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● Links 4/2/2022: Slackware 15.0 and GStreamer 1.20

Posted in News Roundup at 4:40 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Is Adblock Piracy? Is Adblock Illegal? – Invidious

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Experimental Intel ARC Alchemist mesh shader support added to Vulkan Linux driver

• Recently, Intel revealed the newest ANV Vulkan driver for Linux operating systems that offer mesh shading that the company will implement into the new DG2, or ARC Alchemist, discrete graphics cards. This unique mesh shading is considered “experimental” and is still in testing.

• The new experimental mesh shader can expand the scalability of the geometry stage, allowing it to be very accessible to integrate into the engine runtime. Mesh shading can encapsulate the culling procedure in an individual API call, which bypasses the tedious state and resource setup procedure as it draws indirect demands.

Applications

=> ↺ Excellent Utilities: croc – securely transfer files and folders

•  This series highlights best-of-breed utilities. We cover a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides.

• There are many ways you can transfer files between computers. Here’s a few methods. We can transfer files between two hosts on Linux using the scp command. The scp command establishes a secure connection between the two hosts and it uses the standard SSH port in order to transfer files. Alternatively, many people send files as attachments although there are often limitations with this method. Or users frequently use file hosting services in the cloud, WebTorrents, a personal server, wormhole and many others.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Docker Compose Up, Docker Compose Down, Docker Compose Start and Docker Compose Stop

• In this Docker compose a tutorial post, we are discussing on Docker Compose up command, Docker Compose down command, Docker Compose start command and Docker Compose stop command.

=> ↺ How to install MetaTrader 4 with the FxPro Broker on a Chromebook with Crossover

• Today we are looking at how to install MetaTrader 4 with the FxPro Broker on a Chromebook with Crossover 21. 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.

Games

=> ↺ Wordle was fun while it lasted

• Look, I don’t blame Wardle for selling his game. This is a guy you want to see make millions on his pure and sweet creation! A corporation compensated a creator fairly, it seems, for his work and that’s undeniably better than the alternative. This is, forgive the terrible pun, a classic “don’t hate the player, hate the game” situation. I’m a New York Times news subscriber and I do not begrudge them their profits or their subscriber base. But can I also say? It’s still a little depressing when an enjoyable independent creation gets gobbled up by a behemoth that will remove it from its lo-fi little dot-co-dot-uk frame and position it as bait to convert players to Times Puzzle subscribers or whatever. It’s not all or nothing: I can be happy for Wardle and a little sad for the loss of my own experience all at once.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GStreamer 1.20 Open-Source Multimedia Framework Is Out, This Is What’s New

• GStreamer 1.20 is here one and a half years after GStreamer 1.18 to introduce major new features like WebM Alpha decoding support, video decoder subframe support, multi-threaded video conversion and mixing in the compositor, MPEG-2 and VP9 Linux stateless support, as well as smart encoding (pass through) support for VP8, VP9, and H.265.

• It also introduces GstPlay, a new high-level playback library to replace GstPlayer, AV1 and MPEG-2 support to the Windows Direct3D11/DXVA decoder, audio support for the WPE (WebKit Port for Embedded) web page source element, and CUDA-based video color space convert, rescale, upload and download elements.

=> ↺ 10 Necessary Apps to Improve Your GNOME Desktop Experience [Part 4]

• We give you the next set of 10 GNOME Apps that is going to supercharge your productivity while using GNOME Desktop.

Distributions

BSD

=> ↺ Modern inetd in FreeBSD

• The inetd ‘super-server’ is a special application which ties incoming network connections to locally-run commands. Using a single super-server to handle all network requests conserves memory and CPU resources at the expense of increased application latency. Although inetd has largely fallen out of fashion today, it was the most common method for handling network requests in the early days of the Internet.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ Version Control Tool, IRC Client Update in Tumbleweed

•  This week openSUSE Tumbleweed had a steady pace of snapshots with four releases users could #zypper dup their system into, which brought updates for an Internet Relay Chat client and a new default version of Ruby .

• Version Control package git updated in snapshot 20220201. The 2.35.1 version of git now shows the number of stash entries with –show-stash like the normal output does. The color palette used by git grep has been updated to match that of GNU grep. The Mozilla Firefox 96.0.3 update fixed an issue that allowed unexpected data to be submitted in some of the search telemetry. Google’s data interchange format protobuf 3.19.4 fixed data loss bugs occurring when the number of optional fields in a message is an exact multiple of 32; this affected both Ruby and php in the package. Other packages to update in the snapshot were yast 4.4.43, python-fsspec 2022.1.0, suse-module-tools 16.0.19), and yast2-network 4.4.35, which transitioned to inclusive naming for asymmetric communication.

Slackware Family

=> ↺ Slackware, the Oldest Actively Maintained Linux Distro, Releases Version 15.0

• Slackware, the oldest actively maintained Linux distribution, released version 15.0 yesterday after a long release cycle that goes all the way back to 2016 where the last version (14.2) was released. According to the release notes, the whole spirit of this release is: “Keep it familiar, but make it modern.”

=> ↺ Oldest Active Linux Distro Slackware Finally Releases Version 15

• Rejoice! Linux fans will be pleased to know that the legendary distro, Slackware, has received a new release after a long time. For those unaware, Slackware’s latest version was released way back in 2016.

• The entire Linux community was thrilled about it when the devs announced the plans for Slackware 15.0 in February, last year (2021).

• The devs had made rapid progress in the development of Slackware Linux 15.0 in the past year, starting with an alpha release at the beginning of the year. It took a while considering its last release candidate release, but it is here now!

=> ↺ Slackware 15 released

• Version 15 of the venerable Slackware distribution has been released. A bit more information can be found in the release notes. Many of us got our start with Slackware; it is good to see that it’s still out there and true to form.

=> ↺ Slackware 15.0 Officially Released

• Slackware 15.0 is now available for download. Guess what, Slackware 15.0 took almost 6 years to develop.

=> ↺ Slackware 15.0

=> ↺ Slackware 15.0 has been released on 2022-02-02 | Alien Pastures

• I honestly kept my breath and have had some difficulty believing that this would eventually really happen, but yet here it is. Slackware 15.0 stable! Released yesterday and available on mirrors across the globe today.

• [...]

• All in all, when you install Slackware 15.0 on your computer you will be able to work in graphical desktop environments and using tools that are on par with all the big distros. When looking for software that is not part of the core distro you can turn to slackbuilds.org (SBo) which is a curated platform for Slackware package build scripts. Tools like sbopkg, sbotools and slpkg will assist you in automating the build- and dependency resolving process when using these scripts from SBo. Third-party package repositories are also available to quickly install binary packages if you do not trust yourself when compiling from source. You can think of my own alien and restricted packages but also Robby Workman’s package repository or the SlackOnly collection of packages that have been pre-compiled for you out of all the SBo scripts. Slackware’s own slackpkg package manager which only deals with official Slackware packages can be extended with the plugin slackpkg+ if you want to be able to easily manage a mix of official and 3rd-party packages using a single tool.

• Slackpkg with the slackpkg+ plugin also supports managing a multilib installation (i.e. a 64bit Slackware OS which is capable of running and compiling 32bit software). With multilib, running the Steam gaming platform is fully supported on your 64bit Slackware, and Steam applications run as fast on Slackware (or faster) than on Windows.

=> ↺ Slackware 15.0 Officially Released, Powered by Linux Kernel 5.15 LTS

• Powered by the latest long-term supported (LTS) Linux 5.15 kernel series, Slackware 15.0 finally adopts the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) for pure shadow passwords, switches to elogind as default user login and seat manager instead of ConsoleKit2, adopts the PipeWire low-level multimedia framework, and adds support for the Rust and Python 3 languages.

• On the software front, Slackware 15.0 ships with the Xfce 4.16 and KDE Plasma 5.23 desktop environments, adds the Dovecot IMAP and POP3 server to replace the old imapd and ipop3d, drops support for Qt4 as Qt5 is now the norm, and introduces new scripts to help you easily rebuild the installer and to build kernel packages for your needs.

=> ↺ Slackware 15.0 is Officially Emerged from Development Den

• Crushing several rumors and predictions, Slackware 15.0 is now officially released for you to download and experience. We wrap up the iconic release in this post.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi OS is now available as a 64-bit download

• Out of all of the Raspberry Pi computers, the Raspberry Pi 1, Pi 2, and Zero support 32-bit operating systems while the Zero 2, Pi 3, and Pi 4 are all capable of running 64-bit operating systems. While it is simpler for the RPF to offer just one 32-bit image, it noticed that some closed-source software was only made for arm64 hardware (those listed as 64-bit earlier). It also said arm64 hardware should run better with a 64-bit OS.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Linux Lite Gets Updated to Version 5.8

• Linux Lite — a highly trimmed down version of Ubuntu, has been updated to version 5.8 and adds several new features including a new Widget, an updated Papirus icon theme, the command line information tool Noefetch and Mintstick, which lets you create bootable USB drives. There are also nine new wallpapers to freshen up your desktop experience.

• Linux Lite is a highly stripped-down operating system based on the Debian and Ubuntu flavors of Linux. Similar to Linux Core we covered a few days ago, this operating system is designed to run on very low-end hardware, but not as low-end as Linux Core.

=> ↺ Ubuntu MATE 22.04 Will Include Flatpak by Default

• All Ubuntu flavours ship with Snap support preinstalled as well the ability to use regular apt repos. Flatpak, however, is something users have to go out of their way to install at a later date.

• But Ubuntu MATE fans running the next LTS will find they don’t need to as Flatpak is already present. Better yet, all the required desktop integrations with portals are present and working by default.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Top 5 Uses of Raspberry Pi

• You will rarely come across a device that can be handy in many ways and Raspberry Pi is one of those as it has several uses and some of its top 5 uses are already discussed in this article. You can do a lot with your Raspberry Pi device; all you need is a little knowledge about how to use it as a tool. If you really need a good portable device, you should give it a go..

=> ↺ Can Raspberry Pi 4 be a Desktop Replacement?

• You are already familiar with installing the Raspberry Pi operating system on your desktop, but did you expect to have your own operating system in your pocket that you could use anywhere and at any time? It’s difficult to imagine, but you can expect this from the Raspberry Pi 4 device, which could become your desktop replacement. If you are still confused whether it would be a good idea to replace your desktop with Raspberry Pi device, you should read this article first to learn about the Raspberry Pi 4 features and then make a decision based on those features.

=> ↺ How to Change Raspberry Pi Hostname

• The presence of multiple devices with similar names is inconvenient when it comes to getting things done. You must have different device names for your Raspberry Pi in order to use it for multiple purposes, such as serving as a web server or accessing it from a remote server. The main issue with the Raspberry Pi operating system is that it comes with the name “Raspberry Pi” by default, so you must rename them to differentiate between multiple devices. Different methods are used to change the name of the Raspberry Pi hostname and it’s in your hand which method you like to select. This article will guide you to decide which methods you will use to change the name of your Raspberry Pi. If you want to change the name of your Raspberry Pi, all you have to do is carefully complete each step mentioned in the following section…

=> ↺ Getting Root On Linux Amplifier Adds New Inputs | Hackaday

• We remember when getting Linux on your average desktop computer was a tricky enough endeavor that only those with the most luxurious of graybeards would even attempt it. A “Linux box” in those heady days was more than likely an outdated machine salvaged from the dumpster, side panel forever removed, cranking away in a basement or garage. Fast forward today, and Linux is literally everywhere: from smartphones and luxury cars, to TVs and refrigerators. Ironically it’s still not on most desktop computers, but that’s a discussion for another time.

• So when [Michael Nothhard] sent in the fascinating account of how he hacked his Linux-powered Bluesound Powernode N150 amplifier to unlock more inputs, the least surprising element was that there was a “smart amplifier” out there running the free and open source operating system. What piqued our interest was that he was able to bust his way in with relative ease and enable some impressive new capabilities that the manufacturer would probably have rather been kept under wraps.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ India goes RISC-V with VEGA processors

• One of the main advantages of RISC-V architecture is that it is open, so any organization with the right skills can develop its own cores, and India’s government has taken up this opportunity with the Microprocessor Development Programme (MDP) helping develop VEGA RISC-V cores locally.

• Thanks to funding by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) managed to design five RISC-V processors ranging from a single-core 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller-class processor to a Linux capable quad-core 64-bit out-of-order processor.

=> ↺ It’s back: The Hello World podcast for the computing education community

=> ↺ Keep Track of Toilet Paper Usage with This IoT Roll Holder

• Remember the Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2020? We sure do, and it looks like our old friend [Vije Miller] does as well, while seemingly harboring a somewhat morbid fascination about how much paper every bathroom visitor is consuming. And to that end, we present his IoT toilet sheet tracker.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Moto G71 5G Review: Near-Perfect for Android Purists | NDTV Gadgets 360

=> ↺ Exclusive: This is the intelligent Android lock screen Google never gave us

=> ↺ Jingling reduces the JingPad A1 tablet by 45% following bootloader unlock and Android ROM source code publication – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ New renders hint at the Vivo NEX 5′s potential to be the most uniquely-designed Android flagship of 2022 on its launch – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ How to Use Focus Mode on Android

=> ↺ How To Delete Browsing History On Android | Screen Rant

=> ↺ How to show internet speed on status bar on Android – Phandroid

=> ↺ What Is The Best Weather App For Android? | Screen Rant

=> ↺ Android app deals of the day: Siege of Dragonspear, Zenge, AntVentor, more – 9to5Toys

=> ↺ Vevo’s bringing your Google TV and Android TV devices yet another option for music videos

=> ↺ Google Pixel updates: What you need to know – 9to5Google

=> ↺ The 10 Strangest Android Phones of All Time – SlashGear

=> ↺ Galaxy Z Flip, Galaxy Z Flip 5G get Android 12 update in Canada – SamMobile

=> ↺ Paranoid Android Sapphire Alpha 2 released for Xiaomi Mi 10, Mi 10T and more

=> ↺ Moto G71 5G Review: Near-Perfect for Android Purists | NDTV Gadgets 360

=> ↺ Google almost made a smarter, more contextual lock screen for Android – Phandroid

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

=> ↺ Brave vs Vivaldi: Which Chromium-Based Browser is Better?

•  It is also one of the best browsers available for Linux. Vivaldi, on the other hand, has been making the rounds among Linux users for its customizability, and tab management features.

• Is Vivaldi worth a try? Is it open-source? Why should you prefer Brave over it? Or should you consider using Vivaldi?

• Here, I shall answer all those questions, comparing both of them side-by-side.

Chromium

=> ↺ Chrome 99: CSS Cascade Layers, a New Picker for Input Elements, 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 99 is beta as of February 3, 2022. You can download the latest on Google.com for desktop or on Google Play Store on Android.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ LibreOffice 7.3 Community arrives

• LibreOffice 7.3 Community has been released, and this new version of the open source productivity suite features a large number of improvements to help users migrating from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, or when exchanging documents.

FSF

GNU Projects

=> ↺ Yesterday

• I wake up every day in a world in which a lot of people have come to love the GNU operating system, but think a Jack Malik from Finland wrote it, even though he came clean about it from the very beginning!

• Unlike the movie, everyone’s forgetfulness is not caused by a weird worldwide blackout, but by a very well-funded disinformation campaign.

Programming/Development

Python

=> ↺ Python Modules: How To Create And Import • Python Land Tutorial

• The Python import statement allows us to import a Python module. In turn, A Python module helps us organize and reuse our code. In this article, you learn about:

Leftovers

Education

=> ↺ Lawmaker Wants Teachers Punished for Lessons Contradicting Students’ Religion

=> ↺ Jamaal Bowman, Jeff Merkley Propose Bill to End College Legacy Admissions

=> ↺ Critics Say GOP Bill in Alabama Would ‘Decapitate Public Education’

• Progressive critics are warning that Alabama Republican Sen. Del Marsh’s so-called “Parents’ Choice Act,” which advanced out of committee on Wednesday, would “end state support of public education.”

• “It’s about ending the collective commitment to and responsibility for educating the next generations.”

=> ↺ Government to remove ‘neoliberal’ words and concepts from textbooks

• The SEP asserts that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), non-governmental organizations and “groups close to the business sector” intervened in educational reforms carried out over the past 30 years and succeeded in introducing “the concept of quality to measure the performance of the education system.”

• In a 157-page document, downloadable via the scanning of a QR code, the ministry also insinuates contempt for seemingly innocuous words such as “equity,” “coverage” and “graduation.”

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Why Wishful Thinking on Covid Remains As Dangerous as Ever

• We’ve entered a new phase in the Covid-19 pandemic, which we can call bipartisan, unilateral surrender. From liberal and conservative pundits and politicians on both sides of the aisle to the celebrity docs who show up on cable news or in supermarket magazines, we’re being told SARS-CoV-2 is endemic now—which of course has nothing to do with the technical term, but has become popular shorthand for “it’s over.” We’re vaxxed-and-done now and we should be allowed, with no more mask requirements or other efforts to mitigate spread, to resume our pre-pandemic lives with the “urgency of normal.”

=> ↺ In This Latest Covid Surge, Americans Are Struggling to Make Ends Meet Without Sick Leave

• Elsa Erazo’s voice is faint when we speak on the phone. She’s in bed. She struggles to find words, in both English and her first language, Spanish. Our conversation is repeatedly interrupted by deep, rattling coughs.

=> ↺ America’s Two Pandemics

• Still, give Defoe credit. As a grown-up, he may not have lived through the worst version of a plague to hit that capital city since the Black Death of 1348. He did, however, capture much that, four centuries later, will seem unnervingly familiar to us, living as we are in a country savaged by a pandemic all our own. We can only hope that, 57 years from now, on a calmer planet, some twenty-first-century version of Defoe will turn our disaster into a memorable work of fiction (not that Louise Erdrich hasn’t already taken a shot at it in her new novel, The Sentence). Sadly, given so much that’s happening right now from the mad confrontation over Ukraine to the inability to stop this world from heating to the boiling point, that calmer future planet seems unlikely indeed.

• Call me a masochist, but at 77, in relative isolation in New York City as the omicron variant of Covid-19 ran wild — hitting a peak here of 50,000 cases a day — I read Defoe’s novel. All too much of it seemed eerily familiar: stores shutting down, nightlife curtailed, people locked in their houses, others looking desperately to none-too-wise figures for any explanation but a reasonable one about what was happening to them. And so it went then and so it’s largely gone now.

=> ↺ The 2 Pandemics Ravaging America

• Imagine that you were experiencing all of this (and by this, I mean our lives right now) as if it were a novel, à la Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. The famed author of Robinson Crusoe —Defoe claimed it had been written by the fictional Crusoe himself—was 5 years old in 1665. That was when a year-long visitation of the bubonic plague decimated London. It probably killed more than 100,000 of that city’s residents or 15 percent of its population. As for Defoe, he published his “journal” in 1722, 57 years later. He wrote it, however, as if he (or his unidentified protagonist) had recorded events as they were happening in the way that all of us, whatever our ages, have been witnessing the ravages of the many variants of Covid-19 in our own all-too-dismantled lives.

=> ↺ Can You Solve The Miserable Being Miserable Online By Regulating Tech?

• Over the last few months, I’ve been asking a general question which I don’t know the answer to, but which I think needs a lot more research. It gets back to the issue of how much of the “bad” that many people seem to insist is caused by social media (and Facebook in particular) is caused by social media, and how much of it is just shining a light on what was always there. I’ve suggested that it would be useful to have a more nuanced account of this, because it’s become all too common for people to insist that anything bad they see talked about on social media was magically caused by social media (oddly, traditional media, including cable news, rarely gets this kind of treatment). The reality, of course, is likely that there are a mix of things happening, and they’re not easily teased apart, unfortunately. So, what I’d like to see is some more nuanced accounting of how much of the “bad stuff” we see online is (1) just social media reflecting back things bad things that have always been there, but which we were less aware of as opposed to (2) enabled by social media connecting and amplifying people spreading the bad stuff. On top of that, I think we should similarly be comparing how social media also has connected tons of people for good purposes as well — and see how much of that happens as compared to the bad.

=> ↺ Efforts to Limit Drug Prices Are Stalled — and Pharma Is Seizing an Opening

=> ↺ Warren Warns ‘Corporate Vultures’ Are Circling Medicare on Biden’s Watch

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday joined physicians and dozens of her House Democratic colleagues in urging the Biden administration to immediately halt Medicare Direct Contracting, a Trump-era pilot that could result in complete privatization of the cherished public healthcare program by decade’s end.

• “It is completely baffling to me that the Biden administration wants to give the same bad actors in Medicare Advantage free rein in traditional Medicare,” Warren (D-Mass.) said during a hearing held by the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ Report: Microsoft HoloLens 3 is dead as its mixed-reality vision implodes

• The article details all sorts of internal strife, with employees dishing on what Microsoft executives have said about the mixed-reality device in various private discussions. If there’s any conclusion to be reached from BI‘s reporting, it’s that Microsoft wants to design the software platforms that the metaverse will run upon, rather than committing to the device itself. Microsoft said last year that that was Microsoft Mesh, a platform we were skeptical of at the time it was announced. By November, Microsoft’s mixed-reality plans had seemingly been scaled back to Teams avatars.

Security

=> ↺ How Phishers Are Slinking Their Links Into LinkedIn

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Government Agencies are Tapping a Facial Recognition Company to Prove You’re You: Here’s Why That Raises Concerns About Privacy, Accuracy and Fairness

• The IRS’s move is aimed at cutting down on identity theft, a crime that affects millions of Americans. The IRS, in particular, has reported a number of tax filings from people claiming to be others, and fraud in many of the programs that were administered as part of the American Relief Plan has been a major concern to the government.

• The IRS decision has prompted a backlash, in part over concerns about requiring citizens to use facial recognition technology and in part over difficulties some people have had in using the system, particularly with some state agencies that provide unemployment benefits. The reaction has prompted the IRS to revisit its decision.

=> ↺ San Francisco Should Strengthen, Not Gut, Surveillance Technology Ordinance

• A year later, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) violated the landmark Ordinance by using a large non-city surveillance camera network to spy on racial justice protests without Board approval. Now, the SFPD and Mayor London Breed are stoking fears about crime in order to gut the Ordinance’s community control provisions with a ballot measure that would create broad exceptions for the police. Several Supervisors have put forward a competing ballot measure to strengthen that community control and the ban on government use of facial recognition technology.

• EFF supports the Supervisors’ measure, and opposes the police and Mayor’s measure that would weaken transparency and oversight of police surveillance. The measures can be withdrawn until early March—otherwise, they will go to a city-wide vote in June.

• This fight is not just for the civil liberties of San Franciscans, but to protect the Black-led racial justice movement across the country from police backlash. A chief lesson from the protests following the police murder of George Floyd is that communities across the country must have the right to democratically decide how to handle complicated issues of civil liberties, crime, and public safety. San Francisco’s Surveillance Technology Ordinance protects that right and allows communities to say “no” to police surveillance on our streets.

=> ↺ Senator Wyden: EARN IT Will Make Children Less Safe

• Earlier this week we wrote about the problematic reintroduction of the EARN IT Act and explained how it will make children a lot less safe — exactly the opposite of what its backers claim. Senator Ron Wyden has now put out a statement that succinctly explains the problems of EARN IT, and exactly how it will do incredible harm to the very children it pretends to protect:

=> ↺ It’s Back: Senators Want EARN IT Bill to Scan All Online Messages

• A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have re-introduced the EARN IT Act, an incredibly unpopular bill from 2020 that was dropped in the face of overwhelming opposition. Let’s be clear: the new EARN IT Act would pave the way for a massive new surveillance system, run by private companies, that would roll back some of the most important privacy and security features in technology used by people around the globe. It’s a framework for private actors to scan every message sent online and report violations to law enforcement. And it might not stop there. The EARN IT Act could ensure that anything hosted online—backups, websites, cloud photos, and more—is scanned.

=> ↺ Apple’s Face ID with a Mask works so well, it might end password purgatory

• Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple has made Face ID useful again in iOS 15.4 by finally adding the ability to use the face unlock feature while wearing a face mask.

• I’ve been testing out the new iOS 15.4 beta for a few days, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well Face ID works with a mask — in addition to simply enjoying being able to use my iPhone the way it was originally intended to work, instead of mashing in a six-digit passcode a dozen times whenever I leave the house.

=> ↺ Why Apple’s improved 2FA protection matters to business

• Apple has introduced a new layer of protection to its existing two-factor authentication (2FA) system, making it a little harder for phishing attacks to successfully steal valuable authentication credentials.

• Given that Apple, PayPal, and Amazon were the top three brands used for successful phishing attacks last year, according to a recent Jamf report, this matters.

=> ↺ How Apple’s privacy push cost Meta $10bn

• For Meta and its competitors, the problem will probably get worse. Google will soon offer most users of Android, its mobile operating system, the ability to opt out of ad tracking. It also plans to ban third-party cookies, another tracking mechanism, from its Chrome web browser. Meta, aware of the challenges, is trying to engineer its way out of the problem. It is developing new tools to help advertisers regain insight into how well their campaigns perform. It is also trying to escape the reach of Google and Apple by developing its own operating system for the metaverse, which it hopes will be the next big computing platform. Controlling the operating system will prevent companies like Apple from upending Meta’s business model in future—and will give Meta total control over what pop-ups you see.

=> ↺ Facebook slump reignites debate over attracting younger audiences

• TikTok has continued its soaring growth, particularly among younger audiences attracted by its user-friendly controls and upbeat content of mostly very short, self-made videos.

=> ↺ Meta’s miss creates Big Tech divide: who’s got the data

• “It’s two-tiered,” said Gene Munster of investment firm Loup Ventures, who called Apple’s devices and Google’s search service foundations of the [Internet]. “Facebook continues to see that impact of what it means to be built on top of Apple,” he said, noting that Apple’s privacy changes have had a bigger impact on Facebook than he expected.

=> ↺ U.S. Losing Ground on Making Global Privacy Mark Without Federal Rules

• Tech leaders and lawmakers agreed Wednesday that the U.S. is at risk of falling behind being able to establish privacy standards if Congress does not act quickly enough to implement federal rules.

• The European Union already has a sweeping privacy and data protection law, called the General Data Protection Regulation, that impacts American companies, yet the United States does not have similar legislation that would allow it to establish its own principles and have similar global influence, experts said.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ A No-Nukes Strategy or a No-Win Reality

• We all know the scenario. Tens of millions die in the first 60 minutes of a nuclear exchange, followed by nuclear winter causing worldwide crop failure and famine. Infernos, radiation, starvation, perhaps a last-ditch effort for survival resulting in barbaric, tribal warfare before human civilization expires.

• The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock remains a potent symbol with its message that if decisive action is not taken, destructive action moves the hands of the clock toward Armageddon. According to the Clock, we have 100 seconds to midnight.

=> ↺ Trump Floated Blanket Pardon for Jan. 6 Attackers in Final Weeks of Presidency

=> ↺ Opinion | $778 Billion and Counting: Who’s Paying for All This Pentagon Waste? (Hint: It’s You)

• 2021 was another banner year for the military-industrial complex, as Congress signed off on a near-record $778 billion in spending for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy. That was $25 billion more than the Pentagon had even asked for.

=> ↺ “We Need Peace”: War in Ukraine Would Be Humanitarian Catastrophe for Millions in the Region

• As tensions grow between Russia and NATO over a potential invasion of Ukraine, up to 2 million people in eastern Ukraine are at risk of massive displacement and violence if the conflict escalates. We speak with the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Jan Egeland, who is on the ground in Ukraine and says a war could roll back nearly a decade of humanitarian progress made in the Ukrainian region. “We need reconciliation, we need peace,” says Egeland on the messages he is hearing from Ukrainians.

=> ↺ Russian Historian: We Need Both the U.S. & Russia to Deescalate Crisis over Ukraine

• Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin continuing to deny accusations of a planned invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration ordered the deployment of 3,000 additional troops to Eastern Europe on Wednesday to supposedly protect Ukraine. Moscow-based historian and political writer Ilya Budraitskis says both Russia and the U.S. are gaining more from the threat of conflict than an actual war, and says Russia has no real strategic gain from a potential invasion.

=> ↺ War in

=> ↺ Citizen resistance Ukrainian civilians sign up for combat training in case of Russian military escalation

• Against the backdrop of a Russian military buildup and a deepening rift between Russia and Western countries, Ukrainians have begun to make serious preparations for an intensified war. For many, this means joining the Territorial Defense Forces — the country’s volunteer military reserve that was recently incorporated into the armed forces. In Kyiv, instructors with military experience give basic combat training to civilians wielding wooden replicas of Kalashnikov rifles. In Kharkiv, Ukrainian nationalists rehearse maneuvers at abandoned construction sites. Patriotic Ukrainian media outlets hold up these volunteers as heroes — meanwhile, they’re painted as anti-heroes in Russian state propaganda. For the rest of the world, this civilian mobilization speaks to the fact that a full-fledged war between Russia and Ukraine is a very real prospect. Here’s what this combat training looks like. 

=> ↺ Borowski’s Inferno

• After experiencing Stalinist repression in the Soviet Union prior to World War II, then being an inmate at Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II, and then suffering under Stalinist repression in Poland after World War II, the Polish poet, writer and journalist, Tadeusz Borowski (1922-1951), came to realize that all survivors are guilty because securing personal survival as a morally principled innocent is impossible — then and now.

• Borowski came to see the world as nested rings of concentration camps, like a Dante’s Inferno, with the smaller rings (of electrified barbed wire) further in and to which you might be outside of, being more and more depraved as they were more tightly concentrated; and the outer larger rings, all of which you are within, being increasingly livable as they receded from the ring of barbed and arbitrary injustices confining you.

=> ↺ What and Whom to Believe (or How to Cope with Disillusionment)

• Over millennia philosophers have pursued their quest for meaning, truth and justice, aware of the limitations imposed by the availability of empirical data and the psychological and societal constraints of one’s culture, heritage and local environment. Whether we like it or not, we are children of our generation, and our language, social environment and education condition us to believe certain things and not others. It takes a certain temerity to jump over one’s shadow and to attempt thinking outside the box, test our own premises and consider extraneous perspectives. Are we sure that we ourselves are true and honest? Do we ever test our premises?  Do we practice what we preach? Do we have good reason to trust the morals and intellectual honesty of our leaders?

• Admittedly, human existence does not depend on philosophical reflection – live first, then philosophize — primum vivere, deinde philosophari  (Cicero in a letter to his son Marcus).  Undoubtedly, however, our perception of the spirituality of the universe and our conscious participation in the emotional landscape of our civilization can be immensely enriched by developing an awareness of our own selves – nosce te ipsum (the Delphian γνῶθι σεαυτόν), of our instincts and inclinations, preferences, prejudices.  Such awareness puts the cosmos in context and facilitates our understanding of chronologies, relationships, cause and effect. Life is so much more exciting when we connect with our own consciences, when we are free to evaluate persons and events and make our own minds about things, rather than just joining bandwagons, echoing others, participating in “groupthink”.

=> ↺ Remoticon 2021 // Colin O’Flynn Zaps Chips (And They Talk) | Hackaday

• One of the many fascinating fields that’s covered by Hackaday’s remit lies in the world of hardware security, working with physical electronic hardware to reveal inner secrets concealed in its firmware. Colin O’Flynn is the originator of the ChipWhisperer open-source analysis and fault injection board, and he is a master of the art of glitching chips. We were lucky enough to be able to welcome him to speak at last year’s Remoticon on-line conference, and now you can watch the video of his talk below the break. If you need to learn how to break RSA encryption with something like a disposable camera flash, this is the talk for you.

• This talk is an introduction to signal sniffing and fault injection techniques. It’s well-presented and not presented as some unattainable wizardry, and as his power analysis demo shows a clearly different trace on the correct first letter of a password attack the viewer is left with an understanding of what’s going on rather than hoping for inspiration in a stream of the incomprehensible. The learning potential of being in full control of both instrument and target is evident, and continues as the talk moves onto fault injection with an introduction to power supply glitching as a technique to influence code execution.

=> ↺ Supersized Power Bank Built From An EV Battery | Hackaday

• Perhaps one day in the future when our portable electronics are powered by inexhaustible dilithium crystals, we’ll look back fondly on the 2020s when we carried around power banks to revive our flagging tech. Oh how we laughed as we reached for those handy plastic bricks only to find them drained already of juice, we’ll say. [Handy Geng] won’t be joining us though, because he’s made the ultimate power bank, a 27,000 AH leviathan that uses an electric car battery for storage and supplies mains power through a brace of sockets on its end.

=> ↺ US Militarism Is a Cause of Tension in Eastern Europe, Not a Solution

=> ↺ Opinion | The Russians Are Coming! But Are They Bringing the Chinese?

• It should matter little to the Chinese that American diplomats and a handful of their western allies will not be attending the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. What truly matters is that the Russians are coming.

=> ↺ Jan Egeland on Afghanistan Facing Famine, a Massacre in DR Congo & Civilian Casualties in Syria

• The United Nations warns Afghanistan is “hanging by a thread” as millions in the country suffer from hunger and are at risk of freezing to death during the winter as U.S. sanctions have devastated the economy. We get an update on what is now the world’s largest humanitarian crisis from Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. He also discusses how the NRC has condemned the deadly attack on a camp for displaced people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the organization’s humanitarian concerns after the U.S. raid in Syria targeting an ISIS leader that reportedly killed at least 13, including women and children.

=> ↺ 6 Children Reportedly Killed During US Raid in Syria

• United States Special Forces carried out a major raid in northwest Syria in the early hours of Thursday morning that reportedly resulted in the killing of more than a dozen people—including six children and four women.

• In a statement hours after the operation, U.S. President Joe Biden said that “thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi—the leader of ISIS.”

=> ↺ Man caught operating drone in Swedish restricted area is Russian

• The man could be charged with violating the Protection Act, as the castle is a protected building where drones are outlawed.

• The Swedish police’s investigation is ongoing. According to Aftonbladet, the Säpo security service is following the case.

=> ↺ Oath Keepers founder spent six hours on Zoom with Jan. 6 panel

• The founder of a right-wing group whose members have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol spent about six hours Wednesday talking to the Jan. 6 committee on a Zoom call from a jail in Oklahoma.

=> ↺ Don’t Sleep on the January 6 Committee

• As Representative Jamie Raskin, who sits on the committee, told the Times: “It’s hard to imagine a more outrageous federal assault on voting rights than a presidential seizure of voting machines without any action by Congress at all and no basis in law. That is the stuff of dictators and banana republics.”

• Yes, it is.

=> ↺ African Experts Argue Prospects for China’s New $300 Billion Agreement

• A Chinese official in Nigeria says Beijing plans to invest over $300 billion in Africa to increase African exports and help close the large trade gap with China. China’s plans for more investment in Africa have been welcomed by some, but critics worry about Africa’s growing debt with Beijing.

• The recent signing of a multi-billion-dollar partnership between China and Africa marks a major step in China’s effort to spend more money in Africa in nine industrial sectors, including trade, digital innovation, medical, poverty reduction, culture and peace and security.

Environment

=> ↺ Getting Personal About Climate Change Made Me a Better Reporter

• This story is published in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times and Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

=> ↺ A Menacing Wind: a Glimpse of Climate Chaos

• Menacing wind

• The fierce wind whistled its warning for several hours. It kept me alert and very concerned about the safety of my family, house, and community.

=> ↺ Climate Advocates Call on Senate to Confirm Key Fed Nominees

• Progressive groups are urging the U.S. Senate to confirm three of President Joe Biden’s nominees for the Federal Reserve Board, arguing that the highly qualified candidates are needed to help address the needs of workers and the climate emergency.

• “This slate of nominees can get the Federal Reserve back to work and address these serious crises through smart regulation.”

Energy

=> ↺ In Search of Self-Destruction on an Oil Rig

• The 100 or so men that British journalist Tabitha Lasley interviewed for her ethnography turned memoir Sea State are all stalked by death. That makes sense, given their profession: The men work on oil and gas rigs in the North Sea. These offshore workers labor away on floating bombs, at the mercy of an industry that has long been willing to sacrifice occupational safety to the bottom line, a situation that the recent intercession of private equity has only worsened. The UK Health and Safety Executive reported in 2019 that 26 percent of the inspection scores assigned to British rigs qualified as “poor or very poor”; in total, the office identified 1,382 compliance issues ranging from maintenance problems to improper emergency procedures—a figure that has been rising more or less steadily since 2014. Greed, malfeasance, and neglect are all major factors in the serious accidents that continue to happen offshore, as they have been ever since the BP-operated Sea Gem first discovered natural gas in UK waters in 1965. The Sea Gem itself capsized only a few months after it began drilling, when two of its hastily constructed steel support legs crumpled, taking 14 men with it. But the disaster that would eventually become synonymous with North Sea oil is the Piper Alpha, a platform operated by Occidental Petroleum that exploded in 1988 and claimed the lives of 167.

=> ↺ Big Oil Board Members Refuse to Testify on Climate Pledges

• With board members from four Big Oil companies refusing to testify before Congress about their so-called net-zero plansper, House Democrats will speak with climate experts next week about the failures of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP to truly work toward reducing planet-heating emissions.

• “No amount of spin can hide the reality that the fossil fuel industry is continuing to pollute and drive climate change.”

=> ↺ BlackRock Report Makes Clear Transition to Decarbonized World Not If, But How

• Even as it continues to hold billions of dollars in fossil fuel investments, the world’s largest asset manager on Thursday told its clients that a transition to a post-carbon economy is inevitable, and that the company will work to ensure that they profit from it. 

• “BlackRock is not setting itself up for a successful transition unless it explicitly includes exclusion criteria on fossil fuel expansion, and recalibrates how it measures success within a sector.”

=> ↺ Pipeline Politics Hits Multipolar Realities: Nord Stream 2 and the Ukraine Crisis

• US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, asserted (Jan 27), “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another, … we will work with Germany to ensure it (the pipeline) does not move forward.” Delayed by US threats and sanctions, Nord Stream 2 highlights why countries are challenging US leadership.

• Since the 1960s when Europe first began importing Russian gas, Washington perceived Russian energy as a threat to US leadership and Europe’s energy security. More recently, with fracking, the US has become the world’s largest gas producer and a major exporter of LNG (liquefied natural gas). It wants to muscle in on Europe’s huge market, displacing Russian gas. With Nord Stream 2 completed and filled while it awaits German regulatory approval, the stakes are high.

=> ↺ Can India become a global green datacenter hub?

• While datacenters today are fueling India’s digital transformation journey, it is critical to change the fuel that fuels datacenters. Datacenters are power guzzlers, sometimes consuming more energy than an entire city. Therefore, clean energy for datacenters is something both environmentalists and green energy advocates have been battling for.

• India is already on its way to become a global destination for setting up datacenters. But it could also reinforce its position to become a global hub for green datacenters.

=> ↺ Emission omission: Transportation minister in hot water

• When the government unveiled its immense 160 billion kroner ‘Denmark Forward’ infrastructure proposal last April, it suggested the plan was CO2 neutral.

• But recently Ingeniøren newspaper published a series of articles sowing doubt about that statement.

=> ↺ Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest takes Facebook to court over scam [cryptocurrency] ads

• Australian billionaire mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest AO has launched criminal action against Facebook over scam cryptocurrency advertisements that used his image, claiming Facebook has breached anti-money laundering laws.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ The Flawed Economics of Public Lands Grazing: the Case of Monroe Mountain

• The economic analysis of its reauthorization document is typical of many Forest Service and BLM grazing decisions, whereby the agency emphasizes livestock grazing as an economically important component of rural economies by using flawed assumptions. It also justifies the reauthorization of grazing based on “custom and culture”, or the idea that ranching is important to the local sense of community.

• Here’s is how one must “think” about such economic analysis.

Finance

=> ↺ Opinion | Now Is the Time to Electrify the US Postal Service Fleet

• Forget Amazon delivery, it could be the humble, dependable US Postal Service that ushers us all into the electric future. Along with 200 billion pieces of mail a year, electric postal service trucks could also deliver clean air benefits to every neighborhood—that is, if the Biden administration takes charge.

=> ↺ Opinion | Means Testing Will Ruin the Expanded Child Tax Credit

• Lawmakers are scrambling to revive the Child Tax Credit after Senator Joe Manchin effectively killed it along with the Build Back Better Act.

=> ↺ Opinion | In a Single Year, $1.78 Trillion Was Stolen From the Working Class

=> ↺ US’s Richest Families Set to Dodge $8.4 Trillion in Taxes Over Next Decades

=> ↺ Restaurant Owners Got 30 Times More Federal Covid Aid Than Workers: Report

• Federal coronavirus relief programs gave U.S. restaurant owners 30 times more money, on average, than their poorly paid workers who have struggled to keep up with rent and grocery bills throughout the deadly pandemic, according to a new analysis released Thursday.

• “Workers are making it clear that they will not return to an industry that refuses to pay competitive wages.”

=> ↺ Opinion | $1.5 Trillion in Student Loan Debt Is Sabotaging the Nation’s Future

• Ronald Reagan knew that an educated populace was more progressive and more Democratic, and he was determined to stop the explosion of college educated Americans caused by both the 1944 GI Bill and free tuition at the University of California.

=> ↺ California man deposits $33K check in BofA account, never sees it again as branch closes

• This story is a great reminder: keep your receipts!

• BofA did not comment on whether the shutdown of that branch may have caused a problem with the deposit, but says it’s a temporary closure.

• This is one of hundreds of bank branches to close nationwide over the past year.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ It’s Boris’s Party and Apparently He Can Booze if He Wants To

• London—We’ve all been there. You show up for a meeting at work with your fiancé, having been asked to bring your own booze, and find 100 people there drinking alcohol and enjoying nibbles, only to figure out, 25 minutes later, that you’re actually at what some people would call “a party” in your own garden.

=> ↺ The Rage of Political Terrorism

• The U.S. Code of Federal Regulation defines “terrorism” as including “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” The FBI’s definition cuts to the point: terrorism is “Americans attacking Americans based on U.S.-based extremist ideologies.”

• Six months after the January 6th assault on the Capitol, the White House issued a report, “National Strategy for Counting Domestic Terrorism,” that admits, “Domestic terrorism is not a new threat in the United States.” It then points out:

=> ↺ At Least 46 Congress Members Have Visited Trump Properties Since He Left Office

=> ↺ Ted Cruz Tweets About Cancún Travel Costs as Another Winter Storm Hits Texas

=> ↺ Hang-Ups

=> ↺ Opinion | Foreign-Influenced Corporate Spending Is Inherently Anti-Democratic

• Following the January 6th insurrection, in which hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair democratic election, major corporations were quick to publicly condemn the violence and said they would stop bankrolling the Members of Congress who sought to block certification of the election results. They stated that these 147 members of the “Sedition Caucus” were to blame for perpetuating the Big Lie and therefore would not receive their campaign contributions.

=> ↺ Win or Lose, Nomination Debates are Dangerous

• Under pressure to serve up “balance” in their coverage,  producers and editors look for pundits to attack the most moderate and to defend the most extreme nominees. For years, one  ubiquitous source of those pundits has been  The Independent Women’s Forum and their political arm, Independent Women’s Voice. They were vocal supporters of all of Donald Trump’s  nominations, playing up their gender to attack the women who accused Kavanaugh of abuse, and their “independent” label to defend Neil Gorsuch’s embrace of very partisan Republican de-regulatory politics.

• To the media, the IWF offer a convenient bit of “balance”. To the Koch brothers and their network of profit-minded funders, they are an effective, female face of right-wing backlash.

=> ↺ Democrats Are So Fed Up With Kyrsten Sinema They Are Funding a Primary Challenge

=> ↺ How the Sugar Industry Makes Political Friends and Influences Elections

• Last year, the Florida Legislature was in the midst of an extraordinary push to protect the state’s farming industry from lawsuits over air pollution.

• Supporters argued that the legislation was critical to protecting Florida’s agricultural businesses from “frivolous lawsuits.” But some lawmakers were skeptical, noting that residents of the state’s heartland who were bringing suit against sugar companies would feel their case anything but frivolous. At issue was the practice of cane burning, a harvesting method in which the sugar industry burns crops to rid the plants of their outer leaves. Florida produces more than half of America’s cane sugar and relies heavily on the technique, but residents in the largely Black and Hispanic communities nearby claim the resulting smoke and ash harms their health.

=> ↺ Sleepy Woke Joe, Coal Mine Manchin, the Holy Charter, and the Color and Gender of Faces in High Places

• Still, the neoliberal Democrats’ identitarian obsession with the color and gender of faces in high places has its own reactionary aspects. In and of itself, there’s something infantilizing about a pledge “to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court.” At the risk of stating the obvious, neither one’s race nor one’s gender make someone the kind of person decent citizens want sitting on the highest court in the land – or the kind of person who could be expected to take aim at racism and/or sexism, deeply (institutionally and societally) understood. After all, Amy “Coat Hanger” Barrett is a female, and Clarence Thomas is Black. Together those two noxious jurists make up one-third of the right-wing white- and male-supremacist super-majority on the Supreme Court. (The Black female Republican Condoleezza Rice was George W. Bush’s rabidly imperialist National Security Advisor before and during the imperialist and racist invasion of Iraq…I could go on.)

• Installing an officeholder of the politically correct color and/or gender can be worse than merely not a solution to racial and/or gender oppression. It can be a debacle for racial and/or gender justice when the installed person is a right-wing Republican openly opposed to serious anti-racist and anti-sexist government policy. Less obviously but equally if not more important, it can be a calamity if the Black officeholder is a “deeply conservative,” objectively white-supremacist corporate Democrat like Barack Obama, Deval Patrick or Lori Lightfoot – someone who may be Black and/or female but is more subtly opposed in neoliberal ways to serious anti-racist and anti-sexist policy. Among its different downsides, the elevation of an Obama, Patrick, and Lightfoot sort of non-white and/or non-male policymaker helps discredit anti-racism and/or (in Lightfoot’s case) anti-sexism and anti-homophobia by linking them with imperial capitalism and neoliberal regression. Hitching anti-racism to a corporate imperialist like Barack Obama helps the right paint out anti-racism as elitist. Hitching anti-sexism to a corporate imperialist like Hillary Clinton helps the right do the same thing with feminism.

=> ↺ The ministry is not allowed to ban the press from hospitals

• The Ministry of Human Resources (EMMI) unlawfully kept the press, including Telex, out of hospitals. Such was the verdict of the Metropolitan Court of Budapest after we challenged the decision to ban all media outlets other than public television and MTI from health institutions during the epidemic. The court ruled that it is not the ministry but hospital directors who have the authority to decide who is allowed into their facilities. Translated by Dominic Spadacene.

=> ↺ Ohio Bill Could Make It Easier to Sue Social Media Companies Over Censorship

• Ohio House Bill 441 comes after Facebook and Twitter removed former President Donald Trump following the January 6 Capitol riot. Trump was issued a lifetime ban from both platforms due to violating community guidelines. In both instances, each said Trump used his social media account to incite violence.

=> ↺ Viktor Orban meets Vladimir Putin, teachers go on strike and Pegasus used lawfully (?)

• Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday, for a much longer discussion than planned. In addition to the usual protocol, the following specifics topics were also discussed:

• Of course, security issues were also given a prominent role in the press conference, as the level of tensions between Moscow and the EU/NATO are so high, that the united opposition parties even called on Orban to cancel his visit.

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Explainer: The Whole Spotify / Joe Rogan Thing Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With Section 230

• I really wasn’t going to write anything about the latest Spotify/Joe Rogan/Neil Young thing. We’ve posted older case studies about content moderation questions regarding Rogan and Spotify and we should have an upcoming guest post exploring one angle of the Rogan/Young debate that is being worked on.

=> ↺ Spotify’s Covid misinformation plan falls short

• Spotify says it will add a message to content about Covid-19 posted on its platform, directing users to accurate information about the pandemic and vaccines, and will also post its rules and “highlight” them for users. The company’s announcement Sunday came as the platform faces intense pressure from content creators and users for hosting vaccine misinformation, particularly by podcast host Joe Rogan.

=> ↺ Spotify Backs Joe Rogan’s Disinformation Machine

• Don’t be fooled. Peer just beneath the surface and it becomes clear that for big social media companies, matters of “censorship” are always matters of business. Facebook, for example, has had special exemptions from its rules for the very people who are most likely to be believed: politicians and celebrities. More such speech, more advertising revenue.

=> ↺ Joe Rogan can’t stop pushing ivermectin as a COVID treatment. Experts are tired of debunking him

• The gloating tweet appeared mere weeks after hundreds of medical experts urged Spotify to crack down on COVID-19 misinformation, specifically calling out the dangers of Rogan’s podcast. Rogan’s now-deleted tweet said “Well, lookie here,” and linked to a report on a press release suggesting that ivermectin — an off-label anti-parasite drug used for the treatment of some parasitic worms in people and animals — was “effective” against the omicron variant in a phase 3 clinical trial. Reuters originally reported on the press release on Monday, but quickly made a correction.

=> ↺ What Spotify should learn from the Joe Rogan affair

• The starting point is transparency, which the audio platforms sorely lack. Spotify published its “platform rules” only following the Rogan explosion. Apple, the next-biggest streamer, has content guidelines for podcasts but a rough style guide for music. Amazon, the third-largest, has published even less in the way of rules. And whereas Facebook and co release regular reports on what content they have taken down and why, the audio streamers are opaque. Amid the Rogan crisis, Spotify casually mentioned that it had removed 20,000 other podcast episodes over covid misinformation. What else is it taking down? No one knows.

=> ↺ Germany blocks German-language Russian channel

• The German broadcasting regulator said Wednesday it had banned the transmission of the German-language channel of Russian state broadcaster RT, with Moscow vowing to take “retaliatory measures”.

• The transmission of the channel “RT DE” was “prohibited because it does not have the necessary broadcasting licence”, the German regulator’s authorisation and oversight commission said in a statement.

=> ↺ Spotify boss says too early to know Joe Rogan row impact

• Musicians, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, asked for their music to be removed from the platform after criticism that the US broadcaster has helped to spread Covid misinformation.

• It comes as Spotify projected slower subscriber growth for this quarter.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ The Anti-Woke Crowd and Maus

• Not that (some) don’t try to cover their bases. After persistent requests to comment on the school board action, Bari Weiss re-tweeted a mild Art Spiegelman quote posted by The Daily Beast’s Harry Siegel (“Keep your nose in a book—and keep other people’s noses out of which books you choose to stick your nose into!”). Earlier in the week, and focusing on other cases, John McWhorter wrote a baffling editorial in which he tepidly walked back his repeated insistence that the left is uniquely illiberal (“I’m genuinely open to the idea that censorship from the right is more of a problem than I have acknowledged. The truth may be as it so often is, in the middle… our problem today is illiberalism on both sides.”) Most did even less. Steven Pinker did not comment. Zaid Jilani made a characteristically meaningless comment. Andrew Sullivan did not appear to comment except to re-tweet Corey Robin’s bizarre thread downplaying the banning. Glenn Greenwald did not really comment and continues to make nonsensical arguments about censorship. And really—what can they say?

• Truthfully, I continue to find this anti-woke niche puzzling. Not because their views aren’t retrograde and often repulsive… they are. But their perspective is also almost universally banal. These people stand varyingly at the edges of mainstream conservatism, lightly pushing their acolytes to go farther, but largely refusing to do so themselves. In their graceless way they collectively re-affirm some mainstream sense of conservatism, but most of them are not the ultimate threat.

=> ↺ Olympic sponsors’ silence on human rights feeds censorship fears

• Top Olympic sponsors have been tiptoeing around or staying silent on reports of human rights abuses in northwest China.

=> ↺ Censorship and its impact on reading

• When Delhi University announced last August that it was dropping Mahasweta Devi’s short story, ‘Draupadi’, from the undergraduate English syllabus, students around the country began to share it online. Set around the Naxalite movement, ‘Draupadi’ is a retelling of the powerful eponymous character from the Mahabharata. Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi or Dopdi as she is called, is a rebel who is cornered by the police trying to put down forces she represents, and some of the reasons given for the story being dropped were that it was explicit, mentioned rape and showed the armed forces in poor light. In the U.S., school boards of various States have voted to keep out notable works of literature including John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and most recently Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel, Maus, on the holocaust.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Moscow to shut down Deutsche Welle’s operations in Russia in response Germany’s broadcast ban on RT Deutsch

• The Russian Foreign Ministry has announced retaliatory measures in response to Germany banning broadcasting of RT DE (formerly RT Deutsch), the German-language channel run by the Russian state-controlled television network RT (Russia Today).

=> ↺ The Russian state must protect journalists from Ramzan Kadyrov Meduza calls on federal law enforcement to respond to violent threats by Chechen officials

• Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen government, has called Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Milashina and Committee Against Torture director Igor Kalyapin “terrorists.” Kadyrov has also accused entire newsrooms, not just at Novaya Gazeta but also at the independent television network Dozhd, of being “terrorists and their accomplices.” These remarks aren’t just insulting (though they are certainly that); they’re also threats of violence. “We’ve always destroyed terrorists and their accomplices, between whom there’s no distinction, and we will continue to deal with them like this,” said Kadyrov.

=> ↺ The Worst Thing Written When Assange Was Jailed?

=> ↺ How the Establishment Functions

• I suggested in my last post that the British Establishment may be looking for a way out of the terrible Assange debacle without raising difficult truths about the United States justice and penal system. The functioning of the Establishment, the way it forms a collective view and how that view is transmitted, is a mystery to many. Some imagine instructions must be transmitted by formal cabals meeting as Freemasons or Bilderbergers or some such grouping. It is not really like that, although different fora of course do provide venues for the powerful to gather and discuss.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ The Dangerous Trend of the “Parents Rights” Movement

• One notices in “Parental Rights in Education,” a portion of the bill reads “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age appropriate…” While the idea of age appropriateness does not sound objectionable on its face, who determines that? And, according to the bill, elementary school kids would not be told that some students have two moms or two dads? Because in reality, some of them do.

• This wave to give parents greater authority over what schools teach is not exclusive to Florida, nor to this issue. The conservative “parent’s rights” movement is arguing that parents have a right to control school curriculum. Many states have banned the teaching of “Critical Race Theory,” an approach to teaching racial injustice, despite the fact that almost no K-12 teachers were even doing so.

=> ↺ There’s No More Activist Court Than the US Supreme Court

• Ironically, General Knudsen levels his claims against the wrong Supreme Court.

• When Ronald Reagan became president, he set out to change the nature of the Supreme Court, which, for years, had been committed to defending civil rights against state discrimination.  The Court relied upon the 14th Amendment, equal protection and due process clauses.

=> ↺ ‘DeJoy Has to Go Right Now’: Fury Over Postal Service Failure to Electrify Truck Fleet

• A leading House Democrat on Wednesday demanded the ouster of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over his push to spend $11 billion on a new fleet of largely gasoline-powered USPS delivery trucks, a plan that flies in the face of President Joe Biden’s proposed shift to zero-emission government vehicles.

• Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), chair of the House subcommittee that oversees the USPS, warned in a social media post late Wednesday that DeJoy is aiming to “spend billions on gas-powered vehicles despite clear goals set by President Biden and Congress to electrify the federal fleet.”

=> ↺ The Police State Is Failing Officers Too

• On January 21, a mother’s call for help led to the death of two NYPD officers and her son. The mother, Shirley Sourzes, had requested assistance from the police to resolve an argument she was having with her 47-year-old son, Lashawn McNeil, telling the police that she did not believe she was in immediate harm. The officers—22-year-old rookie Jason Rivera and his partner Wilbert Mora—responded to the routine call and were met with gunfire by McNeil when they headed to the back room after McNeil failed to come out. McNeil was in turn shot to death by a third officer.1

=> ↺ ‘Senselessly Unjust’: Ex-Chicago Cop Who Killed Laquan McDonald Released From Prison

• Critics of police violence toward Black Americans expressed outrage as Jason Van Dyke, the former Chicago cop who killed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in October 2014, was released Thursday after serving just over three years in prison for a state murder charge.

• “This man doesn’t need to get out. We are seeking federal charges. The time he did wasn’t enough.”

=> ↺ Virginia Police Used Fake Forensic Documents To Secure Confessions From Criminal Suspects

• Cops lie. It’s just something they do.

=> ↺ Instead of Freeing Palestinian Prisoners, New Scheme Aims at Punishing Their Families

• According to Israel’s Channel 12, the Biden Administration has called on PA President Mahmoud Abbas to stop paying stipends to Palestinian prisoners’ families and, instead, to consider an alternative ‘welfare’ system. For example, over 60-year-old prisoners would receive payments as if ‘retired PA employees’. Those under 60, according to the report, would be paid as ‘PA employees’.

• The above is meant as some kind of a compromise. Unlike previous American and Israeli attempts aimed at cutting off any kind of support to the families of Palestinian prisoners, this time around the PA seems willing to consider alternatives to the existing systems.

=> ↺ Progressives Join Push for Probe of Palestinian-American’s Death in Israeli Custody

• Progressive U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday joined calls for the Biden administration to conduct an independent investigation into the death of an elderly Palestinian-American man in Israeli military custody earlier this month. 

• “This racist violence and impunity is only possible because of the apartheid government of Israel, supported by the U.S., continues to systematically dehumanize Palestinians.”

=> ↺ AP Reporter Presses State Dept on Amnesty’s Israel Report

• Associated Press reporter Matt Lee called on the Biden administration to explain its rejection of Amnesty International’s new report on Israel, which explicitly said this week that the country’s U.S.-backed policies in Palestine amount to “apartheid.”

• After State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters Tuesday, “I reject the view that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid” and noted that the department has “never used such terminology,” Lee asked about the administration’s inconsistent reception of Amnesty International’s exhaustive research into human rights violations around the world.

=> ↺ Amnesty International Defends Report on Israeli Apartheid, Rejecting Criticism from U.S. & Israel

• Amnesty International has become the third major human rights organization to accuse Israel of committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians in a new report released on Tuesday. Amnesty finds Israel’s system of apartheid dates back to the country’s founding in 1948 and has materialized in abuses including massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians — all of which constitute apartheid under international law. We speak with Amnesty International USA’s executive director Paul O’Brien, who calls on the United States to “put pressure on the Israeli government to dismantle this system of apartheid,” despite both the Biden administration and the Israeli government rejecting the report’s findings.

=> ↺ The News Is Not That Israel Has Apartheid, but That Amnesty Dares Say So

• Does the state of Israel now endorse cancel culture? AP (1/31/22) disclosed that its government called on Amnesty International not to release a report (2/1/22) that defines that nation’s legal structure as a form of apartheid. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said the report endorses “lies shared by terrorist organizations.”

=> ↺ Is Slavery Still Legal in the U.S.? Yes, Under the 13th Amendment Exception

• A recent poll commissioned by Worth Rises revealed that 68% of Americans don’t know that there’s an exception in the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — the amendment celebrated for abolishing slavery. Another 20% think there’s an exception if the sitting president decides, as part of wartime efforts, or in the interest of public safety. Thankfully, these exceptions don’t exist, but slavery very much still does.

• So, let’s revisit that history lesson.

=> ↺ Amazon workers at a second warehouse in NYC say they have filed a petition to unionize

• The ALU, which is made up of current and former Amazon workers, is also moving forward with unionization at the company’s JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island after the NLRB determined it had met the showing of interest required to hold an election. The NLRB has scheduled a hearing for February 16th and will then determine the date for the election.

=> ↺ A young Afghan woman on breaking free of the burqa

• I hated wearing a burqa. It made me itch, it made me sweat. And it made me invisible. Mine was blue with a small lace opening for the eyes, though underneath I wore a short-sleeved dress and tights. Walking in a burqa, I lost my usual confident gait: I hung my head lower, both hands clutching the edge of the fabric so I wouldn’t stumble. The very fact of wearing it made me feel inferior. To leave the house, when I became a teenager about a decade ago, I had to transform myself into a thing.

=> ↺ FBI says Pegasus spyware was tested, not used in any investigation

• The FBI confirmed to The Post that it had tested the technology developed by the Israeli company but said it had not been used “in support of any investigation.”

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ SHOP SAFE Will Stomp Out Online Sales of Used and Homemade Goods

• The “Stopping Harmful Offers on Platforms by Screening Against Fakes in E-Commerce” (SHOP SAFE) is a bill that claims to be about protecting consumers but is more likely to enrich big brands at consumers’ expense. SHOP SAFE would force pretty much any online service that allows people to buy and sell items to institute a draconian trademark protection system. If they don’t, they risk crushing liability for the actions of their users.

=> ↺ How Disney Got That ‘Theme Park Exemption’ In Ron DeSantis’ Unconstitutional Social Media Bill

• It’s been almost exactly a year since Florida Man Governor, Ron DeSantis announced plans to try to pass a law that would ban social media websites from taking down misinformation, abuse, and other types of speech. When the final bill came out, at the very last minute, Florida Rep. Blaise Ingoglia tried to sneak in an amendment that carved out Disney, by saying the law didn’t apply to any company that owned a theme park. This took other legislators by surprise, as indicated in this somewhat incredible video of Florida Reps. Anna Eskamani and Andrew Learned confronting Ingoglia over this amendment and what it meant:

=> ↺ New FCC Broadband ‘Nutrition Label’ Will More Clearly Inform You You’re Being Ripped Off

• For years we’ve noted how broadband providers impose all manner of bullshit fees on your bill to drive up the cost of service post sale. They’ve also historically had a hard time being transparent about what kind of broadband connection you’re buying. As was evident back when Comcast thought it would be a good idea to throttle all upstream BitTorrent traffic (without telling anybody), or AT&T decided to cap and throttle the usage of its “unlimited” wireless users (without telling anybody), or Verizon decided to modify user packets to track its customers around the internet (without telling anybody).

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ The best alternatives to Spotify for listening to music

• When we first published this roundup, several tweets recommended that we also include Bandcamp, and it’s easy to see why. Bandcamp calls itself an “online record store and music community” in which independent musicians and podcasters are paid directly by their fans. According to Bandcamp, the artists collect an average of 80 to 85 percent of each sale (except for Bandcamp Fridays, the first Friday of each month, when the company waives its revenue share to make up for the lack of live performances during the pandemic). There is no fee for the service itself; you listen to featured tracks by artists (if you’re using the mobile app, you can hear a stream of tracks from different artists in your chosen category) and then purchase the digital or physical albums of your favorites.

=> ↺ Moving From Manual Reverse Engineering of UEFI Modules To Dynamic Emulation of UEFI Firmware

• Hello and welcome back to the 2nd part of our blog post series summarizing our research in the fields of UEFI fuzzing and exploitation. In part 1 of the series, aptly titled “Moving from common-sense knowledge about UEFI to actually dumping UEFI firmware”, we gave some highly-condensed yet required background information on the SPI flash memory, and discussed the software-based approach to dump it to disk. We concluded that part by unpacking the firmware image using a myriad of tools.

• This part picks up where we left off. We’ll start by giving some more background information on UEFI in general, both from the viewpoint of the boot process itself (what are the different boot phases? How are they related? etc.) as well as from the viewpoint of developers (i.e. what APIs are available to UEFI applications). From there we’ll move on to manually reverse engineer some UEFI modules. Throughout this post, we’ll slowly but surely make our way towards more and more dynamic approaches. If you follow along this post, by the time you finish reading it you’ll have a working environment capable of emulating, tracing and debugging UEFI modules.

• Let’s get going.

=> ↺ Amazon to Raise Price of Prime Membership, Citing NFL Deal and Expanded Entertainment Offerings

• The company said that the price of its annual membership will rise by $20 to $139, while monthly memberships will rise by $2 per month to $14.99. The company cited all of the additions to Prime since it last raised prices in 2018 in explaining the rationale.

=> ↺ The Great Netflix Panic of ‘22

• And yet, even if Netflix continues to stumble through 2022, the odds of it having a MySpace or Napster-level extinction event, or even a WeWork-style crash, seem exceedingly low. Fact is, Netflix is so far ahead in the streaming race it can afford to take big hits like what happened last week. And if growth remains sluggish, or even somehow reverses, execs have plenty of room to adjust: [...]

=> ↺ Netflix Lost $50 Billion in Value Overnight

• In its letter to shareholders, Netflix noted that most of its subscriber growth comes from outside the U.S. and Canada, which has hit a saturation point in recent years. In 2021, almost all of Netflix’s growth was from oversees. “Our service continues to grow globally, with more than 90% of our paid net adds in 2021 coming from outside the UCAN region,” Netflix said.

=> ↺ Viewer Data Suggests Many Netflix Hits Go From Sizzle to Fizzle Quickly

• While Netflix releases hit original shows on a regular basis, new data suggests these series don’t retain a significant number of viewers after their first month of release.

• Virtually all of the 10 most viewed new Netflix titles of 2021 among TV Time app users saw self-reported viewership in the TV Time app significantly slow after their debut month. Entertainment-content insights-provider Whip Media operates TV Time, an app that reports having 2.8 million global monthly users that track the movies and TV shows they’ve watched and want to watch.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ CSV calls on governing parties to ‘draw conclusions’ from controversy

• The Democratic Party (DP) but also its coalition partners, the Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (LSAP) and the Green Party (Déi Gréng), must ask themselves whether they can accept that the Luxembourgish government and the country itself have “lost credibility abroad”, CSV Party President Claude Wiseler said at a press briefing.

• Wiseler stated that, on the one hand, the Prime Minister has lost credibility, but he has also committed a “deontological error” and proven that his political work is “superficial” – something which Wiseler claims was already “well known”.

• While the CSV does not call on the Prime Minister to step down, Wiseler announced that the different party committees will discuss the plagiarism affair further in the near future.

=> ↺ MPA, Amazon & Apple Urge Court to Issue Rapid Pirate IPTV Injunction

• A coalition of Hollywood studios plus Amazon, Netflix and Apple is urging a court in the US to issue an urgent injunction to prevent two pirate IPTV services from infringing their rights. In parallel, the defendant’s legal team argues that the plaintiffs’ case is not only deficient but relies on ‘expert’ evidence that is both biased and inaccurate.

=> ↺ Dutch ISP is Not Required to Forward Piracy Warnings, Court Rules

• Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN collects IP addresses of persistent pirates and asks the associated ISPs to forward warnings to these subscribers. The Netherlands’ largest ISP, Ziggo, refused to do so due to privacy concerns. This week, a local court agreed that ISPs indeed need a separate data processing license to forward BREIN’s warning letters.

=> ↺ Episode 2: Open Culture VOICES – Jonathan Hernández

• We are back with the second episode of Open Culture VOICES, a vlog series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. The Open Culture Program at Creative Commons aims to promote better sharing of cultural heritage in GLAMs collections. With Open Culture VOICES, we’re thrilled to bring you various perspectives from dozens of experts speaking in many different languages on what it’s like to open up heritage content online.  In this interview,  Jonathan Hernández, Researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Library and Information Research Institute offers a unique perspective on what it’s like to open up heritage content online.

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