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● 01.11.22

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● Links 11/1/2022: Btrfs Improvements and DXVK 1.9.3

Posted in News Roundup at 9:56 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ My polyamorous relationship with operating systems: FreeBSD, openSUSE, Fedora & Co.

• Recently, I have posted blogs and articles about three operating systems (or rather OS families) I use, and now people ask which one is my “true” love. It’s not easy, but I guess, the best way to describe it is that both FreeBSD and openSUSE are true ones, and Fedora & Co. is a workplace affair  This is why I’m writing that it is a polyamorous relationship. Let me explain!

• My first ever opensource operating system was FreeBSD. I got an account on the faculty server in 1994, a FreeBSD 1.X system. A few months later, I got the task to install Linux and a year later I ended up using S.u.S.E. Linux on the second faculty server. Soon, I was running a couple of Linux and FreeBSD servers at the university and elsewhere as a part-time student job. SuSE Linux also became my desktop operating system. I have always liked state-of-the art hardware, and while I felt FreeBSD to be a lot more mature on the server-side, it did not play well on a desktop. 25+ years later, it is still the case…

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Destination Linux 260: A Retro-spective of Classic Linux Distros

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to talk about the Classics of the distro world. Then we’re going to discuss some updates to Audacity. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 159 – Late Night Linux

• A simple FOSS way to share your mouse and keyboard across multiple machines, and a handy command line tool to find duplicate files. Plus your predictions for 2022 including gaming, GNOME, Firefox, Raspberry Pi, and PipeWire.

=> ↺ Ask A KDE Dev Anything – TEST! – Kockatoo Tube

• Yo, come at me and ask me stuff! I’ll use this stream to check if things work or not.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux Kernel 5.16 Released. This is What’s New

• Linus Torvalds released Linux Kernel 5.16 as the first stable Kernel release of the year 2022, improving storage, processor, ports and all modules. We wrap up the release in this post with download and installation guidelines.

=> ↺ Linux Garbage Collection Memory Corruption

• Linux suffers from a garbage collection memory corruption vulnerability by resurrecting a file reference through RCU.

=> ↺ Btrfs Seeing Nice Performance Improvements For Linux 5.17 – Phoronix

• With the Btrfs file-system popularity ticking back up, that seems to be helping upstream enthusiasm and development efforts as with Linux 5.17 there is yet more exciting work.

• Btrfs for the Linux 5.17 kernel has prepared another round of performance optimizations on top of tuning found in prior kernel versions. There is also some new core features and never-ending work on code clean-ups and other underlying improvements.

• On the performance front for Btrfs with Linux 5.17 there is now less metadata needed for directory logging, which can mean directory deletion is now 20~40% faster.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ DXVK 1.9.3 is out supporting DLSS, D3D9 improvements and more | GamingOnLinux

• DXVK, the Vulkan-based implementation of D3D9, D3D10 and D3D11 for Wine / Proton has version 1.9.3 out now. This is what’s used in Steam Play Proton, to help get Windows games running nicely on Linux. It’s a bit of an uphill battle to get so many tens of thousands of games to work nicely, but DXVK shows just how powerful and flexible Vulkan is as an API.

• This release brings support for NVIDIA DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) for supported games, when used along with dxvk-nvapi. There’s also a bunch of optimizations and accuracy improvements for D3D9 that should help fix games like Red Orchestra 2, Dark Souls 2 (original version), Dog Fight 1942, Bayonetta, Rayman Origins, Guilty Gear Xrd and Richard Burns Rally.

=> ↺ DXVK 1.9.3 Released with Improvements for Black Mesa, Crysis 3, and Many Other Games

• DXVK 1.9.3 is here about four months after DXVK 1.9.2 to make the DLSS implementation work on supported games in combination with dxvk-nvapi, optimize the D3D9 shader constants for games using software vertex processing, and fix a DXGI issue causing games to fail to enter full-screen mode on some displays that don’t support low rates across all resolutions.

=> ↺ DXVK 1.9.3 Released With NVIDIA DLSS Integration, Many Game Fixes

• DXVK 1.9.3 is out as its first release of 2022 for implementing Direct3D 9/10/11 over Vulkan for allowing Windows games to enjoy good performance when running atop Linux via Valve’s Steam Play.

• With DXVK 1.9.3 there is NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) support in place when used in conjunction with the DXVK-NVAPI component for implementing the NVIDIA NVAPI interface. DXVK-NVAPI usage supports DLSS both for Vulkan and via D3D11/D3D12 Windows games.

• DXVK 1.9.3 also brings optimized Direct3D 9 shader constants handling, D3D9 floating point emulation improvements, and a variety of fixes benefiting different games.

=> ↺ The importance of window to desktop file mapping – Nico’s blog

• Now that we established why it is important to map a window to a desktop file, how is it done?

• On Wayland the xdg-shell protocol, which is responsible for application windows, has builtin support for passing a desktop file name in form of set_app_id.

• On X11, it’s more complicated.

• For Qt applications the plasma-integration Qt Platform Theme sets a KDE-specific window property that contains the desktop file name. The task manager reads this property and handles it accordingly.

• GTK apps have a very similar window property, named _GTK_APPLICATION_ID. However, until now Plasma did not use this information at all! Beginning with Plasma 5.25 the task manager will take _GTK_APPLICATION_ID into account, which fixes matching Gedit and other apps.

=> ↺ Mike Blumenkrantz: How To Bug

• I posted some fun fluff pieces last week to kick off the new year, but now it’s time to get down to brass tacks.

• Everyone knows adding features is just flipping on the enable button. Now it’s time to see some real work.

• If you don’t like real work, stop reading. Stop right now. Now.

• Alright, now that all the haters are gone, let’s put on our bisecting snorkels and dive in.

Applications

=> ↺ Modern Alternatives to Some of the Classic Linux Commands

• When you start learning Linux, you begin with a standard set of Linux commands that have been in existence since the UNIX days. As you grow old as a Linux user, you keep on mastering the same set of standard commands.

• But these standard, legacy commands were created several decades ago and while they do their intended jobs, their functionalities could be improved and the structure could be simplified.

=> ↺ 5 Best Free and Open Source Scala 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.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to install QPrompt as an alternative to Teleprompter

• An outbreak of COVID-19 cases has changed the way of living life earlier, we used to go to our offices, colleges, schools, but now we shifted to a virtual environment.

• Now you attend your office meeting from the couch, children attending their school while taking a nap, and many untold stories of different domains.

• Whatever the situation is, you take the help of video to convey your thought, and It’s quite possible to make mistakes while shooting a video. And it’s quite embarrassing too.

• Qprompt is one of the teleprompter software available on all major platforms, including Android mobile, and most importantly, it is an open-source application.

=> ↺ The Zorin Appearance Tool

• The Zorin Appearance tool can mimic the desktop layout of proprietary operating systems, making it appealing to newcomers.

• Switching to Linux can be a bewildering experience for Windows and macOS users. To ease this transition, some distributions offer desktop environments that imitate proprietary ones. For example, ChaletOS, Linuxfx, and ReactOS all offer imitations of various versions of Windows, while elementary OS’s desktop is sometimes said to resemble that of ReactOS. Yet, no other distribution takes this approach as far as Zorin OS. Depending on the release version, Zorin OS offers as many as eight desktop layouts in its Zorin Appearance tool that loosely resemble those on everything from proprietary operating systems and mobile touchscreens to Ubuntu’s Unity. However, if you expect a full emulation of these operating systems, you may be disappointed.

• Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-derivative founded in 2009 by brothers Artyom and Kyrill Zorin and is currently based in Ireland. Zorin 16, the most recent version, comes in three editions: Core, a free version intended for modern computers; Lite, a free edition intended for “low-spec PCs up to 15 years old,” according to the download page; and Pro, which includes advanced productivity apps, costs $39, and can be installed for individuals with one license for multiple computers. All the versions default to a modified Xfce desktop with a minimalist modern appearance. However, the available settings range from elementary cosmetic control settings to unique controls over the applications that make up the desktop environment. On a virtual machine, you will need 35GB for installation, a high number which might well interfere with Zorin’s use on an older, small computer. In fact, while Zorin OS responds quickly while up and running, its boot and shutdown are notably sluggish.

=> ↺ Terraform Module Dependency – buildVirtual

• As of Terraform 0.13 you can create dependencies between your Terraform modules easily. Version 0.13 of Terraform has been available since August 2020, and introduced some enhancements to Terrafrom modules capability including count, depends_on and for_each functions. In this short article we will look at an example of how to use depends_on with Terraform modules.

• Terraform typically does a great job of understanding dependencies in your Terraform plans, however sometimes it is useful to manually configure a Terraform module dependency to ensure resources deploy in the expected order.

=> ↺ Linux Command: Passwd Usage

• All the user accounts need passwords to log in via the different operating systems many times. In the same way, we can update the password settings for passwords as we did for the user. Thus, the passwd command is known for making updates to the password in Linux. Henceforth, we will discuss the usages of the “passwd” command in Ubuntu 20.04 terminal. Let’s start with the terminal launch in Ubuntu 20.04 system. It would be done using the shortcut “Ctrl+Alt+T” in the Ubuntu 20.04 desktop. The terminal will be opened on your screen.

=> ↺ CUPS web interface fixed

=> ↺ How to Install Handbrake Video Transcoder 1.5.1 in Ubuntu 20.04 / 21.10 | UbuntuHandbook

• The popular free open-source Handbrake video transcoder released version 1.5.0 a day ago and then 1.5.1 with quick fix. Here’s what’s new and how to install it in Ubuntu / Linux Mint.

=> ↺ Linux Command: Usermod Usage

• Linux is a diverse operating system most known for its terminal commands. These commands are of a hundred types and usages. One of these Linux commands is the “Usermod” command. The usermod command can be used for performing a lot of things using flags. This command is specifically designed for Linux users to update and change anything regarding other users in their existing system. Within this guide today, you will see the different uses of the “Usermod” command in Ubuntu 20.04. Let’s have a new start with some of the usermod command examples to see those flags working. Let’s get started.

• Let’s start with the launch of a Ubuntu 20.04 console application. The shortcut key “Ctrl+Alt+T” will be used to launch it in our system quickly. To use the usermod command in Linux, we must use it in the terminal with sudo rights. For the use of sudo rights, you have to use the keyword “su” in the shell, as shown below. It will require your root account password and press Enter to do so. You will see that we will be able to work in a sudo terminal environment.

=> ↺ How to Install Cockpit on Fedora 35 – LinuxCapable

• Cockpit is a free remote server manager that is lightweight and easy to use for GNU/Linux servers. Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers intended for people new to Linux to the experts such as sysadmins. Cockpit makes Linux discoverable, allowing anyone using the software to perform tasks such as start containers, administer storage, configure networks, and inspect logs.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install or enable Cockpit on Fedora 35 Workstation or Server.

=> ↺ Install a Redis server on Debian 11 – Unixcop the Unix / Linux the admins deams

• Hello, friends. In this post, we will install a Redis server in Debian 11. For this, we will use the Debian repository that provides the most suitable way.

=> ↺ MySql Contains Podman -

• MySQL contains is a prominent open-source relational database administration system and one of the popular web server solutions. It stores and structures data in a meaningful and ensures easy accessibility. A container image is maintained by the community.

• Podman is a set of platform-as-a-service developments that support CI/CD development. It allows to develop and deploys applications inside virtual environments, called containers. Podman boots up an application with all its libraries and dependencies with a single image.

=> ↺ MySQL Database Commands Cheat Sheet for Linux

• Both MySQL and MariaDB are attributed as open-source relational database management systems (RDBMS). Since MySQL is broken down to either community or enterprise release.

• MariaDB became a drop-in replacement to parade all the structured query language (SQL) features offered by MySQL but at an open-source cost.

• So whether you are using MySQL Enterprise Edition, MySQL Community Edition, or MariaDB, this article is for you. By the end of your read, you should be comfortable with the use of the powerful structured query language mimicked by these RDBMS.

=> ↺ How to Install Fail2ban with Firewalld on Fedora 35 – LinuxCapable

• Fail2ban is an intrusion prevention software framework that protects computer servers from primarily brute-force attacks, banning bad user agents, banning URL scanners, and much more. Fail2ban achieves this by reading access/error logs of your server or web applications. Fail2ban is coded in the python programming language.

• The following tutorial will teach you how to install Fail2ban on Fedora 35 Workstation or Server and some basic setup and tips.

=> ↺ How to Install ClamAV on Fedora 35 – LinuxCapable

• ClamAV is an open-source and free antivirus software toolkit able to detect many types of malicious software, including viruses, trojans, malware, adware, rootkits, and other malicious threats. One of its primary uses of ClamAV is on mail servers as a server-side email virus scanner or used on file hosting servers to periodically scan to make sure files are clean, especially if the public can upload to the server.

• ClamAV supports multiple file formats (documents, executables, or archives), utilizes multi-thread scanner features, and receives updates for its signature database daily to sometimes numerous times per day for the latest protection.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install and use ClamAV on Fedora 35 Workstation or Server.

=> ↺ How to Install MariaDB 10.6 on Fedora 35 – LinuxCapable

• MariaDB is one of the most popular open-source databases next to its originator MySQL. The original creators of MySQL developed MariaDB in response to fears that MySQL would suddenly become a paid service due to Oracle acquiring it in 2010. With its history of doing similar tactics, the developers behind MariaDB have promised to keep it open source and free from such fears as what has happened to MySQL.

• MariaDB has become just as popular as MySQL with developers, with advanced clustering with Galera Cluster 4, faster cache/indexes, storage engines, and features/extensions that you won’t find in MySQL.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install MariaDB 10.6 on Fedora 35 Workstation or Server.

=> ↺ How to Install SQLite 3 on Fedora 35 – LinuxCapable

• SQLite is a free, lightweight relational database management system (RDBMS) in a C library. SQLite is not a client-server database engine. Instead, it is embedded into the end program. Primarily all programming languages support SQLite, which how languages embed the program is with a file with .sqlite3/.sqlite/.DB extension. The software is a popular choice for local/client storage such as web browsers, Android devices, and much more. The list is quite extensive.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install SQLite 3 with Fedora 35 Workstation or Server.

=> ↺ It only takes minutes to set up a Git repository on Linux – TechRepublic

• If you need a quick code repository, you have everything you need with git and SSH. Jack Wallen shows you how it’s done.

=> ↺ Install Deepin Desktop Environment (UbuntuDDE) on POP OS

• In this tutorial, we learn the steps to install popular Deepin Dekstop- DEE on POP_OS 20.04 LTS or 21.04 Linux using the command terminal.

• Deepin is one of the most beautiful Linux distro based on the Debian operating system. However, there are many people who refrain themselves from using either because of its origin or slow repository. Hence, one of the best ways to experience its beauty is by installing the Deepin Desktop GUI on our existing POP_OS operating systems.

• Moreover, installing a new operating system is also cumbersome if you have already have set up applications you required on it. In such as scenario, installing an extra GUI apart from the default one will be a good idea.

• POP_OS comes with a popular Gnome desktop environment, however being a Linux distro, users are free to install any popular Linux GUI with few commands such as Cinnamon, XFCE, etc. However, unlike other GUI, the Deepin Linux desktop is not available through the default base repository of POPOS. Therefore, to get it we have to add a repo manually. And the best way is to use the package repo made available by UbuntuDDE, an Linux operating system based on Ubuntu and running with DDE.

=> ↺ 4 Ways to Install Discord client on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04 LTS – Linux Shout

• In this tutorial, we learn the commands and steps to install GitHub alternative self-hosted GitLab on Ubuntu 20.04 Focalusing the terminal.

=> ↺ Install Gitlab on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal fossa Linux – Linux Shout

• GitLab is a version control system( VCS). It is based entirely on Git, a distributed versioning system that is made available as open-source software. Git is by far the most widely used VCS in the world. GitLab is not much different from GitHub, both web-based solutions are based on Git for managing the various repository created by developers. Anyone who is acquainted with GitHub would already know what is Gitlab, still, if you are not then it is an alternative to Github. It is a solution that was written by Ukrainian Dmitriy Zaporozhets in collaboration with Valery Sizov in 2011 using the programming language Ruby on Rails. After Microsoft took over GitHub in 2018, many users switch to GitLab to mitigate the monopoly of one platform.

• Being a version management platform the key task of GitLab is to save and document all changes to files done by developers and their source code to make them easily traceable at any time. Hence, GitLab including Github is more inclined and used by the programmers and developers to make things easy for them. Due to a version control system, several developers can work on the same project simultaneously. Know more about this platform’s history at Wikipedia.

=> ↺ How to Install Apache Cassandra on AlmaLinux / Rocky Linux 8

• Apache Cassandra is an open-source NoSQL distributed database management system. Cassandra can be scaled horizontally by adding more nodes across which data is replicated automatically. Nodes can be added or removed without any downtime. The nodes can be organized logically as a cluster or a ring and set up across multiple data centers to improve speed and reliability for high-performance applications.

• In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Apache Cassandra on AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux 8 OS. The commands for both the Operating systems will be identical unless specified otherwise.

=> ↺ How to Install LEMP Stack on Fedora 35 – LinuxCapable

• LEMP is a collection of open-source software commonly used to serve web applications. The term LEMP is an acronym that represents the configuration of a Linux operating system with an Nginx (pronounced engine-x, hence the E in the acronym) web server, with site data stored in a MySQL or MariaDB database and dynamic content processed by PHP that is popularly used for hosting extensive websites due to its performance and scalability.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install LEMP (Nginx, MariaDB, PHP) on Fedora 35 Server or Workstation. The tutorial will install various version choices with Nginx, MariaDB, and PHP.

=> ↺ How to Install ModSecurity & OWASP Core Rule Set with Nginx on Fedora 35 – LinuxCapable

• ModSecurity, often referred to as Modsec, is a free, open-source web application firewall (WAF). ModSecurity was created as a module for the Apache HTTP Server. However, since its early days, the WAF has grown and now covers an array of HyperText Transfer Protocol request and response filtering capabilities for various platforms such as Microsoft IIS, Nginx, and Apache.

• How the WAF works, the ModSecurity engine is deployed in front of the web application, allowing the engine to scan the incoming and outgoing HTTP connections. ModSecurity is most commonly used in conjunction with the OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS), an open-source set of rules written in ModSecurity’s SecRules language and is highly regarded among the security industry.

=> ↺ Freezing your Node.js dependencies with yarn.lock and –frozen-lockfile

• When Yarn introduced a lock file (similar to Gemfile.lock), it did it with an unexpected twist. If you need reproducible builds, yarn.lock is not enough.

• What is a lock file? Lock files ensure that the defined dependencies from files such as package.json get pinned to specific versions. This later ensures parity on developers’ workstations, CI, and production.

• Many people probably depend on Yarn doing the right thing and installing only the pinned versions from yarn.lock on yarn install. But, unfortunately, this is not the case…

• The default behavior of yarn install is that the yarn.lock file gets updated if there is any mismatch between package.json and yarn.lock. Weird, right?

• (In comparison, other package managers such as RubyGems would only ever look at lock files and install the pinned versions from there.)

=> ↺ How to Setup Varnish SSL Termination with Nginx Web server on Rocky Linux 8

• Varnish cache software does not support SSL/TLS by default. You need additional software to enable SSL/TLS support on Varnish.

• SSL Termination is a method to enable SSL/TLS on Varnish. You can use Hitch, Nginx, or Apache to enable SSL termination for the Varnish HTTP accelerator.

• SSL termination software will be running on the HTTPS port ’443′ and handles all HTTPS requests from clients. After that, all requests will be forwarded to the varnish cache software, then forward to the origin backend server.

=> ↺ How to find a domain’s authoritative nameservers

• To be able to tell which one is happening (do you need to make a change, or do you just need to wait?), you need to be able to find your domain’s authoritative nameserver and query it to see what records it has.

• But when I looked up how to find a domain’s authoritative nameserver online to see what advice was out there, I found a lot of conflicting answers. So here’s how I look up a domain’s authoritative nameserver when I want to be 100% sure I’m getting the right answer.

• In this example, we’re going to look up the authoritative nameserver for jvns.ca. There are 2 steps, and the hardest part is just knowing what line of dig’s output to use.

=> ↺ How to use Podman to get information about your containers | Enable Sysadmin

• Podman is a daemon-less engine for developing, managing, and running Open Container Initiative (OCI)-compliant containers. This is the second article in a series about using Podman based on things I do in my real work environment. In my previous article, I showed you how to start containers quickly and easily using the familiar interface of shell scripting.

• In this article, I’ll demonstrate how to get insight into running containers. If you want to follow along with this article, first run the shell scripts I used in the “Setting things up” section of the first article in this series.

• [...]

• There are more options to explore in the podman ps and podman stats toolset. Try them out to familiarize yourself with the outputs. As you do, you’ll become comfortable with the commands, and you’ll be able to decide what suits your ongoing needs best.

• Podman is gaining more and more followers as a convenient and flexible tool for managing containers and images. Understanding how to use it for things such as listing running containers gives you an advantage in managing containers.

• In my next article, I’ll explore how to get your container’s external internet protocol (IP) address. Until then, you can learn more about Podman from 10 Podman guides to do more with containers in 2022, Top 10 container guides for sysadmins, and of course, Podman.io.

=> ↺ How to set up Laravel Bagisto with Nginx and PHP-FPM in Rocky Linux/Alma Linux 8

• Bagisto is an easy to use, free and open source Laravel eCommerce platform to build your online shop in no time.

• In this guide we will learn how to configure Laravel Bagisto with Nginx and PHP-FPM with MariaDB as the data source.

=> ↺ How to install and Configure Mariadb 10 in Rocky Linux/Alma Linux 8

• In this guide we will learn how to install and configure MariaDB in Rocky Linux/Alma Linux 8.

• MariaDB is an open-source one of the most popular relational database management system (RDBMS) that is a highly compatible drop-in replacement of MySQL. It is built upon the values of performance, stability, and openness, and MariaDB Foundation ensures contributions will be accepted on technical merit.

• MariaDB was developed as a software fork of MySQL in 2009 in response to Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL. MariaDB intends to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. It is part of most cloud offerings and the default in most Linux distributions.

=> ↺ What is BusyBox in Linux? How to Use it?

• BusyBox is getting popular these days, specially among Docker users. Many Docker images use BusyBox to provide you with a minimal image.

• And this could leave many users confused specially if you take Linux commands for granted. You think ls, mv and other such commands are part of Linux, while the truth is that these commands are part of GNU Coreutils package and most Linux distributions have it preinstalled.

• GNU Coreutils is almost the de facto provider of various UNIX/Linux commands. Almost because there are always alternatives and BusyBox is one such alternative to GNU Coreutils.

=> ↺ This Tool Adds More Display Scaling Levels for Ubuntu Gnome on X | UbuntuHandbook

• As you may know, Gnome control center (aka settings) has “Fractional Scaling” option since Ubuntu 20.04, allows to change scaling level for HiDPI displays.

• By default, user may scale up to 125%, 150%, 175% and 200% to make Ubuntu (or other GNOME based Linux, such as Fedora) to be read easily. In this tutorial, I’m going to introduce “BetterScale”, a command line tool gives more scaling levels.

=> ↺ Most Simple Linux Commands With 10 Examples

• In this guide you are going to learn the most simple yet powerful Linux commands which every Linux system user should know. These commands are used over and over on your daily work.

• Below given the Tips & Tricks you are about to learn.

=> ↺ How To Manage Location Sharing on Your Android Device

• Suppose you’re looking for someone but not able to find him/her. You know the place where he/she is, but not the exact location. No worries, your Android can make things easy for you in situations like this. You just need to share the exact location from the person’s (you’re looking for) Android to your Android. By doing so, you can easily reach your exact destination. So, manage your Android location sharing and get things done pretty easily.

• Moreover, you can also manage your app location sharing access on your Android along with WiFi and Bluetooth scanning to detect the location automatically. Additionally, real-time location sharing, Google’s location history on/off, is also there for your convenience. So finding or hiding your location is not a big deal anymore.

Distributions

New Releases

=> ↺ antiX-sid iso files available

• For those that like to live on the bleeding edge and build upwards from a small base, antiX has made available iso files based on Debian sid.

• We offer the following completely systemd-free and elogind-free flavours for both 32 and 64 bit architecture. User can download sysVinit or runit versions.

• antiX-core (c460MB) – no X, but should support most wireless (libdbus-1-3 is installed).

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ SUSE-Dell Technologies partnership continues to shine with Joint Open Source Solutions | SUSE Communities

• More value. Less effort. Less worry. No lock-in. For more than 20 years now, these are the shared values of SUSE and our partners at Dell Technologies. We believe in our joint ventures, but we still want you to feel you have the final decision to love us, no questions asked. And that’s how the future should be because it will be widely distributed over sensors and machines, in the cloud, on-premise and at the edge, all with a strong open-source backbone. Together we continue to collaborate over platform integration, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) support, and a solid compute foundation. We enable enterprises to deploy interoperable platforms for mission-critical computing and delivery IT services across your own blend of physical, virtual and cloud environments. And we base it all on SUSE Linux.

=> ↺ SA Power Networks focuses on sustainability with SUSE

• “We’re completing four full patching cycles a year with very few issues thanks to the reliability of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.” Pino Lascala, Server Technical Engineer (Unix), SA Power Networks.

Librem

=> ↺ Secure and Cloud-Friendly Experience with Librem 14 and NextCloud

• If you are wondering how to be on the cloud with your Librem device, we recommend Nextcloud, the freedom-respecting online productivity platform that keeps you in control. Nextcloud allows you to upload, edit, and share documents and files. It also has calendering and advanced plugins.

=> ↺ 2021 Year in Review: Design – Purism

• This year, just like the previous years, the Purism design team has been focusing on improving the overall Librem products experience. We took this opportunity to contribute to some amazing upstream projects like Libadwaita for the world to benefit from those modern and respectful technologies. Our goal is to make each Librem product simple and usable by anyone, while remaining secure and respecting digital rights. We are also working on unifying the overall experience across the different devices by designing UIs and gestures that naturally adapt to different screen sizes and orientations. We want people using a Librem desktop or laptop computer to feel at home when using a Librem 5 and vice-versa.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Linux Release Roundup #22.2: EasyOS 3.2, Linux Mint 20.3, Neptune 7.0, and More Releases – It’s FOSS News

• Linux Mint 20.3 is a point upgrade with several improvements and some new additions. You should also find a new application with this release to manage documents/ebooks.

• For more details, you should read our initial impressions and highlights on Linux Mint 20.3.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 717

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 717 for the week of January 2 – 8, 2022.

=> ↺ Release of Vanilla framework v3.0 | Ubuntu

• We’ve just released Vanilla v3.0 – a new major update to our CSS framework. It includes a few significant updates and improvements around spacing variables, responsive breakpoints, a new expanding search box and various updates to existing components. Important aspects of the release include dropping a noticeable chunk of deprecated styles and components and removing IE support.

• [...]

• We’ve always put a lot of attention into making sure components in Vanilla are consistently spaced and that all text and block elements align properly to our baseline grid. To make it possible while keeping the framework flexible, we used to have quite a large number of spacing variables in our SCSS code. These were used to add various amounts of horizontal or vertical spacing to the elements.

• We also had separate variables for “inner” and “outer” spacing. These turned out to be confusing, as it wasn’t always clear for more complex components if the given space should be considered “inner” or “outer”. The other aspect that made Vanilla spacing complicated was the density multiplication factor that could be changed on a framework level. It affected some of the spacing variables (that we called “scaleable”), but not the others. It was not widely used and was the source of some confusion and bugs.

• For Vanilla 3.0 we decided to refactor the spacing variables and reduce the number of them. We did this by removing the separation of “inner” and “outer” spacing, merging different variables that share the same values and removing the density multiplier and all variables that it affected. We still kept separate variables for horizontal and vertical spacing (to make it clear which values should be used in given directions), but they all follow the same naming conventions. So, “small” horizontal spacing has the same value as “small” vertical one.

• Alongside this work, we also cleaned up and refactored some spacing related mappings.

• This allowed us to reduce the number of our main spacing variables from 20 to around 10 with much more clear and consistent naming.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Rockchip RK3568 SBC to power 4G/5G, WiFI 6 connected smart displays, features an optional tuner – CNX Software

• Geniatech is back with another Rockchip RK3568 SBC. The K3-3568 single board computer is designed specifically for smart displays with 4G LTE, 5G, or WiFi 6 connectivity, and follows last year’s “Geniatech RK3568 development board” (aka DB3568) offered as a full-featured development kit for Rockchip RK3568 SoC.

• K3-3568 SBC ships with up to 8GB RAM, up to 64GB eMMC flash, and offers multiple display interfaces with HDMI, MIPI DSI, LVDS, eDP, plus and an internal HDMI input connector, as well as support for an optional DVB-T2, ISDB-T, DMBT, or ATSC digital tuner.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ New Raspberry Pi CM4 add-on makes it easy to use full-sized PC components

• Plugging in a CM4 board to the Interceptor adds a ton of ports to the tiny machine: four RJ45 Ethernet ports, five standard SATA ports (for hard drives, SSDs, or external media), two USB 2.0 ports, and two full-sized HDMI ports. Other expansion options include a standard set of case controller pins and four cooling fans, plus a 9-pin header for even more USB expansion. Power comes from a standard ATX motherboard power connector, compatible with that dusty power supply you haven’t used since the Pentium 4 was top-of-the-line.

=> ↺ Microchip SAM L22 board makes Casio F-91W watch more customizable (Crowdfunding) – CNX Software

• Casio F-91W is a popular watch that was first released in 1989, and it is still sold today for around $15. The team at “Oddly Specific Objects” decided to create the “Sensor Watch” open-source hardware board based on Microchip SAM L22 Cortex-M0+ microcontroller that can replace the electronics inside the watch.

• They still keep the display and enclosure and wristband from the original Casion F-91W watch, but the new board connects to a temperature sensor board, and more importantly, provides the ability to hack/program the watch with your own code, besides the few samples provided, or even design your own sensor board.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ These New Features Are Coming to Android in 2022

=> ↺ Google’s “Sooner” Was The First Android Phone

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G is the latest model to receive Android 12 update with One UI 4 – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Google Duo has an annoying audio-breaking bug on Android 12, but a fix is underway

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

=> ↺ Android app deals of the day: SpongeBob, Peace, Death!, Money Manager Expense, more – 9to5Toys

=> ↺ Learn what’s new in Google Play system updates for Android – 9to5Google

=> ↺ A Magic new Android phone thinks it can fix Samsung’s biggest flaw | Express.co.uk

=> ↺ Gmail crosses 10 billion installs on Android, fourth Google app to do so | Technology News,The Indian Express

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

Chromium

=> ↺ Chromium Blog: Chrome 98 Beta: Color Gradient Vector Fonts, Region Capture Origin Trial, and More

• Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 98 is beta as of January 10, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

=> ↺ Google Rolls Chrome 98 Into Beta With COLRv1 Font Support – Phoronix

• Following last week’s release of Chrome 97, Google has promoted Chrome 98 to beta form.

• With Chrome 98 there are a variety of small additions but mostly developer-facing items. Some of the Chrome 98 beta highlights include:

• • COLRv1 color gradient vector fonts are supported as a new font format. These color fonts are made up of glpyhs with multiple colors in them such as for emoji, country flags, or multi-colored letters. More details on COLRv1 fonts via developer.chrome.com.

Mozilla

=> ↺ Mozilla launches study into Facebook data collection

• Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, is partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The Markup to launch a study that will analyze how Facebook tracks data for targeted ads and to tailor content recommendations for users.

• The study will use tools provided by Rally, a privacy-focused data sharing platform created by Mozilla in June, Mozilla announced Monday.

• Firefox users can opt into the “Facebook Pixel Hunt” study through Rally. The study will collect the data sent to Facebook pixels as users browse, the URLs of the web pages users browse, the time users spend browsing pages and the presence of Facebook login cookies in users’ browsers.

=> ↺ Mozilla and Linux Mint sign a partnership agreement

• Linux Mint, developer of the popular Linux distribution, and Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client, have signed a partnership agreement.

• The Linux Mint team announced the partnership on the official blog. According to the information published there, the partnership is commercial and technical in nature.

• Some things will change for Linux Mint users who use Firefox as a browser on the system. Linux Mint shipped Firefox with a custom set of settings and configurations in the past, and most of these will be dropped to go back to the defaults.

=> ↺ Firefox 96 is Available to Download, This is What’s New – OMG! Ubuntu!

• Mozilla Firefox 96 is out.

• The first major update to the browser this year comes with a modest miscellany of improvements, plus a few Linux-specifics changes users may be interested to hear about.

• But we’ll start with something everyone: better security.

• Firefox 96 ships with the Cookie Policy: Same-Site=lax setting enabled by default. This, Mozilla say, “provides a solid first line of defense against Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks”. Nice.

• Next, Mozilla says it made “significant improvements in noise-suppression and auto-gain-control as well as slight improvements in echo-cancellation to provide you with a better overall experience.” This relates to the browser’s built-in Media Capture and Streams API which is used in WebRTC.

=> ↺ Firefox 96 Yields Less Load On The Main Thread, WebP Encoder For Canvas – Phoronix

• Firefox 96.0 is officially shipping today as the first update of 2022 for this open-source web browser.

• Firefox 96.0 has “significantly” reduced the amount of load placed on the browser’s main thread and there is also “significant” improvements in noise suppression and auto-gain-control and improvements in echo cancellation. In addition to that performance work, there are also WebRTC improvements, an improved cookie policy to reduce the likelihood of Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks, video quality degradation fixes, and other fixes.

=> ↺ Linux Mint Partners with Mozilla to ‘Improve Firefox Experience’ – It’s FOSS News

• Linux Mint announced a partnership with Mozilla.

• Considering Linux Mint offers Firefox as the default web browser and continues to use Thunderbird as the email client, it sounds like a piece of good news.

• But, what exactly does the partnership affect? What are the changes that come with Firefox on Linux Mint?

• [...]

• Linux Mint will be dropping its customizations and using the default configurations for the Firefox browser, identical to other operating systems or distributions.

• This should ensure that you get a uniform Firefox browsing experience, no matter the platform.

=> ↺ Updating to Firefox 96

• Yesterday we announced a new partnership with Mozilla and a transition to Mozilla default settings in Firefox 96. If you didn’t read this announcement yet, please visit https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244.

• Today, in preparation for Firefox 96 I want to make one more blog post, this time to talk specifically about technical details and to help people before, through and after the transition.

• Firefox 96 is out today but we’ll publish the update on Friday January 14th. This will give everyone a few days to read this post, prepare for the update and get an opportunity to ask questions and seek help before the transition.

FSF

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ Making Open Source economy more viable with dual license collectives

• Here is an idea that has been sitting in my mind for more than a year now, and I still think it might work. I finally decided to write it down, so people can tell me if it already has been tried or why is it bad. I almost never have any truly unique idea, so I bet someone will send me a link proving that I just suck at googling stuff. If you think it’s good – feel free to give it a try. After all, ideas are cheap and execution is where the value is.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Setting Up a CI System Part 3: Provisioning Your CI Gateway

• In this article, we will further discuss the role of the CI gateway, and which steps we can take to simplify its deployment, maintenance, and disaster recovery.

• This work is sponsored by the Valve Corporation.

Perl/Raku

=> ↺ Raku Advent Calendar: All the blogs posts of 2021

=> ↺ 2022.01/02 Perching? – Rakudo Weekly News

• Inspired by the mention of increased number of visitors to the 2021 Raku Advent Calendar (up 180% from 2020), and an article about the cycle of adoption of technology, Steve Roe created a Pull Request for the Raku’s Most Wanted list, which describes a plan to make the Raku Programming Language the tool of choice for the scientist / programmer that is hitting the limits of Python. Hopefully, a Python Perch for all the people working on this in the Rakudo Weekly News, will become a thing!

Leftovers

=> ↺ From the Market Mirage to Regional Communities: the Communitarian Vision of William Appleman Williams

• Friedman made that statement in 1982, even as the laissez-faire economic ideas that had seemed impossible through much of his career were coming to fruition. The new Reagan Administration was busy cutting government programs and regulations, while reducing taxes on corporations and the wealthy. “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” Reagan had proclaimed in his inaugural address. It was a sharp turn from previous decades. The 1930s Depression had deeply discredited free market economics. From the 1930s New Deal to the 1960s Great Society, expansion of government and its role in society had been the hallmark.

• But the 1970s saw the emergence of multiple crises. Oil prices skyrocketed, while inflation radiated throughout a stagnating economy. The old economic formulas no longer seemed to work. The ruling business and political classes were under severe challenge. Wealth inequality, always a major divide, reached a historically low point in the mid-1970s, while labor intensified its demands. The ideas of Freidman and other free market economists developed in the 1950s and ‘60s had already undergone a test run in Chile after the 1973 coup. Now the ruling classes of the U.S. were ready to implement them wholesale in the U.S., even as Margaret Thatcher brought them to the fore in the UK. Strictly speaking, the neoliberal revolution did not so much reduce government as the parts of government that benefitted ordinary people, while attacking labor and unleashing corporations from much of the regulatory framework created in previous decades. The trend continued through Republican and Democratic administrations.

=> ↺ ProPublica’s Year in Visual Journalism

• We at ProPublica often tell stories about vulnerable people who have been failed by powerful individuals and institutions. Through our visual journalism, we aim to help our readers connect with and contextualize these stories.

Hardware

=> ↺ A Simple EMF Detector And Electroscope You Can Make From Junk Box Parts | Hackaday

• Electromagnetic fields are everywhere, all around us. Some are generated naturally, but in vast majority of cases, it’s we humans that are generating them with artificial, electronic means. Everything from your mobile phone to the toaster will emit some sort of signal, be it intentional or not. So we think it only befits the general electronics-orientated hacker to have some way of sniffing around for these signals, so here is [Mirko Pavleski] with his take on a very simple pair of instruments to detect both static and dynamic electromagnetic fields.

• [...]

• The first unit (a simple electroscope) uses a cascade of 2N2222 NPN bipolar transistors configured to give a high current gain, so any charge near the antenna will result in increasing currents in subsequent stages, finally illuminating the LED. Simple stuff.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Disability Rights Advocates Condemn CDC Director’s ‘Abhorrent’ Comments on Covid-19 Deaths

• Disability rights groups on Sunday were among those expressing horror at comments by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky regarding who is most likely to die from the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

• On “Good Morning America” Friday, Walensky shared what she said was “encouraging news” about the variant which is driving case numbers to record highs in the U.S., saying, “The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities.”

=> ↺ Why Doesn’t the Supreme Court Want Workers to Be As Safe From Covid as They Are?

• All the Supreme Court justices are vaccinated. The court, moreover, was an early adopter of remote working to keep the justices safe, and even as they’ve gone back to the court in person, they still require Covid testing of those who will argue in front of them. It would seem the nine people who can be removed from power only by death are taking the best available precautions to stay alive.

=> ↺ The Front Lines of Omicron

• This winter brings a bleak sense of déjà vu to the Boston-area ICU where I work. Once again, beds are increasingly occupied by critically ill patients with Covid-19. When I join Zoom calls with physicians from other hospitals to coordinate regional “load balancing” of ICU beds—exchanging patients between facilities to prevent overload—the tone is again tense.

=> ↺ Omicron Spike Is Straining Hospitals as Health Care Workers Leave the Profession

=> ↺ Congress Is Providing KN95s to Lawmakers. What About the Rest of Us?

=> ↺ ‘Good News for Seniors’: Becerra Orders Medicare to Reassess Premium Hike

• As the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday that he was ordering a review of a planned 15% hike in the Medicare Part B premium for 2022, healthcare reform advocates stressed the need for Congress to pass a Build Back Better bill with a provision allowing the federal government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs.

• “Pharma corporations cynically anticipate public anger at high launch prices and so plan for ‘voluntary’ price reductions.”

=> ↺ ‘What About the General Public?’: Members of Congress to Get KN95 Masks Amid Omicron Wave

• With Capitol Hill—like much of the United States—experiencing a major spike in Covid-19 cases, members of Congress and their offices are reportedly set to receive KN95 masks to help stem the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant.

• “There are unprecedented infections around the entire country! What about the general public?”

=> ↺ Breaking Point: Ed Yong Says Omicron Is Straining Hospitals & Schools Amid Vaccine Mandate Pushback

• The Omicron variant’s transmission rate is exponentially higher than Delta, leaving healthcare workers across the U.S. in dire straits. Waves of doctors, nurses and other health professionals are unionizing, and some have quit the profession over exploitative conditions. The staffing shortage has added on to the strains of increasing hospitalizations due to COVID-19, limited availability of necessary equipment and lack of federal support for preventative measures such as paid medical leave. “This is the cost of two years spent pushing prematurely for a return to normal,” says Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and science writer at The Atlantic. Yong also discusses the debate over keeping schools open during the COVID-19 surge, and challenges to President Biden’s vaccine mandates affecting nearly 100 million workers.

=> ↺ As Djokovic Leaves Australian Detention Hotel, Refugees Held There Urge World Not to Forget Them

• As an Australian judge allows unvaccinated tennis star Novak Djokovic to be released from immigration detention amid controversy over his COVID vaccine exemption, we look at how his case has intensified international scrutiny over Australia’s inhumane treatment of refugees jailed in the same rundown hotel. “No one is telling us when we get out of this indefinite detention,” says Mehdi Ali, an Iranian refugee currently detained by the Australian government at the Park Hotel in Melbourne. We also speak with former Australian soccer player Craig Foster, who advocates for asylum seekers.

=> ↺ Calls for Paid Leave Grow as Workers Face ‘Vicious Cycle’: Their Jobs or Covid Safety

• As U.S. workers ill with Covid-19 during the Omicron surge face the stark choice of staying home without pay at the risk of losing their jobs or reporting to work and possibly infecting colleagues and customers, progressives on Monday renewed calls for the implementation of paid sick leave at the national level.

• “I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting my co-workers. Now I wish I just would’ve gone to work and not said anything.”

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Australian Government Reviews Its Encryption-Breaking Law, Says It’s Cool And Good

• The Australian government gave itself encryption-breaking powers at the end of 2018. The law went into effect January 2019. The beneficiaries of the law immediately swept in to reap the rewards. Demands for “exceptional access” required tech companies to break encryption upon request to hand over communications and data sought by law enforcement and security agencies.

=> ↺ Here Comes the Digital Markets Act, Important New Legislation From the EU Boosting Privacy and Interoperability

• Where the DSA is highly contentious, because of its desire to lay down what is illegal content online — something that touches on human rights such as freedom of speech — the DMA has a great deal of support across the political spectrum in Europe. The GAFAM group has long been regarded as too powerful, and even as a threat to European democracy; calls to clip the wings of these companies have been heard for years. The DMA aims to impose a number of wide-ranging restrictions on these digital giants, and if passed is likely to have a major impact on them not just in the EU, but globally.

=> ↺ Moxie Marlinspike has stepped down as CEO of Signal

• Founded in 2014, Signal has grown into one of the most trusted and robust apps for encrypted messaging. The service has more than 40 million monthly users and is regularly recommended in security guides. Established as a nonprofit, the company is not supported by advertising or app sales, instead relying on donations and a recently launched sustainer program.

=> ↺ The FCC’s still in a stalemate a year into Biden’s presidency

• After nearly a year into Joe Biden’s presidency, new pressure is mounting on the Senate to expeditiously confirm nominations for positions at two of the federal government’s top agencies with control over broadband and data privacy.

• In new statements issued on Monday, public interest groups Free Press Action and Fight for the Future called on the Senate Commerce Committee to fill the final seats at the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Both Gigi Sohn and Alvaro Bedoya, for the FCC and FTC, respectively, have finished their confirmation hearing processes, but neither nomination has received a final committee vote to set them up for floor confirmation.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Citing ‘Blatant Acts of Insurrection,’ NC Voters Petition to Bar Cawthorn From Seeking Reelection

• Citing U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s alleged participation in the January 6 coup attempt, a group of North Carolina voters on Monday submitted a legal challenge to prevent the Republican lawmaker from seeking reelection in 2022.

• “Cawthorn has engaged in blatant acts of insurrection. He must be held accountable for his actions which have threatened our democracy.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Killer Robots and the Laws We Need to Stop Them

• Here’s a scenario to consider: a military force has purchased a million cheap, disposable flying drones each the size of a deck of cards, each capable of carrying three grams of explosives—enough to kill a single person or, in a “shaped charge,” pierce a steel wall. They’ve been programmed to seek out and “engage” (kill) certain human beings, based on specific “signature” characteristics like carrying a weapon, say, or having a particular skin color. They fit in a single shipping container and can be deployed remotely. Once launched, they will fly and kill autonomously without any further human action.

=> ↺ Progressives Demand Biden End Sanctions to Avert Mass Starvation in Afghanistan

• Progressive U.S. lawmakers and human rights advocates are urging the Biden administration to immediately lift economic sanctions on Afghanistan that are fueling a humanitarian disaster and as famine threatens millions in the war-torn nation.

• “Afghanistan is facing an avalanche of hunger and destitution the likes of which I have never seen in my 20 plus years with the World Food Program.”

=> ↺ Lethal Robotic Weapons Systems Are on the Rise, But So Is the Fight to Stop Them

=> ↺ When Sidney Poitier Picked Up the Gun

• I was 15 in the summer of 1968, when it seemed everybody my age and older was out in the streets. Instead, I hunkered down and let the world’s rage, turbulence, and intensity come to me. I absorbed it all. And got so used to my hopes being dashed by the events of that summer that I expected disappointment each day as if it were a regular meal.

=> ↺ Nina Khrushcheva: Putin Could Be Kingmaker in Kazakhstan Power Struggle as Russia Helps Quell Protests

• Kazakhstan’s authoritarian President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has described last week’s protests as an attempted coup and defended his call for Russian-led troops into the country to put down the unrest. Demonstrations were triggered by a rise in fuel prices and widened to broader anti-government protests. Over 160 people were killed in the violence, including a 4-year-old girl, and thousands were detained. “The Russian troops will probably get out, but Tokayev, if he keeps power … probably will be somehow in debt of Putin, and Putin may have [the] position to decide, or help decide, certain moves in Kazakhstan,” says Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs at The New School.

=> ↺ A grim year: Meduza’s Andrey Pertsev sums up the key developments in Russia’s domestic politics in 2021

• The year 2020 saw the death of public politics in Russia. To accommodate a plebiscite on amending the constitution, the authorities introduced a three-day voting period (leaving ballots unsupervised at polling stations overnight), as well as “mobile polling stations” (giving rise to the infamous “stump” voting). The official result was 67 percent turnout, with 78 percent of voters supporting the constitutional changes. 

=> ↺ Putin Unlikely to Invade Ukraine Despite Overheated U.S. Rhetoric, Says Khrushchev’s Great-Granddaughter

• U.S. and Russian officials are meeting today in Geneva as NATO calls on Russia to remove its troops from along the Ukrainian border. The Russian military has also mobilized soldiers to suppress protests in Kazakhstan. We go to Moscow to speak with Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs at The New School, who says President Vladimir Putin is expanding Russia’s sphere of influence but will not invade Ukraine. “It’s not that he wants to take more territory. I think he wants to get heard,” says Khrushcheva.

=> ↺ ‘Reinforced concrete guarantees’ Here’s what the heads of the Russian and U.S. delegations said after today’s talks in Geneva

• On Monday, January 11, diplomats from Russia and the United States held a series of security talks in Geneva. Taking place against the backdrop of Russia massing troops along its border with Ukraine, the discussion centered around a set of draft security proposals that Moscow presented to the United States and NATO in December. Speaking to reporters after the talks, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman underscored that no concrete decisions have been made as of yet. Here are their comments to the press, in a nutshell. 

=> ↺ Denying the Inevitable: Why the West Refuses to Accept China’s Superpower Status

• To help us understand what this claim precisely means, the FT writer uses an analogy. “To use a sporting analogy, you can be an extremely gifted tennis player and genuinely want to be world champion, but still be unwilling to make the sacrifices to turn the dream into reality.”

• At least, in Rachman’s thinking, China is capable of being a political actor, though it remains incapable of vying for the superpower status, as it supposedly lacks ‘the will’ to make the required ‘sacrifices’.

=> ↺ The U.S. Makes a Mockery of Treaties and International Law

• This cudgel is now used most commonly against China and Russia. Oddly enough, whenever the United States asserts this “rules-based order” that China (and other “revisionist powers”/enemy states) are violating, the United States never seems to clarify which “rules” are being violated, but simply releases a miasma of generic accusation, leaving the stench of racism and xenophobia to do the rest.

• This is because there is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the RBIO.

=> ↺ January 6th: From Standoff to Siege and Back Again

• As Western Watersheds Project and others said at the time, the siege of the Capitol was unprecedented but unsurprising. A former senior domestic terrorism analyst described it as “A straight line that you can draw” between Jan. 6, 2021 and the 2014 standoff at the Bundy Ranch. To those of us who have been watching the uprising of anti-government sentiment play out on public lands in the West, the trajectory was painfully clear. The same “Don’t Tread on Me” flags waving on the national mall had been flying from flagpoles in rural towns, and were trademarks of both the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016 and the standoff at the Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville in 2014.

• The resistance to, and resentment of, the government’s nominal protection and management of federally-managed lands from private exploitation by grazing has been a ‘thing’ in the West since the Taylor Grazing Act took the public land out of the hands of the cattle industry. Though certainly not the only – or most extreme – example of white supremacists laying claim to lands that don’t belong to them, public lands ranchers and the January 6 insurrectionists have the same sense of entitlement about having the government run in accordance with their beliefs and for their benefit.

=> ↺ The Pentagon and CIA Have Shaped Thousands of Hollywood Movies into Super Effective Propaganda

=> ↺ Opinion | Hey, Hey, USA! How Many Bombs Did You Drop Today?

• The Pentagon has finally published its first Airpower Summary since President Biden took office nearly a year ago. These monthly reports have been published since 2007 to document the number of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S.-led air forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria since 2004. But President Trump stopped publishing them after February 2020, shrouding continued U.S. bombing in secrecy.

=> ↺ More German state police forces introduce tasers for patrol police

• Four out of 16 federal states are now introducing electric pulse weapons across the board. The right-wing conservative police union DPolG has declared itself to be the mastermind and is sponsored by a manufacturer. Whether the officers will use less violence with the new weapons, as claimed, is questionable. Every year there are two deaths in Germany after being tasered

=> ↺ Anti-War Voices Denounce Knighting of Ex-PM Tony Blair

• Outrage continues to swell over the recent decision to give a knighthood to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was instrumental in the bloody U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with anti-war campaigners in the U.K. gearing up for a protest later this year.

• “We will protest at this grotesque award in the name of the Iraqis, the Afghans, the families who lost soldiers, the refugees, and victims of these and subsequent wars.”

=> ↺ How Close Is Iran to Getting a Nuclear Weapon?

• There are a number of critical technological hurdles Tehran must surmount first to acquire a fully functioning nuclear weapons program. Iran must develop enough highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium to fuel one or more nuclear bomb; construct a nuclear warhead capable of housing the fissile nuclear fuel; and develop a ballistic missile system capable of delivering a nuclear explosive to its target. Finally, it needs to conduct a test to see if the explosive actually works.

=> ↺ The disturbing parallels between the 2020s and 1940s in the U.S.

• These “paradigms” have been for more than a year a regular subject of discussion between me and Jay Weixelbaum. He’s a writer and business historian who’s producing a streaming mini-series about the time a Nazi spy joined US businessmen to toast the fall of France in a Manhattan hotel while a Jewish FBI agent investigated.

• Jay’s project is called A Nazi on Wall Street. (You can donate to the cause here.) During our conversation, he explained why he believes we are moving into a new paradigm and how the choices made in the 1940s seem to mirror choices being made in the 2020s. We could have turned fully fascist back then. Let’s hope we don’t do that now.

Environment

=> ↺ NOAA Report Shows 310 Climate-Linked Disasters Cost US Over $2 Trillion Since 1980

• As new statistics published Monday by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed the United States has sustained more than $2 trillion in damages wrought by over 300 weather and climate disasters since 1980, a leading economist specializing in equitable climate solutions reiterated the need for urgent action—starting with passing Democrats’ flagship Build Back Better Act—to mitigate the planetary emergency.  

• “Policymakers must take drastic actions to rein in global warming emissions across all sectors of the economy.”

=> ↺ Opinion | The Climate Crisis Is Clawing Back Progress We Made to Save the Puffins

• I stepped onto the battlefield of climate change, sidestepping carcass after carcass. In the grass were the remains of Arctic terns, common terns, and roseate terns. Along the boulders, researchers pointed out dead puffin chicks. As other climate war zones smolder with wildfire embers, are strewn with flattened homes, or marked by bleached coral, the signature of conflict on a seabird island in the Gulf of Maine is a maddening quietude.

=> ↺ Obsession: Climate Change Russian Roulette

• How about geo-engineering to reflect sunlight back into space, and cool the Earth? A friend asked: Is Dr. Ye Tao’s mirrors-on-the-ocean-surface scheme to reduce solar influx and thus reduce global warming reasonable? [2]

• My initial reaction: It’s like wearing a thicker helmet so you can keep playing Russian Roulette.

Energy

=> ↺ Opinion | The Fed Is Getting This Economy All Wrong

• Friday’s jobs report from the Department of Labor was a warning sign about the US economy. It should cause widespread concern about the Fed’s plans to raise interest rates to control inflation. And it should cause policymakers to rethink ending government supports such as extended unemployment insurance and the child tax credit. These will soon be needed to keep millions of families afloat.

=> ↺ We Need the Fossil Free Finance Act Now to Combat Wall Street’s Greenwashing

=> ↺ Fukushima Takes a Turn for the Worse

• The problems, issues, enormous danger, and ill timing of deconstruction of a nuclear disaster is always unexpectedly complicated by something new. That’s the nature of nuclear meltdowns, aka: China Syndrome debacles.

• As of today, TEPCO is suffering some very serious setbacks that have “impossible to deal with” written all over the issues.

=> ↺ Bakers: Expensive electricity will raise price of pastries

• Increased electricity bills are eating away at the stocks entrepreneurs have managed to save up during the coronavirus crisis. Bakeries say that rising energy, raw material and labor prices will eventually lead to higher product prices.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Vanishing Lines I Ski resort expansion is destroying our last living glaciers.

=> ↺ Cargo, With a Side of Hornets, Flies and Crabs

=> ↺ The Fish and Wildlife Service Must Reject Gianforte’s Political Grizzly Bear Petition

• The petition is not based upon the best scientific and commercial information available. In fact, its key provision of declaring the NCDE to be a genetically distinct population segment is devoid of any scientific backing or supporting data whatsoever and is not in accord with the Distinct Population Segment Policy. It is built entirely on numbers using questionable methods.

• Let’s be clear, the petition is a transparent political power grab and a vehicle to begin hunting of grizzly bears no matter the levels of other mortality sources. If delisted there WILL be hunting of grizzly bears with mortality exceeding sustainable levels. Forget science-based management. We can see the potential future of state management of grizzly bears by taking a look at the current wolf slaughter which has wiped out entire packs of Yellowstone wolves. By fencing bears into undersized recovery zones with a wall of mortality, the State is attempting to create distinct population segments through permanent isolation. The State’s plan allows for the NCDE grizzly population to fall more than 27% before remedial actions are even considered. That’s an invitation to the extinction vortex where rapid population decline cannot be reversed by management.

Finance

=> ↺ How To Destroy Innovation And Competition: Putting SHOP SAFE Act Into Innovation And Competition Act

• Last fall, we had three separate articles about the horrific problems of the SHOP SAFE Act — one by me, one by Cathy Gellis, and a massive one by Prof. Eric Goldman. The bill is extraordinarily bad, but it’s extraordinarily bad in a somewhat sneaky manner, which we’ll get to in a moment.

=> ↺ Worshiping Markets, Genuflecting to Grand Fortune

=> ↺ Think Big to Overcome Losing Big to Corporatism

• These bills included the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and environmental laws, the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for worker health and safety, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and worker pension protection, among others.

• Alas, Richard Nixon was the last Republican president to be afraid of liberals. When grade B actor Ronald Reagan flew into Washington, he opened all doors to Big Business. A cruel man with a smile, Reagan gave an actor’s cover to the greatest collapse into the corporate power pits in American history.

=> ↺ Knowledge of Build Back Better is Power

• A day after news broke that Manchin’s “no” was not necessarily final and defending the senator’s earlier blanket refusal, Fox News Contributor Deroy Murdock fired off a barrage of invective. He wrote that “BBB [Build Back Better] is … a Pandora’s box teeming with far-Left vipers and viruses.” These include “[u]niversal pre-kindergarten, all the better to brainwash children with critical race theory …,” and a smorgasbord of “socialist goodies,” such as “body spa treatments” and “a Great Lakes heavy icebreaker.”

• Hardworking preschool teachers make sure that the toddlers in their charge learn all sorts of skills. Crafts, story time, potty training, and naps are also big parts of the day, so there is no room for critical race theory, a subject mostly taught in universities. In addition, I do not recall my political science professor ever teaching us that massages and icebreakers are critical elements in forming repressive, authoritarian regimes, even those with a socialist veneer. If he had, we might have wondered if he was qualified for the job or was simply joking.

=> ↺ Inside the December Jobs Report: Unemployment Falls to 3.9 Percent; Wage Growth Remains Strong

• The unemployment rate fell another 0.3 percentage points in December, bringing the unemployment rate down to 3.9 percent. This is lower than all but five months in the late 1990s boom and the period between May 2018 and the pandemic.

• At the same time, the establishment survey showed a weaker than expected increase in 199,000 jobs; although the prior two months figures were revised upward by a total of 141,000. With the upward revisions, the average growth for the last three months was 365,000.

=> ↺ Today in adulting: At nearly 38, I learned that dental insurance almost isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

• I have fairly good teeth, so I haven’t had dental insurance in 20 years.

• But my spouse has awful teeth and has a dental insurance plan through Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

• They pitch it as paying for 80% of minor work (extractions, fillings) and 50% of major (crowns, root canals, and dentures), but what I found out is that their plan and their paper Explanation of Benefits that you get in the mail is really deceptive.

• What actually will happen is a bunch of things like, the dentist charges $275 for a filling, but Blue Cross/Blue Shield has an “allowable amount”.

• Now, on HEALTH insurance, an allowable amount would mean that they gave you a network discount and then paid 80% of that.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Elizabeth Warren Demands Information on Fed Official’s Questionable Stock Trades

=> ↺ Opinion | The Murderous Corporate Psychopaths Who Never Go to Prison

• Alfred Ruf poisoned his wife as part of a scheme to get rich off her life insurance. So did Dr. Gregory “Brent” Dennis, who was looking at a $2 million payout. Joshua Hunsucker poisoned his wife for a mere $250K in life insurance money, $80,000 of which he used to buy a boat. David L. Pettis poisoned his wife for $150,000.

=> ↺ Manchin Filibuster Talks Like “Negotiating Via Etch A Sketch,” Dem Sources Say

=> ↺ Sanders Says Democrats Need ‘Major Course Correction’ to Prevent GOP Takeover

• Sen. Bernie Sanders said in an interview published Monday that too much of the Democratic Party has “turned its back on the working class” and is in need of a dramatic shift as central elements of its agenda—from voting rights to climate action to social spending—face possible collapse thanks to corporate-backed lawmakers.

• In the conversation with The Guardian, Sanders (I-Vt.)—a two-time contender for the Democratic presidential nomination and the current chair of the Senate Budget Committee—said the party must immediately undertake “a major course correction” if it hopes to advance its popular agenda, reverse its falling support among key constituencies, and prevent the increasingly authoritarian GOP from seizing power.

=> ↺ Who could ever have seen this coming?

• As I approached what I should write about early in 2022, I thought that I should write about something more “meta”. (No, not the metaverse or Facebook’s crappy new name!) This reminds me of something I saw before the holidays on Twitter about retiring NIH director Francis Collins, who irritated me so much that I almost broke my vow not to blog over the holidays. Fortunately, I didn’t, which allowed me to contemplate it more and my anger to recede. That doesn’t change my level of frustration; so here we go.

=> ↺ American Exception: Empire and the Deep State with Aaron Good and David Talbot – The Project Censored Show

=> ↺ North Carolina Voters Challenge Madison Cawthorn’s Candidacy

=> ↺ When Will David Brooks Admit That Conservatism Paved the Way for Trump?

• David Brooks is the prodigal son of the Democratic Party. As an undergrad at the University of Chicago in the early 1980s, he identified as a democratic socialist. But upon graduating he got caught up in the spirit of Reaganism, starting off as an intern for William F. Buckley Jr. Now, after more than three decades of being a formidable Republican advocate, Brooks is ready to return to the Democratic fold.

=> ↺ Attention, Democrats: The Constitution Trumps the Filibuster

• Four times during this past congressional session, Senate Republicans have blocked voting rights legislation. Democrats are currently trying to decide whether to use their shaky, one-vote majority to end or limit use of the filibuster in order to overcome Republican opposition and pass a voting rights reform bill. As usual, they are divided.

=> ↺ Opinion | Killing Build Back Better Could End Sinema and Manchin’s Careers: Lessons from 2010

• Holding the fate of Build Back Better (BBB) in their hands, Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin should heed some lessons from 2010. When a small group of Democratic senators so delayed and weakened Obamacare that they cratered Obama’s initially massive support, they also helped end all their own political careers. 

=> ↺ Groups Tell Biden He’s Not Welcome in Georgia Without a ‘Finalized Voting Rights Plan’

• President Joe Biden is set to visit Atlanta on Tuesday to deliver a major speech on the state of voting rights in the U.S., but his planned visit has gotten a chilly reception from Georgia advocates who say they’re sick of lofty rhetoric and no action from Democratic leaders.

• In a joint statement ahead of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip, a coalition of advocacy groups including the Black Voters Matter Fund, the Georgia NAACP, and the Asian American Advocacy Fund said the president must bring with him “an announcement of a finalized voting rights plan that will pass both chambers, not be stopped by the filibuster, and be signed into law.”

=> ↺ Steve Bannon Is Onto Something

• To Hersh, that’s not politics. It’s what he calls “political hobbyism.” And it’s close to a national pastime. “A third of Americans say they spend two hours or more each day on politics,” he writes. “Of these people, four out of five say that not one minute of that time is spent on any kind of real political work. It’s all TV news and podcasts and radio shows and social media and cheering and booing and complaining to friends and family.”

• Real political work, for Hersh, is the intentional, strategic accumulation of power in service of a defined end. It is action in service of change, not information in service of outrage. This distinction is on my mind because, like so many others, I’ve spent the week revisiting the attempted coup of Jan. 6, marinating in my fury toward the Republicans who put fealty toward Donald Trump above loyalty toward country and the few but pivotal Senate Democrats who are proving, day after day, that they think the filibuster more important than the franchise. Let me tell you, the tweets and columns I drafted in my head were searing.

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Fox News has a Jan. 6 problem: Sean Hannity’s text messages make clear his complicity

• It’s impossible to know for sure what he meant by “January 6th happening the way he is being told” but according to a number of accounts this was when Trump’s henchmen were hatching their plot to have Republicans in Congress object to the electoral count and have Pence throw the election to the House of Representatives where Trump would win despite losing through legitimate means. In other words, the coup was being planned. And apparently, the White House counsel’s office knew it was illegal and was threatening to quit en masse over it, or at least that’s the suspicion based upon what Hannity was texting.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ SOPA Plus 10, reflections and continued work

• On January 18, 2012, the web went dark in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), two bills introduced into the United States House and Senate in the last quarter of 2011.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Immigration Reform Is Still Possible — With a Strong Social Movement

=> ↺ Opinion | “The White Negro”: Norman Mailer’s Essay 65 Years Later

• A 1957 essay by celebrated writer Norman Mailer called  “The White Negro” is getting a lot of renewed attention these days. According to a just-published article by journalist Michael Wolff in a site called The Ankler, Random House decided against publishing a collection of Mailer’s essays after a “junior staffer” complained about “The White Negro,” which was going to be included in the anthology.  According to Wolff, the staffer believed that the title was racist and that was enough for Random House to scuttle the project in order to avoid controversy. This quickly triggered a debate on social media over so-called “cancel culture.” Did the nation’s largest book publisher cancel the Mailer book over fears of being called racist?

=> ↺ Japanese Women Are Fighting Back Against Pervasive Sexism

=> ↺ Starbucks Workers in Chicago, Ohio and Oregon Join Unionization Efforts

=> ↺ A Free South

• In the 1960s, the Free Southern Theater, an organization founded by a group of activists with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), traveled to a church in a predominantly Black, rural corner of Mississippi. There they staged Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, an absurdist drama about characters conversing as they wait for someone who never arrives. The play may have seemed like a strange choice—who would imagine that Beckett might connect with rural Black Americans in the throes of the civil rights movement?—but it found at least one admirer in civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer. “I guess we know something about waiting, don’t we?” Hamer said from the audience.1

=> ↺ ‘Absolute Disgrace’: Maine’s Democratic Gov. Kills Bill to Allow Farmworkers to Unionize

• Maine’s Democratic Gov. Janet Mills is under fire after vetoing a bill that would have allowed farmworkers in the state to unionize.

• The Maine Legislature passed a bill to give workers in agricultural industries the right to organize and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. But in a move that labor reporter Kim Kelly called “an absolute disgrace,” Mills on Friday single-handedly prevented the proposal from becoming law.

=> ↺ Conservatives on Supreme Court Poised to Block Biden’s Vaccine and Mask Mandates

=> ↺ Joleen Nez: A Death in Custody

• On April 16, 2020, Officer Preston Panana walked up to Joleen Nez at the corner of Texas Street and Zuni Avenue in Albuquerque. Nez was living in a nearby encampment in a neighborhood known as the War Zone, along with dozens of other unhoused Native Americans. About six months pregnant with her fifth child, Nez, who is Navajo and Zia Pueblo, was getting her meals at the Albuquerque Indian Center, where she’d known some of the staff for years.

• Panana was with four other police officers when he heard Nez and a man arguing. As the two quarreled, the man set a paper cup and bowl down on the sidewalk, and Nez knocked them over. That’s when, as Panana wrote in the incident report, he advised her “to pick up her litter and of the consequences if she did not.”

=> ↺ Podcast Episode: Algorithms for a Just Future

• EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien joined Vinhcent to discuss our digital privacy and how U.S. laws haven’t kept up with safeguarding our rights when we go online. 

=> ↺ The Civil Rights Era on Screen: the Legacy of Sidney Poitier

• “He has carved for himself an imperishable niche in the annals of our nation’s history,” King told the audience of 2,000 delegates. “I consider him a friend. I consider him a great friend of humanity.”

• That man was Sidney Poitier.

=> ↺ Amazon shortens paid leave policy for employees infected with COVID-19

• Amazon is shortening its paid leave policy for employees infected with COVID-19 following the change in quarantine guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Amazon told all U.S. employees on Friday that paid leave for COVID-19 quarantine will be shortened from 10 days to seven days.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Cable TV Cord Cutting Continues To Set Records, Though Streaming TV Is Slowing Down Too

• For more than a decade, cable TV executives brushed aside the threat of cable TV “cord cutting” as either a nonexistent threat or a temporary phenomenon. Of course neither wound up being true, and consumer defections from the bloated, pricey traditional cable TV bundle continue to set records during the COVID crisis. Traditional cable TV providers saw a 6.2% drop in subscribers in the third quarter of 2021, an all time record. It’s particularly bad for traditional satellite TV providers, who saw a 12% dip in overall users during the same quarter.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ WarnerMedia Renews Comcast Carriage Deal, CNN Plus to Become Available on Xfinity Platforms

• As part of the extended agreement, Comcast will make CNN Plus, WarnerMedia’s upcoming subscription streaming platform, available on its Xfinity X1, Xfinity Flex and XClass TV platforms later in the year, following its first-quarter launch. This marks the first distribution deal set for the new streamer.

=> ↺ Canon ink is freaking out after shipping without crucial chips. Here’s how to fix it

• Canon is reporting that it has been forced to ship ink cartridges without chips that identify ink levels, leading to error messages when the cartridges are inserted. The company has published a workaround while it sorts the issue out.

• Canon reported that supply chain shortages have forced the printer manufacturer to ship consumable print cartridges without certain semiconductors inside them. Canon doesn’t describe exactly what these chips do, though a German support page (as discovered by TechRadar) says that they oversee “certain additional functions” such as toner level detection.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Antitrust Suit Alleges 16 Elite Universities Colluded to Limit Financial Aid

• Sixteen elite universities were sued in federal court late Sunday over an alleged price-fixing scheme in which plaintiffs say the schools formed a “cartel” to limit the amount of financial aid they would each offer to low- and middle-income prospective students—breaking antitrust laws.

• Five students who previously attended some of the universities filed the federal lawsuit in Illinois, arguing that in defiance of legislation passed in the 1990s, at least some of the schools take families’ financial needs into account when making admissions decisions. The schools in question are part of a group called the “568 Presidents Group,” which was formed after Ivy League schools were charged with price-fixing in 1991 and is supposed to admit students on a “need-blind” basis.

Trademarks

=> ↺ CBS Sued Over Portrayal of Torture Device on ‘Evil’

• At the beginning of the episode, a woman referenced the device by saying, “Oh right, the God Helmet,” to which a man responds, “Actually, that’s trademarked, so we’ve been asked not to call it that.”

• “There is clear and convincing evidence that Defendants CBS and KING did research for their episode because Defendants knew of the God Helmet, the way the helmet works, and the trademark,” the lawsuit reads. “Therefore Defendants knew the depictions and statements would create a false impression about Plaintiff’s device and trademark.”

Copyrights

=> ↺ Sculptor Of Pillar Of Shame Announces It’s Now Public Domain So That Anyone Can Make A Copy, As Chinese Authorities Seek To Destroy It

• Last fall we wrote about how Chinese officials were looking to remove the “Pillar of Shame,” a sculpture by artist Jens Galschiøt that commemorates China’s massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The sculpture was erected at the University of Hong Kong in 1997, and now that China has been wiping out every last bit of freedom in Hong Kong, the statue has been targeted as well. In our post last fall, we noted that (1) Galschiøt was threatening legal action if the statue is damaged, and (2) activists were making 3D scans of the sculpture so that it can be replicated.

=> ↺ Popcorn Time: The ‘Netflix of piracy’ is dead, developers announce

• Popcorn Time, a streaming service that was both beloved and hated as the “Netflix of piracy”, has been shut down.

• The tool gained vast popularity for the ease with which it allowed users to stream pirated films and TV shows for free. Unlike more complicated or risky services, users were able to easily access what they wanted to watch, with the ease of streaming content on Netflix.

=> ↺ No, Popcorn Time Is Not Dead … It’s Unkillable

• This led various publications including Bloomberg to declare that Popcorn Time, one of the most popular piracy services of all time, is dead and that this era of piracy is over. But it’s not that simple, and it’s silly to declare something that was designed to be unkillable as being “dead.” Just as the Pirate Bay has been “shut down” dozens of times but still exists in some version today, various versions of Popcorn Time are alive and well, and there’s no reason to think that it will ever die as long as the internet exists.

• This is because Popcorn Time is essentially just a BitTorrent client that has a video player built into it. BitTorrent is probably the best, earliest, most useful, and most enduring example of the decentralized internet that Web3 and cryptocurrency evangelists hope to achieve. In that sense, Popcorn Time is unkillable. Popcorn Time has “died” before and has come back, several times.

=> ↺ NFT art sales are booming. Just without some artists’ permission.

• But thanks to the explosion of the NFT art market, thieves have started stealing her work at a jaw-dropping rate. Last week, an unidentified user on OpenSea, the dominant marketplace for the burgeoning NFT art market, started putting tens of thousands of listings of her work, often duplicates, up for sale. Thirty-seven of them sold before she was able to convince the platform to take them down.

• “They just kept taking and remaking them as NFTs,” Trier said. “It’s so flagrant. And if it happens to me, it can happen to anyone.”

=> ↺ RIAA: Yout’s Attempt to Legitimize Stream-Ripping is ‘Wordplay’

• YouTube-ripping service Yout.com is suing the RIAA in an attempt to have its platform declared legal in the US. The case boils down to whether YouTube has meaningful technical protection measures and whether Yout circumvents them. According to the RIAA, there is no question that Yout.com is in the wrong and it characterizes any claims to the contrary as “wordplay”.

=> ↺ PrimeWire: Hollywood & Netflix Win Court Injunction to Disable Site Domains

• Early December, several Hollywood studios and Netflix teamed up under the banner of the MPA to sue PrimeWire, one of the longest-standing pirate streaming sites. After a hearing early this month, the court has now handed down an injunction designed to render the site inaccessible within a matter of days.

=> ↺ Talks At Google: Professor Michael Geist – Talks at Google

=> ↺ Twitter Asks Court To Reconsider Order To Unmask Anonymous Critic Of A Billionaire Over Questionable Copyright Claims

• On Friday we got around to posting an article about the very, very strange case of a shell company with almost no presence filing a DMCA 512(h) subpoena to Twitter seeking the identity of the person behind the @CallMeMoneyBags account, that has a history of mocking wealthy private equity bros. The subpoena came from an operation called Bayside Advisory, which registered the copyrights for a few images that MoneyBags had posted to the Twitter account, all typical social media photos, showing a young woman. The MoneyBags account implied that the woman in the photos was the mistress of a billionaire, Brian Sheth.

=> ↺ Olive Garden At It Again Enforcing Its IP Instead Of Letting Anyone Have Some Fun With Joke NFTs

• You all know about Olive Garden. It’s the chain of… oh, let’s just play along and call them Italian restaurants that have unlimited breadsticks and names of supposedly Italian offerings that appear to have gotten their names by inputting a bunch of Italian food words into a dilapidated AI program that combines them into a series of unholy dish-names. Sure, there’s “Shrimp Scampi”, but there is also “Five Cheese Ziti Al Forno” and “Lasagna Fritta”. I kid of course, but the chain and its parent company, Darden, have also found their way onto Techdirt in the past by being overly aggressive when it comes to trademark enforcement. For instance, Darden attempted to shut down the site allofgarden.com, which was dedicated to tongue in cheek reviews of the chain’s dishes. Darden later apologized for that, blaming some kind of legal bot that crawls for potential trademark infringements on the brand.

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