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● 03.18.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 18/3/2022: FreeBSD 13.1 Beta 2 and Openwashing Goes to Court

Posted in News Roundup at 8:49 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Applications

=> ↺ Linux Candy: Emote – modern popup emoji picker

• The internet has rapidly transformed the way we communicate. Since body language and verbal tone are not conveyed in text messages or e-mails, we’ve developed alternate ways to convey nuanced meaning. The most prominent change to our online style has been the addition of two new-age hieroglyphic languages: emoticons and emoji.

• Emoji originated from the smiley, which first evolved into emoticons, followed by emoji and stickers in recent years. Smiley first appeared in the 1960s and is regarded as the first expression symbols. Smiley is a yellow face with two dots for eyes and a wide grin which is printed on buttons, brooches, and t-shirts.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ 10+ Basic Cat Command Examples In Linux [2022] | Itsubuntu.com

• cat command is used for various file management tasks like creating single or multiple files, viewing the content of a file, concatenating files, and redirecting output in terminal or files.

=> ↺ How to Install Pop!_OS on Raspberry Pi

• Ever desired a standalone operating system for your Raspberry Pi device with a clean desktop environment and an elegant graphical user-interface? Then you should try Pop! OS for your Raspberry Pi device. It’s an open source Linux distribution with a variety of features including stunning graphics, incredible gaming experience and an interactive learning environment for all the techs out there.

• It’s ideal fit for your Raspberry Pi device because of its fast and lightweight performance which do not damage your device CPU resources. The installation of Pop!_OS is not complicated and it will require only a few minutes to make itself ready on your Raspberry Pi device. This tutorial is introduced to provide you with the easiest method to install Pop!_OS on Raspberry Pi and if you want it for your device then you should look at the below guidelines.

=> ↺ How to Install Scrapy on Raspberry Pi

• When it comes to technical SEO, it might be hard to understand how your website works, and proper knowledge is required on how someone can improve their website by bringing a larger audience to it. In such cases, web crawlers will play an important role in optimizing the traffic.

• A web crawler, sometimes known as a web spider is a bot that searches the content on the Internet. To find the information, it crawls through several websites and search engines. It begins the search with a list of recognized websites and then crawls these sites first. Crawlers are typically used by search engines to index websites and then deliver relevant web pages based on keywords and phrases.

• There are numerous web crawlers available, but you should choose the one that works best for your Raspberry Pi device. Scrapy is an excellent choice in this regard, as it is a fast, simple, and open source web crawling framework designed specifically for web scraping. Because of its Python-based foundation, it provides extensible support for a wide range of operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and MAC.

=> ↺ Install a complete WordPress host in a Raspberry Pi

• Creting a personal blog can give a lot of satisfaction for all, but not all the times you can have enough money to afford the very first costs. With a WordPress on Raspberry PI you can start with the cost of a cheap boar

• When I received my first Raspberry PI Model A+, I was excited to test it by building up my home-made new WordPress host on it. And peppe8o.com started its very first days from an RPI hosting at home.

=> ↺ Install Ghost CMS on Ubuntu 20.04

• Today we will show you how to install Ghost CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 which is one of the best positioned rivals of WordPress. Let’s go for it.

• Ghost is a NodeJS-based CMS for creating blog oriented websites. While this means that it doesn’t have all the features of WordPress, it does make it very fast and simple to use. This makes it ideal for projects where we expect a lot of traffic or personal blogs.

• Being based on NodeJS means that we have to install it on a server along with nginx for access. For data management, we have MariaDB. So, we are talking about very popular and well-known programs.

=> ↺ How to Configure Two-Factor Authentication Raspberry Pi

• A lot of hustle and bustle is going around concerning the security of the Raspberry Pi device which is compromised when enabling the SSH feature on the device. Because, anyone can access your device from a remote location using your IP address and this will create a serious security risk for all the Raspberry Pi users out there. Each one of you requires a permanent solution to cope with this issue and a Two-Factor Authentication system will be a perfect option for your device as it will add extra security protection and prevent other users from accessing your device without your permission. The authentication system will function on your mobile device and it can be done through QR code or using a strong password. Well, if you are looking for help on how to make it happen, then you should follow this tutorial.

=> ↺ How to Fix Avrdude Stk500 Recv Programmer Is Not Responding Error

• When programming the microcontroller using the Arduino one can come across a number of errors especially when compiling and uploading the code to the Arduino board. The compiling errors mostly include syntax errors whereas errors during uploading of the program mainly include the connectivity issues of the Arduino board with the computer to which it is connected. The compiler errors are mostly highlighted by the Arduino IDE and are easy to resolve but the errors that occur at the time of uploading the code to the Arduino board are difficult to resolve. So we have discussed the error that is encountered by the users when uploading the code to the microcontroller.

=> ↺ Ping Command not found on Ubuntu Linux

• Does your system face an issue finding the ping command? Don’t worry; we have your issue resolved!

• In the modern era of computers, we are connected across multiple devices via various networks. These networks help establish connections across our devices like handhelds, desktop computers, watches, and many more. We can effortlessly send considerable chunks of data from one point to another across the globe using these services.

• This has all become possible due to computer communication using various networks. However, sometimes our computer may not be able to reach the desired network, resulting in a discontinuity in connection from a network. This is where the ping command comes in.

=> ↺ How to Setup Cayenne on Raspberry Pi

• There are lot of benefits to offer for the Raspberry Pi users unless they are well aware of what they are going to do next. In terms of building IoT projects on Raspberry Pi devices, you are obviously thinking of exploring different ways to create the projects and there you certainly need a platform which will ease your efforts. If you have massive quantity of sensor devices, actuators or other internet connected devices which you want to control from your Raspberry Pi device then you should need the services of Cayenne.

• The Cayenne is a mobile app and web platform that enable the users to step into the world of IoT projects. Once you have managed to set it up for your Raspberry Pi device, you can then be able to create numerous IoT projects offered in the Cayenne menu. It provides you the centralized environment to control your IoT devices on your fingertip with a single touch and go.

=> ↺ How to Integrate ONLYOFFICE Docs with Jitsi on Ubuntu

• Nowadays most Linux users have to switch between multiple applications all the time to get various tasks done. A web browser, an office suite, a PDF reader, a multimedia player, a video conferencing tool, a file manager, an image editor, and an email client are the minimum set of applications for everyday work. In some cases, you might need even more programs for more specific purposes.

• Switching between endless application programs to open the one you need can be very irritating sometimes. Just imagine being able to do a couple of different things using the interface of one solution. For example, editing a document and having a video call at once in the same window. This sounds enticing, doesn’t it?

• In this article, you will learn how to enable video conferencing and document editing on Ubuntu by integrating ONLYOFFICE Docs, an open-source office suite, and Jitsi, an open-source app for video and audio calls.

=> ↺ Upgrading Homelab Kubernetes Cluster from 1.22 to 1.23

• Calico 3.22 has been released with support for Kubernetes 1.23.

=> ↺ How to use KGraphEditor on Linux

• Graphs are a great way for visualizing, interpreting, and understanding data that would otherwise seem like a random group of numbers with no relation whatsoever. They allow you to find correlations between variables, predict values for unknown quantities, and present data in an easy-to-understand manner. If you’re someone working in any STEM field, chances are you encounter these graphs almost daily. Advancements in the field of programming have allowed us to implement these graphs in the form of sophisticated data structures.

• One of the most widely used graph description languages is DOT. DOT allows you to show relationships between different variables/objects easily to interpret.

• Essentially, you would require a file viewer and editor to work with these .dot files. Fortunately, we have just the application for you.

Games

=> ↺ Isometric party-based RPG Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness has launched | GamingOnLinux

• A party-based isometric RPG like the classics! Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness from GrapeOcean Technologies is out now with Linux support.

• “Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness. Explore a land plagued by war, pestilence and mysterious abductions, and uncover the hidden legacy of your birth. Recruit powerful allies to your cause; achieve your goals through sorcery, stealth, a silver tongue or brute force; and discover the truth of the Black Geyser.

• Developed by a small indie team and inspired by cRPG classics like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, Black Geyser features challenging real time tactical combat with pause, deep lore and memorable companions, all set in a sprawling, unique fantasy world.”

=> ↺ Ultra-fast FPS ‘REAVER’ has a new Playtest Demo up on Steam | GamingOnLinux

• More FPS goodness available to check out now, with a public Playtest Demo of REAVER up on Steam and it’s looking really quite promising but it’s very fast-paced. A little bit too fast for me personally but it’s got plenty of style you might enjoy.

• The developer just recently adjusted it for the Linux version, which initially wasn’t running due to some problems with Steam but now it seems to run quite nicely but they would still appreciate feedback from the Playtest.

=> ↺ It’s possible to stream PS4/PS5 games to your Steam Deck. Here’s how. – Invidious

=> ↺ The great space RPG ‘Star Traders: Frontiers’ gets some Steam Deck upgrades | GamingOnLinux

• Star Traders: Frontiers is a popular space adventure RPG from Trese Brothers and a new update is out, with some improvements ready for Steam Deck players.

• Announced on Steam, the developer mentioned a previous update that added tweaks for the Steam Deck screen, which they have now adjusted due to some unforeseen issue for regular players. Now instead there’s a dedicated “small screen display” option you can turn on, which will adjust the whole UI to give a better fit and clarity. Might even help those with old eyes even on bigger screens too.

=> ↺ GOG update their stance on DRM-free, Galaxy as ‘optional’ for single-player | GamingOnLinux

• The GOG team have confirmed in a new update on their plans for the store, and it seems they will continue to note that their Galaxy client is optional.

• It comes at an interesting time, since there was a bit of an issue with the HITMAN release that ended up being pulled down since it required online to do a lot and unlock a lot of things. GOG is well-known as the DRM-free store, and this isn’t exactly changing but they’re tweaking what they mean by it.

Distributions

BSD

=> ↺ FreeBSD 13.1-BETA2 Now Available

=> ↺ FreeBSD 13.1-BETA2 Now Available

=> ↺ Controlling Resource Limits with rctl in FreeBSD

• The tool (and service) to configure and enforce resource limits is the rctl(8) command and the /etc/rc.d/rctl service. The service(8) itself is very simple and just applies resource limits that are configured in the rctl.conf(5) file – which is located in /etc/rctl.conf.

• You can use rctl to manage consumption limits on many system resources, including but not limited to CPU utilization, process and shared memory, and total number of threads or processes.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu revamp its logo after 12 years

• The first impression of the new logo makes me wonder why Ubuntu needed to change the logo, which was looking far better in terms of visual appeal.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ 1.51-inch transparent OLED display works over GDI or SPI interface – CNX Software

• We’ve seen transparent, see-through displays at least since 2010 for retail applications, and over the years, these types of transparent displays or variants have made it to consumer devices like smartwatches and notch-free smartphones.

• But I don’t think I had ever seen transparent displays for the maker market, and DFRobot Fermion is 1.51-inch transparent OLED display with 128×64 resolution that is connected to the host MCU via SPI or GDI (General Display Interface) interface.

=> ↺ LOLIN C3 Mini ESP32-C3 board is compatible with Wemos D1 Mini shields – CNX Software

• Wemos LOLIN C3 Mini board is powered by Espressif ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V microcontroller and follows the company’s earlier Wemos D1 Mini (ESP8266) and LOLIN S2 Mini (ESP32-S2) form factor for compatibility with the original stackable Wemos D1 shields.

• The tiny board comes with 4MB flash embedded in the ESP32-C3 chip, a USB Type-C connector, reset and user buttons, as well as sixteen through holes for GPIOs, VBUS, 3.3V, and ground signals.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Restoring a Tadpole SPARCbook 3 Part 1: Introduction

• A previous series of articles followed the restoration of a SPARCstation IPX, noting how Sun UNIX workstations were a much-coveted object of geek desire in the early 1990s. However, Tadpole laptops which boasted a RISC processor were a great deal rarer than such workstations, with an almost legendary status and you were lucky if you even got to see one in the flesh.

• In this series of posts, we’ll take a look at restoring a third-generation Tadpole SPARCbook, which was introduced in 1994 at a starting cost of $10,950 — which with inflation would make the price tag equivalent to almost $20,000 or £15,000 in today’s money!

=> ↺ Open-Source Farming Robot Now Includes Simulations

• Farming is a challenge under even the best of circumstances. Almost all conventional farmers use some combination of tillers, combines, seeders and plows to help get the difficult job done, but for those like [Taylor] who do not farm large industrial monocultures, more specialized tools are needed. While we’ve featured the Acorn open source farming robot before, it’s back now with new and improved features and a simulation mode to help rapidly improve the platform’s software.

=> ↺ 170 research papers about teaching programming, summarised

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Bluetooth battery tester also serves as DC programmable load – CNX Software

=> ↺ Android Automotive logo quietly makes its debut in update – 9to5Google

=> ↺ The new Samsung Galaxy A53 5G promises four years of Android OS updates for $450 | Android Central

=> ↺ Best Swedish Casino Sites For Android Devices

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

Web

=> ↺ How to Use TinyCP?

• If you use Linux, you might be familiar with some control panel applications. Such applications provide an interface through which you can manage your system. Like any other built-in control panel, there are various settings and configurations that you can control using these applications. TinyCP is one of the control panel applications available to you. It is a lightweight web-based control panel that can be used to perform multiple administrative functions. With TinyCP, you can manage the software packages on your system, run various web applications, set up file sharing servers, manage emails, databases, and much more.

• Currently, TinyCP is available for Ubuntu and Debian users only. If you use either of these and wonder how to set up and use TinyCP as your primary system control panel, you have come to the right place as we will explain everything from installing to performing some basic functions TinyCP.

=> ↺ Mozilla Addons Blog: A new API for submitting and updating add-ons

• The addons.mozilla.org (AMO) external API has offered add-on developers the ability to submit new add-on versions for signing for a number of years, in addition to being available to get data about published add-ons directly or internally inside Firefox.

=> ↺ Tor in the News, 2021

• For the past few years, we’ve shared a post in early February summarizing the news and coverage related to Tor that was published during the previous year. This year, we’re a bit late, and we apologize, but there’s a good reason— we have been busy making sure censored people have access to Tor and teaching others how to help censored users by installing the Snowflake web extension.

• In 2021, we announced three new Tor Board Members: Alissa Cooper, Desigan Chinniah, and Kendra Albert. We shared our plans to build a ‘VPN like’ service to help mobile users connect their apps through Tor, starting with Android, at our 2021 State of the Onion. And at the end of the year, we presented at CCC, where we shared about the Network Health team’s work to make our network safer. We also spoke about the importance of Snowflake in the ‘arms race’ against censorship and the new censorship user experience features we will launch this year.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ PHP version 8.0.17 and 8.1.4 – Remi’s RPM repository – Blog

• RPMs of PHP version 8.1.4 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 34 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky…) and in remi-php81 repository for EL 7.

• RPMs of PHP version 8.0.17 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 34 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky…) and in remi-php80 repository for EL 7.

=> ↺ Node.js community update | Red Hat Developer

• The Red Hat Node.js team dedicates a lot of time to working in the Node.js community and contributing upstream. This is a quick update on some of the interesting things going on in the project as we start 2022.

=> ↺ Qt 6 QML Book Updates

• The Qt 6 QML Book is about QML and related topics such as how to integrate languages such as C++ and Python to QML, the Qt for MCUs offering, and more. It has been a few months since the last update, so we’re going to talk about what happened since the last time around. If you want to go ahead and start reading immediately, you can find the free online book here.

=> ↺ Postgres update multiple columns

• Postgresql provides a facility for the user to update the already present data by using an update command. This command is used to update single and multiple columns in a single command. This article will contain some examples to elaborate on the working of an UPDATE statement for single or multiple columns.

=> ↺ Latex Right Arrow

• Directions are indicated by arrow characters, which are globally recognized. Using upward-pointing arrows to show an expansion in a specific number and downward-pointing arrows to represent a drop is common. Because we don’t have Arrow Characters on our keyboard, we have to encode arrows in Latex Script.

• One of those arrows is the “right” arrow. Therefore, we have decided to cover the Latex examples to create right-directional arrows. Let’s start your terminal with Ubuntu’s shortcut “Ctrl+Alt+t”. After opening Ubuntu’s terminal application, try to update your system with the “apt” package within the “update” instruction.

=> ↺ How to Use min() Function in MATLAB

• The following article explains how to use the min() function in MATLAB® to obtain the minimum element of an array and its main characteristics. The different ways of using the options that this function offers for the treatment of data in two-dimensional arrays will also be detailed. This topic includes practical examples and images to help you understand how the min() function works in MATLAB.

=> ↺ Memcmp in C

• Memory is the very main part of any program when you have a larger amount of code on your tool. Same like that, the C language comes in very handy to compare the memory size of more than 1 variable in the code. It comes up with the “memcmp” function to perform this single task i.e., compare the memory size of two variables, strings.

• It will check whether the initial “n” characters of the variable indicated as the first string are fewer than, equivalent to, or larger than the initial “n” characters of the other variable i.e., string. The memcmp method returns a negative, zero, or a positive integer in the C Language. This article has been utilized to understand the memcmp() function of C in the code. Thus, let’s get started with the terminal.

=> ↺ sq JSON: first sketch

• Would you like to use Sequoia sq from your script? We’d like your feedback.

• I’m sketching what the JSON output of sq might look like. We in the Sequoia project would like to make sure the JSON serves you well and is convenient for your code to consume. This blog post outlines the principles of how JSON output is meant to work, and has a concrete example of what it’s meant to look like. Your feedback would very much be appreciated.

Python

=> ↺ Enrico Zini: Context-dependent logger in Python

Rust

=> ↺ How to Use Enums in Rust

• Enumerations or enums allow us to define a type and select a value from a list of possible variants within the list.

• In this article, we will explore how to work with enums in the Rust programming language.

Java

=> ↺ How to beautify your Java applications | Opensource.com

• I love that Java lets me write applications on one platform and run them on other platforms. You don’t have to mess around with platform-specific SDKs, using a different library for that one platform, or inserting little code hacks to make that other platform behave. To me, that’s how easy all modern programming ought to be. There’s great infrastructure around Java, too, like the Maven build system and SDKMan.

• But there’s one thing about Java I don’t love: the look and feel of its default GUI toolkit, called Swing. While some people feel there’s a charming nostalgia to Swing, for the modern computerist, it can look a little dated.

=> ↺ File Handling in Java

• Java is ruling the programming world because of its extraordinary features, and extensive support for different functionalities such as databases, file handling, sockets, etc. If we talk about File Handling, it is considered as one of the most significant parts of any application because it allows us to create, modify, read, and remove any file.

=> ↺ How to Create/Write a File in Java?

• Java provides a predefined class named “File” which can be found in the java.io package. The File class assists us in working with the files as it provides a wide range of methods such as mkdir(), getName(), and many more. If we talk about file creation and writing to the file, the createNewFile(), and write() methods of the File and FileWriter classes can be used respectively.

=> ↺ How to delete a file in Java

• Java provides a File class that contains an extensive number of built-in file handling methods such as createNewFile(), mkdir(), getAbsolutePath() and so on. Each method performs some specific functionality, for example createNewFile() creates a new empty file, mkdir() creates a directory, etc. If we talk about the file deletion, the File class provides the delete() method that can be used either to delete a file or to remove an empty folder.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Displaced

Education

=> ↺ A professor found his exam questions posted online. He’s suing the students responsible for copyright infringement.

• In January, Chapman University business professor David Berkovitz was scrolling through Course Hero, a website where students share documents from college classes, when he came across a call-out for help on test questions that looked strikingly familiar. They were prompts he had written for a midterm and a final exam for his business law class during the previous school year.

• “He recognized his very unique fact patterns,” Marc Hankin, Berkovitz’s attorney, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “He found what he believes to be evidence that one or more students were seeking and receiving help actually during the exams last spring.”

Hardware

=> ↺ 3D-Printed Parts Let You Assemble Your Own Biggest Fan

• It’s getting close to the time of year when we need to start carefully vetting projects here at Hackaday. After all, nobody likes to get punked by an early April Fool’s joke. But as silly as this outsized PC fan looks, it sure seems like a legit build, if a bit on the pointless side.

=> ↺ Tracked RC Vehicle Is (Mostly) 3D Printed

• While wheels might seem like a foundational technology, they do have one major flaw: they typically need maintained roads in order to work. Anyone who has experience driving a Jeep or truck off-road likely knows this first-hand. For those with extreme off-road needs the track is often employed. [Let’s Print] is working on perfecting his RC tracked vehicle to take advantage of these perks using little more than 3D printed parts and aluminum stock.

=> ↺ 3D Printed Molds For Casting Rose’s Metal

• Have you ever played with Rose’s metal? It’s a fusible alloy of bismuth, lead, and tin with a low melting point of around 100 °C. Historically, it’s been used as a solder for cast iron railings and things, and as a malleable pipe filler material to prevent crimping while a pipe is bent.

=> ↺ Remoticon 2021 // Arsenijs Tears Apart Your Laptop

• Hackaday’s own [Arsenijs Picugins] has been rather busy hacking old laptops apart and learning what can and cannot be easily reused, and presents for the 2021 Hackaday Remoticon, a heavily meme-loaded presentation with some very practical advice.

=> ↺ Doubled Up 3D Printer Upgrade Doubles The Fun

• [Nathan] from Nathan Builds Robots on YouTube is no stranger to modding 3D printers, whether it’s a good idea or not, it’s just fun to find out sometimes. His latest escapade he calls the Double Ender (video, embedded below), where he not only doubles up the hotend, but the doubles up a few other bits too. The aim was to achieve dual material printing, with his specific goal to combine plain nylon and carbon fiber-loaded nylon in the same print, to get the best properties of both materials.

=> ↺ Owning A ShortWave Radio Is Once Again A Subversive Activity

• An abiding memory for a teen fascinated by electronics and radio in the 1970s and 1980s is the proliferation of propaganda stations that covered the shortwave spectrum. Some of them were slightly surreal such as Albania’s Radio Tirana which would proudly inform 1980s Western Europe that every village in the country now possessed a telephone, but most stations were the more mainstream ideological gladiating of Voice of America and Radio Moscow.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Contaminated water of river flows from Slovakia into Hungary – authorities monitor the situation

=> ↺ ‘The World Paid the Price’: Biden’s Outgoing Covid Czar Rebuked Over Failures

• Progressives on Thursday welcomed the announcement that Jeffrey Zients will step down as White House Covid-19 czar, with the head of a leading consumer advocacy group accusing him of failing the world by refusing to “challenge Big Pharma’s monopoly control” over lifesaving vaccines.

• “Zients refused to pay appropriate attention to global solutions to the global pandemic, because of political concerns or otherwise.”

=> ↺ An Overhaul of Prison Health Care Is Long Overdue

• “Medical is a joke,” said Davide Coggins, currently imprisoned at Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in New York’s Washington County. “Unless you have diabetic issues or something simply attended to, you will suffer and decay before you get some type of treatment, if any.” This story was published in partnership with New York Focus, an independent news site investigating power in New York state and city. Sign up for their newsletter here.

=> ↺ The US Is Facing a Maternal Health Crisis. Climate Change Is Making It Worse.

• Esther McCant, a doula in Miami, has visited clients in sweltering apartments without air-conditioning. She has seen them exhausted from long days working on their feet in the South Florida heat. In 2017, she even helped one client, who was well into her third trimester, evacuate during a hurricane. This article originally appeared in Nexus Media News and was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

=> ↺ FAO Economist Warns of Ukraine Conflict Toll on Food Security

• On the basis of their already elevated baseline values, wheat price would increase by 8.7 percent in a moderate-shock scenario and by 21.5 percent in a severe-shock scenario, the FAO chief economist estimated.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ Emotet Malware Sending Emails Disguised as IRS

• Emotet is malware that infects computers by hiding in malicious emails. The malware is hidden in Microsoft Word and Excel files.

=> ↺ Nextcloud gains Rocket.chat support to further elevate the platform into business heights

• Now, here’s the caveat. This integration is very much in the early stages of development. I’ve kicked the tires and found it to be far from ready for production environments. In fact, I’ve been unable to get the Nextcloud Rocket.chat app to connect to my in-house Rocket.chat server (which I can connect to with the Rocket.chat desktop app–so I know the server is working properly).

=> ↺ Supreme Court orders re-vote after iVote crash in NSW local government elections

• In delivering his judgement on Thursday afternoon, Justice Robert Beech-Jones declared the results in the three council areas void.

• “The primary consideration is the interest of the electorate,” Justice Beech-Jones said.

• “The cost, stress and inconvenience to the elected cannot be elevated above the electorates’ interest in having a council elected in accordance with the Local Government Act.”

=> ↺ Three NSW council election results scrapped due to digital voting issues

• The New South Wales Electoral Commission (NSWEC) applied to the Supreme Court for the results in three councils – Kempsey, Singleton and Shellharbour Ward A – to be scrapped due to this issue, and a judge agreed to void the votes on Thursday.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ False advertising to call software open source when it’s not, says court

• The Graph Foundation agreed [PDF] it would no longer claim specific versions of ONgDB, its Neo4j Enterprise Edition fork, are a “100 percent free and open source version” of Neo4J EE. And last month, two other companies challenged by Neo4j – PureThink and iGov – were also required by a court ruling to make similar concessions.

=> ↺ Pro-Ukraine ‘Protestware’ Pushes Antiwar Ads, Geo-Targeted Malware

• Researchers are tracking a number of open-source “protestware” projects on GitHub that have recently altered their code to display “Stand with Ukraine” messages for users, or basic facts about the carnage in Ukraine. The group also is tracking several code packages that were recently modified to erase files on computers that appear to be coming from Russian or Belarusian Internet addresses.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ EFF Tells E.U. Commission: Don’t Break Encryption

• The excuse for this attack on basic human rights is the same one we have seen used repeatedly in the U.S. over the last few years: crimes against children. This is the same excuse that sponsors of the anti-encryption EARN IT Act used in 2020, and again earlier this year. It’s the same excuse that was used to put overwhelming pressure on Apple to develop a phone-scanning plan that disrespected user rights. Neither of these plans have advanced, because the public is overwhelmingly opposed to such surveillance. 

• The plan in both the U.S. and E.U. is similar: coerce private companies to scan all user data, check what they find against government databases, and report their findings to the authorities. It’s unacceptable, and no matter what they say, it’s completely incompatible with end-to-end encryption. 

• Today, EFF has joined European Digital Rights (EDRi) and dozens of other civil liberties and human rights organizations, sending a letter to tell the Commissioners we can’t accept this attack on our privacy. Child abuse can be, and is, investigated and prosecuted without blanketing people with surveillance systems. 

=> ↺ Information systems at Europol: Fishing the „data lake“ with a new dragnet

• The EU police agency has completely restructured its information systems. German authorities are by far the main users for storage and query. Through a parliamentary question, the successor of Palantir software at Europol is now known.

=> ↺ Drawing the Line: Are Smart Cities Compatible with Human Rights and Privacy?

• Sidewalk Labs may have failed, but the smart city concept remains of interest to urban planners. A post by Lina Al-Hathloul on the Access Now site points out that the idea of gathering and using huge quantities of data about what is happening in a city is particularly appealing for countries with authoritarian rulers. The post links to a study from Tina Kempin Reuter called “Smart city visions and human rights: do they go together?“.

=> ↺ DOJ Charges Defendants With Harassing and Spying On Chinese Americans for Beijing

• For years, Chinese American dissidents in New York have suspected that China’s powerful and ubiquitous intelligence services had infiltrated their ranks and were tracking their every move.

• “We operate under the assumption that no secret can be kept from the Chinese Communist Party, except maybe very sensitive ones,” said Chuangchuang Chen, a law student at St. John’s University and leading pro-democracy activist in Queens.

=> ↺ Alaska may end its compliance with the REAL-ID Act

• A bill introduced in the current session of the Alaska state legislature, HB 389, would end the issuance by the state of Alaska of driver’s licenses that comply with the Federal REAL-ID Act of 2005.

• In addition, HB 389 would give Alaska residents “the option of having the applicant’s driver’s license photograph captured with a camera that produces a photograph in a format or with a resolution that renders the image quality insufficient for facial recognition.” The bill would require that the state Department of Administration and its Division of Motor Vehicles “shall destroy or render unusable for facial recognition purposes any photograph captured as a result of an application for a driver’s license ,” and prohibit “bulk sharing of facial images captured a result of an application for a driver’s license.”

• HB 389 was introduced by Rep. David Eastman (R-Mat-Su) and is co-sponsored by Rep. Ronald Gilham (R-Kenai/Soldotna). We look forward to its consideration in the state legislature in Juneau, and to the opportunity to testify on this issue, as we did when the Alaska Legislature first debated whether to comply with the REAL-ID Act in 2006, 2007, and 2008, and again in 2017 when it reconsidered its initial choice not to comply.

=> ↺ Microsoft Edge can now auto-generate image descriptions, improving accessibility

• The feature is powered by Azure Cognitive Services and is available for Edge users on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Android and iOS aren’t included, at least for the time being.

=> ↺ Face recognition’s staying power

• Why it matters: Facial recognition systems solve thorny identification problems for government agencies and businesses, but they also raise concerns over bias and privacy, particularly since the U.S. lacks strong data regulations.

=> ↺ Hearing: GDPR – implementation, enforcement and lessons learned

• In the hearing, MEPs and guest speakers will discuss the current state of GDPR implementation and enforcement in three thematic panels. In each panel, presentations are followed by a Q&A session with MEPs.

=> ↺ Mass surveillance and attack on encryption: Civil society protests against EU chat control plans

• 35 civil society organisations, including European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the German Bar Association and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), are raising the alarms on legislation the EU Commission is to present on 30 March. Similar to Apple’s highly controversial “SpyPhone” scheme, the EU Commission intends to oblige all providers of e-mail, chat or message services to search for and report CSAM by bulk intercepting, monitoring and scanning the content of all citizens’ communications – even where they are so far securely end-to-end encrypted.

=> ↺ Why Vaccine Cards Are So Easily Forged

• My proof of COVID-19 vaccination is recorded on an easy-to-forge paper card. With little trouble, I could print a blank form, fill it out, and snap a photo. Small imperfections wouldn’t pose any problem; you can’t see whether the paper’s weight is right in a digital image. When I fly internationally, I have to show a negative COVID-19 test result. That, too, would be easy to fake. I could change the date on an old test, or put my name on someone else’s test, or even just make something up on my computer. After all, there’s no standard format for test results; airlines accept anything that looks plausible.

• After a career spent in cybersecurity, this is just how my mind works: I find vulnerabilities in everything I see. When it comes to the measures intended to keep us safe from COVID-19, I don’t even have to look very hard. But I’m not alarmed. The fact that these measures are flawed is precisely why they’re going to be so helpful in getting us past the pandemic.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Whistleblower Says Intelligence Community Members Filled Internal Messaging System With Hate Speech, Support For Insurrectionists

• If you work for the government and the government is leaning towards more power and less accountability, why wouldn’t you be supportive of the government, no matter who’s running the joint? That’s what happened in the Intelligence Community, according to a whistleblower who oversaw the IC’s internal chat services for nearly a decade.

=> ↺ Letter to Iran, Regarding the Regulatory System for Cyberspace Services Bill

=> ↺ Opinion | The Racist and Dehumanizing Double Standards of War Reporting

• War’s grim reality is recognizable wherever it occurs. We can see it all too clearly in Ukraine—in the destruction of cities, in civilians fleeing their homes, and in the heart-wrenching casualties.

=> ↺ Veterans for Peace Warns Biden That ‘A No-Fly Zone Is an Act of War’

• As Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine continued Thursday, an anti-war group and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar reiterated demands for de-escalation and reminded President Joe Biden that declaring a no-fly zone would mean the United States entering the war, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

• “As we stand with the Ukrainian people, we must avoid the knee-jerk calls to make this conflict even worse.”

=> ↺ Opinion | US Military Budget Is More Outrageous Than Ever

• Congress recently announced a bipartisan budget deal to fund the federal government through 2022. It’s a lopsided budget if there ever was one.

=> ↺ U.S. Accuses Russia of Using Cluster Bombs in Ukraine as Both Refuse to Endorse International Ban

• President Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal for the first time Wednesday for atrocities in Ukraine, as the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on whether Russian forces have been using cluster munitions in populated areas in Ukraine. Cluster bombs explode in midair and spew hundreds of smaller “bomblets.” The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said their use in Ukraine may amount to war crimes. We speak to Stephen Goose, director of Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division, about the use of cluster bombs in the war in Ukraine and how Russia, Ukraine and the United States are not signatories to the international treaty banning cluster bombs. “It’s willing to criticize other peoples’ use but insists on the right to use them itself,” Goose says of the U.S.

=> ↺ Syrian Activist Condemns Russia for Targeting Civilians & Hospitals from Aleppo to Mariupol

• As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth week, Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have increasingly attacked civilian areas to pound Ukrainian cities into submission, a strategy Russia has employed to devastating effect in Syria, where the Russian Air Force has bombed many cities to rubble in an effort to support the government of Bashar al-Assad since entering the war in 2015. However, the international response to suffering in Ukraine signals a “very clear difference” than in Syria, says Waad Al-Kateab, the award-winning filmmaker whose 2019 Oscar-nominated documentary “For Sama” shows how she and her family lived through five years of fighting in Aleppo. “We really see that what’s happening today in Ukraine might and should be a whole reframing for all the world” to take a stance against Russia’s wars around the world and not just in Ukraine, says Al-Kateab. She is also the founder of the #StopBombingHospitals campaign, which led a protest outside the Russian Embassy in London.

=> ↺ Phyllis Bennis: The Best Way to Help Ukraine Is Diplomacy, Not War & Increased Militarization

• President Biden announced $800 million in new military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday, just days after Congress cleared a $1.5 trillion spending bill that included nearly $14 billion for Ukrainian humanitarian aid and security assistance. Experts warn that sending more lethal weapons could escalate war and result in more losses for Ukraine. “The cost on civilian lives is horrific,” says Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, who says increasing military aid in Ukraine could thwart peace talks between Russia and Ukraine — which appeared to be making progress in the past few days. Her latest piece is headlined “The Best Way to Help Ukraine Is Diplomacy, Not War.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Transcending the Certainties of War

• Peace, in the deepest sense—in the midst of war—requires a clarity and courage well beyond the boundaries of linear understanding. The warning lights flash. World War III has entered the red zone.

=> ↺ Weathering the Global Storm: Why Neutrality is Not an Option for Palestinians

• A new global geopolitical game is in formation, and the Middle East, as is often the case, will be directly impacted by it in terms of possible new alliances and resulting power paradigms. While it is too early to fully appreciate the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the region, it is obvious that some countries are placed in relatively comfortable positions in terms of leveraging their strong economies, strategic location and political influence. Others, especially non-state actors, like the Palestinians, are in an unenviable position.

=> ↺ Putin’s False Flag Scenario

=> ↺ US Peace Activists Must Keep Pressure on Biden to Prevent No-Fly Zone in Ukraine

=> ↺ UN Says 3.1 Million Ukrainians Have Become Refugees Since Start of War

=> ↺ House Dems Urge McConnell to Rally GOP Behind ‘Common-Sense’ Gun Reform

• Calling U.S. gun violence “an epidemic of catastrophic proportions,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman and 48 other House Democrats on Thursday sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urging him to support “common-sense reforms” that will save lives. 

• “Given how much is at stake, anything less than this would be a tragic, unacceptable obstruction to preventing gun violence and gun-related deaths.”

=> ↺ The War of Words Between Between “Rashka” and Ukraine

• Every March 9, Ukraine celebrates the birthday of its national poet, Taras Shevchenko, by awarding the Shevchenko Prize, the state’s arts prize. It’s usually a festive occasion, but this year’s announcement took place against the backdrop of a reminder of who Shevchenko was, and of what, in his short life, he had fought for.1

=> ↺ Arsenal of Democracy or Simply an Arsenal?

• Whatever else one might say of the crisis in Ukraine, the new cold war dreamscape that Washington think tanks and the Pentagon helped promulgate over the last decade against Russia or China or both is here to stay. Consider that a calamity in its own right. The end of America’s failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disastrous results of America’s Global War on Terror launched amid a barrage of lies and self-praise, might indeed have left an opening, however slight, for a shift away from colossal military budgets and creeping militarization.

• Russia’s ill-planned and immoral invasion of Ukraine marks the definitive end of that possibility, however small it might have been. Putin’s actions, whatever their motivation and justification, are being seized upon by the military-industrial-congressional complex as proof positive that Pentagon budgets, already in the stratosphere, must soar higher yet. For so many of the Putin-haters (and I’m no fan), his destructive actions supposedly demonstrate why the U.S. must be prepared to double down in kind.

=> ↺ OMG, War Is Kind of Horrible

• For decades, wise and strategic peace advocates counseled against bothering to mention the millions of men, women, and children slaughtered, wounded, made homeless, terrified, traumatized, poisoned, or starved by U.S. wars. Nobody would care about them, we were told, so mentioning them wouldn’t actually help them. It would be smarter to mention only U.S. troops, even if it perpetuated the false belief that the wars were not one-sided genocidal slaughters. It would be even smarter, we were told, to focus on the financial costs of the wars, even though the U.S. government simply invents how ever much money it wants for more wars. Money, we were told, is something that people can care about.

• Of course, the obvious problem wasn’t what we talked about, but that we weren’t allowed on television. Of course, the average U.S. resident is not a heartless sociopath. Of course, people care all the time about distant and different human beings. When hurricane victims are presented in the media as worthy, people donate. When a famine is blamed on nature, the money gushes forth. When cancer is depicted as arising from a pristine, unsullied environment, I just dare you to find a neighborhood that won’t run a marathon to cure it. So, in theory, I always believed that people in the United States could in fact care about war victims. Just as they could declare “We Are All French” when a bomb went off in France, they could in theory declare “We Are All Yemeni” when the U.S. and Saudi militaries terrorize Yemeni children, or announce “We Are All Afghans” when Joe Biden steals billions of dollars needed for basic survival.

=> ↺ Oligarchs Have Shaped Our View of Russia, But It’s Putin’s Corrupt Elite That has Hobbled Him in Ukraine War

• But this symbol of Russia is now being replaced by a picture in which an oligarch’s giant yacht rides at anchor off some Mediterranean resort. This provides an easily recognisable visual sign of the vast wealth obtained by the oligarchs, often corruptly acquired through looting the Soviet state of its most valuable assets after its collapse in 1991.

• Putting their great fortunes so blatantly on display in the shape of yachts, mansions and football teams reflects a need on the part of the Russian super-rich to highlight their elite status, while obscuring the semi-criminal means by which they acquired their wealth.

=> ↺ NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance

• In fact, the deceptively named target, as a few US news reports on the attack did note, is actually a joint NATO/Ukrainian military base near the border of NATO member Poland that has specifically long been where US and NATO military trainers have worked with Ukrainian troops, teaching them the finer points of handling the lethal equipment being supplied to them by the US and some NATO nations like France, Germany, Britain, and Turkey. (400 Florida National Guard troops were doing just that before being hustled back to Florida as Russia began threatening an invasion into Ukraine a few weeks ago.)

• A day before the rocket attack, and just after the Biden administration announced the approval of another tranche of $200 million worth of weapons for Ukraine, Russia warned that any arms shipments coming into Ukraine would (of course!) be considered fair targets for attack. This warning was typically described by the jingoistic corporate-owned media in the US as increasing the risk of a wider war, though the actual supplying of more lethal weapons to Ukraine by the US and its NATO allies was not so labeled.

=> ↺ Central Asia Struggles With the Consequences of Russia’s War

• On the sidelines of the forum, Kazakbaev also met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov and the State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia Stanislav Raščan and told them that the Kyrgyz Republic wanted the Russian-Ukraine conflict to end, reiterating that his country was willing to play a role to achieve this outcome.

• Why is the Kyrgyz Republic so keen to get involved in Russia’s war in Ukraine? Because this landlocked Central Asian country of more than 6.5 million people is reliant on its economic ties with Russia through the Eurasian Economic Union, “an international organization for regional economic integration,” which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic. Any Western sanctions on Russia will directly impact the Kyrgyz Republic, where 20 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line, according to 2019 figures. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has already begun to have a negative economic impact on the five Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which were once a part of the former Soviet Union.

=> ↺ Cracking Down on Russian Oligarchs Means Cracking Down on U.S. Tax Havens

• “I say to the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: no more,” Biden said in his State of the Union address. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.”

• Targeting Russia’s elites, who have stolen trillions from their own people, is an important strategy to pressure Putin, who himself may be among the wealthiest people on the planet.

=> ↺ ‘Lives of Millions of Ukrainians’ Depend on ‘Intensified’ Diplomacy: UN Political Chief

• As Ukrainians continued to suffer from Russia’s deadly invasion, international political leaders on Thursday emphasized the importance of diplomatic discussions to end the war while also calling for probes of attacks on civilians and infrastructure.

• “This week, there were positive signals reported regarding the ongoing direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian representatives,” Rosemary DiCarlo, United Nations under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, said Thursday. “We welcome all such engagements.”

=> ↺ Stop the Fighting in Ukraine

• The war in Ukraine has reached a dangerous and precarious moment. Having failed in their initial attempt to overcome Ukrainian resistance through a conventional ground assault, the Russian invaders are now resorting to indiscriminate shelling and bombing of urban areas, producing an ever-growing toll of civilian casualties. As we go to press, Russian armored columns are attempting to encircle Kyiv and other major cities, cutting off access to food, water, and power in a brutal drive to force their surrender. Adding to the danger, Moscow has declared that further Western arms shipments to the Ukrainian defenders are a “legitimate target” of Russian attack—a threat made all too real when Russian missiles struck a Ukrainian training base near the Polish border on March 13. We stand on the precipice, then, of a major war in Europe—and one that would entail a significant risk of nuclear escalation. Preventing such an outcome and bringing relief to the suffering people of Ukraine must therefore be the world’s overriding objectives at this critical moment.

=> ↺ After Zelensky’s Address, Lawmakers Call for Military Action

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking from his office in Kyiv, addressed both chambers of Congress on Wednesday, stressing his calls for the United States to provide more military aid and impose a no-fly zone over the country, a move that would put the world on the brink of nuclear war. As part of his plea for more weapons, Zelensky asked Congress to remember 9/11 and the Pearl Harbor attacks and presented graphic footage of the conflict and its destruction toward the end of his 18-minute video address.

=> ↺ Kidnapping suspect wanted ‘tyrant’ Gov. Whitmer tied up on table, FBI agent testifies

• A key figure in an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told an undercover FBI agent that he wanted to restrain the “tyrant” on a table then pose for a photo “like we just made the biggest drug bust,” according to a secret recording played for jurors Thursday.

• The trial of four men resumed in federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after a three-day delay due to someone in the courtroom testing positive for Covid-19.

=> ↺ The Play Putting George W. Bush on Trial for War Crimes

• Don’t worry if you didn’t know the 43rd president was on trial. This was an off-Broadway verdict, the conclusion to a new play called The Trial of an American President. The trial was fiction, but the vote, from nine members of the audience chosen to be the jury, was very real.

• In the play, Bush is charged with three overarching crimes resulting from his war against Iraq.

=> ↺ The Decline of American Soft Power

• However, what’s more interesting is the status of the America’s soft power. Political scientist Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” and popularized its usage in international relations circles after publishing an article in Foreign Policy in 1990 where he fleshed out the concept. In essence, soft power refers to a country’s capacity to persuade other countries to do what it desires without resorting to brute force or coercion.

• In Brand Finance’s Global Soft Power Index 2021, the US fell from first place to sixth place in 2021 with respect to its soft power. In order, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Switzerland occupied the top five spots in this soft power index.

=> ↺ Rebel attacks in eastern Congo kill more than 60

• Islamic State, to which the ADF pledged allegiance in 2019, claimed responsibility for the bombings. United Nations researchers say they have found no evidence of Islamic State control over ADF operations.

=> ↺ France shuts down another mosque for allegedly defending ‘radical Islam’

• The Al Farouk Mosque in Pessac district near the city of Bordeaux was closed for allegedly defending “radical Islam” and “spreading Salafist ideology,” the Gironde governorate said in a statement on Monday.

• The statement accused mosque authorities of giving sermons calling for non-compliance with French laws and legitimising terrorist attacks.

Environment

=> ↺ The Man Who Could Help Big Oil Derail America’s Climate Fight

• This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

=> ↺ New Climate Polling Should Be Warning to Democratic Establishment, Group Says

• With negotiations over the Build Back Better Act stalled, pandemic response funding dropped from a recent omnibus spending package, and the White House showing no interest in broadly canceling student loan debt, the Sunrise Movement issued a warning to Democrats Thursday: The party ignores young voters’ demands for bold climate action at its own peril.

• “After two years with a trifecta and little to show for it, Democrats can’t run the same game plan and expect young people to turn out for them,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise Movement, which campaigned aggressively for President Joe Biden and down-ballot candidates in 2020 after supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the primary. “Politicians have to earn young people’s support.”

Energy

=> ↺ New Campaign Aims to ‘Stop the Oil Profiteering’ of Fossil Fuel Giants

• As fossil fuel companies use global crises and record inflation to hike prices, a new U.S. campaign launched Thursday aims to end the profiteering and build support for federal legislation to tax Big Oil’s windfalls.

• “While millions of Americans are struggling with high prices at the pump, Big Oil is making a killing.”

Finance

=> ↺ Sanders Pans Jeff Bezos as Amazon Workers Walk Out Over Low Pay

=> ↺ ‘Communities Should Not Pay Amazon. It Should Be the Other Way Around.’

• Janine Jackson interviewed Good Jobs First’s Greg LeRoy about Amazon subsidies sanctions for the March 11, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

=> ↺ Going for Tax Reform Big Time

• First $100 million per year would be used to get through Congress long-overdue legislation such as full Medicare for All, a living wage, preventing corporate abuses, etc. The second $100 million would be devoted to create facilities making it easy for people to band together in their various organized roles (e.g., workers, consumers, patients, savers) so they could counter corporate bosses who unite their investors and many lobbying trade groups.

• Now, I wish to suggest the third $100 million per year be used to make Congress change the disgracefully unfair, wasteful, and inefficient tax laws.

=> ↺ We Can Thank the Wobblies for the Biggest Labor Story of the Year

• When the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, whose members are often dubbed “Wobblies”) launched a campaign to unionize Starbucks baristas in 2004, the idea was so quixotic it seemed more like performance art designed to comment on the labor movement itself than an earnest attempt to organize shops. Unionizing Starbucks baristas was like unionizing the Death Star stormtroopers: both impossible and pointless. Now, as I write in the spring of 2022, workers at over 100 locations nationwide have petitioned for recognition and the Starbucks Workers United campaign is the labor story of this young year. What changed?

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Corporal Anselmo, Double Agent of the Brazilian Dictatorship, in His Obituary

• By phone, the writer and journalist André Cintra told me the news five minutes ago. I was taking a nap, but I jumped out of bed. And until now I don’t know where to begin José Anselmo dos Santos’ obituary.

• The news, with its natural objectivity, which in this case means, with all natural ignorance of history, says that José Anselmo dos Santos died on Tuesday night at the age of 80, in Jundiaí (SP). And that he was a “double agent during the military regime”. See? They call the dictatorship and the state terror in Brazil “military regime”.

=> ↺ Boric’s Challenge: Laying Chile’s Ghosts to Rest

• Back in 1796, José Cos de Iriberri, a Chilean merchant, praised “the opulence and richness” of the land, going on to lament: “Who would think that in the midst of such abundance there would be such a scant population groaning under the heavy yoke of poverty, misery and vice.”

• Of course, the ghost of Iriberri (who inhabited a Spanish province of less than a million souls), would not recognize contemporary Chile, a nation of 20 million people, groaning, rather, under the yoke of typical 21st-century troubles. And yet he might observe that inequality, injustice and corruption continue to haunt his native land. Now, though, there is a chance that this could change.

=> ↺ News Org Demands Josh Hawley Stop Using Raised Fist Photo On His Campaign Merch

• We recently discussed noted fascist and fist-raiser Josh Hawley and his campaign’s decision to start selling campaign merchandise using a photo from a Politico photographer. As part of that post, we talked about how the Associated Press was looking into whether this constituted copyright infringement. I very much think it does not, given that the use is for political donations (speech), that it is at least mildly transformative, and there is zero harm done to the news organizations due to its use. On the other hand, I also very much expected a conflict over all of this.

=> ↺ ‘Worse Than Texas’: Extreme Anti-Choice Bills Advance in Multiple States

• As anti-choice policymakers across the country seek to severely restrict reproductive freedom—and as the fate of Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance pending a looming U.S. Supreme Court decision—Republican lawmakers in at least four states this week advanced bills banning or limiting abortion access.

• The Idaho Legislature on Monday became the first in the nation to approve a bill modeled after a Texas law that empowers citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks.

=> ↺ Opinion | Why It’s Obvious Members of Congress Should Not Be Trading Stocks

• In early 2020—as millions of Americans faced a terrifyingly novel virus, joblessness, uncertainty, and the tragic loss of loved ones—then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) was busy making millions of dollars on some highly suspect stock transactions. Now, Congress is finally starting to hold hearings and consider bills aimed at reining in insider trading among its own members. 

=> ↺ The Culture Wars and the 2022 Congressional Elections

• Instead of giving Price a warning or appropriate disciplinary actions, the school’s superintendent terminated him because the reading caused “unnecessary embarrassment or disparagement” and displayed “a lack of professionalism and impaired judgment,” violating the state’s code of ethics for educators.

• This incident is but one of a rapidly growing number of actions being taken by local and state officials across the country in the latest round of the long-simmering culture wars, the social struggle over acceptable – and legal — values and lifestyles.  Such battles have defined America since the nation’s founding four centuries ago.  During the 20th century, they were defined by the 1925 Scopes trial over teaching evolution, the anti-Communist loyalty oaths for teachers during the Joe McCarthy era after World War II and the conservative reaction of the tumultuous 1960s.

=> ↺ Ohio Supreme Court Strikes Down Gerrymandered GOP Maps For the Third Time

=> ↺ Stacey Abrams “Wows” as Earth’s President on “Star Trek”

=> ↺ Court Blocks Order Barring Biden From Considering Climate Costs in Rulemaking

=> ↺ ‘Common-Sense Decision’: Court Allows Biden to Weigh Social Cost of Carbon

• Environmentalists applauded late Wednesday after a federal appeals court blocked a Trump-appointed judge’s order barring the Biden administration from considering the future costs of climate damage in its rulemaking and public projects.

• “When it comes to the climate, Biden can’t continue business as usual.”

=> ↺ The U.S. Campaign for Democratic World Federation

• In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the most destructive war in human history, a mass movement developed among people in the United States and other lands who were determined to create the kind of united world that could avert future human catastrophe. Among their leaders were the acclaimed physicist Albert Einstein, Nuremberg War Crimes Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz, presidential advisor Grenville Clark, and feminist activist Rosika Schwimmer.

• In February 1947, during a massive snowstorm, 327 delegates representing several world federalist organizations from across the United States gathered in Asheville, North Carolina, to launch one of the most significant peace efforts of the twentieth century. Among those present were Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review and later president of the World Federalist Association; Thomas K. Finletter, later President Harry Truman’s Secretary of the Air Force; Florence Harriman, former U.S. ambassador to Norway; Cord Meyer, Jr., World War II decorated Marine officer and, subsequently, president of United World Federalists; and Harris Wofford, later U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.

=> ↺ Arnold Schwarzenegger invokes his ‘broken’ Nazi father as he tells Russian soldiers ‘Putin lied to you’

• “This is not the war to defend Russia that your grandfathers or your great-grandfathers fought. This is an illegal war. Your lives, your limbs, your futures have been sacrificed for a senseless war condemned by the entire world.”

• Addressing Vladimir Putin directly, Schwarzenegger said: “You started this war. You are leading this war. You can stop this war.”

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Conservative Party-Linked Facebook Page, Canada Proud, a Major Source of Climate Disinformation

• As Russian forces advanced towards Kyiv, Canada’s oil and gas industry and its supporters responded with a self-serving narrative: the Ukraine crisis means Canada must accelerate its production of fossil fuels.

• Leading the charge is Canada Proud, a right-wing Facebook page with close ties to the Conservative Party, which made post after post in the early days of the invasion urging the country to export more hydrocarbons to Europe. 

=> ↺ National Guard refutes Russian media claims that Tennessee guardsmen killed in Ukraine

• The National Guard on Thursday refuted claims it said had been made by Russian media that three Tennessee National Guard members were killed in Ukraine.

• Pravda, a paper owned by the Russian Communist Party, reported earlier Thursday that three “mercenaries” from the Tennessee National Guard had been killed while fighting in the conflict, according to a press release from the National Guard.

=> ↺ Computer programmers are taking aim at Russia’s propaganda wall

• But the Internet has sent those information-war efforts into overdrive, allowing everyday people to pitch in on imaginative efforts designed to reach strangers thousands of miles away.

• The volunteers behind today’s efforts say they hope to help overcome the Russian government’s suppression of the war’s devastated cities, bombed hospitals and humanitarian catastrophes. The human rights group OVD-Info says thousands of Russians have been arrested in antiwar protests since the invasion began.

=> ↺ Ukraine’s Digital Ministry Is a Formidable War Machine

• Until the war, the ministry’s most prominent project was an app called Diia intended to deliver the “state in a smartphone” concept. It can function as an electronic passport or driver license and also provides other services, such as easy payment of traffic fines. The project sped from proposal to release, in February 2020, in just over four months and is currently used by around 14 million Ukrainians. Before the war, Fedorov checked in on the Diia project three times a week through scheduled Zoom calls that began at 7:30 pm, with discussions often continuing until midnight, Banik says. “Fedorov is a huge workaholic, but he’s a great boss; we were unafraid to take on hard challenges.”

• Since the war began, the ministry’s challenges and working hours have grown further. “These 15 days of war are like one very long day that never ends,” Ionan, the deputy minister, recently remarked. She and others have scrambled to adapt platforms and relationships developed to serve dreams of e-government into tools to attack Russia and support Ukraine’s besieged population.

=> ↺ Russian propagandists turn on pro-Western “traitors”

• Several new websites have sprung up to help identify such “traitors”. One such is provokatoru.net, which is Russian for “No to provocateurs”. It displays names and pictures of more than 200 artists, writers, actors and journalists who have spoken out against the war. “At a time when our soldiers are fighting the brown chimera” (a reference to the Nazi monsters who supposedly run Ukraine) “and our volunteers are supporting the suppressed people of Ukraine, these [traitors] are openly opposing our people, our government and our president,” an opening statement on the site says. It invites “the people” to add names, photographs and descriptions of more such fifth-columnists, to be reported to the authorities.

=> ↺ Raadio 4 editor: In short, Russian-language media landscape is in chaos

• Thankfully, he said, police in Estonia responded quickly to the news and immediately announced that the information that was being spread wasn’t true, and that anyone who witnesses any conflicts should immediately contact the police.

=> ↺ Deepfake presidents used in Russia-Ukraine war

• Volodymr Zelensky appears behind a podium, telling Ukrainians to put down their weapons. His head appears too large for and more pixelated than his body – and his voice sounds deeper.

• In a video posted to his official Instagram account, the real President Zelensky calls it a “childish provocation”.

• But the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications had warned the Russian government may well use deepfakes to convince Ukrainians to surrender.

=> ↺ Putin’s invasion of Ukraine exposes the Fox News-QAnon feedback loop

• Welcome to the QAnon-Fox News feedback loop. Conspiracy theories first surface in the right-wing swamplands and spread through social media channels. They get picked up and then, crucially, laundered on right-wing media outlets like Fox News. Dwellers of the right-wing swamps are emboldened by seeing their ideas on Fox News and other “mainstream” conservative outlets and “ordinary” Fox News viewers (presuming they exist) are driven to social media to “learn” more, where they get hit with the harder stuff from QAnon. Rinse and repeat, and pretty soon every GOP voter in the country is full to the brim with ideas first floated by the absolute worst people on the [Internet].

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Russia’s domestic internet talk isn’t new — but it’s ramping up

• None of this rhetoric is new. For years, the Kremlin has discussed creating a domestic Russian internet, routinely referring to the global [Internet] as a foreign project and a threat to regime security, out of the paranoid belief that foreign technology platforms and the [Internet] writ large are little more than a Western project to topple unfriendly regimes. In 2019, the Russian government formalized its intentions: it passed a new law calling for a domestic Russian internet that could be isolated in the event of a state-identified security incident. (For the Russian government, a security incident would include individuals spreading truths that reflect badly on Vladimir Putin and his inner circle.)

=> ↺ TikTok’s Censorship in Russia Is Giving Putin Exactly What He Wants

• When TikTok announced last week that it was suspending the ability of Russian users to upload new videos, the decision was seen as part of the company’s efforts to protect itself against the draconian new “fake news” law enacted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in a bid to control the narrative about the war in Ukraine.

• But minutes after the ban went into effect, Russian TikTok users noticed something unusual happening: Non-Russian content was also no longer viewable. That meant videos posted by TikTok superstars like Charli d’Amelio, as well as content posted by international media outlets like the BBC and VICE World News, and organizations like the UN, were blocked.

=> ↺ Mali bans local broadcasts by leading French radio and TV news outlets

• Journalists in Mali have been warned. Reporting that annoys Mali’s military government will result in threats, expulsions and broadcasting bans.

• In a communiqué signed by Col. Abdoulaye Maïga, the minister for territorial administration and decentralisation, the junta said it was suspending RFI and France 24 following a report that RFI broadcast in two parts on 14 and 15 March about summary executions and looting by Malian soldiers and the Russian security personnel now accompanying them on their operations against terrorists in Mali.

=> ↺ Indonesia: Anti-blasphemy law reinstated, 72 Christians imprisoned

• Although there has always been an anti-blasphemy law in Indonesia, it has been observed that convictions in this area have been increasing, which is evidence of the return of blasphemy as a social indicator that influences people’s way of thinking, analyses Aleteia. Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world with 264 million people, is the largest Muslim country in the world – ahead of India and Pakistan. And although the country is historically known for practising a moderate Islam, as the religion was introduced through trade relations rather than weapons, a radicalisation of Islam has been observed for a number of years. This was made possible by the arrival of successful preachers who introduced the rhetoric of Wahhabi Islam imported from the Gulf states.

=> ↺ ‘The Kashmir Files’: Pallavi Joshi Reveals Challenges While Shooting; ‘Fatwa Was Issued’

• Joshi said that filming for ‘The Kashmir Files’ was the easiest part and probably the smallest part of it. She mentioned that they all dedicated four years to the film but the shooting was done within a month. She said that when she was shooting in Kashmir, a fatwa was issued on their names while shooting the last scene of their film.

• Pallavi said that she told Vivek to finish the last scene quickly and head to the airport. She asked her husband to not say anything and focus on finishing the shoot as they won’t get another chance to come back. Soon after this, the actor asked the whole team to start packing their bags to leave from there.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Laura Murray (no relation!)

• We should all congratulate Laura Murray on her emphatic victory against the Daily Telegraph and the dreadful apartheid Israel stooge Lord Ian Austin, who I am happy to say have been forced to pay substantial damages. (Update: I originally stated Laura had won her libel case – this was incorrect as the libelers caved in before the case got to court).

=> ↺ Niger Media Pay Tribute to Press Freedom Defender

• Niger’s media have paid tribute to Gremah Boucar, a radio journalist lauded for his efforts to promote and defend press freedom.

• Boucar was repeatedly threatened and jailed for his journalism in Niger. He persevered nonetheless.

• When he died March 8 at a hospital in Tunisia, the 63-year-old left behind the privately owned Anfani radio and TV network and a legacy of fighting to deliver uncensored news across Niger.

=> ↺ Australian politicians must act to save Assange before it is too late

• As has been reported, former US president Barack Obama’s administration considered whether it could bring criminal charges against Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing classified information.

• As American journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote: “It ultimately decided it would not do so, and could not do so, consistent with the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment.

• “After all, the Obama DoJ concluded, such a prosecution would pose a severe threat to press freedom because there would be no way to prosecute Assange for publishing classified documents without also prosecuting The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and others for doing exactly the same thing.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Green Groups Praise Progressive Dems’ Call for Climate Emergency Declaration

• Grassroots climate advocates praised the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Thursday for pushing President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to declare a national climate emergency, a move that would unlock an array of specific tools needed to combat planetary warming.

• “There’s no question that we’re in a climate emergency,” Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s (CBD) energy justice program, said in a statement. “The caucus is absolutely right that President Biden should declare it so we can build the energy security that only renewable energy can bring.”

=> ↺ Bernie Insiders Give Thumbs Up to Ro Khanna 2024 Presidential Run

• Progressive U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna is being encouraged by leading figures behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’ back-to-back Democratic presidential bids to launch his own run for the White House in 2024 should President Joe Biden not seek another term, Politico reported Thursday.

• Khanna (D-Calif.), a 45-year-old, Philadelphia-born and Justice Democrat-backed lawmaker, has represented Silicon Valley since 2017. He also served as the national co-chair for Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign.

=> ↺ 16 GOP Lawmakers Vote Against Increasing Awareness of US Internment Camps

=> ↺ Progressive Urge Biden to Take 55 Executive Actions to Advance Domestic Agenda

=> ↺ We Need to Build a Labor Movement That’s Willing to Break the Law

=> ↺ Starbucks Brought Former CEO Howard Schultz Back to Union Bust, Workers Say

=> ↺ Disney Workers Walk Out Over Company’s Silence on “Don’t Say Gay” Bill

• Demanding the Walt Disney Company use its considerable influence in Florida to stop the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill from going into effect, workers at the company are staging walkouts this week with plans to launch a full-scale nationwide work stoppage next Tuesday.

• The “Disney Do Better Walkout” is being organized by the company’s LGBTQIA+ community and allies, who warned in an open letter this week that CEO Bob Chapek’s response to the legislation has “utterly failed to match the magnitude of the [bill's] threat to LGBTQIA+ safety.”

=> ↺ Opinion | The Real Irish-American History They Don’t Teach You in School

• Author’s note on the following essay which has been re-posted for many years at Common Dreams as a St. Patrick’s Day tradition:

=> ↺ Progressives Hand Biden List of 55 Executive Actions Because ‘Working People Can’t Wait’

• With the pivotal midterm elections looming, the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Thursday unveiled a slate of more than 50 executive actions it is urging President Joe Biden to pursue as much of his domestic policy agenda remains stalled in Congress—thanks in large part to right-wing members of his own party.

• “Working people can’t wait for relief from rising costs—and that Democrats must use all the tools available to provide it, quickly.”

=> ↺ Can a Thriller Capture the Feeling of Being Watched?

• Long before the advent of reality TV, the rise of social media influencers, and the first invasive rush of 24/7 paparazzi, Jenny Holzer somehow managed to predict all these developments in one of her provocative and spooky fine-art texts. “A real torture would be to build a sparkling cage with 2-way mirrors and steel bars,” the artist wrote in Inflammatory Essays (1979–1982). “In there would be good-looking and young girls who’ll think they’re in a regular motel room, so they’ll take their clothes off and do the delicate things that girls do when they’re sure they’re alone. Everyone who watches will go crazy because they [won’t believe] what they’re seeing but they’ll see the bars and know they can’t get in. And, they’ll be afraid to make a move because they don’t want to scare the girls away from doing the delicious things they’re doing.” Holzer cannily does not specify exactly who this set-up is a torture for—the audience, denied the opportunity to actually touch the objects of their voyeuristic desire, or the pretty prisoners who do “the delicate things that girls do” without realizing they are caged. The resulting image, halfway between a runway show and the premise of a stylized slasher film, suggests a balance between the observer and the observed that could explode into either eroticism or violence at even the slightest tipping of the scales.

=> ↺ Opinion | Saudi Arabia: A Masterclass on How to Not Reform Through Mass Executions

• Saudi Arabia’s March 12 announcement that it executed 81 men marks the country’s largest mass execution since 2019, indicating Riyadh’s continued disinterest in reforming its flawed and arbitrary judicial system. The decision to commit the mass execution of detainees on a range of vague and broad charges offers yet another example of the Riyadh’s rejection of basic human rights and again disproves Mohammed bin Salman’s (MbS) “reformer” charade. Unfortunately, world leaders and policymakers in Washington will continue to coddle the Gulf monarch while denouncing the same actions of equally brutal leaders across the Arab world.

=> ↺ Saudi Arabia puts 81 to death in largest mass execution in kingdom’s modern history

• Ali Adubusi, the director of the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, alleged that some of those executed had been tortured and faced trials “carried out in secret.”

• “These executions are the opposite of justice,” he said.

=> ↺ TikTok star ‘shot dead by brother for wearing crop tops in honour killing’

• A TikTok star in Iraqi Kurdistan who defied conservative Islamic conventions by wearing crop tops and a crucifix was allegedly shot dead by her brother.

• Eman Sami Maghdid, known to her 47,000 followers as Mari or Maria, is thought to have been murdered in an ‘honour’ killing.

=> ↺ Two Saudis executed for killing mother who tried to stop them from joining Daesh

• Dubai: Two Saudi brothers were executed after almost seven years in jail for murdering their mother who tried to stop them from joining Daesh in Syria, local media reported.

• The duo were among 81 people put to death on Saturday in kingdom’s largest mass execution. Most were individuals convicted of terrorism and capital crimes, including members of Daesh and Al Qaida, the Saudi Press Agency said yesterday quoting a ministry of interior statement.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ California Legislators Introduce Bill To Blame Internet Companies For Kids Liking Their Products

• Ridiculous, unhinged, anti-internet legislation is a bipartisan affair. The latest such examples is California’s new (awkwardly named) Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act. As you can likely tell from the name, this is yet another moral panic “think of the children!” bill. It argues that social media is addictive and that we need to “hold companies responsible” for that so-called addiction. It kicks off by quoting some research — but cherry picking which research and taking some of the findings out of context — to insist that social media is unquestionably bad for kids.

=> ↺ Minnesota Pushing Bill That Says Websites Can No Longer Be Useful For Teenagers

• The various “for the children” moral panic bills about the internet are getting dumber. Over in Minnesota, the legislature has moved forward with a truly stupid bill, which the legislature’s own website says could make the state “a national leader in putting new guardrails on social media platforms.” The bill is pretty simple — it says that any social media platform with more than 1 million account holders (and operating in Minnesota) cannot use an algorithm to recommend content to users under the age of 18.

=> ↺ No, U.S. Broadband Isn’t Miraculously Getting Cheaper

• Hoping to pretend that the U.S. broadband industry is vibrant and competitive, every so often the broadband industry will issue a broad proclamation that U.S. broadband is secretly amazing and super affordable. Unfortunately data uniformly, clearly shows that it’s not. The availability of fast speeds remains spotty, prices remain high, and customer service, while improving glacially, is generally terrible.

=> ↺ It’s not over until it’s over: sanctions must stop Telenor’s sale to the Myanmar military – Access Now

• Access Now, outraged by today’s announcement that the Myanmar Investment Commission has approved the sale of Telenor Myanmar, is calling for international actors to implement sanctions and stop the company’s irresponsible disposal of its Myanmar operations to a company whose 80% majority shareholder is military-linked Shwe Byain Phyu Group.

• “It’s not over until it’s over,” said Wai Phyo Myint, Asia Pacific Policy Analyst at Access Now. “The Telenor sale approval does not come as a surprise, but it is a major kick in the guts for human rights defenders on the ground. The purchaser, Shwe Byain Phyu, may not be sanctioned now — but it needs to be. International actors must recognize and take action against the company’s multiple and flagrant links to the military.”

• Telenor’s sales agreement is with M1 Group, which will buy Telenor Myanmar through its Singapore-registered entity Investcom Pte Ltd — the majority of which will be owned by military-linked Shwe Byain Phyu Group. Telenor noted that it had “not been party to any dialogue between M1 and its local partner,” even as it claims that it screened the transaction as sanctions compliant.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Netflix Starts Cracking Down Harder On Password Sharing

• Back when Netflix was a pesky upstart trying to claw subscribers away from entrenched cable providers, the company had a pretty lax approach to users who shared streaming passwords. At one point CEO Reed Hastings went so far as to say he “loved” password sharing, seeing it as akin to free advertising. The idea was that as kids or friends got on more stable footing (left home to job hunt, whatever), they’d inevitably get hooked on the service and purchase their own subscription.

=> ↺ Deere in the Headlights: How software that farmers can’t access has become necessary to tractor repair

• Modern farm equipment runs on software. But when manufacturers restrict access to the software tools needed to repair broken tractors, farmers are left out in the cold. They are forced to rely on dealerships to fix their equipment, which can lead to lengthy delays and inflated repair bills. With fields to be plowed, planted and harvested, farmers don’t have the time to wait for a dealer. They need to be able to fix their own stuff.

=> ↺ Why Netflix is starting to crack down on password sharing

• Netflix has for years ignored the fact that many of us are mooching off our friends’ and families’ accounts. But the streaming king now appears to be reconsidering its look-the-other-way policy, a shift that comes as Netflix’s growth slows and its annual production budget for churning out new hits creeps ever higher. In other words, Netflix needs more money.

• The company this week announced that it’s testing a password-sharing crackdown that could curb the number of accounts mooching off account holders outside their own households. As part of this test, Netflix will soon offer users in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru the ability to add up to two additional members to their Netflix membership as sub-accounts. In Costa Rica, this will cost about $3 on top of the monthly cost of Netflix.

=> ↺ Netflix plans to start charging for password sharing, and customers aren’t happy

• Netflix said it won’t ban password sharing, but those who do it will have to pay. It will be testing the change in three countries — Chile, Costa Rica and Peru. For 2,380 Chilean pesos, 2.99 U.S. dollars and 7.9 Peruvian sol, respectively, users can add up to two profiles.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Microsoft faces EU antitrust complaint about its cloud computing business | Reuters

• U.S. tech giant Microsoft (MSFT.O) is facing an antitrust complaint filed by three European rivals in the booming cloud computing business, one the plaintiffs said on Thursday.

• The complaint, filed with the European Union’s competition watchdog months ago, alleges that Microsoft’s contractual and business practices make it costly and difficult for users of its cloud computing services to opt for those of a competitor, a source close to the matter said.

• French cloud computing services provider OVHcloud (OVH.PA) confirmed in a statement that it had joined the complaint against Microsoft. A spokesperson for the company declined to give the names of the two other European plaintiffs.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Dua Lipa’s Dual Lawsuits Explained: Musicologists Break Down ‘Levitating’ Similarities

• Variety spoke with musicologists E. Michael Harrington, who consulted on Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” case and was approached by Linzer and Brown in their attempt to defeat Lipa; and Judith Finell, who delivered the landmark expert testimony on behalf of the Marvin Gaye estate in the infamous “Blurred Lines” case.

=> ↺ An information shock is needed to make firms understand that music is changing

• The music industry, in little more than 20 years, has gone through two technological shocks linked to digitization: first the advent of downloads, which have replaced physical supports, then that of streaming, with the passage from the possession of a content to the right of access to a catalog. Paola Cillo and Gianmario Verona (Department of Management and Technology), in a study with Paola Zanella (CUNEF University), document that, in the case of streaming, it took an information shock (the inclusion of streaming in Billboard’s “The Hot 100″ ranking) for the industry to react to the ongoing change, by modifying its strategies.

=> ↺ Better Internet Series: Architecture and Open Standards

=> ↺ Episode 13: Open Culture VOICES – Melissa Terras

• Welcome to episode 13 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. In this episode, we’re joined by Melissa Terras, a leading international figure in the field of Digital Humanities. Since 2017, she has been Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh, and director of its Centre for Digital Scholarship. Her research focuses on the digitization of cultural heritage, including its technologies, procedures, and impact, and how this intersects with internet technologies.  She is a Turing Institute Fellow 2018-2022. 

=> ↺ Episode 14: Open Culture VOICES – Karin Glasemann

• Welcome to episode 14 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. In this episode, Karin Glasemann, Digital Coordinator at Nationalmuseum Sweden, joins us. Karin is responsible for streamlining internal digitization processes and ensuring that the public can find, access, use and reuse the digitized collections. She holds a PhD in history and has initiated the Nationalmusuem’s Public Domain policy and several collaborations with Wikimedia Sweden, which boosted the Nationalmuseum’s digital presence.

=> ↺ WIPO’s Pirate Site Blocklist Expands to 4,042 Active Domain Names

• The pirate site blocklist for advertisers, maintained by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), has grown to well over 7,000 domains names, of which 4,000 are active. To make the “WIPO Alerts” system more transparent, the public can now search to check if a specific site is listed and, if so, by which country it was flagged.

=> ↺ Two More ‘Ringleaders’ of Torrent Site ‘Asgaard’ Sentenced in Denmark

• Following investigations by anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, police have been rounding up people who played prominent roles at Danish private torrent site Asgaard. This week two more people were convicted of copyright infringement offenses. Both were handed conditional prison sentences, ordered to pay compensation, and have to complete community service.

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