager to dive in and start creating your own programs.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Jussi Pakkanen ☛ Jussi Pakkanen: PDF with font subsetting and a look in the future

    After several days of head scratching, debugging and despair I finally got font subsetting working in PDF. The text renders correctly in Okular, goes througg Ghostscript without errors and even passes an online PDF validator I found. But not Acrobat Reader, which chokes on it completely and refuses to show anything. Sigh.

Leftovers

• TruthOut ☛ BuzzFeed’s AI-Produced Content Experiment Is a Glimpse Into a Bleak Future

• [Repeat] The Register UK ☛ What is Google doing with its open source teams?

  For example, Chris DiBona, who founded Google’s OSPO 18 years ago, was let go. As was Jeremy Allison, co-creator of Samba and Google engineer; Cat Allman, former Program Manager for Developer EcoSystems; and Dave Lester, a new hire who was taking ownership of Google’s open source security initiatives.

  These are not the people anyone in their right mind, or HR container, would want to fire. They are open source movers and shakers. In open source leadership circles, they’re people everyone knows and are happy to work with.

  What the hell, Google?

• Buttondown ☛ Tag Systems

  I’ve tried to write a blog post on tag systems for years now. Literally years, I think I first started drafting it out in 2018 or so? The problem is that there’s just so much to them, so many different approaches and models and concerns that trying to be comprehensive and rigorous is an exercise in madness.

  So screw it. These are my noncomprehensive, poorly-researched thoughts on tag systems, thrown on the newsletter. This is not about implementation of tag systems, just their design.

• Quillette ☛ Death on Demand: Cautionary Tales from Canada

  MAiD is generating plenty of other collateral damage, too. Some relatives are anguished when they learn that their parents, siblings, or even adult children had requested or received MAiD, and no one ever told them. (Authorities say that privacy laws prevent them from disclosing this information.) We also know that some people who have received approval for MAiD end up torturing themselves about whether to go through with it, scheduling and de-scheduling death dates as they weigh the misery of their existence against the prospect of personal annihilation. For many of these people, their primary form of suffering isn’t physical. It’s social and psychological: feelings of loneliness, boredom, helplessness, and depression. Are those sufficient reasons to indulge a wish for state-assisted death?

  The implications of loosening the MAiD regime’s eligibility rules frighten me profoundly. Canada, like the rest of the world, is full of people who are sad, isolated, and/or disabled. Sooner or later, you and I may well be among their ranks (if you aren’t already), along with many of the people we love.

  Of course, we want to control our fates. But there is something unsettlingly overeager about those stepping forward to expand the reach of this ghoulish (to many) form of medical therapy. Do we really want to be treated—and to treat others—as if humans were disposable? What happens when passing bouts of loneliness and sadness really are all that are formally required for a state-assisted death, with care providers casually offering to sign a depressed patient’s death warrant after he or she has completed a short form on a clipboard?

• Counter Punch ☛ Frank Kunert’s ès Cuisine Photographic Art

  It’s bizarre. Recently, I have been waking dream-like fantasies where I am trapped in a room, often the kitchen, horror-roaring voices assailing me, with no exit or escape feeling I’m about to be grabbed by invisible hands, and decide to jump, and dive into the kitchen floor, and go through the floor, which turns to water, and I’m underwater swimming, down my driveway, up my street, car passing over me, and up an access road to the highway, which is empty and, as I pop my head up on to road, turns to a whitewater, and I ride the water down the steep hill to a place called Midland, now lost beneath a flood. Dream over. It’s a repeating dream. And I’ve wondered if there is something wrong with me.

  Somehow my disappearance from the scene in a dream relates to my recent reading and exploration of Frank Kunert’s latest book of ‘disruptive’ art photography, Carpe Diem. Like his previous books, Lifestyle (2018), Wonderland (2018), and Topsy Turvy World (2008), Kunert’s new book of images has a weird, almost undine, consciousness to it. Though each image implies the presence of humanity — staircases, furniture, place settings, off-ramps, springboards, etc. — there are no people. Replacing people are readers of the book who wear the image as a dream mask for however many moments they sit there perusing the photo. And the photo is of a carefully constructed 3D model of a set. You might recall the scaled world your weird uncle made in his garage where his model train ran through, tenderness in the details of the countryside, structures and the works of humans featured with humans themselves absented, a peaceable kingdom by the sea, if the king were autistic.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Setting tech expectations

  It sounds obvious when spelled out like this, but one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned was that our expectations can so often colour our views of a situation. It’s not universally applicable: you can’t force an expectation of feeling great if you haven’t slept for three days. But having reasonable expectations, especially for tech, can help you cope with issues.

• Hackaday ☛ Driverless Buses Take To The Road In Scotland

  Scotland! It’s the land of tartans, haggis, and surprisingly-warm kilts. It’s also ground zero for the first trial of full-sized driverless buses in the United Kingdom.

• Helsinki Times ☛ Tampere saw population grow by almost 5,000 in 2022

  THE POPULATION of Tampere grew last year by 4,837 people to 249,060, driven by migration gains.

• Mexico News Daily ☛ Recycling plant fire in Tijuana sends thick smoke across border

  The blaze followed a reported explosion at a carboard recycling plant on Saturday and has spread to the assets of seven other businesses.

• Science

  • Adafruit ☛ Solving the Riddle of Roman Concrete

    The engineering wonders of ancient Rome are widely known and much of their impressive construction was held together with a formulation of concrete. Structures like the Pantheon, built in A.D. 128 and featuring the the world’s biggest unreinforced concrete dome, remain intact today, as do ancient Roman aqueducts, still delivering water.

  • Cendyne Naga ☛ How to use HKDF to derive new keys

    In this article, “misuse” has a specific meaning: a cryptographic tool is not delivering all intended security properties because it is not used correctly.

• Education

  • CS Monitor ☛ How teachers in France are shifting focus to build a confident society

    In France, strict classrooms are giving way to ones where feelings are discussed more openly. How might that shift change student experiences – and French society?

  • Common Dreams ☛ DeSantis Targets Diversity Programs, Tenured Professors in ‘Unhinged’​ Attack on Higher Ed

    Taking aim yet again at higher education, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday proposed sweeping changes to the state’s university system, including banning state funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and critical race theory education, as well as forcing tenured professors to undergo reviews at any time.

  • The Nation ☛ Bullying Librarians Is for Know-Nothings

    Voters filing out of a library in west Michigan last year were proud to show off their “I voted” stickers. Ironically, most of them had just voted to defund the library itself.

  • IT Wire ☛ Skills gap among ICT talent expected to ‘intensify’ over year ahead: NetApp

    While the Federal Government and the local tech sector have a shared commitment to achieve 1.2 million tech jobs in Australia by 2030, the skills gap among ICT talent is expected to intensify over the coming year, according to Mathew Hurford, NetApp ANZ VP and Managing Director.

  • RTL ☛ Libraries offer novel ‘warm space’ for hard-up Britons

    As Britain endures a cost-of-living crisis, public libraries and other community hubs are providing “warm spaces” for vulnerable members of society to stay safe and access free food this winter.

  • Business Insider ☛ Alec Baldwin skipped a mandatory firearms safety training for ‘Rust’ and was on the phone with his family during a private, on-set session, prosecutors allege

    The documents allege Gutierrez-Reed then scheduled a private, on-set, hour-long session with Baldwin, but the session ended up only being 30 minutes in length because “Baldwin was distracted and talking on his cell phone to his family during the training,” Guiterrez-Reed told prosecutors.

    “The on-set and limited time of training does not comport to industry standards,” prosecutors said, adding “Baldwin’s failure to ensure minimum standards were met is considered reckless in the industry.”

  • People Magazine ☛ Alec Baldwin Seemed ‘Distracted,’ Missed Required Firearm Training Prior to Shooting: Prosecutors

    In the district attorney’s office’s special investigator Robert Shilling’s probable cause filing, he writes that Baldwin “was not present for required firearms training prior to the commencement of filming.” The filing pointed out that Gutierrez-Reed said in her deposition that Baldwin had “limited training in firearms and how to check his own firearm as to whether it was unloaded or loaded.”

    Gutierrez-Reed also said, per the documents, that Baldwin did attend a 30-minute training session but appeared “distracted and talking on his cell phone to his family during the training.”

• Hardware

  • NPR ☛ These combat vets want to help you design the perfect engagement ring

    They call their company Wove. They can’t send multiple diamond rings in the mail — the insurance bill would be crippling. But with 3D printing, they make inexpensive models people can see, and feel, and then revise, before buying the real thing.

  • Hackaday ☛ DIY Adjustable Wrench? Nuts!

    What do you do if you want a tiny little adjustable wrench? If you’re [my mechanics] you build your own. Where do you get the stock metal? Well, he started with an M20 nut. A few milling operations, a torch, some pliers, and work with a vice resulted in a nice metal blank just the right size to make each part of the wrench, including a new nut for the adjustment.

  • Hackaday ☛ A New Analog And CRT Neck Board For The MacIntosh SE

    Keeping a 35-year old system like the MacIntosh SE and its successor, the SE/30, up and running requires the occasional replacement parts. As an all-in-one system, the analog board that provides the power for not only the system but also the 9″ (23 cm) built-in CRT is a common failure location, whether it is due to damaged traces, broken parts or worse. For this purpose [Kay Koba] designed a replacement analog board, providing it with a BOM of replacement components. This also includes the neck board, which is the part that the CRT itself connects to.

  • Hackaday ☛ Find SWD Points Quickly, No Extra Hardware Needed

    Say you’re tinkering with a smart device powered by a CPU that uses Serial Wire Debug (SWD), but doesn’t mark the testpoints. Finding SWD on a board — how hard could it be? With [Aaron Christophel]’s method, you can find the SWD interface on a PCB within a few minutes’ time. All you need is two needles, a known-to-be-ground connection, an SWD dongle of some kind, and a computer with an audio output. What’s best — you could easily transfer the gist of this method to other programming interface types!

  • Hackaday ☛ KiCanvas Helps Teach And Share KiCad Projects In Browsers

    KiCad is undeniably the hacker favourite when it comes to PCB design, and we’ve built a large amount of infrastructure around it – plugins, integrations, exporters, viewers, and much more. Now, [Stargirl Flowers] is working on what we could call a web viewer for KiCad files – though calling the KiCanvas project a “KiCad viewer” would be an understatement, given everything it aims to let you do. It will help you do exciting things like copy-pasting circuits between KiCad and browser windows, embed circuits into your blog and show component properties/part numbers interactively, and of course, it will work as a standalone online viewer for KiCad files!

  • New York Times ☛ Netherlands and Japan Said to Join U.S. in Curbing China’s Access to Chip Tech

    A new agreement is expected to expand the reach of U.S. technology restrictions on China issued last year.

  • Hackaday ☛ Handmade GPS Tracker Keeps An Eye On Adventurous Cats

    One of the most convenient things about having cats is their independent lifestyle: most are happy to enjoy themselves outside all day, only coming back home when it’s time for dinner and a nap. What your cat gets up to during the day remains a mystery, unless you fit it with a GPS collar. When [Sahas Chitlange] went searching for a GPS tracker for his beloved Pumpkin, he found that none were exactly to his liking: too slow, too big, or simply unreliable. This led him to design and build his own, called Find My Cat.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • JURIST ☛ Canada dispatch: British Columbia decriminalizes possession of small amounts of several ‘hard’ drugs

    Canadian law students are reporting for JURIST on national and international developments in and affecting Canada. Mélanie Cantin is JURIST’s Chief Correspondent for Canada and a 2L at the University of Ottawa.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Hong Kong bans CBD, forcing businesses to shut or revamp

    Hong Kong has banned CBD as a “dangerous drug” and imposed harsh penalties for its possession, forcing fledging businesses to shut down or revamp. Supporters say CBD, derived from the cannabis plant, can help relieve stress and inflammation without getting its users high, unlike its more famous cousin THC, the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana which has long been illegal in Hong Kong. CBD was once legal in the city, and cafes and shops selling CBD-infused products were popular among young people. With the ban, CBD-related businesses have closed down while others have struggled to remodel their businesses. Consumers dumped what they saw as a cure for their ailments into special collection boxes set up around the city.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Cannabis compound CBD now banned in Hong Kong – 7-year jail term for possession to match meth, cocaine

    Hong Kong has banned cannabidiol, or CBD, adding the cannabis compound to a list of criminalised drugs including heroin and cocaine as of Wednesday. The ban involves the addition of CBD to the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, joining over 200 substances listed in the ordinance, among them fentanyl, cocaine, heroin, ketamine and methamphetamine.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s John Lee opposes investigation into gov’t Covid response; masks to stay until after ‘winter surge’

    Hong Kong’s leader John Lee has said he does not think the city should set up an independent inquiry into the government’s Covid-19 response, a suggestion first raised by health experts who said a thorough probe would help improve the handling of any future pandemics.

  • Science Alert ☛ High-Fat Diets May Break The Brain’s Ability to Regulate Calories

    Messing with your head.

  • Science Alert ☛ Ultra-Processed Food May Exacerbate Cognitive Decline, New Studies Show

    A neuroscientist explains what we know.

  • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Drought Profiteers’ Under Fire as Wall Street Targets Colorado River Water

    Financial speculators are buying and selling rights to the Colorado River’s dwindling water resources in a bid to profit as historic drought conditions intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis lead to worsening scarcity.

• Proprietary

  • The Hill ☛ Russian-backed [crackers] actively targeting US health care sector, HHS warns

    The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) warned on Monday that pro-Russian hacktivist group Killnet is actively targeting the U.S. healthcare industry with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

  • Troy Patterson ☛ Using ChatGPT to Create Multiple Choice Questions to Put into Moodle

    This is a tutorial on having ChatGPT write questions to be imported into Moodle using the GIFT format. I’m going to use BBEdit as my text editor, but you can use a different one. The free version of BBEdit should do everything in these steps (* NOTE: Google Docs won’t work for the Regular Expression Find and Replace (Step 3). Microsoft Word will.)

  • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ ChatGPT doing things it’s not supposed to.

  • NL Times ☛ Pro-Russian hackers Killnet behind Groningen hospital cyberattack

    Only the UMCG website is down. According to the hospital, the website with the medical records of UMCG patients has not been compromised. Patients can still view their medical history, operations, medicines, and appointments.

• Security

  • Data Breaches ☛ JD Sports hit by cyber-attack that accessed 10m customers’ data

    Mark Sweney reports: The fashion retailer JD Sports said the personal and financial information of 10 million customers was potentially accessed by hackers in a cyber-attack.

  • Data Breaches ☛ Atlantic General Hospital experiences ransomware event [Ed: Microsoft Windows TCO]

    Sarah Ash reports: Atlantic General Hospital experienced what’s being called a ransomware event Monday afternoon. A hospital spokesperson told 47 ABC that the cause of the disruption is being investigated. Network outages did occur but we’re told patient interruption was limited. The hospital Emergency Room is continuing to receive and treat patients and will continue to service elective surgeries and other outpatient procedures.

  • Data Breaches ☛ Ca: Qulliq Energy stops short of labelling cyberattack another Nunavut ransomware incident

    CBC reports: The Qulliq Energy Corp. says it was locked out of its data in January’s cyberattack, but stopped short of calling it a ransomware attack.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Reality check: Is ChatGPT really the next big cybersecurity threat? [Ed: Self-promotional Microsoft propaganda/charm offensive campaigns]

    ChatGPT isn’t a malware-writing savant and much of the hype around it obscures just how much expertise is required to output quality code.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Russia’s cyberwar against Ukraine offers vital lessons for the West [Ed: Microsoft Windows TCO]

    Ukraine’s experience in countering Russian cyber warfare can provide valuable lessons while offering a glimpse into a future where wars will be waged both by conventional means and increasingly in the borderless realm of cyberspace.

  • USCERT ☛ CISA Releases One Industrial Control Systems Advisory

    Original release date: January 31, 2023

    CISA released one Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisory on January 31, 2023. This advisory provides timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.

  • Security Week ☛ Microsoft’s Verified Publisher Status Abused in Email Theft Campaign

    Microsoft and Proofpoint are warning organizations that use cloud services about a recent consent phishing attack that abused Microsoft’s ‘verified publisher’ status.

  • Security Week ☛ Critical QNAP Vulnerability Leads to Code Injection

    QNAP warns users of a critical vulnerability that allows attackers to inject malicious code on NAS devices.

  • CubicleNate ☛ Ad-Blocking and Why You Should

    You are being constantly tracked, surreptitiously, through the web. Various sites are tracking you with the intent of selling you products or selling your information. It’s one thing if a website inquires basic information when you are visiting, it is another thing when a website stalks you across the internet.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Google Fi suffers data breach following T-Mobile hack

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Variety ☛ Eva Green ‘Humiliated’ After Private WhatsApp Messages ‘Exposed’ in Court

      As part of the discovery process, numerous communications between Green and other individuals – including her agent, Charles Collier of Tavistock Wood, and the film’s writer and director Dan Pringle – were disclosed, in which Green admits she was “very direct.” Among them are missives in which Green calls Sherborne “arseholes” and “sad little people” and describes one of the producers on the project, Jake Seal, as “evil” and “the devil.” She also referred to the crew at production facility Black Hanger Studios as “shitty peasants.” On Monday, the court heard that Green had described the failing project as a “B-shitty-movie”.

      As part of a lengthy cross examination, White Lantern’s lawyer, Max Mallin KC, asked Green whether she was “accustomed to lying in text messages,” to which Green responded that she has a “very direct” manner, before adding: “I was not expecting to have my WhatsApp messages exposed in court. It’s already very humiliating.”

    • EFF ☛ EFF Files Amicus Briefs in Two Important Geofence Search Warrant Cases

      The two cases are People v. Meza, in the California Court of Appeal, and United States v. Chatrie, in the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. In each case, the defendant is challenging the police use of a surveillance tool we’ve written about before called a “geofence warrant.” In both cases, the lower courts denied motions to suppress. In Chatrie, however, the district court issued a lengthy opinion holding the geofence warrant was unconstitutional before ruling that police relied on the warrant in “good faith” and therefore the evidence from their search was admissible.

      Unlike traditional warrants for electronic records, a geofence warrant doesn’t start with a particular suspect or even a device or account; instead police request data on every device in a given geographic area during a designated time period, regardless of whether the device owner has any connection to the crime under investigation. Google has said that for each warrant, it must search its entire database of users’ location history information—data on hundreds of millions of users.

      The data Google provides to police in response to a geofence warrant has the potential to be very precise—much more precise than cell site location information, for example. It allows Google to determine where a user was at a given date and time, sometimes to within twenty meters or less. Google can even determine a user’s elevation and establish what floor of a building that user may have been on. As the lower court noted in Chatrie last summer, Google’s database “appears to be the most sweeping, granular, and comprehensive tool—to a significant degree—when it comes to collecting and storing location data.” At the same time, however, Google does not guarantee accuracy. Google’s goal is to accurately infer a user’s location within a certain radius a bare 68% of the time. This creates the possibility of both false positives and false negatives—people could be implicated for a crime when they were nowhere near the scene, or the actual perpetrator might not be included at all in the data Google provides to police.

    • Techdirt ☛ Madison Square Garden’s Facial Recognition-Enabled Bans Now Being Targeted By Legislators, State AG

      Late last year, it was revealed that MSG Entertainment (the owner of several New York entertainment venues, including the titular Madison Square Garden) was using its facial recognition tech to, in essence, blacklist its owner’s enemies.

    • Counter Punch ☛ How Police Use Public-Private Partnerships to Spy on Americans

      In this age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives: everything is public.

      Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. License plate readers. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices.

    • EFF ☛ Two Steps Forward, One Step Back on Vaccine Privacy in New York

      The original bill would have protected people from having their information misused by private companies, the government, or other entities that wish to track their movements or use their private medical information to punish or discriminate against them. It also would have expressly prohibited immunity information from being shared with immigration agencies seeking to deport someone, or with child services seeking to take away their children. Finally, it would have required those asking for immunity information to accept an analog credential, such as a paper record.

      New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the bill into law at the end of December. Unfortunately, she amended the bill the legislature passed to weaken some of its provisions on data sharing.

      New Yorkers are better off with this law on the books. But it’s disappointing to see signing amendments that run counter to the heart of the bill: that public health requires public trust. We should never worry that seeking health care, especially for something as routine as a vaccine, will land us in legal trouble.

    • New Yorker ☛ Surveillance and the Loneliness of the Long-Distance Trucker

      A new book shows how electronic tracking systems have failed to make trucking safer. But they have helped companies spy on their workers.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Government monitoring of Covid-19 policy media critics revealed

      Toby Young, Talkradio’s Julia Hartley-Brewer and Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens were among those monitored.

    • EDRI ☛ Under surveillance: (mis)use of technologies in emergency responses

      In the months following the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half the world’s countries enacted emergency measures. Within this broader context, we have seen a rapid scaling up of governments’ use of technologies to enable widespread surveillance. How has this impacted civil society groups globally?

    • Engadget ☛ EU vows to get tougher on Big Tech privacy violations

      The European Union iseager to crack downon Big Tech’s alleged privacy abuses, but the reliance on individual countries to enforce General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules has led to lengthy cases with punishments that arefrequently modest.

    • Danish speed camera warning app to be switched off

      The Fartkontrol.nu app, which warns motorists about upcoming speed checks on roads, is to be switched off at the end of January.

    • Marcy Wheeler ☛ DOJ Has Spent Five Months Trying to Access Scott Perry’s Phone

      In addition to all the difficulties created by the 25 subjects or witnesses in the January 6 investigation, DOJ has been fighting for five months to access Scott Perry’s phone.

    • EDRI ☛ Member States want internet service providers to do the impossible in the fight against child sexual abuse

      In May 2022, the European Commission presented its proposal for a Regulation to combat child sexual abuse (CSA) online. The proposal contains a number of privacy intrusive provisions, including obligations for platforms to indiscriminately scan the private communications of all users (dubbed ”chat control”). There are also blocking obligations for internet services providers (ISPs), which is the focus of this article.

    • EDRI ☛ Phone unlocking vs biometric mass surveillance: what’s the difference?

      Facial recognition is one of the most hotly-debated topics in the European Union’s (EU) Artificial Intelligence Act. Lawmakers are more aware than ever of the risks posed by automated surveillance systems which pervasively track our faces – as well as our bodies and movements – across time and place. This can amount to biometric mass surveillance (BMS), which undermines our anonymity and freedom, and weaponises our faces and bodies against us. The article explores the types of biometric technology and their implications.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Democracy Now ☛ “Elite” Police Units Face More Scrutiny as Memphis SCORPION Unit Disbanded over Tyre Nichols Death

    Memphis police have revealed a sixth and a seventh officer have been placed on administrative leave in addition to the five fired officers over the death of Tyre Nichols, after Nichols was brutally beaten at a traffic stop. On Saturday, Memphis disbanded the police unit responsible for the killing, known as SCORPION, which stood for “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood.” We look more closely at these so-called special police units in cities nationwide that operate with little oversight with investigative reporter Radley Balko, author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces” and of the criminal justice newsletter, The Watch. His opinion piece for The New York Times is headlined “Tyre Nichols’s Death Proves Yet Again That ‘Elite’ Police Units Are a Disaster.”

  • Counter Punch ☛ How America’s Insurrectionists Crossed the Rubicon of History

    Americans tuning into the television news on January 8th eyed a disturbingly recognizable scene. In an “eerily familiar” moment of “déjà vu,” just two years and two days after the January 6th Capitol insurrection in Washington, D.C., a mob of thousands stormed government buildings in the capital city of another country — Brazil. In Brasilia, what New York Times columnist Ross Douthat ominously labelled “the first major international imitation of our Capitol riot” seemed to be taking place.

    As the optics suggested, there were parallels indeed, underscoring a previously underappreciated fragility in our democratic framework: the period of transition between presidencies.

  • The Nation ☛ Cops Lynched Tyre Nichols Because They Knew They Could

    The race of a cop is “cop.” Nobody should have needed to see a video of five Black cops lynching Tyre Nichols to figure that out. Nichols was beaten to death by Black cops (five of whom have been charged with murder); Tasered by a white cop who encouraged the beating (who has been suspended but still not charged); and abandoned by people with a duty to render aid (three Memphis first responders have been relieved of duty) as he slumped, dying of injuries, for 23 minutes until an ambulance showed up on the scene. A goddamn rainbow coalition of “cops” killed that man. Then, a police force made up of a diverse group of people whose forebears were enslavers, slaves, and slave catchers took to the streets in riot gear and armored personnel carriers to keep Memphis “safe” from people who wanted to protest the brutality of those cops.

  • New Yorker ☛ The Killing of Tyre Nichols and the Issue of Race

    The case dispatches several assumptions associated with police reform.

  • LRT ☛ Lithuanian FM says all EU countries should expel Russian ambassadors

    Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis says he sees no point in EU member states having Russian ambassadors in their countries.

  • IT Wire ☛ US thinking of further tightening export curbs on Huawei: report

    It cited “people familiar with the matter” as saying Washington was looking at adjusting its licensing policy to achieve this end, but that no final decision had been made.

  • Tom’s Hardware ☛ US Government Stops Export Licenses to Huawei

    U.S. administration imposes total export ban on Huawei.

  • New York Times ☛ Russia Pours Fighters Into Battle for Bakhmut

    Part of Moscow’s strategy appears to be overwhelming Ukrainian defenses with waves of soldiers as it tries to gain its first significant victory in months.

  • Site36 ☛ Armed hypocrisy with Aija Kalnaja, in line with the values of the EU

    Misconducts are „pactices of the Past“, Frontex reported after Aija Kalnaja took over as interim director in the autumn.

  • European Commission ☛ Mr Janusz Wojciechowski takes part in mission to Kyiv with College of European Commissioners.

    European Commission Event Kyiv, 27 Jan 2023 Mr Janusz Wojciechowski takes part in mission to Kyiv with College of European Commissioners.

  • Defence Web ☛ Egyptian President visits India to elevate bilateral relations, including defence ties

    Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi touched down in New Delhi on 24 January for a three-day state visit focused on elevating the relationship to the level of strategic partnership between Egypt and India, in an effort to ramp up defence, political, energy and economic ties.

  • France24 ☛ Live: Russia not complying with last remaining nuclear treaty amid Ukraine war, US says

    The US said Tuesday that Russia was not complying with New START, the last remaining arms control treaty between the world’s two main nuclear powers, as tensions soar over the Ukraine war. Follow FRANCE 24’s live coverage of today’s developments on the war in Ukraine. All times are in Paris time (GMT+1).

  • CNN ☛ Opinion: Why some African nations are greeting Russia with open arms

    Russia seems to be outmaneuvering the United States in Africa. In recent days, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov underscored that stark reality as he wined and dined his way through a tour of four African capitals.

  • Axios ☛ U.S. charges 4 more suspects in Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination

    Four men were extradited to the U.S. and charged for their alleged involvement in the assassination of former HaitianPresident Jovenel Moïse, the Department of Justiceannouncedon Tuesday.

  • NYPost ☛ 12-year-old boy shot inside lobby of NYC apartment building

    The preteen suffered a gunshot wound to the left shoulder around 9:20, the NYPD said.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Some things are more important than justice’ Trial lawyer Ivan Pavlov talks about the state of Russia’s judiciary and how treason cases are tried in the country — Meduza

    Ivan Pavlov is a defense attorney specializing in crimes against the state. Since the 1990s, he has defended Russians charged with treason, espionage, and disclosing state secrets. In 2015, he founded Team29, an advocacy group for the right to access government information. The state’s resistance to Pavlov’s initiative eventually forced the group to close. Next, Ivan Pavlov and his colleagues established a new advocacy organization, Department One, this time with the mission of helping defendants in non-public trials, where secrecy enables all kinds of manipulations by the prosecution. While representing Ivan Safronov in a recent high-profile treason case, Pavlov himself was arrested and charged with violating the investigation’s secrecy. In September 2021, he emigrated to the Republic of Georgia. Deutsche Welle columnist Konstantin Eggert spoke with Pavlov in Tbilisi, asking him about Russia’s judiciary, his client’s 22-year prison sentence, the people who work in the FSB, and the lustration that could come to Russia, should the Putin regime collapse. With DW’s and Konstantin Eggert’s permission, Anna Razumnaya summarizes Ivan Pavlov’s remarks from an interview that originally appeared on Deutsche Welle’s Russian-language YouTube channel.

  • Meduza ☛ Russia’s prison population stops shrinking after record drop due to Wagner Group recruitment — Meduza

    Russia’s federal penitentiary service (“FSIN”) has published a new report on the country’s prison population. According to the agency’s figures, the number of Russia’s incarcerated people has finally stabilized, after a record drop registered last November.

  • Meduza ☛ Alexey Navalny: ‘Russia’s prison system is just like the Soviet Gulag, only with a chapel in every zone’ — Meduza

    Alexey Navalny, the imprisoned opposition politician serving a sentence in Russia’s Vladimir Region, writes that he is struck by the memoirs of Anatoly Marchenko, a Soviet-era dissident whose experience of the Gulag mirrors Navalny’s own life in the penal colony.

  • The Nation ☛ Tyre Nichols’s Police Murder and the Pathologizing of Blackness

    On January 7, 2023, five Black Memphis police officers brutally beat 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, a Black man, during a traffic stop. Nichols was hospitalized after the coordinated assault, and died three days later.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian Prosecutor General says more than 9,000 illegally mobilized soldiers have been sent back home — Meduza

    Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov said during a meeting with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that more than 9,000 soldiers who were illegally mobilized have now been sent home, including some who were unqualified to serve in the military due to health issues.

  • Counter Punch ☛ The Ukraine War and International Law

    The Ukraine War has provided a challenging time for the nations of the world and, particularly, for international law.

    Since antiquity, far-sighted thinkers have worked on developing rules of behavior among nations in connection with war, diplomacy, economic relations, human rights, international crime, global communications, and the environment. Defined as international law, this “law of nations” is based on treaties or, in some cases, international custom. Some of the best-known of these international legal norms are outlined in the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions.

  • Common Dreams ☛ I’m a Card-Carrying Member of the Military-Industrial Complex and Here Is the Unpleasant Truth

    My name is Bill Astore and I’m a card-carrying member of the military-industrial complex (MIC).

  • Meduza ☛ Putin’s decree simplifies implementing terrorism alerts across Russia — Meduza

    Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree that simplifies implementing terrorist threat alerts across Russia’s regions.

  • Counter Punch ☛ What Was That Biden Said About Ending the War?

    Commentators speculate how the American president’s promise – endorsed by the country as enthusiastically as Zelensky himself– of M1 Abram tanks to Ukraine will affect the war that grinds on in Ukraine. Many assume that gifts of fighter jets will follow shortly.

    What disturbs me is the semantics of Biden’s announcement of the gift, rationalized and neatly summed up, by “We all want an end to this war.” I wonder if Joe Biden is aware that his statement comes in the week that marks 50 years since the inglorious end of the U.S. war in Vietnam, (noted more widely in the foreign press than in the U.S.) How many times and for how many years did Americans and perhaps their Vietnamese quislings hear that kind of heroic talk about victory there? Similar assurances from military leaders and politicians were offered in subsequent wars. Remember Afghanistan where American military forces likewise abandoned the noble cause, although that took two decades to prove unworkable, and humiliating as well.

  • Counter Punch ☛ The Pentagon’s Perpetual Crisis Machine

    Given President Biden’s decision to send 31 of its top-ranked M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, it is clear that the Pentagon has decided to escalate its war against Russia. Biden’s decision was followed by Germany’s decision to deliver 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks to Ukraine. I’ll guarantee you there isn’t a Russian alive who doesn’t know about the time in the 1940s when Germany sent its tanks deep into Russia, killed millions of Russians, and almost succeeded in conquering the country.

    If the increasing pressure that the Pentagon is putting on Russia does not result in a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, the advocates of this highly dangerous interventionist and escalatory strategy will later exclaim, “You see, we told you that there was never a risk of nuclear war.” But what’s interesting about the Pentagon’s strategy is that if it does result in nuclear war, there won’t be anyone around to point out how wrongheaded it was.

  • RFA ☛ Chinese photographer displays rare photos of 2008 crackdown in Tibet capital Lhasa

    In March 2018, the Tibetan regional capital Lhasa was seething with protests over long standing grievances about harsh Chinese rule in the Himalayan region. By October the city had recorded several hundred such protests, which were met by a heavy Chinese crackdown that Tibetan sources say claimed as many as 400 lives. Sympathy demonstrations were held around the world, including some that interrupted the Olympic torch relay in European capitals for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

  • CBC ☛ Yazidis plead with Canada not to repatriate [sic] ISIS members

    The looming return of alleged ISIS members to Canada has brought trauma, worry and fear to people who were invited to Canada as a safe haven after the terrorist group all but destroyed their ancient community in northern Iraq.

  • RAIR Foundation ☛ London: In Response to Quran Burnings in Denmark and Sweden, Allahu Akbar Shouting Muslims Seize Control of Streets, Burn Flags, Declare Supremacy

    In response to the Qur’an burnings in Sweden and Denmark, angry Muslims protested outside Sweden’s London embassy in the United Kingdom. They turned the Embassy into a Masjid for the day. They took turns burning the Danish flag while chanting the Islamic battle cry, Alluha Akbar, and screaming the controversial adhan (call to prayer). Then, in a show of force, the Islamic supremacists seized control of London streets to show the world they had conquered another western city: [...]

  • NL Times ☛ Netherlands got most asylum applications since 2015 last year

    The number of people applying for asylum in the Netherlands increased sharply last year. There were 35,535 first asylum applications, the highest number since 2015. Compared to 2021, the number of applications increased by 43.6 percent. Applications have decreased slightly since September.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • [Old] FlightAware ☛ Do you want to build your own FlightAware PiAware ADS-B Ground Station?

    You can now build and run your own ADS-B ground station that can be installed anywhere and receive real-time data directly from airplanes on your computer.

    Your ground station can run FlightAware’s PiAware software to track flights within 100-300 miles (line of sight, range depending on antenna installation) and will automatically feed data to FlightAware. You can track flights directly off your PiAware device or via FlightAware.com.

    As a thank you from FlightAware, users sending ADS-B data receive the following: [...]

• Environment

  • BBC ☛ Missing radioactive capsule found in Australia

    The capsule was found when a vehicle equipped with specialist equipment, which was travelling at 70 km/h, detected radiation, officials said.

    Portable detection equipment was then used to locate the capsule, which was found about 2 metres from the side of the road, they added.

  • Common Dreams ☛ AI Study Warns World Could Hit 2℃ Within Decades—Even With Emissions Cuts

    Even with ambitious action to reduce planet-heating emissions, the world could pass the two key temperature thresholds of the Paris climate agreement in the coming decades, according to new research that relied on artificial intelligence.

  • Common Dreams ☛ DeSantis Screeching “Resiliency” Won’t Save Florida From Climate Catastrophe

    Florida is crazy about resiliency. The word is everywhere, because hurricanes, rising seas, erosion, disappearing beaches and downtowns flooding on sunny days are everywhere. The elected need to look like they’re doing something about it. So here comes resiliency. It’s got toughness, machismo, lilt. The syllables surf off the tongue with just enough self-importance for a word coined in mid-17th century England that our right honorable Gov. DeSantis thinks it’ll power Florida through the catastrophes of the 21st. He’s plastering the word everywhere like wonder whitewash.

  • Common Dreams ☛ The Battle of Lützerath Marks Beginning of a New Stage for Global Climate Movement

    In early January 2023, in a tiny village in western Germany, tens of thousands of climate justice activists faced off against thousands of police in a showdown over the fate of the fossil industry in central Europe. The gigantic mobilization of means to secure the destruction of a village and the expansion of one of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines—Garzweiler—in the center of Europe marks a new historical moment. To consider what happened in Lützerath as a defeat of the movement is to misunderstand history.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • TruthOut ☛ Sky-High Gas Prices Handed Exxon a Record $6 Million in Profit Per Hour in 2022

    • TruthOut ☛ Miami’s Mayor Went All In on Cryptocurrency. His Constituents Suffered.

    • NPR ☛ Exxon announced record earnings. It’s bound to renew scrutiny of Big Oil

      The high profits have also revived perennial conversations about how much profit is too much profit for an oil company — especially as urgency over the need to slow climate change is mounting around the world.

      Exxon’s blockbuster earnings, announced Monday, will likely lead to more political pressure from the White House. Last year President Biden called out Exxon for making “more money than God.”

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ Danish police to use electric cars

      Ten electric patrol cars will become part of the police’s regular fleet, it has been confirmed.

    • Common Dreams ☛ Calls for Windfall Tax Grow as ExxonMobil Smashes Big Oil Profit Record With $56 Billion Haul

      As ExxonMobil on Tuesday joined other U.S. oil companies in reporting record 2022 earnings amid rising gas prices, consumer and climate advocates renewed calls for a Big Oil windfall profits tax.

    • Gizmodo ☛ Exxon and Chevron Are Absolutely Killing It (Profits, the Planet)

      If by some miracle you had a great 2022, you’re not alone. At least two of the world’s biggest oil corporations thoroughly rocked last year. In fact, for ExxonMobil and Chevron, 2022 wasn’t just a good year—it was the best one ever.

    • CNN ☛ ‘Pool of misery’: Constant blackouts push South Africa to the brink

      Car crashes, opportunistic criminals, rotting food, decomposing bodies, bankrupt businesses, and water shortages. Welcome to life under South Africa’s power blackouts.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Yes, we have enough materials to power the world with renewable energy

      Powering the world with renewable energy will take a lot of raw materials. The good news is, when it comes to aluminum, steel, and rare-earth metals, there’s plenty to go around, according to a new analysis.

    • New York Times ☛ Administration Expected to Endorse Limited Drilling in Alaska Project

      An environmental review expected soon would effectively signal that the Willow project proceed, according to people familiar with the report.

    • Common Dreams ☛ ‘A New Day for Bristol Bay’ as EPA Blocks Pebble Mine in Alaska

      Environmental advocates in Alaska and across the United States on Tuesday applauded what one Indigenous campaigner called “historic progress” in the fight to protect Bristol Bay’s ecosystems from the developers of Pebble Mine, a proposed open-pit copper and gold mine that would have led to the dumping of waste in the world’s largest sockeye salmon run.

    • Common Dreams ☛ ‘Stop Drilling and Start Paying’: Greenpeace Activists Occupy Shell Oil Platform

      In an effort to call attention to the company’s planet-wrecking drilling projects, several Greenpeace International campaigners on Tuesday boarded and occupied a Shell-contracted platform in the Atlantic Ocean as it headed toward a major oil and gas field in the U.K. North Sea.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Vice Media Group ☛ Scientists Launch Project to ‘De-Extinct’ the Dodo, Reintroduce to Natural Habitat

      Scientists and Colossal Biosciences want to reverse-engineer and “de-extinct” the iconic bird centuries after it was wiped out.

  • Overpopulation

    • Overpopulation ☛ Linking population growth and biodiversity loss: a new bibliography

      Excessive and growing human numbers are a leading cause of decreasing biodiversity in many parts of the world. In researching a paper on this topic last year, we became aware of the large amount of good scientific work recently published on it.

    • LRT ☛ Europe’s water crisis – could Lithuania become water-exporting country?

      Scientists have estimated that Europe loses around 84 gigatons of water every year due to climate change. This signals a freshwater crisis, says Gintaras Valiuškevičius, a hydrology professor at Vilnius University (VU).

      According to him, many EU countries draw a large part of water for drinking and domestic use from surface sources, including rivers, lakes, and ponds. Such water usually requires additional treatment.

• Finance

  • FAIR ☛ Goldilocks Wants to Eat the Poor

    The 19th century English fable Goldilocks tells the story of a young girl who breaks into the home of three bears and eats their porridge. Luckily, they have three different bowls ready for consumption: One is too hot. One is too cold. The other is just right.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Tech layoff watch: PayPal, Workday and HubSpot cut staff amid slowing economy

    PayPal Holdings Inc., Workday Inc. and HubSpot Inc. are the latest tech companies to announce layoffs as firms large and small attempt to cut costs to deal with a slowing economy. PayPal leads the list, announcing that it plans to lay off 2,000 employees or about 7% of its workforce.

  • New York Times ☛ Brexit Turns 3. Why Is No One Wearing a Party Hat?

    The divorce between Britain and the European Union has become the dark thread that, to many, explains why Britain is suffering more than its neighbors.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Global economy proves resilient as IMF predicts growth in 2023

    The International Monetary Fund has a positive outlook for the global economy. It expects 2.9% in growth this year as the world shows surprising resilience in the face of high inflation, elevated interest rates, and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

  • teleSUR ☛ French Streets Flooded With Over 800,000 Protesters

    “After having worked all our lives, not only do we want to survive on our pensions, but to live on them for quite some time,” union leader Martinez stated.

  • France24 ☛ France sees bigger crowds on second strike day against Macron pension reforms

    French protesters launched a new push Tuesday to pressure President Emmanuel Macron into dropping a pension reform plan, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets in bigger crowds than those seen on the previous day of rallies on January 19.

  • Common Dreams ☛ “Citizens’ Insurrection”: Huge Protests in France Aim to Kill Macron Pension Plan

    Hundreds of thousands of enraged workers across France walked off the job and hit the streets Tuesday to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the nation’s official retirement age from 62 to 64.

  • France24 ☛ ‘Not just about pensions’: French protesters see threat to social justice in Macron’s reform

    Huge crowds marched across France on Tuesday in a new round of protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age, signalling the opposition’s success in framing the pension debate as part of a broader battle against an economic platform they perceive as unfair.

  • Engadget ☛ PayPal is laying off 2,000 employees

    PayPal is about to become the latest tech company to lay off a substantial part of its workforce.

  • Engadget ☛ 343 is reportedly ‘starting from scratch’ on Halo development after layoffs

    The 343 team is understood to be using Unreal for an unannounced game, nicknamed “Tatanka,” developed with the help of long-time ally Certain Affinity.

  • CNN ☛ Chinese cities are struggling to pay their bills as ‘hidden debts’ soar

    Three years of strict pandemic controls in China and a real estate crash have drained local government coffers, leaving authorities across the country struggling with mountains of debt. The problem has gotten so extreme that some cities are now unable to provide basic services, and the risk of default is rising.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Pakistan’s elite and the current economic crisis

    Former Pakistan Finance Minister Miftah Ismail in a media interview made some very interesting points. While Ismail lashed out at his successor and current Finance Minister Ishaq Dar saying that the latter’s Anti International Monetary Fund (IMF) approach was one of the key reasons behind the current economic crisis in Pakistan.

  • The Strategist ☛ Vietnam’s economy shows signs of revival

    In 2022, the geopolitical tensions caused by the war in Ukraine, slowing growth in the Chinese economy and sharp rises in energy and food prices led to a significantly higher inflationary outlook globally.

  • Common Dreams ☛ So You Wanna Reduce the Debt? Tax the Wealthy Like We Used To

    The dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington, demanding that the $31 trillion federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed (thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling).

  • Common Dreams ☛ White House Insists Debt Default Won’t Be Negotiated as McCarthy Says He Is ‘Coming to Negotiate’

    “Raising the debt ceiling is not a negotiation; it is an obligation of this country and its leaders to avoid economic chaos.”

  • Democracy Now ☛ Marxist Economist Richard Wolff on How the Debt Ceiling Benefits the Rich & Powerful

    As House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden prepare for their first face-to-face meeting this week to discuss raising the debt ceiling, we speak with Marxist economist Richard Wolff about why the limit on the federal government’s borrowing lets politicians avoid making hard choices about taxing the wealthy. House Republicans are pushing for major spending cuts as part of any deal to raise the federal government’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit. “It’s 99% theatrics,” says Wolff, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of The New School. Wolff also discusses the economic impact of the Ukraine war.

  • TruthOut ☛ The Debt Ceiling Benefits the Rich and Powerful, Says Economist Richard Wolff

  • Common Dreams ☛ As Fed Meets, Experts Tell Powell to Stop ‘Needlessly Threatening Jobs’

    As the Federal Reserve kicked off its first policy meeting of the new year on Tuesday, economists and progressive advocates reiterated their now-familiar call for the central bank to stop raising interest rates amid growing evidence that hiring, wage growth, and inflation are slowing significantly.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Hill ☛ Workday cuts hundreds of jobs

    The company told employees in a message on Tuesday that it decided to restructure and realign some teams across the company, leading to the layoffs, the majority of which will be those working on product and technology, according to a copy of the message from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  • The Hill ☛ PayPal laying off 2,000 employees

    CEO and President Dan Schulman wrote in a message to employees shared on the company website that while PayPal made “substantial progress” in restructuring its cost structure and prioritizing its allocation of resources, more work needs to be done. He said the downsizing will occur within the next few weeks, and that some organizations in the company will be “impacted more than others.”

  • World Wide Web Consortium ☛ W3C re-launched as a public-interest non-profit organization

    The World Wide Web Consortium began the year 2023 by forming a new public-interest non-profit organization. The new entity preserves our member-driven approach, existing worldwide outreach and cooperation while allowing for additional partners around the world beyond Europe and Asia. The new organization also preserves the core process and mission of the Consortium to shepherd the web, by developing open web standards as a single global organization with contributions from W3C Members, staff, and the international community.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ The real scandal is overclassification

    Thousands of American bureaucrats have unilaterally classified tens of millions of unremarkable documents without any legitimate basis for shielding them from public view. Meanwhile, millions of people have “Top Secret clearance” and can view these documents, making a mockery of their supposed secrecy.

  • NPR ☛ The CEO of TikTok will testify before Congress amid security concerns about the app

    The committee alleged the app is linked to the Chinese Communist Party, and said in a statement, “Americans deserve to know how these actions impact their privacy and data security, as well as what actions TikTok is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms.”

  • The Nation ☛ The Long, Bitter History of Globalism

    Historians often interpret the history of Europe between the two world wars as an epochal struggle between emergent and entrenched systems of governance: communism versus fascism, democracy versus dictatorship. Yet in her new book, Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars, Tara Zahra offers a different frame for grasping the interwar period. Zahra, a professor of Eastern European history at the University of Chicago, sees these years as a mass political reaction to the advent of a truly globalized world and the consequences of a global economy (and the interwar depression) that affected the lives of millions.

  • TruthOut ☛ GOP Oversight Chair Plans to Investigate Biden’s Docs Case But Not Trump’s

  • Meduza ☛ ‘An especially dangerous criminal’ The story of Vasyl Ovsienko, who spent more than 13 years in Soviet prisons for using the Ukrainian language — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Lithuanian Foreign Minister calls on EU countries to expel Russian ambassadors — Meduza

    Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis called on other EU member states to expel their Russian ambassadors on Wednesday, saying that in most cases, Russia’s diplomatic missions are “not diplomatic institutions but propaganda institutions” that “cover up war crimes” and “promote a program of genocide,” according to the Lithuanian news outlet Delfi.

  • The Nation ☛ Britain’s Winter of Discontent

    Every Thursday at 8 pm during the spring of 2020, British people would emerge from lockdown for a few brief minutes and make some noise. Some of us bashed pots and pans, others cheered and whooped, others simply clapped. This display of national gratitude was for our “essential workers”—nurses, bus and train drivers, teachers and sanitation and Deliveroo workers—who had to do their jobs so that society could function. With Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles (as they all were then) joining in, we clearly weren’t all clapping for the same thing.

  • Techdirt ☛ As Expected, Twitter’s New Trust & Safety Rules Are ‘Elon’s Whims’

    Have you noticed that everything that Elon Musk insisted was “bad” about the old Twitter (often incorrectly) are things… he’s now doing himself, but in even more ridiculous ways? He insisted that Twitter was run by people who were promoting ideological political views. Yet… it was Elon Musk (not old Twitter management) who publicly insisted people should vote for one party in the midterm elections. He insisted that Twitter unfairly blocked accounts based on made up rationale. Yet it was Elon Musk who started making up nonsense rules to ban people who annoyed him. He insisted that “shadowbanning” was bad, but his stated solution to content moderation policies… is the same exact thing he claims (falsely) is “shadowbanning.”

  • The Nation ☛ What the Attacks on New Mexico Democrats Say About Being a Woman in Politics

    On December 4, Adriann Barboa, the Bernalillo County commissioner, returned home from buying Christmas lights, and what she saw terrified her: Her front door was riddled with bullet holes. Only hours earlier she’d been playing with her grandchild behind that door. Police said a person had shot eight times into her home. It was sheer luck that she and her family were away. She told me that she asked herself in that moment, Why would somebody do this? “I immediately thought,” she said, “it must be because of one of two things: my position as a commissioner or because of the work I’ve done on abortion access.”

  • Techdirt ☛ Ted Cruz Goes After ‘Woke’ Microsoft Over Xbox Power Saving Settings Update

    If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you will be familiar with the concept of the anti-“woke” culture war the Republican Party grows and farms for its own purposes. This isn’t to say there aren’t real cultural conflicts we need to work out as a country, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that much of what you hear about in the press is specifically cultivated by one party or another to generate headlines and outrage for the purposes of votes and campaign contributions.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Danger Ahead: Angry Republicans

    If there’s a symbol of the Republican Party today, it’s heralded replicant Rep. George Santos of New York, known resume creator. If that, indeed, is his real name.

    He’s right out of the 1982 cult dystopian movie “Blade Runner,” starring Harrison Ford. You can’t tell by Santos’ eyes because he wears black horn-rimmed glasses. It’s the eyes that have it for identifying replicants.

  • Engadget ☛ Twitter is killing off co-authored tweets after less than a year

    “We’re still looking for ways to implement this feature moving forward,” Twitter said. So, it could return at some point.

  • New Yorker ☛ When Americans Lost Faith in the News

    Half a century ago, most of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, most say they don’t. What happened to the power of the press?

  • CS Monitor ☛ Saving democracy by shielding judges

    From Lebanon to Hong Kong, leaders see judicial independence – and civic equality before the law – as essential.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Nearly 80% of Voters in George Santos’ NY District Say He Should Resign: Poll

    Close to 80% of voters in GOP Rep. George Santos’ New York congressional district want him to resign—including 71% of Republicans—according to a poll published Tuesday, the same day the serial liar temporarily stepped down from his House committee assignments.

  • TruthOut ☛ 78 Percent of George Santos’s Constituents Want Him to Resign, Poll Finds

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Brussels hits the Hungarian government on a very sensitive point with the Horizon program

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ The latest from Arte Weekly: Turkey may sabotage Sweden’s NATO membership over Kurds, while the EU approves certain insects as food

  • Techdirt ☛ Incredibly, Facebook Is Still Figuring Out That Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do Well

    For years now, I’ve talked about the impossibility of doing content moderation well at scale. I know that execs at various tech companies often point to my article on this, and that includes top executives at Meta, who have cited my work on this issue. But it still amazes me when those companies act as if it’s not true, and there’s some simple solution to all of the moderation troubles they face. The WSJ recently had a fascinating article about how Facebook thought that by simply silencing political opinions, they’d solve a bunch of their moderation problems. Turns out: it didn’t work. At all.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Kyiv to Hungarian ambassador: ‘Anti-Ukrainian rhetoric’ must stop!

  • Common Dreams ☛ Biden Intervention in Democratic Primaries Is a Show of Weakness

    When the Democratic National Committee convenes its winter meeting on Thursday in Philadelphia, a key agenda item will be rubber-stamping Joe Biden’s manipulation of next year’s presidential primaries. There’ll be speeches galore, including one by Biden as a prelude to his expected announcement that he’ll seek a second term. The gathering will exude confidence, at least in public. But if Biden were truly confident that Democratic voters want him to be the 2024 nominee, he wouldn’t have intervened in the DNC’s scheduling of early primaries.

  • TruthOut ☛ Manhattan DA Impanels Grand Jury Over Trump’s Payments to Stormy Daniels

  • Common Dreams ☛ Bernie Sanders to the DNC: Ban Super PAC Money in All Democratic Primary Races

    Ahead of the Democratic National Committee’s annual Winter Meeting in Philadelphia, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called on the party to end super PAC spending in primary races, saying the Democrats should take the event as an opportunity to show their commitment to protecting democracy.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Techdirt ☛ GOP Belatedly Realizes Its Embrace Of Propaganda And Conspiracy Results In Bizarre And Unpopular Candidates

      Frustrated by factual reality, science, and an independent press, the GOP and its wealthy backers have spent the better part of forty years building an alternative reality propaganda machine across AM radio, local broadcasting (with the help of Sinclair Broadcasting), fake “pink slime” local newspapers, cable news (OANN, Newsmax, Fox), and now the Internet.

    • Reason ☛ Hulu’s 1619 Project Docuseries Peddles False History

      The first episode paints an enslaver, plantation master, and Royalist autocrat as a leading and even celebrated agent of emancipation.

    • AntiWar ☛ The Real Disinformation Was the ‘Russia Disinformation’ Hoax

      Thanks to the latest release of the “Twitter Files,” we now know without a doubt that the entire “Russia disinformation” racket was a massive disinformation campaign to undermine US elections and perhaps even push “regime change” inside the United States after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. Here is some background.

    • EDRI ☛ Panel: how can the EU fight (partisan) disinformation and hate speech and protect media freedom and human rights?

      In the last years, the relationship between the media and trust in democratic institutions has received increasingly attention. In two roundtables the panellists will discuss legal instruments, and recommendations in the context of media freedom and human rights on digital platforms.

    • EDRI ☛ European Parliament approves a timid online political advertising proposal

      Tomorrow, 2 February, the European Parliament will vote on the regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising proposal in plenary. Although this regulation intended to restrict the use of personal data to target online political advertisements, important proposals to tackle the root causes of data-driven vote manipulation were watered down during the discussion in the Parliament.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Meduza ☛ A window into Yandex’s censorship A source code leak reveals how Russia’s top tech company protects Putin’s image — Meduza

    Last week, Russian Internet giant Yandex suffered a major source code leak when an unknown user (likely a former employee) published parts of the company’s internal repository online. The leaked code provides new insight into the inner workings of Russia’s largest search engine, which has faced growing criticism in recent years for cooperating with the Kremlin. Among other things, the breach confirmed that Yandex has censored image and video search results to prevent the Z symbol and images of Putin from appearing in contexts that might embarrass the Russian authorities. Meduza explains how.

  • Wired ☛ The Flight Tracker That Powered @ElonJet Just Took a Left Turn

    The standard the exchange relies on, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and is mandated by the FAA. It’s that standard that has made ADS-B Exchange so reviled by Musk and the Sauds. Plane owners who wish to hide their flight paths from the general public can submit a request to the FAA, which can require that downstream users of their feeds, like FlightRadar24 and FlightAware, suppress that information. Because ADS-B is transmitted without encryption, directly from the planes themselves, that kind of censorship isn’t possible.

    ADS-B Exchange’s administrators pride themselves on never hiding flight data. James Stanford, one of ADS-B Exchange’s senior administrators, told WIRED their website has been used to track gold smugglers and kidnappers, and it has been threatened by billionaires and warlords who aren’t keen on having their private jets tracked.

  • JETNET ☛ JETNET Acquires ADS-B Exchange

    Founded in 2016 by Dan Streufert, ADS-B Exchange aggregates approximately 750,000 messages per second worldwide via receivers hosted by aviation enthusiasts around the world. The acquisition of ADS-B Exchange will enable JETNET to expand its flight data solutions with real-time information.

  • Drew DeVault ☛ Should private platforms engage in censorship?

    Private service providers are entitled to do business with whom they please, or not to. Occasionally, a platform will take advantage of this to deny service to a particular entity on any number of grounds, often igniting a flood of debate online regarding whether or not censorship in this form is just. Recently, CloudFlare pulled the plug on a certain forum devoted to the coordinated harassment of its victims. Earlier examples include the same service blocking a far-right imageboard, or Namecheap cancelling service for a neo-Nazi news site.

  • Express ☛ Iran poised to execute pregnant woman for burning picture of founder Ayatollah Khomeini

    More than 500 people have been killed in an Iranian government crackdown since the start of the protests, with in excess of 18,000 arrested – including pregnant women.

    Zahra Nabizadeh was six months pregnant when she was detained on January 18 in the town of Mahabad, in West Azerbaijan province, Hengaw, a Norway-based group which monitors rights violations in Iran’s Kurdish regions, has reported.

  • Hindu Post ☛ How NY Times negates persecution of Hindus, even in its coverage of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws

    Per census data Hindus comprise the largest religious minority in Pakistan: 2.14% vs 1.27% for Christians. And face non-stop persecution & hostility from private and State actors for their faith along with attacks on Hindu temples and loss of sacred spaces.

    Hate against “idol-worship” & fake blasphemy charges against Pakistani Hindus are common. In 2019, a Hindu school principal was accused of blasphemy by a Muslim student simply for being asked about incomplete homework. Community-wide attacks followed.

  • PJ Media ☛ A UN Body Has Condemned the Burning of a Qur’an in Sweden. Here’s Why It Shouldn’t Have.

    Book burning is an ugly business; in America is generally associated with Nazis standing gleefully before bonfires of forbidden books. Still, the freedom of expression is the freedom of expression, and if someone wants to burn a copy of Mein Kampf or The Catcher in the Rye or the Bible, that’s his business. When it comes to the Qur’an, however, suddenly the most stalwart exponents of the freedom of expression start talking about how much we need to curtail that freedom in order to respect the rights of others. It’s all happening again in connection with the burning of a Qur’an in Sweden on Friday.

  • RFERL ☛ Iranians Use Sadeh Festival To Protest Against Lack Of Freedoms

    Protesters in Tehran’s Ekbatan neighborhood celebrated the Sadeh festival by lighting huge fires, saying they showed the depth of their anger toward the government’s intrusion on their freedoms and chanted “death to the dictator,” a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Similar scenes were repeated in the Iranian cities of Yazd, Kerman, Shiraz, Kermanshah, Kerman, and Mashhad.

  • The Epoch Times ☛ Hollywood Is Beijing’s Lap Dog

    If Hollywood had a spine, it would be made of money. After all, the film industry has always been about money and power. Filmmakers, writers, and actors have always been at the mercy of a cluster of people at the top in Hollywood who decided which actor or which film would get the opportunity to make money at the box office.

    That’s still the case, but the only difference now is that those powerbrokers are from Beijing rather than Beverly Hills, and it’s not just about money anymore. Yes, the old adage, “money is power” still applies in La-La Land, and the studios will do anything for it, including selling out their country and serving the largest slave state on the planet.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Meduza ☛ Prosecution requests 9-year sentence for journalist Alexander Nevzorov, charged with spreading ‘fakes’ for criticizing Ukraine invasion — Meduza

    The prosecution is seeking to sentence the Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov to nine years in a penal colony, for allegedly spreading “fake news” about the Ukraine invasion.

  • CBC ☛ Postmedia to lay off 11% of editorial staff, sources say

    In an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The Canadian Press, Gerry Nott, acting senior vice-president of editorial content, said the cuts would affect all of the company’s publications with the exception of Brunswick News and Postmedia Editorial Services, which have already been downsized.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Nordic Unions to Quit Global Journalists’ Body IFJ, Citing ‘Corruptive Activity’

    The Nordic members accused the IFJ of longstanding undemocratic practices, unethical finances and of allowing the Russian state media representatives to continue as members.

    “We call this corruptive activity,” Hanne Aho, the chairwoman of the Union of Journalists in Finland, told Reuters, adding the four Nordic unions would resign from the IFJ on Tuesday.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • DagHammarskjöld ☛ Do we weep or rejoice? The 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

    Like all anniversaries, this one rightfully calls for reflection. Does the track record of the United Nations’ work on human rights make this a moment to weep or rejoice? History shows that the human rights pillar, perhaps more than any other area of the organisation’s work, has struggled with issues of politicisation, legitimacy and underfunding. At the same time, it has generated some of its most transformative advances leading to increased recognition and enjoyment of human rights around the world. Weeping and rejoicing it seems. But most importantly, rekindling of the 1948 spirit to reset and carry on.

  • India Times ☛ Apple workplace rules violate U.S. labor law, agency finds

    The National Labor Relations Board will issue a complaint targeting the policies and claiming Apple executives made comments that stymied worker organizing unless the company settles first, an agency official said on Monday in an email reviewed by Reuters.

    The official had sent the email to Ashley Gjovik, a former Apple senior engineering manager who filed complaints against the company in 2021.

  • Medforth ☛ Authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia have closed a Muslim halal slaughterhouse near Cologne, Germany

    “The animal cruelty in the slaughterhouse can hardly be put into words, it is certainly among the worst I have ever seen,” says Jan Peifer, Chairman of the Board of the German Animal Welfare Office. The main accusation, however, is that there was repeated slaughter without anaesthesia. The sheep were brutally pushed to the ground and their throats were cut without prior anaesthesia. The slaughter of animals without anaesthesia is generally prohibited in Germany and is only possible in some federal states with an exceptional permit. However, the slaughterhouse does not have such an exemption.

  • RFERL ☛ Iranian Restaurant Shut Down After Woman Sings At Opening

    The latest incident was sparked by a video published on social media showing a female singer performing at the opening ceremony of a new restaurant in Mahshahr, in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.

    After the video went viral and was praised by Iranian social-media users, Farshad Kazemi, the police chief in Mahshahr, announced the restaurant had been sealed shut because of the performance.

  • The Nation ☛ Cops Lynched Tyre Nichols Because They Knew They Could

    Cops do not exist to stop crime (see Uvalde) or solve crime (a 2020 report found that police arrests lead to convictions in only 2 percent of major crimes). They exist to arrest people. One might hope that they’re arresting criminals or suspected criminals, but it’s important to remember that the very institution of local policing can trace its roots directly back to the old slave patrols and slave catchers of the antebellum South. Studies show that even when a massive influx of cops into a city leads to a small reduction in major crimes like homicide, it comes with an explosion of arrests for petty, victimless crimes, and, of course, increased brutality against Black people.

    The police are institutionally designed to be predators: Capturing (and if need be, killing) their targets is the primary way they justify their continued existence. Police are judged everywhere based on their numbers of arrests, the number of people they catch. And like all predators, they tend to target the weakest among us.

  • NBC ☛ Texas police chief is put on leave after a raid that targeted the wrong home and an innocent teen

    The teenager who was being sought does not live at that home and was later cleared of any involvement in the slaying, officials said.

  • Salon ☛ Reporters expose how police use “junk science” forensic techniques to arrest innocent people

    Junk science can spread a lot of different ways, but there are some common patterns in how it spreads across forensics and law enforcement.

  • Democracy Now ☛ Asylum Seekers Refuse to Leave Manhattan Hotel, Citing Inhumane Conditions at Brooklyn Shelter

    In New York, asylum seekers are continuing to protest outside a Manhattan hotel where they’d been living for weeks, after city officials suddenly evicted them over the weekend to move them to a remote camp in Brooklyn with a thousand cots and no heat. We hear from migrants and activists fighting the eviction.

  • Counter Punch ☛ USA Pipe Dreams: a Response

    We read with stupefaction the recent declarations of the head of the Southern Command of the USA Armed Forces, General Laura Richardson to the Atlantic Council think tank about the Latin American region. In language devoid of any obfuscation, she quite openly said what is well known, that Washington’s foreign policy in the region is exclusively based on its interest in its resources, not its people. As Orinoco Tribune reported, she stated:

    No word about establishing friendly relationships, about facing together shared problems of poverty, about encouraging social development, fighting environmental degradation, or drug trafficking. No “good neighbour” niceties.  It is almost funny, if it wasn’t so ominous. Let us not forget that according to a UN study, more than 40% of armed conflicts of the last 60 years were linked to natural resources.[2]  And with looming environmental disasters, increasing scarcity and competition,  the pillage of natural resources and ensuing environmental deterioration can only get worse.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Say No to Expanding the Death Penalty

    Republican leaders have a death penalty problem. During a time when researchers called 2022 the “year of the botched execution” and when several states have had to place a moratorium on executions amidst failed protocols, several Republic leaders are seeking to expand capital punishment.

    It is no surprise that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is pro-death penalty. DeSantis has put himself on the national map by echoing if not extending many of Donald Trump’s most repressive measures.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Wife of Chief Justice Causes Latest Ethics Concerns at US Supreme Court

    Fresh calls for federal lawmakers to pass new ethics rules for the U.S. Supreme Court mounted after The New York Times on Tuesday revealed that a former colleague of Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife raised concerns to Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice.

  • TruthOut ☛ A Victory for Abolitionists: ICE-Run Immigration Prison Shuts Down Today

  • TruthOut ☛ 1,300 Social Justice Groups Demand Atlanta Mayor Resign Over Tortuguita’s Death

  • TruthOut ☛ Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs Eulogizes Racist Former State Lawmaker

  • EDRI ☛ The UK will treat online images of immigrants crossing the Channel as a criminal offence

    On 17 January, the United Kingdom (UK) government announced that online platforms will have to proactively remove images of immigrants crossing the Channel in small boats under a new amendment to be tabled to the Online Safety Bill. The announcement, intended to bolster the UK’s hostile immigration policy, has been met with concern among the British public and charities working with people on the move.

  • EDRI ☛ EDRi-gram, 1 February 2023

    In this first EDRigram edition of 2023, we want to take a look back at what we collectively achieved in 2022. Together, we mobilised people and organisations in key moments and continued to strengthen our network and to contribute to the design of a decolonising programme for the field.

    We are also exploring why the European Commission’s blocking obligations for internet services providers in the context of addressing the spread of child sexual abuse material online are impossible.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Thai police apologise after Taiwanese actress ‘extortion’ case

    Seven police officers have also been transferred and charged with dereliction of duty.

  • Denmark to grant asylum to all women and girls from Afghanistan

    Denmark’s immigration authority will now grant asylum to women and girls from Afghanistan because of their gender alone.

  • The Local SE ☛ Politics in Sweden: The migration paradigm shift we need isn’t the one we’re getting

    Malfunctioning bureaucracy at the Migration Agency is the single biggest hurdle to Sweden’s ability to attract international talent – and yet it receives shockingly little attention in the political debate, writes The Local’s editor Emma Löfgren.

  • JURIST ☛ Filings reveal Starbucks paid over $11M to former legal chief amid unionization efforts

    The Starbucks Corporation Monday disclosed in US Securities and Exchange Commission filings that former General Counsel Rachel Gonzalez’s pay amounted to nearly $11.7 million in 2022, including $7.1 million in severance pay.

  • Engadget ☛ The DOJ is looking into Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving claims

    The rumors of Teslafacing a Justice Department investigationwere true. The EV designer hasconfirmedin an SEC filing that the DOJ has requested documents linked to Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) features.

  • The Nation ☛ RIP Repro Rights

  • ACLU ☛ What it’s Like to Fight for Abortion Rights, Post-Roe

    It was exactly one year ago, on the 49th anniversary of Roe, amid an unprecedented surge of anti-abortion attacks sweeping through state legislatures in the run-up to the Dobbs decision. As abortion rights activists were gearing up for the decision, more and more people who had abortions were sharing their stories publicly, hoping to lessen the stigma of abortion as a strategy to fight back.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • EFF ☛ Setting the Record Straight: EFF Statement in Support of FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn

    First, we’ve seen some outlandish headlines about EFF’s 2020 recognition of Danielle Blunt, a leader in the technology policy space and advocate for sex workers, because she is a professional dominatrix. Ms. Blunt is one of the co-founders of Hacking//Hustling, a collective of sex workers and others working at the intersection of tech and social justice to interrupt state surveillance and violence facilitated by technology. Through that work, Ms. Blunt is an expert on the impacts of the censorship law FOSTA-SESTA, and on how content moderation affects the movement work of sex workers and activists. No one is more aware of the way that the power imbalances of the real world permeate online, and is more poised to act, than she is.

    Second, much has been made about EFF’s strong and continued opposition to FOSTA-SESTA. These attacks take the claims of FOSTA-SESTA’s proponents at face value—that it was a good and useful measure to take against sex trafficking when all evidence points to the contrary. Our opposition to FOSTA-SESTA was and remains based on the facts: It will not stop sex trafficking and will instead make stopping it harder. At the same time, the law puts a wide range of online expression at risk and we are always, unapologetically, against the criminalization and chilling of legal speech.

    Third, despite what its supporters claim, the EARN IT Act is a surveillance bill that would have a devastating impact on privacy, security, and free speech. If Congress passes this disastrous bill, it may become too legally risky for companies to offer encryption services. This bill treats every internet user as a potential criminal, and subjects all our communications to mass scanning. We are pleased that Congress has rejected it twice already.

  • India Times ☛ EU studying whether Big Tech should pay network costs

    The tech giants say the idea is equivalent to an internet traffic tax that could interfere with Europe’s net neutrality rules treating all users equally.

    The commission’s query is part of a 19-page document the EU executive drafted before it proposes legislation.

  • EFF ☛ The FCC Broadband Maps: Meet the New Maps, Same as the Old Maps

    The problems have also been raised by states, local government, and community organizations, who have filed challenges to the FCC over these inaccuracies. It is now up to the FCC and NTIA to fix the map, and time is of the essence: the Biden administration is set to confirm how the money will be spent by the summer as part of its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.

    Overreliance on internet service providers (ISPs) to report service locations and service availability is a recurring problem. ISPs have no incentive to accurately report, and in fact, have every incentive to overreport, because misinforming the government has never carried a heavy penalty. These same ISPs then use these faulty broadband maps – which are built on their bad data – to challenge and try to prevent would-be competitors from building infrastructure into areas that are underserved or unserved.

    The FCC, recognizing this concern, created a challenge process through which government entities as well as individuals are able to challenge the ISPs over their service location and service availability. Setting aside the issues with the challenge process and the obvious discrepancy that is pitting an average consumer or small government agencies against well-resourced ISPs, these challenges only allow a glimpse of the true scope of the map’s inaccuracies.

  • Techdirt ☛ Starry’s Broadband Ambitions Fall Apart, Lays Off More Employees

    You might recall that Aereo founder Chaitanya Kanojia’s attempt to disrupt the TV industry ran face-first into an army of broadcaster lawyers and a notably ugly ruling by the Supreme Court. Undaunted, Kanojia returned with a new plan to try and disrupt the broken U.S. broadband industry.

  • Internet Freedom Foundation ☛ Legislative Brief on Digital Rights for Budget Session 2023

    Our legislative brief on digital rights for the Budget Session 2023 highlights some of the focus areas within the larger issues of digital rights, online content regulation, platform governance and free speech, data protection, etc. that call for extensive deliberation in the Houses of Parliament.

  • Michael Geist ☛ “Ongoing Concerns”: U.S. Objections to Canadian Digital Policies Spreads to the Senate

    U.S. concerns with Canadian digital policy continues to mount with both the U.S. Administration and Senators from both parties raising fears of discrimination. U.S. pressure seems likely to grow as the issue emerges as a major irritant in the bi-lateral trade relationship with Canada’s most important trading partner. With U.S. President Joe Biden scheduled to visit Ottawa later this winter, it seems likely that digital policy – particularly a

  • Michael Geist ☛ The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 154: The House is Back – A Preview of Canadian Digital Policy as Parliament Resumes

    The House of Commons and Senate return from a lengthy break this week and will likely run until late June with the occasional week or two off. Digital policy may not attract top line attention, but it has emerged as one of the government’s most active issues. This week’sLaw

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Local SE ☛ Spotify posts net loss of 430 million euros – but beats expectations

    Swedish music streaming giant Spotify reports deepening losses, but for the first time climbed past 200 million paying subscribers.

  • Techdirt ☛ Netflix’s Password Sharing Cash Grab Finally Arrives In The States

    After years of saying password sharing wasn’t really a big deal and was akin to free advertising, Netflix recently announced it would be cracking down on password sharing. It started with a new trial in the global south where users were nagged until they paid an additional fee if they shared their password with users outside of their home.

• Monopolies

  • Common Dreams ☛ Report Details How US Policy Devastated Small Dairy Farms and Boosted Corporate Monopolies

    Food & Water Watch on Tuesday released an analysis of the U.S. dairy farming industry—the climate and food justice group’s third in-depth report on the economic costs of food monopolies—revealing how corporate consolidation has helped push small family farms out of business over the past two decades, while worsening the climate emergency.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Deregulation and the Law of Unintended Consequences

    Montanans have already had a very brutal lesson in deregulation and its unintended consequences. The great idea of the Legislature in the late ’90s was to deregulate our utilities under the “free market” theory that competition would lead to lower prices. HAHAHA! We went from the lowest cost power in the region to the highest — and the rip-off continues to this day, decades later.

    Comes now Governor Gianforte’s ongoing effort to “reduce red tape” — which is simply deregulation of industry under another name. Moreover, they have pulled the wool over the eyes of the populace by saying the goal is to create more “affordable housing.”

  • CCIA ☛ Lays of the Land: Tracking State Legislative Efforts

    DisCo recently released three posts outlining the current content moderation, data privacy, and competition landscapes, highlighting a number of states that have proposed legislation on these topics. As state legislative sessions kicked off in January, these topics are already producing additional proposals and we anticipate this will continue throughout 2023.

  • Patents

    • Common Dreams ☛ Pfizer’s Record-Shattering $100 Billion in Revenue Denounced as ‘Sickening’

      The U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer reported Tuesday that it brought in a record-breaking $100.3 billion in revenue in 2022 and $31.4 billion in profit, sums that campaigners decried as “sickening” in the face of an ongoing pandemic and persistent inequities in coronavirus vaccine access.

    • JUVE ☛ Novartis and Freshfields win PIs against eight generics companies in fingolimod battle [Ed: Novartis attacks public health using patents, helped by criminals who run the EPO]

      In a dispute spanning numerous European countries, Novartis is fighting to enforce EP 29 59 894.

  • Software Patents

    • Techdirt ☛ Stupid Patent Of The Month: Digital Verification Systems Patents E-Signatures

      Patent trolls make patents, and argue over them. They don’t have to ever make the thing described in their patents, if it’s even possible to determine what those things are. Instead, they generate legal threats and waste the time and money of companies that do do these things.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Pornhub Risks Losing Its Domain Name in Bizarre Piracy Lawsuit

      Pornhub sister company MG Premium is embroiled in a lawsuit that puts the pornhub.com domain at risk. The company, which is part of the MindGeek imperium, sued the tube site Goodporn for massive copyright infringement. However, Goodporn turned the tables by claiming that it owns the rights, citing a previously signed agreement that MindGeek dismisses as fraudulent.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Site Admin Convicted After Five Years, Another Acquitted, Site Lives On

      Following a legal process of more than five years, a court in Lithuania has handed down its verdict against two alleged operators of streaming portal Filmai. After being found guilty, one man was sentenced to fines and a confiscation order of 200,000 euros. The second man was acquitted. Meanwhile, Film.ai is still online and remains one of the most popular sites in the country.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • 🔤SpellBinding: ADFIYNM Wordo: SCENE

• Technical

  • terminal emulators

    I want one that has sixel support

    but also lets me make up my own regexes
    to match parts of the terminal’s output
    and make those sections clickable and then
    passable to an external program.

  • How Would You Feel If Google Indexed the Gemini Space?

    If Google would start supporting the Gemini protocol and indexing the Gemini space, presumely to make better SERPs for users of the Gemini space available, would you feel bad about it?

    There couldn’t be any advertisement and tracking on Google’s Gemtext SERPs, obviously. So, no harm done.

    Would you feel bad if the Gemini space’s content would be available on Google’s SERPs on the WWW, but linking to Gemini pages? It surely would spread the word and allow for more users to know about and experience the Gemini verse and the slow web.

    But there would be advertisement and tracking on Google’s HTML SERPs, obviously. So, harm done, but showing a way out.

  • Science

    • The Scientist ☛ Mitochondrial Metabolism Dictates Neurons’ Growth Rate

      Altering the rate of respiration in mitochondria changes how fast neurons grow, making mouse neurons grow more like human ones and vice versa, a study finds.

GNU/Linux

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Tux Digital ☛ 310: Web 3.0 Discussion & Interview with Danielle Fore of elementary OS

    This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to be discussing Web 3.0 . . . what is it and should you be excited about it? Then we have Danielle Fore’ from elementary on the show to discuss the latest release.

  • Late Night Linux – Episode 214

    The Mars Helicopter continues to amaze, aviation nerds get burned, Google lays off loads of open source people, running a Mastodon instance isn’t for everyone, KDE Korner, and more.

• Applications

  • Linux Links ☛ Best Free and Open Source Font Managers

    Linux users may not have a plethora of fonts, but there are many lovely and usable fonts. Different Linux fonts are supplied with different Linux distros. What you may need is an efficient way to manage your fonts. Step forward a dedicated font manager utility.

    Here’s our verdict captured in a LinuxLinks-style chart. We only feature free and open source software in this article.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Installing Python on windows, Mac and Linux

    Python is a popular programming language that is widely used for web development, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and many other applications. It is easy to learn, versatile, and has a large community of developers who contribute to its development.

  • What is Python?

    Python is a high-level programming language that is widely used for web development, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and more.

  • MySQL: Creating tables

    Creating tables in MySQL is a fundamental task for any database administrator or developer. A table is a collection of related data that is organized in a specific structure, with rows and columns. In this article, we will go over the basics of creating tables in MySQL and provide examples to help you get started.

  • MySQL: Creating databases

    MySQL is a popular open-source relational database management system that is widely used for web development, data warehousing, and other applications. One of the first things you’ll need to do when working with MySQL is to create a new database.

  • Connecting to MySQL using the command-line client

    Connecting to MySQL using the command-line client can seem like a daunting task for those new to the world of databases. But don’t worry, it’s not as difficult as it may seem.

  • It’s Ubuntu ☛ Find WiFi Password Of Connected Networks In Linux

  • Linux Host Support ☛ 5 Ways to Empty or Delete a Large File in Linux

    In this article, we will go over five different ways to empty/delete a large file in Linux. You might have a file that’s gigabytes in size that you want to get rid of quickly, or you want to automate emptying a file for each iteration.

  • It’s Ubuntu ☛ How To Apply Updates Automatically With dnf-automatic In RHEL, AlmaLinux And Rocky Linux [2023]

  • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install OpenJDK on CentOS V8

    With the three options we have presented in this guide, you can quickly get the latest Firefox version on your Linux Mint.

  • Linux Hint ☛ Getting the Latest Version of Firefox on Linux Mint

    The preinstalled version is not the latest one and with the three options in this guide, you can quickly get the latest Firefox version on your Linux Mint.

  • Linux Hint ☛ How to Install TeamSpeak on Linux

    This guide covered how to install TeamSpeak on Ubuntu using three ways. In one of the methods, you will soon start enjoying the comfort of TeamSpeak.

  • Linux Hint ☛ Vim Undo and Redo howto

    After going through this guide, you will have enough knowledge of using “Undo” and “Redo” operations in the Linux Mint “Vim” editor.

  • Linux Hint ☛ Linux Uniq Command

    Practical tutorial on the Linux Uniq command to eliminate the duplicate content from files and only display it once on the output using the “uniq” keyword.

  • It’s Ubuntu ☛ How To Install Git On Ubuntu 22.04 LTS [2023]

  • It’s Ubuntu ☛ How To Change Java Version In Linux [2023]

  • Ubuntubuzz ☛ How To Setup Ubuntu Computer for Chinese Writing Input

  • Linux Cloud VPS ☛ Sign up for a LinuxCloudVPS today

    This tutorial will cover the most used SS commands in Linux with examples to make using the SS command easier.

  • Linux Handbook ☛ Find All Symbolic Links in Linux

    How do you find a soft link?

  • Linux Handbook ☛ Netstat Command Examples in Linux

    The netstat is one of the most popular utilities to monitor connections over your network.

  • OpenSource.com ☛ Use Terraform to manage an OpenStack cluster

    After having an OpenStack production and home lab for a while, I can definitively say that provisioning a workload and managing it from an Admin and Tenant perspective is important.

    Terraform is an open source Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) software tool used for provisioning networks, servers, cloud platforms, and more. Terraform is a declarative language that can act as a blueprint of the infrastructure you’re working on. You can manage it with Git, and it has a strong GitOps use case.

    This article covers the basics of managing an OpenStack cluster using Terraform. I recreate the OpenStack Demo project using Terraform.

  • OpenSource.com ☛ How to use GitOps to automate Terraform

    GitOps as a workflow is perfect for application delivery, mostly used in Kubernetes environments, but it is also possible to use for infrastructure. In a typical GitOps scenario, you might want to look at solutions like Crossplane as a Kubernetes-native alternative, while most traditional infrastructure are still used with CI/CD pipelines. There are several benefits of creating your deployment platform with Kubernetes as the base, but it also means that more people would have to have that particular skill set. One of the benefits of an Infrastructure-as-Code tool like Terraform is that it is easy to learn, and doesn’t require much specialized knowledge.

    When my team was building our platform services, we wanted everyone to be able to contribute. Most, if not all, of our engineers use Terraform on a daily basis. They know how to create Terraform modules that can be used in several scenarios and for several customers. While there are several ways of automating Terraform, we would like to utilize a proper GitOps workflow as much as possible.

• Games

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Free strategy shooter game Unvanquished v0.54 is out now

    Free, open source and full of bugs (the squishable kind) — Unvanquished is a mixture of strategy and an FPS with a new release v0.54 out now. Unvanquished is a fork of Tremulous, for those don’t know it’s similar in style to Natural Selection with aliens versus humans fighting it out with each having a little base to build.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Steam Deck and desktop Beta fix up more on-screen keyboard bugs

    Bugs! Kill ‘em all! Would you like to know more? Valve have a new Steam Deck and Desktop Steam Beta available with a few bugs being stomped. As per usual, there’s some shared between them since they mostly use the same bits of the Steam client now.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Forspoken gets an update to improve Steam Deck performance

    Forspoken has been controversial for quite a lot of a reasons but also a title many were looking forward to. The release was a bit rough but the developers are cleaning it up now and it has some Steam Deck fixes.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ AMD GPU driver on Linux and Steam Deck to get big improvement on stuttering problems

    The work to improve gaming performance on Steam Deck and Linux desktops for AMD GPUs is always ongoing, and it seems we’re set for another nice improvement to how smooth games are.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Colossal Cave returns from the 1970s in a 3D reimagining

    Colossal Cave, originally released in 1977 from Will Crowther and Don Woods has been revived and reimagined for modern audiences. Another one for a heavy dose of nostalgia perhaps? This new version comes from Sierra On-Line founders Ken and Roberta Williams.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Inspired by Boulder Dash and Supaplex, Gem Worlds is out now

    Oh the nostalgia is heavy with this one! Gem Worlds is inspired directly by the likes of Boulder Dash and Supaplex. I didn’t play either, but it’s also very similar to one I did play and LOVED on Amiga called Emerald Mine.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ SurrounDead looks like a mix of DayZ and Project Zomboid

    It’s early days for the game yet with it in Early Access but SurrounDead could be a promising one to play online with some friends.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • 9to5Linux ☛ Xfce 4.20 Desktop Environment Will Finally Bring Wayland Support

    Great news for users of the lightweight Xfce desktop environment as the next major release, Xfce 4.20, which is currently in early development, will finally bring the long-anticipated and highly requested Wayland support.

    That’s right, work on Xfce 4.20 kicked off earlier this month with the release of libxfce4windowing, a new dependency for the Xfce desktop environment to provide support for the next-generation Wayland display protocol.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Using Kate’s Git Features

      Git support in Kate landed almost 2 years ago but so far it is undocumented. I am writing this article in order to fill this gap and hopefully make more people aware of the git related features that Kate has.

      To be able to use git functionality you need to enable at least two plugins

    • QCoro 0.8.0 Release Announcement

      This is a rather small release with only two new features and one small improvement.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• New Releases

  • DebugPoint ☛ elementary OS 7 “Horus” Released. This is What’s New

    The new version of elementary OS 7 “Horus” is now officially available to download. This version was under development for more than a year by the elementary team. Hence you can expect many improvements across the desktops and applications.

    Let’s take a look at the key highlights.

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ elementary OS 7 Released, This is What’s New

    See what’s new in elementary OS 7, the latest stable release of this Ubuntu-based Linux distro. From UI changes, to new apps, to powerful new features.

  • elementary OS 7 Available Now

    It’s been just over a year since we released elementary OS 6.1 Jólnir which brought new features and fixes based on your feedback, introduced new office productivity features, and expanded compatibility with a wide range of hardware. So far, OS 6.1 has been downloaded from our website over 400,000 times—150,000 times more than 6.0—and as always, that’s not including downloads from third parties or direct downloads via torrent that bypass our download page!

  • It’s FOSS ☛ elementary OS 7 is a Modest Upgrade With Useful Changes

    elementary OS 6.1 was an impressive release. It has been more than a year, and finally, the next major upgrade, elementary OS 7 ‘Horus’, landed. The changes may not be considered a massive overhaul, but the development focus was more on refinements, as previously reported.

  • The Next Major Release of Elementary OS has Arrived

    The elementary OS developers have been hard at work crafting version 7 of their open source operating system. With this new release, they’ve focused on getting users the apps they need, empowering users with new features and settings, and evolving their developer platform.

    When you install and boot up elementary OS 7, there are no obvious and major changes to greet you. In fact, the desktop UI looks very much in line with what the team has released in the past… and that’s a good thing, as the elementary OS UI is one of the finest on the market.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Partnership lands Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Oracle Cloud

    Red Hat Inc. today announced a nonexclusive alliance with Oracle Corp. under which Red Hat Enterprise Linux will become a supported operating system on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. IBM-owned Red Hat said the deal is significant in that 90% of Fortune 500 companies currently use products from at least one of the two companies.

• Debian Family

  • Linuxiac ☛ OpenSnitch App-Level Firewall May Find a Home in Debian 12

    A discussion that began in 2018 about adopting OpenSnitch in Debian repositories will probably find a resolution in Debian 12.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Beta News ☛ Linux Mint 21.2 is named ‘Victoria’

    Are the developers of Linux Mint fans of the Spice Girls? That I don’t know. What I do know, however, is Linux Mint 21.2 has been code-named “Victoria.” I’d like to think this version of the operating system is being named after soccer-star David Beckham’s wife Victoria (who once went by the stage name “Posh Spice” as a member of the aforementioned pop singing group), but probably not.

    Anyway, besides the codename of “Victoria,” the Linux Mint developers have shared some interesting tidbits about the upcoming Ubuntu-based operating system. Most importantly, it will be released in June 2023. As expected, Linux Mint 21.2 will once again come with your choice of three desktop environments — Cinnamon, Mate, and Xfce. If you opt for the Xfce variant, you will be treated to the cutting-edge version 4.18.

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Linux Mint 21.2 Reveals Codename, Teases Planned Features

    Linux Mint 21.2 will be released at the end of June. It has the codename “Victoria”. New features will be added to the login screen and the Pix photo app.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino ☛ 3D-printed continuous rotation servo motor is super smooth

    There are three types of motors that makers typically consider: stepper motors, servo motors, and DC motors (either brushed or brushless). Stepper motors are great when you need high precision and torque, but tend to have jerky movement.

  • Arduino ☛ Augmented reality fire drills make training more effective

    While we adults don’t experience them often, school kids practice fire drills on a regular basis. Those drills are important for safety, but kids don’t take them seriously. At most, they see the drills as a way to get a break from their lessons for a short time.

  • Arduino ☛ Home automation blossoms with Arduino’s Plant Watering Kit

    Love your plants, but also have a life? If you work long hours, travel often or just can’t be tied down to a regular schedule, the Arduino Plant Watering Kit is for you.

  • Arduino ☛ An awesome new open source long-range RC transmitter

    DSM (digital spectrum modulation) is a relatively new radio control technology that is ideal for long-range applications. It uses two methods, FHSS (frequency hopping spread spectrum) and DSSS (direct sequence spread spectrum), to transmit data, with the latter being especially resilient to interference and therefore suitable for transmission over long distances.

  • Arduino ☛ New authentication technology measures light reflected by hands

    Biometric identification and authentication is big business. As an example, consider Apple’s Face ID technology, which has made strong smartphone security both user friendly and readily available. But Face ID requires substantial hardware and computational power to work, which makes it ill-suited for applications where cost is a major concern.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • 9to5Google ☛ Google Maps on Android readies planned charging stops for EVs

  • 9to5Google ☛ What it’s like to use Matter on Google Home for Android

  • 9to5Google ☛ New Meta smartwatch breaks cover, brings Android, not Wear OS

  • T-Mobile OnePlus 9, 10T, 10 Pro Android 13 update delay concerns

  • Giz China ☛ How To Make Android Smartphones Operate Better

  • Business Wire ☛ Claim Administrator Angeion Group Announces Proposed Settlement in Google Play Store Antitrust Litigation Involving U.S. Android OS Application Developers | Business Wire

  • Make Use Of ☛ How to Share Your Wi-Fi Password on an Android Phone: 2 Easy Ways

  • WCCF Tech ☛ Factory Reset Your Android Phone and Prepare for Galaxy S23

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers/Web Servers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla ☛ How to have the tech talk with kids, according to TikTok’s ‘Mom Friend’

      Cathy Pedrayes earned a following as TikTok’s “Mom Friend” for her practical safety tips – from how to break a car window in an emergency to what not to post on social media. She’s a TV host and has been featured on Today Parents, The Miami Herald, BuzzFeed News, The Bump and Good Morning America. Her book, “The Mom Friend Guide to Everyday Safety and Security,” was published last year.

    • Mozilla ☛ Pocket kicks off 2023 with new and expanded publisher partnerships

      The Pocket editorial and product teams have been busy over the past couple of months to continue delivering the great experience Pocket users have come to expect. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new at Pocket, starting with our newest and returning publisher partnerships, followed by the latest updates to Pocket Android.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Neowin ☛ OnlyOffice 7.3.0

    OnlyOffice Desktop Editors is an open-source office suite distributed under AGPL v.3 that combines text, spreadsheet and presentation editors allowing to create, view and edit documents stored on your computer. The application does not require constant connection to the Internet and allows you to create, edit, save and export text, spreadsheet and presentation documents.

  • LibreOffice project and community recap: January 2023

    Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks….

  • Meet the LibreOffice community at FOSDEM 2023!

    FOSDEM is one of the largest meetups for free and open source software projects. After two years of online events due to the panic, it’s back in-person, in Brussels on February 4 and 5! And, of course, LibreOffice and The Document Foundation will be there.

• GNU Projects

  • GNU ☛ a2ps @ Savannah: a2ps 4.14.94 released [alpha]

     Another alpha release, some more tweaks and tidy-ups.
    
    
    
    Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature:
    
      https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/a2ps/a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz
    
      https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/a2ps/a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz.sig
    
    
    
    Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
    
      https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html
    
    
    
    Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:
    
    
    
    1c99e0200ed0d93119ad6ab54a4735692dbb6d26  a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz
    
    3+mUXOzeILDgtP08dCJjPI2BL5px92ndCH27qjW1RPI  a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz
    
    
    
    The SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the
    
    hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.
    
    
    
    Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
    
    .sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
    
    and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:
    
    
    
      gpg --verify a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz.sig
    
    
    
    The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:
    
    
    
      pub   rsa2048 2013-12-11 [SC]
    
            2409 3F01 6FFE 8602 EF44  9BB8 4C8E F3DA 3FD3 7230
    
      uid   Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>
    
      uid   keybase.io/rrt <rrt@keybase.io>
    
    
    
    If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
    
    or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve
    
    or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.
    
    
    
      gpg --locate-external-key rrt@sc3d.org
    
    
    
      gpg --recv-keys 4C8EF3DA3FD37230
    
    
    
      wget -q -O- 'https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?group=a2ps&download=1' | gpg --import -
    
    
    
    As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU
    
    keyring:
    
    
    
      wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
    
      gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify a2ps-4.14.94.tar.gz.sig
    
    
    
    
    
    This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
    
      Autoconf 2.71
    
      Automake 1.16.5
    
      Gnulib v0.1-5639-g80b225fe1e
    
    
    
    NEWS
    
    
    
    * Noteworthy changes in release 4.14.94 (2023-01-31) [alpha]
    
     * Features:
    
       - Replace the 'psmandup' utility with simpler 'lp2' to directly print
    
         documents to a simplex printer.
    
       - Remove the outdated 'psset' and 'fixnt', and simplify 'fixps' to
    
         always process its input with Ghostscript.
    
     * Documentation
    
       - Remove some obsolete explanations.
    
     * Build
    
       - Minor tidy up and removal of obsolete code.
    
    

• Programming/Development

  • OpenSource.com ☛ Merge design and code with Penpot

    For most of the history of computer programming, there’s been a gap between the programmers creating an application’s code and the designers creating an application’s user experience (UX). The two disciplines receive vastly different training, and they use a different set of tools. Programmers use a text editor or an IDE to write code, while designers often draw concepts of widget layout and potential interactions. While some IDEs, like Eclipse and Netbeans, have interface design components, they’re usually focused on widget position and not on widget design. The open source design app Penpot is a collaborative design and prototyping platform. It has a suite of new features that make it easy for designers and developers to work together with familiar workflows. Penpot’s design interface lets developers write code in harmony with the design process like no other tool does. And it’s come a long way since Opensource.com last looked at it. Its latest features don’t just improve your experience with Penpot, they propel the open source Penpot app past similar and proprietary tools.

  • OpenSource.com ☛ Automate Mastodon interactions with Python

    The federated Mastodon social network has gotten very popular lately. It’s fun to post on social media, but it’s also fun to automate your interactions. There is some documentation of the client-facing API, but it’s a bit light on examples. This article aims to help with that.

    You should be fairly confident with Python before trying to follow along with this article. If you’re not comfortable in Python yet, check out Seth Kenlon’s Getting started with Python article and my Program a simple game article.

  • OpenSource.com ☛ Learn to code a simple game in Zig

    Writing the same application in multiple languages is a great way to learn new ways to program. Most programming languages have certain things in common, such as:

    These concepts are the basis of most programming languages. Once you understand them, you can take the time you need to figure out the rest.

    Furthermore, programming languages usually share some similarities. Once you know one programming language, you can learn the basics of another by recognizing its differences.

    A good tool for learning a new language is by practicing with a standard program. This allows you to focus on the language, not the program’s logic. I’m doing that in this article series using a “guess the number” program, in which the computer picks a number between 1 and 100 and asks you to guess it. The program loops until you guess the number correctly.

  • An Introductory Guide to Golang

    Golang is an open-source programming language developed by Google in 2007. It is a statically typed and compiled language which makes it lightning fast and

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Move or copy your strings? Possible performance impacts

    You sometimes want to add a string to an existing data structure.

  • Medevel ☛ 10 Open Source CSS Animation Frameworks

    What is a CSS animation?

    CSS animation allowing you to animate HTML elements using only CSS classes. It does not require JavaScript, nor extensive setup or configuration.

    CSS animations allow you to create fancy eye-catching websites, parallel sliders, control, animated hover effects, 3D effects, entries, and exit animations per element.

  • Perl / Raku

    • Rakulang ☛ 2023.05 RB Awarded

      And the winner is Oleksander Kiryuhin (aka sena_kun aka Altai-man). The Rainbow Butterfly Award is awarded to Oleksander for their tireless efforts as release manager of the Raku Programming Language for two years (2020-2021), and their work on getting a more functional Raku documentation in general, and a better documentation web site in particular.

  • Python

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Stack

      A guide on how to use the pandas stack for stacking the level columns into rows or indexes to save time by providing the desired results in the DataFrame.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Sum Column

      A guide on computing the sum across DataFrames using the Pandas sum() method, adding columns conditionally, and adding the values after grouping the columns.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas to Array

      Guide on what arrays are and how the DataFrames in Pandas can be converted to NumPy columns using three methods to change the DataFrame columns into an array.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Tabulate

      Comprehensive tutorial on how to alter a Pandas DataFrame into a table with different styles using the tabulate() method along with practical examples.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas str Replace

      This teach you how to substitute/replace the string values in pandas. We have discussed the syntax of the str.replace() method to understand its functionality.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Add Column with Default Values

      Practical tutorial on adding a column with the default value in Pandas using three methods – assign(), [], and insert() – to add a column with a constant value.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Drop Duplicate Index

      Tutorial on the concept of dropping the duplicate indexes using the module by utilizing the Index.drop_duplicates() method along with the syntax and parameters.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Add Days to Date

      Practical guide on how to add the days to the dates in Pandas by utilizing three methods – pandas.DateOffset(), pandas.timeDelta(), and pandas.to_timeDelta().

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Display All Columns

      Tutorial on how to display the column names and how to filter the columns using the data types and view the DataFrame memory usage and summary statistics.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Argmax()

      Guide on how to locate the index location of the maximum value in a DataFrame or Series using the Index.argmax(), Series.argmax, and DataFrame[‘column’].argmax.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Apply() Function to Every Row

      Tutorial on how to utilize the apply() function to every row in Pandas to implement any function to every row in DataFrame in Pandas using practical examples.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas DatetimeIndex

      Tutorial on how to create the DatetimeIndex and access the Date and Time details separately using some date and time methods along with practical examples.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Crosstab() Function

      Comprehensive tutorial on the concept of calculating the cross-tabulation for data analysis with a bunch of useful features like the pandas.crosstab().

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Append to CSV

      Tutorial on how to append to the CSV in Pandas using three distinct examples to append the data to the already existing CSV file with the to_csv() function.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Columns to List

      Guide on converting the Pandas columns to lists using the tolist(), [], and list() functions, and using the list() function to convert the columns into lists.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Pandas Bins

      Tutorial on the cut() and qcut() functions to bin the data in Pandas, how to segment the data into bins, label the bins, and use the equal-sized binning data.

Leftovers

• Security

  • TrenchBoot Anti Evil Maid for Qubes OS

    Editor’s note:The following is a guest post by Michal Zygowski from3mdebon the work they’ve been doing to upgradeAnti Evil Maid (AEM). The original post can be found on the3mdeb blog. This work was made possible through generousdonationsfrom the Qubes community viaOpenCollective. We are immensely grateful to the Qubes community for your continued support and to 3mdeb for contributing this valuable work.

  • Port Swigger ☛ Bug Bounty Radar // The latest bug bounty programs for February 2023

    New web targets for the discerning hacker

• The Kent Stater ☛ Alec Baldwin has been formally charged in ‘Rust’ shooting

  Actor and producer Alec Baldwin has been criminally charged in connection with the 2021 fatal shooting on the set of the movie “Rust,” the Santa Fe County, New Mexico, district attorney’s office told CNN Tuesday.

• uni Stanford ☛ Stanford police under scrutiny after drawing gun on Black man

  Stanford Department of Public Safety is receiving massive backlash after a police officer drew a gun on a Black man who was driving through a roundabout on campus late Saturday night.

• CNN ☛ US says Russia is violating key nuclear arms control agreement

• CS Monitor ☛ As Hindu nationalism grows, so does interest in Delhi’s Muslim history

  Islamophobia in India is rising, but some tour guides and historians see hope in the growing curiosity about Delhi’s Muslim heritage.

• ADF ☛ Benin Becoming New Frontline of Expanding Terrorism

  ADF STAFF Until November 2021, Benin had been spared from the kind of extremist violence that has ravaged its neighbor to the north, Burkina Faso. Since then, Arnaud Houenou has witnessed a change in the attitudes of his fellow Beninese.

• Axios ☛ House GOP prepares vote to remove Omar from committee after McCarthy finds escape hatch

  The House is preparing to vote on a resolution to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee as soon as Wednesday after Republicans found a way to bring a key GOP holdout on board.

Environment

• Energy/Transportation

  • Reason ☛ Court Orders Unsealing Names of Non-Parent Sureties Who Put Up Bail for Samuel Bankman-Fried

    From yesterday’s opinion in U.S. v. Bankman-Fried, decided by Judge Lewis Kaplan (S.D.N.Y.): At defendant’s presentment on December 22, 2022, the government and defense jointly proposed a set of bail conditions. Those conditions required, inter alia, that defendant sign a $250 million personal recognizance bond to be co-signed by defendant’s parents.

Finance

• Silicon Angle ☛ NetApp lets go 8% of its workforce in cost-cutting push

  Data management provider NetApp Inc. today announced plans to let go about 960 employees, or 8% of its global workforce. The move comes two months after the company projected that its next quarterly earnings results will fall short of expectations.

• New York Times ☛ Russia’s economic growth suggests Western sanctions are having a limited impact.

• New York Times ☛ Russia Sidesteps Western Punishments, With Help From Friends

  A surge in trade by Russia’s neighbors and allies hints at one reason its economy remains so resilient after sweeping sanctions.

• Digital First Media ☛ Flagstar Bank trims retail mortgage, cuts jobs in wake of merger

  New York Community Bancorp president and CEO cites impact of higher mortgage rates resulting from Fed interest rate hikes.

• New York Times ☛ In Debt Limit Fight, Republicans Won’t Say What Spending Cuts They Want

  A renewed focus on fiscal restraint in the standoff with Democrats poses its own political risks.

• New York Times ☛ Apple’s Secrecy Violated Workers Rights, NLRB Finds

  After a yearlong investigation, a federal labor board determined that the tech giant’s rules interfere with employees’ right to organize.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Kev Quirk ☛ An Algorithm vs Time

  Twitter is on fire, but is an algorithm better than a chronological timeline?

• RFA ☛ Laos National Assembly approves Cabinet reshuffle

  Three ministers were replaced by officials connected to new prime minister

• RFERL ☛ Iranian Restaurant Shut Down After Woman Sings At Opening

  Iranian authorities have shut down a restaurant in the city of Mahshahr after a female singer performed there, signaling a crackdown on events the authorities deem contrary to Islamic values continues.

• The Register UK ☛ Twitter sued over rent on Market Square HQ

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Documentary filmmaker Sibel Tekin released after weeks behind bars

  Tekin was arrested after a police car entered her frame while shooting a documentary. She is accused of carrying out a reconnaissance mission for a “terror group.”

Civil Rights/Policing

• TechCrunch ☛ Labor officials found that Apple execs infringed on workers’ rights

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• APNIC ☛ Accessing IPv6-only resources via legacy IP: NAT46 on a FortiGate

  Guest Post: How to have IPv4-only clients reach your IPv6-only servers.

• APNIC ☛ Australian Internet and astronomy: A deep relationship

  What implications does the Square Kilometre Array have for Australian Internet operations?

Monopolies

• Patents

  • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ A new European patent landscape (1): the bumpy road to the Unitary Patent system [Ed: No, it has not been ratified yet; this is lobbying disguised as 'journalism']

    In June 2023 the European patent landscape will see one of the most dramatic changes in decades with the introduction of the Unitary Patent (UP) and the opening of Unified Patent Court (UPC).

  • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ What will the Irish population vote on in the UPC referendum? [Ed: UPC has not even started; the litigation fanatics and profiteers use a lot of 'fake news' to promote it regardless]

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Federal Circuit Dataset & Stats: January 2023 Update [Ed: Federal Circuit historically dominated by patent maximalists, until Sharon Prost]

    It’s time for the January 2023 Federal Circuit statistics update! As I’ve done for the last few years, below I provide some statistics on what the Federal Circuit has been doing over the past year. These charts draw on the Federal Circuit Dataset Project, an open-access dataset that I maintain that contains information on all Federal Circuit decisions and docketed appeals.  While previous versions of the dataset have been limited to merits decisions, this year we began including non-merits terminations as well.  Currently, all non-merits terminations from 2022 are included in the dataset.  We’ll be working backwards to add terminations from earlier years.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Technical

  • A Documentary About Early ANSI Art / BBS History

    I just rewatched a 2005 documentary about early ANSI/BBS history on YouTube. It mainly shows the eternal battle of ACiD vs. iCE, two dominant ANSI groups.

  • One billion, one continent

    In the online circles I frequent, I bump into the notion of “solarpunk” primarily in the form of a label applied to things actual people are actually doing, a kind of practice. But it’s “supposed” to be a genre of fiction, and when I first encountered the term, around ten years ago now (and, yes, for the record, when I chose the handle “solderpunk”, I did kind of like that there was a subtle nod to solarpunk in there, even though at the time I wasn’t anywhere near as focused on sustainability stuff as I am now), there didn’t seem to be any notion of it as anything *other* than a genre of fiction. It was a strange kind of “vapourgenre”, I remember discovering it and feeling like it was really strange that there seemed to more words written about what solarpunk was than there were words written in the total sum of actual solarpunk literature, unless you counted stuff which had been retroactively labelled solarpunk, stuff written years before the label existed. I suppose this has probably changed quite a bit in the decade since, I’m vaguely aware that Tomasino has a solarpunk writing prompt podcast, which I ought to check out some time if I can ever overcome my innate aversion to podcasts.

GNU/Linux

• XDA ☛ Linux and Android are the future of handheld gaming

  Devices like the Steam Deck, Ayaneo 2, and even the Nintendo Switch have taken the world by storm in recent years. Portable handheld consoles open up a new world of experience. While Nintendo has been making handhelds for years, the first two offer PC gaming on the go, complete with good performance, excellent battery life, and the ability to do so much more with the software.

  However, the Steam Deck has a leg-up over the Ayaneo 2 in one big department: the operating system. It’s so much easier to do whatever you want on SteamOS, a fork of Arch Linux, not to mention the reduced overhead. On the one hand, this decreases the cost since there’s no need to shell out for a software license for its distribution. However, there are disadvantages to using Linux, such as the requirement for the Proton compatibility layer to ensure that games built for Windows are still playable.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • RoseHosting ☛ How to Install DokuWiki on Debian 11

    DokuWiki is an open-source wiki application written in PHP programming language.

• Games

  • Hackaday ☛ Classic Calculators Emulated In Browser

    The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, now known simply as MAME, started off as a project to emulate various arcade games. The project is still adding new games to its library, but the framework around MAME makes it capable of emulating pretty much any older computer. The computer doesn’t even need to be a gaming-specific machine as the latest batch of retro hardware they’ve added support for is a number of calculators from the 90s and early 00s including a few classics from Texas Instruments.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• It’s FOSS ☛ 5 Linux Distros for Visually Impaired People

  If a user is visually impaired or blind, they may rely on sound prompts or other interactions (like Braille) to read and communicate.

  How can they use a Linux distribution?

  Well, in general, accessibility software help make it possible.

  I focus on listing some of the best options here. Before that, there are some essential pointers to note before you try/recommend Linux for visually challenged users.

• IT Wire ☛ IIT Madras firm develops Indian mobile operating system

  Called BharOS, the new operating system is an Android open source project, developed by incubated JandK Operations Private Limited.

  Unlike Android, it does not have default Google apps or services and IIT Madras says the operating system can be installed on commercial off-the-shelf handsets.

  According to IIT Madras, BhasrOS provides a secure environment for users and is a significant contribution towards Atmanirbhar Bharat, a phrase coined by by Indian PM Narendra Modi and his government, which translates to ‘self-reliant India’, in relation to the country’s economic development plans.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Network World ☛ Red Hat Enterprise Linux arrives in Oracle’s cloud

    Red Hat and Oracle announced jointly Tuesday that they have partnered to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, broadening Oracle’s available public cloud options and creating a measure of détente between two long-standing competitors.

    The announcement couched the news as step one in a broader partnership between Red Hat and Oracle, but provided details mostly of the OCI integration. RHEL will be available on Oracle’s VMs, ranging in size from 1 to 80 CPU cores and from 1GB of memory up to 1024GB. Initial support will be limited to the newer OCI virtual machine shapes, which use AMD, Intel and Arm processors.

  • Business Wire ☛ Red Hat and Oracle Expand Collaboration to Bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

  • SDx Central ☛ Oracle, Red Hat Link Public Cloud IaaS Integration

  • India Times ☛ Red Hat and Oracle expand operating system collaboration

  • Red Hat Official ☛ 10 ways to integrate event-driven automation into IT operations

    Try Event-Driven Ansible, a new open source project in developer preview that helps you create event-driven automation scenarios across IT domains.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • 9to5Linux ☛ Linux Mint 21.2 “Victoria” Is Slated for Release on June 2023, Here’s What to Expect

    Dubbed “Victoria,” Linux Mint 21.2 will arrive at the end of June 2023 in the same format as before, supporting the Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE desktop environments. Most notably here, the Xfce edition will be based on the latest Xfce 4.18 desktop environment.

    As for the new features to expect in Linux Mint 21.2, the developers shared the fact that they are working on various login screen (Slick Greeter) improvements like support for multiple keyboard layouts via a new indicator in the top-right corner of the screen.

  • 9to5Linux ☛ elementary OS 7 “Horus” Launches Based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Here’s What’s New

    Built on top of the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) operating system series, elementary OS 7 is here to introduce a much-improved AppCenter that promises to make it easier than ever to find, install, and update all the apps that you need for your daily work routine.

    AppCenter in elementary OS 7 also received improved app sideloading, support for alternative stores like Flathub, better navigation with support for two-finger swipe gestures to navigate back, improved application descriptions and screenshots, automatic Flatpak updates, offline updates, as well as support for Web Apps.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ DIGI SOMs integrate pre-certified dual-band Wi-Fi 5/BL5 and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity

    The Digi ConnectCore MP1 is an industrial embedded System-on-Module  platform which integrates the STM32MP157C microprocessor and a 3D GPU (Vivante – OpenGL ES) 2.0.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android Police ☛ LineageOS 20 brings Android 13 to the Google Pixel 2

  • Giz China ☛ Android 14: Does it worth the wait? Here’s the answer

  • The meaning behind the green dot at the top of your Android device | Fox News Video

  • Testers Needed For The Dolphin Android Beta Program – Droid Gamers

  • HowTo Geek ☛ Why Did Google Stop Using Android Dessert Names?

  • Giz China ☛ TOP 5 internet browsers for Android in 2023 – Gizchina.com

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Unicorn Media ☛ OSI License Review Working Group Seeks Input on Changes

  The Open Source Initiative, the organization that decides what is or is not an open source license, are thinking about making some changes to how it handles its license review process, and they’re looking for community input before putting any new policies in place.

  Back in 2020, OSI established a License Review Working Group which was tasked with the job of examining and improving the organization’s license review process, which is how OSI decides whether a license receives its seal of approval as an OSI approved open source license.

• The Register UK ☛ FOSS could be an unintended victim of EU crusade to make software more secure

  But FOSS is in the most danger. The underlying assumption of the regulation is that cybersecurity exists in the digital market like fire resistance does in that for soft furnishings. Putting regulatory cost burdens on a part of the market with no revenue and no gatekeeping on its distribution channels cannot work; there are no prices to increase to absorb compliance costs and no tap to turn off to keep the stuff off the market.

  And FOSS can’t be outlawed. To re-engineer infrastructure and applications to exclude it would be unthinkably expensive and undoubtedly vastly destabilizing for cybersecurity resilience. To allow grandfathering – allowing pre-regulatory software components to continue to be used but demand compliance if new or updated – would freeze the sector to death. And what “cybersecurity framework” would catch the sort of errors that currently only appear after intensive analysis by the few teams of good and bad hats who are already fully employed for better or worse on a tiny percentage of extant software.s

• [Old] NLNet Foundation ☛ Open-source software vs. the proposed Cyber Resilience Act

  We feel the current proposal misses a major opportunity. At a high level the ‘essential cybersecurity requirements’ are not unreasonable, but the compliance overhead can range from tough to impossible for small, or cash-strapped developers. The CRA could bring support to open-source developers maintaining the critical foundations of our digital society. But instead of introducing incentives for integrators or financial support via the CRA, the current proposal will overload small developers with compliance work.

  We would love to be wrong about most of our analysis. So if you believe the situation to be less grim than we portray it to be, please talk to me so I can update this overview. However, if you share our concerns, this is what you can do: [...]

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • It’s not you, it’s SQL

    And that something was MongoDB. MongoDB happily took our Python dictionaries, stored them away somewhere, and sometimes even gave them back later. No hand-crafted SQL strings littering our Python codebase, and everything still worked.

    It was like a veil had been lifted. “What was with all the ceremony, SQL? My controllers are so lean now, and my schema is whatever I want it to be.” We paused just long enough to take a sip of our Spicy Maya Mocha from Coupa Cafe. “I mean, so what if none of my writes are ever actually confirmed by my new database? These are just hamster-likes and wristwatch-enthusiast-pokes! We can lose a few and still get to our Series B.”

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Linux Links ☛ ONLYOFFICE Docs v7.3 released: user roles in forms, SmartArt graphics, enhanced password protection, Watch Window and new functions in spreadsheets

    The developers of ONLYOFFICE Docs released a new version of their collaborative office suite with plenty of new features and improvements for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and fillable forms. Let’s take a deep look at what’s new in this release.

    The functionality of fillable forms, which were introduced in version 7.0, has been significantly enhanced in the latest release. The most important improvement is that now you can create and manage various user roles to simplify the process of field filling. By assigning different roles, you allow other users to visually identify which fields they should fill out depending on their role.

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ ONLYOFFICE 7.3 Released with SmartArt, Password Protection

  • It’s FOSS ☛ ONLYOFFICE 7.3 is Now Available: What’s New

• Programming/Development

  • A call to action: Think seriously about “safety”; then do something sensible about it

    What might “something sensible to do” be? I suggest making a list of issues that could be considered safety issues (including UB) and finding ways of preventing them within the framework of P2687R0. That’s what I plan to do.

    And anyway, what is “the overarching software community”? To the best of my knowledge, no experts from the ISO C++ standards committee were consulted.

  • Undeadly ☛ Game of Trees 0.83 released

    Version 0.83 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated): [...]

Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ Let This Minimal Desktop Weather Display Point The Way

  Much of the Northern Hemisphere is currently in the middle of winter, so what better way to brighten a potentially gloomy day than to put this charming, minimalist weather display on your desk.

• Hackaday ☛ A Reverse Polish Calculator For Your Keychain

  As the smartphone has eaten ever more of the gadgets with which we once surrounded ourselves, it’s with some sadness that we note the calculator becoming a less common sight. It’s with pleasure then that we bring you [Nekopla]’s keychain calculator, not least because it’s a little more than a conventional model. This is a calculator which uses Reverse Polish Notation, or RPN.

• Counter Punch ☛ NEPA: Sunshine in Government

• Counter Punch ☛ Letter from London: Words and Pictures

  I used to love the way words clinked together to make sense. Images didn’t really get a look-in once I’d learned how to read. It was like I’d cracked the code and was in. I liked reading both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers. And if information wasn’t enough, I also liked cadence. Life in my early teens was ‘dreich’ — Scots for dreary or bleak — and overripe language was fun. Hard news, of course, didn’t like it, but some documentaries that I watched did. As a result, I began to play around with cameras as well as words. Not quite with the same application as some people I knew — I wasn’t a technician — and the first ever camera I took abroad, a small vintage 8mm cine camera, was stolen. (Years later, I was robbed of a larger one on Ibiza but vowed not to leave the island until I got it back, which, thanks to the admirable efforts of others, I got back.) I wrote occasional features and the odd play but grew to see cameras not just as artful expressions but also as very useful portals through which to grab information and analyse it. In time, I felt, one slow pan in a conflict zone, or even a gallery or sitting room, was worth more than a page of notes.

  Today I find myself writing again, as if attempting to complete a full-circle. It’s not what I was expecting. At a time when everyone now is filming, I am headed back in the opposite direction. Even in the deliberately discursive style of this Letter, I feel writing more direct today. I don’t even have to spend a whole year trying to raise funds for the damned thing, not like I did with documentaries. Writing cuts to the chase, which is ironic. I have one good friend who regularly sends me long articles from small journals and I like to devour each one. This is written information from the fringes. As for me, I used to say I wrote with a camera. Well, now I am filming with a pen. I also like what Gloria Steinem said: ‘As a profession, freelance writing is notoriously insecure. That’s the first argument in its favour. For many reasons, a few of them rational, the thought of knowing exactly what next year’s accomplishments, routine, income, and vacation will be — or even what time I have to get up tomorrow morning — has always depressed me.’ Just as Orson Welles wasn’t so wrong when he said filmmaking was two per cent moviemaking and ninety-eight per cent hustling for money.

• Counter Punch ☛ Encounters with Tom Verlaine

  Everyone knows that Television was instrumental in creating New York’s punk scene —  that CBGB’s would not have existed as a venue without their intervention — but ever since their debut Marquee Moon came out in 1977, critics wondered if there was anything punk about the band at all. Maybe that’s why, for all the classic punk records released in the late seventies, this is the one that seems as relevant and modern today as it was then; it is not dated by slogans, fashions or sounds.

  If we back up a couple of years to the Neon Boys (the pre-Television trio consisting of Verlaine, Richard Hell and Billy Ficca), well, yes, it sure sounds like they were inventing punk rock. But they soon evolved. Punk bands played short and played fast. Television’s first single, “Little Johnny Jewel,” recorded while Richard Hell was still in the band, runs nine minutes and was broken up over two sides of a 7” single.

• Techdirt ☛ DoNotPay’s CEO Appears To Modify Donation Receipt After Being Called Out On Unfulfilled Promise

  We’ve written a few stories lately about DoNotPay, the “robot lawyer” service whose gimmick of an automated AI-driven tool that would help users deal with challenges like getting out of parking tickets or cancelling subscription services that are difficult to get out of sounds like a really enticing idea. But there have long been questions about the service. While we’ve seen a bunch of truly impressive AI-generation tools in the last year or so, for years many companies claiming to offer AI-powered services often seemed to be doing little more than finding someone to hack together a complicated spreadsheet that the marketing folks would labels as “artificial intelligence.” It’s unclear how sophisticated DoNotPay’s technology actually is, though as guest poster Kathryn Tewson discovered last week, it sure seemed sketchy.

• New York Times ☛ Australians Scour Desert for Dangerous Radioactive Capsule Smaller Than a Penny

  The truck carrying the sensor arrived in Perth on Jan. 16. On Friday, nearly two weeks later, the authorities called an emergency news conference to alert the public that the capsule had disappeared somewhere along the 1,400-kilometer, or 870-mile, journey.

• Science

  • Pro Publica ☛ 2 Key Examples of Junk Science in Forensics and Criminal Justice

    It’s been decades since the intersection of forensic science and criminal justice first became a pop culture phenomenon, popularized by countless TV shows, movies and books. But the public’s growing awareness of forensic techniques obscures a far more complex field that’s chock full of bogus science — and the people who champion it, often for profit.

    For years, ProPublica has reported on these dubious techniques as they’ve wormed their way into every corner of our real-life criminal justice system.

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ Is AM Radio Dead?

    …that was the question I asked my Dad, a radio engineer for many decades, who worked at the biggest AM station in St. Louis, KMOX. The station is approaching its centennial in 2025, as are—some YouTube commenters argue—its primary audience!

• Education

  • [Old] EPO Management Isn’t Listening to Staff, It’s Just Trying to Divide and Demoralise the Staff Instead

    Built after Poland regained independence at the end of the First World War, by 1923 half of Europe was sending telegrams to the USA via the Transatlantic Radiotelegraphic Broadcasting Centre in Warsaw.

    Consisting of 10 massive 126-metre-tall tower, the radio station’s transmitter was powerful enough to reach both North and South America.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ 1000 Aluminium Cans Cast Into A Guitar

    Aluminium cans are all around us, and are one of readily recyclable. While you can turn them into more cans, [Burls Art] had other ideas. Instead, he turned roughly 1000 cans into a custom aluminium guitar.

  • Hackaday ☛ Converting A Sink To An Ultrasonic Cleaner

    While ultrasonic cleaning might sound a bit like the “sonic shower” from Star Trek, this is actually one case where the futuristic-sounding technology predates its use in Sci-Fi. Ultrasonic cleaners have been around since the 50s and are used to clean all sorts of oddly-shaped or specialty objects by creating cavitation within a liquid that allows the surface of the object to be scoured. With the right equipment, these cleaning devices are fairly straightforward to build as well.

  • Hackaday ☛ RF Spectrometer Sees Inside

    Spectrometry is a well-known technique or, more correctly, a set of techniques. We usually think of it as the analysis of light to determine what chemicals are producing it. For example, you can tell what elements are in a star or an incandescent based on the spectrum of light they emit. But you can also do spectroscopy with other ranges of electromagnetic radiation. [Applied Science] shows how to make an RF spectroscope. You can see the video below.

  • Hackaday ☛ Retro Computer Enclosure Without The Sacrifice

    The unique look of early desktop computer systems remains popular with a certain segment of geekdom, so it’s no great surprise when we occasionally see a modern hacker or maker unceremoniously chuck 40+ year old electronics from a vintage machine just to reuse its plastic carcass. We try not to pass judgement, but it does sting to see literal museum pieces turned into glorified Raspberry Pi enclosures.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Counter Punch ☛ Venting About Ventilation in the Time of Covid

    I need to vent, because we need better ventilation.

    The World Health Organization now recommends masking “for anyone in a crowded, enclosed, or poorly ventilated space.”  But few of us know the quality of ventilation in our spaces.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Medical Aid in Dying and Knowing the Mind of God

    Once again, the GOP supermajority/Freedom Caucus is taking a run at criminalizing doctors who provide medical aid to a dying patient, enabling that person to end his or her own suffering, and life, with a self-administered medication prescribed by the physician. SB 210 is the bullet that ends the statutory approach to medical aid in dying set out in the Montana Supreme Court’s 2009 Baxterdecision.

    Despite its detractors, we know that over the intervening 14 years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Baxter v. State,[1] Montanans suffering from horrible and debilitating life-ending illnesses have successfully sought and have obtained medical aid in dying from various compassionate physicians in this State.

  • CNN ☛ Surgeon General says 13 is ‘too early’ to join social media

    US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says he believes 13 is too young for children to be on social media platforms, because although sites allow children of that age to join, kids are still “developing their identity.”

    Meta, Twitter, and a host of other social media giants currently allow 13-year-olds to join their platforms.

    “I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early … It’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships and the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children,” Murthy said on “CNN Newsroom.”

  • CNN ☛ For adolescents, social media might be a brain-changer, researchers say

    Over a three-year period, the students — who were all 12 or 13 years old when the research began — reported their social media behavior and underwent annual fMRI imaging of their brains to see their neural responses to an onscreen display of positive and negative social feedback, such as a happy or angry face.

    During that period, the students who reported checking their social media more regularly showed greater neural sensitivity in parts of the brain like the amygdala, Telzer said. Those who checked their social media less frequently saw less sensitivity in those areas on the fMRI.

    It is not clear whether the neural changes resulted in behavioral changes, like increased anxiety or addictive behaviors, Telzer said.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Americans Want Government-Run Health Care, What’s Standing in the Way?

    Here’s one of many indicators about how broken the United States health care system is: Guns seem to be easier and cheaper to access than treatment for the wounds they cause. A survivor of the recent mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, California, reportedly said to Gov. Gavin Newsom that he needed to keep his hospital stay as short as possible in order to avoid a massive medical bill. Meanwhile, the suspected perpetrator seemed to have had few obstacles in his quest to legally obtain a semi-automatic weapon to commit deadly violence.

    Americans are at the whim of a bewildering patchwork of employer-based private insurance plans, individual health plans via a government-run online marketplace, or government-run health care (for those lucky enough to be eligible). The coverage and costs of plans vary dramatically so that even if one has health insurance there is rarely a guarantee that there will be no out-of-pocket costs associated with accessing care.

• Security

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Ransomware Payments Are Down

    Chainalysis reports that worldwide ransomware payments were down in 2022.

    Ransomware attackers extorted at least $456.8 million from victims in 2022, down from $765.6 million the year before.

    As always, we have to caveat these findings by noting that the true totals are much higher, as there are cryptocurrency addresses controlled by ransomware attackers that have yet to be identified on the blockchain and incorporated into our data.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ California Law Says Electronic Search Data Must Be Posted Online. So Where Is It?

      When it was passed in 2015, the California Electronic Communications Act (CalECPA) was heralded as a major achievement for digital privacy, because it required law enforcement to obtain a warrant in most cases before searching a suspect’s data, be it on a personal device or on the cloud. But the law also contained a landmark transparency measure: the legislature ordered the California  Department of Justice (CADOJ) to publish a regularly updated dataset of these search warrants on its website.

      Up until last year, CADOJ was doing a pretty good job at uploading this data to its OpenJustice website, where it hosts a number of public datasets related to criminal justice. Advocacy groups and journalists used it to better understand the digital search landscape and hold law enforcement accountable. For example, the Palm Springs Desert Sun analyzed the data and found that San Bernardino County law enforcement agencies were by a large margin filing more electronic search warrants than any other jurisdiction in the state. The Markup also published a piece highlighting a troubling discrepancy between the number of search warrants based on geolocation (a.k.a.geofence warrants) self-reported by Google and the number of search warrants disclosed by agencies to the California Department of Justice.

      But then, last summer, CADOJ accidentally exposed the personal data of 192,000 people who had applied for a concealed carry weapons permit. Among the various actions it took in response, CADOJ suspended its OpenJustice website. Over the next several months, other datasets–such as data about use of force, jail deaths, complaints against officers, and threats to reproductive health providers–returned to the website.

    • Techdirt ☛ More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

      If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.

• Defence/Aggression

  • TruthOut ☛ GOP Lawmaker Hands Out Grenades as “Gifts” to Colleagues in House

  • Meduza ☛ Russian Defense Ministry moves to limit number of banks to which soldiers can receive payments — Meduza

    The Russian Defense Ministry has prepared a bill that, if passed, will limit the number of banks Russian soldiers can use to receive their salaries and benefit payments, according to RBC.

  • The Nation ☛ The Pentagon’s Quest for Academic Intelligence: (AI)

    At this time of intense debate within academia over race, gender, inequality, and our vanishing democracy, one might expect serious engagement with the moral and ethical implications of university-conducted war research. Yet, despite a massive increase in Pentagon support for military-oriented campus research, no such debate exists. Ever since many universities suspended their ties with the Department of Defense in the 1960s and ’70s—often in response to impassioned anti-war protests—concern over such ties has largely disappeared. But now, with the military expanding its footprint on campus and an ever-increasing share of the nation’s resources being devoted to war preparation, it is time to end this silence and start a rigorous debate on the ethics of university-conducted military research.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Israel’s Strange Ambivalence on Ukraine

    There are currently only two Jewish heads of state in the world. The first, not surprisingly, leads Israel. The second is Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.

    They don’t get along.

  • The Nation ☛ Rand Paul Is Right About the Need to Cut Pentagon Spending

    Kentucky Senator Rand Paul did something that too few people in Washington have been willing to consider since the debate about how to meet the debt obligations of the United States has intensified with the Republican takeover of the US House.

  • Common Dreams ☛ ‘War Is Clearly Back on the Agenda’: US Says Israel Was Behind the Drone Attack on Iran

    Unnamed U.S. officials on Sunday confirmed suspicions that Israel was behind the weekend drone attack on a purported military facility in the Iranian city of Isfahan, heightening concerns that the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is gearing up for a broader assault on Iran as international nuclear talks remain at a standstill.

  • Salon ☛ Pelosi’s attacker is proud of himself. The GOP emboldened him

    Like many of the January 6 insurrectionists who have been arrested, DePape appears to have no interest in backing down from the Donald Trump-fueled conspiracy theories that led to his violence. Instead, the chilling audio hints at a man who feels confident in his false accusations and supported in his belief that the Trumpist agenda must be forced upon America through violence.

    DePape appears delusional in many regards, but he is, sadly, right about one thing: His pro-violence views have a lot of support from Republicans, both politicians and voters. While he took it to the next level, DePape was only acting on a correct interpretation of Trump’s implicit message: Since Democrats can’t be beaten at the ballot box, power must be seized through violence. It’s a view that, while they often avoid saying out loud, is widely backed by the rest of the GOP. The party, after all, has gone out of its way to reaffirm support for Trump in the wake of the deadly riot he unleashed on the Capitol two years ago.

  • Saudi Arabia ☛ UN: Al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist groups driving insecurity in Mali

    “The attacks carried out against civilians by terrorist groups, the battle for influence among them and the violent activities conducted by community militias remain a chilling daily reality, as do the attacks against the Malian Defense and Security Forces and against MINUSMA,” the UN peacekeeping force, he said.

    Guterres said in the report to the UN Security Council that “going forward, military operations to combat the extremist groups will continue to be a crucial component for the restoration of security.”

    In central Mali, he said, the extremists are capitalizing on intercommunal conflicts to expand their influence and secure new recruits.

  • VOA News ☛ Iran Summons Senior Ukraine Diplomat Over Comments on Drone Strike

    In Ukraine, which accuses Iran of supplying hundreds of drones to Russia to attack civilian targets in Ukrainian cities far from the front, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy linked the incident directly to the war there.

  • TruthOut ☛ US Secretary of State Arrives in Israel as Violence and Colonization Intensify

  • Common Dreams ☛ Acts That Defy Humanity: This Has To Stop

    Full Disclosure: We couldn’t watch the entire video of the savage beating to death of Tyre Nichols by five armed thugs of the state, all twice his size, all seized by “a wild, punishing violence” as they screamed a barrage of orders to their prostrate victim. What struck us: The “wolf-pack” pathology as they clustered afterwards, like homicidal football players, to revel in their total dehumanization of a kind, young, “damn near perfect” father, skateboarder, photographer, and, yes, human being.

  • Techdirt ☛ Five Memphis Cops Charged With Murder After Beating A Man To Death During A Traffic Stop

    It’s rare to see a cop charged with murder. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was not only charged but convicted (!) of murder after kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for nearly 10 minutes, and for three minutes after another officer told Chauvin he could no longer detect Floyd’s pulse.

  • Counter Punch ☛ George Floyd and the Lumpenproletariat

    Candace Owens is leading the fake news charge that George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose rather than by police murder. There is a lot of money to be made from peddling such a narrative. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be said to this audience but such a claim has already been proven false by Dr. Baker of Hennepin County through examination. Baker stated Floyd’s cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”

    Liberals of course have their own ideology. The rush to call George Floyd a hero and prove his great character, while certainly preferable to Owens’ sick response to death, are also avoiding the political question. If there were drugs in Mr. Floyd’s system, even if this wasn’t the cause of death, why should the police be called at all?

  • Common Dreams ☛ 1,300+ US Groups Demand Atlanta Mayor’s Resignation Over Forest Defender Tortuguita’s Killing

    A coalition of more than 1,300 climate and racial justice groups from across the United States on Monday joined a call for an independent investigation into the police killing of forest defender Manuel Paez Terán earlier this month, and demanded the resignation of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Bolsonaro Requests Six-Month US Tourist Visa to Prolong Florida Trip as Brazilian Probes Mount

    Brazil’s far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro has applied for a six-month visitor visa to remain in the United States amid worsening legal troubles in his home country.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Croatian President Warns US Tanks in Ukraine Only ‘Prolongs the War’

    Croatian President Zoran Milanovic became the latest critic to condemn the decision of Western countries, including the United States, to send dozens of tanks to Ukraine to help fight the war against Russia, warning that continued military escalation will not help bring the conflict to an end.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Where Is the Anti-War Democrat?

    Are America’s national interests best served by our stance on the Ukraine-Russia war? It is striking that within the Democratic Party, with its long tradition of anti-war activism, there are no prominent voices raising this question.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Orbán still committed to Rosatom deal, but questions around Paks II abound

  • Meduza ☛ FSB arrests three high school students for sabotaging train tracks near Moscow — Meduza

    The FSB has arrested three eighth-grade students who allegedly sabotaged the railway by damaging the tracks near Moscow.

  • Meduza ☛ Kadyrov criticizes Europe for failing to support Chechen independence — Meduza

    Responding to Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who remarked that Chechnya deserves to be an independent state, Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov posted a Telegram video with sharp criticisms of “certain incompetent European politicians.”

  • Meduza ☛ Russian consulate in Lithuania refuses to issue new passports to nationals pegged for protest — Meduza

    The Russian consulate in Lithuania has denied a citizen’s application for a new Russian passport, reports the independent outlet Verstka, citing the applicant herself.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Poland Says It’s Ready To Send F-16s to Ukraine in Coordination With NATO

    Biden said “No” when asked if the US would send F-16s to Ukraine, but the US previously ruled out providing other arms it eventually sent.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian Interior Ministry issued more foreign passports in 2022 than in any year since 2014 — Meduza

    Russia’s Interior Ministry issued more than 5.4 million foreign passports in 2022, according to its website.

  • Project Censored ☛ Silicon Valley’s Censorship by Proxy, State Propaganda, and the Military-Entertainment Complex – The Project Censored Show

  • Site36 ☛ Matthias Monroy

  • Meduza ☛ Russian man sentenced to 12 years on terrorism charges for setting fire to military enlistment office — Meduza

    A court in Russia’s Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug has sentenced a 20-year-old man named Vladislav Borisenko to 12 years in prison on terrorism charges for allegedly taking part in an arson attack at a military enlistment office in May, according to TASS. The case reportedly marks the first time anybody in Russia has been convicted of terrorism for setting fire to one of the offices.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian authorities demand Tretyakov Gallery change its exhibits to reflect country’s ‘moral and spiritual values’ — Meduza

    The Russian Culture Ministry has ordered Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery to bring its exhibits “into accordance with [Russia’s] moral and spiritual values,” The Moscow Times reported on Tuesday, citing a letter addressed to the museum by ministry official Natalia Chechel.

  • Spiegel ☛ Ukraine: Tank Deliveries Could Mark Turning Point in War

    There is enormous relief in Kyiv that, after months of hesitation, the West is now willing to supply main battle tanks. But can the Leopard 2s supplied by Germany and its allies really turn the tide on the battlefield?

  • Spiegel ☛ Russia Expert Angela Stent: “As Long as Russia Has 6,000 Nuclear Warheads, It Will Remain a Threat”

    How great is the risk for the West after the decision to send tanks to Ukraine? In an interview, Russia expert and former U.S. government adviser Angela Stent discusses German weapons deliveries to Kyiv and the mistakes made in dealing with Moscow.

• Environment

  • TruthOut ☛ Migrant Farmworkers Have No Safety Net in the Face of Catastrophic Flooding

  • Common Dreams ☛ US Lawmakers to John Kerry: Urge UAE to Remove Oil Boss From COP28 Presidency

    More than two dozen members of Congress have called on top U.S. climate diplomat John Kerry to push the United Arab Emirates to replace Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as president-designate of the United Nations COP28 meeting set to begin this November.

  • Helsinki Times ☛ Consumption-based emissions for all Finnish municipalities and regions calculated for the first time

    For the first time, the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) has published consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions data for all Finnish municipalities and regions. The emissions per capita vary considerably between different municipalities and regions. As a result of the consumption of imported goods, a significant portion of emissions is also directed abroad.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Yes, we have enough materials to power the world with renewable energy

      Powering the world with renewable energy will take a lot of raw materials. The good news is, when it comes to aluminum, steel, and rare-earth metals, there’s plenty to go around, according to a new analysis.

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Duke Energy’s N.C. coal plants more expensive to run than building new solar farms, report finds

      Duke Energy could save customers money by swiftly shutting down its coal plants and replacing them with a mix of solar and energy storage, a report found.

    • uni Michigan ☛ U-M startup joins White House partnership to remove lead pipes

      U-M startup BlueConduit, which helped accelerate the removal of dangerous lead pipes in Flint has joined a White House partnership aimed at replacing all of the nation’s lead service lines in a decade.

    • The Nation ☛ Nuclear Fusion Isn’t the Silver Bullet We Want It to Be

      I awoke on December 13 to news about what could be the most significant scientific breakthrough since the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first Covid vaccine for emergency use two years ago. This time, however, the achievement had nothing to do with that ongoing public health crisis. Instead, as The New York Times and CNN alerted me that morning, at stake was a new technology that could potentially solve the worst dilemma humanity faces: climate change and the desperate overheating of our planet. Net-energy-gain fusion, a long-sought-after panacea for all that’s wrong with traditional nuclear-fission energy (read accidents, radioactive waste), had finally been achieved at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ Billion kroner project could send cars underground in Copenhagen

      Now the city is inching closer to a decision regarding one of its primary car-related eyesores in the city: Bispeengbuen, the six-lane road that slices through the heart of the city from Nørrebro past the Lakes to Ørestads Boulevard in Amager.

      A majority of City Hall is in favour of plans to submerge parts of the contentious stretch of road underground and replace the current concrete monstrosity with green areas on the surface.

    • DeSmog ☛ Canada’s New Oil And Gas Strategy: Green Promises at Home and More Exports Abroad

      Top Canadian oil and gas companies are moving “aggressively” to cut their greenhouse gas emissions domestically so that they can sell more of their climate-warming products abroad.

      That was the message delivered by the sector’s most powerful trade and lobby group at a recent resources industry conference in British Columbia, that achieving “net-zero” at home is crucial for opening up foreign markets.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ A de-extinction company is trying to resurrect the dodo

      The dodo bird was big, flightless, and pretty good eating. All that helps explain why it went extinct around 1662, just 150 years after European sailing ships found Mauritius, the island in the Indian Ocean where the bird once lived.

• Finance

  • YLE ☛ Tech sector workers to strike this week, no new settlement in wage dispute

    Starting on Wednesday, the walkout will affect about 50 companies across the country for three days.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Green with envy: Sorry, Giants fans; the Empire State Building’s owner can light up his building however he wants

    Sunday, no less a New York City icon than the Empire State Building rubbed salt into a few million local wounds by lighting up in Eagle green and white for the NFC champs.

  • TruthOut ☛ House Republicans Are Pushing to Make the US Tax Code Further Serve the Rich

  • Scheerpost ☛ France Strikes Against Macron’s Neoliberal Pension Reform Plans

    France’s eight major trade unions united for the first time in 12 years to combat government proposals to raise the retirement age to 64.

  • TruthOut ☛ Sanders Calls for Minimum Wage to Be Raised to at Least $17 an Hour

  • Scheerpost ☛ Havana Declaration Outlines Vision for Building Just World Economy

    “What is the common vision to guide the Global South out of this crisis?” asked the Progressive International. “What is the plan to win it?”

  • Common Dreams ☛ Havana Declaration Outlines Vision for Building Just World Economy

    Delegates to the Havana Congress on the New International Economic Order—a gathering organized by the Progressive International and attended by more than 50 scholars and policymakers from 26 countries across all six inhabited continents—agreed over the weekend on a declaration that outlines a “common vision” for building an egalitarian and sustainable society out of the wreckage of five decades of neoliberal capitalism.

  • Common Dreams ☛ New Campaign Aims to Fight Off GOP Threat to Social Security and Medicare

    A coalition of progressive advocacy groups on Monday launched a campaign urging every member of Congress to pledge to “never vote to cut Social Security or Medicare under any circumstances,” an effort that comes as House Republicans are weighing attacks on the two programs as part of their sweeping austerity spree.

  • Common Dreams ☛ As Profits Soar, US Utilities Lavish Shareholders While Shutting Off Power for Millions

    Energy justice campaigners on Monday called for “a permanent ban” on energy shutoffs by utilities as they released a report showing that major power companies have shut off millions of struggling customers’ electricity and heat due to missed payments—while raking in record profits and spending billions of dollars on executive compensation, shareholder dividends, and stock buybacks.

  • FAIR ☛ ‘We Can Pay for What We Decide to Pay For’

    Janine Jackson interviewed Mother Jones‘ Michael Mechanic about defunding the IRS for the January 27, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Counter Punch ☛ McCarthy’s 15-Round Victory: Capitalism’s Politicians Perform in Public

    After 15 raucous votes spanning almost two weeks, Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy, R-California, was elected House Speaker on January 7. The vote was 216-212, a party-line vote with six Republicans voting present. From the beginning, former President Donald Trump pressured his 20 super-supporters, mostly in the Republicans’ “rightwing” Freedom Caucus, to back McCarthy. They refused until several behind-the-scenes deals, and a new “rules package” governing House operations, were negotiated.

    Perish the thought! The Republican dissenters won the right to actually see future proposed legislation packages a number of days before they are put to a vote! Imagine that! Members of the U.S. Congress will now have the right to read and review the legislation they are voting on! Readers here might think that my words are exaggerated. Not so. Contrary to popular belief, the often multi-thousand page pre-packaged legislation traditionally put together by the House Speaker is often quickly rammed through without most House members having seen it or having time to read it. Regardless, they follow their leader.

  • Counter Punch ☛ Lies, Damned Lies, and George Santos

    “Of course,” the late P.J. O’Rourke wrote in Parliament of Whores, by way of explaining why government is boring, “politicians don’t tell the truth …. But neither do politicians tell huge, entertaining whoppers: ‘Why, send yours truly to Capitol Hill, and I’ll ship the swag home in boxcar lots. … There’ll be government jobs for your dog.  … Social Security checks will come in the mail not just when you retire at sixty-five but when you retire each night to bed. Vote for me, folks, and you’ll be farting through silk.’”

    O’Rourke seems to have actually preferred a more prosaic style of political falsehood: In 2016, the long-time Republican endorsed Hillary Clinton for president over whopper-prone Donald Trump, citing her “lies and empty promises.” She’s “wrong about absolutely everything,” he said, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”

  • Counter Punch ☛ The Winter Coup Season in Latin America

    Coup attempts have gone viral this winter season in Latin America. The contagion spread first to Argentina, then Peru, and finally Brazil on January 8. In addition, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua continue to suffer from long-term US regime-change efforts.

    Coverage of this political pandemic by the US liberal press (i.e., the preponderance of mainstream media that endorse a Democrat for the presidency) reflects politically motivated agendas. Its spin on Brazil in particular reflects a trend among Democrats to greater acceptance of the security state.

  • TruthOut ☛ Some States Eye New Protections for Election Workers Ahead of 2024

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Hungary would award the Nobel Peace Prize to Turkish President Erdoğan – Szijjártó

  • Meduza ☛ State media speculate about date of Putin’s anticipated annual address to Russia’s legislature — Meduza

    The address delivered annually by Russia’s president before the parliament may take place in late February, report both TASS and Ria Novosti, citing sources in the State Duma.

  • Techdirt ☛ New Report: Twitter’s Ad Revenue Woes Are Even Worse Than Expected

    We knew that Elon Musk had driven away tons of top advertisers, which is kind of a big deal, as the company has been desperate for revenue, if only to cover the interest payments Elon loaded the company with by using a $13 billion loan as part of his $44 billion purchase. Elon keeps talking about how much he’s cut costs, but killing off the revenue isn’t particularly helpful either. Earlier, we had noted that both Elon directly, and other internal reports, had suggested that ad revenue at the company had been sliced by a somewhat astounding 40%. Since then, we’ve seen that the company is desperately offering to give advertisers a $250k match if they promise to spend $250k.

  • TruthOut ☛ McCarthy May Not Have the Votes to Unseat Omar From Committees

  • Counter Punch ☛ Overcoming Social Fragmentation

    Fragmentation is a particular curse of the modern world. We live in a bewildering array of systems and networks, of groupings and cultures. In market society we are continually being sold one thing or another. The grabs for our attention and focus are seemingly infinite. There is not much to bring us together as people, especially around concepts about how we might create a better society.

    There seems to be some design in this. The very idea we might create a better society stands in challenge to business as usual. Since the 1980s, we have lived with the neoliberal ideas that the market rules, there is no alternative, and, as neoliberal icon and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families.

  • TruthOut ☛ RNC Passes Resolution Urging GOP to Make Abortion Bans a Top Priority for 2024

  • TruthOut ☛ Minnesota Becomes First State to Pass Abortion Protections Bill After “Dobbs”

  • Techdirt ☛ Twitter Tumbleweed Watch

    I just want to share some back-of-the-envelope math. I’m increasingly convinced that Twitter (or at least the network neighborhoods that comprise my Twitter experience) is becoming a ghost town. Here’s why:

  • Techdirt ☛ Twitter Sued For Not Paying Rent On Its SF Headquarters And Its London Offices

    There have been a bunch of stories about how one of Elon’s big “cost saving” techniques was to stop paying for basically anything, including rent.

  • Common Dreams ☛ 20 House Dems Push Biden to Cut Off Security Aid to Peru Over ‘Violent Repression’ of Protesters

    Twenty House Democrats on Monday pressed the Biden administration to immediately halt the flow of security funding to the Peruvian government over its vicious crackdown on protests against unelected President Dina Boluarte, who rose to power following the arrest of leftist President Pedro Castillo last month.

  • The Nation ☛ Kathy Hochul Can’t Govern Like Andrew Cuomo. Why Would She Want To?

    Profiling New York Governor Kathy Hochul last year, I labeled her the “un-Cuomo.” Admirers and detractors alike gave her credit for a collegial approach to decision-making, pulling in legislators, sometimes even opponents, to confer about her next moves, in a way her disgraced predecessor Andrew Cuomo never did.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Ralph Nader: Drug Price Showdown Time for Chairman Bernie Sanders

    By Ralph Nader It is showdown time. Senator Bernie Sanders, new chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee versus Big Pharma. The self-described “democratic socialist” from a safe seat in Vermont has long been a Big Pharma nemesis.

  • India Times ☛ Trai calls for overhaul of existing norms around entertainment apps, tech convergence

    Trai observed in the paper that while in the past telecommunications and broadcasting served two distinct purposes, and as such were government by separate regulatory and licensing framework, it is no longer the case.

    “Today’s evolving digital technologies and ongoing deregulation are beginning to blur the boundaries that once separated these two functions, at least from the perspective of carriage of these services,” the sector regulator further observed.

  • Broadband Breakfast ☛ Must Internet Platforms Host Objectionable Content? Appeals Courts Consider ‘Must Carry’ Rules

    As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a pair of cases about online platform liability, it is also considering a separate pair of social media lawsuits that aim to push content moderation practices in the opposite direction, adding additional questions about the First Amendment and common carrier status to an already complicated issue.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Vice Media Group ☛ America’s Biggest New Age Expo Welcomes Conspiracy Theories Back In

      After its founder rejected some conspiracy content, the Conscious Life Expo once again takes a more suspicion-friendly approach.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Straits Times ☛ Viral video puts spotlight on issues faced by breastfeeding mums in China

    China had just 2,600 nursing rooms in 2019, when 14.6 million babies were born that year.

  • Gannett ☛ 3 charged in plot to assassinate activist Masih Alinejad, who is critical of Iran regime

    Since July, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the criminal group had been planning the assassination of New York-based journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, who just two years ago had been the target of a foiled kidnapping attempt linked to Iranian intelligence operatives.

  • YLE ☛ Police: Koran burning would not be allowed in Finland

    An Yle poll in 2021 found that a majority of Finnish MPs did not want to change Finland’s law on the sanctity of religion, which includes the possibility of a six-month prison sentence for blasphemy.

    However, some MPs called for changes to the law based on freedom of speech concerns.

    The UN Human Rights Committee has urged Finland to change the criminal provision, arguing that it restricts freedom of expression.

  • NDTV ☛ Pakistan Tightens Blasphemy Laws That Already Carry Death Penalty

    The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has said that these amendments are likely to exacerbate the persecution of the beleaguered religious minorities and minority sects.

    The HRCP Chairperson, Hina Jilani, in a statement issued from Lahore on Friday, said the enactment would further increase persecutions of the minorities.

  • India Today ☛ Pakistan’s new blasphemy laws may be ‘weaponised’ against minorities, says rights group

    The Pakistan National Assembly unanimously passed the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act 2023 last week, enhancing the minimum punishment for those who insult the revered personalities of Islam from three to 10 years along with a fine of Rs 1 million. It also makes the charge of blasphemy an offence for which bail is not possible.

    This latest piece of legislation has left human rights activists alarmed, as they fear the laws would be misused to settle scores and further persecute religious minorities like Hindus and Christians in Pakistan.

  • New York Times ☛ Pakistan Strengthens Already Harsh Laws Against Blasphemy

    The move this week by Parliament to further strengthen the nation’s strict blasphemy laws, which are often used to settle personal scores or persecute minorities, has raised concerns among rights activists about the prospect of an increase in such persecution, particularly of religious minorities, including Christians.

    As Pakistani society has turned more conservative and religious in the past several decades, religion and display of religiosity in public life have become ever more pronounced.

  • Gatestone Institute ☛ ‘The Shame of Pakistan’: Blasphemy Accusers: Courageous Christian Woman Stands Up to Them

    “Pakistan was to review its harsh blasphemy laws. It has made them even harsher…The National Assembly has unanimously passed an amendment to the laws that widens the net and makes punishment more stringent under these laws…. The blasphemy laws are often misused in Pakistan to settle personal scores. It is also used to persecute its small minorities.”

    Recently in Pakistan, however, an encouraging sign emerged: an interesting uproar on social media about a Christian female security officer who bravely stood up to a Muslim colleague threatening her with a false accusation of blasphemy.

  • IAMC writes to Elon Musk seeking censorship reversal of BBC documentary on Modi

    Indian American Muslim Council writes to Twitter CEO Elon Musk seeking the reversal of censorship of the BBC documentary critical of the Indian Prime Minister titled “India: The Modi Question”.

    In a two-page letter, the IAMC also sought Twitter to refuse all future compliance with media censorship requests from the Indian Government.

  • The Verge ☛ Elon Musk’s Twitter is caving to government censorship, just like he promised

    Over the weekend, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting senior advisor Kanchan Gupta tweeted that both Twitter and YouTube had complied with orders passed down by the government, which has labeled the BBC documentary “hateful propaganda.” The documentary has also been apparently removed by the Internet Archive, although it’s not clear whether this was following a demand from the government or a copyright complaint from the original owner, and the Internet Archive didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

  • NBC ☛ Elon Musk’s Twitter faces censorship allegations in India free speech battle

    Elon Musk is facing allegations of being complicit with state censorship after Twitter appeared to take sides with India’s government in a turbulent free speech fight over a documentary critical of the country’s prime minister.

    The fight revolves around a new documentary from the BBC that focuses on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, delving into accusations that the politician allowed religious-based violence against Muslims. India is majority Hindu with a Muslim minority.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Elon Musk shrugs off criticism that he has helped India censor BBC’s Modi documentary

    Google-owned YouTube and Mr Musk’s Twitter have been receiving flak for complying with the Indian government’s demand to prevent users from sharing the documentary. It reports for the first time a British intelligence report that held Mr Modi “directly responsible” for the Gujarat riots in 2002, where potentially thousands of Muslims were massacred, when he was the state’s chief minister.

  • Foreign Policy ☛ Modi Is Muzzling Big Tech

    This week, India made global headlines by banning a BBC documentary on its prime minister, Narendra Modi, which focused on his role in religious riots in the state of Gujarat in 2002 when he was the state’s chief minister. The broadcast ban included a directive to YouTube and Twitter under the country’s technology laws, demanding they take down links to the documentary, which a government advisor said the companies complied with.

  • Meduza ☛ OnlyFans stops working in Russia — Meduza

    The adult content sharing platform OnlyFans is no longer accessible in Russia, according to multiple Russian Telegram channels and media outlets. The site is showing a 403 error, which suggests that it’s been blocked by its owners.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Scheerpost ☛ Assange Visitors Renew Request for CIA to ‘Purge and Destroy’ Files on Them

    Attorneys and journalists, who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was living under political asylum in the Ecuador embassy, amended their lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for allegedly spying on them.

  • Don’t Extradite Assange ☛ Assange Odysseia, 23 January 2023, Strasbourg, France

    Inspired by the narrative form of Homer’s Odyssey, Assange Odysseia tells the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and, with the help of witnesses, experts as well as political and cultural figures, sheds light on facts and events that are little known by the general public.

  • The Hill ☛ Trump sues journalist Bob Woodward

    Trump concedes that he consented to Woodward recording their conversations for the purpose of a book, and gave 19 interviews to the veteran journalist in 2019 and 2020, which Woodward included in his 2020 book “Rage.”

    But the former president is arguing the agreement doesn’t cover the inclusion of those audio files in “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook collection of the recordings published by Simon & Schuster Inc. last year.

  • VOA News ☛ With Media on Trial or in Exile, Belarusian Journalists Strive to Keep Reporting

    Tut.by drew the government’s ire for its coverage of the August 2020 contested presidential elections, when Lukashenko claimed victory and opposition candidates were detained or forced to flee. When demonstrations broke out across the country, authorities arrested scores of protesters and journalists.

    The government later branded Tut.by and other independent outlets as “extremist.” In May 2021, officials raided the newsroom, blocked access to its website and detained staff, including the editor-in chief Marina Zolatova and general director Lyudmila Chekina. A few months later, Tut.by was declared “extremist” and banned.

  • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Top court: Prosecution must give credible reasons for fining journalists

    The Supreme Court agreed with the circuit court in that while Eesti Ekspress journalists Sulev Vedler and Tarmo Vahter and their employer Delfi Meedia AS did disclose criminal investigation details without permissions from the prosecution, fining them was not justified in this case.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Denmark rated world’s least corrupt country in index

    Denmark has been named the least corrupt country in the world for the fifth time in an annual index – but that does not mean the Nordic country is corruption free, according to a representative from the organisation behind the ranking.

  • Meduza ☛ Izyum’s petal mines Human Rights Watch documents the Ukrainian military’s apparent use of thousands of banned rocket-fired landmines during the city’s Russian occupation — Meduza

    In a new report, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch calls on Kyiv to investigate the Ukrainian military’s “apparent use of thousands of [banned] rocket-fired antipersonnel landmines” in and around the city of Izyum. The findings are based on interviews with more than 100 people, including “witnesses to landmine use, victims of landmines, first responders, doctors, and Ukrainian deminers.” HRW also found copious physical evidence in and around Izyum showing the use of PFMs (anti-infantry high-explosive mines) — colloquially known as “butterfly mines” or “petal mines” — and observed blast signatures consistent with these weapons, which have reportedly maimed dozens of local civilians. Meduza summarizes the report’s key findings.

  • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Transparency International: Hungary is the most corrupt country in the EU

  • Shadowproof ☛ Delays And Obstacles Disrupt Communications For Georgia Prisoners

    Incarcerated Georgians and their loved ones have struggled to stay in touch after the Georgia Department of Corrections began switching communications services from JPay to Securus, as the former merges its systems with the latter. This change was accompanied by the emergence of a more stringent and increasingly punitive prison communications policy.

    While the Georgia Department of Corrections’ (GDC) policy was written in 2018, it is only now being enforced, according to incarcerated people and their loved ones. Under the policy, people who wish to communicate with someone inside must submit an application and submit to government screening. Additionally, a prisoner may only have 12 people on this approved communications list.

  • BBC ☛ Afghan women share what their lives are really like under the Taliban

    Women from across Afghanistan have been telling us about their daily lives under Taliban rule.

  • Medforth ☛ France: Muslim convert beats former partner into a coma because the Qur’an allows him to do so

    On that December 13, 2022, the young woman was nevertheless determined to press charges against the man she had just separated from, and even to have an abortion. After staying with her mother in the Vienne department for a few days, she spoke out about the fear he caused her: harassment by text message, threats, an attempt to strangle her. Since she converted to Islam, Marvin J. has also been spreading the idea that the Qur’an allows a man to beat his wife…

  • Sara Khadem: ‘I’m not me when I’m wearing a hijab’

    On December 26, the Iranian chess player participated in the World Rapid Chess Championship in Kazakhstan with her head uncovered, a silent protest that is a very serious offense in her native country. After the photos circled the world, she announced her intention to settle in Spain. Her story represents the cause of freedom that so many Iranian women are fighting for

  • TruthOut ☛ We Must Refuse “Normal Life” After Police Violence Like Killing of Tyre Nichols

  • The Nation ☛ The Killing of Tyre Nichols Is an Indictment of the Entire Political System

    The five Memphis police officers charged on Thursday with murdering Tyre Nichols after he was stopped for an alleged traffic violation were not ordinary cops on the beat. They were members of an elite unit bearing the type of name usually given to a villainous secret society in a James Bond movie: SCORPION. As journalist Radley Balko, who specializes in writing about police abuse, noted in The New York Times, “The SCORPION program has all the markings of similar ‘elite’ police teams around the country, assembled for the broad purpose of fighting crime, which operate with far more leeway and less oversight than do regular police.” (The SCORPION unit was disbanded on Saturday).

  • NPR ☛ Police statements tell the first version of an incident. Then video footage comes out

    Video footage released Friday, taken from officers’ body cameras and a street surveillance camera, shows a different story. In the videos, police quickly yank Nichols from his car, shout obscenities and threats, and then pepper spray him. Nichols flees, and when police finally catch him a second time, officers kick him, hit him with a baton and repeatedly punch him in the head while he’s being restrained.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Hollywood Reporter ☛ NBCUniversal Shakes Up Ad Sales Division For Streaming-First Restructure

    The changes include new or reworked roles for a variety of top executives, including Maggy Chan, who joined from the BBC last month and will oversee global ad sales and partnerships; Mark Marshall, who will lead a centralized national sales team; Frank Comerford, who will lead local ad strategy; and Dan Lovinger, who leads a sales team dedicated to the Olympics.

• Monopolies

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Rep. Issa – House IP Leader

    Ryan Davis at IP360 is reporting that Rep. Darryl Issa is the new chair of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. He was previously Chair 2015-2019.

  • Patents

    • How to test UPC CMS sunrise functionalities [Ed: UPC is illegal and unconstitutional. It's not even ratified, so they're simulating "progress" as a lobbying strategy.]

  • Software Patents

    • Unified Patents ☛ $1,500 awarded for IP Edge entity AdaptFlow Technologies video data patent prior art

      The ongoing contests are open to anyone, and include tens of thousands of dollars in rewards available for helping the industry to challenge NPE patents of questionable validity by finding and submitting prior art in the contests.

    • EFF ☛ Stupid Patent of the Month: Digital Verification Systems Patents E-Signatures

      This month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is a great example of that. U.S. Patent No. 9,054,860 has been used by a company called Digital Verification Services, LLC, (DVS) to sue more than 50 companies that provide different types of e-signature software.

      There’s no evidence that the inventor of this patent, Leigh Rothschild, ever created his own e-signature software. But in patent law, that doesn’t matter. He acquired this patent in 2015, by adding a trivial, almost meaningless limitation to an application that the U.S. Patent Office had spent the previous seven years rejecting.

      You can’t learn much about how to verify digital identities from the patent owned by Digital Verification Services. But the breadth of work on actual digital verification can be gleaned by looking at the long list of companies and products that DVS has sued. In fact, DVS has sued more than 50 different companies. Some are large, like NASDAQ-listed DocuSign, but many more of its targets are small companies with less than 50 or even less than 10 employees. They stand accused of offering “hardware and/or software for digital signature services.”

  • Trademarks

    • TTAB Blog ☛ TTAB Posts February 2023 Hearing Schedule

      The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Tee-Tee-Ā-Bee) has scheduled six (6) oral hearings for the month of February 2023.

    • TTAB Blog ☛ Precedential No. 5: TTAB Finds ICE MONSTER & Design Confusable With MONSTER ENERGY for Restaurant Services

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate IPTV Owners Liable For $100m in Damages Fight House Seizure

      In June 2022, the operators of pirate IPTV service Nitro TV were ordered to pay $100 million in damages to broadcaster DISH Network. To recover at least some of the millions made by the service, DISH obtained permission to seize and sell a house worth almost $1 million. After failing to participate in the original lawsuit, the defendants are now trying to defend their house.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Court: Accused Pirate Can Use the Term ‘Copyright Troll’ at Trial

      Online piracy lawsuits against individual file-sharers rarely make it to trial, but a case in Florida between Strike 3 Holdings and an alleged pirate is moving strongly in that direction. A recent order provides positive news for the rightsholder but that won’t prevent the defense from being able to use the term “copyright troll” in court.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal

  • Re: This is Bananas!

    I always peeled from the stalk end until I visited Thrigby Hall, a zoo in Norfolk. A keeper gave a talk as she fed the gibbons, and said that it’s only humans who start at the stalk. We watched the gibbons start at the other end, and later I tried it. I’ve never gone back to the stalk end.

  • Fecking Bahamas

    It’s been a really long time since I last was this excited about an album! I’m about halfway and it’s pretty good. But there’s this little something in Ireland and Australasia, even in France, missing here…

    At first I was planning only a quick mention in the tinylog, but that doesn’t make justice to how much I appreciate these compilations. So let’s make a short summary of my favorite compilations and songs.

• Technical

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Better Availability or I Begrudgingly Switched My Gemini Server Back to ECDSA

      When I setup my Gemini server in the beginning of December of 2022, I used Agate with Ed25519 certificates. They are more modern than the ECDSA ones and are the ones you should use.

      But judging from my Agate log, a lot of requests fail, apparently because they don’t support this newer algorithm. While from a security standpoint this is not a big deal, because no sensitive data will be transfered, but I prefer current technology and don’t like abandonware.

      I’m not sure about my general feelings here. Do I want to be more inclusive or am I thinking about reaching more people too much and therefor emphasizing the performative aspect of publishing on the internet. I despise this.