● 10.21.21

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 21/10/2021: GIMP 2.99.8 Released, Hardware Shortages, Mozilla Crisis

Posted in News Roundup at 10:59 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ BSDNow 425: Releases galore

• The New Architecture on the Block, OpenBSD on Vortex86DX CPU, lots of new releases, and more.

=> ↺ The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 927

• support limps along, rocketbook, desktop roundup, dilldogs

=> ↺ FLOSS Weekly 652: Faces of Open Source – Peter Adams

• Photographer Peter Adams joins Doc Searls and Simon Phipps on FLOSS Weekly. The Mount Rushmore of Open Source is Adams’ “Faces of Open Source,” which is 100 faces strong so far. Including the faces of Searls and Phipps. Adams talks about the project, plus the history and future of open source, blockchain and NFTs, his work as a journalist, historian, entrepreneur.

=> ↺ Are We Anti Cheat Yet?: Valve Has A Plan – Invidious

• We’re still a ways away from full anti-cheat on the steam deck but Valve is making some moves that will hopefully encourage developers to actually get their act together and get their games supported on the device.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Upcoming Linux PCIe Driver To Fully Utilize M1 Mac Mini Ports

• Further development of Apple silicon drivers for Linux continues. According to a report from Phoronix, developers are almost ready to release a new PCIe driver for M1 chips that will bring PCIe compatibility to Apple chips running the Linux operating systems. That could bring us closer to a day where we can run Linux with full compatibility on Apple’s new high-performance M1 chips.

• This new PCIe driver is one of the most important drivers to be developed for the Apple M1 and Linux ecosystem: The PCI express drivers will give Linux operating systems full access to all I/O including USB ports, networking, Thunderbolt, and wireless ports on a multitude of M1 products.

• Linux support for Apple’s M1 has been underway for some time now; we first saw initial support with Linux Kernel 5.13, and a real demonstration of Linux running on an M1 Mac a few weeks ago. However, the process of getting Linux compatible with Apple’s M1 chips has been challenging thanks to both the ARM architecture and loads of proprietary technologies packed inside Apple Silicon.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ CUDA-Python Reaches “GA” With NVIDIA CUDA 11.5 Release, __int128 Preview

• NVIDIA has made available CUDA 11.5 today as the latest version of their popular but proprietary compute stack/platform. Notable with CUDA 11.5 is that CUDA-Python has reached general availability status.

• NVIDIA CUDA 11.5 was posted today along with updated device drivers for Windows and Linux systems. Some of the CUDA 11.5 highlights include:

=> ↺ AMD GPU Driver Looks To Make Use Of Intel’s New Buddy Allocator Code In The Linux Kernel – Phoronix

• Thanks to the nature of open-source, AMD engineers for the “AMDGPU” kernel graphics driver are looking to make use of Intel’s new i915 buddy allocator code they introduced as part of all their video memory management changes as part of their discrete graphics bring-up.

• As part of Intel’s bring-up of device local memory support for their dedicated GPU enablement and adding the notion of memory regions and other changes, they added a buddy allocator implementation for allocating video memory. This is an implementation of the well known buddy system for dividing of memory into equal parts (buddies) and continuing equal splitting that until able to satisfy the memory request.

Benchmarks

=> ↺ AMD EPYC 7003 “Milan” Performance On Ubuntu Linux Six Months After Launch

• It’s been a half-year already since AMD introduced the EPYC 7003 “Milan” processors that continue performing well and gaining marketshare. While the recently released Ubuntu 21.10 is not a long-term support (LTS) release, for those wondering what this latest Linux distribution means for EPYC 7003 series performance, here is a look at its performance across many benchmarks against that of Ubuntu 21.04 that was released right after the Milan launch and then Ubuntu 20.04 as the current LTS stable series.

• Basically what is being looked at today is the performance from the same AMD EPYC 74F3 ASRockRack server when testing…

=> ↺ Beelink SER3 Review – A good AMD Ryzen 7 mini PC… after tweaks – CNX Software

• Beelink has just launched a new mini PC called the SER3. It is another ‘new’ mini PC using an older CPU, in this case, an AMD mobile processor. However, the performance is surprisingly good once a few tweaks are made to the stock configuration. Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu together with using an eGPU.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Adventures with the Linux Command Line, First Internet Edition

• I’ve just released the first Internet edition of my new book, Adventures with the Linux Command Line. This 250+ page volume is a sequel/supplement to The Linux Command Line (TLCL). With 14 action-packed chapters, it covers a variety of skill-enhancing topics intended for makers, students, and anyone who wants to take their knowledge of the command line and shell scripting to the next level.

=> ↺ LFCS – User Account Management | Linux.org

• With any Linux system, you may need to add users. Additional Users may be needed when adding Services such as Samba. Being able to manage user accounts is a very important task, especially if working on multiple systems in a business environment.

=> ↺ How To Install Nagios on Debian 11 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nagios on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Nagios is an open-source tool that provides an enterprise-class central monitoring engine for IT monitoring, network monitoring, server, and applications monitoring. It monitors your entire IT infrastructure to ensure systems, applications, services, and business processes are functioning properly. In the event of a failure, Nagios can alert the technical staff of the problem, allowing them to begin remediation processes before outages affect business processes, end-users, or customers.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Nagios monitoring tool on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

=> ↺ How to Install Debian 11 (Bullseye) Server Using Net Install

• In this guide, we will walk you through the installation of a Debian 11 (Bullseye) Minimal Server, using the netinstall CD ISO image. This installation you will carry out is appropriate for building a future customizable server platform, without a GUI (Graphical User Interface).

=> ↺ How to Install LAMP Stack on Debian 11/10/9

• On (August 14, 2021), the Debian project announced the availability of the new stable version (Debian 11) codenamed Bullseye.

• With this release, the well-known and widely-used Debian 10 Buster gained old-stable status, which designates the previous stable repository. As it always happens with the release of a new stable version, Bullseye includes hundreds of new packages and updates to thousands of others.

• Since Debian powers a large percentage of web servers all over the world, in this article we will explain how to install the LAMP stack in Debian 11 and also works on older Debian 10 and Debian 9 releases.

=> ↺ How to Install LFTP to Download and Upload Files in Linux

• When it comes to the availability of ftp (file transfer protocol) client solutions, the Linux operating system, and its numerous distributions never disappoint.

• In this area, there is plenty of fish in the ocean. The Linux-based ftp clients are a mixture of GUI and non-GUI solutions. Ftp client solutions not only give you access to remote machines and servers but also enable you to easily upload/download files to/from your remote machines/servers.

=> ↺ How to Install Pip on Kali Linux – Linux Nightly

• pip is the package installer for Python. On Linux, pip allows for easy installation of Python programs and dependencies. For Python developers, pip is an essential tool.

• In the context of Kali Linux, pip is mostly used for hacking scripts or to download dependencies that hacking scripts rely on. Even if you don’t write Python scripts yourself, you may still find it necessary to install pip. In this guide, you’ll see how to install pip on Kali Linux.

=> ↺ How to install GUI on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 Minimal Linux server – Unixcop

• Have you installed CentOS 8 minimal installation and need to change the command line to Graphical user insterface GUI ?

• So if you are new to the command line, it will be a great idea to start with a Graphical user interface to learn and become a master of Linux.

• Also sometimes, Advanced users need a Graphical desktop environment to handle various services easily.

• So this guide will help you to change your command-line CentOS linux server to GUI. or You can install the GUI to your server.

=> ↺ How to install VirtualBox from A to Z and learn to use it | ArcoLinux

• We recommend this option as it is the easiest way to get VirtualBox on your computer.

=> ↺ How to setup an RDS MySql (Relation Database MySql) instance on AWS

• RDS(Relational Database Service) comes under “Database” services of AWS(Amazon Web Services) Cloud. RDS service provides a scalable and cost-efficient relational database capacity. It automates time-consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, setup, backups, etc. It helps us to focus on our applications instead of database administration and maintenance tasks.

• RDS provides us with 6 database engines, Amazon Aurora, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL. RDS handles routine database tasks such as provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, failure detection, and repair.

=> ↺ How To Install PostgreSQL 14 on Ubuntu 20.04 – howtodojo

• In this tutorial, we learn how to install PostgreSQL 14 on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa).

• PostgreSQL, or usually called Postgres, is an open-source object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) with an emphasis on extensibility and standards compliance.

• PostgreSQL is ACID-compliant and transactional. It is developed by PostgreSQL Global Development Group (PGDG) that consists of many companies and individual contributors. PostgreSQL released under the terms of PostgreSQL license.

=> ↺ How to Install Minikube on CentOS 8 – Unixcop

• Minikube is open source software for setting up a single-node Kubernetes cluster on your local machine. The software starts up a virtual machine and runs a Kubernetes cluster inside of it, allowing you to test in a Kubernetes environment locally.

• Minikube is a tool that runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster in a virtual machine on your laptop.

• In this tutorial we will show you how to install Minikube on CentOS 8.

=> ↺ How to Install and Secure Redis on Ubuntu 20.04 | RoseHosting

• Redis (short for Remote Dictionary Server), is an open-source in-memory data structure store. It’s used as a flexible, highly available key-value database that maintains a high level of performance. It helps to reduce time delays and increase the performance of your application by accessing in microseconds.

=> ↺ How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10 – OMG! Ubuntu!

• If the glowing reviews for the Ubuntu 21.10 release have you intrigued, here’s how to upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10 from an earlier version.

• Fair warning: this tutorial is super straightforward (the benefits of upgrading after a stable release, rather than a little bit before). Meaning no, you don’t need to be a Linux guru to get going!

• There are plenty of good reasons to upgrade from Ubuntu 21.04 to Ubuntu 21.10, such as benefiting from a newer Linux kernel, enjoying a new GNOME desktop, sampling the new Yaru Light theme, and getting to go hands-on with an able assortment of updated apps.

=> ↺ How to install Adobe Flash Player on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Adobe Flash Player on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

=> ↺ How to install OnlyOffice on Linux Lite 5.4 – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at how to install OnlyOffice on Linux Lite 5.4. Enjoy!

=> ↺ Jenkins: How to add a JDK version – Anto ./ Online

• This guide will show you how to add a JDK version to Jenkins. If you plan to run a Java build requiring a specific version of the Java Development Kit, you need to do this.

=> ↺ Sending EmailsSend them from Linux Terminal? | Linux Journal

• Does your job require sending a lot of emails on a daily basis? And you often wonder if or how you can send email messages from the Linux terminal.

• This article explains about 6 different ways of sending emails using the Linux terminal. Let’s go through them.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ You Can Now Install KDE Plasma 5.23 on Kubuntu 21.10, Here’s How

• Released last week, Kubuntu 21.10 ships with KDE Plasma 5.22.5 as default desktop environment, but users who want to use the recently released KDE Plasma 5.23 “25th Anniversary Edition” desktop environment can now upgrade their installations if they have the Kubuntu Backports PPA repository installed.

• The Kubuntu team announced today that the KDE Plasma 5.23.1 packages are now available in the Kubuntu Backports PPA repository, along with the KDE Frameworks 5.87 and KDE Gear 21.08.2 software suites, to make your Plasma desktop and KDE apps experience better.

=> ↺ Challenge: Use KDE Plasma ONLY With Touchscreen! – Kockatoo Tube

=> ↺ KDE/Plasma 5.23 “25th Anniversary Edition” for Debian | There and back again

• In the last week, KDE released version 5.23 – 25th Anniversary Edition – of the Plasma desktop with the usual long list of updates and improvements. This release celebrates 25 years of KDE, and Plasma 5.23.0 was released right on the day 25 years ago Matthias Ettrich sent an email to the de.comp.os.linux.misc newsgroup explaining a project he was working on. And Plasma 5.23 (with the bug fix 5.23.1) is now available for all Debian releases. (And don’t forget KDE Gears/Apps 21.08!)

=> ↺ Kdenlive comes to macOS (nightly version)

• Every now and again users would ask for a macOS version of Kdenlive. Up until recently, the only thing we were able to offer was a very, very old MacPorts version (0.9.10).

• But, after Vincent and I invested some time in it, we are happy to announce that we now have an up-to-date nightly build for macOS! However, since Kdenlive is a complex application with many dependencies, it still needs some testing before we can call it officially stable.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ #13 It begins…

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from October 01 to October 08.

Distributions

BSD

=> ↺ sh(1): make it the default shell for the root user

• This changes also simplifies making tiny freebsd images with only sh(1) as a shell

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ The 8 Excellent Alternative Desktops for Fedora and How to Install Them

• There are over 30 different desktop environments and window managers available for Fedora Linux. We’re going to show you how to install and switch between any of them in just minutes.

• In general, the best-known desktop environments are probably GNOME and KDE Plasma. GNOME is the default desktop environment for Fedora but you can install the OS with KDE (as well as a few other desktops) by using one of the many Fedora spins.

• Pros and Cons of Fedora Spins

• While Fedora spins are a quick and easy way to get a system set up with an alternative desktop, there are only a handful of spins available—eight at the time of writing. That might seem like a lot of extra choices but there are actually more than 30 different desktop environments and window managers that you can easily install on Fedora in just a few moments.

• Best of all, when you install new desktops yourself, you gain the ability to switch between them whenever you like. When you install a spin, you will only get the desktop that comes with that specific spin. For example, if you install the KDE spin, you will only have the KDE Plasma desktop. You won’t be able to easily switch to GNOME if you need or want to.

• If, however, you set your system up with the default GNOME version of Fedora and then use this guide to install the KDE and Cinnamon environments, you’ll be able to choose from all three desktops whenever you log in. You can switch your desktop at any time according to your needs or just your mood. You can even try out some of the most popular desktops that were built for other Linux distributions.

=> ↺ Deploy a Java application using Helm, Part 2 | Red Hat Developer

• In the previous article in this series, you learned how to deploy Java applications to Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) using Helm on Red Hat OpenShift. Developers can use the procedures in Part 1 to easily stand up traditional Java application servers on Kubernetes with predefined Kubernetes manifestos.

• What if you could have the same benefits when you develop microservices using JBoss EAP and Helm charts? JBoss EAP provides the Extension Pack (XP) to implement content trimming, packaging to a bootable JAR, and a MicroProfile specification including fault tolerance, monitoring, and tracing in support of microservices in the cloud. This article explains how to make a bootable JAR using JBoss EAP XP and Helm and deploy the application to OpenShift.

=> ↺ Red Hat build of Quarkus 2.2: Simplified Kubernetes-native Java

• Red Hat has released the Red Hat build of Quarkus 2.2 to continue to support enterprise developers building Kubernetes-native Java applications. The latest release has many great features and performance improvements, including tools to improve developer productivity while in Dev Mode.

• Let’s take a look at some highlights from this release. For a complete list, check out the release notes.

=> ↺ What’s new in the Red Hat OpenShift 4.9 console

• Red Hat OpenShift console users will discover a rich set of new and improved console features in OpenShift 4.9. This article introduces general improvements, usability enhancements, and new console features for developers using Red Hat OpenShift Serverless, Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines, and Red Hat OpenShift GitOps.

=> ↺ DevOps: 3 skills needed to support its future in the enterprise

• It’s no longer a question of if organizations need DevOps, but rather when they should adopt it, according to the DevOps Institute Upskilling 2021 report. That report finds that global enterprise adoption of DevOps at the project or multiple-project level is at 20 percent and 36 percent, respectively – and the skills needed for a successful DevOps journey span the categories of automation, human, technical, functional, and process knowledge.

• Whether you’re facing a skills gap in any of those key areas or you’re looking to expand your adoption of DevOps in the near future, keep the following considerations in mind:

=> ↺ Productivity lessons learned: 6 CIOs share tips for you and your team

• In our new hybrid work reality, many people in IT have enjoyed the flexibility to rewrite the rules on work-life balance. But it’s been a learning curve, says Kumud Kalia, CIO, Guardant Health.

• “As we moved to remote working for most of our employees, it became evident that time management had become much more of a juggling act between work, childcare/schooling, and miscellaneous personal priorities without a clear separation between these various activities. We already had flexible working hours for many of our employees, but we found that Zoom fatigue was real and added to the already unrelenting demands upon our people,” says Kalia.

• We asked CIOs who recently won the 2021 Bay Area CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards for their best productivity tips and lessons learned on work-life balance over the last year and a half. The awards were presented by the Bay Area CIO Leadership Association, a professional community that annually recognizes CIOs for their excellence in technology leadership.

• From being intentional and selective, to setting the right examples from the top, learn how these award-winning CIOs are making the most of their workday – and encouraging their teams to do the same.

=> ↺ Docker and Fedora 35

• In June of 2020, we published an article related to running Docker and Fedora 32. We described various workarounds that were required to run Docker, and we explained the bothersome situation at that time. But Docker has evolved, and it’s time to return to our previous tutorial. Thus, today we’ll talk about using Docker on Fedora Linux 35.

• With this guide, you should be able to easily recreate an existing development environment, without having to retool your entire pipeline. We’ll focus on getting the right packages, testing a few important scenarios, and helping you with tooling.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Are you going to install Ubuntu 21.10? What you should do before and after | ITIGIC

• The truth is that this new version does not bring great news or features that stand out especially. Canonical has basically included a new Kernel (5.14) , the new version of GNOME 40 and has updated the installer to make it simpler and more intuitive, but little else. Even so, if we are not using an extended support version, and we want to hold out with support until the next LTS is released, it will be necessary to go through it.

=> ↺ What’s New in Ubuntu 21.10? 6 Highlights

• Version 21.10 marks the latest release of Ubuntu, and while Canonical has turned more of its attention toward the cloud and developers, Ubuntu “Impish Indri” comes with a number of substantial changes for the many who still use the Ubuntu desktop on a daily basis.

• Here’s what to expect as you finish up your download.

• 1. GNOME 40 Makes Its Big Ubuntu Debut

• GNOME Version 40 marked a major visual change, if not much of a functional one, when it was a redesigned GNOME launched earlier in 2021. Canonical’s tweaks and adjustments were not ready in time for 21.04, so 21.10 marks the big debut of these changes in Ubuntu.

• In typical Ubuntu fashion, the dock retains its always-visible position on the left side of the screen, but other changes from GNOME 40 have made it in. For example, when you open the Activities Overview, workspaces now pan horizontally and are visible when you open the app drawer.

=> ↺ The New Features and Upgrades You’ll Find in Ubuntu 21.10

• Ubuntu 21.10, codenamed “Impish Indri” features several new upgrades, including the latest version of GNOME and Linux kernel.

• Version 21.10 marks the latest release of Ubuntu, and while Canonical has turned more of its attention toward the cloud and developers, Ubuntu “Impish Indri” comes with a number of substantial changes for the many who still use the Ubuntu desktop on a daily basis.

=> ↺ Impish Indri Ubuntu-fr t-shirt

• Ocelot did it again! The French speaking Ubuntu community is happy to present you his splendid Impish Indri t-shirt. You can buy it before the end of October for €15 (+ shipping costs) and receive it at the end of November 2021. You can try to buy it later but it will be more expensive and you will not have any garanty of stock.

=> ↺ Plasma 5.23 available for Kubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) in backports PPA

• We are pleased to announce that Plasma 5.23.1 is now available in our backports PPA for Kubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri).

• The release announcement detailing the new features and improvements in Plasma 5.23 can be found here.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ V3DV Raspberry Pi Driver Now Exposes Vulkan 1.1 – Phoronix

• Mesa’s V3DV driver for supporting newer Broadcom VideoCore graphics hardware with Vulkan now is advertising v1.1 support. This Vulkan 1.1 support in V3DV is notable as the Raspberry Pi 4 and newer are the most notable beneficiaries of this driver.

• Igalia continues developing the V3DV driver under cooperation with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It was Igalia developer Alejandro Piñeiro who this morning made the change in Mesa 22.0-devel now exposing Vulkan 1.1 rather than Vulkan 1.0.

• The necessary extensions and other changes for Vulkan 1.1 have been in place while now the formality of changing the exposed version has landed in Mesa Git as of this morning.

=> ↺ Here’s Why Raspberry Pi is Increasing its Price – It’s FOSS News

• It may not be a good time for best pricing when it comes to motherboards, CPUs, and GPUs. However, Raspberry Pi boards continued to sail through most of 2020-2021 without an increase in its price.

• But, recently, Raspberry Pi announced its first-ever price hike ever, so why is that happening?

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi 4 2GB gets a price hike to $45, 1GB version coming back for $35 – CNX Software

• We’ve been used to getting better hardware for cheaper or in the case of Raspberry Pi model B boards a stable $35 price tag since 2021 with gradual improvements to the hardware. Many companies already had to hike prices for their board due to supply constraints, and Raspberry Pi Trading has become the latest victim of the increase in components with the Raspberry Pi 4 with 2GB RAM going back to its original $45 price tag, and the re-introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 1GB for $35. We are told this is temporary, and once everything settles the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB should sell for $35 as was the case since last year. This is the very first price hike in Raspberry Pi (short) history.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi Sees Their First Price Increase Due To Supply Chain issues

• The ongoing supply chain issues across the semiconductor industry (and more broadly) are now impacting the Raspberry Pi operations for end-users/customers when it comes to pricing.

• The Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi 4 2GB models have been under particular pressure due to supply chain disruptions. The Raspberry Pi Foundation expects these supply chain challenges to last through at least much of next year.

=> ↺ Even the Raspberry Pi isn’t immune to the chip shortage

• The crunch on global technology continues unabated. As production on everything from graphics cards to automobiles slows to a grind due to the ongoing chip shortage, even the humble Raspberry Pi isn’t unscathed. The makers of every maker’s favorite tiny, self-contained PC announced that they’re going to have to raise prices on the latest model. It’s the first time the company has ever announced a price increase for any product.

=> ↺ Take part in the UK Bebras Challenge 2021 for schools!

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Arduino enables USB mouse support on custom 6502 homebrew computer | Arduino Blog

• The MOS Technology 6502 was one of the most popular processors of the 8-bit era. It found a home in legendary computers like the Commodore 64, Acorn Electron, BBC Micro, and Apple II. Even the NES had a custom implementation of the 6502. Because the 6502 is so well documented, it is possible for today’s enthusiasts to use it in their own homebrew computers. To enhance their DIY 6502 computer, rehsd used an Arduino to add USB mouse support.

=> ↺ Light Deck is a MIDI Lightroom controller | Arduino Blog

• Using Adobe Lightroom can be a tedious process, especially for those who don’t have their keyboards set up with a hundred macro shortcuts. Andrea Lunaro wanted to make this process easier by constructing a large, physical bank of buttons and potentiometers that can be used to perform a whole host of functions within Lightroom. It can output commands to copy/paste, set HSL values, do basic transformations, and navigate around the software in general, all over the MIDI protocol.

=> ↺ Labyrinthian Circuit Sculpture Evokes Moods With Sound And Light | Hackaday

• We can’t help but wonder if [Eirik Brandal] was evoking such Wilde thoughts when he wrote to tell us about ddrysfeöd, an electronic sound and light sculpture which he called “uselessly applied electronics.” Given the mood created by the video below the break, we have to agree that it is indeed quite artful. But if it serves a purpose to inspire and cause wonderment, is it really useless? Let the philosophers philosophize. On to the hack!

=> ↺ This Arduino radio looks like something from 100 years ago | Arduino Blog

• As time has progressed, personal radios have shrunk from the size of a large filing cabinet down to a tiny circuit that can be integrated into other ICs. Instructables user exposedwire wanted to bring back the feeling of a vintage 1920s radio set, so they built one out of wood that carries the same antique feeling with some more modern features.

• For the electronics, exposedwire went with an Arduino Uno for the main control board, along with a TEA5767 FM receiver IC that communicates with the Uno over I2C. The currently tuned frequency is displayed on a seven-segment LED module, which is driven by the ubiquitous TM1637 chip. The station can be changed by rotating the accompanying rotary encoder. Finally, the resulting audio signal is sent from the TEA1637 to an NS8002 amplifier and outputted from a small speaker.

=> ↺ Quit Hunching Over Your Screen With A Little Robotic Help | Hackaday

• This simple Arduino-based build uses the ubiquitous MPU-6050 which provides 3-axis acceleration and 3-axis gyro data all processed on-chip, so it can measure where you’re going, which way you are orientated and how fast you are rotating. This is communicated via the I2C bus, so hooking into an Arduino or Raspberry Pi is a simple affair. There are plenty of Open Source libraries to work with this very common device, which helps reduce the learning curve for those unfamiliar with programming a fairly complex device.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android 12 is now available, but will your phone be compatible? – CNET

=> ↺ Vivo Reveals Phones Eligible for Android 12-based Funtouch OS 12 Beta: Full List

=> ↺ How to downgrade from Android 12 to Android 11 on Pixel – 9to5Google

=> ↺ Best Android app deals of the day: Hydro Coach PRO, more – 9to5Toys

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 starts receiving October 2021 Android security patch globally – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Android 12: News, Features, Release Date, And More

=> ↺ Android 12 update tracker: Early info we know so far

=> ↺ vivo announces Android 12-based Funtouch OS 12′s beta release schedule – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Xperia Alpha tipped to launch with Android 12 next week as Sony starts camera-centred teasers – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ iOS 16 should steal these 5 features from Android 12 | iMore

=> ↺ LG Android 11 update (LG UX 10) list of eligible devices & release date

=> ↺ Harmful Squid Game malware on Android infects phones with malicious ads | Laptop Mag

=> ↺ iPhone 13 Pro selfie camera lags behind “Android” smartphones – Gizchina.com

=> ↺ How to make your Android phone charge faster | Tom’s Guide

=> ↺ TCL’s Tab Pro 5G Android tablet is an iPad rival with 5G | Tom’s Guide

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ OK Lenovo, we need to talk!

• I’ve been wanting to publicly comment on Lenovo’s statement on Linux support for a while, as there’s much to say about it, and my failing attempt at finding a suitable replacement for my venerable T510 gave me an excuse to document my love-hate relationship with Lenovo all at once.

• This is of course my own personal views and ideas, and does not reflect the Haiku project’s position on the topic, nor that of Haiku, Inc. But I feel they deserve to be brought here due to history and the direct and indirect effect it might have had on the project, including previous failed attempts at commercial applications using it.

• While Lenovo is still above many other manufacturers on some aspects, and on others domains, well, nobody does any better anyway, they purport to perpetuating the IBM legacy, so I think (sic) they should be held up to the standard they claim to follow. Yet the discussion about repair and documentation pertains to almost every vendor.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Free Software Review: Trying out LibreWolf 93 as an alternative to Firefox. It’s less annoying, but there’s still DRM?

• Firefox has recently crossed the line into malware territory.

• I’ve been blogging a lot about how much I absolutely despise the direction they are taking the company in.

• To recap a little, they’ve turned into a “woke” political party on a crusade to bring Cancel Culture to everyone who has a difference of opinion, their CEO is running them into the ground and swiping all the money while she’s at it.

• They laid off most of the developers last year and blamed COVID, and now they hope to get a pile of dirty cash from a sleazy advertising partner with “sponsored suggestions”. A keylogger.

• None of this is okay. This is actually worse than Chrome in some ways because it sends your private data to three companies, one of which is Google, then Mozilla, and then another advertising company (BuySellAds).

• While I generally like GNOME Web and where it’s going, I’d like to keep using the parts of Firefox that actually do what I want them to, and I was even considering learning how to clean it myself. I’ve built the browser from source code before.

• Most of the malicious anti-features are compile-time options.

• But it appears that a project called LibreWolf beat me to this.

=> ↺ Chris H-C: Six-Year Moziversary

• I’ve been working at Mozilla for six years today. Wow.

• Okay, so what’s happened… I’ve been promoted to Staff Software Engineer. Georg and I’d been working on that before he left, and then, well gestures at everything. This means it doesn’t really feel that different to be a Staff instead of a Senior since I’ve been operating at the latter level for over a year now, but the it’s nice that the title caught up. Next stop: well, actually, I think Staff’s a good place for now.

• Firefox On Glean did indeed take my entire 2020 at work, and did complete on time and on budget. Glean is now available to be used in Firefox Desktop.

=> ↺ Hacks.Mozilla.Org: Hacks Decoded: Thomas Park, Founder of Codepip

• Thomas Park is a software developer based in the U.S. (Philadelphia, specifically). Previously, he was a teacher and researcher at Drexel University and even worked at Mozilla Foundation for a stint. Now, he’s the founder of Codepip, a platform that offers games that teach players how to code. Park has made a couple games himself: Flexbox Froggy and Grid Garden.

=> ↺ Mark Surman: Exploring better data stewardship at Mozilla

• Over the last few years, Mozilla has increasingly turned its attention to the question of ‘how we build more trustworthy AI?’ Data is at the core of this question. Who has our data? What are they using it for? Do they have my interests in mind, or only their own? Do I trust them?

• We decided earlier this year that ‘better data stewardship’ should be one of the three big areas of focus for our trustworthy AI work.

• One part of this focus is supporting the growing field of people working on data trusts, data cooperatives and other efforts to build trust and shift power dynamics around data. In partnership with Luminate and Siegel, we launched the Mozilla Data Futures Lab in March as a way to drive this part of the work.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ LibreOffice extension to remove blank cells – Help to improve it!

• Rafael Lima from the Brazilian LibreOffice community is working on an extension to remove blank cells in LibreOffice Calc. It has four modes (single column, single row, blank rows and blank columns). Here’s a quick animation of it in action…

• So far, the main functionality is there, but Rafael would like to improve it. We asked him for some more info…

CMS

=> ↺ 5 Best Free and Open Source TypeScript Static Site Generators

• LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.

• While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.

• There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.

FSF

=> ↺ Pumpkins, markets, and one bad Apple

• Imagine your local farmers market: every Saturday the whole town comes together to purchase fresh and homemade goods, enjoy the entertainment, and find that there is always something for everyone. Whatever you need, you can find it here, and anyone can sign up to have their own little stand. It is a wonderful place, or so it seems. Now, imagine starting out as a pumpkin farmer, and you want to sell your pumpkins at this market. The market owner asks 30% of every pumpkin that you sell. It’s steep, but the market owner — we’ll call him Mr. Apple — owns all the markets in your area, so you have little choice.

• Let’s continue this analogy and imagine that, since it is a little hard for you to make ends meet, you decide to tell your customers that they can come visit you at your farm to purchase pumpkins. Mr. Apple overhears and shuts your stand down. You explain that your business cannot be profitable this way, but the grumpy market owner says that you can either comply or find another place. At the end of your rope, you look for information about starting your own farmers market, but it seems Mr. Apple owns every building in town.

• In the midst of Apple announcing its new products, attention is drawn away from its ongoing battle to maintain its subjugation over users globally. The Netherlands’ Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) last month informed the U.S. technology giant of its decision that the rules around the in-app payment system are anticompetitive, making it the first antitrust regulator to conclude that the company has abused market power in the App Store. And while Apple is appealing this verdict, the European Union is charging the company with another antitrust claim concerning the App Store.

GNU Projects

=> ↺ Development version: GIMP 2.99.8 Released

• GIMP 2.99.8 is our new development version, once again coming with a huge set of improvements.

=> ↺ GIMP 2.99.8 Released with .jxl File Support, How to Install in Ubuntu

• GIMP image editor released new development version 2.99.8 for the next 3.0 series with some great new features.

• GIMP 2.99.8 introduced multiple layers support for its Clone, Heal and Perspective Clone tools. There are as well 2 new modes in particular…

=> ↺ GIMP 2.99.8 Released with Clone Tool Tweaks, Support for Windows Ink

• A new development version of GIMP is available to download and it carries some interesting new features.

• While this isn’t a new stable release — GIMP 2.10.28 is the most recent stable release (and the version you’ll find in Ubuntu 21.10’s archives) — the release of GIMP 2.99.8 is yet another brick in the road to the long-fabled GIMP 3.0 release.

• And it’s a fairly substantial brick, at that.

=> ↺ GIMP 2.99.8 Released As Another Step Toward The Long Overdue GIMP 3.0

• GIMP 3.0 as the GTK3 port of this open-source Adobe Photoshop alternative has been talked about for nearly a decade now and the work remains ongoing. However, out today is GIMP 2.99.8 as the newest development snapshot.

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ GPL Had Better be a Contract

• Software Freedom Conservancy announced today that they are suing Vizio, which makes TVs, for violations of GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1. Their website has a copy of a signed complaint, the legal document you file with a court to get a lawsuit started.

• Upshot: It looks like SFC’s suing for breach of contract. They’re claiming explicitly that GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 are contracts, that Vizio breached those contracts, and that they should be held accountable under contract law.

• The main remedy SFC requests—the thing they’re asking the court to do for them—is to order Vizio to give them full corresponding source code, as agreed under GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1. That’s called “specific performance”. It’s a remedy under contract law. Not property law or intellectual property law, like copyright law.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Open access switch picks up pace in Australia and New Zealand

• Australian and New Zealand universities have notched up open access deals with two major academic publishers inside a week after Springer Nature unveiled a “transformative agreement” with the Council of Australian University Librarians (Caul).

• The three-year “read and publish” arrangement covers the article processing charges that authors normally pay to move their work in front of paywalls. Researchers will be able to make their articles freely accessible if they are accepted for publication in more than 2,000 journals, provided that their universities subscribe to those journals.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Ruby Lands “YJIT” As A Speedy, In-Process JIT Compiler – Phoronix

• YJIT is a JIT compiler for Ruby that leverages the lazy Basic Block Versioning (LBBV) architecture. YJIT has been in the works for a number of years. Most exciting for end-users and developers is that YJIT yields an average speed-up of around 23% compared to the current CRuby interpreter for realistic benchmarks.

=> ↺ Release: rebuilderd v0.15.0

• rebuilderd 0.15.0 very recently released, this is a short intro into what it is, how it works and how to build our own integrations!

=> ↺ Eclipse OpenJ9 0.29 Released With Full AArch64 Linux Support, More Mature JITServer Tech

• The newest feature release to Eclipse OpenJ9 is now available, the high performance Java Virtual Machine originating from IBM J9.

• Eclipse OpenJ9 v0.29 was released today, one day after the GraalVM 21.3 release and one month after the OpenJDK 17 debut. But in the case of OpenJ9 v0.29 it continues to target just OpenJDK 8 and OpenJDK 11.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Good Neighbors, NO Fences

=> ↺ Cargo backlog creates traffic headaches on sea and land

• About 40% of all shipping containers entering the U.S. come through the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. The logjam of ships has interrupted the global supply chain and last week prompted the Biden administration to allow the port complex to operate 24 hours a day to try to get goods unloaded and out to consumers.

=> ↺ Arlo Makes Live Customer Service A Luxury Option

• The never-ending quest for improved quarterly returns means that things that technically shouldn’t be luxury options, inevitably wind up being precisely that. We’ve shown how a baseline expectation of privacy is increasingly treated as a luxury option by hardware makers and telecoms alike. The same thing also sometimes happens to customer service; at least when companies think they can get away with it.

Science

=> ↺ Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says – IEEE Spectrum

• Michael I. Jordan explains why today’s artificial-intelligence systems aren’™t actually intelligent

=> ↺ In tree rings and radioactive carbon, signs of the Vikings in North America

• Vikings from Greenland — the first Europeans to arrive in the Americas — lived in a village in Canada’s Newfoundland exactly 1,000 years ago, according to research published Wednesday.

• Scientists have known for many years that Vikings — a name given to the Norse by the English they raided — built a village at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around the turn of the millennium. But a study published in Nature is the first to pinpoint the date of the Norse occupation.

• The explorers — up to 100 people, both women and men — felled trees to build the village and to repair their ships, and the new study fixes a date they were there by showing they cut down at least three trees in the year 1021 — at least 470 years before Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492.

Education

=> ↺ The Federal Government Gave Billions to America’s Schools for COVID-19 Relief. Where Did the Money Go?

• After the pandemic shut down schools across the country, the federal government provided about $190 billion in aid to help them reopen and respond to the effects of the pandemic. In the year and a half since millions of children were sent home, the Education Department has done only limited tracking of how the money has been spent. That has left officials in Washington largely in the dark about how effective the aid has been in helping students, especially those whose schools and communities were among the hardest hit by the pandemic.

• “We’ve been in the pandemic now for nearly a year and a half,” said Anne Hyslop, the director of policy development at the education advocacy group Alliance for Excellent Education. “There is a responsibility to the public to make sure the funds are spent responsibly, but also make sure that the funding that is spent is accountable to supporting students and educators.”

=> ↺ The Diversity Problem on Campus | Opinion

• American universities are undergoing a profound transformation that threatens to derail their primary mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge. The new regime is titled “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” or DEI, and is enforced by a large bureaucracy of administrators. Nearly every decision taken on campus, from admissions, to faculty hiring, to course content, to teaching methods, is made through the lens of DEI. This regime was imposed from the top and has never been adequately debated. In the current climate it cannot be openly debated: the emotions around DEI are so strong that self-censorship among dissenting faculty is nearly universal.

Hardware

=> ↺ Building A Hammer Powered By Gunpowder | Hackaday

• Hammers are pretty straightforward tools. If you need more impact force, just get a bigger hammer. Alternatively, you can look at enhancing performance with chemical means, and we don’t mean by using steroids. No, instead, you can try hammering with the aid of gunpowder, and [i did a thing] has done just that.

• The build relies on using 6.8mm blank cartridges designed for the Ramset brand of explosive nail drivers. However, rather than buying such a tool off the shelf, [i did a thing] built one in a traditional hammer format instead. The device looks like a hammer, with a hinge on the two-piece head, which allows a blank cartridge to be placed inside. When the hammer is swung at a hard surface, the impact triggers the blank which drives the nail forward with incredible force.

=> ↺ Sign Detects RF To Show You Are On The Air | Hackaday

• Like a lot of hams, [Stuart] wanted an “on the air” sign. These signs often connect to a PTT switch or maybe an output from the transmitter that also does things like switches antennas or switches in an amplifier. [Stuart’s] version, though, simply senses the radio frequency emissions from the transmitter and lights up that way. You can see two videos about the sign, below.

• Honestly, we are a little worried that he might have too much RF at his operating position. Presumably, the device is pretty sensitive, especially if there’s any actual antenna on the sign. A comparator and a pot let you set the sensitivity so it doesn’t light up when your garage door opens.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Scientists Search for Cause of Mysterious COVID-Related Inflammation in Children

=> ↺ Draft Report Accuses Bolsonaro of Crimes Against Humanity for Covid-19 Recklessness

• A Brazilian congressional probe of President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic attributes more than 300,000 deaths—half of the nation’s coronavirus death toll—to the far-right leader’s policies, and although its initial recommendation to charge him with mass homicide and genocide has been jettisoned, the draft report still accuses him of crimes against humanity.

• The 1,000-plus page document, the product of a six-month investigation led by a special Covid-19 Senate committee, asserts that Bolsonaro “intentionally let the coronavirus rip through the country and kill hundreds of thousands in a failed bid to achieve herd immunity and revive Latin America’s largest economy,” the New York Times reported Tuesday.

=> ↺ Championing Mental Health Is the Latest Celebrity Grift

• Over a century before Princess Diana died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, the physician Jean-Martin Charcot attracted toute la ville to his live demonstrations of neurological disorders on its premises. Charcot’s particular interest was hysteria, that mysterious, uniquely female complex—literally, “of the womb”—that seemed to afflict so many women of his day. His Tuesday lectures, featuring patients of the hospital on full display, were high spectacle, attended, according to one account, by “a multi-colored audience, drawn from all of Paris: authors, doctors, leading actors and actresses, fashionable demimondaines, all full of morbid curiosity.” Among them was Sigmund Freud, whose own deranged analysis of “the great neurosis” also made him famous.1

=> ↺ Arizona Groups Demand Sinema ‘Stop Obstructing’ on Medicare Expansion

• As Democrats’ sweeping Build Back Better package hangs in the balance largely due to a pair of corporate-backed members working to water down their own party’s budget reconciliation bill, two dozen Arizona groups joined with Public Citizen on Wednesday to pressure their obstructionist U.S. senator to support keeping various improvements to Medicare in the package.

• “Sen. Sinema seems to have forgotten… that all legitimate law comes from the people, not pharmaceutical companies.”

=> ↺ Advice That Kills

• Everybody treats it like it’s a confounding question with no easy answer.  The actual answer, though, is pretty straightforward: the psychopaths running the rightwing media ecosystem dominated by Fox “News” and social media, and echoed by 1500 radio stations across the country, have decided people dying and being disabled is both profitable and politically advantageous to them.

• When Joe Biden was elected president the Republican Party and their joined-at-the-hip rightwing media did a sudden about-face from praising Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” to encouraging their followers to remain unvaccinated so President Biden would struggle to get the economy back on sound footing.

=> ↺ Supreme Court Refuses to Block Maine’s Vaccine Mandate for Health Care Workers

=> ↺ Attacks on scientists in the age of COVID-19: How “they” view “us”

• About a week ago, Nature published a survey in an article entitled ‘I hope you die’: how the COVID pandemic unleashed attacks on scientists. For some reason I didn’t notice last week when it was first published, but I did notice the other day and felt that, given my long experience, I had to comment. I’ll discuss more of the details later in this post, but the CliffsNotes version is that large percentages of scientists and physicians who have made media appearances, spoken in public, or posted on social media to try to educate the public about COVID-19 have as a result experienced abuse, including online abuse, attacks on their credibility, and even threats of violence, death, and sexual abuse. Naturally, Twitter lit up last week and continuing to this week. A couple of examples:

=> ↺ Sanders Rails Against John Deere Threat to Striking Workers’ Health Coverage

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ FreeOffice 2021 is Here for Linux With Enhanced Compatibility and New Features to Rival Microsoft Office

• The German-based software developer has just announced the latest upgrade to its popular FreeOffice series. FreeOffice 21, as a free alternative to Microsoft Office.

• It is a complete software suite aimed at productivity. It contains three apps – TextMaker 21, PlanMaker 21, and Presentations 21 – that serve as alternatives to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The UI is very similar to MS Office’s ribbon layout, although you can choose the classic layout instead.

• FreeOffice 21 is based on the commercial suite SoftMaker Office 21, which is also available for Linux. Even though it lacks certain features compared to SoftMaker Office, FreeOffice is reasonably sufficient for home or office use.

Pseudo-Open Source

Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

=> ↺ Intel Makes ControlFlag Open-Source For Helping To Detect Bugs In Code – Phoronix

• Last year Intel announced ControlFlag as a machine learning tool for helping to uncover bugs within code. ControlFlag promised impressive results after being trained on more than one billion lines of code and at the end of 2020 was already being used internally on Intel’s code-bases from firmware to software applications. We hadn’t heard anything more about ControlFlag this year… Until today. Intel has now made ControlFlag open-source for helping to autonomously detect more programming bugs.

=> ↺ Developers: Intel’s automated debugging tool ControlFlag is now open source

=> ↺ once again outsourced a project

• Now available via GitHub, ControlFlag taps machine learning to automatically identify bugs in software and firmware code, saving developers the time-consuming task of manually debugging the programs they write.

Security

=> ↺ Newly Found npm Malware Mines Cryptocurrency on Windows, Linux, macOS Devices

• Sonatype’s automated malware detection system has caught multiple malicious packages on the npm registry this month. These packages disguise themselves as legitimate JavaScript libraries but were caught launching cryptominers on Windows, macOS and Linux machines.

=> ↺ These hackers dodge Windows and target Linux as they look to steal phone data

=> ↺ ZDNet

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Facebook’s Very Bad, No Good Week: What It Means for Privacy, and How to Make Things Better

• However logical it might have seemed at the time, creating that internal monoculture was clearly ill-advised, since it meant that when Facebook’s main system was down, everything was down. A note by Facebook engineering explains exactly what happened. But for many of the company’s 3.5 billion users, particularly in countries outside the West, the effects were even more dramatic. As the New York Times put it:

=> ↺ Public health or private wealth? How digital vaccine passports pave way for unprecedented surveillance capitalism

=> ↺ Delta Proudly Announces Its Participation In The DHS’s Expanded Biometric Collection Program

• Via Travel & Leisure comes this warning — one the online magazine has decided to portray as exciting news.

=> ↺ Facebook down gave people a glimpse of a better world

• Seriously! “For a whopping five-hours-plus, people read news,”, says Niemanlab. As in “reading news by going straight to the websites of news outlets, without all the filtering, noise and profiling that is the hallmark of those platforms.

=> ↺ Amazon offers up more data to tell third-party sellers which items will be popular

• With Amazon’s track record of copying popular products and selling them under its Amazon Basics brand, an obvious concern with this tool is where the data is coming from and how granular it is. While Amazon quotes a seller saying that they’re excited to get “recommendations specifically relevant” to their business, it’s easy to imagine other sellers being nervous that Amazon’s suggestions could direct businesses to rip off existing products.

=> ↺ DC AG adds Facebook’s Zuckerberg to Cambridge Analytica suit

• Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine (D) on Wednesday added Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to an existing lawsuit alleging the social media giant failed to protect user data during the 2016 election.

• This is the first time that Zuckerberg has been named in a complaint by an American regulator, according to Racine’s office.

• The lawsuit, initially filed in 2018, focuses on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when a data firm harvested information from as many as 87 million people without their knowledge.

=> ↺ Facebook’s rumoured name-change reflects its ambitions—and its weakness

• There is another, less flattering possible motive for a makeover. For all its pecuniary success, the Facebook brand has become tarnished. The social network is blamed for stoking everything from teenage anorexia to insurrection at the US Capitol. This month Frances Haugen, a former employee, told Congress that Facebook was failing to moderate content on its platform and covering up a drop in young American users (it denies this). Public trust in it is lower than in most tech giants, and falling. Although two years ago the firm started branding its apps as being “from Facebook”, its new “smart glasses”, which can record video and take phone calls, feature only the logo of its partner, Ray-Ban.

=> ↺ Biden admin backs down on tracking bank accounts with over $600 annual transactions

• The Biden administration on Tuesday backed down on a controversial proposal to direct the IRS to collect additional data on every bank account that sees more than $600 in annual transactions, after widespread criticism from Republican lawmakers and banking industry representatives, who said the tax enforcement strategy represented a breach of privacy by the federal government.

• Instead, the administration and Senate Democrats are proposing to raise the threshold to accounts with more than $10,000 in annual transactions, and any income received through a paycheck from which federal taxes are automatically deducted will not be subject to the reporting. Recipients of federal benefits like unemployment and Social Security would also be exempt.

=> ↺ ABC iview user data collected through Google Analytics stored in the US

• Any data collected by the ABC through the use of the Google Analytics 360 Suite for its iview service is stored in the US, according to the lone document released to a security researcher who sought details about how such data is used.

=> ↺ ABC refuses request to rethink iview data-sharing decision

• The decision was conveyed on 6 September to Dr Vanessa Teague, a researcher who runs the infosec outfit Thinking Cybersecurity, and who lodged an FOIA request on 16 June, seeking full information on data-sharing agreements signed by the ABC with third parties who have access to iview data, including Google, Facebook and customer data hub and enterprise tag management firm Tealium, and any other firm to whom the broadcaster has granted access.

• Rejecting the request on 6 September, the ABC said, in part: “Having reviewed your request, I have decided to: [...]

=> ↺ Chinese smartphones driving digital payments adoption in India: PhonePe report

• Four out of five leading smartphone brands used in digital transactions by Indian users are of Chinese origin, with the top two – Xiaomi and Vivo – cornering nearly 45% share of the total customer base in the third quarter of 2021.

=> ↺ Who we hurt when we attack encryption – Access Now

• The news is full of articles that detail law enforcement agencies’ demands for access to our encrypted communications. They claim such access is required because criminals and terrorists use encryption. But that is only one side of the story. Encryption not only protects us from the very criminals law enforcement is targeting, it’s a vital tool for keeping human rights defenders safe from powerful adversaries. It is necessary for basic online safety and secure transactions and communications. It is also necessary for the survival of democracy, and any hope of abiding by human rights as laid out by the United Nations.

• As humans, we all need the freedom to conduct personal and private conversations online without interference. However, strong encryption meets even more urgent needs. For human rights defenders, encryption can be the difference between life and death. That is why any policy related to encryption must ensure their important work is not compromised. If we weaken or bypass encryption, and fail to protect most at-risk individuals and organizations in our communities, not only will more people get killed, vital human rights work will suffer.

• Today, as COVID-19 pushes more of our activities online, more highly sensitive conversations, like those between human rights lawyers and their clients — the victims of human rights abuses — are conducted over the internet. It is imperative to keep these conversations private.

• At Access Now, our Digital Security Helpline handles cases that show why encryption is essential for a safer world. Following are five examples, with the names of organizations and individuals, and any details that could leak their identities, changed or omitted to keep them safe.

=> ↺ Four strategies to defend encryption and our human rights – Access Now

• When we fight for encryption, we fight for human rights. It enables us to stay safe online, and communicate privately and freely. Yet governments keep pushing to undermine it, and Apple’s plan to bypass encryption is an alarming sign of private sector capitulation to this pressure. So today, the inaugural Global Encryption Day, we are highlighting four strategies to help human rights advocates defend encryption and protect our privacy, security, and freedom of expression.

=> ↺ Surveillance cameras are just more social media

• One is extra work for law enforcement…

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ The Trial Of Thomas Sankara’s Killers

• Sankara took power in the landlocked West African state of Upper Volta after a coup in 1983, changing the name of the former French colony to Burkina Faso (“the land of upright people” in Mossi, the language of the country’s largest ethnic group) the following year.

• Sankara’s government, using a synthesis of Pan-Africanism and Marxist politics, initiated a string of far-reaching economic and social reforms that included nationalizations, land redistribution, reforestation, infrastructure and public housing construction, expanded access to education, vaccination campaigns, and advancing the rights of women by banning female genital mutilation, polygamy and forced marriages. His government, hewing to a foreign policy predicated on non-alignment, took on former colonial powers, as well as their satrap institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

=> ↺ In Unanimous Vote, Jan. 6 Commission Holds Steve Bannon in Contempt of Congress

=> ↺ Oath Keepers in the State House: How a Militia Movement Took Root in the Republican Mainstream

• North Carolina state representative Mike Clampitt swore an oath to uphold the Constitution after his election in 2016 and again in 2020. But there’s another pledge that Clampitt said he’s upholding: to the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militant organization.

• Dozens of Oath Keepers have been arrested in connection to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, some of them looking like a paramilitary group, wearing camo helmets and flak vests. But a list of more than 35,000 members of the Oath Keepers — obtained by an anonymous hacker and shared with ProPublica by the whistleblower group Distributed Denial of Secrets — underscores how the organization is evolving into a force within the Republican Party.

=> ↺ Taliban promise cash, land, to families of suicide bombers

• The Taliban’s acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, offered the reward to dozens of family members of bombers gathered at a Kabul hotel, Interior Ministry spokesman Saeed Khosty tweeted on Tuesday.

=> ↺ America’s Cold Civil War

• This debilitating division among Americans has devolved to the point at which some Republicans curry favor with Trump for fear of not being elected, not because they admire him. That’s how much control he exerts. More courageous others have urged his supporters to seek emancipation from a mendacious madman who wants nothing more than to be America’s first dictator.

• Our country is fighting a cold civil war, with the Republican side hurling absurd epithets at the Democrats, charging them with being socialists and destroying our lives when in fact they’re trying to do the opposite with trillions of dollars. Their childish antics and statements are right out of a schoolyard.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Is Australia’s Nuclear Sub Deal, Its First Step Toward Building Nuclear Power Plants?

• The Australian federal government has announced a landmark defence pact with the United States and United Kingdom that involves this nation acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. The question of nuclear submarines in Australia has been bubbling along for some time – and with it, whether we should also develop a nuclear energy sector.

• Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted the defence deal did not mean Australia would look to develop a civil nuclear capability.

=> ↺ Colin Powell, Moral Weakling

• Rarely has history offered such a stark example of a human being offered a clear existential choice between right and wrong. Hardly ever has so much hung in the balance for humanity and for an individual’s soul, as when then-secretary of state Colin Powell spoke to the United Nations to make the case for war.

• It would be impossible to overstate the import of Powell’s February 2003 speech, in which he claimed that the United States had amassed a stockpile of evidence that proved that Iraq had retained chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction in violation of its commitments under the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire. Iraq’s government, Powell argued forcefully, presented such a clear and present danger to its neighbors that the international community—led by the U.S.—had a right, even a duty, to remove it with an invasion. President George W. Bush and his co-conspirators had spent the better part of the previous year working to convince Americans to support a second war against Iraq over WMDs. Polls showed that voters remained unconvinced.

=> ↺ What Are the Prospects for Peace? An Interview With Abby Martin

• Abby Martin is an American journalist, TV presenter and activist. She helped found the citizen journalism website Media Roots and serves on the board of directors for the Media Freedom Foundation which manages Project Censored. She hosted Breaking the Set on the Russian state-sponsored network RT America from 2012 to 2015, and then launched The Empire Files in that same year as an investigative documentary and interview series on Telesur, later released as a web series. In 2019, she released the film documentary, The Empire Files: Gaza Fights for Freedom. She continues her work opposing imperialism and promoting peace, as an independent filmmaker and journalist. We are extremely honored that she took the time to talk to us and share her views. Her responses below are exactly as she provided.

• The questions here are not philosophical or abstract. They focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time. They directly address the role of the U.S. in the escalating tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We also probe the role of everyday citizens in affecting the relationship the U.S. now has and will have with the rest of the world community.

=> ↺ Cable News’ No. 1 Host Flirts With Fascism

• When Fox News host Tucker Carlson (Fox News, 9/27/21) interviewed Polish President Andrzej Duda, Carlson began by lamenting of the United States, “Has a better country ever been led by worse people?” That’s why, he explained, he tries to interview “leaders on this show from other countries who actually care about their people.”

=> ↺ Afghanistan Withdrawal: Sundays With the Military Industrial Complex

• As US troops finally made their exit from Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation, the Sunday shows—which have always aimed to set Washington agendas—were filled with guests who had direct ties to the military/industrial complex.

=> ↺ Russian inmate who leaked torture videos alleges death threats

• The videos, which he obtained while working in a prison office during his jail term, caused an outcry in Russia when they emerged online earlier this month.

• Russian authorities have since said they have opened criminal investigations into alleged torture and sexual assaults in jails and fired several senior prison officials.

Environment

=> ↺ This 5-Point Plan Will Fix Climate Coverage

• This column is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

=> ↺ Extreme heat is a growing concern for doctors around the world

• Extreme heat is a huge worry for doctors and public health experts around the world, and it’s steadily become a bigger problem over time, according to a sweeping new climate report published today in the leading medical journal, The Lancet.

• The analysis, from 43 academic institutions and United Nations agencies, focuses on the threats the climate crisis poses to human health. While the group has published similar reports over the past five years, this is the first time it includes warnings on the impact hotter days have on mental health and physical activity. It follows an increase in devastating heatwaves around the world.

=> ↺ Climate Change Could Turn a Carbon Sink Into a Carbon Bomb

Energy

=> ↺ ‘Who’s Next?’: Quebec Declares End to Fossil Fuel Extraction in Province

• Climate campaigners are welcoming Quebec Premier François Legault’s Tuesday announcement that his government has decided to put an end to any further fossil fuel extraction in the province.

• “This is the climate leadership we need.”

=> ↺ ‘Dangerous Trajectory’: Report Details a World Set to Consume Fossil Fuels at Full Speed

• “Recent announcements by the world’s largest economies to end international financing of coal are a much-needed step in phasing out fossil fuels. But… there is still a long way to go to a clean energy future.”

• “The research is clear: global coal, oil, and gas production must start declining immediately and steeply to be consistent with limiting long-term warming to 1.5°C.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Banks Worldwide Must End Funding of Factory Farms to Halt Climate Damage

• As the climate crisis boils over, new research shows that reducing methane emissions is our best hope to rapidly stem the crisis. It’s time to turn up the heat on the industrial meat industry and dramatically curtail its climate harm, which includes 32% of global methane emissions. Yet instead development banks are using public funds to expand this sector that generates 16.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

=> ↺ ‘Bombshell’: Total Knew About Climate Threat From Fossil Fuels for Decades, But Denied It

• Exxon knew. Shell knew. It turns out, Total knew, too.

• “These revelations provide proof that TotalEnergies and the other oil and gas majors have stolen the precious time of a generation to stem the climate crisis.”

=> ↺ French Oil Company Total ‘Knew About Global Warming Impact in 1971’, Study Finds

• French oil giant Total knew that its fossil fuel extraction could contribute to global warming as early as 1971 but stayed silent about it until 1988, according to a new study. 

• Research published today in the journal Global Environmental Change, based on internal company documents and interviews with former staff, found that personnel “received warnings of the potential for catastrophic global warming from its products by 1971”. 

=> ↺ Study: Fossil fuel plans would far overshoot climate goals

• The report published by the U.N. Environment Program found that while governments have made ambitious pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions, they are still planning to extract double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be consistent with the 2015 Paris climate accord’s goal of keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

• Even the less ambitious goal of capping global warming at 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times would be overshot, it said.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ NYC Taxi Drivers Launch Hunger Strike to Demand Relief From Medallion Debt

=> ↺ Human Rights and Environmental Organisations Demand The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation Reconsider Supporting ‘Risky’ Major East Africa Oil Project

• International and local human rights and environmental organisations speaking for thousands of people in East Africa have submitted a complaint to the World Bank criticising it and its subsidiary, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), of supporting major fossil fuel projects without properly considering the environmental and human impacts: the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and related infrastructure under development in Uganda and Tanzania.

• Led by human rights group Inclusive Development International, the organisations in a letter dated October 13 addressed to Janine Ferretti, vice president compliance advisor ombudsman at the World Bank, accuse the bank of indirectly investing in EACOP, which they describe as “one of the world’s largest and riskiest oil developments”.

=> ↺ ‘Huge Win’: Green Groups Applaud Biden Move to Protect Minnesota Watershed

• Environmentalists on Wednesday cheered a “huge win” as the Biden administration announced it would pause all new mining activity in an unspoiled region of northern Minnesota pending a lengthy review that could ultimately lead to a 20-year mineral extraction ban.

• “The Boundary Waters is a paradise of woods and water.”

=> ↺ The Climate Doesn’t Care About Your Hiking Trip

• For decades, the environmental and conservation movements hammered this message home while they forestalled the incursion of roads, mines, logging and housing in the remaining patches of wilderness. Those efforts have protected more than 15 million acres of wilderness in California alone. That focus on salvaging the remaining wild spaces nonetheless rests on the notion that there is “unspoiled” wilderness that we can preserve for eternity — or at least multiple generations. The pervasive effects of climate change have laid that illusion bare.

• That’s a huge psychological blow to this generation and those to come. Future hikers might slip through Kearsarge Pass without a hint of smoke. They nonetheless will be reminded at every turn that wilderness is not protected from the broad despoiling brought on by human activity. Their trip may be over before it has started.

Finance

=> ↺ Squid Game’s Capitalist Parables

• About halfway through the new Netflix horror series Squid Game, one of the contestants, a career gangster named Jang Deok-su (played by Heoh Sung-tae), comes upon a gruesome new strategy. Thus far, he and several hundred other men and women, dressed in identical green polyester track suits, have been told by an anonymous army of enforcers that they are in a six-round tournament of literal elimination. Each round is a different challenge based on a children’s game, like marbles or tug-of-war—but each is also played to the death and for an unimaginably large jackpot. Every person who loses dies, and their deaths add to the prize money. Despite these macabre stakes, a sense of fairness has prevailed in the game’s first rounds: Do your best in competition and, if you survive, retreat to the school-gym dormitory to eat and sleep. But Jang sets out to test this boundary. He steals an extra helping of food and then, when the man deprived of his meal puts up a fight, kills him in public view.

=> ↺ Taking Aim at Predatory Equity Firms, Warren Leads Bill to ‘Stop Wall Street Looting’

• Accusing private equity companies of “drooling” over the prospect of snatching up businesses faltering during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday led the reintroduction of a bill to “fundamentally reform” the predatory industry and “level the playing field” by forcing firms “to take responsibility for the outcomes” of their acquisitions.

• “Private equity firms get rich off of stripping assets from companies, loading them up with a bunch of debt, and then leaving workers, consumers, and whole communities in the dust.”

=> ↺ Opinion | The Unconscionable Hypocrisy of the Federal Spending Debate

• Right now, the United States is locked in a contentious debate over the Build Back Better plan, which will make a significant difference in the lives of millions of individuals and families.

=> ↺ ‘He Isn’t Negotiating, He Is Killing the Bill’: Ilhan Omar Slams Joe Manchin

• Congresswoman Ilhan Omar issued fresh public rebuke of Sen. Joe Manchin late Tuesday night, accusing her fellow Democrat of openly sabotaging the Build Back Better agenda that is at the center of their party’s effort to make sweeping social investments to lift up the American working class in the midst of the ongoing pandemic by expanding Medicare, curbing childhood poverty, increasing affordable housing, spending big on climate, offering paid family leave, and initiating universal pre-K and childcare.

• With reporting overnight that the White House has agreed in principle to drop the topline number of the reconciliation package down to $1.9 trillion—a number that progressives initially staked for a ten-year program at $10 trillion, later $6 trillion, and then $3.5 trillion—Omar said it was “time we all recognized” what Manchin is doing.

=> ↺ Opinion | Don’t Blow Up Our Future, Senator Manchin!

• In the last week, Senator Manchin (D-WV) has become increasingly public with his opposition to the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP), a policy designed to drive down power sector carbon emissions which is part of the reconciliation bill under consideration in Congress. With the vote margins so slim in Congress, his stance significantly jeopardizes the chances that this vital policy will survive the legislative process. At a time when the devastating, costly, and inequitable impacts of climate change around the nation—including worsening flooding in West Virginia—could not be clearer, it is deeply disturbing to see the Senator actively undermining policies that would help drive down heat-trapping emissions and protect people.  

=> ↺ ‘Should Be a No-Brainer’: Biden Pushed to Back Long-Term Child Tax Credit Extension

• “The expanded child tax credit is popular, good for the economy, and a key element of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. There is absolutely no reason for Congress to consider anything but a long-term extension of the policy.”

=> ↺ Do Not ‘Cave to Big Pharma’: 60+ Groups Tell Schumer, Pelosi to Deliver on Drug Pricing Reform

• More than 60 civil society organizations from around the United States on Wednesday urged the Democratic Party’s leaders to reject the attempts of a few caucus members bankrolled by Big Pharma to dilute the Build Back Better Act’s provision to empower Medicare to reduce the nation’s sky-high prescription drug prices.

• “Drug price negotiation has repeatedly polled as one of and often the most popular single policy in the entire Build Back Better Act and Biden agenda.” 

=> ↺ Opinion | Any Democrat Who Stands Against Lower Drug Prices Should Be Primaried in 2022

• Excuse me but I have to vent.

=> ↺ Sanders Calls John Deere Threat to Take Away Striking Workers’ Health Coverage ‘Beyond Outrageous’

• “Taking healthcare off the bargaining table by making it a right for everyone in America would vastly increase workers’ bargaining power and make it easier for workers to stand against vicious union-busting attacks.”

=> ↺ On the John Deere Picket Line in Iowa With UAW Local 281

• Davenport, Iowa—On day four of their strike, 50 John Deere and Company members of UAW Local 281 stood across a county road in front of the John Deere Plant Works near Highway 61 here on the northern edge of Davenport. They were upbeat but realistic.

=> ↺ 10,000 Striking John Deere Workers Demand “Equitable” Pay & Benefits as Company Sees Record Profits

• We go to the picket line in Iowa, where thousands of workers are on strike at John Deere after the United Auto Workers failed to reach an agreement with the company to improve wages. Despite reporting record profits in 2021, John Deere forced employees to work overtime and announced significant cuts to raises and benefits. Chris Laursen, 19-year John Deere worker on strike in Ottumwa, Iowa, says profit margins went to shareholders and a 160% salary increase for the CEO. “We came into work every day. We worked overtime, not only exposing ourselves, but our family, our friends,” says Laursen. “At the end of the day, we feel that the offer brought up is very arrogant and … is not going to cut it.”

=> ↺ “Dire Crisis of Poverty”: NYC Taxi Drivers Launch Hunger Strike to Demand Relief from Medallion Debt

• A group of New York City taxi drivers launched a hunger strike Wednesday demanding the city provide debt relief from their taxi medallion loans. Since 9/11, thousands of taxi drivers have accrued massive debt largely due to the city artificially inflating the cost of taxi medallions, the permits required to drive a taxi. Drivers have also denounced the mental health impacts triggered by the financial ruin. At least nine have died by suicide. “At this point, drivers have an average debt of $550,000, [and] the city has basically no solution. They’ve come out with what’s really just a cash bailout to the banks with no relief for the drivers,” says Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “Thousands of families are going to be left in a debt that will be beyond their lifetime, and they’ll be earning below minimum wage just to pay it off.” Despite popular congressional support for a solution being put forth by the union, Desai says Mayor Bill de Blasio hasn’t been willing to discuss the proposal.

=> ↺ Rich Homeowners Have Endangered Hawaii’s Beaches With Sand Burritos. The State Is Cracking Down.

• On a gusty Saturday morning, local residents and visitors lounged along Oahu’s picturesque Sunset Beach, breathing the thick, salty air and swimming in the deep blue and turquoise waters. Two women strolled along the beach, where waves glided up the deep deposits of golden sand, before stopping short and retreating.

• Amid the waves were tangled mounds of thick, black fabric, sandbags the size of large tree trunks, boulders and wood planks with protruding screws — the components of the makeshift seawalls that property owners have built along the public beach to protect their homes from being sucked into the ocean. The large piles that front about half a dozen homes block residents and visitors from walking along one of the world’s most famous stretches of sand.

=> ↺ Supply Chain Blues: Who’s Pulling Yours?

• A few facts that demonstrate how this has worked out:

• The other day there were 76 container ships off Long Beach.

=> ↺ A FL Worker Applied to 60 Jobs to Show Employers Are Driving US “Labor Shortage”

=> ↺ Opinion | Our Future vs. Neoliberalism

• Americans should likewise demand that our government stop wasting trillions of dollars to militarize the world and destroy countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and start solving our real problems, here and abroad.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ ‘End the Jim Crow Filibuster’: Republicans Rebuked After Torpedoing Voting Rights Bill

• Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a compromise voting rights bill—the Freedom to Vote Act—sparking a deluge of criticism from Democrats and progressive groups who said it was the latest evidence of the need to get rid of, or at least reform, the filibuster.

• “No Senate rule should stand in the way of the freedom to vote.”

=> ↺ Sanders to Host “What’s in the Damn Bill” Online Panel Discussion About Democrats’ Package

• As a couple of right-wing Democrats continue to block President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda despite the party’s full control of Congress, progressive lawmakers are planning to come together Wednesday evening to discuss key policy proposals for the budget reconciliation package at a livestreamed event hosted by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

• Watch:

=> ↺ The Most Progressive Governor In America?

• More than two years before George Floyd’s murder by a white police officer in Minneapolis sparked a national outcry for a crackdown on police violence, New Jersey Assemblywoman Britnee Timberlake was fighting to make the investigation of deaths in police custody fair and impartial, unclouded by the often intimate relationship between county prosecutors and law enforcement. At times it seemed like an uphill battle. Timberlake’s proposed bill, A3115, required the state to take charge of police-involved death investigations, moving prosecutions out of the counties where the killings occurred. It faced staunch opposition from the state’s powerful police unions and New Jersey’s attorney general. Because the attorney general was a high-profile appointee of Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, there was speculation that A3115 would be vetoed. But, Timberlake recalls, “Governor Murphy listened to us, even though he was getting pressure from folks who were very opposed. He knew that it was the right thing to do, and he proceeded according to his moral compass.”1

=> ↺ Rahm Emanuel Helped Cover Up Murder 7 Years Ago. Now He Wants to Be Ambassador.

=> ↺ Meet India Walton: Black Socialist on Democratic Ticket for Buffalo Mayor Snubbed by NY Dem Party

• As early voting kicks off Saturday in a nationally watched mayoral race in Buffalo, New York, we speak with India Walton, who shocked the Democratic establishment when she defeated four-term Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary. Since then, the self-described socialist has faced stiff opposition from within her party, with many top Democrats in the state, including Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Chuck Schumer, refusing to endorse her. State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs even compared Walton to former KKK leader David Duke in an interview, for which he later apologized. Walton is a Black single mother, a registered nurse and longtime community activist. If elected on November 2, she will be the first mayor of a major American city in decades who identifies as a socialist. Walton says she is “hyper-focused” on her campaign and does not want to take part in the vitriol of her opponents. “I am running for mayor of Buffalo as an expression of love,” Walton adds.

=> ↺ Manchin Threatens to Leave Democratic Party Over Social Infrastructure Bill

=> ↺ Biden Announces New Reconciliation Deal That Slashes Bill Nearly in Half

=> ↺ Adieu, Facebook: Irony and the Finale of Farewell

• Media was an influencer even then

• This quite neatly (and with irony to spare) brings me to today’s lecture.  Media; all forms, all platforms, all audible and written or posted or tweeted or…..ad infinitum media, is now nothing more than an echo chamber of increasing severity.  I liken it to the tinnitus I have in my ears; a ringing, buzzing, mosquito-like, annoyance that no matter what I try, I cannot escape.  And Facebook (FB), where I am posting this point-in-time piece, is the most egregious of the offenders.  Some may argue that Snap Chat or Twitter or any of the amorphous media upchucks are more, or less, offensive.  I never got on board any of those ship-sinkers.  A toe dipped delicately into Twitter, once, was all I could take.  It proved too much for my soul to ingest.

=> ↺ House passes bills to secure telecommunications infrastructure

• The Secure Equipment Act, sponsored by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), was approved by the House by a vote of 420-4, and would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take steps to block authorization of products from companies on the agency’s “covered list.”

• Companies on this list include Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE, which both Congress and the Trump administration took steps to block from the U.S. due to national security and espionage concerns.

=> ↺ Ebay founder funding Facebook whistleblower: report

• Politico reported on Wednesday that Omidyar provided financial support to Frances Haugen and the public relations firm helping her, a cushion that many corporate whistleblowers do not have.

=> ↺ China’s Bullying Is Becoming a Danger to the World and Itself

• Although news reports said that Ma had surfaced briefly in Hong Kong, there has also been talk that he may have been under some kind of house confinement during the last year. Ever since Ma gave a speech in October 2020 that criticized China’s financial regulators, Xi has cracked down on Alibaba’s global empire and blocked what would have been a record initial public offering of an affiliate company set to have taken place last November.

• It was as if Xi said: “You know, if I have to choose either having Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and all the other Chinese tech giants be global champions — with their own massive financial and data resources but growing beyond the grasp of the Chinese Communist Party — or having them be second-tier companies under my control, I’ll choose door No. 2.”

=> ↺ China: The patriotic ‘ziganwu’ bloggers who attack the West

• Guyanmuchan is among a new crop of bloggers known as the “ziganwu”, whose rise in fame on Chinese social media has been inextricably linked with the ascendancy of Chinese nationalism.

• Their name refers to the infamous “wumao” army of trolls who are paid to spread state propaganda – but the difference is that the “ziganwu” do it for free.

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Norwegian security services to investigate how reportage of mass killing spun out of control

• Contrary to initial reports, the man with Norwegian and Danish parentage who went on a killing spree in Kongsberg, some 60 km southwest of Oslo, did not murder his victims using a bow and arrow.

=> ↺ 70 percent of Americans say Facebook, Twitter do more harm than good: poll

• Asked about misinformation, 52 percent of respondents said Facebook was doing a poor job of regulating false content, compared to 27 percent who said it was doing a not so good job, and 12 percent who said it was doing good job. Only 1 percent called Facebook’s misinformation handling excellent, according to the survey.

• The poll was conducted in the days following whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony before a Senate panel accusing the company of putting profits before user safety.

• “Facebook should not get a free pass on choices it makes to prioritize growth and virality and reactiveness over public safety,” Haugen told the panel at the time. “They shouldn’t get a free pass on that because they’re paying for their profits right now with our safety.”

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ ‘This Is Sick’: Cable Companies Refuse to Air Ad Criticizing Corporate Donors to Florida’s Abortion Opponents

• One of the Democratic Party’s largest political advocacy groups planned to launch a six-figure ad campaign in three Florida media markets to denounce AT&T, Disney, and NBCUniversal for donating to anti-choice politicians—who are trying to enact a Texas-like abortion ban, the group says—but cable giants Comcast and Spectrum have refused to air the television commercial, the Tampa Bay Times reported Tuesday.

• “Lawmakers did it in Texas, and now they want to try to do it in Florida,” actors say in the ad, paid for by American Bridge 21st Century. “Big corporate money is funding them. What are they doing?”

=> ↺ LinkedIn (Mostly) Exits China, Citing Escalating Demands For Censorship

• Less than week from its horrendous decision to help China’s censorship apparatus keep Chinese residents from accessing the accounts of American journalists, LinkedIn has announced it will no longer be offering the full-featured version of its quasi-social media platform in the country. (via the BBC)

=> ↺ Content Moderation Case Studies: Snapchat Disables GIPHY Integration After Racist ‘Sticker’ Is Discovered (2018)

• Summary: Snapchat debuted to immediate success a decade ago, drawing in millions of users with its playful take on instant messaging that combined photos and short videos with a large selection of filters and “stickers.” Stickers are graphics that can be applied to messages, allowing users to punch up their presentations (so to speak).

=> ↺ After lecture is canceled, free speech debate roils science academia

• In a statement on Twitter, the physicist, David Romps, said Monday that he is stepping down as director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center, or BASC, “at the end of this calendar year or when a replacement is ready, whichever is sooner.” Romps will remain a professor in the school’s department of earth and planetary sciences, a university spokesperson said.

• The incident has added to the debate about when, if ever, it is appropriate to suppress speech on college campuses.

=> ↺ Cancel Culture Has a Lot to Answer For

• An incident in early October involving MIT, a jewel in world academia’s crown, presents an especially egregious instance of this institutional failing, aggravated by that university’s cowardice in the face of intimidation and threats by self-righteous students and their faculty allies. MIT had invited Dorian Abbot, a University of Chicago geophysicist, to deliver the prestigious John Carlson Lecture on climate and the potential of life on other planets—a topic on which Abbot is a recognized expert. Unfortunately for Abbot and his intended audience, however, he had recently committed the campus equivalent of hara-kiri by taking seriously the norms of academic freedom which MIT and other schools claim to cherish.

• Abbot, in online discussions of the growing “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” movement on American campuses, had stressed “the importance of treating each person as an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic context,” he continued, “that means giving everyone a fair and equal opportunity when they apply for a position as well as allowing them to express their opinions openly, even if you disagree with them.” And in a co-authored Newsweek op-ed in August, he had argued that DEI as currently practiced on campus “violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment” and “treats persons as merely means to an end, giving primacy to a statistic over the individuality of a human being.”

=> ↺ James Bond Has No Time for China

• China’s absence from Bondworld is part of a general absence in American cinema. Out of fear of losing the Chinese market, and amid the aggressive use of commercial soft power by Beijing, in the almost quarter-century since Brad Pitt’s “Seven Years in Tibet” and Richard Gere’s “Red Corner,” no major Hollywood release has portrayed the Communist regime in a substantially negative light. Instead, China appears in our pop productions in soft focus, as in “The Martian” and “Arrival,” or else takes a fantastical form, as in “Mulan” and “Shang-Chi.”

• Or just as often, as in the Craig movies, it barely appears at all. The Asian pop culture that has increasing influence on America is mostly Korean and Japanese, while China — despite all its power, despite our economic intertwinement, despite its crucial role in our political and now our public-health debates — remains more a domain for experts, its internal life and culture more distant and opaque.

=> ↺ Digital Services Act: bad decisions can lead to global consequences – Access Now

• The European Union (EU) has proved to be a global trendsetter in internet legislation, but bad decisions made now can have irreversible global impacts. It’s time to set a positive example through the Digital Services Act (DSA).

• To support the EU in upholding transparency and accountability, and establishing and promoting a world standard for platform governance, civil society from across the world formed the Digital Services Act Human Rights Alliance in May, 2021. Today, the group is calling on the EU to focus on the protection of fundamental rights, laying the foundations for global human rights-centric lawmaking.

• “Decisions around internet legislation made within the EU have global consequences — for better or for worse,” said Eliska Pirkova, Europe Policy Analyst and Global Freedom of Expression Lead at Access Now. “If we don’t get the Digital Services Act right today, we could be watching a wave of dangerous copycat legislation wash over the rest of the globe.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Opinion | Inhumane Border Policing Only Exacerbates Displacement and Suffering

• On September 22, as I descended from the ferry into the bustling port of Lesbos, Greece, I was stopped by a police officer. “Don’t worry, it’s just a security check,” he said, gesturing for me to follow him, and insisting my friend come too. We were directed to a beige trailer at the end of the port, where I, an Arab woman, along with my white German friend, joined an Afghan man and a Black man. The belongings of the latter were strewn across the table, as the officer interrogated him about each card in his billfold—his residency card identified him as an asylum seeker. The officer then patted him down aggressively, grabbing at each of his legs.

=> ↺ Opinion | The US Criminal System Is Broken: Mandatory Minimum Sentences Must End

• This essay is part of the Brennan Center’s series examining the punitive excess that has come to define America’s criminal legal system.

=> ↺ In the Light of Youth

• The years of childhood, the stupider adults used to assure us, are the happiest years of our lives, but as every child knows, they are, in fact, among the most horrible. When we are little, nothing makes sense, and everything is the wrong size. There are spikes and sharp edges everywhere. The people who unaccountably have charge of us seem incomprehensible, or mad, or both. Then we are sent to school, and the real trials and torments begin. We quickly come to understand that what we have to learn in order to get on in the world, or at least to get by in it, is how to impersonate ourselves convincingly; it’s a hard task, and many of us fail at it.

=> ↺ How to Survive Being a Student-Survivor

• “I was blackout drunk and I woke up naked with my lip busted,” said Jane, a University of Missouri student who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym to protect her privacy. “I looked down and I was naked.”

=> ↺ Requiem for Bachman’s Warbler

• Sobering news indeed, though Bachman’s Warbler, easily overlooked, is hardly material for the front page. And it’s not quite final yet: technically, there is a 60-day public comment period during which the public can protest the decision. Yet, barring new evidence of a miraculous sighting, no one expects that little bird to claw its way back from being extinct to the dubious honor of just being endangered. Like other bird species recently declared extinct, Bachman’s Warbler, once at home in the bottomland forests of the Southeast and, during the winter, in Cuba, fell victim to what kills so many birds—habitat destruction (along with hurricanes in Cuba). Bachman’s Warbler was last seen in 1988.

• Why lament the disappearance of just one species, however pretty? The history of our planet has been marked by extinctions. Even as we now worry about what Subhankar Banerjee has called a “full-scale winnowing of vast populations of the planet’s invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants,” the fact remains that so many organisms are still waiting to be discovered. Scoop up a handful of dirt, the entomologist E.O. Wilson once mused, and you are holding billions of microspecies yet unknown to humans. And what is death in nature anyway? Darwin, more than 150 years ago, quipped that it was no big deal: “It is generally prompt, …no fear is felt, and the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.” But do they?

=> ↺ No, Black People Can’t Be “Racists”

=> ↺ Indigenous Movements are the First, and Often Last, Line of Defense in the Fight Against Fossil Fuels

• Ironically the tap was opened on October 1, only days before Indigenous Peoples Day on October 11 and weeks before the global climate summit in Glasgow begins on October 31. Ignoring demands from climate activists, the Biden administration refused to cancel the permit. This reflected a pattern in which administration officials seem to be stuck in a pattern of dithering instead of following up climate action pledges with actions.

• Public opinion in Minnesota was bitterly divided. Although Democratic voters opposed the project by a 64 to 21 percent margin, Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz and Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith have refused to oppose Line 3 — or even to criticize the collaboration between law enforcement and Enbridge in the violent suppression of protests.

=> ↺ Tennessee Children Were Illegally Jailed. Now Members of Congress Are Asking For an Investigation.

• Eleven members of Congress sent a letter Wednesday asking the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee, based on reporting published this month by ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio.

• The letter, sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, says, “Tennessee’s children deserve to enjoy their childhoods without the fear of being unjustly searched, detained, charged, and imprisoned.” The letter’s signers, all Democrats, include Reps. Steve Cohen, from Memphis; Val Demings, from Florida; Cori Bush, from Missouri; and Ted Lieu, from California. Cohen is on the House Judiciary Committee and chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

=> ↺ Striketober: Labor Militancy Grows as U.S. Workers Walk Off the Job & IATSE Members Get Tentative Deal

• We begin our coverage of what some are calling “Striketober” with a look at how the union of 60,000 television and film production workers averted a strike just hours before a midnight deadline on Saturday, when it reached a tentative agreement with an association of Hollywood producers representing companies like Walt Disney, Netflix and Amazon. The tentative deal brings members of IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, higher pay, longer breaks, better healthcare and pension benefits. Some members say the deal doesn’t go far enough, and about 40,000 members from 13 Hollywood locals must still approve the pact. Jacobin writer Alex Press says the averted strike is part of a “broader moment” of labor militancy across the United States, including workers at Amazon, Kellogg’s and elsewhere. “Workers are willing to fight back,” she says. “They understand they have more leverage right now.”

=> ↺ Report: Client-Side Scanning Is An Insecure Nightmare Just Waiting To Be Exploited By Governments

• In August, Apple declared that combating the spread of CSAM (child sexual abuse material) was more important than protecting millions of users who’ve never used their devices to store or share illegal material. While encryption would still protect users’ data and communications (in transit and at rest), Apple had given itself permission to inspect data residing on people’s devices before allowing it to be sent to others.

=> ↺ Empty Gestures or Substantive Change? On the Nobel Prize in Literature and Its Discontents

• It is premature to suggest that the Academy has finally decided to break away from its ethnocentric past and genuinely embrace the incredible literature constantly originating from the Global South. One can be excused for appearing too cynical – after all, since its inception in 1901, over 80% of those who have received the award hail from Europe and North America. In the last decade, Chinese novelist, Mo Yan, was the only non-Western author to receive the award in 2012.

• This raises several grim possibilities:

=> ↺ Vice President Harris Confronts a Reality Gap

• There is absolutely no doubt that she and her staff see what followed as a minor political disaster. Here is what happened. One of the students (probably in her early 20s) noted that, on a previous occasion, the vice resident had said that “the power of the people and demonstrations and organizing is very valuable in America.” Then the student described recent impressive demonstrations across the country against Israeli treatment of Palestinians, adding that it all added up to “ethnic genocide and a displacement of people—the same that [once] happened in America.” So, the student asked, how come the U.S. continues to give Israel aid and support? She closed by observing that “I feel like there’s a lack of listening” on the part of government officials.

• The student was correct in her description, though perhaps inexact in the use of the term genocide. Even so, her assertion of “ethnic genocide” (a charge the Zionists immediately labeled a “patent lie”) was warranted if not in the sense of gas chambers—the only way the Zionists choose to define genocide—but in the sense of the forced death of a culture. Mass displacement, be it through imposed exile or apartheid ghettoization, is historically equivalent to cultural genocide. It was Harris’s failure to challenge the student’s use of the term “ethnic genocide” that subsequently got her in political trouble with the Zionists.

=> ↺ Tlaib Leads Call for Biden to Take ‘Commonsense Steps’ to Aid Afghan Evacuees

• Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib led two dozen other Democrats in sending a letter pressuring U.S. President Joe Biden to take several “concrete, commonsense steps” to aid Afghan evacuees with “their transition into life in the United States.”

• About 53,000 Afghans—roughly half of them children—were brought to the United States during an evacuation of American troops earlier this year. In the letter, Taib and the other lawmakers called on the president to:

=> ↺ Why can’t we say ‘woman’ anymore?

• The inclusive objective is worthy.

• The erasure of women is not.

• “Woman” is in danger of becoming a dirty word … struck from the lexicon of officialdom, eradicated from medical vocabulary and expunged from conversation.

• Which is a bitchy thing to do to half the world’s population.

=> ↺ Unarmed man shot 8 times by police files $26 million lawsuit

• Turbyfill was also charged with felony reckless handling of a firearm, according to a special grand jury indictment in July. Turbyfill had been placed on administrative duties since the shooting, according to a past statement from the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s office.

• The county sheriff is also listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, and is stated to have responsibility for the actions by directing and supervising Turbyfill’s deputies.

=> ↺ Facebook paying fine to settle US suit on discrimination

• Facebook is paying a $4.75 million fine and up to $9.5 million to eligible victims to resolve the Justice Department’s allegations that it discriminated against U.S. workers in favor of foreigners with special visas to fill high-paying jobs.

• Facebook also agreed in the settlement announced Tuesday to train its employees in anti-discrimination rules and to conduct more widespread advertising and recruitment for job opportunities in its permanent labor certification program, which allows an employer to hire a foreign worker to work permanently.

• The department’s civil rights division said the social network giant “routinely refused” to recruit, consider or hire U.S. workers, a group that includes U.S. citizens and nationals, people granted asylum, refugees and lawful permanent residents, for positions it had reserved for temporary visa holders.

=> ↺ Tibet is now in the hands of a CPC leader sanctioned for Xinjiang crimes.

• According to Chinese state media, a rising Chinese leader sanctioned by Western countries for alleged human rights breaches in Xinjiang has been nominated as the CPC’s chief of Tibet. Wang Junzheng, 58, was the political commissar of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and deputy secretary of the CPC committee of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ From Bangkok to Burlington — The Public Interest Social Internet

• In the last installment, we discussed platforms that tie messaging apps together. These let users chat with more people more easily, no matter where they are or what app they’re using, making it possible for someone using the latest chat tool, like Slack, to talk to someone on a decades old-platform like IRC. But localized services matter to the public interest internet as well. While  forums like Nextdoor have drawn attention (and users) for offering neighborhood communication regardless of your zip code, other services that predate those—and get around many of their controversies—do exist. 

• Is the best of the Internet doomed to exist in just some narrow strongholds? 

• This post will be about two very different social networks:

=> ↺ #KeepItOn: Eswatini authorities shut down internet to quell protests, ask people to email grievances – Access Now

• Authorities in Eswatini have again disrupted access to the internet and social media platforms in response to ongoing pro-democracy protests. On Friday, October 15, 2021, the government shut down social media platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter for approximately two hours. As protests intensified in the country, and reports of police brutality against people continued surfaced, on October 20, 2021, authorities ordered mobile operators to block social media, targeting Facebook and WhatsApp.

=> ↺ Why didn’t the web disrupt mobile, you ask? | Stop at Zona-M

• There is a very long post at Substack, that tries to answer why the World Wide Web replaced native programs installed and running locally on desktop computers, but not on mobile ones, that is smartphones and tablets.

• The post makes long, enthralling comparisons between the evolution and survival strategies of the web and those of life on Earth. Here are some quotes, to give an idea of the whole thing:

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ MLB In Talks To Offer Streaming For All Teams’ Home Games In-Market Even Without A Cable Subscription

• Streaming options for professional and major college sports has long been a fascination of mine. That is in part because I’m both a fairly big fan of major sports and a fan of streaming over the wire instead of having cable television. My family cut the cord a couple of years back and hasn’t looked back since, almost entirely satisfied with our decision. The one area of concern here continues to be being able to stream our local sports teams, as most of the pro sports leagues still have stupid local blackout rules. MLB.TV, the league’s fantastic streaming service, has these rules too. While using a DNS proxy is trivially easy, easier would be the league coming to terms with modernity and ending the blackout rules. Notably, MLB did this in 2015 when it came specifically to Fox Sports broadcasts for 15 teams, but as I noted at the time:

=> ↺ British Telecom Wants Netflix To Pay A Tax Simply Because Squid Game Is Popular

• For years telecom executives, jealous of internet services and ad revenue, have demanded that content and services companies pay them an extra toll for no reason. You saw this most pointedly during the net neutrality fracas, when AT&T routinely insisted Google should pay it additional money for no coherent reason. Telecom execs have also repeatedly claimed that Netflix should pay them more money just because. Basically, telecoms have tried to use their gatekeeper and political power to offload network investment costs to somebody else, and have spent literally the last twenty years using a range of incoherent arguments to try and justify it with varying degrees of success.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Don’t Be Distracted by Possible Facebook Rebrand, Say Critics of Tech Behemoth

• Digital rights advocates on Wednesday shrugged off reports that Facebook is planning to change its name by accusing the company of attempting to divert attention from its failure to address problems plaguing the platform and calling for meaningful regulation of—and in some cases, breaking up—the social media giant.

• “Like Big Tobacco and Big Oil rebranded to deflect attention for their crimes, Facebook thinks that a rebrand can help them change the subject.”

=> ↺ New Senate Antitrust Bill Reaction, Charter Making Executive Changes, T-Mobile, Verizon Top Charts

• A Senate antitrust bill introduced Monday that would empower the Federal Trade Commission to further regulate technology companies will harm start ups and small business, according to the Consumer Technology Association.

=> ↺ Support Builds for Bipartisan Legislation From Klobuchar, Grassley, and Colleagues to Rein in Big Tech

• U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today introduced bipartisan legislation to restore competition online by establishing commonsense rules of the road for dominant digital platforms to prevent them from abusing their market power to harm competition, online businesses, and consumers.

=> ↺ Facebook Is a Monopoly — Here’s Why That Matters

• According to a 2020 Social Media Trends report from Global Web Index, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Argentina, Malaysia, Colombia, and Brazil have some of the highest WhatsApp user rates. In all seven countries mentioned, more than 90% of [Internet] users between ages 16-64 are on WhatsApp. Importantly, WhatsApp also allows for free international communication, making it an especially popular app for diasporic communities and people who frequently communicate with family and friends across borders.

=> ↺ Xinuos sues IBM

• A company called Xinuos has announced a lawsuit against IBM and Red Hat that has a familiar echo to it. “Xinuos alleges that the IBM and Red Hat conspiracy has harmed the open-source community and specifically Xinuos’ OpenServer 10 product, which is based on FreeBSD, an open-source UNIX-based operating system and alternative to Red Hat’s Linux-based open-source operating system, RHEL. ‘By dominating the Unix/Linux server operating system market, competing open-source operating systems, like our FreeBSD-based OpenServer 10, have been pushed out of the market.’” The full text of the suit [PDF] is available for those wanting the details.

=> ↺ Xinuos sues IBM for patent infringement

• Software company Xinuos is suing IBM and Red Hat, claiming they stole the Linux source code and pushed its own products out of the market. The move rekindles a legal spat over ownership of the original Unix source.

• Xinuos, which is based in the US Virgin Islands, sells server operating systems to commercial customers. The lawsuit, filed in the US Court of the Virgin Islands, accuses IBM and Red Hat of using wrongfully copied software code and engaging in anti-competitive misconduct to corner the market in Unix and Linux server operating systems.

• The complaint claims IBM stole Xinuos’ intellectual property and misled the public in its SEC statements by saying a third party that owned all of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights had waived all infringement claims against it.

=> ↺ Xinuos Sues IBM & Red Hat for Allegedly Copying Software Code

• Xinuos is known for their open-source operating systems (OpenServer) tailored for enterprises.

• Out of the blue, it looks like they filed a copyright infringement and antitrust lawsuit against IBM and Red Hat in the United States District Court of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas and St. John Division.

• Xinuos alleges that IBM illegally copied its server operating system’s source code and engaged with Red Hat to proceed with anti-competitive behavior in the industry.

Copyrights

=> ↺ YouTube Rippers Oppose RIAA’s Worldwide ‘Blocking’ Injunction & Massive Damages

• YouTube rippers FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com are opposing the RIAA’s request for a permanent injunction and $82 million in damages at a Virginia federal court. While the sites’ owner previously backed out of the lawsuit, his lawyers argue that a worldwide shutdown order is too broad and that the requested damages are too high.

=> ↺ Trump Invokes Presidential ‘Absolute Immunity’ in Electric Avenue Copyright Suit

• Last month, lawyers acting for Donald Trump failed to have a court dismiss a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by musician Eddy Grant over the unlicensed use of his track Electric Avenue in a campaign video. Trump has now responded with an answer to the complaint which, among other things, claims that the civil lawsuit fails due to “Presidential absolute immunity.”

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