● 02.08.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 8/2/2022: Plasma 5.24 and Maui 2.1.1

Posted in News Roundup at 9:50 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ 264: Interview with Aleix Pol i Gonzàlez of KDE & Jill’s Robot Wars Story – Destination Linux

• This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to talk with Aleix Pol i Gonzàlez from KDE. Then we’re going to chat about some cool robotics you can get your hands on from Red Hat. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.

=> ↺ elementary OS 6.1 Jólnir Quick overview #Shorts – Invidious

Applications

=> ↺ Use ’TextSnatcher’ to Copy Text from Images to Your Clipboard on Linux

• Being able to extract text from photos, pdfs and the like isn’t something new. Indeed, many ace tools exist for the job, including several well-regarded command line ones available on Linux. But being able to do it very easily? That is new.

• With modern operating systems like macOS and Android making image OCR an integrated feature of their native image viewer tools or photo managers, it’s understandable that some folks new to Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and other distros expect similar functionality.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How To Set Up SSH Keys

• At Teleport, we advocate SSH certificates over SSH keys and passwords as the best authentication method for SSH. Nothing beats the security and operational flexibility of using certificate-based authentication for a large fleet of SSH servers running on dynamic infrastructure. But in practice, certificate-based authentication is far from the de facto authentication method, and sometimes we may need to use SSH keys. For example, in my daily workflow I use SSH keys when accessing DigitalOcean servers or to check repositories in my GitHub personal account because SSH keys are the default available methods (alongside passwords). So it helps to learn the best way to generate and use SSH keys.

=> ↺ Change git repo to use SSH not HTTPS

• So I changed:

• $ git remote set-url origin git@gitlab.com:rubenerd/repo_name.git

=> ↺ How to FileRun on Debian 11 – A free and private cloud for us!

• Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to install FileRun on Debian 11. The procedure is simple, so let’s get started.

=> ↺ How to Quickly Reset a Forgotten Password on Ubuntu

• If you’ve somehow forgotten your Ubuntu password, don’t worry, it’s easy to log back in to your system by resetting the password.

• Forgetting passwords can be an absolute nightmare, and if you’ve had the misfortune of forgetting the password to your PC, then you might be pretty worried. Typically, it’s much easier to reset the password of an online web account (Google, Facebook, etc.) than resetting your computer’s password.

• If you’ve locked yourself out of your Ubuntu system, you don’t need to worry about losing important data that you may not have backed up. Luckily, there is a quick fix that helps you reset your password on Ubuntu.

=> ↺ How To Install Pantheon Desktop on Fedora 35 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Pantheon Desktop on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, Pantheon is the default desktop environment that is bundled with elementary OS. Pantheon is designed to be fast and user-friendly with a highly polished appearance. Pantheon desktop environment inspiration from macOS and combining it with one of the most visually appealing desktops around and a bonus for any macOS users wanting to take the plunge into Linux.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Pantheon Desktop Environment on a Fedora 35.

=> ↺ whmapi to create and delete cPanel account using SSH

• If you want to create the cPanel account using SSH then follow below instructions.

=> ↺ 2 ways to Install latest version of LibreOffice in Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04 LTS

• The “LibreOffice” is a popular open-source office suite, a fork of OpenOffice that is functionally equivalent to Microsoft Office. Word processing, spreadsheets, presentation programs, graphics software, databases, and formula editors offer roughly the same range of functions as Excel, Word, or PowerPoint. You can also create PDF files and read, edit and save Microsoft Office documents.

=> ↺ When Not to Use Docker: Cases Where Containers Don’t Help – CloudSavvy IT

• Docker’s undoubtedly one of the most impactful developer technologies of the last decade. Containers have provided a solution for isolating applications, scaling them across physical machines, and abstracting the differences between environments.

• Many organizations that adopt Docker or an adjacent containerization technology find it increases efficiency and accelerates the development process. Docker’s not something that magically improves every system though. In this article, we’ll look at some scenarios where moving to containers might be more of a hindrance than a help.

=> ↺ Git and GitHub SSH KeyGen Example

• In order to push, pull and clone securely between your local Git installation and a remote GitHub or GitLab repository, you must first create an SSH key pair which can be used to both identify you and authenticate your local Git installation with the remote GitHub or GitLab server you are attempting to connect to.

=> ↺ What is Zsh? Should You Use it?

• You probably already know that there are various shells available in Linux/Unix. Bash is the most popular and the default shell on most Linux distributions.

• Another popular shell is Zsh. It is powerful and it is also the default Shell in macOS.

• Now, the questions comes, what features make Zsh a popular choice and should you even bother to use it?

• Let me answer that.

=> ↺ Open Source Software Development Professional Certificate on edXLinux

=> ↺ this

=> ↺ this

=> ↺ Install PHP 8.1 on Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, Alma, Rocky or other clone – Remi’s RPM repository – Blog

• Here is a quick howto upgrade default PHP version provided on Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux or other clones with latest version 8.1.

=> ↺ NMState: A Declarative Networking Configuration Tool

• The Linux ecosystem provides numerous ways of configuring networking including the popular Network Manager daemon and command-line tools such as nmcli and nmtui GUI utility. This guide introduces yet another network configuration tool known as NMState

• NMState is a declarative network manager for configuring networking on Linux hosts. It’s a library that provides a command-line tool that manages host network settings. It manages host networking through a northbound declarative API. At the time of writing this guide, the NetworkManager daemon is the only provider supported by NMState.

• In this guide, we look at some of the example usages of the NMState tool. For this guide, we will demonstrate this using Fedora Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Maui 2.1.1 Release – MauiKit — #UIFramework

• This version of Maui brings new features and bug fixes to Maui’s applications and the frameworks they rely on. The changes introduced in this release will make your experience with Maui Apps much more enjoyable and feature rich across different devices and form factors.

=> ↺ KDE: A Nice Tiling Environment and a Surprisingly Awesome DE | The Changelog

• I recently wrote that managing an external display on Linux shouldn’t be this hard. I went down a path of trying out some different options before finally landing at an unexpected place: KDE. I say “unexpected” because I find tiling window managers are just about a necessity.

• Until a few months ago, I’d been using xmonad for well over a decade. Configurable, minimal, and very nice; it suited me well.

• However, xmonad is getting somewhat long in the tooth. xmobar, which is commonly used with it, barely supports many modern desktop environments. I prefer DEs for the useful integrations they bring: everything from handling mount of USB sticks to display auto-switching and sound switching. xmonad itself can’t run with modern Gnome (whether or not it runs well under KDE 5 seems to be a complicated question, according to wikis, but in any case, there is no log applet for KDE 5). So I was left with XFCE and such, but the isues I identified in the “shouldn’t be this hard” article were bad enough that I just could not keep going that way.

=> ↺ Plasma 5.24

• Today the KDE Community releases Plasma 5.24, a Long Term Support (LTS) release that will receive updates and bugfixes until the final Plasma 5 version, before we transition to Plasma 6.

• This new Plasma release focuses on smoothing out wrinkles, evolving the design, and improving the overall feel and usability of the environment.

=> ↺ KDE Plasma 5.24 Desktop Environment Officially Released as the Next LTS Series

•  The biggest new features in KDE Plasma 5.24 include support for fingerprint readers, which you’ll use to unlock the screen, authenticate in apps that require administration password, or authenticate with sudo on the command-line, as well as a brand-new Overview effect that lets you control your virtual workspaces and also find search results from KRunner.

• Talking about effects, the “Cover Switch” and “Flip Switch” effects are back, QtQuick-based effects saw a major performance boost for NVIDIA GPU users, and the “Scale” effect replaces the “Fade” effect as default when opening and closing windows.

=> ↺ Jonathan Riddell: KUserFeedback 1.2.0

• KUserFeedback is a library for collecting user feedback for apps via telemetry and surveys.

Distributions

=> ↺ I took Manjaro Linux for a spin and it was absolutely delightful…

• This past weekend and with the help of a very patient user, I was working through a set of bugs and enhancements for my RapidDisk project. This included adding support for the 5.15, 5.16 and release candidates of the 5.17 Linux kernels. This very helpful user was attempting to use my kernel drivers on Manjaro Linux and while Manjaro was not a requirement to reproduce his reported problems with my code, it did make it easier for me to troubleshoot and fix my code. That means, I downloaded the latest distribution release ISO for Manjaro with XFCE (manjaro-xfce-21.2.2-220123-linux515.iso), installed it and got to work.

• From the very beginning, I felt comfortable loading the ISO image and running the installer. The installation ran smoothly and before you know it, the virtual machine was rebooted into the installed operating system.

New Releases

=> ↺ Tiny Core Linux 13 Released

• Tiny Core Linux 13 is an ultralight operating system that has a good reputation for giving new life to old hardware, says Mark Tyson.

• The system needs just 46MB of RAM and a minimum of 50MB of storage to install.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

=> ↺ OpenMandriva Lx 4.3 Released as a Classic KDE-Based Linux Distro

• Version 4.3 of the operating system comes with Linux kernel 5.16 and uses KDE Plasma 5.23.5 for its desktop environment.

• OpenMandriva Lx is a KDE-focused community-driven Linux distribution that is also inspired and forked from Mandriva Linux, and offers a host of open-source software to complement the whole package. Developed by the OpenMandriva Association, OpenMandriva Lx caters to experienced KDE users, as well as first-time Linux converts.

• The OpenMandriva project was created back in May 2012, when Mandriva S.A. avoided bankruptcy by abandoning the development of its consumer product to the Mandriva community.

• The OpenMandriva project announced today the general availability of the latest stable release – OpenMandriva Lx 4.3. This release includes updated bundled applications and various improvements. With that said, let’s quickly take a look at what’s new.

=> ↺ Linux Release Roundup #22.6: OpenMandriva Lx 4.3, Absolute Linux 15, Escuelas Linux 7.3, and More Releases

• OpenMandriva is an independent Linux distribution that includes several essential KDE applications and features one of the latest Linux Kernel versions.

• This release includes updated KDE applications including Krita 5.0.2, Falkon browser 3.2, and others. PipeWire also replaces PulseAudio as the default sound server.

• The desktop environment has also been updated to Plasma 5.23. In addition to these, there are various other changes that you can find in the official announcement.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ ‘The Register’ Lays an Egg: SUSE Liberty Linux is NOT a Distro

• No matter what you may have read elsewhere, SUSE is not coming out with a new distro to vie for space in the crowded CentOS replacement business. With Alma, Rocky, Oracle, and others already vying for a piece of the CentOS market pie, SUSE thinks that’s a market that’s already crowded enough, thank you.

• What it is going to do is make life easier for Enterprises (or anybody else) running a mixed environment of numerous Linux distributions to support them under a single plan called SUSE Liberty Linux.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Nobara Project aims to make Fedora 35 viable for gaming • The Register

• The Nobara Project is a fresh flavour of Fedora 35 aimed at Linux gamers and streamers. It’s very new and the website is mostly just a placeholder, but it’s already causing controversy.

• Windows is the default OS for PCs so PC games mostly tend to aim at Windows. If you want to run your games on Linux, that involves a bit of extra legwork. Valve Software’s Steam runs on Linux (if not without some glitches early on), Proton can help with running current Windows games, and Lutris with older ones. If Proton isn’t quite current enough, a developer nicknamed “Glorious Eggroll” offers Proton-GE, a cutting-edge build with the latest patches and support.

• Nobara is a new project from Glorious Eggroll, or Thomas Crider as we suspect his friends call him. He works for Red Hat, and also contributes to WINE, Lutris, and other projects. Nobara is basically Fedora 35 plus a whole bunch of extensions: the latest Proton-GE and Lutris, as you might guess, plus installers for AMD and Nvidia drivers, and the RPM Fusion repo of third-party add-ons and extensions enabled.

=> ↺ Customer success stories: Enterprise open source platforms help address challenges in public health and safety

• Data accessibility, management and sharing may be a priority for many organizations right now but were especially critical agenda items for the two customers we’re highlighting in this month’s customer success stories post.

• For Toronto’s University Health Network, securing patient information and other sensitive data prompted its search for a highly available, scalable integration solution. And the Slovenian National Police Force had goals of improving staff communication and system integration as it set out to modernize its IT environment.

• See how Red Hat technologies have not only helped address these challenges for our public health and safety customers but also helped them explore more benefits of open source innovation and equipped them with tools to quickly respond to COVID-19 needs.

=> ↺ Investigating the cost of Open vSwitch upcalls in Linux

• Open vSwitch (OVS), which many data centers run on Linux systems for advanced networking functions, adds a certain amount of overhead for new datapath flows. This article introduces the upcall_cost.py script, written in Python, which tracks packets through the kernel’s invocation of OVS and displays statistics that can help with troubleshooting performance in applications and data centers, as well as the kernel and OVS itself.

• My interest in this question was triggered when some people argued that it takes too long for the kernel module to bring a packet to the ovs-vswitchd in userspace to do the lookup. However, I have not seen anyone backing up this complaint with data. This article offers tools that can help research this question and many others. I’ll describe the script and its output, then show data from two interesting scenarios: A 16-node Red Hat OpenShift cluster and a lab benchmark.

=> ↺ Try Kakoune for a modern Vi | Enable Sysadmin

• The Vi text editor has been around for a long time, it has lots of fans and users, and it ships with nearly every POSIX system available. To its credit, Vi hasn’t changed all that much, although it has managed to undergo some major improvements (in fact, most Vi users actually use Vi-improved, or Vim).

• One of the greatest things about open source is how it can be adapted and iterated upon, however, and so you might wonder what Vi might look like if it had been invented today. You can get a glimpse of such an alternate timeline with Kakoune, a modern Vi-like editor incorporating ideas from current editors as well as Vi and Vim.

=> ↺ IBM previews Developer Technology Sandbox to help developers explore new technologies

• As a developer, you need to be able to try and test new software and tools, but the process can be tedious. You often need to download the source code and reconfigure your entire local environment to deploy it. The process is a bit like being asked to assemble a car before giving it a test drive.

• The IBM Developer Technology Sandbox is a turnkey solution for you to test drive software. The browser-based, no-code/low-code sandbox enables developers to try new technologies, whether you are trying to extend your application stack or build new skills.

• Explore the pre-built applications and use the step-by-step instructions to run them with the click of a button. These applications are built on a combination of various IBM and IBM partner technologies, including APIs, cloud services, and more.

=> ↺ IT leadership: 4 ways to lead digital maturity

• For the past decade, CIOs have been on a slow and steady drive toward digital transformation, incrementally moving their organizations to implement technology in business strategy. Yet getting organizations to establish true digital capability remains a challenge.

• Rapid adoption of new processes and technology often lacks continuity. However, recent history has proven that organizations can and will embrace continuous change at an extraordinarily fast pace to remain relevant. This gives CIOs a prime opportunity and obligation to advance digital capability at every level of the organization.

• Opportunities to increase digital maturity center on creating better customer experiences. Every member of the team needs to embody a customer-focused mindset and behaviors to achieve the highest level of innovation.

• Too often, the executors on the ground don’t think beyond the automation of existing process. They lack the knowledge, imagination, and/or desire to leverage the human-centered technology available, leaving transformational capabilities untapped. Further, they are missing opportunities to leverage data to create customer journeys and optimized processes that deliver more value sooner.

=> ↺ 4 metaverse tools that tackle workplace collaboration

• By now, most of us have come to realize that the next normal won’t look much like it used to. The pandemic has taught us that turbulent and unpredictable times require flexibility and an open mind.

• Meanwhile, technology companies have been delivering highly competitive technologies to win both mind and market share. Think back on the quality (or lack thereof) of video calls pre-pandemic. COVID forced competition and accelerated innovation where new features seem to be released monthly instead of annually.

Debian Family

=> ↺ It’s official: Raspberry Pi OS goes 64-bit

• 64-bits. More is always better, right?

• Well, not exactly. And that’s why it’s taken years for Raspberry Pi OS to add an officially-supported 64-bit version, in addition to the 32-bit version they’ve had since the original Pi came out.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 721

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 721 for the week of January 30 – February 5, 2022. The full version of this issue is available here.

=> ↺ Finserv hybrid cloud strategy – it starts with Linux

• Hybrid multi-cloud architecture provides financial institutions flexibility, portability, interoperability, and the control needed to consistently deploy and manage enterprise applications and workloads. By adopting hybrid cloud, finservs realise the benefits of effective cloud cost management, security, compliance, efficiency and agility. The hybrid cloud strategy starts with choosing the right enterprise Linux.

• The right operating system (OS) gives financial institutions the ability to deploy and run applications anywhere — physical, virtual, private, and public clouds — and delivers a consistent foundation to support a financial institution’s current and future requirements for enterprise hybrid cloud deployments.

• Ubuntu is one of the leading enterprise Linux distributions both in the public clouds and in the private clouds. It is also one of the most secure end user operating systems according to UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

• Ubuntu Pro is a premium OS image designed by Canonical to provide the most comprehensive feature set for production environments running in the public clouds including AWS, Azure and Google cloud. Using Ubuntu Pro in the cloud provides the same performance, scalability, management, and reliability that you expect on any other deployment footprint. Ubuntu Pro includes optimised kernel, hardening, and security coverage for the entire collection of software packages shipped with Ubuntu.

=> ↺ Free Software Fellowship: Did FOSDEM remove Elio Qoshi, Ubuntu employee with underage girlfriend?

• In 2021, the Fellowship revealed that Elio Qoshi is the Ubuntu employee and Mozilla Tech Speaker who recruited an underage girlfriend while he was Fedora Ambassador.

• Search results show his profile was included in the FOSDEM 2022 program but if we click the link, it doesn’t go anywhere, he has been removed.

• In many countries there are laws obliging people to inform the police about known cases of child abuse. If the people who removed Qoshi from the program know something about the abuse or if details have been shared on private mailing lists then anybody who has received that information may be under an obligation to report it.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ CLEAR is an open-source FPGA ASIC provided by efabless’ chipIgnite

•  Open-source SoC designs are available to run on FPGA hardware, but few make it to silicon due to the costs involved. That’s why a couple of years ago the Google SkyWater PDK (process design kit) was released together with an offer to manufacture up to 100 pieces for free to selected designs in collaboration with efabless.

• efabless chipIgnite is an evolution of that offer with $9,750 being enough funds to manufacture 100 QFN or 300 WCSP parts, or alternatively 1,000 parts for $20 each ($20,000). Based on the company’s Caravel template SoC and the openFPGA generator framework, efabless CLEAR open-source FPGA ASIC design is meant to promote and demonstrate the chipIgnite “paid IC creation” solution. You can participate by joining a group buying campaign on GroupGets to get a development board based on CLEAR for $74.99 plus shipping.

• 

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Cannonball Mold Makes A Dandy Integrating Sphere For Laser Measurements | Hackaday

• [Les]’ need for an integrating sphere comes from the desire to measure the output of some of his lasers with his Raspberry Pi-based PySpectrometer. Rather than shell out for an expensive commercial integrating sphere, or turn one on a lathe, [Les] turned to an unlikely source: cannonball molds. The inside of the mold was painted with an equally unlikely ultra-white paint concocted from barium sulfate and PVA glue. With a few ports machined into the mold, it works perfectly to diffuse the light from his dye lasers for proper measurements.

=> ↺ Intel joins RISC-V International, pledges $1bn to chip biz

=> ↺ Intel’s $1 billion investment in IFS focuses on RISC-V and open chiplets

• Intel announced a $1 billion fund to boost RISC-V, x86, and Arm IP development at Intel Foundry Services and revealed IFS collaborations with Andes, Esperanto, SiFive, and Ventana Micro using RISC-V and “open chiplet” technology. The chipmaker also joined RISC-V International.

=> ↺ Calling all Computing and ICT teachers in the UK and Ireland: Have your say

=> ↺ Yamaha DX7 chip reverse-engineering, part V: the output circuitry

• The Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer (1983) was the classic synthesizer in 1980s pop music. It uses a technique called FM synthesis to produce complex, harmonically-rich sounds. In this blog post, I look inside its custom sound chip and explain how the chip’s output circuitry works. You might expect it’s just a digital output fed into a digital-to-analog converter, but there’s much more to it than just that.

=> ↺ Removing my last server?

• In the past I used to run a number of virtual machines, or dedicated hosts. Currently I’m cut things down to only a single machine which I’m planning to remove.

=> ↺ Enable the external antenna connector on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4

• The internal WiFi module on the Compute Module 4 (that’s the bit under the metal shield in the picture above) routes its antenna signal via software. You can route the signal to either:

• The built-in PCB triangle antenna (this is the default).

• The external U.FL connector (which has an external antenna plugged into it in the picture above)

=> ↺ PlottyBot: A DrawBot That Plots A Lot | Hackaday

• Fire up those 3D printers because if you’re like us, you’ll want your own PlottyBot. Still, have a pile of “thank you notes” to write from recent winter holiday gift exchanges? Hoping to hand letter invitations to a wedding or other significant event? Need some new art to adorn your lock-down shelter or shop? It sounds like [Ben] could help you with that.

=> ↺ Arduino Nano Adds USB Interface To The Psion Organiser II | Hackaday

• Introduced in 1984, the Psion Organiser series defined the first generation of electronic organizers or PDAs (personal digital assistants). Even though these devices are now over 30 years old, the Psion Organiser scene is alive and well: with new hardware and software is still being developed by enthusiasts the world over.

=> ↺ Mapping the Earth with a homemade magnetometer | Arduino Blog

• Magnetometers are devices that use various techniques to measure certain aspects of magnetism, including direction, strength, or relative changes. By combining these and applying some math, underground and other hidden structures can be discovered without the risk of damaging anything sitting below the sensor. This is why Markus Opitz decided to build a large-scale magnetometer using simple components in order to map things around his property.

• The basic structure of the device consists of a basic frame made from several wooden planks with a pair of wheels at its base and a wide piece of aluminum tubing to hold the sensor array. To gather raw data, Opitz started by integrating seven Hall effect sensors with a digital compass and an Arduino Mega.

=> ↺ Fluke DMM Hack Adds One Digit To Model Number | Hackaday

• The Fluke 77 was introduced in 1983, and is an average responding meter in the AC modes. This model has become a de-facto standard for use in maintenance depots and labs for equipment which has very long lifespans — think military and industrial gear, for example. Many test procedures and training materials have been designed around the use of the the Fluke 77. The cost to change them when a new and better meter comes along is usually so prohibitive they might as well be cast in stone — or at least hammered into 20 pound fanfold paper by a WordStar-driven daisy-wheel printer. But for those unburdened by such legacy requirements, Fluke has the 17x series of True RMS reading meters from since the beginning of this century. These meters bear a strong visual resemblance to their siblings in the 7x family and are substantially interchangeable but for their AC measurement methods.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Samsung’s latest phones could get four years of Android OS upgrades! – SamMobile

=> ↺ Tips to enhance your privacy on Android – Gizchina.com

=> ↺ Report: Wifi Password-Sharing Coming to Android and Chromebooks

=> ↺ Android 13: 5 things we want to see from the 2022 Android update | Android Central

=> ↺ OnePlus’s unified OS will reportedly run atop Android 13

=> ↺ Mi Pad 5 series set for MIUI 13 and Android 12 updates as Xiaomi suspends internal beta – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ Google Maps on Android Auto Still Unavailable For Some Users | Android 12 Glitch? | Tech Times

=> ↺ [Exclusive] OnePlus Pad tablet will ship with Android 12L OS | 91mobiles.com

=> ↺ Redmi 10 (2022) Alleged Geekbench Listing Suggests MediaTek Helio G88 SoC, Android 11 | Technology News

=> ↺ 5 settings that can make Android phones user friendly for senior citizens – Times of India

=> ↺ How To Remove A Hacker From My Android Phone?

=> ↺ YouTube Music for Android gains new ‘Downloads’ shortcut – 9to5Google

=> ↺ android: Android phones may soon come preloaded with Truecaller app in these countries – Times of India

=> ↺ Twitch for Android could soon get an option to edit stream schedules

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ 10 Best Free and Open Source Tools for Novelists

•  Writing is one of the essential skills in modern society. Being able to communicate effectively is paramount both at work and at home. It makes your thinking visible to others, and is the main way in which work, learning, and intellect is judged by others.

• At first glance, the trusty word processor might seem a good tool for a novelist. After all, in days gone by, budding authors would tap away using a typewriter, and a word processor is the modern day equivalent. Linux has some excellent word processing software such as LibreOffice. However, word processors are actually not the ideal tool for some forms of writing, particularly novel-writing. In fact, it could be said that using a word processor for novel-writing is a recipe for disaster, and actually a retrograde step from a typewriter. Word processors are a general application software that are perfect for constructing business documents, letters, batch mailings using templates, etc. However, many word processors are too obtrusive and distracting for writers. What is needed is software that helps concentrate on the content of the novel, sketch out the chapters and scenes, work out the best structure, import research, add locations, characters and objects, and so on.

Web Browsers

=> ↺ New Release: Tor Browser 11.0.5 (Android)

• Tor Browser 11.0.5 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

• This version includes important security updates to Firefox.

=> ↺ What could a browser be?

• The latest CSS Tricks newsletter has me energised about what browsers could be. The newsletter makes this point:

• My point here is this: what we think browsers are today are not what they’ll be in the future. And because of that, I’m excited about browsers for the first time in a real long time.

=> ↺ UK CMA’s mobile ecosystems report is a step toward improving choice for consumers; swift independent enforcement is still necessary – Open Policy & Advocacy

• Consumers today face many barriers that prevent them from accessing and using a variety of software options on their devices. We welcome efforts by the UK Competition and Market Authority (CMA) to better understand the situations faced by mobile device users and to address them.

• Earlier today, we submitted our comments to the CMA’s interim report on mobile ecosystems. Their assessment adds to a growing body of work by regulators on the systemic barriers that prevent meaningful consumer choice and stifle innovation online. As these reports show, all devices run on operating systems, and concentration of operating systems and affiliated software harms developers and consumers alike. In addition, the CMA’s report is the first to chronicle the importance of web compatibility and the harmful network effects that result when popular software apps are incompatible with all browsers. It also dives into the importance of browser engines to a healthy internet ecosystem that is decentralized and open.

=> ↺ Stuart Langridge: Contact the CMA about the browser ecosystem

• The CMA, the UK’s regulator of business competition and markets, what the USA calls “antitrust”, is conducting a study into mobile platforms and the mobile ecosystem. You may recall that I and others presented to the CMA in September 2021 about Apple’s browser ban. They have invited public comments, and they honestly are eager to hear from people: not solely big players with big legal submissions, but real web developers. But the time is nigh: they need to hear from you by 5pm UK time today, Monday 7th February 2022.

• Bruce Lawson, who I presented with, has summarised the CMA’s interim report. What’s important for our perspectives today is how they feel about mobile browsers. In particular, they call out how on Apple’s iOS devices, there is only one browser: Safari. While other browser names do exist — Chrome, Firefox, and the like — they are all Safari dressed up in different clothes. It’s been surprising how many developers didn’t realise this: check out the Twitter hashtag #AppleBrowserBan for more on that. So the CMA are looking for feedback and comments from anyone in the UK or who does any business in the UK, on how you feel about the mobile ecosystem of apps and browsers in general, and how you feel about the browser landscape specifically. Did you decide to use the web, or not use the web, on mobile devices in a way that felt like you had no choice? Do you feel like web apps are a match for native apps or not?

Mozilla

=> ↺ Mozilla Firefox 97 Is Now Available for Download, This Is What’s New

•  Firefox 97 comes as an incremental update to previous releases and adds a new set of Colorway themes to further customize the look and feel of the web browser. There are six Colorway themes available (for a limited time) for you to try under the Themes section in the about:addons page or via Customize Toolbar right-click context menu option > Manage Themes.

• For Linux users, this release removes the PostScript printing support.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ Golang SQLite database/sql

• If you’re curious about the basics of storing persistent data into a SQL database using Golang, this tutorial will be helpful for you. I’m going to be using sqlite3, but I’ll add lots of headings, so you can skip ahead if sqlite is not your thing.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ Improved PDF export options in the command-line and in Online

•  The LibreOffice Technology now has much better support for creating custom PDF exports of documents: options available in the interactive PDF export options dialog are now also possible to set from the command-line, and also when using the document conversion feature of Collabora Online.

• I was working on a regression that only happens if you export the second and third pages of a document to PDF. While investigating, I needed a quick way to trigger the problematic code-path, and clicking through a dialog is not convenient.

FSF

GNU Projects

=> ↺ poke – News: GNU poke 2.1 released [Savannah]

• I am happy to announce a new release of GNU poke, version 2.1. This is the first bugfix release in the 2.x series. See the file NEWS in the distribution tarball for a list of issues fixed in this release. The tarball poke-2.1.tar.gz is now available at

• https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/poke/poke-2.1.tar.gz.

• GNU poke (http://www.jemarch.net/poke) is an interactive, extensible editor for binary data. Not limited to editing basic entities such as bits and bytes, it provides a full-fledged procedural, interactive programming language designed to describe data structures and to operate on them.

• Thanks to the people who contributed with code and/or documentation to this release. In certain but no significant order they are: Mohammad-Reza Nabipoor Luca Saiu Alfred M. Szmidt Bruno Haible Sergio Durigan Junior Special thanks to Bruno Haible for his help in testing this release. And this is all for now. Happy poking!

=> ↺ LibrePlanet’s almost here, come and be a volunteer! — Free Software Foundation

• We want to see a world where users are liberated — not restricted — by the software they use. Our annual LibrePlanet conference is a reflection of the community that formed itself over the years around this idea. It is coming up soon, March 19 & 20, and we need your help!

=> ↺ January GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: Twenty-two new releases

• alive-2.0.5 bash-5.1.16 cflow-1.7 ddrescue-1.26 direvent-5.3 freeipmi-1.6.9 gama-2.17 gdb-11.2 hello-2.11 libsigsegv-2.14 libunistring-1.0 linux-libre-5.16 mailutils-3.14 moe-1.12 mtools-4.0.37 ocrad-0.28 parallel-20220122 pies-1.7 readline-8.1.2 rush-2.2 serveez-0.3.1 tramp-2.5.2

Licensing/Legal

=> ↺ Free software licenses explained: MIT

• The first paragraph of the license enumerates the rights which you, as a recipient of the software, are entitled to. It’s this section which qualifies the license as free and open source software (assuming the later sections don’t disqualify it). The key grants are the right to “use” the software (freedom 0), to “modify” and “merge” it (freedom 1), and to “distribute” and “sell” copies (freedoms 2 and 3), “without restriction”. We also get some bonus grants, like the right to sublicense the software, so you could, for instance, incorporate it into a work which uses a less permissive license like the GPL.

• All of this is subject to the conditions of paragraph two, of which there is only one: you must include the copyright notice and license text in any substantial copies or derivatives of the software. Thus, the MIT license requires attribution. This can be achieved by simply including the full license text (copyright notice included) somewhere in your project. For a proprietary product, this is commonly hidden away in a menu somewhere. For a free software project, where the source code is distributed alongside the product, I often include it as a comment in the relevant files. You can also add your name or the name of your organization to the list of copyright holders when contributing to MIT-licensed projects, at least in the absence of a CLA.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ The right thing for the wrong reasons: FLOSS doesn’t imply security

• Reading the source code, compiling, and passing tests isn’t sufficient to show us a program’s final behavior. The only way to know what a program does when you run it is to…run it.

=> ↺ Development notes

• So in the course of working on Placemark, I’m solving a lot of small problems that are each too small and niche to merit their own blog post. But I hate letting things go unwritten, so here they are, smorgasbord style.

=> ↺ Dirk Eddelbuettel: x13binary 1.1.57-3 on CRAN: Packaging Updates

• Release 1.1.57-3 of the x13binary package providing the X-13ARIMA-SEATS program by the US Census Bureau arrived late yesterday on CRAN.

• This release relaxes the download requirement on macOS and Linux: if a user supplies a path in an environment variable X13_PATH we check for a suitable binary there and omit the download. This helps with air-gapped installation (and alike).

=> ↺ Simplest alternative IDs with Rails

• Rails actions default on using record IDs. But what if we want to change the URL to something prettier, something that doesn’t leak the record ID in the database?

• Luckily, there is a simple answer that doesn’t require you to change much. Let’s say we want to use a slug in the URL for a Team model.

Perl/Raku

=> ↺ 2022.06 BASICly – Rakudo Weekly News

• Matthew “Stephen” Stuckwisch has started playing around with the RakuAST branch of Rakudo, and has written a proof of concept module of a BASIC slang and reported about that on /r/rakulang. Cool stuff. And a great introduction on things to come in the Raku Programming Language!

=> ↺ raku for yachting – Physics::Journey

• On Saturday, I was honoured to be among the leaders of the raku community in the FOSDEM 2022 raku devroom. Thanks to Andrew Shitov for organising and to all those who were able to join.

=> ↺ p6steve: raku on the M1 – up to 2.4x faster

• In November (2021) I wrote a couple of posts bemoaning the headaches of the Apple Intel to ARM architecture shift (part I and part II) before coming to a solution that works for me. (raku on docker on ubuntu on vftools as set out at the end of part II).

• One of the drivers to choose this option was to get the whole of my (raku) stack running native on ARM (–platform linux/arm64) to get the performance boost of the new M1 CPU architecture.

• Going back to something I posted in January 2021 – where I ran through the progressive speed ups that refactoring my code had achieved – there were a couple of test timings that I can now rerun.

Python

=> ↺ Customize your shell prompt with Starship | Opensource.com

• Nothing irritates me more than when I forget to git add files in my Git repository. I test locally, commit, and push, only to find out it failed in the continuous integration phase. Even worse is when I’m on the main branch instead of a feature branch and accidentally push to it. The best-case scenario is that it fails because of branch protection, and I need to do some surgery to get the changes to a branch. Even more worse, I did not configure branch protection properly, and I accidentally pushed it directly to main.

• [...]

• There is even more information that is useful in the prompt. While the name of Python virtual environments is in the prompt, the Python version the virtual environment has is not.

=> ↺ “Lazier” Web Scraping Is Better Web Scraping | Hackaday

• Ever needed to get data from a web page? Parsing the content for data is called web scraping, and [Doug Guthrie] has a few tips for making the process of digging data out of a web page simpler and more efficient, complete with code examples in Python. He uses getting data from Yahoo Finance as an example, because it’s apparently a pretty common use case judging by how often questions about it pop up on Stack Overflow. The general concepts are pretty widely applicable, however.

Java

=> ↺ Accumulating into lists in Java and Groovy | Opensource.com

• In my last article, I reviewed some differences between creating and initializing lists in Groovy and doing the same thing in Java. I showed that Groovy has a straightforward and compact syntax for setting up lists compared to the steps necessary in Java.

• This article explores some more differences between list handling in Groovy and Java. I’ll explore how to run-length encode a list in both languages for that purpose. Briefly, run-length encoding is a way of compactly representing repeated sequences of the same value in a list.

• You’ll need to make sure you have both Groovy and Java installed on your computer to follow along.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Judy Gumbo’s Cultural Revolution

• I have known three of her four husbands, including her present partner, Art Eckstein, a retired professor and the author of a book about the Weather Underground and the FBI which says in a scholarly way, “a plague on both your houses.” I also knew, very well, Gumbo’s second husband, Stew Albert, my consigliore, with whom I traveled to Algiers on a mission from Bernardine Dohrn who was then on the “FBI Ten Most Wanted List.” I was to tell Eldridge Cleaver not to trust Timothy Leary, a slippery fellow if ever there was one. It was Eldridge who gave Judy Clavir her moniker, Gumbo. She was the female version of Stew. Get it?

• Eldridge over-reacted to my message and placed Leary under house arrest. Later, he sent Leary and his entourage to the Middle East to befriend the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an expedition that turned into a fiasco. Years later, Leary and Cleaver both surrendered to the authorities and both named names they should not have named. Yes, they informed on former comrades and betrayed confidences. Leary snitched on his own lawyer, Michael Kennedy.

=> ↺ A Sinking Boat Caught Her Eye During a Zoom Call

• At that point, Ms. Harght said she excused herself from the meeting and called 911, figuring that surely others must have seen the overturned vessel and had already contacted emergency responders.

• But there was no one else, according to John P. Murphy, Scituate’s fire chief, who said on Friday that Ms. Harght had played a pivotal role in facilitating the rescue of all three of the boat’s crew members from the 42-degree waters of Massachusetts Bay.

=> ↺ Crimping Tools And The Cost Of Being Cheap | Hackaday

• Crimp connectors provide an easy and convenient way to connect electronics while still allowing for them to be removed and swapped without having to reach for a soldering iron and desoldering wick. While browsing one’s favorite cheap shopping site, you may get the impression that all one has to do to join the world of crimp-awesome is order a $20 crimp tool and some assorted ‘JST’ and ‘DuPont’ (a Mini-PV clone) connectors to go with it. After all, it’s just a bit of metal that’s squeezed around some stripped wire. How complicated could this be?

• The harsh truth is that, as ridiculous as the price tag on official JST and Mini-PV crimping tools may seem at hundreds of dollars each, they offer precise, repeatable crimps and reliable long-term stability. The same is true for genuine JST, Mini-PV and Molex connectors. The price tag for ‘saving a buck’ may end up being a lot higher than the money originally saved.

Science

=> ↺ Factoring composite numbers into nearly equal factors

• Pennsylvania license plate numbers have four digits and when I’m driving I habitually try to factor these. (This hasn’t yet led to any serious injury or property damage…) In general factoring is a hardish problem but when !!n<10000!! the worst case is !!9991 = 97·103!! which is not out of reach. The toughest part is when you find a factor like !!661!! or !!667!! and have to decide if it is prime. For !!667!! you might notice right off that it is !!676-9 = (26+3)(26-3)!! but for !!661!! you have to wonder if maybe there is something like that and you just haven’t thought of it yet. (There isn’t.)

=> ↺ As Light as Plastic; As Strong as Steel

• Chemical engineers at MIT have pulled off something that was once thought impossible. By polymerizing material in two different directions at once, they have created a polymer that is very strong. You can read a pre-print version of the paper over on Arxiv.

• Polymers owe many of their useful properties to the fact that they make long chains. Atoms known as monomers join together in strings held together by covalent bonds. Polymer chains may be cross-linked which changes its properties, but it has long been thought that material that had chains going through the X and Y axis would have desirable properties, but making these reliably is a challenge.

• Part of the problem is that it is hard to line up molecules, even large monomers. If one monomer in the chain rotates a bit, it will create a defect in the 2D structure and that defect will grow rapidly as you add more monomers. The new technique is relatively easy to do and is irreversible which is good because reversible chains tend to have undesirable characteristics like low chemical stability. Synthesis does require a few chemicals like melamine, calcium chloride, pyridine, and trimesic acid. Along with N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone, the mixture eventually forms a gel. The team took pieces of gel and soaked it in ethanol. With some filtering, ultrasonics, centrifuging, and washing with water and acetone, the material was ready for vacuum drying and was made into a powder.

Education

=> ↺ Can School Board Meetings Bring Us Together Rather Than Pull us Apart?

• She is not alone. Many communities are being torn apart as parents fight for their children’s future – but with different views of what that future should be.

• In many ways, this energy around school boards is wonderful. Parental involvement has increased. People have decided to run for office who never expected to do so. While so much involvement is great for our democracy, often missing are the basic elements of engagement, openness and learning, transparency and trust, collaboration and shared purpose. Many times, people are not listening to each other and solving conflicts together.

=> ↺ Despite 2020 Promise, Jill Biden Confirms Free Community College Plan Is Dead

• Confirming that the Biden administration has abandoned its efforts to pass tuition-free community college—a signature campaign promise—First Lady JIll Biden on Monday offered a stark reminder, according to one critic, of “how low we, the people, are on the U.S. list of priorities.”

• The first lady spoke at the Community College National Legislative Summit in Washington, D.C., telling attendees that President Joe Biden has not found a way to keep the community college provision in the Build Back Better Act, his social spending and climate package, as Democrats continue to negotiate the bill.

=> ↺ A Push to Remove LGBTQ Books in One County Could Signal Rising Partisanship on School Boards

• Nearly seven years ago, Melanie Graft’s 4-year-old daughter was in the children’s section of her local North Texas library when she picked up a book about an LGBTQ pride parade. Within the colorful pages of the book, “This Day in June,” children and adults celebrate with rainbow flags and signs promoting equality and love over hate. Adults embrace and kiss one another.

• Alarmed, Graft launched a campaign against the book and another about a boy who likes to wear dresses, suggesting that their presence in the library foisted inappropriate themes on unsuspecting children. By June 2015, the Hood County Library Advisory Board had received more than 50 complaints asking that the two books be removed from the shelves of the children’s section. The board refused, saying the books did not promote homosexuality, as some complaints had suggested, and arguing that the library already required parents of young children to accompany them and check out materials. Librarian Courtney Kincaid called “This Day in June” a tool to teach respect and acceptance of the LGBTQ community, but she agreed to move it to the adult section. She kept “My Princess Boy” in the children’s section.

=> ↺ The University Crisis

• In January 2020, just days before the first case of Covid-19 was identified in the United States, Bryan Alexander, a scholar at Georgetown University known as a “futurist,” published a new book, Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Alexander made no claim to clairvoyance, only to “trend analysis and scenario creation.” But one of his scenarios showed startling foresight:1Imagine a future academy after a major pandemic has struck the world…. Would distance learning grow rapidly as people fear face-to-face learning because of perceived contagion risk?… How would we take conferences and other forms of professional development online?… Would athletes refrain from practice and play for fear of contagion, or would both institutions and the general public demand more college sports as an inspirational sign of bodily vigor in the context of sickness and death?

=> ↺ I took the CompTIA Project+ PK1-005 beta exam for fun

• This afternoon, I took the CompTIA Project+ PK1-005 beta exam for fun. I am not a project manager, nor are there any expectations on me to act as a project manager for $DAYJOB. However, there are faculty in my department that hold active PMP certification. And some of the core courses (that I don’t teach) do cover management and related topics. This occasionally translates to students talking to me about management issues. The beta exam seemed like an easy excuse to finally learn a little bit about project management.

• To be clear: there is no professional benefit for me getting certified. I did it out of pure curiosity plus the fact that CompTIA is offering a public beta for $50. That’s low enough that I don’t mind taking the exam and not passing.

=> ↺ Replacing The Prestige Signal

• tl;dr: Evidence suggests that the prestige signal in our current journals is noisy, expensive and flags unreliable science. There is a lack of evidence that the supposed filter function of prestigious journals is not just a biased random selection of already self-selected input material. As such, massive improvement along several variables can be expected from a more modern implementation of the prestige signal.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Opinion | Across-the-Board Rate Hike by the Fed Is a Cure Worse Than the Disease

• Although some supply shortages were anticipated as the global economy reopened after the COVID-19 lockdowns, they have proved more pervasive, and less transitory, than had been hoped. In a market economy that is governed at least in part by the laws of supply and demand, one expects shortages to be reflected in prices. And when individual price increases are lumped together, we call that inflation, which is now at levels not seen for many years.

=> ↺ Far-Right, Anti-Vax Factions in US and Beyond Rally Around Ottawa ‘Siege’

• Now in its second week, an anti-government demonstration in the Canadian capital of Ottawa has garnered support from right-wing lawmakers and media personalities in the U.S. and abroad, with millions of dollars raised internationally to back the so-called “Freedom Convoy” and similar protests reportedly being planned in the U.S. and Europe for the coming weeks.

• The demonstration began last month over a federal Covid-19 vaccine mandate for truck drivers who operate between the U.S. and Canada. Only 10% of the country’s cross-border truckers are unvaccinated, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, but the far-right group Canada Unity and other organizers assembled what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “small fringe minority” to protest the mandate.

=> ↺ School District Where Toxic Chemicals Lingered for Years Offers $34 Million Settlement to Families

• A school district in Washington state has offered an extraordinary $34 million settlement to students and parents exposed to toxic chemicals that lingered for at least eight years on a public school campus.

• The Monroe School District, northeast of Seattle, proposed the striking settlement in November under court seal, preventing the public from seeing the offer. However, the $34 million figure appears in a separate court document obtained last week by The Seattle Times.

=> ↺ Omicron Led to Cuts in Hours Not Jobs

• Revisions Change Our View of the Economy

=> ↺ Medicare for All Bill Introduced by Pramila Jayapal Gets Record 120 Cosponsors

=> ↺ Drug Decriminalization Is Working in Oregon. Other States Should Follow.

=> ↺ Why Can’t We Pay Attention Anymore?

• Ward describes three nested metaphorical loops. The first loop is inside us. He gives a fascinating survey of the known spectrum of human biases that get in our way of thinking through things, even when we convince ourselves we have. The second loop is composed of technology automatically poking at our bruises, triggering actions by playing on the frailties described in the first loop, such as a tendency toward risky behavior like gambling. Finally, the outermost layer describes how we are prodded not only into short-term behavior by such technology, but into something approaching global sheeplike behavior, utterly determined by conditioning.

=> ↺ Ottawa Declares State of Emergency Amid Truckers’ Protest

• On Saturday, about 5,000 people and 1,000 tractor-trailers and personal vehicles squeezed into downtown Ottawa to join in on the second week of a protest, which was initially intended to voice opposition to the Canadian government’s vaccine requirement for truckers crossing the Canada-United States border.

=> ↺ Pakistan: Cousin marriages create high risk of genetic disorders

• Scientists say inbreeding is causing an unusually high number of genetic mutations to spread in Pakistan, leading to disabilities in children of consanguineous marriages. Still, this social custom persists.

=> ↺ USA Number 1!

• The Economist now estimates around 350 per 100K, so in 5 months another roughly 334K have died, or about 2.2K/day. Using the Dept. of Transportation value of a life, these deaths have cost the economy $32B.

=> ↺ Remembering The MIT Radiation Laboratory | Hackaday

• Back in the late 80s, our company managed to procure the complete 28 volume MIT Radiation Laboratory (Rad Lab) series, published in 1947, for the company library. To me, these books were interesting because I like history and old technology, but I didn’t understand why everyone was so excited about the acquisition. Only a cursory glimpse at the volumes would reveal that the “circuits” these books described used vacuum tubes and their “computers” were made from mechanical linkages. This was the 1980s, and we worked with modern radar and communications systems using semiconductors, integrated circuits, and digital computers. How could these old musty books possibly be of any practical use? To my surprise, it turned out that indeed they could, and eventually I came to appreciate the excitement. I even used several of them myself over the years.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ Unpatched Security Bugs in Medical Wearables Allow Patient Tracking, Data Theft

• Analysts with Kaspersky Labs reported finding 33 vulnerabilities last year in the most widely used data transfer protocol for internet of things (IoT) medical devices, known as MQTT — that’s 10 more than the previous year. All of them put patient data at risk, the team warned.

• To put those numbers in perspective, the analysts at Kaspersky said only 90 vulnerabilities in MQTT have been reported since 2014. Worse yet, many of those bugs are still unpatched, they added.

=> ↺ PowerPoint Files Abused to Take Over Computers

• New research from Avanan, a Check Point company, has uncovered how a “little-known add-on” in PowerPoint – the .ppam file – is being used to hide malware. Jeremy Fuchs, cybersecurity researcher and analyst at Avanan, wrote in a report published Thursday that the file has bonus commands and custom macros, among other functions.

=> ↺ Charming Kitten Sharpens Its Claws with PowerShell Backdoor

• The Iranian advanced persistent threat (APT) Charming Kitten is sharpening its claws with a new set of tools, including a novel PowerShell backdoor and related stealth tactics, that show the group evolving yet again. The new tools may signal that it’s getting ready to pounce on new victims, researchers believe.

• Researchers at cybersecurity firm Cybereason discovered the tools, which include a backdoor they dubbed “PowerLess Backdoor,” as well as an evasive maneuver to run the backdoor in a .NET context rather than as one that triggers a PowerShell process, the Cybereason Nocturnus Team wrote in a report published Tuesday.

Security

=> ↺ FBI Releases Indicators of Compromise Associated with LockBit 2.0 Ransomware | CISA

=> ↺ Microsoft Windows TCO

• The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released a Flash report detailing indicators of compromise (IOCs) associated with attacks, using LockBit 2.0, a Ransomware-as-a-Service that employs a wide variety of tactics, techniques, and procedures, creating significant challenges for defense and mitigation.

=> ↺ FBI: Watch out for LockBit 2.0 ransomware, here’s how to reduce the risk to your network

=> ↺ a back doors company

• The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has published a fresh warning about LockBit 2.0. recommending that companies enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) and use strong, unique passwords for all admin and high-value accounts to thwart the strain of ransomware that is used by one of the busiest attack groups on the internet today.

=> ↺ Security updates for Monday [LWN.net]

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (ldns and libphp-adodb), Fedora (kernel, kernel-headers, kernel-tools, mingw-binutils, mingw-openexr, mingw-python3, mingw-qt5-qtsvg, scap-security-guide, stratisd, util-linux, and webkit2gtk3), Mageia (lrzsz, qtwebengine5, and xterm), openSUSE (chromium), and Ubuntu (python-django).

=> ↺ PwnKit (polkit’s pkexec exploit) – CVE-2021-4034

• The update fixing the issue for Mageia 8 was released Wed, 26 Jan 2022 10:31 UTC (05:31 EST).

=> ↺ DPD package sniffing | Pen Test Partners

• An unauthenticated API call was identified in DPD Group’s public API that could allow a user with a valid package ID to, with some basic OSINT, discover the package’s destination postcode and thus obtain all details about the package.

• DPD Group were prompt in the triage and resolution of the vulnerability, which was fixed in October 2021.

=> ↺ Why Security in Kubernetes Isn’t the Same as in Linux: Part 2 | MarketScreener

• Security for Kubernetes might not be quite the same as what you’re used to. In our previous article, we covered why security is so important in both Linux on-premises servers and cloud Kubernetes clusters. We also talked about 3 major aspects of Linux server security – processes, network, and file system – and how they correspond to Kubernetes. So today, we’ll talk more about the security concerns unique to Kubernetes.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ German Court Fines Site Owner For Sharing User Data With Google To Access Web Fonts

• The European Union’s data privacy law, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), has caused all sorts of problems since its debut. Its debut was itself a mess, something that immediately resulted in a whole lot of websites simply refusing to allow European users to connect with them.

=> ↺ IRS Says It Will Move Away From Requiring ID.me Facial Recognition

• Last month, we wrote about how the IRS and other federal agencies were starting to require the use of private facial recognition from a somewhat sketchy private company, for people to access their own government’s services. The main company in question, ID.me, had made some… questionable decisions that raised serious questions about why the government was forcing people to make use of such a private service.

=> ↺ IRS To Ditch Biometric Requirement for Online Access

• The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said today it will be transitioning away from requiring biometric data from taxpayers who wish to access their records at the agency’s website. The reversal comes as privacy experts and lawmakers have been pushing the IRS and other federal agencies to find less intrusive methods for validating one’s identity with the U.S. government online.

=> ↺ Access through Europol and databases: EU decides against control of Interpol

• Authoritarian states use the international police organisation for the political persecution of opposition members. The EU Council or the Commission could coordinate the review of these misused alerts. However, the Parliament has agreed to a horse-trading deal.

=> ↺ Shutting down Facebook and Instagram in Europe? MEP Patrick Breyer fears the EU Commission could buckle

• The US tech company Meta has threatened to take its digital services Facebook and Instagram offline in the EU if the EU does not allow the company to transfer personal user data and profiles to the US. Meta uses these personality profiles it collects on all users to target them with surveillance-based advertising and paid messages.

=> ↺ Everyone Hates Facebook (but this is more than just about Facebook)

• So we have a bigger – systemic ­– problem on our hands. (Ooh, fun!) And it seems everyone has some idea or other about how we should do things differently moving forward.

=> ↺ FBI: Use a Burner Phone at the Olympics

• Use a burner phone if you’re traveling to the Olympics, the FBI warned on Tuesday, lest you come home with a nasty case of malware and/or snatched personal data.

• The FBI didn’t mention specific threats, per se, but its alert warned those traveling to the February 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and March 2022 Paralympics that we’ve seen this all before with the Olympics, where “malicious cyber actors could use a broad range of cyber activities to disrupt these events.”

=> ↺ About Face: IRS Backtracks on Biometrics After Backlash – Purism

• Recently the IRS announced a new facial recognition system that would require customers upload videos of themselves to access certain IRS services. Over the past couple weeks the system has faced backlash online, bi-partisan backlash in Congress, and a lot of media attention, and this week the IRS announced they were transitioning away from the facial recognition service. What lessons does the IRS’s about face teach us about the current state of privacy awareness among the general population and people’s power to change privacy policy, and what does it mean for the future?

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Genocide Denier? Not Me, Pal. Try the White House Instead

• Since then, I have written thousands of articles and thirty books, largely concerned with the open wounds of our planetary grief. This year, Noam Chomsky and I will release The Withdrawal: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and the Fragilities of US Power (New Press), which will bring together his considerable thinking on the ugliness of our times and my reporting from some of these places. In the book, Chomsky and I talk about the Godfather attitude of the United States government: either you are with us or against us, and if you are against us, then we will use every ounce of our force to demolish you. One of the ways in which this Godfather attitude appears is in the information war that the United States (and its corporate allies) conducts against anyone who objects to its self-anointed right to power and to its myopic vision of the world. Noam’s book with Edward Herman Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda (1975) was pulped by Warner when its chief executive felt that it was “a scurrilous attack on respected Americans.” You tell the truth about the violence of the United States government, and you will get it in the neck from its loyal defenders.

=> ↺ Opinion | What the Cuban Missile Crisis Can Teach Us About Ending Hostility in Ukraine

• Commentators on the current Ukraine crisis have sometimes compared it to the Cuban missile crisis.  This is a good comparison―and not only because they both involve a dangerous U.S.-Russian confrontation capable of leading to a nuclear war.

=> ↺ House Dems Vow to Introduce War Powers Resolution for Yemen

• A pair of progressive U.S. lawmakers on Monday said that if President Joe Biden does not stop supporting the Saudi-led war against Yemen, they will work to pass a new war powers resolution to “end unconstitutional U.S. participation” in the conflict. 

• “We will not sit by as the Constitution is ignored and the Yemeni people suffer seven years into this unauthorized war.”

=> ↺ Is This Israel’s South Africa Moment?

• Last week, Amnesty International released a meticulously researched report detailing the objective reality of Israel’s decades-old system of apartheid, which treats Palestinians as an “inferior racial group.” Even before the official release, the Israeli government was vilifying and slandering Amnesty in a desperate attempt to torpedo the damning report. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid summarized the strategic concern that is haunting his government: “Calling Israel an apartheid state was a slowly creeping trend for a very long time, and in 2022, it will be a real threat.”

=> ↺ Is Russia-NATO Brinksmanship Over Ukraine Thwarting Diplomatic Resolution?

=> ↺ Is a Peaceful Resolution Still Possible? Masha Gessen & Anatol Lieven on Ukraine, Putin & NATO

• The U.S. warns Russia could soon invade Ukraine, as diplomatic talks continue in Moscow and Washington and the U.S. sends more military equipment to Ukraine. We look at the potential of war from the seldom-discussed perspective of citizens of Ukraine. “This Russian brinkmanship is having a devastating effect on the Ukrainian economy, even without an invasion,” says Russian American journalist Masha Gessen, who just returned from reporting in Ukraine. Foreign policy expert Anatol Lieven says that while a Russian invasion of Ukraine remains a possibility, “there clearly is a desire in Moscow to pursue a diplomatic path” to resolve the crisis without war.

=> ↺ Putin is Playing a Strong Hand on Ukraine…as Long as He Doesn’t Invade

• “What we currently have,” writes Andriy Zagorodnyuk, the former Ukrainian defence minister, and military specialists, in a report by the Centre for Defence Studies in Kyiv, “is the military threat posed by about 127,000 Russian servicemen along Ukraine’s borders, in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine, and in Crimea. This number has not increased since April [2021], and is not enough for a full-scale offensive.”

• The report states categorically that Russian forces are not in a position to invade in the next two or three weeks and are unlikely to be able to do so in 2022. It points to the absence of ammunition and fuel along with field hospitals and trained up-to-strength military units essential to a modern army going to war. This negative judgement about the prospect of a Russian offensive is confirmed by Ukrainian ministers and defence officials who politely downplay the war hysteria in Washington and London.

=> ↺ Biden’s Brinksmanship

• In that spirit, I write as a 54-year-old person who has been diligently consuming a wide variety of news sources on a daily basis since I was 12:  we’ve been here before.  The details have changed, but the pattern is firmly established.

• It would be completely MAD to go to war with Russia — that is, it would be an invitation for the world to finally learn the true meaning of the acronym that used to be as commonly used as acronyms like SALT, START, or ICBM — Mutually Assured Destruction.  But in our corporate and so-called public media landscape today, in the media consumed daily by so many millions of Americans (not to mention people in the UK, Australia, and many other countries in similar straits), there will be no reminders of this critical concept, which was once known as a doctrine, one that was dominant in the halls of power in both Washington, DC and Moscow for much of the twentieth century.

=> ↺ Why We Intend to Pass a New Yemen War Powers Resolution

• The recent round of devastating airstrikes launched in Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition marks the latest escalation of a conflict that has dragged on for nearly seven years, pushed millions to the brink of famine, and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. A recent bombardment killed at least 90 people and cut off Internet access for the entire country for days. The disturbing truth is that the United States, through its military involvement in the Saudi-led coalition’s war against the Houthis in Yemen, has been directly participating in this horrific war for too long. It’s time for this complicity to end.

=> ↺ Even with its head severed, Islamic State may continue to bite

• Al-Qurayshi came to power in 2019, following the death of his predecessor in almost identical circumstances. Three years ago, as US special forces approached his hideout in Idlib province, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and his two children. Both IS leaders were denounced as cowards by the US presidents who authorised the raids.

• The al-Qurayshi raid continues the decapitation strikes—colloquially described as cutting off the head of the snake—that were a key element of US counterterrorism strategy in the global war on terror. Such strikes have long been part of the military arsenal, especially in counterinsurgency, but how successful they are as a counterterrorism tool is not straightforward.

Environment

=> ↺ Study Exposes How World’s Biggest Corporations Embellish Climate Progress

• A new study out Monday evaluates the public climate pledges made by 25 of the world’s biggest corporations and concludes they “cannot be taken at face value” because the vast majority of firms analyzed are exaggerating the nature of and progress toward their goals—a greenwashing trend that critics say will continue in the absence of stronger regulation.

• “Setting vague targets will get us nowhere without real action, and can be worse than doing nothing if it misleads the public.”

=> ↺ Montana Plaintiffs Announce First Children’s Climate Trial in US History

• Young Montanans and their lawyers announced Monday that the first children’s climate trial in U.S. history is set to begin a year from now in Helena, Montana.

• “Knowing that we have the dates for the first youth constitutional climate case ever, I feel hopeful that finally our government may begin to serve our best interest.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Is California Backsliding on Its Plan to Reach Zero Carbon Emissions by Mid-Century?

• California is one of the world’s largest economies. It is also a liberal state that acts as a leader in efforts to combat the climate crisis. Indeed, California is said to have revolutionized climate policy, advancing many key pieces of climate legislation that seek to combat global warming and its catastrophic effects. Among them is a plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles statewide by 2035. California leaders also pride themselves in seeking to meet climate goals while maximizing jobs and economic growth. 

Energy

=> ↺ An FTI Consulting Presentation Pulls Back the Veil on Fossil Fuel PR

• “We understand how the oil and gas sector works — we’ve worked in it, studied it, defended it and impacted the policy that regulates it,” a 2015 presentation delivered to the Tennessee Oil and Gas Association begins. “We have been instrumental players in the industry’s highest profile business issues, regulatory hearings, legal disputes and arbitration.”

• Those bona fides came not from an oil and gas company or investor, but from FTI Consulting, a sprawling consulting firm that markets its strategic communications services to a wide range of industries — including coal, oil, and gas producers.

=> ↺ Total’s East African Crude Oil Pipeline ‘Struggling’ To Find Financiers, Say Campaigners

• Total’s “incredibly risky” crude oil pipeline may still lack the financial backing it requires, campaigners have claimed, as the controversial project moved one step closer to completion.

• Once finished, the 1,443km east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP) could transport up to 216,000 barrels a day from the Lake Albert region in landlocked Uganda to Tanga in Tanzania, with the first oil expected in 2025.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ What’s Needed to Save Wolverines? A New Study Has Answers

=> ↺ A Big Disappointment on the Custer-Gallatin

• The CGNF proposes 140,000 acres of new wilderness across the entire forest (keep in mind that only Congress can designate wilderness). But recent mapping by the Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance has determined there are more than 1.1 million roadless acres on the forest that could, in theory, qualify for designation as wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act.

• Yet, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) breathlessly reported they had “exciting news” to share. They celebrated the CGNF recommendation for 140,000 acres of new wilderness spread across the three million-acre forest due to their “hard work” as the Gallatin Forest Partnership (GFP) members. The GFP successfully fought to keep a portion of the Gallatin Range in the Buffalo Horn and Porcupine drainages and the West Pine Creek areas from being recommended for wilderness. Way to go, GYC.

Finance

=> ↺ ‘Keep Pushing’: Momentum Grows Behind Effort to Ban Stock Trading

• The momentum behind a widely popular effort to ban stock trading by members of Congress is growing, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly instructing fellow Democrats to unite behind a specific legislative proposal.

• “After weeks of silence, Senate Democratic leaders have asked lawmakers to propose improvements on rules governing congressional stock trading,” Insider reports. “In a call Friday, Democratic leadership staff told legislative directors for Democratic senators about their aspirations for bringing a congressional stock-trading ban bill to the floor of the U.S. Senate.”

=> ↺ Opinion | The Dynastic Wealth of US Oligarchs Is a Threat to Democracy

• There is an understandable focus on new wealth technology billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, especially as their wealth surges during the pandemic.

=> ↺ ‘Fighting Back Works!’ IRS Ditches Pilloried Facial Recognition Plan

• After Democrats in both chambers of Congress added their voices to the growing chorus of opposition to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s plan to require the use of a private company’s facial recognition software to access various information online, Sen. Ron Wyden revealed Monday that the IRS intends to change course.

• “Facial recognition technology and the collection of peoples’ biometric data puts everyone in danger.”

=> ↺ Economists Warn Against the Fed Raising Rates at Worst Possible Time

• As the U.S. Federal Reserve mulls hiking interest rates in the coming weeks in an effort to curb inflation, progressive economists are warning against such a move—arguing that it will hurt workers and fail to address the real source of rising prices: unmitigated corporate power.

• “The last thing average working people need is for the Fed to raise interest rates and slow the economy further.”

=> ↺ Senators Ask JPMorgan Chase to Explain Its Lawsuit Blitz Against Credit Card Customers

• Saying they were “deeply troubled by recent reports” that JPMorgan Chase has “renewed its predatory practice of robo-signing,” six Senate Democrats on Monday asked Jamie Dimon, the company’s CEO, to provide “detailed information regarding the bank’s credit card debt collection practices.”

=> ↺ As Child Tax Payments Expire, Struggling Families Are Desperate

• There are great parallels between the birthing pains of Social Security and President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda in the Build Back Better package. Both proposed to fundamentally transform the social compact between working Americans and their government. Both met fierce cries of “socialism” from conservatives who felt that government should do as little as possible for ordinary folks. Both were fully paid for. Both met irresistible pressure to scale back benefits and help fewer people. And like Social Security, we hope, Build Back Better will be subsequently strengthened and expanded once the American people have fallen in love with it. All the authors are on Twitter @21stCenNewDeal.

=> ↺ When Private Equity Becomes Your Landlord

• Daniel Cooper could barely afford a tiny apartment at the 13-story Olume building in downtown San Francisco. But the expansive view from the roof deck captivated him.

• Raised in a small city in Kentucky, Cooper was struck by the grandeur of the skyline before him, from the soaring heights of Salesforce tower, San Francisco’s largest skyscraper, to the gleaming gold cupolas atop St. Joseph’s Church, one of the city’s historic landmarks.

=> ↺ Momentum Is Growing to Ban Congress Members From Trading Stocks

=> ↺ Is the NFL Run Like a Plantation? Ex-Player Donté Stallworth Responds to Bombshell Racism Lawsuit

• Ahead of the Super Bowl this weekend, we speak to former National Football League player Donté Stallworth about racism and anti-Blackness in the league. Last week, former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores sued the NFL, as well as three teams — the Dolphins, Broncos and Giants — for discriminating against him as a Black candidate during his interview process. In his complaint, Flores says the NFL is “racially segregated and is managed much like a plantation,” with wealthy white owners and head coaches at the top while the majority of players who risk bodily injury are Black. “Hopefully at the end of this, Brian Flores can continue his coaching, but also that we can see some changes in the NFL,” says Stallworth.

=> ↺ The NFL’s Shift on the Flores Lawsuit Betrays Its Vulnerability

• Just three days after issuing a statement that Brian Flores’s racial discrimination suit was “without merit,” the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell are oafishly changing tactics. Following a backlash both inside and outside the league against their initial hardline stance, Goodell has now lurched toward a more conciliatory position. Don’t trust it. Goodell’s new letter is a display of gaslighting and corporate doublespeak that takes great care to not expose “the Shield” to more lawsuits. This missive from the desk of Roger Goodell begins by saying, “I want to address a subject that many of us have discussed together, not only this week but for many years.”

=> ↺ Baseball Players Can’t Live on “a Cup of Coffee”

• You’ve probably never heard of DeRond Stovall, Doug Simons, Bill Bathe, or Dave Stegman. Stovall currently is a Starbucks trainer in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Simons coaches baseball at a small college in Georgia. Bathe is a retired firefighter and paramedic in Tucson, Arizona. Stegman just retired as an actuary with an insurance company in Ohio. All four are former Major League Baseball (MLB) players. Yet, with the 2022 major league baseball season currently in limbo because of the club owners’ locking out the players, it is players like Stovall, Simons, Bathe, and Stegman that fans should be thinking about rather than the multimillion-dollar stars.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ ‘Time for Him to Go’: Ron Johnson Says He Won’t Fight for Wisconsin Jobs

• Republican Sen. Ron Johnson faced a torrent of backlash over the weekend for publicly admitting that he won’t pressure a Wisconsin manufacturer to locate around 1,000 new jobs in his home state rather than in South Carolina, which has some of the most anti-union labor laws in the nation.

• “Johnson just said he wouldn’t lift a finger to make sure the new USPS truck is built here in Wisconsin.”

=> ↺ Hypocrisy Rules As Companies Try To Smear New FTC Nomination Alvaro Bedoya

• Throughout the Trump administration, a lot of folks had absolutely no problem with the mindless rubber-stamps appointed to key regulatory positions. Ajit Pai, for example, couldn’t have demonstrated regulatory capture any more clearly, rubber-stamping every idiotic whim of telecom monopolies at every conceivable opportunity (often with the help of fabricated data and fraud). Revolving door regulation and unqualified industry lackey appointments hit a fevered pitch not seen at any point in U.S. history, and at every step a long list of organizations and individuals made it abundantly clear they were fine with all of it.

=> ↺ Opinion | Now Every Day Is January 6: Trump Targets the ‘Vote Counters’

• Next time, former President Donald Trump may not even have to ask.

=> ↺ Big Enough

=> ↺ Democrats Are Facing an Uphill Battle

• Democrats are in retreat as they head into this election year. In a stark display of the party’s lack of confidence in its prospects in November’s midterms, 29 House Democrats have announced that they won’t be running for reelection. Given the party’s razor-thin majorities, Joe Biden’s sinking popularity, and the fact that the party of the sitting president almost always suffers losses in midterm elections, it looks as though the Democrats are going to get eviscerated if they don’t quickly change course.

=> ↺ Opinion | The Antiwar Movement That Could Not End a War

• When I urge my writing students to juice up their stories, I tell them about “disruptive technologies,” inventions and concepts that end up irrevocably changing industries. Think: iPhones, personal computers, or to reach deep into history, steamships. It’s the tech version of what we used to call a paradigm shift. (President Biden likes to refer to it as an inflection point.)

=> ↺ The Blockade Against Cuba Turns 60

• On February 2, 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy called his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, and gave him an urgent task: “I need a lot of [Cuban] cigars.” “How many, Mr. President?” “About a thousand,” Kennedy replied. Salinger visited the best-stocked stores in Washington and got 1,200 H. Upmann Petit Corona cigars rolled by hand in the fertile plains of Pinar del Río, at the western end of the island.

• “The next morning, I walked into my White House office at about 8 a.m., and the direct line from the President’s office was already ringing,” Salinger told Cigar Aficionado magazine years later. “‘How did you do, Pierre?’ he asked, as I walked through the door. ‘Very well,’ I answered. … Kennedy smiled, and opened up his desk. He took out a long paper which he immediately signed. It was the decree banning all Cuban products from the United States. Cuban cigars were now illegal in our country.”

=> ↺ US Sanctions on Afghanistan May Kill More Than 20 Years of War

• But if more Americans knew how many innocent civilians actually die as a result of these sanctions, would the worst of them be permitted?

• We may be about to find out in Afghanistan. Sanctions currently imposed on the country are on track to take the lives of more civilians in the coming year than have been killed by 20 years of warfare. There’s no hiding it any more.

=> ↺ Biden White House Unveils Plan to Bolster Unions as Membership Falls

• The Biden White House on Monday unveiled a report detailing steps that federal agencies can take to strengthen the collective bargaining rights of public- and private-sector U.S. workers as corporate America continues its decades-long, highly effective assault on labor unions.

• Compiled by a task force headed by Vice President Kamala Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, the 45-page report lays out nearly 70 policy recommendations aimed at boosting U.S. union membership, which fell by 241,000 workers in 2021 despite historically high public support for organized labor.

=> ↺ White House Plans to Implement New Guidelines Making It Easier to Unionize

=> ↺ Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie Talk Abolition Feminism

=> ↺ Trump Took Letters From Kim Jong Un, Other Official Correspondence to Mar-a-Lago

=> ↺ Is Mike Pence Really the Future of the Republican Party?

• It was the speech the nation desperately needed.

=> ↺ Calling a Spad a Spad

• Last week the mainstream media was full of stories of “top aides” quitting Downing Street. But typically the real scandal was entirely missed – the fact that ever-increasing numbers of unqualified and unelected political hacks are given positions of real power, and large salaries, at public expense.

=> ↺ It’s Time for Black Experts to Be Heard

• From 1975 to 2016, the increase in Black doctoral recipients among US citizens and permanent residents, across every major field of study, outpaced white doctoral recipients. Additionally, Black doctoral recipients are more likely to be first-generation students. Nonetheless, public discourse has long ignored Black experts, who often understand how compounding crises are confounded by demographic and socioeconomic differences. For example, William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University, noted how the Federal Reserve missed early signs of the Great Recession because it did not listen to warnings from Black economists. More than a decade later, very little has changed.

=> ↺ At Least 80 Pro-Trump “Big Lie” Believers Are Running for State Offices

=> ↺ French politician indicted after criticising Islamism

• The RN MEP pointed out that his indictment came at a time when “we learn that journalists (from M6) and a Roubaix resident (the lawyer Amine Elbahi, who testified on M6) have been placed under police protection”. This was because they had “described the reality and highlighted the advance of Islamism in the city of Roubaix” via a report on the Zone Interdite programme on Islamism, broadcast on M6 on Sunday January 23.

=> ↺ Big 4 firms share record loot from government after another round of bribes (donations)

• The scam is the Big 4, which are the biggest winners from the outsourcing of the public service, collected $1.74bn for giving advice to government over 18 months. Last year they “donated” $670,570 to the major political parties of $670,570. Job done.

• This is the same crew which claims to act as the gatekeepers of commerce – auditing most of the financial statements of the world largest corporations while also advising them how to dodge tax, and while dodging tax themselves but not producing any financial statements. They are partnerships, not companies, you see.

=> ↺ Zim partners foreign firm to collect taxes from companies like Facebook. Who is this partner?

• The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) is responsible for collecting taxes and other revenues for the govt. But believe it or not, even with over a thousand employees, they are still understaffed. In a mostly informal economy, Zimra would have to employ half the population to keep track of every business venture in the country. Hence why we ended up getting the 2% tax.

• Now, the 2% tax was not the last of our finance minister’s revenue generating innovations. He also introduced taxes on companies that provide digital advertising, content, cloud computing, e-commerce, gambling, betting, gaming and cryptocurrency services to Zimbabweans. Seeing as the global economy is ever going digital, this move made all the sense in the world.

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ The Town That QAnon Nearly Swallowed

• Dr. Allison Berry sits at a table at the Rainshadow Café in downtown Sequim (pronounced “Squim”), a 110-mile drive northwest of Seattle, describing the tsunami of hatred that has come her way during the pandemic. She’s young, smiles a lot, wears woolen sweaters and scarves, and has been the health officer for Clallam and Jefferson counties since 2018; before that, she was a doctor at a local clinic run by the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe.

=> ↺ “Debate me” bros in the age of COVID-19 disinformation

• On this blog, I like to think that I go beyond just refuting misinformation with facts and science. In addition to that, I try to inoculate our readers with critical thinking skills by discussing the tactics of disinformation and misinformation. One of the most common tactics is to challenge a scientist or science advocate to a “live public debate” about the topic in question, whether it be the claim that vaccines cause autism (they don’t), whether HIV causes AIDS (it does), regarding “integrative medicine” or “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), or antivaxxers trying to trap me. Regular readers no doubt can recount why quacks, cranks, pseudoscience-promoters, and conspiracy theorists have the advantage in these debates—”Gish gallop” anyone? —but there are other reasons why science deniers gravitate towards this particular tactic. Sometimes the motivations are dishonest, but more often they are not, being based instead on the false idea that such “debates” are a fair and democratic method to settle a question, whether there is a real scientific debate or not. (Almost always, there is not.) Given that I’ve been seeing a rash of challenges to a “debate” coming from COVID-19 contrarian and antivaccine social media personalities and doctors, I decided that now would be a good time to address this common tactic again.

=> ↺ Information wars: are we getting a fair view of China’s treatment of Uyghurs?

• Genocide or puffery and clickbait? Independent journalism is the touchstone of MWM. So when a widespread narrative about China is challenged, who better than former China correspondent for The Australian, Michael Sainsbury, to sort the wheat from the propaganda chaff?

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ At Beijing Olympics, China & IOC Accused of “Sportswashing” Amid Uyghur Abuses, Peng Shuai Censorship

• Human rights advocates say renewed international attention for China during the Winter Olympics should focus on rampant human rights violations occurring across the country. It is incumbent upon the International Olympic Committee to deny countries the bid to host if they violate their citizens’ human rights, says Jules Boykoff, author and former member of the U.S. Olympic soccer team. While many have commended China’s “zero-COVID policy,” the emphasis on keeping infection rates low is distracting from other kinds of suffering, adds Yaqiu Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch.

=> ↺ Russian Teacher ‘Forced To Quit Job’ For Reading Poems By Authors Persecuted Under Stalin

• A Russian teacher says she was forced to quit her job at a school in the city of St. Petersburg after she read poems to her class by two authors who had been persecuted during Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s purge in the 1930s and 1940s.

• Serafima Saprykina wrote on Facebook on February 6 that the school’s principal forced her to leave her job after she read poems by Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedensky during one of her lessons with 10th graders, even though the school’s deputy principal had approved the lesson.

Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ New Forms of Advertising Raise Questions About Journalistic Integrity

• These specific advertisements are called “native advertising,” but are also tagged as “sponsored content,” “partner post” or other labels consumers don’t understand. They look like news articles, with headlines, photos with captions and polished text. But really they are ads created by, or on behalf of, a paying advertiser.

• With declining revenue from traditional display advertising and classified ads, news outlets are increasingly relying on native advertising – a sector in which U.S. spending was expected to reach $57 billion by the end of 2021.

=> ↺ AssangeDAO raises $38M in donations to help free WikiLeaks founder

• A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) set up to support the liberation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from prison has raised 12,569 Ether (ETH) or around $38.8 million at current prices.

• Assange is currently fighting extradition to the United States following a court ruling in December that overruled a British court ruling barring extradition. He is currently locked up in a London prison where he has been since 2019.

=> ↺ Editors to protesters: Let reporters do their job

• In a statement issued on Monday, Finland’s Association of Editors (PTY) points out that the media is not a party to protests, and that both demonstrations and a freely functioning media are elements of a democratic society.

• Reporters covering the Convoy Finland 2022 protests in central Helsinki this past weekend said they faced verbal and physical harassment as they went about their jobs. According to the Association of Editors the harassment was particularly experienced by camera crews and journalists providing live coverage. On Friday, protestors stole microphones twice from an Iltalehti reporter, and tried to do the same to Yle reporters.

=> ↺ Assange-Pak NFT raises US $39 million ahead of auction today

• The much-anticipated auction of NFT collection ‘Censored’, a collaboration between political prisoner Julian Assange and renowned artist Pak will launch today, the same day set by the UK Supreme Court for Julian Assange to file his appeal against US extradition.

=> ↺ Assange-Pak NFT raises over $40 million ahead of auction today

• The collection consists of two parts: an auction of a single artwork ‘Clock’ (1 of 1) and a separate pay-what-you-like Open Edition.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ America COMPETES Act Ignores Social Needs, Feeds Tensions With China: Analysis

• A researcher at a progressive think tank warned Monday that a bill passed last week by the House of Representatives “stokes future U.S.-China conflict” while prioritizing spending on militarized technology at the expense of “urgent human needs.” 

• “The bill is framed heavily in terms of national security and competition with China and could easily pave the way for boosting the already massive military budget in years to come.”

=> ↺ You Can’t Have the State Highway Your Way

• It’s true that “in a properly functioning market, consumers express their preferences through the prices they pay.” Yet Hanley tacitly implies that renewable options are a luxury. This has been asserted outright by John Stossel: “The market didn’t arbitrarily pick oil as the dominant source of energy.”

• R. Buckminster Fuller observed that the ability of fossil fuels to burn quickly after being formed over far vaster stretches of time makes them an “energy savings account.” The short-term benefit doesn’t reflect their limited supply, with the “fabulous energy-income wealth” of renewable alternatives untapped.

=> ↺ Court Grants Qualified Immunity To Officer Who Told Couple To Take Down Facebook Post About Off-Duty Cop Who Shot Their Dog

• This case — sent to us by Eric Goldman — touches on a lot of subject matter covered frequently at Techdirt: dead dogs, police officers, the First Amendment, and qualified immunity. Yet the narrative isn’t quite what’s expected given the elements. And the court’s conclusions, while disappointing, are likely the correct application of the law.

=> ↺ With Alabama Ruling, SCOTUS Delivers ‘Another Major Blow’ to Voting Rights Act

• Voting rights advocates in Congress and across the United States reiterated the need for stronger federal voting rights laws after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed Alabama’s GOP-drawn, racially gerrymandered congressional map to stay in place.

• “Congress cannot sit by and watch as Americans’ most fundamental democratic freedoms are eviscerated by right-wing partisan justices.”

=> ↺ Ways to End a Race

• The first one, the cruelest, is under torture and hateful beatings. A public lynching, with assistance under the sun, beer and passivity. If a black man is being beaten to death, he has done something. In fact, black people are always doing something wrong.

• So it was with Moïse Kabagambe, who was working in Rio de Janeiro at a beach kiosk. His mistake, his petulance… his folly was not to recognize his place, when he charged two days’ pay for his work. For what? He was brutalized by five barbarians who destroyed him with pieces of wood and a baseball bat. One of the killers said that he “decided to vent his anger” and that he hit the Congolese man with a baseball bat.

=> ↺ Preparing for a Season in the Political Wilderness

• Times to try our souls. And to prepare for darker times ahead.

• I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. I’ve worked for progressive change most of my life. Today it feels as if dark forces are overwhelming efforts to leave our children a world that is not a dystopian nightmare. What can we do facing such a bleak situation?

=> ↺ Toxic “Leadership”: The Other Pandemic That Afflicts Us

• In the abstract, toxicity and leadership are antithetical, oxymoronic. True leadership is about motivating others, inspiring them, to follow willingly. To follow unwillingly is to bow to the fear of coercion. To follow conditionally – I scratch your back, you scratch mine – is to give in to the self-serving bribery we euphemize as persuasion. But truly leading is qualitatively different, a supremely more elevated form of human interaction than we commonly experience. It’s about being out in front rather than on top; about eliciting willing deference from others because they want to, not because they feel they have to; about synching the hearts and minds – even the souls – of followers by the exemplary example a leader sets.

• Where the poison of toxicity is at play, true leadership is absent. That, regrettably, is much more the norm than the exception today – not only in this country, its institutions, organizations, and communities, but abroad as well; at all levels of human interaction. Its paragon, of course, was and is Donald Trump, foremost practitioner, proponent, propagator, and embodiment. But it didn’t – and doesn’t – begin or end there. We have all experienced it in varying degrees, in various forms, at various times in our careers and our lives. It’s everywhere: in the organizations and institutions of politics and government, business, sports and entertainment, the media, education, medicine, even religion. It has been celebritized, commercialized, commoditized as a practice. If you want to understand the underlying causes of the manifold divisions afflicting this country today, for example, look no farther. It is, unquestionably, the defining sign of our times – a crisis of pandemic proportions; and January 6, 2021, was its political apotheosis.

=> ↺ First Nations Land Defenders File Submission to UN Human Rights Council

• First Nations land defenders on Monday filed a submission to the United Nations detailing how their territory and human rights are being violated by Canadian and British Columbian authorities in service of a fossil fuel corporation’s gas pipeline.

• “We are intimidated and surveilled by armed RCMP, smeared as terrorists, and dragged through colonial courts. This is the reality of Canada.”

=> ↺ The Chicano Guernica

• In a similar fashion to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, a painted protest against a fascist Inter-state (Germany and Spain) brutal violence towards a Basque town (Guernica) resisting the Spanish Franco regime dictatorship in 1937[1], Fernando Barragan took the brush and squared off on canvas with energetic strokes the multiple challenges faced by Latin@/ Chican@ communities: police brutality, state and gang violence, discrimination, immigration issues, exploitation and racisms. A victim to gang and state violence himself, Barragan carries over the impact/trauma on inter family relations and children growing up under such conditions into this artwork. Unlike Picasso’s cubist style of painting, Barragan is closer to Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco’s dramatic figurative work on canvas and walls. He shares the striking style of Orozco and Picasso’s tragedy interpretation of war, despair and inhumane ideologies based on biological classifications and a civilizing norm of violence inherited in modern societies/cultures.  Barragan’s canvas mural is a plea to all those involved in the creation of communities, in the deconstruction of alternative humane ways of living and being  to stop, reflect and catch up with our deepest desire to build healthy environments and find respectful means of understanding ourselves as a community.

• No Somos Animales depicts a community that can well be interpreted as a scene in Palestine, in India, in Chiapas, In U.S African American spaces, In Guatemala, in Chile with the Mapuche indigenous people or any other place or space in the world facing violence. Although its interpretation is about a particular Chican@ space, nevertheless it contains a universal conversation.  The Chicano Guernica in No Somos Animales contains the same concerns of those by African artist Dumile Feni’s painting titled, African Guernica (1967): war and its effects.[2] For Feni it was the trauma and devastation of colonial wars on African people and the African continent. For Barragan it is the war waged on Chican@/ Latin@ and immigrant communities by the modern state. When Chicana artists Margaret Garcia reached out to Barragan for an art piece that enacted a protest for a play, Barragan shared in his own words that he “wasn’t going to provide a protest. I was going to give them a riot.” It is a strong timeless political statement made by Barragan towards the powers be and in particular to individuals. He invites us to examine what is community? How are we building community and who leads communities?  Latin American philosopher Juan Jose Bautista S. reminds us that for the most part modern societies are made of individuals vs. communities. This contradiction between community and individuals is a deep divide towards the collective potential in many communities that can aid against the egoistic tendencies embedded in modern neoliberal cultures by rescuing the collective virtue known as solidarity. This brings up the following question as to how a community interprets itself. Is it as subject to subject or is it a subject /object relation?

=> ↺ A Manifesto for Dignity in a Digital Age

• Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley in Congress. Over the years, he has come to greatly admire the creativity of its entrepreneurs, their ability to get things done quickly (so unlike the sluggish pace of Congress), and their tremendous capacity for wealth generation. These, he believes, are qualities our democracy needs. And since ours is a digital age, our democracy particularly needs the work those qualities achieve in Silicon Valley.

=> ↺ Migrants Have Right to Truth Commission and Reparations for Abuses at US Border

=> ↺ Not talked about on TV Five years after Russia decriminalized domestic violence, women’s aid groups are busier than ever. Officials continue to sweep the problem under the rug.

• Exactly five years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that decriminalized some forms of domestic violence. Since then, victims have been unable to press criminal charges for domestic battery unless it’s at least the abuser’s second offense — first time offenders only face administrative fines, ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 rubles ($66 to $400). To find out what impact this legislation has had on Russia’s domestic violence problem, Meduza spoke to Diana Barsegyan — the deputy director of the aid group Nasiliu.net (No to Violence).

=> ↺ Slut shaming: Model Sabeeka Imam threatened with acid attack, death

• Famous model Sabeeka Imam is the latest celebrity to receive death and rape threats online. The award-winning model took to social media and shared screenshots where someone had tagged her in a post where an Instagram user had tried intimidating Sabeeka with horrifying threats.

• The model shared the screenshot on her profile and went on to add that she has contacted relevant authorities about the threats. Sabeeka, while posting the screenshot, tagged the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Cybercrime and British Council Pakistan.

=> ↺ ‘Girls know their rights now’: Fighting female genital mutilation in Kenya

• In the run-up to the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation on Sunday, countries around the world are calling for an end to the globally condemned practice. In Kenya, around 4 million women and girls have been subjected to FGM, according to the United Nations.

=> ↺ Rate of female genital mutilation is 11 percent in Hewler and 4.9 percent in Raperîn

• The report was released on World Day Against Female Genital Mutilation. Articles 19 and 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the United Nations (UN) in 1989, do not allow female genital mutilation.

• The German Wadi organization conducted a survey on female genital mutilation in girls and women from 0 to 20 in Hewler and Raperîn, in the province of Sulaymaniyah in 2021.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Kia, Subaru Disable Useful Car Features, Blames Mass. Right To Repair Law

• In late 2020, Massachusetts lawmakers (with overwhelming public support) passed an expansion of the state’s “right to repair” law. The original law was the first in the nation to be passed in 2013. The update dramatically improved it, requiring that, as of this year, all new telematics-equipped vehicles be accessible via a standardized, transparent platform that allows owners and third-party repair shops to access vehicle data via a mobile device. The goal: reduce repair monopolies, and make it cheaper and easier to get your vehicle repaired.

=> ↺ Spotify’s Business Model Is Screwing Over Musicians and Ruining Music

• This ought not to surprise anyone. In 2020, the company entered into an exclusive and lucrative $100 million contract with Rogan and his library of more than a decade of podcast episodes. Rogan recently interviewed anti-vaccine activist Robert Malone—a man who was banned from Twitter for violating its guidelines on COVID-19 misinformation. The interview was so controversial that even YouTube banned it.

• Still, Spotify chose Rogan over Young. And over Joni Mitchell, India Arie, and even Crosby, Stills, and Nash, who followed suit in pulling their music. It did so because the bottom line for the company is preserving its profits, and it appears to see Rogan’s show as more financially valuable than the entire catalogs of legendary musicians.

=> ↺ Middle Eastern Streaming Giant Anghami Makes NASDAQ Debut Following SPAC Merger

• Abu Dhabi-headquartered Anghami revealed the closure of its merger with Vistas Media Acquisition Company via a formal release, and the post-deal company’s shares arrived on NASDAQ (as “ANGH,” with warrants listed as “ANGHW”) this morning. At the time of publishing – with about three hours until market close – ANGH was hovering just above $14, for a gain of more than 16 percent. Shares briefly surged to $17 apiece when the market opened.

• Execs at 10-year-old Anghami acknowledged their company’s stock-market debut in an additional release today, touting the platform’s regional reach (“around 58% of the market share in the Middle East”), 72 million-track library, and 75 million registered users.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Episode 3: Open Culture VOICES – Temitope Odumosu

• New week, new episode of Open Culture VOICES! VOICES is 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.  On episode three, we’re joined by Dr. Temitope Odumosu, art historian, curator and senior lecturer in cultural studies at Malmö University in Sweden. Her international research and cultural practice is concerned with the representation of African peoples, visual and affective politics of slavery and colonialism, colonial archives and archiving, Afro-Diaspora aesthetics, and more broadly exploring how art mediates social transformation and healing.

=> ↺ Search Engines Will Deindex All Domains That Have 100+ Links to Pirated Content

• Major rightsholders and internet companies in Russia have signed a new memorandum of cooperation designed to make pirated movies, TV shows and other content harder to find. In addition to automatically removing reported infringing links within hours, search engines have agreed to completely deindex all domains that carry 100 or more links to infringing content.

=> ↺ Member of Scene Piracy Group SPARKS Gets 22-Month Prison Sentence

• A key member of Scene piracy group SPARKS has been sentenced to 22 months in prison. The 52-year-old Brit George Bridi, who pleaded guilty, apologized and showed remorse for his wrongdoing at a New York federal court. The sentence is lower than the 27 to 33-month term the U.S. Attorney had asked for.

=> ↺ Danish Torrent Tracker Admin Gets Conditional Prison Sentence

• A 43-year-old man has been handed a three months conditional prison sentence for his involvement with the Danish torrent tracker Asgaard. The man, who is seen as one of the driving forces behind the now-defunct site, helped to set up and manage servers and also helped with coding. Several other defendants connected to the site will have their day in court later this year.

=> ↺ Consolidation Strategies Emerge For The Big 3 In Gaming: Nintendo Looks Like It Doesn’t Want To Play

• We’ve been talking a bit about industry consolidation through mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the video game industry as of late. The impetus for that discussion has been a series of high-profile acquisitions for several notable companies, namely Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft acquired Zenimax for $7 billion and Activision Blizzard King for a bonkers $69 billion recently, while Sony jumped into the game by acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion. Of interest for these pages is the different approaches these companies have taken with these acquisitions. Microsoft hemmed and hawed about whether it would start building Microsoft exclusivity for products from its acquisitions, eventually landing on very much embracing exclusivity, while Sony took a much more hands-off approach and stated plainly that Bungie games would still be cross-platform. For those of us interested in digital and technology economies and business models, this is interesting stuff.

=> ↺ Australia Pays $20 Million To Buy The Copyright Of Aboriginal Flag, But It’s Still Not Public Domain

• Over a decade ago, we wrote about how Google had to edit out the Australian Aboriginal flag from a logo because of copyright concerns. An 11-year-old girl had won a contest to design a Google logo for Australia Day, and her logo included a simple drawing of the popular Aboriginal flag. Harold Thomas created a (fairly simple) flag design “as a symbol of unity and national identity” for the Aboriginal people in Australia. The flag became quite popular… and then Thomas basically became a copyright landlord, demanding payment for pretty much any usage.

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