● 10.17.21

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 17/10/2021: GhostBSD 21.10.16 and Mattermost 6.0

Posted in News Roundup at 7:02 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Framework: a customized modular DIY-ready laptop for pros

• It is not the first time that we witness an attempt to create a modular, customized DIY (Do-It-Yourself) laptop machine. But this one may be different.

• The Framework Laptop offers a new user-customized, upgradable laptop with a DIY edition for developers and technical users.

• Like the new Apple MacBook laptops and Microsoft Surface laptops, the Framework laptop is thin, lightweight with 13.5” and offers high durability without sacrificing the performance, style, or build quality.

• [...]

• It comes in two editions, the classical Framework Laptop edition which starts from $999, and the DIY edition (starts from $749) which you can buy the components and assembles your laptop at home.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ This Week in Linux 172: PinePhone Pro, Ubuntu 21.10, KDE Plasma 5.23, NVIDIA + Wayland

• On this episode of This Week in Linux, PinePhone Pro Announced, Ubuntu 21.10 Released, KDE Plasma 5.23 Released, NVIDIA 495 Beta Driver Released, Ventoy 1.0.54 Released (Multiboot USB), Devuan 4.0 Released, AppSupport for Linux Platforms (Android), Heroic Games Launcher 1.10.2 Released, Lutris 0.5.9 Released, Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

=> ↺ GNU World Order 430

• GNU parallel and patchelf from NixOS.

=> ↺ Protonup: Essential Tool For Linux Steam Gamers – Invidious

• Proton is an absolutely fantastic tool but for some games it’s not going to work properly and you’ll need to try out a custom version, the most popular being proton ge and protonup will help us manage our versions.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ The Most Popular Gamepads with Linux Gamers in 2021

• During the last survey we had the chance to ask about the favorites gamepads used for gaming. We decided to split the market between major brands and “others” as it would be impractical to cover all existing gamepads by brand and name that can work with USB, a specific wireless protocol, or Bluetooth.

=> ↺ Axboe Achieves 8M IOPS Per-Core With Newest Linux Optimization Patches – Phoronix

• It was just last week that Linux optimizations were leading to possible 6M IOPS per core and then at the start of this week new patches pushed Linux past 7M IOPS per-core with an ideal hardware configuration as well. In ending out the week, 8M IOPS has been reached!

• Jens Axboe of Facebook who leads the Linux kernel’s block subsystem and also well known for his development of IO_uring has been pushing the limits of Linux I/O performance. It was just last month he was excited over 3+ million IOPS per-core after upgrading to an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X desktop with Intel Optane Gen2 storage.

Applications

=> ↺ GNOME Gingerblue 2.0.0 Recording Software supports XSPF 1.0

• GNOME Gingerblue 2.0.0 is Free Recording Software for GNOME.

• In the 2.0.0 release I have added support for XSPF 1.0 from Xiph.org.

=> ↺ Free Software Review: Balena Etcher couldn’t be easier for writing ISO images, but do they really need telemetry? – BaronHK’s Rants

• Debian 11.1 was released a few days ago and that means it’s time to refresh your installer media in case disaster strikes.

• It usually doesn’t strike, of course, but the thing about disasters is that they are often unforeseen.

• While using GNU/Linux is more reliable, as a strategy, than living in the Gulf Coast of the United States and wondering who could have seen hurricane season coming EVERY SINGLE YEAR, stuff happens.

• That’s why it pays to have a relatively current installer.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to enable debug logs in Nginx

• While working with the Nginx web server, one of the most common tasks is checking the debug logs. Knowing how to enable and interpret the debug logs is quite helpful for troubleshooting application or server issues as these logs provide detailed debugging information. In Nginx, you can enable the debug logs for examining the upstream interactions and internal behavior. Nginx keeps track of its events in two logs: error logs and access logs. Before moving ahead, let’s understand the basic concept of error logs and debug logs.

=> ↺ How to fix “FirewallD is not running” error on CentOS

• Are you looking for a solution to fix the “FirewallD is not running” error? We are here to assist you. In Linux-based operating systems such as CentOS, FirewallD is a firewall management utility. It acts as a front-end for the netfilter framework of the Linux kernel, offering firewall functionality. It supports firewall zones, bridges, IPv6, IPv4, and other ipsets for networks.

• If the FirewallD utility is not enabled or your system is missing this tool, then you may encounter a “FirewallD is not running” error in your CentOS terminal. In this post, we will check three different solutions for fixing the “FirewallD is not running” error on a CentOS system. So, let’s start!

=> ↺ How to enable and disable systemd-resolved in Ubuntu – Anto ./ Online

• This guide will show you how to enable and disable the systemd-resolved service in Ubuntu.

=> ↺ How to do Debian 11 Network configuration

• Debian is a Linux-based distribution known for its power, stability and security. Network configuration is a broad process to set up controls of a network, manage the network flow and operation to support the network communication for a specific organization or network owner. Multiple configuration settings are included while configuring the network: Router Configuration, Host Configuration, Software Configuration.

• In this descriptive post, network configuration of Debian 11 is explained using command line and GUI as well.

=> ↺ How to delete empty lines using sed

• There are two possible methods to delete empty lines from a text file using sed; the methods are listed below and are discussed in detail in the upcoming part of this guide.

=> ↺ How To Install ROS Noetic on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ROS Noetic on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, ROS (Robot Operating System) is an open-source robotics software framework and tools for robotics applications. It helps design complex software without having a good understanding of the hardware. The architecture ROS Noetic supported are amd64, armhf, and arm64.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the ROS Noetic on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

=> ↺ How to Renew DHCP IP on Debian 11

• The DHCP or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is used to assign devices random IP addresses automatically. When using a server or router with a DHCP server, clients don’t have to set their IP addresses manually. They need to request it from the DHCP. The IP addresses provided by DHCP are known as Dynamic IP addresses, while IP addresses set manually are known as Static IP addresses.

=> ↺ How to ZIP a folder in Ubuntu

• Sometimes, you want to share a directory or folder that contains a bundle of files with someone. In this situation, compressing the folder in a .zip file format is a good approach. Zip is the commonly used and popular archive file format in many operating systems for file compression that provides lossless data compression features.

• The zip file behaves as a container that is composed of more compressed files or folders. There are more file formats such as .tar extension, also common practice to use for Linux systems, but still zipping folders using .zip extension is ubiquitous and a perfect choice.

• Using Zip file format for file compression takes less disk space and saves the network bandwidth while you transfer a file from one machine to another system. Zipped file format can be transferred more quickly as compared to uncompressed files. These compressed zip folders can easily be extracted using supportive utilities in Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems.

• You will learn in this guide how to zip a folder in Ubuntu Linux operating system. We will explain two methods for zipping a folder; one method is zip a folder using command-line and the other using the Gnome graphical interface environment. All steps we will cover in this article have been implemented on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS focal fossa distribution.

=> ↺ How to use vim editor – Complete Guide

• Vim editor is among the best editors used in the command-line interface to open, edit and save files, vim editor can be used for editing simple text files as well as different code files of different languages. Vim is the updated version of Vi editor that’s why vim is abbreviated as “Vi improved”. It is highly efficient and also known as IDE (integrated development environment) because of its popularity in the programming editors. Vim has different shortcuts to perform tasks, it has different modes and bindings.

=> ↺ List all Users in Ubuntu

• The Linux administrator can easily interact with the system and manage all users using useful commands in a Linux system.

• Ubuntu is the most widely used Linux distribution that offers more useful features for system administrators to list all users and manage their daily tasks. Therefore, the administrator can easily grant privileges to a user on a file or folder and assign limited permission for each user to secure your system’s data.

• We will explore in this article how to list all users in the Ubuntu Linux system using a command-line environment. All commands are implemented on the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS focal fossa in this article. Let us dive into the details!

=> ↺ How to play Dungeon Defenders on Linux

• Dungeon Defenders is a hybrid multiplayer video game developed by Trendy Entertainment. The game was released on Microsoft Windows, Xbox, iOS, Mac OS, Linux, etc. Here’s how to play the game on Linux.

=> ↺ How to play Company of Heroes on Linux

• Company of Heroes is a real-time strategy game developed by Relic Entertainment. The game takes place during WWII and was released on Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, and Linux. Here’s how you can play Company of Heroes on your Linux PC.

=> ↺ How to Install TeamViewer on Ubuntu Linux

• TeamViewer is a popular cross-platform tool that allows a user to remotely access and control another user’s computer in an easy and secure way. File sharing, remote desktop control and web conferencing between computers are all possible using TeamViewer.

• TeamViewer is useful for providing remote customer support in organizations, collaborating with colleagues who are far away, and connecting to your own device remotely.

• This article will walk you through the process of installing TeamViewer on Ubuntu systems.

=> ↺ How to Upgrade Ubuntu 21.04 to 21.10 Impish Indri

• Ubuntu has officially released the Ubuntu 21.10 codenamed Impish Indri. This has seen the introduction of GNOME 40 as the default desktop, and sadly GNOME 41 did not make the final cut. The release also introduces Linux Kernel 5.13 among new applications and other back-end performance improvements.

=> ↺ How to Extract Tar Bz2 File in Linux – ByteXD

• In this tutorial, we will be showing you how to use tar command to extract tar.bz2 files.

• Tar stands for tape archive, and it is one of the most used commands that deals with compressed archive files. Bz2 stands for bzip2. It is a specific compression algorithm.

• The tar command comes pre-installed in most Linux distributions. The tar utility is used to compress and extract files using different algorithms.

• Tar supports a wide array of compression algorithms such as gzip, bzip2, xz, lzip, etc.

=> ↺ How to mount ISO in Kubuntu Linux – Darryl Dias

• Dolphin file manager in Kubuntu (Tested this in Kubuntu 21.04) does not ship with Mount ISO option in the right click menu, but with the help of the dolphin-plugins package we can add this and many other features.

=> ↺ Setup OpenWRT on BPi-R2 | Zamir’s Board

• It’s pretty easy to get OpenWRT start and running on BPi-R2. However, I realized that I need to extend the root filesystem to the whole disk, which is where the struggling starts.

Games

=> ↺ 5 open source tabletop RPGs you should try

• Open source arrived in the pen-and-paper RPG industry back at the turn of the century, when Wizards of the Coast, publisher of Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, developed the Open Game License (OGL). Many publishers have since adopted the OGL themselves or use similar licenses, such as Creative Commons.

• Today is Free RPG Day. It’s the one day a year you can go to your friendly local game store and pick up, at no cost, a free tabletop role-playing game from some of the biggest publishers in the hobby. If you don’t have a local game store or can’t get out to a game store, some free RPG sampler downloads are available from Dungeon Crawl Classics and Paizo. But not everything for Free RPG Day is available as a download, so I’ve collected five of my favorite open source tabletop games that you can download and play.

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ xfce4-terminal 0.9.0 development release

• Welcome back! Since I became maintainer of xfce4-terminal I’ve worked on replacing deprecated parts of the codebase, closing old bugs and merging Merge Requests which have been sitting around for a while.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Emmanuele Bassi: GWeather next

• Libgweather, the small GNOME library that queries weather services, is getting a major version bump to allow applications using it to be ported to GTK4.

• In the beginning, there was a weather applet in the GNOME panel. It had a bunch of code that poked at a couple of websites to get the weather information for a given airport or weather observation stations, and shipped with a list of locations and their nearest METAR code.

• In 2007, the relevant code was moved to its own separate repository, so that other applications and system settings could reuse the same code as the panel applet: the libgweather library was born. Aside from the basic weather information and location objects, libgweather also had a couple of widgets: one for selecting a location (with autocompletion), and one for selecting a timezone using a location.

• Since libgweather was still very much an ad hoc library for a handful of applications, there was no explicit API and ABI stability guarantee made by its maintainers; in fact, in order to use it, you had to “opt in” with a specific C pre-processor symbol.

• Time passed, and a few more applications appeared during the initial GNOME 3 cycles—like Weather, followed by Clocks a month later. Most of the consumers of libgweather were actually going through a language binding, which meant they were not really “opting into” the API through the explicit pre-processor symbol; it also meant that changes in the API and ABI could end up being found only after a libgweather release, instead of during a development cycle. Of course, back then, we only had a single CI/CD pipeline for the whole project, with far too little granularity and far too wide scope. Still, the GWeather consumers were few and far between, and the API was not stabilised.

=> ↺ Alexander Larsson: Quadlet, an easier way to run system containers

• Kubernetes and its likes is an excellent way to run containers in the cloud. And for development and testing, manually running podman is very useful (although do check out toolbox). But sometimes you really want to run a system service using a container. This could be on your laptop, NUC, or maybe some kind of edge or embedded device. The container should automatically start at boot, restart on errors, etc.

• The recommended way to do this is to run podman from a systemd service. A lot of work has gone into podman to make this work well (and it constantly improves), and there are lots of documentation around the internet on how to do this. Additionally podman itself has some tools to help starting out (see podman generate systemd). But, the end result of all of these is that you get a complex, hard to understand systemd unit file with a very long “podman run” command that you have to maintain.

• There has to be a simpler way! Enter quadlet.

Distributions

BSD

=> ↺ OpenBSD 7.0 Released (openbsd.org)

• Everyone’s favorite security focused operating system OpenBSD released version 7.0 Thursday. In addition to the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements, support for RISC-V processors has been added.

=> ↺ GhostBSD 21.10.16 ISO is now available

• Removed all code related to startx fixes VirtualBox boot

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Red Hat Pushes the Edge Further with Updates to Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes

• Red Hat Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced Red Hat OpenShift 4.9 and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.4, both designed to drive consistency of the open hybrid cloud to the furthest reaches of the enterprise network. The new capabilities, which include the general availability of single node OpenShift for the small, full featured enterprise Kubernetes cluster, help organizations scale existing development, deployment and management workflows to meet increased interest in information and services.

=> ↺ Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16.2 Now Generally Available

• Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16.2, the latest version of its highly-scalable and agile cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform. Designed to help organizations succeed in a hybrid cloud world, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16.2 delivers tighter integration with Red Hat OpenShift, so customers can run both new and traditional applications in parallel with improved network capacity, security features, storage, performance and efficiency.

=> ↺ Red Hat Enhances Developer Experience on OpenShift with Latest Portfolio Updates

• Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced a series of updates in its portfolio of developer tools and programs aimed at delivering greater productivity, security and scale for developers building applications on Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform. With updates to tools like Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines, Red Hat OpenShift GitOps and the Red Hat build of Quarkus — as well as an expanding roster of training resources available on Kube By Example — Kubernetes developers can more easily build, automate and deploy cloud-native applications for hybrid multicloud environments.

=> ↺ Red Hat OpenShift, ACM Updates Flex Kubernetes at the Edge

• Red Hat announced updated versions of its Kubernetes-focused OpenShift and Advanced Cluster Management (ACM) platforms, highlighting the vendor’s focus on providing organizations with more flexibility in managing their container-based infrastructure in edge locations.

• OpenShift 4.9 now supports a single-node architecture targeted at edge environments. This option combines worker and control capabilities into one server, which reduces the need to rely on a centralized Kubernetes control plane and addresses the challenge of space-constrained environments with a smaller deployment footprint.

• OpenShift continues to offer support for 3-node clusters and remote worker nodes.

=> ↺ My 5 favorite Linux container images | Enable Sysadmin

• When you start using containers in earnest, you quickly realize that there are many container images out there. One of open source’s greatest strengths is choice, and with so many images available, you have plenty of options when you need an image to base your work upon. I find myself going back to the same few images pretty frequently. There are five in particular that consistently make me a happy fledgling cloud architect.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Flatpak 1.12.1 hits Debian 11 Backports, fixes bugs, and makes Steam run Windows games again. – BaronHK’s Rants

• Flatpak 1.12.1 has been pushed to Debian Backports for Debian 11.

• Among the new features, Steam works again.

• According to the release notes for Flatpak 1.12.0:

• “The major changes in this series is the support for better control of sub-sandboxes, as used by the Steam Flatpak app to run Windows games under Proton.”

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu Web 20.04.3 Distribution Release

• Introduced the release of Ubuntu Web 20.04.3 distribution , aimed at creating a Chrome OS-like environment optimized for working with a web browser and running web applications in the form of standalone programs. The release is based on the Ubuntu 20.04.3 package base with the GNOME desktop. The browser environment for running web applications is based on Firefox. The size of the bootable iso image is 2.5 GB.

• [...]

• The distribution is developed by Rudra Saraswat , an eleven – year- old from India known for creating the Ubuntu Unity distribution and developing the UnityX project , a fork of the Unity7 desktop .

=> ↺ The State of Robotics – September 2021

• September news is charged with analysis and comment of what has been a month with important announcements for open source robotics. It has been a month to understand that, in a nascent and fragmented market, the actors have a deeper impact upon all the stakeholders. A flop won’t be just a flop, it could be the reason why someone won’t give a robot a chance.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ PineTime Smartwatch and Good Code Play Bad Apple

• PineTime is the open smartwatch from our friends at Pine64. [TT-392] wanted to prove the hardware can play a full-motion music video, and they are correct, to a point. When you watch the video below, you should notice the monochromatic animation maintaining a healthy framerate, and there lies all the hard work. Without any modifications, video would top out at approximately eight frames per second.

• To convert an MP4, you need to break it down into images, which will strip out the sound. Next, you load them into the Linux-only video processor, which looks for clusters of pixels that need changing and ignores the static ones. Relevant pixel selection takes some of the load off the data running to the display and boosts the fps since you don’t waste time reminding it that a block of black pixels should stay the way they are. Lastly, the process will compress everything to fit it into the watch’s onboard memory. Even though it is a few minutes of black and white pictures, compiling can take a couple of hours.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ PinePhone Pro is here, Finally. A premium Linux Smartphone

• PINE64 announced that a pro version of the popular PinePhone is now available for pre-order. Here’s the spec and information.

=> ↺ 5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week – Android Apps Weekly

=> ↺ 10 best minimal apps for Android – Android Authority

=> ↺ Best Free Android Apps: Sugarizer – learning platform – LinuxLinks

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Mattermost 6.0 messaging system Released

• The release of the messaging system Mattermost 6.0 is available , focused on ensuring communication between developers and employees of enterprises. The server-side code of the project is written in the Go language and is distributed under the MIT license. The web interface and mobile applications are written in JavaScript using React, the desktop client for Linux, Windows and macOS is built on the Electron platform. MySQL and PostgreSQL can be used as a DBMS.

• Mattermost is positioned as an open alternative to the Slack communication system and allows you to receive and send messages, files and images, track the history of conversations and receive notifications on your smartphone or PC. Slack-ready integrations are supported , and a large collection of native modules are provided to integrate with Jira, GitHub, IRC, XMPP, Hubot, Giphy, Jenkins, GitLab, Trac, BitBucket, Twitter, Redmine, SVN, and RSS / Atom.

=> ↺ Best 20 Free Open-source CCTV, NVR and DVR solutions

• CCTV or closed-circuit television system makes use of camera networks and monitor to watch and monitor of interior and exterior of a property.

• Companies, museums, art galleries, and houses are using CCTV networks for video surveillance and security. There are dozens of commercial CCTV software packages.

• However, as they vary in price and features, they are also not for everyone.

• In this article, we present a collection of free and open-source CCTV and DVR (Digital video recorder) solutions.

• Our primary goal is to promote open-source and offer reliable alternatives to commercial solutions.

=> ↺ AV1 Codec Library libaom v3.2 Brings More Performance Optimizations

• Libaom 3.2 is now available as the latest version of the official AOMedia/Google-developed AV1 Codec Library. With libaom 3.2 comes compression efficiency improvements, perceptual quality improvements, and a variety of speed-ups and memory optimizations.

=> ↺ Apache Software Foundation moves to CDN distribution for software

• It’s not enough to create and release useful software. As an open source foundation, a major part of the Apache Software Foundation’s (ASF) job is to help get that software into the hands of users.

• To do so, we’ve relied for many years on the contributions of individuals and organizations to provide mirror infrastructure to distribute our software. We’re now retiring that system in favor of a content distribution network (CDN), and taking a moment to say thank you to all the individuals and organizations who helped get ASF software into the hands of millions of users.

=> ↺ Bareflank Hypervisor 3.0 Pre-Release Debuts With Many Changes

• Bareflank 3.0 has been a big undertaking more than one year in development. Bareflank 3.0 improvements have included work to support AMD SVM virtualization, initial work on the ARM/AArch64 support, native Windows support not needing Cygwin, migrating their codebase to C++14, and a variety of other enhancements.

=> ↺ Open Source Initiative: October News & Updates

• I consider myself lucky to have witnessed open source changing the world, watching it go from a niche revolutionary idea to owning a place just about everywhere in everyday life.

• It spread because of the principles it embeds: Non discrimination, fairness, collaboration, community and innovation. These principles of open source were written in the Open Source Definition to simplify our way of interacting with the digital world.

• There’s much we can accomplish together as a community; it was great to jump right in with the Practical Open Source Information event. For now, know that I’m committed to open communication, and ready to hear any questions, concerns or ideas you have. Book an appointment for an informal chat during office hours on Fridays.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Mozilla Localization (L10N): L10n Report: October Edition

CMS

=> ↺ 21 Open-source tools to fix your site broken links and improve your SEO

• Broken links in your website mean that your site is not reliable, and it does not offer a good, satisfying user experience.

• The broken links are not just visible to your visitors, they are checked and monitored by search engines, which leads to bad SEO.

• Broken links can be internal to a site’s internal page or external to external websites or resources. That’s does not matter much, they have still broken links.

=> ↺ Projectify: A TiddlyWiki powered Personal Project manager

• TiddlyWiki is a lightweight, portable multipurpose note-taking app. Created by Jeremy Ruston and powered by a strong community, TiddlyWiki became productivity tool for many.

• Because it is highly customizable and portable, you can use it for almost anything. Besides, It has a growing ecosystem filled by its community with plugins, hacks, and themes.

• I have been using TiddlyWiki for years, mainly to take notes, record my thoughts and track my progress while learn or study anything. I also use it as a personal to-do list and a project manager.

• Everything is a post, every post uses tags, and posts are connected.

Education

=> ↺ Next FOSDEM: 5 & 6 February 2022

• We are painfully aware that we’re not only compressing our schedules, but yours as well.

• I don’t think we ever said it this early, but we’re all looking forward to FOSDEM 2023.

FSF

GNU Projects

=> ↺ How To Achieve A Liquify Look In Gimp

=> ↺ How To Add New Fonts To Gimp

=> ↺ How To Create A Pattern In Gimp

=> ↺ How To Create Pixel Paintings In Gimp

=> ↺ How To Crop An Image In Gimp

=> ↺ How To Paint An Object With A Pattern In Gimp

=> ↺ How To Outline An Image In Gimp

=> ↺ How To Remove A Background In Gimp

=> ↺ How To Use The Clone Tool In Gimp

=> ↺ How To Use The Scissor Tool In Gimp

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Software developers have stopped caring about reliability

• Of all the principles of software engineering which has fallen by the wayside in the modern “move fast and break things” mentality of assholes modern software developers, reliability is perhaps the most neglected, along with its cousin, robustness. Almost all software that users encounter in $CURRENTYEAR is straight-up broken, and often badly.

• Honestly, it’s pretty embarassing. Consider all of the stupid little things you’ve learned how to do in order to work around broken software. Often something as simple as refreshing the page or rebooting the program to knock some sense back into it — most users can handle that. There are much stupider problems, however, and they are everywhere. Every morning, I boot, then immediately hard-reboot, my workstation, because it seems to jigger my monitors into waking up properly to do their job. On many occasions, I have used the browser dev tools to inspect a broken web page to figure out how to make it do the thing I want to do,1 usually something complicated like submitting a form properly (a solved problem since 1993).

• When the average person (i.e. a non-nerd) says they “don’t get computers”, I believe them. It’s not because they’re too lazy to learn, or because they’re backwards and outdated, or can’t keep with the times. It’s because computers are hard to understand. They are enegmatic and unreliable. I know that when my phone suddenly stops delivering SMS messages mid-conversation, it’s not because I’ve been abandoned by my friend, but because I need to toggle airplane mode to reboot the modem. I know that when I middle click a link and “javascript:;” opens in a new tab, an asshole a developer wants me to left click it instead. Most people don’t understand this! You and I, dear reader, have built up an incredible amount of institutional knowledge about how to deal with broken computers. We’ve effectively had to reverse engineer half the software we’ve encountered to figure out just where to prod it to make it do the thing you asked. If you don’t have this background, then computers are a nightmare.

=> Eddelbuettel, R, C++, Rcpp ↺ Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppQuantuccia 0.0.4 on CRAN: Updated Calendar

• A new release of RcppQuantuccia arrived on CRAN earlier today. RcppQuantuccia brings the Quantuccia header-only subset / variant of QuantLib to R. At the current stage, it mostly offers date and calendaring functions.

• This release is the first in two years and brings a few internal updates (such as a swift to continuous integration to the trusted r-ci setup) along with a first update of the United States calendar. Which, just like RQuantLib, now knows about two new calendars LiborUpdate and FederalReserve.

=> ↺ System/Linux/DevOps Engineer Interview – Invidious

• An interview with a fellow Linux Engineer / System Engineer / DevOps Engineer / Programmer / Tech Person — Craig has an interesting background, and some amazing advice for those of you breaking into the tech industry right now.

=> ↺ ninja Build system, and renamed files

• I’ve been hearing about ninja, I had looked at it some time in the past, and did some local basic benchmarking (using time), and didn’t find a huge difference in build times, both from scratch and incrementally. I tried ninja again recently and found one feature that sells it pretty well to me, it can show the build progress on one line in the terminal.

=> ↺ The Return of the Unix Shell

• With about half a century of life, the Unix shell is pervasive and entrenched in our computing infrastructure—with recent virtualization and containerization trends only propelling its use. A fresh surge of academic research highlights show potential for tackling long-standing open problems that are central to the shell and enable further progress. A recent panel discussion at HotOS ’21 concluded that improvements and research on the shell can be impactful and identified several such research directions. Maybe it’s time for your research to be applied to the shell too?

C/C++

=> ↺ Sin function in C

• In mathematics, the sine function is among three primary functions, others comprising cosine and tan. Techniques for executing basic mathematical operations, like the elementary exponential, logarithmic, square root, and mathematical operations, are included in the <math.h> header. You must include the header file <math.h> to utilize these functions. The sin function accepts an angle in radians and gives its sine value, which can be confirmed using a sine curve.

• You may use the law of sine to find any arbitrary angle in a triangle, as well as the length of a certain triangle side. This is a fundamental trigonometric notion. The sin function is used in the ANSI/ISO 9899-1990 versions of the C language. Sin () returns a result that is between 1 and -1.

• Now, let us start with a few examples of sin() function in the C programming language.

=> ↺ How to pass a struct to a function in C

• A structure has been widely used as a user-defined data type in the C language. The purpose of using structures in C is to create a single data type that would be used further to group various data type variables or elements into one type. The structure has been used as a global variable so all the functions can access it easily. This means it can’t be declared in the main method so that we can use it anywhere.

=> ↺ C++ String Reverse

• If the string, “vwxyz“, is reproduced in the new order as, “zyxwv“.

• Then the string has been reversed. Unfortunately, such direct reversibility is not possible in C++. However, there is a classical workaround for reversing a string in C++. Keep reading this article to know-how.

• A string can be created in two main ways in C++. A string can be created as a constant pointer to a sequence of characters. A string can also be created by instantiating a string object from the string class. This article deals with string objects instantiated from the string class. This means the string library has to be included in order to execute the code samples in this article.

• A string object is a data structure where the string literal is a list. Each character is of one element in the list. And so, a literal string can be handled like an array of elements.

• This article explains the classical workaround to reverse a string in C++. This essentially iterates the string literal, backward. Having a summary knowledge of forward iteration enables the reader to understand reverse iteration better. This article deals with string objects instantiated from the string class.

=> ↺ C++ String starts with

• There comes a time when the programmer has to know what a string starts with. This knowledge can be used to choose or eliminate items in a list of characters. So, a programmer may want to know if a string starts with a particular character or with a particular sub-string. A programmer can write code that will check the initial characters of a string, one-by-one, and compare that with a prefix sub-string. However, all the strategies involved have already been done by the C++ string library.

• The C++ string class of the string library has the member function, starts_with(). This does the work for the programmer, but the programmer needs to know how to use the function. And that is why this tutorial is being produced. There are three variants of the string starts_with() member function. Variants of the same function are called overloaded functions.

• The basic approach for the start_with() member function is to compare a short independent sub-string with the first short segment of the string in question. If they are the same, then the function returns true. If they are different, the function returns false.

=> ↺ Function Overloading in C

• Function overloading is a very well-known concept used in object-oriented languages having many functions with the same name and different parameters in a single code. The object-oriented programming languages which support function overloading include Java and C++. As the C compiler doesn’t allow it to be used in the code hence, it isn’t easy to implement function overloading in C. Yet; we can still achieve the same thing with some technique. Let’s start this article with the opening of the shell terminal of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Python

=> ↺ Python CGI example

• CGI is abbreviated as Common Gateway Interface in Python, which is a block of benchmarks to explain the exchange of data among the web server and a script. A CGI program is written by an HTTP server as the user input is entered through the HTML . In other words, it is a collection of procedures that are used to build a dynamic interaction between the client and the server application. When a client uses any element or sends a request to the web browser, that CGI executes a particular request, and the result or the output is sent back to the webserver.

=> ↺ How do I check if a string contains another substring in Python

• Sometimes we need to find out whether a particular string is present in another string or not. So to know that there are some already pre-defined methods available in Python programming.

JS

=> ↺ How to disable scrolling on a webpage with JavaScript

• JavaScript is a web language used for creating dynamic web pages and making them interactive for users. Through JavaScript we can perform various functions, change CSS of HTML elements, perform actions on each click and many more.JavaScript makes the page of our website more interactive and adds dynamic behaviors to it, we can create various menus, drop down menus, scroll bars etc. We can even enable and disable the behaviour of each of these components using JavaScript. In this article we’ll see how to disable scrolling on a webpage using JavaScript.

=> ↺ How to check if an array is empty in JavaScript

• Knowing how to check for an empty array is an important coding skill which can often come in handy. It can be helpful in a situation where you have to show or hide something on a web page depending on whether the array is empty or not.

• Similarly, there are many other places where you will find this skill helpful. The purpose of this post is to explain the code, the concept behind the code and the most common use cases of checking for empty arrays in JavaScript code.

MySQL

=> ↺ What is connection string in MySQL

• In this article, we will learn how we can access the data from the MySQL database using the PHP language.

• [...]

• Connection string is a string that specifies the information related to database login. For understanding, we will consider an example of a PHP scripting language and will write a code to establish the connection with the database. We have a database, named “Organization”, the user name is “maadi” and password is “qwer1234”…

=> ↺ What is schema in MySQL

• The data in MySQL is managed in databases in the form of tables, which further consist of rows and columns. What is Schema? Schema is different from databases as it does not have all the privileges that a database holds, it has only privileges of tables, rows, and columns which defines the structure of a database.

• In this write-up, we will explain what a schema is, how it works, and what are the differences between the schema and database.

=> ↺ What is “IS NULL” query in MySQL

• The ‘IS NULL” query in the MySQL database shows the data which is either missing or is unknown to DMS. A NULL value is different as it has no value, it is neither equal to zero integer or to an empty set. Null is a state, not a value, if we compare the NULL value to any other NULL value, the result will always be NULL because it’s unknown itself. A “IS NULL” query is used when data is missing or unknown for example we make a list of phone directories, if any person’s phone number is unknown then “IS NULL” will extract it and the number can later be added to complete the directory.

• In this article, we are going to understand what the “IS NULL” query is and how it works with some examples.

=> ↺ How to use the SELECT INTO TEMP table statement in MySQL

• Sometimes, we are supposed to fetch out data from different MySQL tables which we can use for some specific purpose. For our ease, we create a temporary table and place all the data there which we can later use. When the session is over, the table will vanish on its own, else it can delete it using the DROP command. Similarly, to create the clone of the table we use the statement “SELECT INTO”, which not only copies the contents of the selected table but also inserts all the content into the newly created table.

• In this write-up, we will learn how to use the statement “SELECT INTO TEMP TABLE” in MySQL and how this statement works.

=> ↺ How to use mysqli_real_escape_string function

• A mysqli_real_escape_string is a built-in function of the PHP that is used to control the unwanted and dangerous characters. In this article, we will discuss with the help of an example what is the mysqli_real_escape_string function and how it can be used for the protection of the database.

=> ↺ How to use MySQL Substring function

• Mysql has a variety of built-in functions for different purposes, one of them is the function of the substring. The function of substring deals with the “string” data type and it is used in database management to extract the string from the tables. Now what the string is? The string is the collective combination of the characters. For example, “Hello LinuxHint” and “KHG1234” are strings.

• In this article, we will understand what is the substring function and how it can be used in MySQL in managing the data in the databases.

=> ↺ How to use MySQL COALESCE function

• MySQL is a DBMS that has a concept of Null values. In MySQL, COALESCE function is used as it returns the first non-null value from the specified series of expressions. If all values of the column are null then COALESCE will also return the null. It works similarly to “IS NULL query ”; both deals with the NULL values but the difference in both of them is of their behavior, “IS NULL” query extracts the null values from the table whereas the COALESCE function gives the first non-null value if there is any null value present in the table.

• In this write-up, we will explain what COALESCE function is in MySQL and how it can be used with the help of examples.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ OpenCL 3.0.9 Specification Released – Phoronix

• The Khronos Group’s OpenCL working group did a quiet Friday evening tagging of OpenCL 3.0.9.

• Most notable with OpenCL 3.0.9 as this routine specification update are the specification sources now being included for the provisional extensions adding semaphores and external memory support to OpenCL. Those extensions were originally announced this spring as part of OpenCL 3.0.7 but the specification ASCII doc sources were not included until now.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Opinion | Shut Up and Drivel

• A quote often attributed to Groucho Marx before he was born and after he died goes like this: “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.”

=> ↺ Further decline in reported piracy incidents

• Piracy incidents in the first nine months of 2021 are the lowest reported in 17 years with, at the other end of the scale, 51 crew kidnapped, eight taken hostage and one killed.

• The latest piracy report from the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) released this week shows 85 vessels boarded, nine attempted attacks, two vessels shot at and one hijacked.

Science

=> ↺ Computer scientists at University of Edinburgh contemplate courses without ‘Alice’ and ‘Bob’

• A working group in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has proposed a series of steps to “decolonize” the Informatics curriculum, which includes trying “to avoid using predominantly Western names such as Alice/Bob (as is common in the computer security literature).”

• The names Alice and Bob were used to represent two users of a public key cryptography system, described in a 1978 paper by Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, “A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems.” And since then, a variety of other mostly Western names like Eve – playing an eavesdropper intercepting communications – have been employed to illustrate computer security scenarios in related academic papers.

• The School of Informatics’ working group reflects the University of Edinburgh’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and to meet specific obligations spelled out in Scottish regulations like the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equalities Duty.

• The naming recommendation was reported last month by The Telegraph, which cited internal university documents. The Register filed a Freedom of Information Request with the University to obtain the documents, which were added to the University’s website following the Telegraph report.

• [...]

• Examples cited in the document include “to avoid using master/slave to represent computing agents and instead use coordinator or workers” – a decision taken by numerous open source projects and companies in recent years – and to avoid using off-putting stereotypes during instruction.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Migrant Farmworkers Are Being Left Out of Roundup Cancer Compensation

=> ↺ Sitting too much drags down your mental health. Here’s how to get moving

• More than a year and a half of social distancing and work-from-home policies have led to less time moving around and more time sitting and looking at screens — it’s a potentially toxic combination that’s linked with poorer mental health.

=> ↺ Senators Ask Instagram About Content Promoting Eating Disorders

• In their letter to Zuckerberg and Mosseri, they write, “The stakes here are incredibly high — studies have found that eating disorders have one of the highest mortality rates of any mental illness. We have long fought to ensure Americans can access treatment services for eating disorders, but more must be done to protect our kids from being exposed to content on Facebook and Instagram that glorifies and promotes eating disorders.”

Integrity/Availability

=> ↺ NSA warns of heightened wildcard TLS certificate risk

• “Wildcard certificates have legitimate uses, but can confer risk from poorly secured servers to other servers in the same certificate’s scope,” warned an alert (PDF) from the NSA this week.

• ALPACA is a technique used to exploit hardened web applications through non-HTTP services secured using the same or a similar Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificate.

=> ↺ Security considerations emerge as Finland adopts Covid pass

• “Counterfeit apps are circulating. Restaurateurs and event organisers must ensure that they download the official Covid pass reader from a reliable app store. You have to watch out for criminal applications aimed at misusing personal information,” Eronen explained.

• Black markets for fraudulent health passes have sprung up in many countries, including Finland. But is it actually possible to fake a Finnish QR-based Covid pass?

• Cyber security experts told Yle that while it’s possible to fake something that looks like a Covid pass, a fraudulent QR code will not contain officials’ digital signature, meaning THL’s reader app is able to spot fraudsters.

Proprietary

=> ↺ A Post-Mortem in 5 Acts, of How Microsoft Privatized Open Source, killing JavaScript in the Process

• Then one day Microsoft came in and took control of the two core tools, which were the gateways to the whole Open Source community; npm and Github. I don’t think people saw this coming, and it’s clear that the majority of developers, even today, don’t realize what happened and how it will affect them very shortly.

• Once the take-over was complete, a massive propaganda onslaught began to fully convert the idealistic open source community towards the capitalistic Microsoft mantra. It’s a ‘secret’ war, with high-tech propaganda, which over time will silently destroy and remove independence, kill-off non-Microsoft-owned editors, tools, libraries, even JavaScript itself. All of this is inevitable because Microsoft is a for-profit corporation. It’s in its DNA to take over whole industries and turn them into profit-generating monopolies for its shareholders.

=> ↺ India 6th most affected country by ransomware: Google

• India 6th most affected country by ransomware: GoogleNew Delhi: A Google report that analysed more than 80 million ransomware samples submitted over the last year and a half has revealed that India is at the sixth place in the list of 140 countries most affected by ransomware.

=> ↺ Infosec expert Beaumont slams Microsoft over hosting malware ‘for years’

• According to the security firm Palo Alto Networks, “BazarLoader (sometimes referred to as BazaLoader) is malware that provides backdoor access to an infected Windows host. After a client is infected, criminals use this backdoor access to send follow-up malware, scan the environment and exploit other vulnerable hosts on the network.”

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Advocacy Groups Must Stand Up for Encryption—While They Still Can

• Once again, proposed legislation mandating government access to encrypted messaging is making the rounds. Law enforcement agencies claim that greater oversight is needed to catch criminals online. They’re putting pressure on regulators and lawmakers to grant them access to private messages and data. But as awareness grows of government attempts to weaken encryption—and the threats they pose to digital privacy, security, and freedom of speech—the public has become increasingly vocal.

=> ↺ The hidden fingerprint inside your photos

• The different sensitivities of the photosites creates a type of imperceptible image watermark. Although unintentional, it acts like a fingerprint, unique to your camera’s sensor, which is imprinted onto every photo you take. Much like snowflakes, no two imaging sensors are alike.

• In the digital image forensics community, this sensor fingerprint is known as “photo response non-uniformity”. And it’s “difficult to remove even when one tries”, says Jessica Fridrich of Binghamton University in New York state. It’s inherent to the sensor, as opposed to measures, such as photo metadata, that are “intentionally implemented”, she explains.

=> ↺ Irish DPC greenlights Facebook’s “GDPR bypass”.

• Agreement to use data is not “consent”? Facebook’s legal argument is rather simple: By interpreting the agreement between user and Facebook as a “contract” (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR) instead of “consent” (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR) the strict rules on consent under the GDPR would not apply to Facebook – meaning that Facebook can use all data it has for all products it provides, including advertisement, online tracking and alike, without asking users for freely given consent that they could withdraw at any time. Facebook’s switch from “consent” to “contract” happened on 25.5.2018 at midnight – exactly when the GDPR came into effect in the EU.

• Schrems: “It is painfully obvious that Facebook simply tries to bypass the clear rules of the GDPR by relabeling the agreement on data use as a ‘contract’. If this would be accepted, any company could just write the processing of data into a contract and thereby legitimize any use of customer data without consent. This is absolutely against the intentions of the GDPR, that explicitly prohibits to hide consent agreements in terms and conditions”

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ US to Offer ‘Condolence Payments’ to Relatives of 10 Civilians Killed in Drone Strike

• The Pentagon said Friday that the U.S. would issue “condolence payments” to relatives of 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children, killed in an August drone strike—an attack military officials had initially defended as a “righteous strike” targeting an explosive-laden vehicle destined for militants and later admitted to being a “horrible tragedy” that claimed innocent lives.

• The statement from Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby followed a Thursday virtual meeting that included Dr. Steven Kwon, president and CEO of Nutrition & Education International (NEI), and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl. NEI had employed as a technical engineer Zemari Ahmadi, who was killed along with nine members of his family in the August 29 Hellfire missile strike in Kabul as the U.S. was pulling its troops out of Afghanistan.

=> ↺ Opinion | Drones Must Be Banned as Weapons

• Everyone who followed the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan was horrified by the drone attack, called a “tragic mistake” by the Pentagon, which killed ten members of a single family, including 7 children.

=> ↺ Three Children Attacked a Black Woman. A Sheriff’s Deputy Arrived — and Beat Her More.

• The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office is investigating a deputy accused of holding a Black woman by her hair and slamming her head repeatedly into the pavement with such force that a witness to the Sept. 20 incident said it ripped several of Shantel Arnold’s braids from her scalp. A 14-second video captured the incident in the New Orleans suburb where, for decades, Black residents have accused the Sheriff’s Office of targeting them.

• It was the second time that hour that Arnold had been assaulted. By the time the deputies arrived, she said she had already fended off an attack by some local boys.

=> ↺ Survivors of Medical Abuse at ICE Jail in Georgia Are Still Waiting for Justice

=> ↺ 20 Years After Anthrax with Robbie Martin

• Robbie Martin joined Whitney for an important discussion about the 20th anniversary of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

=> ↺ India fears Taliban fallout in Kashmir

• Kashmir rebel shootings of civilians and police, raids by the security forces on militant hideouts, and insurgent infiltrations across the India-Pakistan ceasefire line have all increased in the Muslim-majority region since the Taliban overran Kabul on August 15.

• About 40 people have been killed in shootings and clashes in the two months since then in the Himalayan region, which has been divided since India and Pakistan became independent in 1947.

• Militants have targeted minority Hindu and Sikh civilians, while gun battles near the ceasefire line have also left soldiers and rebels dead.

=> ↺ Experts Shocked by Military Robodog With Sniper Rifle Attachment

• Yesterday, we reported that the military hardware company Ghost Robotics had debuted a robodog with an attached sniper rifle.

• Now, experts are speaking out against the heavily armed robodog, which they say marks an inflection point in the development of killer robots — and should represent an urgent opportunity to reflect on whether the tech should be allowed at all.

=> ↺ Reality Winner to Appear at Screening of Film Telling Her Story

• The documentary “United States vs. Reality Winner” is scheduled to be shown Wednesday in Washington, D.C., at the Double Exposure Film Festival and Symposium presented by the news organization called 100Reporters. Promotion for the event highlights Winner as a speaker following the screening.

=> ↺ This new Broadway play doesn’t have a script — but it does have a transcript

• By 2017, Tina Satter’s New York downtown theater company Half Straddle — which she had founded nine years earlier — had toured the European theater circuit and mounted productions at esteemed off-off Broadway theaters. But to pay the bills, Satter still needed to take temp jobs on occasion.

• While she was — in her words — waiting for the phone to ring at a law firm where she was filling in as a receptionist, she read a New York magazine profile about Reality Winner, the 25-year-old National Security Agency contractor who had leaked a classified report about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to the Intercept. Satter poked around on the internet and found the transcript of the FBI interrogation of Winner. As she read it, the theater director in her saw artistic potential in the document.

=> ↺ Turkey’s use of chemical weapons brought up in the German parliament

• For months, the Turkish state has used chemical weapons in its invasion attacks against the Kurdistan freedom guerrillas in Southern Kurdistan (Northern Iraq). The HPG Press Center has issued comprehensive statements stating that these weapons, which are prohibited by international organizations, have been used to kill a large number of guerrillas.

=> ↺ A Capitol Police officer is accused of telling a Jan. 6 suspect to hide evidence

• Over the course of the next several days, Riley and the suspect allegedly sent dozens of messages back and forth and spoke on the phone at least once. In one message cited in the indictment, Riley instructed the suspect to, “get off of social media.”

=> ↺ Florida vendor sells hats with Nazi symbols during motorcycle rally

• “It’s absolutely disgusting to see a vendor selling Nazi and SS gear, but it’s even worse that the only reason they would do so is because people are actually buying it,” Davis said.

=> ↺ Swastikas turn up on Biketoberfest merchandise at Froggy’s bar on Main Street

• “I know that a lot of visitors coming for Biketoberfest have political views different than mine and that’s fine, but I thought we were all in agreement that Nazi imagery has no place in our society,” said Jonathan Davis, a Holly Hill resident who took the photo on Thursday during a visit to the event.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Destroy the WhistleBlowers!

• And here’s the thing. None of the information Assange released hurt anybody, and a lot of it needed to be revealed: war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and government surveillance of tens of millions of US citizens. The CIA made it all secret because it could, not because it was necessary or justifiable.

• It’s not just American intelligence agencies, of course, and they don’t always think about killing those who spill their precious secrets. Thus Israeli Mordechai Vanunu, who confirmed the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons in 1986, was only kidnapped in Italy and jailed in Israel for 18 years (11 years in solitary).

• Vanunu’s revelation changed nothing: everybody already knew that Israel has nuclear weapons, even if it will never confirm it publicly. Thirty-five years after he was kidnapped, however, Vanunu is still not allowed to leave Israel. If he speaks to foreigners he is arrested, and sometimes jailed again for a few months.

Environment

=> ↺ Ghanaian Fisheries At Risk Of Collapse, Experts Warn

• The fisherman was describing saiko, the illegal transshipment of fish at sea. Saiko and other illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing has steadily driven Ghana’s fish populations to the brink of collapse, threatening food security and the incomes of millions of people.

• In August, the EJF released a report based on interviews with 215 small-scale fishermen, fish processors and traders, more than half of whom said they went without sufficient food over the past year. More than 70% of respondents also reported deteriorated living conditions, including a lack of access to clean water, over the past five years due to loss of income.

• Analysts say there soon may be no more fish to catch.

=> ↺ The EU’s vision for a rapidly changing Arctic

• This task could not be more urgent. Climate change is on everyone’s mind, but it is happening more than twice as fast in the Arctic as elsewhere. Some of the region’s coastal stretches will soon become ice-free during summers—and eventually during winters, too. Melting ice and thawing permafrost are releasing large amounts of methane, further accelerating global warming, while rising sea levels are increasingly threatening coastal communities around the world. The August report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stressed that human actions lie at the root of these developments.

=> ↺ Growing BIPOC Youth-Led Climate Movement Is the Force Occupy Could Have Been

=> ↺ Opinion | Climate Activism Is Working in Germany

• Two days before the recent German election, crowds gathered in cities across the country, demanding serious action on climate change. After catastrophic floods this summer, and protests from school climate strikers and anti-coal activists in recent years, climate breakdown overtook COVID as the issue of most concern to German voters, according to pollsters tracking attitudes in the run-up to the vote.

=> ↺ Manchin Threatening Key Climate Provision: Reports

• Advocates for bold action to slash planet-heating emissions expressed concern Friday and Saturday following reports that a key climate program in the still-evolving reconciliation package may be neutered or taken out completely.

• Resistance to the program’s inclusion is coming from Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who, along with fellow rightwing Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, has been a major obstacle to Democrats securing the 50 votes needed for Senate passage of the Build Back Better package.

Energy

=> ↺ Congress needs to step up on [cryptocurency], or Biden might crush it

• The fact is that the leading American start-ups in the enterprise blockchain space have been trying for years to work in good faith with regulators — especially the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — to set rules that guard against fraud and criminal activity but that also allow legitimate companies to bring their innovative and beneficial products to the marketplace. Instead of being invited to engage in transparent rulemaking or public engagement to reach clarity, these startups have been sued, subpoenaed and maligned. The SEC under two successive administrations has been particularly unconstructive, practicing regulation by enforcement as its only reliable means of dialogue with [cryptocurrency] companies. Sadly, the Biden administration is signaling it will double down on this approach.

=> ↺ Finland-Based Company Develops Technique to Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Cement Production

• VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, in cooperation with business partners Finnsementti, Nordkalk, and UPM, has developed a new process that could significantly reduce the carbon dioxide emissions associated with cement and quicklime production.

• According to VTT, cement is responsible for about 7% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. The new process would incorporate a gas-tight, electrical-heated rotary kiln, which would utilize low-emission electricity, rather than combustion, to decompose calcium carbonate and capture the carbon dioxide produced in the process.

=> ↺ VTT reveals work on electric heated kiln project with Finnsementti

• The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Finnsementti have revealed work on the Decarbonate project to test a 12m electrically-heated rotary kiln. Other partners on the initiative included Nordkalk and UPM. Precalcination was tested as well as the projection of quick lime. The eventual goal is to use electricity from renewable sources to power the kiln and then capture the CO2 released for utilisation.

=> ↺ Critical Decarbonization Technologies Need at Least “10x” Investment

• Breakthrough technologies such as hydrogen-based fuels, bioenergy and carbon-capture storage solutions are needed to hit the global goal of zero emissions by 2050.

• To scale these technologies and take them to market, at least a tenfold increase in investment is needed, according to the How to Finance Industry Net-Zero report.

• Released by the World Economic Forum and Oliver Wyman, the report outlines how to address the supply-and-demand-side gap and take these technologies to the next level.

• Part of the Forum’s Financing the Transition to a Net-Zero Future Initiative, the report brings together input from over 50 financial institutions and the public sector. Their focus is on how to steer capital to breakthrough technologies and drive a more sustainable future.

=> ↺ Youth Activists Confront Shell CEO During Climate Panel

• Shell is the seventh-largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. In May 2021, in landmark litigation, a Dutch court ordered Shell to speed up its plans for reducing emissions 45% by 2050, and move that deadline up to 2030. Van Beurden, in an age-appropriate move, took to LinkedIn to complain that Shell was “singled out” and that reducing one company’s emissions wouldn’t make a difference in fighting climate change. (Climate scientists likely would beg to differ.) Despite claiming it wants to fight the climate crisis, Shell is appealing the ruling. “We agree urgent action is needed and we will accelerate our transition to net zero. But we will appeal because a court judgment against a single company is not effective,” Van Beurden said in a statement about the appeal.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Pablo Escobar: Colombia sterilises drug lord’s hippos

• The Colombian government has so far sterilised 24 of more than 80 animals.

• They have been treated with a chemical that will make them infertile.

• Colombian environmentalists say the hippos, believed to be the biggest herd outside Africa, are an invasive species and have pushed away the native fauna.

Finance

=> ↺ 5 Charts Show How Tax Reform Can Tackle Bad Corporate Behavior

=> ↺ The Postal Service Can Do More to Be Present in the 21st Century

=> ↺ Opinion | Corporations Shouldn’t Be “The Master of Our Fate”

• In any election, anywhere, 90% of the voters agreeing on any anything would be rare indeed. But, that is exactly what happened Sunday when John Deere workers voted down the agreement negotiated by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and John Deere management, an agreement workers said was slanted to the interest of corporate profit at the expense of working people.

=> ↺ [Former IBM executive] The Supply Chain Economy – A New Categorization of the US Economy

• A few weeks ago I attended The Supply Chain Economy: Understanding Innovation in Services, a virtual seminar sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations with economists Mercedes Delgado and Karen Mills discussing their recent paper A New Categorization of the U.S. Economy.

• The debate about the drivers of innovation and job creation has long been centered on manufacturing versus services. The predominant view has been that manufacturing drives good wages, economic growth, and innovation as measured by its large share of patents, while services provide lower-wage jobs, less innovation and significantly fewer patents.

• But Delgado and Mills argue that categorizing the economy in terms of manufacturing versus services is no longer meaningful. Instead, they’ve proposed an alternative framework for understanding the drivers of innovation and economic performance that’s focused on the suppliers of both goods and services: the supply chain economy.

• “A long academic and policy debate has focused on the role of the manufacturing capacity of a country in its economic and innovative performance,” wrote the authors. “This question has become even more relevant as the U.S. economy has shown a large decline in manufacturing employment in recent decades, in part due to increased import competition. In this debate, the predominant view is that a country’s manufacturing capacity drives innovation because of externalities associated with the production of intermediate goods (e.g., machine tools, automation equipment, and semiconductors) that improve the efficiency of the innovation process. Most prior work on innovation focused on a narrow view of suppliers as producers of intermediate goods. However, in today’s economy suppliers increasingly produce services (e.g., enterprise software).”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Manchin Fumes After Sanders Op-Ed in West Virginia Paper Calls Out Obstruction of Biden Agenda

• Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia lashed out Friday after a major newspaper in his home state published an op-ed by Sen. Bernie Sanders that called out Manchin’s obstruction of his own party’s Build Back Better reconciliation package.

• “Congress should proceed with caution on any additional spending and I will not vote for a reckless expansion of government programs,” Manchin said in a statement shared on social media.

=> ↺ Tibet’s Exile Parliament Names Three Women to Cabinet Posts

• The vote in the 17th parliament’s first session followed a four-month impasse over the seating of 45 MPs elected in an April 11 vote.

=> ↺ Opinion | Cherry-Picking Polls to Mask Public Support for Biden’s Reconciliation Package

• Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen (9/30/21) lauded Sen. Joe Manchin’s opposition to the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package being considered by Congress, because Manchin “correctly reads public opinion.”

=> ↺ Manchin Lashes Out After Sanders Condemns Obstruction of Biden Agenda

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Doctors Who Repeatedly Spread COVID-19 Misinformation and Disinformation Should Lose Medical Licenses: PHR

• “A foundational principle of medicine is ‘do no harm.’ By spreading misinformation and disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, some health professionals are contributing to profound harms, preventable death and illness, and distrust of science,” said Michele Heisler, MD, MPA, medical director of Physicians for Human Rights and professor of internal medicine and public health at the University of Michigan. “We face the COVID-19 pandemic as well as a pandemic of misinformation. Some of the most potent and damaging lies during this crisis have been created or propagated by medical professionals – including doctors and nurses – who should act as voices of facts, evidence, compassion, and ethics. Those who profit from or knowingly spread these toxic narratives and conspiracy theories have violated the Hippocratic Oath and are no longer qualified for the profession. Particularly during a pandemic, disinformation is deadly.

=> ↺ US military is not dishonorably discharging 350,000 Covid-19 vaccine holdouts

• “I am not sure where that number came from but I can tell you that for the Active Duty service members, more than 96.79 percent have received at least one shot. As a total force, to include the National Guard and Reserves, we are over 80 percent with at least one dose,” he said.

• With an active duty force of roughly 1.4 million, the Pentagon figures would mean fewer than 45,000 service members have yet to begin the vaccination process.

• “I am unaware of any service members being discharged at this time because the deadline for the services has not hit yet ,” Dietz added.

=> ↺ ‘They Can’t Stop Everyone’: GOP Congressman Dangerously Encourages Kids to Defy Statewide School Mask Mandate

• What could have been a simple high school government lecture on civic duty and participation from a local congressman instead became a Covid-19 misinformation fest worthy of a primetime slot on Fox News. Congressman Bob Good (R-Va.) encouraged a group of high school students to defy a statewide school mask mandate, and he spread lies about vaccines and how the virus spreads, the Rappahannock News reported.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Danish artist hires lawyers to reclaim Hong Kong Tiananmen statue

• The eight-metre (26-feet) high “Pillar of Shame” by Jens Galschiot has sat on the University of Hong Kong’s (HKU) campus since 1997, the year the city was handed back to China.

• It features 50 anguished faces and tortured bodies piled on one another and commemorates democracy protesters killed by Chinese troops around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

• Last week Hong Kong’s oldest university ordered it to be removed by 5pm on Wednesday citing “legal advice” as authorities crack down on dissent.

• Galschiot told AFP he had hired a local lawyer and requested a hearing with the university over the future of the statue as the deadline looms.

=> ↺ Democrats Use Whistleblower Testimony to Launch New Effort at Changing Section 230

• The Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – which provides legal liability protections to companies for the content their users post on their platform – to remove that shield when the platform “knowingly or recklessly uses an algorithm or other technology to recommend content that materially contributes to physical or severe emotional injury,” according to a Thursday press release, which noted that the legislation will not apply to small online platforms with fewer than five million unique monthly visitors or users.

=> ↺ Forget the ‘small minority,’ the national security law has silenced Hong Kong society

• Unintended (perhaps) targets include Hongkongers who find their favourite newspaper or website is no longer available, people who find organisations of which they were members or whose services they enjoyed have suddenly ceased operation, people who are eased out of jobs by employers who fear legal liability for something they might say, people who supported regular public events like the June 4th commemoration which will, we may surmise, never happen again.

• Many Hongkongers, including me, find that since the national security legislation was passed none of the people we voted for on various occasions are still in office, or indeed still in politics. Government fans are now desperately trying to rustle up some plastic pro-democracy politicos, to disguise the fact that life has become impossible for the real thing.

=> ↺ International Youth and Students for Social Equality demands the immediate reinstatement of Bright Sheng

• The following open letter was written by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality at the University of Michigan to David Gier, the Dean of the School of Music, Theater and Dance at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

=> ↺ DPC “requires” noyb to take down documents from website

• Yesterday night, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) sent an extraordinary letter (PDF) to noyb, saying it would “require [noyb] to remove the draft decision from your website forthwith, and to desist from any further or other publication or disclosure of same”. noyb refused to self-censor and limit the public’s access to problematic decisions. Alternatively, noyb invited the DPC to bring legal proceedings before the relevant Court in Austria, instead of sending letters that are intended to intimidate complainants.

=> ↺ TikTok Removed 81 Million Videos in Q2 2021 — But Fewer Than 0.5% Were Copyright-Related

• That’s for the period between April 1st and June 30th. During that time, TikTok removed approximately 81,518,334 videos in violation of the company’s community guidelines or terms of service. TikTok says that number represents less than 1% of the total videos posted. That means more than 8.1 billion videos were posted to TikTok in that three-month time period. TikTok averages around 90 million videos uploaded each day at that rate.

=> ↺ Why Did The Rolling Stones Drop ‘Brown Sugar’ From Their Setlist?

• The chart-topping track appears on Sticky Fingers and deals with several scandalous topics. The familiar opening begins, “Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields.” The lyrics deal with heavy topics, while the title itself is a double entendre for heroin addiction.

• Keith Richards was asked about the omission of the song during a recent Los Angeles Times interview. “You picked up on that, huh?” the guitarist says. “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is. Don’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery?”

• “But they’re trying to bury it,” Richards continues. “At the moment, I don’t want to get into conflicts with all of this shit.” Richards says the song is gone from the setlist for now, but he hopes “that we’ll be able to resurrect the babe in her glory somewhere along the track.”

=> ↺ 2 Hindu Men Killed In Fresh Communal Violence In Bangladesh

• Protests began on Wednesday after footage emerged of a Quran being placed on the knee of a Hindu god during Durga Puja celebrations. The minority community make up about 10 per cent of the population.

• [...]

• The Anti-Hindu violence spread to more than a dozen districts across Bangladesh this week after footage emerged on social media of the Quran incident.

• [...]

• High-speed mobile phone [Internet] services were shut down in an apparent bid to prevent the violence from spreading.

=> ↺ Dave Chappelle for gender realism

• Dave Chappelle is luckier than his two heroes. Having pocketed a reported $50m for six shows on Netflix, the 48-year-old stand-up is even bigger than they were at their peaks. And Mr Chappelle, who lives with his wife and children on a farm in deepest Ohio, shows no appetite for Pryor-level debauch or for voicing cartoon donkeys. No problem. The subversion bar has been reset so low by the censorious left that his irreverent, observational comedy has never seemed more topical or edgy. Thus the furore stirred by his jokes about transgender politics in the last of those shows, entitled “The Closer”, which was released last week.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ What We Lost When Gannett Came to Town

• The Hawk Eye isn’t dead yet, which sets it apart from many other local newspapers in America. Its staff, now down to three overstretched news reporters, still produces a print edition six days a week. But the paper is dying. Its pages are smaller than they used to be, and there are fewer of them. Even so, wide margins and large fonts are used to fill space. The paper is laid out by a remote design team and printed 100 miles away in Peoria, Illinois; if a reader doesn’t get her paper in the morning, she is instructed to dial a number that will connect her to a call center in the Philippines. Obituaries used to be free; now, when your uncle dies, you have to pay to publish a write-up.

• These days, most of The Hawk Eye’s articles are ripped from other Gannett-owned Iowa publications, such as The Des Moines Register and the Ames Tribune, written for a readership three hours away. The Opinion section, once an arena for local columnists and letter writers to spar over the merits and morals of riverboat gambling and railroad jobs moving to Topeka, is dominated by syndicated national columnists.

• By now, we know what happens when a community loses its newspaper. People tend to participate less often in municipal elections, and those elections are less competitive. Corruption goes unchecked, and costs sometimes go up for town governments. Disinformation becomes the norm, as people start to get their facts mainly from social media. But the decline of The Hawk Eye has also revealed a quieter, less quantifiable change.

=> ↺ Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of journalists imprisoned in Iran

• Those who try to denounce prison conditions end up paying a price in the form of arbitrary punishments. They include Kayvan Samimi Behbahani, 73, the well-known editor of the monthly Iran Farda and president of the Association for the Defence of Press Freedom. Held since December 2020, he is serving a one-year sentence for “anti-government propaganda.”

• In an audio message from Tehran’s Evin prison, he reports that he has been denied visiting rights and phone calls with his family since February as a punishment. “Eleven of my fellow detainees and friends who help me to contact my family are being threatened,” he said. The authorities are also refusing to reduce his sentence under a legal provision for elderly detainees who can no longer support prison conditions.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Native American Protesters Hit by Sonic Weapons in DC

• Ahead of Monday’s march, protesters painted “Expect Us” on the pedestal of a statue in Lafayette Park opposite the White House of Andrew Jackson, the genocidal seventh U.S. president known to Cherokees as “Indian Killer” — and a favorite of former President Donald Trump.

• Indigenous Environmental Network tweeted video footage of police using a Long-Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD) against demonstrators sitting defiantly but peacefully outside the White House fence. Some observers contrasted the deployment of so-called “sound cannons” against nonviolent Indigenous protesters both on Monday and during past #StopLine3 protests with the absence of such heavy-handed tactics during the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mostly white mob.

=> ↺ Apple just fired a leader of the #AppleToo movement

• Apple has fired Janneke Parrish, a leader of the #AppleToo movement, amid a broad crackdown on leaks and worker organizing. Parrish, a program manager on Apple Maps, was terminated for deleting files off of her work devices during an internal investigation — an action Apple categorized as “non-compliance,” according to people familiar with the situation. The files included apps like Robinhood, Pokémon GO, and Google Drive.

• Internally, some employees expressed disbelief that Parrish’s firing could be anything other than retaliation for organizing.

=> ↺ Apple employee says she was fired for speaking out about workplace conditions

• Janneke Parrish, who was fired from her role as a product manager on Apple Maps on Thursday, told The Washington Post that she believes her firing was connected to her involvement in #AppleToo, a movement created to improve working conditions within the company.

• Parrish’s firing came just hours after she was quoted in a Washington Post article voicing support for her co-worker Cher Scarlett, who is a founder of #AppleToo.

=> ↺ ‘Highway robbers’: How a trip to buy farmland ended with police taking all his cash

• They had no way of knowing at the time but Thai and Liu were about to begin an hourslong ordeal that would leave them stripped of all their cash and searching for answers. Their experience highlights the controversial law enforcement practice known as civil asset forfeiture, in which police can confiscate a person’s cash or other property even without bringing criminal charges.

• [...]

• The men are now fighting to get it back. Adding insult to injury, they contend that the amount the sheriff’s office says it confiscated – $131,500 – is actually $10,000 short of the total they had in their car that day.

=> ↺ British football coach jailed for 25 years in Dubai over cannabis oil found in car

• “The UAE promotes itself as a glamorous ‘party place’ to foreigners with marketing designed to lure over investors, skilled labour and tourists.

• “Celebrities are paid to market the country, ultimately masking the truth for money.

• “People have been arrested for legal prescription medicine, for specs of dust or because of an association to someone, a false allegation, for having a glass of wine on a flight or trace elements of hashish consumed outside the country that are still present in the system.

=> ↺ British football coach ‘tortured’ in brutal Dubai prison after 25-year sentence for CBD oil

• Dubai police are thought to have singled him out after monitoring WhatsApp messages and looking for words related to drugs, such as CBD, the abbreviation for cannabinol.

• A week before Mr Hood’s arrest the friend who owned the vape liquid sent him a message telling him he had forgot it in his car.

=> ↺ Sikh exodus from Afghanistan as community flees extremist persecution after Taliban takeover

• Only 212 Afghan Sikhs now remain in the country, trapped due to the suspension of commercial flights.

• It was the chaos of the 1990s that proved a deadly turning point for Afghanistan’s Sikhs. Both the Islamic fundamentalist Mujahideen, and then the Taliban, destroyed Sikh businesses, looted temples and occupied their land.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Netflix Projects ‘Squid Game’ Will Generate $891 Million in Value, According to Leaked Data

• Netflix paid $21.4 million for the nine-episode series, which premiered four weeks ago, and the company estimates “Squid Game” will deliver more than 40 times that — an estimated $891 million — in what it calls “impact value,” Bloomberg reported Saturday, citing confidential internal data that someone provided to the outlet.

=> ↺ Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ ‘Make a Gesture of Humanity’: Pope Francis Urges Pharma Giants to Release Covid-19 Vaccine Patents

• Amid ongoing outrage over global vaccine inequity, Pope Francis on Saturday urged pharmaceutical companies to “make a gesture of humanity” by lifting intellectual property protections and sharing Covid-19 vaccine technology with the world.

• The pope’s remarks came during a video address to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, a collection of grassroots groups, in which he expressed his belief “that we are not condemned to repeat or to build a future based on exclusion and inequality.”

Copyrights

=> ↺ Primary Wave Acquires Stake in Bing Crosby’s Name, Brand Rights, and IP — Including ‘Many’ Unreleased Recordings

• 15-year-old Primary Wave – which received a $375 million investment from asset-management firm Oaktree Capital Management (NYSE: OAK) over the summer – unveiled its all-encompassing deal with the Bing Crosby estate this morning. The transaction will see Primary Wave secure a stake in Crosby’s “publishing, master recording, film and television, name, likeness, and brand rights, as well as archive of owned materials,” the parties indicated.

• Primary Wave has specifically acquired Crosby’s IP and archived materials (including “thousands of recordings by Bing and other artists, many have which [sic] have never been released”) from HLC Properties Ltd, a company owned by the Tacoma, Washington-born singer’s estate. The latter (and, in turn, HLC) has been at the center of multiple high-profile legal battles involving the “At Your Command” vocalist and songwriter’s family.

=> ↺ beIN Identifies IPTV Providers and Xtream-UI Panel As Major Piracy Threats

• For many years, beIN has made headlines due to its battle with Saudi-backed pirate TV service beoutQ. While that dispute spilled heavily into the political arena, the direct threat from beoutQ appears to be largely over. The overall threat from piracy certainly isn’t though and this week beIN revealed details of new threats, including a key pirate IPTV provider and software panel Xtream-UI.

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