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● 01.18.22

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● Links 18/1/2022: GNOME 42 Alpha and KStars 3.5.7

Posted in News Roundup at 7:45 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Audiocast

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 160

• A theme of funding open source development runs throughout the news including npm sabotage, Mozilla accepting crypto donations, and Signal’s CEO standing down. Plus Wordle’s open web problem, the usual great stuff in KDE Korner, and more.

=> ↺ Destination Linux 261: KDE Roadmap Interview with Nate Graham

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re joined by Nate Graham from KDE to talk about Plasma and all things KDE. Then we’re going to discuss an exciting announcement from Pine64. 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.

DRM

=> ↺ The Beat of a Different DRM – Purism

• Canon made big news this past week when it started telling customers how to defeat the Digital Rights Management (DRM) in its toner cartridges because of supply chain issues with the chips they normally use to enforce it. That Canon explained how to bypass the DRM when it suited them, and that it didn’t negatively affect the operation of the printers or the customer, made it clear that DRM and the chips that enforce it offer little if any benefit to customers. Instead, DRM is only in place so the vendor can exert remote control over their product after the customer buys it. Computer vendors are marching to the beat of this DRM, and their ultimate goal is to exert the same sort of control printer and smartphone vendors enjoy into laptops and desktops.

=> ↺ You Don’t Own Your Movies, Music, Books, Games (DRM Is Evil!) – Invidious

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon (Edge) Edition now available for download

• When using a Linux-based operating system, you should always use the most recent kernel, right? Actually, no. While new kernels do add fixes and support for new hardware, they can also be less stable and cause bugs.

• Unfortunately, if you have extremely new hardware, sometimes you must use a newer kernel in order to boot, as older kernels do not yet support some of your devices. For instance, Linux Mint 20.3 “Una” was released recently and it comes with Linux kernel 5.4. If that older kernel does not support your computer, it may not boot.

• Thankfully, all is not lost. Today, the Linux Mint developers release an “Edge” version of the operating system. No, it doesn’t come with Microsoft’s Edge browser. The “Edge” moniker simply means it comes with a more modern kernel for those with very new hardware. You see, Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon (Edge) Edition comes with the much-newer kernel 5.13.

=> ↺ Platform Firmware Runtime Update & Telemetry Feature Submitted For Linux 5.17

• Last September I was the first to call attention to Intel working on a new feature to allow updating some system firmware components without needing to reboot such as for mission critical servers that try to avoid downtime at all costs. That Intel “Seamless Update” feature also known as Platform Firmware Runtime Update and Telemetry (PFRUT) has now been sent in for mainlining with Linux 5.17.

• Intel sent out the revised patches in December for implementing Platform Firmware Runtime Update and Telemetry for Linux systems as outlined by the ACPI specification. This provides a new “pfr_update” kernel driver behind the new “ACPI_PFRUT” kernel configuration build option. There is also a basic user-space tool for demonstrating how firmware updates are submitted to the kernel driver for run-time updating and also accessing the telemetry support.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Intel’s Former Vulkan Driver Lead Dev Lands Great Role For Improving Linux Graphics

• Jason Ekstrand who was the lead developer of Intel’s open-source “ANV” Vulkan Linux driver left Intel in December and has now revealed details about his new role.

• Ekstrand’s prolific work on the Intel ANV driver over the past number of years has made him one of the top five contributors to Mesa by commit count even with only being involved in the open-source Linux graphics scene since 2013. When he announced he was leaving Intel came as a bit of a surprise, but at least it turns out his new role will be still benefiting the upstream open-source Linux 3D graphics ecosystem.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ What is POSIX? Why Does it Matter to Linux/UNIX Users?

• You’ll hear the acronym, or read about it: POSIX, on different online boards and articles. Programmers and system developers seem to worry about it the most. It can sound mysterious and, while there are many good sources on the subject, some discussion boards (brevity is part of their nature), don’t go into detail as to what it is and this can lead to confusion. What, then, is POSIX, really?

• POSIX isn’t actually a thing. It describes a thing – much like a label. Imagine a box labeled: POSIX, and inside the box is a standard. A standard consists of sets of rules and instructions that POSIX is concerned with. POSIX is shorthand for Portable Operating System Interface. It is an IEEE 1003.1 standard that defines the language interface between application programs (along with command line shells and utility interfaces) and the UNIX operating system.

=> ↺ Reasons to avoid Javascript CDNs

• Many javascript projects have install instructions recommending that people use a CDN like jsdelivr or unpkg to include the code on their website. This has the advantage that it’s quicker to get started with, and it’s often claimed to load faster. However, it also has downsides when it comes to privacy, security, and systemic risk, and it may actually be slower in some common cases. Here are some reasons not to use a javascript CDN, and some alternatives to consider instead.

• The big javascript CDNs are used by huge numbers of people — cdnjs brags that it’s on 12.5% of websites on the internet, and serves more that 200 billion requests per month, jsdelivr serves nearly 100 billion requests per month, and unpkg serves ~2.4 billion unique IP addresses per month. This means that one of these CDNs going down, or an attacker hacking one of them would have a huge impact all over society — we already see this category of problem with large swaths of the internet going down every time cloudflare or AWS has an outage.

• There’s a fundamental tradeoff here between efficiency and resiliency, and when 12.5% of the internet can have an outage because of one provider going down, I think we’ve swung way too far away from resiliency, as a society.

=> ↺ How to install Mattermost desktop client on Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.04

• So, in this post, you will learn how to install Mattermost desktop client on Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.04.

• Hello, friends. We recently explained to you how to install Mattermost on Debian 11. But the truth is that although it can be used through a web browser, it is also possible to use a desktop client.

=> ↺ BUILD YOUR NETWORK FIREWALL WITH CLEAROS

• Welcome again! today will learn to build a Firewall with ClearOS. in the very last article I listed up the top five firewalls. The one potentially useful firewall, I was not able to cover in the article. So today we will cover a complete step-by-step installation guide for the same.

• The firewall comes in a form of a dedicated OS and can be downloaded from this link. The free-to-use license of ClearOS comes under community license. Yet the UTM is free having no official support. But, still have a good support community and documentation. Let’s go step by step. First, we will have a look into the features of the firewall followed by an installation guide. Finally, we will give the final verdict in form of a conclusion.

=> ↺ Zsh shell installation and configuration on Linux

• The Z-shell (zsh) is a modern and very powerful shell: it incorporates and extends many feature of other shells, like Bash. Although it can be used as a powerful scripting language, it is mainly aimed at interactive use, since one of its more prominent feature is the advanced tab completion system. In this tutorial we see how to install zsh in the most commonly used Linux distributions, see what are its startup and shutdown files and how to perform the basic configurations.

=> ↺ How to install and manage fonts on Linux

• Fonts are a really important part of the user experience. On the most commonly used Linux-based distributions, there are many packaged fonts which can be installed using the native package manager. Sometimes, however, we may want to install some fonts manually. In this tutorial we see how to perform such operation, and, more generally, how fonts are managed on Linux.

=> ↺ How to use LUKS with a detached header

• Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) is the de-facto standard block device encryption format used on Linux-based systems. We already discussed some of the features provided by it in a previous tutorial about using a file as a LUKS device key. When using LUKS, encryption metadata is stored on the header which is created at the beginning of the encrypted device (a copy of the header is created at end of the device for redundancy, when using LUKS2).If desired, it is possible to specify that the header should be detached from the device: in this tutorial we see how.

=> ↺ How to scrape web pages from the command line using htmlq

• Web scraping is the process of analyzing the structure of HTML pages, and programmatically extract data from them. In the past we saw how to scrape the web using the Python programming language and the “Beautilful Soup” library; in this tutorial, instead, we see how to perform the same operation using a command line tool written in Rust: htmlq.

=> ↺ Install Node.js 17 & NPM on Debian 11 Bullseye – LinuxCapable

• Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment built on Chrome’s V8 engine to build fast and scalable network applications and back-end APIs. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking IO module that makes it very lightweight and practical. It is a fantastic choice for data-intensive real-time applications across distributed devices.

• NPM is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language maintained by NPM, Inc. NPM is the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js and is arguably the most available repository for Node.JS packages.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Node.JS 17 from the node source repository on Debian 11 Bullseye.

=> ↺ Install UNRAR on Debian 11 Bullseye – LinuxCapable

• UNRAR is widely known and used amongst Windows users. RAR files are much smaller archives and compress better than ZIP for most files by compressing files “together,” saving more space. UNRAR does not come pre-installed natively on Debian, but it is available to install from its repository.

• The following tutorial will show you how to install UNRAR on Debian 11 Bullseye and the basic commands to use it on either your Debian desktop or server.

=> ↺ How to Add Host in Zabbix Server to Monitor

• Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software tool for diverse IT components, including networks, servers, virtual machines and cloud services. Zabbix server is rich in template tools which contain lots of predefined templates which we can easily be used with your hosts.

=> ↺ How to install Flightgear on Elementary OS 6.0 – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Flightgear on Elementary OS 6.0.

=> ↺ How to install and configure Squid Proxy on Rocky Linux/Alma Linux 8

• In this guide we will learn how to install and configure Squid Proxy server on a Rocky Linux 8 server. This guide also works on other RHEL 8 based distros like Alma Linux and Oracle Linux.

• Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator. It runs on most available operating systems.

=> ↺ How to install Flashforge FlashPrint 5.2.1 on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Flashforge FlashPrint 5.2.1 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

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

=> ↺ Install PHP 8.1 on Linux Mint 20 – LinuxCapable

• PHP 8.1 is a significant update of the PHP language that was “officially” released on November 25, 2021. As we advance from the existing PHP 8.0 release, this is a standard upgrade. The new PHP 8.1 brings enums, fibers, never return type, final class constants, intersection types, read-only properties amongst the long list of new features and changes.

• Linux Mint is known to be a desktop distribution and not as a full-fledged web server. However, developers may require to install PHP on their Mint system for development purposes. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to import the Ondřej Surý PPA and install PHP 8.1 on your Linux Mint 20.

=> ↺ How to install and use Firewalld on Rocky Linux 8 – Linux Shout

• Firewalls are one of the most essential parts of security when we are going online. Here we learn the steps and command to install, configure, and how to use FirewallD on Rocky Linux 8 using CLI or GUI.

• Many of us who are not already Linux would already be familiar with the firewall feature on Windows, where it is very easy to turn On or Off ports or services using GUI. However, what about Linux such as CentOS, Rocky Linux, RedHat, AlmaLinux, and more… If you are using full Linux Desktop then a firewall would already be there but in most of the cases without a graphical interface. Nevertheless, Debian, RedHat, Ubuntu, and other Linux systems provide the appropriate firewall GUI software directly from their respective repository to manage things with the help of mouse clicks.

• But what if you just want a basic OS installation with no graphical interface? Because minimal versions of Linux would not even have the CLI version of Firewall by default. Well, this is a very small problem, if you have an active internet connection and due to an in-built package manager under Linux, we can install a firewall with just a single command.

=> ↺ Overview of the Wireshark User Interface (GUI)

• Wireshark is a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and it is developed by a community of enthusiastic developers. Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) is used for capturing and investigating the traffic going on a network. It is a very popular network protocol analyzer among network professionals, security analysts, and research scholars around the world. The good thing is that it is open source and freely available under the GNU General Public License version 2. It is available for major OSes like Windows, macOS, Linux, and UNIX.

• Wireshark has many features like profound inspection of network traffic, real-time capture, offline analysis, R/W support for different capture file types etc. It also organizes SharkFest, an annual educational conference, around the world for imparting knowledge of their product. These conferences are focused on the best practices of using Wireshark.

=> ↺ How to install DragonFly BSD 6.2.1 plus MATE desktop and some applications. – Invidious

• In this video, I am going to show how to Install DragonFly BSD 6.2.1 plus MATE and some applications.

=> ↺ Using the Linux look command to select lines from files | Network World

• The look command on Linux can be handy for selecting particular lines from text files with sorted contents. Let’s look into how it can be used and where you might run into some problems.

=> ↺ How to Change Domain Name on WordPress

• This tutorial explains how to change the domain name on WordPress. By reading this article you will learn how to edit your WordPress site URL both from the WordPress dashboard and from your server through phpMyAdmin.

• In case you do not have access to your dashboard through your new URL, you can achieve it from your server. This method includes the use of a plugin to update all the URLs in your site content.

• All steps explained in this article include screenshots making it easy to follow them.

=> ↺ Expanding Your Nextcloud Instance Using Linode’s NVMe-Backed Block Storage

• Nextcloud is a very popular self-hosted alternative to Dropbox, Google Drive, and other cloud hosting providers. It’s not only the go-to choice for individuals, either. Nextcloud has a number of enterprise-level deployments.

• Given the above, we decided to install Nextcloud on a Linode Dedicated CPU and see just what it would take to configure it to use Linode’s new NVMe-backed block storage. This article was the result.

=> ↺ Analyze Network Traffic Using Brim Security – kifarunix.com

• In this tutorial, you will learn how you can analyze network traffic using Brim security tool. Brim is an open source desktop application that can be used to analyze structured network traffic data like;

Games

=> ↺ Old Firewall Reborn As Retro PC | Hackaday

• In two follow-up videos (here and here), he builds an enclosure (instructions on Thingiverse) and tries out several other operating systems. He was able to get the Tiny Core Linux distribution running with the NetSurf browser, but failed to get Windows 2000 or XP to work. Returning to Windows 98, he tweaks drivers and settings and eventually has a respectable retro-gaming computer for his efforts. The next time you’re cleaning out your junk bins, have a peek inside those pizza-box gadgets first — you may find a similar gem.

=> ↺ Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer – Part 9: Ancient Archaeology | GamingOnLinux

• After the demise of Loki Software, one of their former employees found himself forced to work behind a cash register for a living. Desperate to get back to porting games, he found the email address of an artist working for the Croatian developer Croteam, creators of the game Serious Sam. Croteam agreed to let him attempt to create a port of the game to Linux, the first of many games to come to the platform thanks to the work of Ryan “icculus” Gordon.

• The port of Serious Sam though would in the end never leave the beta stage. Croteam later released the source code to the game in 2016, with Ryan himself returning to craft his own source port, but his original effort languished for years with a number of unfortunate bugs. One of these left the game unbeatable as it prevented the player from inflicting any damage to the final boss. Unbeatable that is with the standard version of the game.

• Our friends at Global Star Software released Serious Sam: Limited Edition in 2002, a bizarre budget retail variant of Serious Sam: The First Encounter that only features seven out of the fifteen levels. It also happens to be the only version of the game that I possess on CD-ROM. I initially dismissed the idea of playing Serious Sam as I thought it would be too much for the hardware, but the jewel case insists that the Rage 128 Pro is compatible.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KStars v3.5.7 Released

• KStars v3.5.7 is released on January 18th for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. This release includes a number of new features and bug fixes.

• This feature is finally implemented in 3.5.7. Many assumed it existed before and were disappointed when they couldn’t drag the mosaic panels around for finer adjustments.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ ‘Burn My Windows’ GNOME Extension Adds 3 New Effects & Random Mode – OMG! Ubuntu!

• A couple of new Star Trek-esque effects have been added to the ‘Burn my Windows’ GNOME Shell extension.

• If you’ve not yet heard about this bling-tactic add-on, it animates closing windows (and optionally dialogs) in some spectacularly over the top ways — just like Compiz of old.

• Burn My Windows 8 is available from the GNOME Extensions website and it adds there new effects.

=> ↺ GNOME 42 Desktop Environment Is Now Available for Public Testing

• GNOME 42 alpha is now ready for public testing to give the Linux and Open Source community an early taste of what they can expect from the next major release of one of the most popular desktop environments for Linux-powered operating systems, used on desktop and mobile.

• The biggest changes in the GNOME 42 release around the GTK 4 and libadwaita components. Some of the default apps distributed as part of the GNOME stack have been ported to GTK 4 for a more modern look and extra functionality. Here’s a first look at some of them.

=> ↺ GNOME 42.alpha released

=> ↺ GNOME 42 Alpha Released With A Lot Of GTK4 Porting, Other Improvements

• The alpha release of GNOME 42 is now available for testing.

• GNOME 42 is working up to its release in March while out today is the “42.alpha” milestone. GNOME 42 components have been seeing a lot of work porting from GTK3 to GTK4, beginning to make use of libadwaita, support for the dark mode / dark preference option, and a variety of other improvements.

• Some of the specific changes worth noting with GNOME 42 Alpha include:

• • The Baobab disk usage analyzer has been ported to GTK4 and libadwaita.

Distributions

=> ↺ Didiwiki personal wiki retired

• DidiWiki has been in the “Personal” menu category for …forever. EasyOS, Quirky, and the pups before, all had it. However, I just discovered that it is broken, cannot create new wiki pages.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ openSUSE Begins Annual Survey – openSUSE News

• The start of an openSUSE survey has begun, and users, open-source contributors and community members are encouraged to take the annual survey.

• Last year the community started its end of year survey and discussed the results during a community meeting.

=> ↺ 3DT Holdings prepares to revolutionize heart-valve surgery with SUSE Rancher and UberCloud | SUSE Communities

• “Our work with UberCloud and SUSE is playing an important role in developing an innovative solution for heart-valve disorder, one of the health care industry’s most pressing challenges.” Yaghoub Dabiri, Scientist, 3DT Holdings.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Firefox 96 on Power

• Firefox 96 is out and after some usage of it I think I agree it’s definitely lessened the load on the main thread, which is one of the lead features in this release (and our heavily multicore POWER9 systems can pick up the slack for everything else). There are also multiple improvements to HTML and CSS. Some of you with Emacs muscle memory will want to read the Developer section of the Release Notes, though (I have the Command key mapped instead so I can still use Mac muscle memory: set ui.key.accelKey to 91). Fortunately it all builds out of the box using the PGO-LTO patch and .mozconfigs from Firefox 95.

=> ↺ How to renew your Red Hat Developer Subscription for Red Hat Enterprise Linux | Red Hat Developer

• Learn how to renew your no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscription to continue accessing support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Red Hat products.

Debian Family

=> ↺ » GNU Linux & sustainability: waste avoided & resources saved – another printer saved from trash – Brother MFC-8420 works perfectly fine with GNU Linux Debian 10 | dwaves.de

• actually wanted give this printer to (still) windows user, then realizing… there is no f*** chance to install drivers within windows 10 for this elderly but just printing damn fine reliable black and white laser printer from brother, so…

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Canonical Kubernetes for Financial Services | Ubuntu

• Adopting a container-first approach represents an unrivalled opportunity for financial institutions to increase system efficiency and resource utilisation, improve security, introduce automation, and accelerate innovation.

• Containers offer a logical packaging tool in which applications can be decoupled from the underlying infrastructure on which they run. This allows container-based applications to be installed easily and consistently, regardless of whether the target environment is a private or public cloud. With containerisation, development teams move fast, deploy software efficiently, and operate at an unprecedented scale.

• Despite the advantages, containers can be hard to manage and to track individually, and across multiple cloud platforms. Container orchestration solves this issue by automating the management and tracking of containers. Kubernetes has established itself as the leading open source platform for managing containerised workloads and services.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 718

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 718 for the week of January 9 – 15, 2022.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ The PinePhone Pro brings upgraded hardware to the Linux phone

• Pine64 is launching a major hardware upgrade in its quest to build a Linux smartphone. After the launch of the original PinePhone in 2019, the organization is now taking preorders for the PinePhone Pro, a new smartphone it’s calling “the fastest mainline Linux smartphone on the market.” The phone was announced in October, and you can now secure a unit. The MSRP is $599, but it’s up for preorder now at an introductory price of $399.

• Since Pine64 wants to make an open source Linux smartphone, its choice of hardware components is limited. Most big chip companies like Qualcomm or Samsung don’t want to share open drivers or schematics, and you saw that with the original PinePhone, which was based on a 40 nm Cortex A53 SoC made by Allwinner. The PinePhone Pro is upgrading things with a Rockchip RK3399 SoC. The chip sports two Cortex A72 CPUs and four Cortex A53 CPUs, and Pine64 says it worked with Rockchip to get the chip “binned and voltage locked for optimal performance with sustainable power and thermal limits.” Pine64 doesn’t cite a process node, but other companies list the RK3399 at 28 nm. If that’s true and you’re looking for something roughly comparable in Qualcomm’s lineup, the Snapdragon 618/650 (a mid-range chip from 2016) would seem to fit the bill.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ New Part News: Raspberry Pi Cuts Out the Middleman

• Raspberry Pi has just announced that they’ll be selling their RP2040 microcontroller chips by the reel, directly to you, at a decent discount.

• About a year ago, Raspberry Pi released its first piece of custom silicon, the RP2040 microcontroller. They’ve have been selling these chips in bulk to selected customers directly, but have decided to open up the same deals to the general public. If you’re looking for 500 chips or more, you can cut out the middleman and save some serious dough.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Samsung Exynos 2200 SoC features Xclipse 920 GPU with AMD RDNA 2 architecture – CNX Software

=> ↺ Free instead of $2.99: This Android fitness app helps you lose weight | NextPit

=> ↺ Google Self Share Makes File Transferring Easy for Chromebook or Android Users | Tech Times

=> ↺ These OnePlus Phones Will Never Receive Another Android Update

=> ↺ Weird Google Keep bug only affects Samsung devices running Android 12 – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Galaxy S10 5G joins the Android 12 club in US and South Korea – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy S10 5G gets Android 12 in South Korea and the US – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ 24 advanced tips for Android 12 | Computerworld

=> ↺ Google may add a new screen time widget for Android phones: Report – Times of India

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Open source, closed wallets, big profits – nobody wins the OSS rock, paper, scissors game

• There’s much talk of the Open Source Sustainability Problem. From individual developers to Google’s White House lobbying, the issue seems simple but intractable. Is the willingness of volunteer coders a solid enough basis for the long-term health of essential infrastructure?

• This is, of course, balderdash. It’s not an open source problem, it’s a software problem. All software needs resources to adapt as the working environment changes, resources the changed environment may not provide. Look how many out-of-support versions of Windows still limp on like superannuated footy players in the Sunday leagues.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ ONLYOFFICE Docs v7.0 Adds Online Forms, Password Protection, and More Improvements – It’s FOSS News

• ONLYOFFICE is a popular open-source office suite available for Desktop platforms (including Linux) and web applications as well.

• If you have a Nextcloud or ownCloud instance, you may already have ONLYOFFICE installed to manage your documents.

• Now, for its first major release in 2022, ONLYOFFICE v7.0 has been announced with a range of improvements and much-needed feature editions.

=> ↺ ONLYOFFICE v7.0 released: fillable online forms, password protection in spreadsheets, collaboration and usability improvements and more

• The developers of ONLYOFFICE Docs have released version 7.0 of their open-source online office suite. The new version of the online editors comes with brand-new online forms, new editing features, improved collaboration and usability. Here is a brief overview of what’s new around the suite.

• The killer feature of ONLYOFFICE Docs v7.0 is the ability to create and edit fillable forms online. Based on the Microsoft Office content controls, ONLYOFFICE forms offer the same flexibility as Adobe forms but come with more advanced field properties allowing users to create model documents of various types, e.g. sales contracts, DNA agreements, questionnaires, etc.

• Users can create fillable forms from scratch, use an existing DOCX document or download a template from the official ONLYOFFICE library. You can share your form with others and collaboratively edit it together in real time. Once your form is ready, let other people fill out the required fields.

=> ↺ Community Member Monday: Baltasar García Perez-Schofield – The Document Foundation Blog

• Today we have a quick chat with Baltasar García Perez-Schofield, who recently became a Member of The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice…

• [...]

• I think that the open standards for document formats are vital for any computer user, and therefore defend the TDF’s existence. In that sense, becoming a member was an honor for me, and I also perceived it as a recognition for the work I did.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Sam Thursfield: Status update, 17/01/2022

• I am keeping busy at work integrating BuildStream with a rather large, tricky set of components, Makefiles and a custom dependency management system. I am appreciating how much flexibility BuildStream provides. As an example, some internal tools expect builds to happen at a certain path. BuildStream makes it easy to customize the build path by adding this stanza to the .bst file…

=> ↺ Entering the Job Market? Here Are the Most In-Demand Programming Languages for 2022 – Anto ./ Online

• As we enter 2022, you might be looking for a new job. The Great Resignation proves beneficial to job hunters or switchers, as employers are willing to provide higher pay and more benefits to stem labor shortages.

• Now is an excellent time for anyone wanting to launch, boost, and even future-proof their career. If you’re looking to snag a job that is and will stay in demand, the World Economic Forum recently listed their top 10 jobs of the future.

=> ↺ GCC 12 Moves On To Stage 4 Development With Many New Compiler Features – Phoronix

• GCC 12 as this year’s annual GNU Compiler Collection feature release has moved on to “stage four” development with likely releasing GCC 12.1 in April.

• This transition was known and marks the end of the stage 3 general bug fixing period now with just focusing exclusively on regression/documentation fixes. This is the final stage focused on getting the next GCC feature release ready for debut.

=> ↺ HTMLQ: Like JQ But To Parse & Query HTML – Invidious

• Parsing and querying HTML through pure Unix tools can be a massive pain and you’re much better off using specialized tools, one of those specialized tools in HTMLQ, which is much like JQ. Between recording and upload, the dev added the ability to remove nodes so ignore that point.

Python

=> ↺ The__repr__ in Python

• The repr() method of Python yields a textual or string depiction of an entity or an object. This process is termed whenever the entity’s repr() method is invoked. You can say that the “repr” method and “repr” can be used interchangeably for the same purpose. The text reverted must be a proper Python phrase that would be castoff to reassemble the entity if feasible. A “str” function of python does the same, but there is a slight difference between both the functions. The str method is designed to produce a human-readable version, useful for tracking or displaying object information. The repr method, on the other hand, is designed to provide an “official” textual image of the object that may be used to recreate it. We’ll focus on both key Python entity methods in our article today. Let’s have a fresh start.

=> ↺ The Python Sort List of Tuples

• In Python, we utilize tuples to store multiple elements in a variable. Tuple lists may be sorted similarly to any other list. However, tuples contain numerous elements, so we are free to rearrange the tuples based on item 1 or item i. In this guide, we will look at how to sort various lists of tuples using multiple examples. We will go over the various scenarios and the many strategies employed to accomplish this. We will mainly focus on some built-in methods and sorting procedures to achieve tuple sorting. The well-organized nature and invariant properties of tuples are dissimilar from those in regular lists.

=> ↺ How to Remove an Element From a Set in Python

• This article describes how to remove items from a set in Python. We utilize certain built-in features, several approaches to better understand this topic. Let’s take a look at a set of Python. Disordered records will have unindexed values. We cannot access the values of the set via the index number, such as we have done in a different list. The values of a set are unchallengeable. That is, we cannot change the value once it is created. The data in the set may remain of some type, such as integers, floating-point values, or integers.

=> ↺ How to Use Xrange in Python

• In Python, xrange is a commonly used function that gives a series of numbers from a given range. In Python 2, there is a function that returns an xrange object. When we need to iterate through a loop, we use the xrange function. As a result, the object created by xrange is mostly utilized for indexing and iteration. Keep in mind that the xrange method is only supported in Python 2 at this time. Because Python 2 is no longer supported, we recommend using Python 3 and the range() method instead of xrange(). The range() and xrange() methods can be used for loops to iterate a specified number of times, let’s say 10 times or 5 times. Although Python 3 does not provide an xrange function, the range function works identically to the xrange function in Python 2.

• If you want to develop programs that can be executed on both Python 2 and Python 3, you should utilize the range method. The range() returns a range object (a type of iterable), while xrange() returns a generator object that can only be used to loop through integers. The only specific range is presented on demand, leading to the term “lazy evaluation”. Both are used in various ways and have different qualities. The return type, memory, operation usage, and performance are all factors to consider. Let’s discuss each factor with a corresponding example for better understanding.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ Eagle’s Path: DocKnot 7.00 (2022-01-17)

• The recent 6.01 release of my static web site generator was kind of a buggy mess, which uncovered a bunch of holes in my test suite and immediately turned up problems when I tried to use it to rebuild my actual web site. Most of the problems were Unicode-related; this release hopefully sorts out Unicode properly and handles it consistently.

• Other bugs fixed include processing of old-style pointers in a spin input tree, several rather obvious bugs in the new docknot release command, and a few long-standing issues with docknot dist that should make its results more consistent and reliable.

C

=> ↺ C: execve function usage

• Execve() function is used for the execution of the program that is referred to by pathname. The exec family is used mainly in the C programming language and has many functions. These functions execute a system command in a separate process from the main program and print the output. In this article, we will discuss some of the main functions of the exec family and mainly execve functions with some elementary examples.

• Now let’s look at the exec family in the image attached. This picture shows the syntax of all possible functions of the exec family.

=> ↺ C: inet_pton function example

=> ↺ C: Connect Function System Call

• We cannot emphasize enough socket programming and all its use-cases. However, since it is a pervasive topic, each of its components or the functions used while doing socket programming holds a crucial value and needs to be studied separately. The connect function or system call is also an essential function used while doing socket programming in the C programming language. In this article, we will see how we can use this function in the C programming language.

=> ↺ C: CHDIR Function Usage

• We have already talked about the “CHDIR” function of the C programming language briefly while discussing the “getcwd” function. However, this article will specifically revolve around the “CHDIR” function mainly used to alter the current working directory of a system. We will especially try to explore how the behavior of this function changes once it is used within a C script. To do that, we will first introduce you to the purpose of this function, followed by its syntax. Then, we will discuss the impact of this function on the current working directory of the shell in Linux. Finally, we will conclude our discussion by talking about some of the errors that can be returned from executing the “CHDIR” function of the C programming language.

=> ↺ C: Basename Function Usage

• While dealing with the files in Linux, you need to manipulate their paths. There are certain functions of the C programming language that can operate on the file paths; however, as far as the scope of this article is concerned, we will talk in detail about the usage of the Basename function of the C programming language.

Leftovers

=> ↺ “Martin”: Algeria, 2008

• On a 2008 visiting professorship in this unattractive but popular seaside city, having rented my own apartment, I had to deal with utility issues myself. My lodging was on Rue d’Hasan ……(a name I’ve since forgotten). But it was one of Algeria’s tens of thousands of streets, buildings and squares named for martyrs of its painful and costly, never-forgotten and never-recovered-from 1954-1962 war of independence.

• I’d placed my daybook on the desk between us as I offered my ID  to the woman. Until that remark—the whispered single word, “mahteen”– she hadn’t spoken to me.

=> ↺ Woodstock in 1969

• Lang was also much involved with the 25th Anniversary Woodstock Festival held at Winston Farm in Saugerties in 1994. The 1994 Festival drew about 350,000 people. The Woodstock Film Festival honored Lang with its “Spirit of Woodstock award” in 2011.

• In all the years running into Lang at public events in Woodstock, at the Post Office, or the supermarket, I never saw him frown. He always had an upbeat and positive expression on him. All Hail to Michael Lang.

Science

=> ↺ Machine Learning Detects Distracted Politicians | Hackaday

• [Dries Depoorter] has a knack for highly technical projects with a solid artistic bent to them, and this piece is no exception. The Flemish Scrollers is a software system that watches live streamed sessions of the Flemish government, and uses Python and machine learning to identify and highlight politicians who pull out phones and start scrolling. The results? Pushed out live on Twitter and Instagram, naturally. The project started back in July 2021, and has been dutifully running ever since, so by now we expect that holding one’s phone where the camera can see it is probably considered a rookie mistake.

=> ↺ AI Camera Knows Its S**t | Hackaday

• [Caleb] shares a problem with most dog owners. Dogs leave their… byproducts…all over your yard. Some people pick it up right away and some just leave it. But what if your dog has run of the yard? How do you know where these piles are hiding? A security camera and AI image detection is the answer, but probably not the way that you think.

• You might think as we did that you could train the system to recognize the–um–piles. But instead, [Caleb] elected to have the AI do animal pose estimation to detect the dog’s posture while producing the target. This is probably easier than recognizing a nondescript pile and then it doesn’t matter if it is, say, covered with snow.

Education

=> ↺ A Library the Internet Can’t Get Enough Of

• Dr. Macksey’s book collection clocked in at 51,000 titles, according to his son, Alan, excluding magazines and other ephemera. A decade ago, the most valuable pieces — including first editions of “Moby Dick,” T.S. Eliot’s “Prufrock and Other Observations,” and works by Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley — were moved to a “special collections” room on the Hopkins campus. After Dr. Macksey’s death, a S.W.A.T. team-like group of librarians and conservationists spent three weeks combing through his book-filled, 7,400-square-foot house to select 35,000 volumes to add to the university’s libraries.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Why Did Democratic AG Kill Flint Water RICO Case?

• Prosecutors investigating Flint’s contaminated water crisis were pursuing a racketeering case against public officials whose austerity-driven policies caused the health catastrophe, but after newly elected Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel took over in 2019, those charges were dropped.

• “This adds a new tragedy for the people of Flint who deserve to know the root causes of their suffering and to hold any financial wrongdoing accountable.”

=> ↺ Lawmakers Seek to Weaken Ban on Surprise Medical Bills

• It’s been less than three weeks since a federal ban on most surprise medical bills went into effect, but Democratic and Republican members of Congress are already teaming up with the for-profit healthcare industry to weaken a key provision in the law, The Intercept reported Monday.

• The No Surprises Act is expected to protect millions of people in the U.S. from costly bills that private equity-owned providers foist upon patients who inadvertently receive out-of-network care during medical emergencies.

=> ↺ Where’s the Data? The Missing Link in the U.S. Response to Covid-19

• Thus, when this week’s guest–a leading researcher in molecular medicine had sharp words for the Biden administration’s failure to collect critical data on Covid cases, I paid attention.

• Appearing in a January 13 presentation, Eric Topol, editor-in-chief of Medscape and holder of an endowed chair at Scripps Research, said,

=> ↺ Hospitals Struggle With Sheer Volume of COVID Cases Amid Staff Shortages

=> ↺ Brazilian Senate Investigation into the Handling of COVID is Bad News for Bolsonaro’s Reelection Bid

• Bolsonaro might face charges for Violation of preventive health measures, Crime of epidemic with result of death, Charlatanism, Prevarication, Irregular use of public funds, incitement to crime, Falsification of private documents, Crime of responsibility, and crimes against humanity.

• The rapporteur, Senator Renan Calheiros, had originally included in the final report of the CPI the crime of genocide against Bolsonaro, for his treatment of indigenous populations and based on statements and actions of the president and his allies violating indigenous rights and ensuring support for loggers and land grabbers in indigenous lands.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ IDrive 360 Adds Endpoint Cloud Backup Support for Linux Machines

• IDrive 360, a secure, enterprise-scale endpoint cloud backup solution from IDrive, has added backup support for Linux machines, enabling IT admins to schedule and automate backups for all of their organizational Linux data into a single account through a unified web console.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Canceling QR-codes Russian lawmakers withdraw controversial vaccine pass bill from consideration

• The Russian State Duma Council unanimously agreed to withdraw from consideration a controversial bill that would require QR-code vaccine passes for accessing many public spaces, parliamentary speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced on Monday, January 17.  

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ From the airport to the courtroom Ukraine’s former president Poroshenko returns to the country, faces arrest on treason charges

• On the morning of Monday, January 17, Ukraine’s former president, lawmaker Petro Poroshenko, arrived in Kyiv after spending nearly a month abroad. An estimated 3,000–4,000 people met him at Kyiv’s Zhuliany Airport; some of his supporters carried Ukrainian flags and posters with pro-Poroshenko slogans. At passport control, Poroshenko was met by officials from Ukraine’s State Investigation Bureau. His passport was taken away for around 15 minutes, but then returned to him. The state investigators attempted to serve Poroshenko with a subpoena but he refused to take the document. Poroshenko then proceeded to hold an impromptu rally, addressing his supporters gathered outside the airport and urging them to support him in court. 

=> ↺ Why Xinjiang Has Been a Touchy Subject in China for Centuries

• Xinjiang’s largely flat terrain made it a primary part of the historical Silk Road route. The region’s geography and proximity to numerous Eurasian cultures and civilizations have also made it a contested land for centuries, with competing narratives over its history and cultural traits. The name Xinjiang, for example, translates to “New Frontier” or “New Dominion” in Chinese, while Uyghur nationalists refer to the region as East Turkestan. Chinese scholars posit that Uyghurs are descended from nomadic Uyghurs from modern-day Mongolia and settled in Xinjiang in the ninth century (joining other groups, including the Han Chinese). Uyghur historians, on the other hand, tend to stress their Central Asian Turkic origins, with East Turkestan their historical homeland.

• Regardless of the historical debate over the lineage of Uyghurs, a distinct Muslim and Turkic identity had emerged among portions of Xinjiang’s population in the 18th century when China’s Qing Dynasty reconquered the region. According to historical records, the Chinese campaign split the Uyghur population from the other Turkic groups of Central Asia, which later came under the control of the Russian Empire. Hostility toward Chinese rule in Xinjiang among Muslims from a variety of different cultural backgrounds culminated in the Dungan Revolt from 1862 to 1877, with rebels receiving support from both the Ottoman and British empires. Despite the successful Chinese suppression and pacification of Xinjiang afterward, nationalist sentiment grew within the Muslim-Turkic population, and the term Uyghur began to be used to describe much of the local Muslim-Turkic population around the Tarim Basin by the early 20th century.

=> ↺ Hollywood’s Pentagon Propaganda and News Abuse with Robin Andersen; and a New Book on Decolonizing Podcasters with Nicholas Baham III and Nolan Higdon – The Project Censored Show

=> ↺ Are Western Wealthy Countries Determined to Starve the People of Afghanistan?

• The figure of $10 billion is significant. A few days after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in mid-August 2021, the U.S. government announced the seizure of $9.5 billion in Afghan assets that were being held in the U.S. banking system. Under pressure from the United States government, the International Monetary Fund also denied Afghanistan access to $455 million of its share of special drawing rights, the international reserve asset that the IMF provides to its member countries to supplement their original reserves. These two figures—which constitute Afghanistan’s monetary reserves—amount to around $10 billion, the exact number Griffiths said that the country would need if the United Nations does not immediately get an emergency disbursement for providing humanitarian relief to Afghanistan.

• A recent analysis by development economist Dr. William Byrd for the United States Institute of Peace, titled, “How to Mitigate Afghanistan’s Economic and Humanitarian Crises,” noted that the economic and humanitarian crises being faced by the country are a direct result of the cutoff of $8 billion in annual aid to Afghanistan and the freezing of $9.5 billion of the country’s “foreign exchange reserves” by the United States. The analysis further noted that the sanctions relief—given by the U.S. Treasury Department and the United Nations Security Council on December 22, 2021—to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan should also be extended to “private business and commercial transactions.” Byrd also mentioned the need to find ways to pay salaries of health workers, teachers and other essential service providers to prevent an economic collapse in Afghanistan and suggested using “a combination of Afghan revenues and aid funding” for this purpose.

=> ↺ Corporate Seditionists are no Better than the Seditionists who Attacked the Capitol

• That’s why I took some comfort just after the attack on the Capitol when many big corporations solemnly pledged they’d no longer finance the campaigns of the 147 lawmakers who voted to overturn election results.

=> ↺ France: Man shouts “Allah Akbar” in the street and injures three police officers

• The police quickly spotted the driver. He first stopped and then got out of his vehicle. Enraged, he attacked the police officers with the car keys and punched them in the face. Finally he was overpowered and arrested. The 36-year-old offender, who was already known to the police, was taken into police custody. He was brought in for an investigation into his behaviour.

=> ↺ The long jihadist-extremist quest to free Aafia Siddiqui – analysis

• The precise details of how and why a man who attacked a synagogue in Texas and then demanded to have Siddiqui freed are not yet clear. However, the use of her name has conjured up past instances of attempts to swap her for people held by extremist groups.

Environment

Energy

=> ↺ Fossil Fuel, Fuels Doom

• Check out all installments in the OppArt series.

=> ↺ Protests at the Pump

• In October 1990, furious at the new liberal government for raising gas prices by 65 percent, taxi drivers in Hungary set up barricades and established roadblocks that brought transportation to a halt around the country. The price hike was partly in response to cutbacks in petroleum deliveries from the Soviet Union and supply problems related to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait the previous August. For four days, Hungarian cities were paralyzed. Eventually, the government had to back down.

=> ↺ Youngkin’s Cabinet Has More Fossil Fuel Ties Beyond Trump’s EPA Chief

=> ↺ Earth’s Biosphere Absorbs the Heat Equivalent of 32 Hiroshima Nuclear Explosions Every Second

• In May 2020, I calculated that the entire biosphere (atmosphere, oceans, land surface) was being heated by 32 Hiroshima-equivalent heat bombs per second.

• While it is the atmosphere that initially captures the IR (infrared = heat radiation emitted upward from Earth’s surface) that produces global warming, soon enough about 20-30% of that captured heat is absorbed by the surface waters of the ocean — in a continuous process. One could then say that 6.4-9.6 [6-10, so ~7] of the continuous heat bomb output goes into the oceans and 22.4-25.6 [22-26, so ~25] into the atmosphere — and eventually into the oceans.

Finance

=> ↺ Members of Congress Shouldn’t Be Getting Rich From Trading Stocks

• In the chaotic early days of the pandemic, members of Congress sat in closed-door briefings on the emerging threat of the virus, before the public knew of its severity. In a unique position to act decisively, the impulse of many in attendance wasn’t to prepare or somehow mobilize the resources necessary to slow the spread of a deadly disease. Some Democratic lawmakers raised an alarm, of course. But their pleas for more funding were bogged down by Congress’s usual dysfunction. For other lawmakers, including top Republican and Democratic leaders, the impulse was to profit from the private information. So they did what any decent American would: They rushed to buy and sell stocks just weeks before the market crashed.

=> ↺ College Football Coaches Making $25,000 a Day? Let’s Sideline This Lunacy!

=> ↺ The Inflation Hawks on the Path to an Inflation War

• First, as fans of reality like to point out, the jump in inflation over the last year is largely a worldwide phenomenon, not something that can be attributed to bad policies in the United States. Our year-over-year (December 2020 to December 2021) inflation figure was 7.0 percent, which is definitely high. But the figure for the U.K. was 4.6 percent, for Canada 4.7 percent, for Germany 5.2 percent, and for Spain 5.5 percent. (These are all inflation numbers from November 2020 to November 2021, since December data are not yet available.)

• The jumps in inflation in these countries cannot be blamed on the American Recovery Act (ARA) that Biden pushed through Congress back in February or Federal Reserve Board policy. Obviously, the US inflation rate is higher than in these other countries, but the point is that we would have seen a substantial jump in inflation even if Biden has not moved aggressively to restart the economy.

=> ↺ Colleges Accused of Conspiring to Make Low-Income Students Pay More

• Is this the latest ‘admissions scandal’?

• Although it may be tempting to brand this case as the latest college admissions “scandal,” this lawsuit harks back to an investigation of 57 private, four-year universities conducted over 30 years ago by the Department of Justice on charges of “price fixing.” In this case, price fixing means limiting how the colleges compete for students by agreeing with one another to offer similar financial aid awards to admitted students.

=> ↺ With Billions in Fines, U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Ranks Are ‘Packed With Rogues’

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Opinion | An All-Out War on Democracy Is Now Underway in the US

• The following is adapted from the new edition of Norman Solomon’s book “Made Love, Got War,” just published as a free e-book.

=> ↺ 5 Lessons From Hunter S. Thompson

• Fifty years ago, Rolling Stone asked Hunter S. Thompson to cover the 1972 presidential campaign. In some ways, the assignment made perfect sense. Already a seasoned journalist, Thompson was basking in the success of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which the magazine had run the previous month. When Random House published the book version to enthusiastic reviews in 1972, Thompson consolidated his position as the magazine’s most popular writer.

=> ↺ Opinion | Another ‘Big Lie’ Corporatists Like to Tell: Bipartisanship Will Lead to Progress

• After the initial flush of optimism from the passage of the landmark infrastructure bill, the Biden Presidency is starting the year on a political down note. Both the “Build Back Better” and voting reform acts have stalled seemingly indefinitely. Just as troubling his approval rating and the public’s overall optimism about the nation’s direction have plummeted to near historic lows.

=> ↺ #FreeNavalny Supporters rally in cities around the world one year after Alexey Navalny was arrested upon returning to Russia

• On January 17, 2021, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport immediately upon returning to Russia from Germany, where he had spent months recovering from a near-fatal poisoning. Navalny would go on to spend the next year behind bars, first in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina remand prison and then in a prison colony in the Vladimir region, where he is still in custody today. The Kremlin critic was incarcerated under a reinstated sentence after Russia’s Penitentiary Service accused him of parole violations. Navalny was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, but given the number of ongoing criminal cases against him, the opposition leader says he’s not counting the days until his release. To mark the anniversary of Alexey Navalny’s arrest, his supporters rallied in dozens of cities around the world to call for his freedom. Here’s what the rallies looked like from Moscow to Miami.

=> ↺ Yes, Mr. Debs, the Republican-Democratic Party is alive and well

• There’s just one problem with this line of thinking. It’s dead wrong.

• Just look at what the Democrats—who control both the executive and legislative branch of the federal government—have actually accomplished: They overwhelmingly voted for a bloated, wasteful $770 billion defense bill at a time when the USA is ostensibly in a rare moment of peace time.

=> ↺ Progressives Rail Against Sinema For Choosing Filibuster Over Voting Rights

=> ↺ Is Donald Trump the Antichrist?

• I passed on drawing a conclusion, but then the lines lit up with a steady stream of people over the next few hours offering their “proofs” that Trump was, in fact, the Evil One come to ravage the Earth. That first caller clearly hit a nerve.

• It’s a fascinating question, however, whether put literally or metaphorically.

=> ↺ Eight New Year’s Resolutions for NPR to Consider Now

• Resolution One: Apart from excellent features around the country and the world, NPR should give voice to what civic groups are doing to improve our country locally and nationally. NPR is heavy on entertainment and entertainers and needs to fill some of that airtime with news of the bedrock civic community in America. The imbalance is serious from the national to the local.

• Resolution Two: NPR features many reports and interviews on Race, but needs far more focus on Class. Class exploitation by the rich and powerful corporate supremacists feeds into racial discrimination. The euphemism used is “inequality,” but corporate-bred crime, fraud, and abuse affects all people indiscriminately, which often disproportionately harms minorities. A result of the gross imbalance of time devoted to race and not to class is that indiscriminate injustice is mostly ignored.

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Substack: The new wretched hive of scum and quackery

• Over the nearly two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve been writing a lot about social media, particularly Facebook (excuse me, “Meta”), Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram (and now Tik Tok), as amplifiers of antivaccine misinformation. Part of the reason is that the pandemic finally—finally!—appears to have awakened public health authorities and government officials to how dangerous antivaccine misinformation and disinformation can be, after years and years of attempts by bloggers, as well as a relatively small number of academics, journalists, and health care professionals, to combat it without much support. As I said last week, everything old is new again, and, belated cries of, “Who could ever have seen this coming?” aside (the answer is: everyone who’s been paying attention), it’s important to assess the situation now, however we might have gotten here. This brings me to Substack. Remember how I used to refer to a certain antivaccine blog as a “wretched hive of scum and quackery” in homage to a line from Star Wars? Although there’s a lot of good writing on Substack, a byproduct of its freewheeling design and—shall we say?—lax attitude towards content guidelines, Substack has now become the new wretched hive of scum and quackery, something that is not entirely counterbalanced by the quality writing that’s there.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ UN Chief Urges Global Solidarity on Covid, Climate, and Debt Relief

• During a virtual event to open the notorious annual gathering of the World Economic Forum, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday decried not only humanity’s poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic but also unequal economic recovery and inadequate climate action.

• “Stand with us as we shape a global financial system that works for all countries, not just the wealthy few.”

=> ↺ Interview With Shrishail Rana – Tweaking Technologies

• Shrishail Rana: Back in the days businesses were localized and used to serve a more stable population. However, with time the way individuals live their lives and use computers has advanced. No more system cleaners alone can do the needful. For complete system optimization and security, advanced tools with different options are the need of the hour. Having this idea in mind, Tweaking Technologies was, and the products it offers are designed. Each software offered by the company focuses on increasing productivity and offers system security and storage optimization. Our users know us for the quality and reliable apps we create and deliver.

=> ↺ Corporate Media Largely Ignore Labor Issues. Let’s Make Them Visible.

=> ↺ All Hail the Revolutionary King: Dr. Martin Luther King’s Challenge to the Democrats, as Biden Finally Speaks out on Voting Rights

• On January 11, 2022 President Joe Biden made an impassioned speech in support of the Voting Rights Act and against the right-wing fascist take-over. It was a critical speech in the fight between the center-right Democrats and the arch rights fascist Republicans and deserves our support.  But, once again we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday and fight to protect his revolutionary legacy from Democratic Party white washers, including their cover-up of their treachery against him when he was alive.

• The goal is to protect Dr. King’s historical legacy and explain Dr. King’s independence from the Democratic Party, his lifelong fight with the Democratic Party, and to call on “social justice groups” who have become adjuncts the Democratic Party to have the decency to look history squarely in the face. You don’t have to agree with Dr. King’s independence from the Democratic Party, his strong Black Liberation politics, his profound internationalism, anti-imperialist, and pro-communism, but please do not take the name of the Revolutionary Dr. King in vain or use him to advance the neo-liberal, anti-Black Democratic agenda.

=> ↺ Opinion | Martin Luther King’s Radicalism Would Not Be Celebrated Today

• As we mourn Martin Luther King Jr. and celebrate his life, we must remember that he was violently assassinated. His ideas were seen as radical and dangerous. He critiqued liberals and moderates and did not have the approval of most Americans. So what if we instead celebrate King as a leader who gave his life to a movement focused on Black people, on poor people, on labor activism and anti-war sentiments. What if we celebrate King as he was: a radical?

=> ↺ ‘No Celebration Without Legislation’: King Family Leads Voting Rights March

• With the Democratic Party on the verge of failure in Congress, the family of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday joined with other civil rights advocates and faith leaders in Washington, D.C. to demand lawmakers pass national voting rights legislation.

• The MLK Day action comes amid a wave of voter suppression efforts advanced by Republican-controlled state legislatures and ongoing obstruction from right-wing Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to change the rules of the filibuster—the Senate’s 60-vote threshold rule that critics have dubbed a “Jim Crow relic” used to block key democracy reforms.

=> ↺ Martin Luther King Jr. and the Unfinished Work of Abolishing Poverty

• The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. warned in an essay written shortly before his assassination on April 4, 1968, that turbulence and mounting anxiety in a profoundly unequal and deeply divided country could lead to a circumstance where “we’ll end up with a kind of rightwing take-over in the cities and a Fascist development, which will be terribly injurious to the whole nation.”

=> ↺ Opinion | What are the 25 Best Films About the Civil Rights Movement?

• Congress passed the Martin Luther King Day holiday to make sure that we remember the man and the movement. Both have been depicted in documentary films, but this list focuses on fictional movies about the civil rights movement and the Black experience, including some that describe people and events prior to the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v Board of Education ruling and the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, which are often viewed as the key events that catalyzed the modern movement. Quite a few of these films, especially those made by independent producers outside the Hollywood system, are little-known, progressive, and deserve more recognition.

=> ↺ MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words

• Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which he delivered at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated.

=> ↺ MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign Isn’t Over. We’re Planning a Mass Protest for June.

=> ↺ Progressives Counter Cherry-Picked Quotes With MLK’s True Legacy

• As the FBI, right-wing political figures, and others came under fire Monday for engaging in the annual trend of dishonoring Martin Luther King Jr. by sanitizing his beliefs, progressives in Congress worked to honor his legacy of fighting for a more just society.

• “Let us not just celebrate the man, but remember the values and vision that motivated him.”

=> ↺ Opinion | As We Honor Dr. King, We Must Remember What He Truly Stood For

• The following is excerpted from an email Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent to supporters on Martin Luther King Day, January 17, 2022.

=> ↺ Opinion | As Dr. King Understood, The Right to Vote Is Both a Moral and a Practical Imperative

• Voting rights and electoral fairness are currently the most contested issues in our extremely polarized political system. And the best way to advance these essential values is to make clear the inextricable link between the moral and the practical.

=> ↺ You Are Not One But Many

• Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Your deep voice still hangs in the air, Melting the cowardly silence. You are the one standing solidly there Looking straight in the face of violence.

=> ↺ Sinema’s MLK Day Tweet Sparks Online Fury

• Sen. Kyrsten Sinema set off a flurry of furious condemnation Monday with a tweet to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day just days after she helped sink Democratic Party hopes to pass voting rights legislation.

• The tweet by the corporate Democrat from Arizona, stating that “today we remember the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” came as progressive lawmakers urged against remembrances of Dr. King that gloss over or ignore his radical legacy and vision.

=> ↺ The Time Is Now for the “Radical Revolution of Values” That MLK Called For

=> ↺ Mohamed Noor To Be Resentenced In Justine Ruszczyk Damond’s Shooting Death

• A former Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot an unarmed woman after she called 911 to report hearing a possible rape happening behind her home will be sentenced on a lesser charge Thursday after his murder conviction was overturned in a case that drew global attention and was fraught with the issue of race.

=> ↺ Billionaires ‘Had a Terrific Pandemic’ While Inequality Killed Millions: Oxfam

• Oxfam International’s latest report on global inequality finds that while the 10 richest individuals in the world more than doubled their collective wealth since Covid-19 hit in 2020, the related result of this billionaire surge has been a deadlier and more prolonged pandemic for the rest of the world in which the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fell, over 160 million people were forced into poverty, and billions of the poorest were denied access to life-saving vaccines. 

• “The predictability of it is sickening. The consequences of it kill.”

=> ↺ Wealth of richest 98 same as bottom 552 million, says Oxfam report

• India’s richest families saw their wealth reach a record high in 2021, even as 84 per cent of Indian households saw an income decline amid the pandemic, according to a report from non-profit Oxfam India titled ‘Inequality Kills’. It said the richest 98 Indians own the same wealth as the bottom 552 million people.

=> ↺ Wealth of world’s 10 richest men doubled in pandemic, Oxfam says

• Oxfam’s report, which was also based on data from the World Bank, said a lack of access to healthcare, hunger, gender-based violence and climate breakdown contributed to one death every four seconds.

• It said 160 million more people were living on less than $5.50 (£4.02) a day than would have been without the impact of the Covid pandemic.

• The World Bank uses $5.50 a day as a measure of poverty in upper-middle-income countries.

=> ↺ World’s 10 richest men doubled their wealth during pandemic, Oxfam reports

• The pandemic has plunged 160 million people into poverty, the charity added, with non-white ethnic minorities and women bearing the brunt of the impact as inequality soared.

• The report follows a December 2021 study by the group which found that the share of global wealth of the world’s richest people soared at a record pace during the pandemic.

=> ↺ Ten richest men double their fortunes in pandemic while incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall

• In a new briefing “Inequality Kills,” published today ahead of the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda, Oxfam says that inequality is contributing to the death of at least 21,000 people each day, or one person every four seconds. This is a conservative finding based on deaths globally from lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, hunger, and climate breakdown.

=> ↺ Palestinians remove Muslim from al-Aqsa after confusing him for a Jew

• Later on Friday afternoon, the guards at the site announced that they had been mistaken and that the man was actually a Muslim from abroad. The guards stated that they became suspicious due to the man’s failure to answer their questions. The guards referred to recent reports that a group of Jewish Israelis were disguising themselves as Muslims in order to freely enter the Temple Mount.

=> ↺ Indonesian woman flogged 100 times for adultery while her male partner receives just 15 lashes

• The man was sentenced to 30 lashes. But he appealed to the province’s Sharia court, which reduced his punishment to 15 lashes.

=> ↺ Christian woman accuses husband of detaining her in Islam theological centre

• The incident came to light when the woman complained to the Pothanikad police station against the husband Aslam, 33, of Kothamangalam, and his family members charging them with dowry harassment, wrongful confinement, and insulting modesty of a woman. The police registered a case on December 7, 2021, based on her complaint.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Cable repair ship to set sail from PNG to restore communications to Tonga

• The cable, which would normally carry almost all communications traffic to and from Tonga, has been out of action since shortly after the eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano on Saturday.

=> ↺ Could take ‘two weeks’ to restore Tonga internet cable

• “It could take up to two weeks to get it repaired. The nearest cable-laying vessel is in Port Moresby,” he added, referring to the Papua New Guinea capital, more than 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) from Tonga.

• Southern Cross is assisting Tonga Cable Limited which owns the 872 kilometre cable linking Tonga with Fiji and from there to the rest of the world.

=> ↺ Significant tsunami damage feared in Tonga, communications still cut

• Internet and phone lines went down at about 6.40 p.m. local time on Saturday, leaving the 105,000 residents on the islands virtually uncontactable.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Copyright Law as the tool of choice for censorship and reputation management

• The purpose of copyright law is to induce and reward authors for their original work by extending property rights to the copyright holder and qualifying its reproduction. The two-fold rights this gives them includes primarily an economic right to derive financial reward for reproduction of their work, along with an ancillary moral right to prevent distorted reproductions of their work. Of late, however, there has been a shift in the use of copyright laws by copyright holders. Instead of fulfilment of economic objectives with the interest to protect original work, copyright holders weaponize copyright law as a tool to fulfil of non-economic objectives to vindicate non-copyright interests.This is often done to censor legitimate content, capitalizing on the fact that the copyright holders intellectual property was a part of the content itself, even though it may be insignificant to the final essence of the subject matter, or it may even qualify for fair use due to the purpose for which it was used. This article will discuss the motivation for individuals and business entities to shoehorn non-copyright claims within copyright law as opposed to any other speech regulation laws, share some examples of such copyright abuse for reputation management, and conclude by highlighting takedown transparency as a potentially useful next step in finding a way to rectify such complexities.

=> ↺ It’s Copyright Week 2022: Ten Years Later, How Has SOPA/PIPA Shaped Online Copyright Enforcement?

• Ten years ago, a diverse coalition of internet users, non-profit groups, and internet companies defeated the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), bills that would have forced internet companies to blacklist and block websites accused of hosting copyright-infringing content. These were bills that would have made censorship very easy, all in the name of copyright enforcement. This collective action showed the world that the word of the few major companies who control film, music, and television can’t control internet policy for their own good.

• We celebrate Copyright Week every year on the anniversary of the internet blackout that finally got the message across: Team Internet will always stand up for itself.

• While SOPA and PIPA were ultimately defeated, their spirits live on. They live on in legislation like the CASE Act and the EU Copyright Directive. They live on in the use of copyright filters on major platforms, which exist because the largest entertainment companies insist on them. They live on every time you can’t fix a device you paid for and rightfully own. They live on in the licensing agreements that prevent us from owning digital goods.

=> ↺ Welcome to the Public Domain, Winnie-the-Pooh

• This year, the public domain opened up to include works from 1926 and a whopping 400,000 sound recordings. Of course, the real fun is that the third Hercule Poirot novel by Agatha Christie, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and the original books of Winnie-the-Pooh and Bambi are now free for anyone to use.

• In particular, the popular images of Winnie-the-Pooh and Bambi have been dominated by one rightsholder’s vision for a long time: Disney. And while Disney’s versions of those stories remain under copyright, their exclusive hold on two cornerstones of childhood has come to an end. This is a good thing—it lets those stories be reinterpreted and repurposed by people with different takes. We can all decide whether the Disney versions are the actual best ones or were simply the only ones.

• Public domain works can be used for such lofty goals. Or they can simply be used for fun, allowing anyone to participate in a worldwide sport of joy. With so many more uses suddenly available to so many more people, we get a flood of works and get to choose which ones we love most. And, of course, we can try our hand at joining in.

=> ↺ Assessing cultural heritage institutions’ needs related to CC’s public domain tools

• As part of our Open Culture / GLAM program’s celebration of Public Domain Day, we are reaching out to practitioners and experts working in galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) to help create a clearer picture of the use of CCs’ public domain tools, CC0 and the Public Domain Mark (PDM). To do so, we are collecting information on understandings, issues, needs, wishes and expectations via a short survey in English, French and Spanish. 

=> ↺ Browser Extension Adds Sci-Hub Download Links to Publishers’ Websites

• As scientists and academics of all kinds turn to Sci-Hub to freely access scientific papers, a new browser tool aims to make access even more straightforward. Currently available from the Mozilla addon store but also compatible with Chrome, ‘Sci-Hub Injector’ embeds Sci-Hub download links into popular publishers’ websites.

=> ↺ VPN Provider Agrees to Block Torrent Traffic and The Pirate Bay on U.S. Servers

• VPN Unlimited has settled a copyright lawsuit filed by several movie companies. The VPN provider stood accused of failing to take action against subscribers who were pirating films. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to block BitTorrent traffic and prominent pirate sites including ‘Pirate Bay,’ ‘YTS’, and ‘RARBG’ on U.S. servers.

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