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● 12.09.21

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● Links 9/12/2021: Pgpool-II 4.3.0 and European Commission Releases Free Software

Posted in News Roundup at 4:54 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Server

=> ↺ Want to get aboard the Kubernetes Express? Start learning now

=> ↺ The Register

=> ↺ Containers 101: In-person in Columbia, SC; Online from Anywhere – FOSS Force

• With a brand spanking new version of Kubernetes being released today, here’s an event that might be just what the doctor ordered for many.

• On Thursday, December 9 (that’s tomorrow, and we apologize for being so late with this), the folks behind the All Things Open conference are presenting a single-night free event in Columbia, South Carolina called Containers 101.

=> ↺ Announcing Istio 1.12.1

• This release contains bug fixes to improve robustness. This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.12.0 and Istio 1.12.1

=> ↺ Industry Participants Discuss Security, Benefits of Internet-Connected Devices

• Many in-home appliances currently on the market, such as washing machines and refrigerators, are connected to the [Internet], which opens it up to [cracking].

• During a Federal Communications Bar Association event Tuesday, Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge, expressed concern over this trend in the consumer market.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Reptilian Power Play | Coder Radio 443

• We peak in on one of the nastiest corporate moves in a while, and Chris has a big confession.

=> ↺ FLOSS Weekly 659: Open Source and Amateur Radio – Steve Stroh

• Steve Stroh (N8GNJ) joins Doc Searls and Jonathan Bennett (KG5IAR) for an hour of conversation regarding the world of wireless communication, HAM radio and open source. It’s quite the masterclass as he discusses how HAM radio modeled and still practices openness for the world, packet radio, TNCs, SDRs (and transceivers) WSJT, Helium, LoRa, the ups and downs of crypto, WSPRnet, CHIRP, disaster recovery, making antennas, StarLink, mesh networks and much more.

=> ↺ Freespire 8.0 Run Through – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at Freespire 8.0.

=> ↺ Freespire 8.0

• Today we are looking at Freespire 8.0. It is based on Ubuntu 20.04, Linux Kernel 5.4, XFCE 4.16, and uses about 900MB – 1.5GB of ram when idling.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ AMD Linux EDAC Driver Prepares For Zen 4, RDDR5 / LRDDR5 Memory – Phoronix

• AMD’s Linux engineers continue preparing for next-gen EPYC server processors based on Zen 4 and supporting DDR5 memory.

• In addition to recent work like preparing for up to 12 CCDs per socket, temperature monitoring, and other bits, out today is a set of patches for AMD’s EDAC (Error Detection and Correction) driver code for the next-generation Zen 4 server processors.

• The work sent out today includes adding support for RDDR5 and LRDDR5 memory support to the driver (conventional DDR5 support was already mainlined). This is for Registered DDR5 memory support as well as Load-Reduced DDR5 memory support. LRDDR5 support is for the higher memory density servers, similar to LRDIMMs with prior DDR generations.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ RADV Working On ETC2 Emulation Support For Newer Radeon GPUs To Satisfy Android – Phoronix

• Mesa’s Radeon Vulkan driver “RADV” is implementing emulated support for ETC2 texture compression to use with newer AMD GPUs to improve compatibility with Google’s Android operating system.

• ETC2 is the royalty-free texture compression standard developed by Ericsson that has worked its way into the OpenGL and OpenGL ES specifications. RADV already supports ETC2 with Radeon GPUs having the support, but that is rather limited to the likes of AMD Stoney APUs and Vega/GFX9 graphics processors. Unfortunately, the ETC2 support on the AMD GPU side has been rather spotty and not supported by newer APUs/GPUs.

=> ↺ XWayland gets DRM leasing support for helping VR on Linux

• A big improvement has been merged into XWayland called DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) Leasing, which should allow good VR support under Wayland. Something we’ve been waiting on!

Applications

=> ↺ 5 Best Terminal Based Linux Monitoring Tools

• We are going to explore the 5 best terminal based monitoring tools that you can use on your Linux systems to keep you fully aware of their status.

• Everyone will agree that Linux monitoring tools are required to ensure a healthy Linux infrastructure. Hence, a performance monitoring solution becomes important to observe the health, activities, and capability of your Linux systems.

• Fortunately, there are many Linux monitoring tools available out there. In this article we are going to talk about 5 lightweight terminal-based and free-to-use tools to monitors servers and desktops running Linux.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to – Inkscape – rounded corners

=> ↺ Install WPS Office on Debian 11 Bullseye or 10 Buster Linux

• The free office suite “WPS Office Free” which was earlier known as Kingsoft Office Free is one of the best free alternatives available for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It is not open source like LibreOffice but readily available for Linux systems. Here we learn the commands or steps to install WPS Office on Debian 11 Bullseye.

• The WPS office package supports and opens all documents saved in Microsoft file types such as DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, and PPTX. Functionally, the three modules offer a professional range of services: from the spell checker, thesaurus and mail merge function via formula editor, WordArt function, and target value search for tables to saving presentations as MPEG videos. The creation of PDFs is also possible with “WPS Office Free”.

=> ↺ GNU Linux bash – analyze get detailed info on hardware summary with inxi

=> ↺ Understanding the PHP values in the php.ini configuration file

• In this tutorial, we are going to explain what contains the “php.ini” configuration file and what is used for. The PHP ini configuration file is a special file for PHP applications used to control PHP settings what users can or can not do with the website.

• When PHP is installed the server is configured to use the default PHP settings, but sometimes we need to change the behavior of the PHP at runtime and this is when this configuration file comes to in use.

=> ↺ Using whois/jwhois on Linux | Network World

• The whois and jwhois commands allow you to retrieve a lot of information on Internet domains–likely a lot more than you might imagine. Here’s how these commands work and how they can be useful.

=> ↺ How To Install Siege Benchmarking Tool on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Siege Benchmarking Tool on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Siege is one of the popular HTTP load testings and benchmarking utility tools to measure the performance of web servers under stress. You can perform a stress test using a single URL with a specific number of users or you can put all URLs in files and stress them simultaneously. Siege reports the total number of hits recorded, bytes transferred, response time, concurrency, and return status. Siege supports HTTP/1.0 and 1.1 protocols, the GET and POST directives, cookies, transaction logging, and basic authentication.

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

=> ↺ Find out who Edited Files in Linux – kifarunix.com

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to find out who edited files in Linux. Linux provides user space tools for security auditing called auditd (Audit daemon). auditd keeps track of all the changes happening on the system and generate logs that can be analyzed so as to get an insight into system security posture. This include finding out who edit what files at what specific time.

=> ↺ Linux Fu: The Ultimate Dual Boot Laptop? | Hackaday

• I must confess, that I try not to run Windows any more than absolutely necessary. But for many reasons, it is occasionally necessary. In particular, I have had several laptops that are finicky with Linux. I still usually dual boot them, but I often leave Windows on them for one reason or another. I recently bought a new Dell Inspiron and the process of dual booting it turned out to be unusually effective but did bring up a few challenges.

• If you ever wanted a proper dual-booting laptop, you’ll be interested in how this setup works. Sure, you can always repartition the drive, but the laptop has a relatively small drive and is set up very specifically to work with the BIOS diagnostics and recovery so it is always a pain to redo the drive without upsetting the factory tools.

• Since the laptop came with a 512 GB NVMe drive, I wanted to upgrade the drive anyway. So one option would have been to put a bigger drive in and then go the normal route. That was actually my intention, but I wound up going a different way.

Games

=> ↺ The Dramatic Rise of Esports Worldwide

• The Boiling Steam Matrix Room is full of surprises. Turns out that one of our readers, @Grazen, is in a senior leadership role at an Esports company. Since Esports are growing like crazy these days, it was a great opportunity to ask him for more details about the market and where everything is headed (and if Linux fits anywhere currently).

• [...]

• Adam: I play all of them, badly, but I keep trying. I would say Overwatch is my favorite to play but tough to master. Overwatch and League of Legends also work well via Lutris in Linux so it makes it easier for me to play as I don’t generally use Windows or OSX. There’s of course a native Linux version of Counter-Strike but I don’t believe it’s as well optimized as the Windows version. Call of Duty isn’t playable on Linux due to the anti-cheat system used.

=> ↺ Assistive Tech And Video Games | Hackaday

• The basic premise of the circuit is pretty simple. She DIY’d a few contact switches using conductive plates made of cardboard, duct tape, and aluminum foil. The output of the switch is read by analog input pins on an Arduino Leonardo. When the switches are off, the analog input pins are pulled HIGH using 1 MegaOhm resistors. But when the user hits their head on one of the four conductive pads, the switch is engaged, and the analog input pins are shorted to ground.

=> ↺ How to install Grapple! by Barji on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Grapple! by Barji 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.

• This tutorial will only work on Chromebooks with an Intel or AMD CPU (with Linux Apps Support) and not those with an ARM64 architecture CPU.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ This Extension Reproduces Old Fashioned Desktop Cube in GNOME 40 / 41

• Remember the old fashioned Desktop Cube effect? Almost 10 years ago, Ubuntu user may enable this Compiz effect, so press and hold Ctrl+Alt key and drag the mouse will turn Desktop into a rotatable cube.

=> ↺ State persistence for apps and sessions: Endless Orange Week | Philip Withnall

• Those two bullet points hide a lot of complexity, and it’s not surprising that I didn’t get particularly far in this project! It requires coordinated changes in a lot of components: GLib, GTK, gnome-session and applications themselves.

• A lot of these changes have been prototyped or worked on before, by various people, but nothing has yet come together. In fact, gnome-session used to fully support restoring apps to a certain degree — before it was ported away from XSMP, it used to support saving the set of apps when closing a session, and re-starting those apps when starting the session again. It did not support restoring the state of each app, though, just the fact that it was running.

=> ↺ GstVA in GStreamer 1.20 – Herostratus’ legacy

• It was a year and half ago when I announced a new VA-API H.264 decoder element in gst-plugins-bad. And it was bundled in GStreamer release 1.18 a couple months later. Since then, we have been working adding more decoders and filters, fixing bugs, and enhancing its design. I wanted to publish this blog post as soon as release 1.20 was announced, but, since the developing window is closed, which means no more new features will be included, I’ll publish it now, to create buzz around the next GStreamer release.

=> ↺ Carlos Garnacho: An Eventful Instant

• Traditionally, GNOME Shell has been compressing pointer motion events so its handling is synchronized to the monitor refresh rate, this means applications would typically see approximately 60 events per second (or 144 if you follow the trends).

• This trait inherited from the early days of Clutter was not just a shortcut, handling motion events implies looking up the actor that is beneath the pointer (mainly so we know which actor to send the event to) and that was an expensive enough operation that it made sense to do with the lowest frequency possible. If you are a recurrent reader of this blog you might remember how this area got great improvements in the past.

• But that alone is not enough, motion events can also end up handled in JS land, and it is in the best interest of GNOME Shell (and people complaining about frame loss) that we don’t need to jump into the JavaScript machinery too often in the course of a frame. This again makes sense to keep to a minimum.

=> ↺ ‘Video Trimmer’ GTK App Adds Dark Mode, New Encode Option

• Among the changes offered in Video Trimmer 0.7.0 is a new checkbox for “accurate trimming with re-encoding” to the output file selection dialog. Whenever you need a frame-perfect result you may want to make use of this option — though it can sometimes result in lower quality, so YMMV.

• As well as more accurate trimming, the look of the app has been given a once-over. The design of Video Trimmer is said to better match the GNOME Adwaita theme, and the app now sports a dark style/dark mode (and uses this by default, in-keeping with other editing tools).

• Finally, the app makes finding your exports a touch easier. When video trimming is complete the app shows a(n in-app) notification. As of this release that notification gains a “Show in Files” button. This lets you quickly locate the resulting clip.

Distributions

New Releases

=> ↺ Meet Calculate Linux 22!

• We are pleased to announce the release of Calculate Linux 22.

• With this new version, you will be able to smoothly update your system after a long period of time. We also ported the Calculate Utilities to Python 3, and set PipeWire as the default sound server.

• Calculate Linux Desktop featuring the KDE (CLD), Cinnamon (CLDC), LXQt (CLDL), Mate (CLDM) or Xfce (CLDX and CLDXS) desktop, Calculate Directory Server (CDS), Calculate Linux Scratch (CLS) and Calculate Scratch Server (CSS) are now available for download.

=> ↺ Tails 4.25 launches new graphical backup tool

• We already have between us Tails 4.25, the latest version of “Portable operating system that protects you from surveillance and censorship”, or at least that’s how the project describes itself. For those who are lost, it is a Linux distribution belonging to the Tor Project and a live session aimed at those who seek security and anonymity.

• Tails 4.25 arrives with some important news. The first is the new graphical utility to backup persistent storage to another Tails USB stick, which automates the backup process described in the project documentation and requires using the command line. The tool is quite basic for now, but those responsible hope to improve it in the future. At least it is a step forward in carrying out a process that may be important to the users of this distribution.

• The other important novelty of Tails 4.25 is the adding an entry called “Tails (External Hard Disk)” in the GRUB boot loader. This feature has been added to be able to start the system from an external hard drive or a USB memory that used to return the following error: Unable to find a medium containing a live file system (Cannot find a media that contains a live file system.)

Debian Family

=> ↺ Install WPS Office on Debian 11 Bullseye or 10 Buster Linux

• The free office suite “WPS Office Free” which was earlier known as Kingsoft Office Free is one of the best free alternatives available for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It is not open source like LibreOffice but readily available for Linux systems. Here we learn the commands or steps to install WPS Office on Debian 11 Bullseye.

• The WPS office package supports and opens all documents saved in Microsoft file types such as DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, and PPTX. Functionally, the three modules offer a professional range of services: from the spell checker, thesaurus and mail merge function via formula editor, WordArt function, and target value search for tables to saving presentations as MPEG videos. The creation of PDFs is also possible with “WPS Office Free”.

=> ↺ How to Install Zend OPcache in Debian and Ubuntu

• This article was earlier written for APC (Alternative PHP Cache), but APC is deprecated and no longer working with PHP 5.4 onwards, now you should use OPcache for better and faster performance as explained in this article…

• OpCache is an advanced caching module based on opcode that works similar to other caching solutions. It significantly improves PHP performance, and your website by extension, by storing your site’s pre-compiled PHP pages in shared memory. This eliminates the need for PHP to constantly load these pages on each request by the server.

=> ↺ How to install the latest version of nano text editor – Unixcop the Unix / Linux the admins deams

• First, install Homebrew from the project’s website. In our chaos, I have opted for Debian for the demo. So, read our post

• How to install Homebrew on Debian 11?

• After the installation has been successful. It is then convenient to uninstall the version of nano that we have on the system.

=> ↺ Ana Guerrero Lopez, Aurelien Jarno, EDF, ESA & Debian toxic woman

• Here in the Debian Community News Team, we are disgusted about violence against women. Yet we also want to tell the truth: every time a toxic woman like Ana Guerrero Lopez makes a conspiracy, many innocent women and volunteers suffer.

• Ana thinks she is special. She works for a nuclear company in France. Her husband works for the European Space Agency. Therefore, she can write this horrible defamation and she will never suffer any consequences. Other women will suffer for Ana’s arrogance.

• Ana never created any real software for Debian users. Ana became a Debian Developer by going to DebConf and meeting the men. Ninety-nine percent of the code in a Debian release comes from real developers. People like Ana are imposters, they take our code, they put it into packages and they create these big titles for themselves to hide the developers who did the real work.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ The 10 Best Ubuntu-Based Linux Distributions of All Time

• Ubuntu, the Debian-based Linux OS, has been around since 2004; ever since, it has spawned some excellent distributions that are, in turn, based on Ubuntu’s source code.

• These distributions continue to mete out varying degrees of success for serving diverse use cases. The following list of community-maintained Ubuntu distributions is technology’s current creme.

• Without further ado, let’s find out what makes each of these Ubuntu-based distros tick.

=> ↺ Zorin OS 16 Lite is a great Linux-based Windows 11 alternative for older PCs

• I’m a big fan of Windows 11, and I highly recommend it. With that said, the operating system has a huge problem — it is incompatible with many older computers. This is by design, as Microsoft purposely blocks some older hardware. While there are ways to bypass the compatibility check, Microsoft can close them at any time, including possibly blocking future updates. It just isn’t worth the hassle, folks. Ultimately, if the Windows 11 installer says your PC is incompatible, you should either stay on Windows 10 while it is supported or switch to Linux.

=> ↺ Revisiting default initramfs compression

=> ↺ Ubuntu Rethinking Its Initramfs Compression Strategy – Phoronix

• While Ubuntu switched from LZ4 to Zstd for compressing its initramfs, they now are finding they were too aggressive in defaulting to Zstd with the highest compression level of 19. Due to speed and memory consumption concerns, they are looking at lowering their Zstd compression level.

• Ubuntu had switched from LZ4 at its maximum compression level of 9 to going with Zstd, which is wonderful, and has a maximum level of 19. But with that highest compression level they have found the initramfs decompression to be too slow and consumes too much memory. In particular, for low-end devices and embedded hardware like the Raspberry Pi Zero with just 512MB of RAM, it just crashes.

Devices/Embedded

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ SiFive adds mid-range Essential 6-Series RISC-V cores, including two Linux-ready models

• SiFive announced a “21G3” release of its RISC-V cores, including a new, embedded focused “Essential 6-Series” featuring the Linux-ready, 64-bit U64 and a similar U64-MC designed for quad-core SoCs.

• Leading RISC-V core and SoC vendor SiFive, which last week unveiled a Cortex-A77 like SiFive Performance P650 core for up to 16-core SoCs, has released a 21G3 update to its entire product line. SiFive also announced a new mid-range line of 64-bit and 32-bit Essential 6-Series core IP, including Linux-friendly, 64-bit U64 and U64-MC models.

=> ↺ Two 64-bit RISC-V cores debut: StarFive Dubhe and CAS Nanhu

• StarFive has launched its 64-bit RISC-V “Dubhe” core with up to 2GHz @ 12nm performance plus Vector and Hypervisor extensions. Meanwhile, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced a similarly Linux-friendly, 14nm RISC-V RV64GC “XiangShan Nanhu” core that also clocks to 2GHz.

• Chinese RISC-V chipmaker StarFive, which recently showed off a VisionFive V1 SBC with a StarFive JH7100 SoC with dual Cortex-A55 like SiFive U74 cores, has announced the “delivery” of its own RISC-V core called Dubhe. In other China-related RISC-V news, the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed a line of open source XiangShan RISC-V cores that run Linux, including a new, high performance XiangShan Nanhu design (see farther below).

=> ↺ An Easy Music Visualizer With The Arduino Nano | Hackaday

• Flashing LEDs are all well and good, but they’re even better if they can sync up with ambient sounds or music. [mircemk] has built the LUMAZOID visualizer to do just that, relying on some staple maker components to do so.

• The build is open-source, and designed to work with strings of 60, 120, or 180 WS2812B LEDs. An Arduino Nano is charged with running the show, capturing audio via its analog-to-digital converter. A sensitivity pot enables the input level to be set appropriately.

=> ↺ 3D Printed Lithographic Moon Lamp | Hackaday

• After years of being a software developer, [Chris] was excited to get back into embedded development and we’re glad he did. His 3D printed lithographic moon lamp combines a number of hacker and maker skills, and is sure to impress.

• 3D-printed lithographic moons have gotten pretty popular these days, so he was able to find a suitable model on Thingiverse to start with. Gotta love open-source. Of course, he needed to make a few modifications to fit his end design. Namely, he put a hole at the bottom of the moon, so he could slide the LED and heatsink inside. The 3 watt LED is pretty beefy, so he definitely needed a heat sink to make sure everything stayed cool.

=> ↺ Simple Design Elevates This Mechanical Dot Matrix Display | Hackaday

• Don’t get us wrong — we love unique displays as much as anyone. But sometimes we stumble across one that’s so unique that we lack the basic vocabulary to describe it. Such is the case with this marble-raising dot-matrix alphanumeric display. But it’s pretty cool, so we’ll give it a shot.

• The core — literally — of [Shinsaku Hiura]’s design is a 3D-printed cylinder with a spiral groove in its outside circumference. The cylinder rotates inside a cage with vertical bars; the bars and the grooves are sized to trap 6-mm AirSoft BBs, which are fed into the groove by a port in the stationary base of the display. BBs are fed into the groove at the right position to form characters, which move upwards as the cylinder rotates. Just watch the video below — it explains it far better than words can.

=> ↺ PicoVoice offline Voice AI engine gets free tier for up to 3 users – CNX Software

• PicoVoice offline Voice AI engine has now a free tier that allows people to create custom wake words and voice commands easily for up to three users on any hardware including Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards.

• I first learned about PicoVoice about a year ago when the offline voice AI engine was showcased on a Raspberry Pi fitted with ReSpeaker 4-mic array to showcase the company’s Porcupine custom wake word engine, and Rhino Speech-to-Intent engine. The demo would support 9 wake words with Alexa, Bumblebee, Computer, Hey Google, Hey Siri, Jarvis, Picovoice, Porcupine, and Terminator.

=> ↺ This Arduino device can detect which language is being spoken using tinyML | Arduino Blog

• Although smartphone users have had the ability to quickly translate spoken words into nearly any modern language for years now, this feat has been quite tough to accomplish on small, memory-constrained microcontrollers. In response to this challenge, Hackster.io user Enzo decided to create a proof-of-concept project that demonstrated how an embedded device can determine the language currently being spoken without the need for an Internet connection.

• This so-called “language detector” is based on an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense, which is connected to a common PCA9685 motor driver that is, in turn, attached to a set of three micro servo motors — all powered by a single 9V battery. Enzo created a dataset by recording three words: “oui” (French), “si” (Italian), and “yes” (English) for around 10 minutes each for a total of 30 minutes of sound files. He also added three minutes of random background noise to help distinguish between the target keywords and non-important words.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ Leaving MySQL – blog post by long-term MySQL team member Steinar H. Gunderson

=> ↺ PostgreSQL: Pgpool-II 4.3.0 is now released.

• Pgpool Global Development Group is pleased to announce the availability of Pgpool-II 4.3.0.

=> ↺ PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL @ FOSDEM 2022: Call for Proposals

• We are happy to announce that FOSDEM is hosting a virtual PostgreSQL Devroom at FOSDEM 2022. Next year’s conference will take place on the 5th and 6th of February, with the PostgreSQL Devroom being on Sunday 6th (It could be extended to Saturday as well if we get as many submissions as we did last year).

• Information about FOSDEM is available at the official website at https://www.fosdem.org/. The in-person events in previous years attracted more than 8000 participants, expect more people joining for an online event.

• We are now looking for PostgreSQL related talks from both experienced and new speakers.

FSF

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ The intriguing implications of SFC v Vizio

• A couple of weeks ago, the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) filed suit against television maker Vizio, alleging that Vizio took advantage of open source software without playing by open source rules—a scenario akin to joining in a friendly, come-one, come-all community game of soccer then taking the ball and running away with it.

• The suit alleges that Vizio incorporated software covered by two General Public License agreements into its SmartCast platform for streaming content from services like Apple’s AirPlay and Google’s Chromecast to its TVs, but Vizio didn’t make its source code publicly available. After several years of diplomacy and numerous unsuccessful appeals on the part of SFC to Vizio to provide the source code out of a duty to fair play, the SFC is now asking a California state court to force Vizio to share the source code.

• I encourage you to read the full copy of the complaint, because it’s a great treatise on “why it matters.” In Section D, SFC argues that defending software freedom benefits the public and offers three practical examples. First, developers could add features that protect the user’s privacy and personal data. (Vizio previously paid a $17 million settlement in a 2017 case for collecting consumer data with its Smart TVs without consumer consent.) Second, developers could also improve SmartCast accessibility to accommodate those who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or disabled. And third, developers could “maintain and update the operating system should Vizio or its successor ever decide to abandon it or go out of business. In these ways, purchasers of Vizio smart TVs can be confident that their devices would not suffer from software-induced obsolescence, planned or otherwise.

=> ↺ Open source year in review: 2021 – TechRepublic

• Vizio lawsuit

• The Software Freedom Conservancy sued Vizio for abusing the GPL by using software like BusyBox, U-Boot, bash, gawk and tar within SmartCast OS. In turn, Vizio failed to release the source code (which puts them in breach of the GPL). Instead of rectifying the situation, Vizio filed a request to have the case removed from the California State Court. To make matters worse, Vizio took this one step further and asked that the California court to agree that consumers not only have no right to ask to be supplied with source code but residents of the state have no right to ask the court to consider the question. In effect, Vizio is saying anyone who purchases their SmartCast OS-powered TVs has no right to the source code or even make a request for the source code to the company or the court. Clearly, Vizio has no idea how open source works.

• Trump’s Truth Social violates open-source license

• Speaking of license violations, Donald Trump’s beta of his rumored Truth Social platform was discovered to violate the AGPLv3 open-source license. Turns out the site used code from the popular open-source Mastodon project and failed to release the code to the public. As soon as the organization was made aware of the violation, the site was taken down. However, users who set up accounts on the site (before it was taken down) were not given access to the code, which is in direct violation of the license, and the Trump organization continues to ignore requests for the source, though it has admitted that it used the code from Mastadon.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ The European Commission is making its software open source to benefit society

• If you’re wondering what sort of code the EC could offer to the world, it gave two examples. First, there’s its eSignature, a set of free standards, tools, and services that can speed up the creation and verification of electronic signatures that are legally valid inside the EU. Another example is LEOS (Legislation Editing Open Software) which is used to draft legal texts.

=> ↺ Dirk Eddelbuettel: #34: Less Is More

• Welcome to the 34th post in the rambunctiously refreshing R recitations, or R4. Today’s post is about architecture.

• Mies defined modernism. When still in Europe, I had been to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin which provides a gorgeous space for the arts. Twenty-five years ago, I worked next to his Toronto-Dominion Center in Toronto. Here in Chicago we have numerous buildings: the Federal Center (the Dirksen, the Kluczynski and the US Post Office rounding out the square in the Loop), multiple buildings on the Illinois Tech (aka IIT) Campus where he taught in the architecture department he created and lead, the (formerly called) IBM Plaza building at the river and more.

• Structure and minimalism, often based on the same core elements of black steel beams and glass, are a landmark of these buildings. One immediately senses that there is nothing left to take away.

Rust

=> ↺ Launching the 2021 State of Rust Survey | Rust Blog

• It’s that time again! Time for us to take a look at who the Rust community is composed of, how the Rust project is doing, and how we can improve the Rust programming experience. The Rust Community Team is pleased to announce our 2021 State of Rust Survey! Whether or not you use Rust today, we want to know your opinions. Your responses will help the project understand its strengths and weaknesses, and establish development priorities for the future.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Manufacturers Coupon History: Running Discounts, With Scissors

• In a world where browser extensions basically deliver discounts to e-commerce sites as soon as they’re needed, it can be strange to consider the printed coupon in that context. That dotted-line block of discounts and fine print, a mainstay of newspapers and mailboxes alike, is actually relatively new in the historic sense, representing one of the first modern forms of marketing, but in recent years, the value proposition has shifted because of the rise of e-commerce and the mobile phone. But printed coupons still have their fans, and they remain steady drivers of what’s left of the Sunday newspaper. Today’s Tedium talks coupons, where they came from, and how they evolved into a culture of their own.

=> ↺ Complete Hobo Stove Cooking System Could Get You Through The Apocalypse | Hackaday

• Let’s face it, times are hard, and winter is imminent in the northern hemisphere. No matter how much you have to your name, there’s nothing like a cup of hot tea or a warm meal on a cold day. So if you need a snow day activity, consider preparing for whatever may come to pass by building yourself a complete hobo stove system out of empty cans.

Science

=> ↺ Spacing Out: Telescopes, Politics, And Spacecraft Design | Hackaday

• Perhaps the most highly anticipated space mission of the moment is the James Webb Space Telescope, an infra-red telescope that will be placed in an orbit around the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point from which it will serve as the successor to the now long-in-the-tooth Hubble telescope. After many years of development the craft has been assembled and shipped to French Guiana for a scheduled Ariane 5 launch on the 22nd of December. We can only imagine what must have gone through the minds of the engineers and technicians working on the telescope when an unplanned release of a clamp band securing it to the launch vehicle adapter sent a vibration throughout the craft. Given the fragility of some of its components this could have jeopardised the mission, however after inspection it was found that no damage had occurred and that space-watchers and astronomers alike can breathe easy.

Education

=> ↺ I Set Out to Build the Next Library of Alexandria. Now I Wonder: Will There Be Libraries in 25 Years?

• These are not small mom-and-pop publishers: a handful of publishers dominate all books sales and distribution including trade books, ebooks, and text books. Right now, these corporate publishers are squeezing libraries in ways that may render it impossible for any library to own digital texts in five years, let alone 25. Soon, librarians will be reduced to customer service reps for a Netflix-like rental catalog of bestsellers. If that comes to pass, you might as well replace your library card with a credit card. That’s what these billion-dollar-publishers are pushing.

• The libraries I grew up with would buy books, preserve them, and lend them for free to their patrons. If my library did not have a particular book, then it would borrow a copy from another library for me. In the shift from print to digital, many commercial publishers are declaring each of these activities illegal: they refuse libraries the right to buy ebooks, preserve ebooks, or lend ebooks. They demand that libraries license ebooks for a limited time or for limited uses at exorbitant prices, and some publishers refuse to license audiobooks or ebooks to libraries at all, making those digital works unavailable to hundreds of millions of library patrons.

=> ↺ The Middle East Studies Association’s Shameful Betrayal of Academic Freedom

• Those campus environments help incubate and promote lethal politics and terroristic activity, both on campus and in Palestinian society in general. Nor is Islamic University alone in its role in helping to germinate radical Islam and jihadism. Matthew Levitt, director of the Washington Institute’s Stein Program on Terrorism, Intelligence, and Policy, noted, for instance, that the 11,000-student An-Najah is the largest university in the territories, and “the terrorist recruitment, indoctrination and radicalization of students for which An-Najah is known typically take place via various student groups,” among them the Hamas-affiliated Islamic Bloc. “Of the thirteen members of An-Najah’s 2004 student council, eight,” Levitt wrote—“including the chairperson—belong to Hamas’s Islamic Bloc.”

=> ↺ Machine Learning is the most acquired skill in India on Coursera in 2021

• As per Future of Jobs 2020 by the World Economic Forum, AI and Machine Learning Specialists, Data Analysts and Data Scientists are emerging job roles. Therefore, graduates and professionals are keen to explore the domain and gain specialized skills. ‘Machine Learning’ course by Stanford University is the most popular course on the platform.

=> ↺ ‘Cheugy,’ ‘omicron’ among 2021′s most mispronounced words

• The list released Tuesday identifies the words that proved most challenging for newsreaders and people on television to pronounce this year.

• The caption company said it surveyed its members to generate the list, which is now in its sixth year and was commissioned by Babbel, a language-learning platform with headquarters in Berlin and New York.

Hardware

=> ↺ Made To Spec: The Coming Age Of Prototyping As A Service | Hackaday

• Just over a decade ago, ordering Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) was an expensive (nay, too expensive) ordeal for the hobbyist. Getting a single board made would cost you several hundred US dollars at the PCB fab house. The issue wasn’t the price per board. It was the up-front manufacturing cost to push the board through the factory. Sadly, PCBs just aren’t made one-at-a-time. They’re consolidated with other copies of the same PCB onto a larger panel to simplify the fixturing process when moving the design from machine to machine in manufacturing.

• But soon after, a small company called OSH Park did something wildly different. Acting as middle-agent, they consolidated different PCBs from various designers onto a shared panel and sent that panel design out for manufacturing instead. The result was that hobbyists could order a single PCB through OSH Park for a fraction of the cost of needing to place a batch order directly. And what was once a professional process became available to the after-hours engineer for a few dollars and a few weeks lead time.

=> ↺ Squishy Robot Hardware Does Well Under Pressure | Hackaday

• If your jealousy for Festo robots is festering, fret not! [mikey77] has shown us that, even without giant piggy banks, we can still construct some fantastic soft robotics projects with a 3D printer and a visit to the hardware store. To get started, simply step through the process with this 3D Printed Artificial Muscles: Erector Set project on Instructables.

• In a nutshell, [mikey77] generously offers us a system for designing soft robots built around a base joint mechanism: the Omega Muscle. Fashioned after its namesake, this base unit contains an inflatable membrane that expands with pressure and works in tandem with another Omega Muscle to produce upward and downward angular movement. Each muscle also contains two endpoints to connect to a base, a gripper, or more Omega Muscles. Simply scale them as needed and stack them to produce a custom soft robot limb, or use the existing STLs to make an articulated soft gripper.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ What New Data On Gun Recoveries Can Tell Us About Increased Violence In 2020

• ATF data shows that in 2020, police recovered almost twice as many guns with a short “time-to-crime” — in this case, guns recovered within a year of their purchase — than in 2019. Law enforcement officials generally view a short time-to-crime as an indicator that a firearm was purchased with criminal intent, since a gun with a narrow window between sale and recovery is less likely to have changed hands. Altogether, more than 87,000 such guns were recovered in 2020, almost double the previous high. And almost 68,000 guns were recovered in 2020 with a time-to-crime of less than seven months (meaning they were less likely to have been purchased the prior year).

=> ↺ The Right’s Bad-Faith Argument About Bodily Autonomy

• But these claims willfully ignore crucial differences. A pregnant person, of course, has the right to the autonomy of their own body, which includes the choice of whether to carry a pregnancy to term. And while the government should not send shock troops into homes to force needles into people’s arms, no one has the right to carry a deadly disease into public space and possibly infect the bodies of others, at least not when easy and affordable mitigation tools are at hand.

=> ↺ Instagram chief gets bipartisan grilling over harm to teens

• Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle grilled Instagram chief Adam Mosseri Wednesday over steps his platform has taken to protect young users.

• The hearing, in front of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection, was Mosseri’s first before Congress and showed rare bipartisan agreement on the harms being caused by social media.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ EndeavorOS, 4MLinux, MX-21, elementary OS, VSCode, Vivaldi …

=> ↺ Microsoft PASSWORD STEALER

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ Apple debuts new Open Source website, will release projects on GitHub

• Featured Projects details some of the open source projects that Apple leads. Additionally, it also features open source projects led by third-party organizations but contributed to by Apple engineers.

• The Releases section will see Apple publishing the code used in various macOS, iOS, and Developer tools. Apple says, alongside the updated website, it will begin making its open source projects available as git repositories on Github.

Privatisation/Privateering

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Linux Foundation to Host the Cloud Hypervisor Project, Creating a Performant, Lightweight Virtual Machine Monitor for Modern Cloud Workloads

• The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it will host the Cloud Hypervisor project, which delivers a Virtual Machine Monitor for modern Cloud workloads. Written in Rust with a strong focus on security, features include CPU, memory and device hot plug; support for running Windows and Linux guests; device offload with vhost-user; and a minimal and compact footprint.

=> ↺ Linux Foundation to Host the Cloud Hypervisor Project

=> ↺ Intel’s Cloud-Hypervisor Moving To The Linux Foundation – Backed By Arm, Microsoft

=> ↺ Linux Foundation to Host the Cloud Hypervisor Project, Creating a Performant, Lightweight Virtual Machine Monitor for Modern Cloud Workloads

Security

=> ↺ Germany’s new government will firmly defend encryption, key Social Democrat says – EURACTIV.com

• According to Jens Zimmermann, the German coalition negotiations had made it “quite clear” that the incoming government of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the business-friendly liberal FDP would reject “the weakening of encryption, which is being attempted under the guise of the fight against child abuse” by the coalition partners.

• Such regulations, which are already enshrined in the interim solution of the ePrivacy Regulation, for example, “diametrically contradict the character of the coalition agreement” because secure end-to-end encryption is guaranteed there, Zimmermann said.

• Introducing backdoors would undermine this goal of the coalition agreement, he added.

=> ↺ Security updates for Wednesday

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (nss), Fedora (rubygem-rmagick), openSUSE (xen), Red Hat (firefox and nss), SUSE (kernel and xen), and Ubuntu (mailman and nss).

=> ↺ Security: This new Firefox feature could stop zero-day flaws in their tracks | ZDNet

• Mozilla has released Firefox 95 and shipped it with its new security sandboxing technology called RLBox for Firefox on Windows, Linux and macOS.

=> ↺ Mozilla Releases Security Updates for Firefox, Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird | CISA

• Mozilla has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in Firefox, Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

• CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Mozilla security advisories for Firefox 95, Firefox ESR 91.4.0, and Thunderbird 91.4.0 and apply the necessary updates.

=> ↺ Protect your PHP websites with CrowdSec

• PHP is used by 79% of the websites for which we know the server-side programming language, according to W3Techs’ usage statistics. It is evident that we needed to provide a PHP bouncer to help you secure your websites. This day has finally come.

• CrowdSec bouncers can be set up at various levels of your applicative stack: web server, firewall, CDN), etc. And today, we are looking at one more layer: setting up remediation directly at the application level.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ HAROI: Human Readable Authenticated Relay Operator Identifier

• below is a partial proposal draft for human readable relay operator IDs that are authenticated by directory authorities. If there is any interest in implementing something like this I’ll complete the draft and submit it via gitlab.

=> ↺ How to keep some of your Twitter data away from advertisers

• In April 2020, Twitter began sharing more of your information with advertisers. Notice came via a rather weird notification that said “your ability to control mobile app advertising measurements has been removed” — which basically meant that Twitter was now sharing data such as which ads you looked at or interacted with, as well as the tracking identifier for your phone. Previously, you could turn that off — no longer. (Unless you live in the European Union or the UK, where there are extra protections.)

=> ↺ Russia Blocks Privacy Service Tor In Latest Move To Control Internet

• Russia’s media regulator has blocked the online anonymity service Tor in what is seen as the latest move by Moscow to bring the Internet in Russia under its control.

• Roskomnadzor announced it had blocked access to the popular service on December 8, cutting off users’ ability to thwart government surveillance by cloaking IP addresses.

=> ↺ Russia Blocks TorProject.org and Begins Blocking of Wider Tor Network

• On the orders of Russian authorities, ISPs in Russia have blocked TorProject.org, the main domain of the privacy-focused anti-censorship tool Tor. The move comes hot on the heels of moves to block access to the wider Tor network following allegations that the service helps people to access previously blocked sites and facilitates crime, including access to the dark web.

=> ↺ Instagram head says it’s bringing back the chronological feed

• The company’s algorithmically sorted feed, introduced in 2016, and then updated in 2017 to include recommended posts, is widely disliked by users who prefer to have their posts and their friends’ posts surface in a timely manner. The current feed uses AI to create what Instagram considers a more personalized feed, based on users’ activity. But it has remained generally unpopular among a vast swath of users, despite the company’s assertions otherwise.

• Mosseri appeared before the Senate subcommittee where he was grilled by senators about child safety issues on the app, prompted in part by revelations from whistleblower Frances Haugen, who provided internal documents to The Wall Street Journal that suggested the company was aware its app may be “toxic” for teenagers. “Have some empathy. Take some responsibility,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) chided Mosseri as the hearing wound down.

=> ↺ How to create an NFT — and why you may not want to

• NFTs have been a cultural phenomenon throughout 2021, constantly making headlines as celebrities dabble in the space and as shenanigans, scams, and legal fights ensue. With some creators making millions off NFTs, though, it’s understandable why you’d want to try your hand at it or play around with the tech to get a better feel for it.

• We’re going to go over how to create an NFT using two of the most popular marketplaces, but before we get to that point, let’s cover some of the basics of what an NFT is and the decisions you may have to make before deciding to sell one. (If you’re relatively up to speed, you can go to Step 3 to begin the journey of actually creating a token.)

Confidentiality

=> ↺ uBlock, I exfiltrate: exploiting ad blockers with CSS

• Ad blockers like uBlock Origin are extremely popular, and typically have access to every page a user visits. Behind the scenes, they’re powered by community-provided filter lists – CSS selectors that dictate which elements to block. These lists are not entirely trusted, so they’re constrained to prevent malicious rules from stealing user data.

• In this post, we’ll show you how we were able to bypass these restrictions in uBlock Origin, use a novel CSS-based exploitation technique to extract data from scripts and attributes, and even steal passwords from Microsoft Edge. All vulnerabilities discussed in this post have been reported to uBlock Origin and patched.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Cologne: Public call of the muezzin for the first time on Christmas Eve?

• As predicted by the AfD, there are increasing signs that the two-year “model project” will become permanent. Ditib” states that “the duration is currently not foreseeable”.

=> ↺ At least 30 killed in suspected jihadist attack in central Mali

• Mali has been struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency that first erupted in the north in 2012 and has since claimed thousands of military and civilian lives.

• Despite the presence of thousands of French and United Nations troops, the conflict has engulfed central Mali and spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

=> ↺ News of Liverpool Terrorist attacker’s ‘reconversion’ to Islam is no surprise.

• It is also believed that an accidental trigger or overstepping a timer due to traffic delay, caused the detonation in the taxi. Police have since confirmed that the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was packed with ball bearings and was definitely created to maim, injure or kill civilians.

• So this was not a personal suicide mission.

Environment

=> ↺ How Bolivian lithium could help fight climate change

• Demand for lithium doubled between 2015 and 2020 to around 360,000 tonnes per year. Benchmark predicts it will soon outstrip supply by some 240,000 tonnes. The lithium market is highly speculative; past predictions of shortages have proven wrong, in part because people were slow to start buying electric cars. But the idea that sooner or later plug-in wheels will go mainstream has led to renewed interest in Bolivia. It has 21m tonnes of reserves, says the US Geological Survey. If it could extract more of its reserves, it would noticeably increase the global supply.

Energy

=> ↺ With Shell Abandoning the Cambo Project, the North Sea Urgently Needs a Serious Just Transition Plan

• By Dr Daria Shapovalova (School of Law) and Professor Tavis Potts (School of Geosciences), University of Aberdeen 

• News that Shell is pulling out of the proposed Cambo oilfield in the North Sea has been met with delight by the climate movement and concern by the oil and gas sector. The oil giant has said its decision is economically-motivated, but in reality it is a symptom of the public’s growing awareness of the urgent emissions cuts needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

=> ↺ New Report Throws Doubt on Overly Optimistic Fracking Forecasts From U.S. Government

• Oil and gas investors are anticipating hefty dividend checks to close out 2021. Following a decade of red ink — capped by a devastating 2020 when oil prices briefly went negative — fracking-focused companies finally made some money this year. High energy prices and a slower pace of drilling allowed North America’s shale firms to harvest a bumper crop of cash through the summer and fall. They’re now returning much of that bounty to investors, rather than just plowing it back into new wells.

• Yet a new analysis from earth scientist David Hughes, writing for the nonprofit Post Carbon Institute, suggests that the industry’s future may not be nearly so bright.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Today’s GOP Would Excommunicate Bob Dole

• When Bob Dole bid for the presidency in 1996, the very conservative Republican from Kansas ran a campaign that proudly announced he “supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965” and “played an instrumental role in extending the Voting Rights Act in 1982.”1

=> ↺ Restore the 4th Minnesota: Racking Up Victories in 2021

• The EFF Organizing Team caught up with Chris at RT4MN to hear about how they got organized and won victories this year for their communities.

• What is Restore the Fourth Minnesota?

• How did it come back together in 2019? Was restarting the chapter easier than starting it initially?

=> ↺ Google files lawsuit against Russian [crackers] as part of disrupting botnet

• As part of the effort, Google filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday against two Russian nationals, Dmitry Starovikov and Alexander Filippov, and more than a dozen other unnamed individuals for allegedly creating and running the “Glupteba” botnet. Google also worked with industry partners to disrupt infrastructure used by the group which means the individuals behind the botnet currently do not have control over it.

=> ↺ Estonian ID cards cannot be used to enter UK from October 1

• People who entered the UK before September 30 with an ID-card may require a passport to leave the country.

• It is possible to apply for a return certificate, which is a temporary single-use travel document for returning from the UK to Estonia.

=> ↺ Can a New University Really Fix Academia’s Free Speech Problems?

• To debate the free speech crisis — or lack thereof — on campuses, Jane Coaston brought together Greg Lukianoff, the president and C.E.O. of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science and public affairs and the director of the Center for European Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They discuss whether the new university can address deep-rooted issues on campus or will just fall into the same “thought bubble” that plagues other institutions.

=> ↺ Crumbling Constitution

=> ↺ US Should’t Be Invited to Summit for Democracy, Let Alone Be Its Host

• This week, the United States is convening a virtual “Summit for Democracy,” the first of its kind in what the State Department hopes to make an annual event.

=> ↺ Biden Shouldn’t Use the Summit for Democracy to Start More Cold Wars

• On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, US President Joe Biden will host a virtual “Summit for Democracy.” The gathering will bring together leaders from 110 countries who work in government, civil society, and the private sector, with the officially declared purpose of developing an agenda to renew democratic government and keep democracy’s ideals strong. (The guest list includes Pakistan, Ukraine, and Brazil.) As authoritarianism grows around the world, including in the United States, the administration says it seeks practical ideas and strong alliances against its spread. This article was produced by Globetrotter in partnership with ACURA. 

=> ↺ A One-Sided Narrative: U.S. Press Focuses on “Russian Aggression” While Ignoring U.S. Escalation

• During a virtual summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Biden threatened to impose new economic sanctions and other measures if Russia invades Ukraine. The talks were held amid growing tension between the two countries over the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe and Russia’s deployment of tens of thousands troops along the border of Ukraine. Editorial director and publisher at The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel says the U.S. has a “one-sided narrative” of the Russia-Ukraine conflict that neglects to acknowledge its own role in escalating tensions. “This [the Russia-Ukraine conflict] is a civil war but it has become a proxy war between the United States, Russia, NATO.”

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ The political divide in the United States has become irreconcilable, study says

• Politics in the United States have become an increasingly polarized affair for decades, driven largely by the right moving further to the right. Observation of political polarization is not merely anecdotal; studies repeatedly bear this out.

• Now, some researchers say the partisan rift in the United States has become so extreme that the country may be at a point of no return.

• According to a theoretical model’s findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the pandemic failing to unite the country, despite political differences, is a signal that the U.S. is at a disconcerting tipping point.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Library display pairing Bible with explicit books removed

• The display was removed Tuesday; it’s not clear how long it had been in place. In a statement, Fairfax County Public Library Director Jessica Hudson said the “holiday reading display was intended to highlight the freedom to read and the fact that many library patrons have more time during the holidays to do so. It was not the intention of staff to create a display that could be construed as offensive.”

=> ↺ More than 600 authors, publishers condemn recent book bans in joint statement

• Wednesday’s statement condemning such acts of censorship was released by the National Coalition Against Censorship but included notable signatories, such as author Judy Bloom, publishing houses Penguin Random House and Scholastic, and the American Library Association, among others.

• “The First Amendment guarantees that no individual, group of individuals, legislator, community member, or even school board member can dictate what public school students are allowed to read based on their own personal beliefs or political viewpoint,” the statement reads. “It is freedom of expression that ensures that we can meet the challenges of a changing world. That freedom is critical for the students who will lead America in the years ahead. We must fight to defend it.”

=> ↺ RaymondIbrahim.com Banned as a ‘Pornographic’ Website

• As anyone who has visited my website since its inception 16 years ago knows, raymondibrahim.com focuses almost exclusively on the Islamic question: it looks at doctrinal and historical issues pertaining to Islam, that religion’s interactions with non-Muslims—with a strong focus on Christian minorities who are regularly persecuted by the adherents of the religion of peace—and contemporary Islamic terrorism.

=> ↺ Top censor Mutua received Sh3.1m excess salary

• Former Film Classification Board CEO Ezekiel Mutua may be forced to refund Sh3.1 million in excess salary he was paid on the financial year ending June 2020.

• As of June 30, 2020, KFCB cumulatively paid Sh15.3 million, comprising Sh9.2 million and Sh6.1 million in the financial years 2019-20 and 2018-19, respectively.

• Auditor General Nancy Gathungu has flagged the excess payment as irregular, citing lack of approval by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission.

=> ↺ Knesset advances bill censoring ‘criminal’ social media posts

• Proposed law, allowing courts to remove content that incites violence or ‘endangers mental health,’ is met with pushback from right-wing leaders, who claim it will crimp speech

=> ↺ English schools banned from using anti-capitalist material in teaching

• The guidance reads: “Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters. This is the case even if the material itself is not extreme, as the use of it could imply endorsement or support of the organisation.”

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Filipino, Russian Journalists to Receive Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo

• Two journalists, one from the Philippines and the other from Russia, will receive the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo Friday. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it was honoring the pair for their efforts to safeguard press freedom.

• The Nobel Peace Prize is the latest accolade for Filipino American journalist Maria Ressa, who has received numerous awards for her fight for press freedom in the Philippines. “There’s a part of me that is happy (to accept the Nobel Peace Prize), yes, but also angry, and hoping for a better future,” Ressa told reporters at the Manila airport Tuesday on her way to the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

=> ↺ Nobel laureate Ressa urges journalists to defend their rights

• Her visit to Oslo was long uncertain. Currently on bail pending an appeal against a conviction last year in a cyber libel case, she applied to four courts for permission to travel to Norway for the ceremony.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Free Speech Advocates Contemplate International Human Rights Obligations on Big Tech

• Whereas traditionally, citizens of a democracy can hold their governments accountable for decisions related to transparency of information, it is more difficult to that now with big technology companies being the gatekeepers, according to Barbora Bukoská, Senior Director for Law and Policy of international human rights organization Article 19.

• “On the [Internet], this is being more and more challenged because governments are no longer [the ones] who are in control of the information they hold about people,” said Bukoská. “More and more we see corporations, especially Big Tech, making decisions on a basis which we don’t know about.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Fox News Ready to Go All-In On Streaming If Pay-TV Decline Keeps Up

• Speaking at a UBS conference Wednesday, Fox CFO Steve Tomsic underscored that the company is committed to the linear pay-TV business for its sports and news assets, but added that it is ready and willing to push further into streaming if it has to.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Snowball Fights in Art (1400–1946) – The Public Domain Review

• What’s wondrous about browsing the images of snowball fights gathered here is how little changes across centuries and continents.

=> ↺ Little Switzerlands: Alpine Kitsch in England – The Public Domain Review

• Far from the treacherous peaks and ravines of Switzerland, Alpine cottages arose, unexpectedly, amid the hillocks and modest streams of 19th-century England. Seán Williams recovers the peculiar fad for “Little Switzerlands”, where the Romantic sublime meets countryside kitsch.

=> ↺ Roku settles YouTube dispute and locks down apps in ‘multi-year’ deal

• Roku has reached a deal with Google to continue distributing the YouTube and YouTube TV apps on its platform. The two had been at odds over a contract extension, sparring over what Roku described as onerous demands by Google for more data and more prominent placement on its devices.

• If they hadn’t reached an agreement by tomorrow, Google planned to pull the YouTube app from Roku — a loss for basically everyone involved, but especially Roku users who would have no longer been able to download a key video service.

=> ↺ Operation ‘IPTV Special’: 49 Pirate IPTV Resellers Fined €10,000 Each

• Following a 2020 raid in Italy that shut down a pirate IPTV provider, authorities have been making progress towards bringing those involved to justice. More than 70 people face complaints, with 49 resellers of the service now required to pay more than 500,000 euros in fines. Police are also working on a database of 65,000 customers to determine the next course of action.

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