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● 04.27.22

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● Links 28/04/2022: New Official Release of IPFire, FSF Hiring

Posted in News Roundup at 6:59 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac: the channel comparison | IT PRO

• With Linux being open source software, its code can be tweaked and modified to meet specific user requirements – something which is not possible with the closed source Windows and macOS systems. While that can mean support is not as easily accessible, it’s this flexibility that has helped make Linux a popular choice with the developer community and certain sections of the enterprise user base.

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ 6 Dirty Secrets of the Linux and Open Source Industry

• The Linux Foundation is funded (and controlled) by Microsoft and Facebook

• As of 2018, the cost of a “Platinum Membership” to the Linux Foundation cost $500,000 USD (half a million) per year. A system that propelled The Linux Foundation revenue up to $177 Million dollars in 2021.

• Platinum Members include Microsoft, Oracle, and Facebook (now Meta).

• The Board of Directors of The Linux Foundation is made up of representatives from Facebook (Meta), Microsoft, and Amazon (who employs the Chair).

• Think you’re being rebellious — and staying clear of Big Tech — by using Linux? Think again.

• Who controls and funds the foundation which controls Linux?

• Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon.

=> ↺ Moving from Windows to Linux – Disk management

• Today, I’d like to break away from my recent template of Windows-to-Linux tutorials, which have focused on showing you how to install, configure and use a variety of programs, typically designed or intended only for Windows, using frameworks like WINE. What we shall discuss today is the juicy topic of disk and drive management.

• Beyond applications, there’s data to reckon with. And data is critical to everything. Things become extra complicated when one considers the cardinal differences between Windows and Linux. The former uses NTFS, and data is organized in drives (C:, D:, etc). Linux stores everything under one filesystem tree (root, /), and uses different filesystem formats (like ext4), although it can handle NTFS. So then, what gives if you’re trying to move your stuff over? This tutorial is a neat suggestion for those looking for order, simplicity and clarity.

=> ↺ Beelink SER 4 4800U X pairs a Ryzen 7 CPU with Manjaro Linux – Liliputing

• Tiny PC specialist Beelink is offering up a new model that ships with a Linux-based OS preinstalled. The SER 4 4800U X pairs an AMD Ryzen 7 4800U processor with the popular Manjaro distro.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ SOLVED: Pacman Wouldn’t Let Me Run An Update! – Invidious

• If you run Arch Linux or a distribution based on Arch Linux, you will occasionally encounter errors when using the package manager (pacman).

=> ↺ The Most Usable Minimal Terminal Calendar! – Invidious

• Calcurse is a great application but if you want to go even more minimal than that how about you try out when which is as minimal as you can go while still being productive

=> ↺ How to install LeoCAD on Debian 11 – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at how to install LeoCAD on Debian 11.

=> ↺ FLOSS Weekly 678: Of Musk, Mastodon and More – Ethan Zuckerman, Mastodon and the Future of Twitter

• Now that Twitter is a Musk mystery, what becomes of, well, everything? Ethan Zuckerman raises even more questions than he answers in a thought-filled hour of conversation with Doc Searls and Simon Phipps on FLOSS Weekly.

=> ↺ You Git What You Pay For | Coder Radio 463

• Mike battles the onslaught of yet another bout with the plague. At the same time, we react live to Elon buying Twitter, Gitlab kicking off some free accounts, and we discover Google and Apple are working together again to pull the rug on app developers.

=> ↺ There will NEVER be a year of the Linux desktop, but… – Invidious

=> ↺ Easily moving Linux installs – Invidious

• Are you tired of having to reset all your app settings on a new install? Using a simple tool you will never have to reconfig your app settings again. Also adding new apps and programs are extremely simple and intuitive. Stop wasting your time and start using Chezmoi to restore your app settings.

=> ↺ Pop!_OS 22.04: Full Review – Invidious

• The latest LTS release of one of the most popular desktop distributions is finally here – say hello to Pop!_OS 22.04! In this video, Jay will give you all the details about the release, including its new features, how it differs from Ubuntu, and more!

Kernel Space

=> ↺ The Future of the NTFS Linux Driver as Part of the Kernel Is in Question

• After Paragon’s NTFS3 driver was accepted to become part of the Linux kernel last year, it has not received a single line of code maintenance.

• Let’s start with a brief background of events. The NTFS support in the Linux kernel has always been an important part. After all, a vast number of Linux users rely on it to be able to use the Windows file systems fully under Linux.

• Unfortunately, the existing Linux NTFS driver, which implementation dated back to 2001, was unmaintained in the kernel and lacked proper write support and other features.

=> ↺ SocketCAN x Kubernetes

• The SocketCAN package is an implementation of CAN protocols for Linux. Generally speaking, CAN is a networking technology that has widespread use in automation, embedded devices, and automotive fields. While there have been other CAN implementations for Linux, SocketCAN uses the Berkeley socket API, the Linux network stack, and implements the CAN device drivers as network interfaces, often making it the first choice for a CAN implementation.

• Recently, we worked on a project where we used Kubernetes to control and automate deployments and updates. One component of our workflow required the availability of a CAN interface inside the Kubernetes Pod; to our surprise, such support didn’t exist. Fast forward to today, and SocketCAN support is now available in the form of a Kubernetes SocketCAN device plugin!

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Hardware for a syslog-ng server – Blog – syslog-ng Community – syslog-ng Community

• What hardware to use for a syslog-ng server? It is a frequent question with no definite answer. It depends on many factors: the number and type of sources, the number of logs, the way logs are processed, and so on. My experience is that for the majority users even a Raspberry Pi would be enough. But of course, not for everyone.

=> ↺ Apollo ISO bug is fixed for most users and also a workaround for those who need it.

• e have received messages that our recent Apollo ISO resulted in failed installations due to the recently updated Archlinux keyring.

=> ↺ How to Write a Shell Script in Ubuntu – VITUX

• A shell script is a Linux-based script in which commands are written. When a user executes the script, all the commands that are in the script are executed one after another. Think of it like this: You have a task to do, for which you need to write a certain number of commands, and it is difficult to write and execute these commands one by one.

=> ↺ How to Flush the DNS Cache on Ubuntu – VITUX

• The DNS or the Domain Name Server can be characterized as one of the most essential parts of your link to the internet. The DNS translates the domain names to and from the IP addresses so that we don’t need to remember or keep a list of all the IP addresses of the websites we ever want to access. Our systems also maintain a list of DNS records so that we can access our frequently visited websites faster through a quick resolution of IP addresses. This cache on our system needs to be flushed from time to time. This is required because websites may change their addresses time and again, so it is a good idea to avoid IP conflict by clearing the cache. Flushing the cache is also a good way to clear unnecessary data residing on our systems.

=> ↺ ​How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) was released on April 21, 2022, and it will be supported for five years. It comes with many new packages and major software upgrades, including the latest versions of OpenSSL, GCC, Python, Ruby, and PHP. This release is based on the Linux 5.15 LTS kernel and adds support for new hardware and filesystems.

• The desktop edition comes with kernel v5.17, GNOME 42, and a new screenshot and screen recording tool. This tutorial explains how to upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS from Ubuntu 20.04 or Ubuntu 21.10.

=> ↺ How To Install VirtualBox on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VirtualBox on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, VirtualBox is a free and open-source virtualization tool for desktops and servers. It is an alternative to VMware workstation player and other virtualization software out there. VirtualBox supports the guest virtual machines running Windows, Linux, BSD, much more operating systems.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Oracle’s VirtualBox on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

=> ↺ Touch Command in Linux – Options + Examples

• The Linux operating system has multiple objects, such as application files, directories, system files, and binary files. These objects contain metadata information along with the files, which include create, access, and modification time. Sometimes, you may need to update these timestamps and the Linux touch command is a way to do it.

=> ↺ How to install VRoid Studio 1.6.0 on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install VRoid Studio 1.6.0 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

=> ↺ How to conduct Linux privilege escalations

• We can begin the kernel exploitation process by taking a look at how to use kernel exploits with the Metasploit framework. The Metasploit framework offers an automated and modularized solution and streamlines the exploitation process.

=> ↺ How to Install and Use Annotator: An Image Annotation Tool for Linux

• Linux offers various image manipulation tools to help you edit images. Some of the popular ones include GIMP, Pinta, and Krita. However, while these tools offer tonnes of features and serve the needs of most users, many of them have a steep learning curve, and the added complexity in features makes them overkill for basic image editing and annotation needs.

• For such use-cases, you rather need an annotation tool, like Annotator, which simplifies image manipulation and lets you annotate images with just a few clicks.

• Follow along as we walk you through the steps to install and use Annotator on Linux.

Distributions

=> ↺ blog.ipfire.org – IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 167 released

• Another update of IPFire is ready: IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 167. It brings an updated kernel in which we continue our efforts to harden IPFire even further; various package updates including bug and security fixes as well as smaller improvements throughout the distribution.

=> ↺ 5 Reasons to Try Out Zorin OS (and Which Edition to Go For)

• Each Linux distribution provides a particular feature set suitable for a specific target audience. With so many options to choose from, you may find it hard to select the right one.

• Users from other operating systems, such as Windows and macOS, often find it challenging to switch to Linux for various reasons, and that’s where Zorin OS, an Ubuntu-based Linux distro, arrives on the scene.

• This distro is an excellent choice if you are new to Linux. Its interface and features are similar to other popular OSes and help you quickly shift to Linux. Here are some reasons why you should install Zorin OS as your next (or first) Linux distro.

New Releases

=> ↺ Linux Lite 6.0 RC1 is here with Google Chrome as new default web browser

• Now that Ubuntu 22.04 has been released, we will start to see updates to all the Linux distributions that are based on Canonical’s operating system. For instance, the first release candidate of Linux Lite 6.0, which is based on Ubuntu 22.04, is now available. If you aren’t familiar, Linux Lite is very popular with those that are switching to Linux from Microsoft Windows.

• Linux Lite 6.0 RC1 is notable for ditching Mozilla Firefox as the default web browser, and switching to Google Chrome 100 instead. The operating system currently uses Linux kernel 5.15.0-25 and the desktop environment Xfce 4.16.3. It comes with some excellent software pre-installed, such as GIMP 2.10.30, Thunderbird 91.7.0, VLC 3.0.16, and LibreOffice 7.2.6.2.

Arch Family

=> ↺ Arch Linux’s Archinstall Gets a Brand-New Menu System, Many Other New Features

• The biggest new feature of the Archinstall 2.4.1 release is a completely new menu system, which you can see in the screenshot above. The brand-new menu system uses the simple-term-menu Python package that creates simple interactive menus on the command line and it’s accessibility friendly. In addition, Guided has been updated to use the new menu system.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ Fedora not deprecating legacy BIOS – yet [LWN.net]

• As was recently reported here, the Fedora project has been considering dropping support for legacy BIOS systems in upcoming releases. The idea was controversial at best, and the minutes from the April 26 FESCo meeting show that it has been rejected, for now at least. The BIOS SIG will be asked for a new plan for BIOS support in Fedora.

=> ↺ AlmaLinux 9 beta is now available and introduces several improvements

• AlmaLinux is a Linux distribution that is 1:1 binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That means it’s perfectly at home as an enterprise server operating system capable of handling anything you can throw at it. This server-centric operating system was first released in 2021 as a drop-in replacement for CentOS and would serve as an alternative to RHEL.

• [...]

• With RHEL 9 releasing in May, it should come as no surprise that AlmaLinux 9 will follow in its footsteps. Although there is no official release date for the next iteration of AlmaLinux, what we do know is that the beta has finally arrived and although it’s not a major departure from what was offered in AlmaLinux 8, there’s certainly enough to garner a bit of excitement about this next release.

=> ↺ Compliance as Code: Extending compliance automation for process improvement

• Supply chain disruptions, intellectual property theft and the rising cost of data breaches are among the top reasons for a drastic increase in global focus on cybersecurity compliance.

• Regulated industries face more stringent requirements, and some organizations now require third-party assessments instead of using internal teams to verify compliance with cybersecurity frameworks. Non-regulated industries can also leverage the same standards in order to reduce their security risk. Compliance automation is increasingly important to manage the growing burden that security teams face.

=> ↺ Red Hat report: Enterprise open source new pandemic response

• Red Hat recently released The State of Enterprise Open Source 2022 report, which highlights the changing perceptions about the use of the open source development model in the enterprise technology space.

• Now in its fourth year, the survey of nearly 1,300 IT decision makers reveals how organisations are increasingly shifting to open source software solutions to address COVID-19 related challenges and tackle new market demands for quality, speed and an evolving cybersecurity landscape.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Louis-Philippe Véronneau – Montreal’s Debian & Stuff – April 2022

• After two long years of COVID hiatus, local Debian events in Montreal are back! Last Sunday, nine of us met at Koumbit to work on Debian (and other stuff!), chat and socialise.

• Even though these events aren’t always the most productive, it was super fun and definitely helps keeping me motivated to work on Debian in my spare time.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu Blog: Design and Web team summary – 22 April 2022

• The Web and design team at Canonical run two-week iterations building and maintaining all of the Canonical websites and product web interfaces. Here are some of the highlights of our completed work from this iteration.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Incredibuild Launches Support for Yocto Project® – Bolstering Solution for Linux

• Incredibuild, creator of the first hybrid acceleration platform for development processes, announced today support for The Yocto Project®, an opensource collaboration project that helps developers create custom Linux-based systems regardless of hardware architecture. Incredibuild’s newly launched support for Yocto & Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) allows the embedded software development industry to build on-prem and in the cloud while significantly reducing build times and cutting cloud costs.

=> ↺ MontaVista Launches MVEdge, a Commercially Supported End-to-End Solution for the Intelligent Edge – EnterpriseTalk

• MontaVista® Software, LLC, a leader in commercial Embedded Linux® products and services, today announced MVEdge, a full-platform solution for the Intelligent Edge, specifically aimed at gateway-style devices.

• MVEdge allows customers to focus their development resources on developing and enhancing their core products on top of a Linux platform, with MontaVista providing the full DevOps environment from source to deployment, including a pre-integrated security framework for the run-time platform and support for production security processes.

=> ↺ RFID With Arduino Uno: RC522 Wiring and Code

• This tutorial explains how to connect the RFID (RC522) with Arduino Uno. Features, wiring diagram and code detailed

=> ↺ Mini Plex Server Running On A ZimaBoard With A 480GB SSD – The DIY Life

• In this project, we’re going to be making a Mini Plex Server with SSD storage using a ZimaBoard. If you haven’t heard of a ZimaBoard before, it’s a low-cost, feature-rich single board server – we’ll take a look at some of its features once we get it unboxed.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android 13 beta 1 shows face unlock on Pixel 6 Pro, but there’s a catch

=> ↺ OnePlus Nord 2 gets a taste of Android 12 with its first OxygenOS 12 Open Beta

=> ↺ Xiaomi OLED Vision 55 Smart TV arrives with Android TV 11, Dolby Vision IQ, 8 speakers and a 4K OLED panel – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ Ranking all available GTA games on Android in 2022

=> ↺ How to delete your Twitter account on Android – 9to5Google

=> ↺ New Android Auto update brings one-tap message replies

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ 6 Best Alternative Router Firmware that are Open Source – DekiSoft

• Firmware is basically the OS that comes on the router pre-installed. Now each manufacturer carries its own version. Just like OS there on your phone device or personal PC, it controls all inner workings of the device.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

=> ↺ Kiwi TCMS – Kiwi TCMS 11.3

• We’re happy to announce Kiwi TCMS version 11.3 which is the 100th tagged version in our git repository!

FSF

=> ↺ FSF job opportunity: Licensing and compliance manager

• The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a Massachusetts 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect computer user freedom, seeks a motivated and talented Boston-based individual to be our full-time licensing and compliance manager.

• This position, reporting to the executive director, works as a critical member of our licensing and compliance team to protect and promote the use of freely licensed works of software and documentation. For over twenty years, the FSF’s Licensing & Compliance Lab has been the preeminent community resource for free licensing. From principled enforcement of the GNU General Public License (GPL), to certifying software and devices as respectful of user freedom, to the writing and distribution of licensing-related educational materials, the team does work vital for the free software movement.

Programming/Development

Perl/Raku

=> ↺ Perl Weekly Challenge 162: ISBN-13 and Wheatstone-Playfair

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ Bash 05 – Script Logic

• Probably the most important aspect of scripting is using logic operators to control the flow of the script. Sometimes a script needs to do more than run each command in order from the beginning to the end of the script.

• There are many times when you need to control the flow of a script to allow different things to happen based on the parameters that you specify. For example, you may need to verify that a file or folder exists before you copy certain files into the folder.

• We have basically four logic features that we need to cover in this article. There are more logic features we will cover later, but these features will aid you in script flow.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Movin’ On Up A Little Higher, Part 1: Starting to ‘Get Up Offa That Thang’ with Interoperability – Public Knowledge

• You can view the introduction of this series at publicknowledge.org/Movin’. Download detailed charts of both legislative proposals to follow along with our analysis.

• The Black-empowerment hit-maker James Brown mostly sang about movement – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, political, and even economic. The Godfather of Soul recalls being dehydrated and fatigued on tour, but he jolted back to life when he saw the audience in a Fort Lauderdale club reflecting his exhaustion. He yelled “Get Up Offa That Thang, and dance ‘til you feel better… SING!” And that was the birth of his 1974 smash-hit. The cure for collective exhaustion was movement. As consumers, we are exhausted with the harms of some of the largest digital platforms. We all want the choice to start moving. But, movement away from the largest digital platforms isn’t easy. Nevertheless, we must push ourselves and our communities to “Get Up Offa Them Thangs” with interoperability.

• A growing class of Afro-descendant tech entrepreneurs have heard and experienced the downsides of the largest digital platforms and have decided to create their own platforms. The pre-Facebook social media network Black Planet, as well as The Cookout, Bean, RAMŚE, and Black Twitter, all want to compete with Facebook to create safer and more inclusive spaces for Black communities. Fanbase and MelaninPeople are seeking to compete with YouTube for Black content creators who often get uncredited and underpaid for viral content. TruSo and Zimela are vying to compete with Microsoft-owned LinkedIn to cultivate a professional social network. Black-owned wholesale retailers like WeBuyBlack.com are seeking to offer more diverse and culturally inclusive products directly from sellers of color around the world. Platforms that carefully curate Black-owned businesses and Black-inspired goods, services, and experiences like Support Black Owned, Official Black Wall Street, Black Owned Association, Black Owned Brooklyn, and EatOkra are trying to offer alternatives to Google’s ginormous search engine and Amazon’s mammoth marketplace of everything.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Bubble Hockey History: For the Hockey Lovers in Your Life

• The nature of invention and innovation has been on my mind the past few weeks. Specifically, why we attribute some innovations to particular individuals but not others. Henry Ford didn’t invent the assembly line but it’s credited as one of the innovations that made his automobile company one of the most profitable. A.C. Gilbert didn’t really invent the Erector Set but its success and his charisma helped him become one of the largest toy manufacturers in the world. Plenty of business tycoons find success with products they didn’t invent, or even significantly innovate in a meaningful way. Elon Musk bought his way into Tesla Motors, he wasn’t its founder and, of course, the electric car was invented some 80 years before his birth. But perhaps the simplest way to understand why certain business leaders get credit over others is to look at an arcade game popular in colder climates or any place where hockey fans congregate. Today’s Tedium is looking at bubble hockey and the lawyer-turned-game-maker that became its chief champion—and why it might matter to American patent law in coming years.

=> ↺ The World Language

• In Lojban there is an expression, “malglico” (c pronounced as sch) which means “English can go to hell“.

• (L1 means first language, the first language a given person has learned (“mother tongue” as it used to be called), and L2 means all other languages.)

• But English is the world’s most widely spoken L2; four times more people know it than the second most common L2, the MSA variety of Arabic. Though that’s just a written language, and we were talking about spoken L2. Hindi in that case, also about a quarter of English.

=> ↺ Stumbles in the door…

• I am being demoted at work. It is a administrative reorganisation thing, unique I guess to huge administrations. Same job, same money – for now, different title (under-minion) Someone somewhere does not know what I do, and luckily management are asking awkward questions…

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Security

=> ↺ Hackers Are Getting Caught Exploiting New Bugs More Than Ever

• A pair of reports from Mandiant and Google found a spike in exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in 2021. The question is, why?

=> ↺ Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Are on the Rise – Schneier on Security

• Both Google and Mandiant are reporting a significant increase in the number of zero-day vulnerabilities reported in 2021.

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

• Security updates have been issued by Mageia (virtualbox), Red Hat (container-tools:2.0, container-tools:3.0, gzip, kernel, kernel-rt, kpatch-patch, mariadb:10.3, mariadb:10.5, maven-shared-utils, polkit, vim, xmlrpc-c, and zlib), Scientific Linux (maven-shared-utils), SUSE (ant, go1.17, go1.18, kernel, and xen), and Ubuntu (fribidi, git, libcroco, libsepol, linux, linux-gcp, linux-ibm, linux-lowlatency, openjdk-17, and openjdk-lts).

=> ↺ 2021 Top Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities

• CISA, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), the New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre (NZ NCSC), and the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK) have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory that provides details on the top 15 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) routinely exploited by malicious cyber actors in 2021, as well as other CVEs frequently exploited.

=> ↺ FreeBSD based Citrix VPN hacked in massive hostpital healthcare hack in Germany CVE 2019 19781 – hits healthcare hospital in Germany, causing death of (at least) 1 person

=> ↺ Microsoft Windows kills hospital patients all the time

=> ↺ diaspora* version 0.7.17.0 released with security fixes! – The diaspora* Project

• We just released a new diaspora* version, which addresses two critical security issues in the Ruby on Rails framework, as well as one medium security issue in our code discovered by a security researcher.

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

=> ↺ Microsoft discovers ‘several’ vulnerabilities affecting Linux desktop endpoints

=> ↺ We’ve responded to this

=> ↺ Microsoft warns: These flaws could give attackers root privileges on Linux desktops

=> ↺ We’ve responded to this

=> ↺ Nimbuspwn Linux Bugs Could Provide Root Access

=> ↺ We’ve responded to this

=> ↺ Why companies should focus on preventing privilege escalation

• Ahmed: Individuals getting into cybersecurity pen testing, such as red teamers and even blue teamers, benefit from learning about the big techniques to leverage. The systems you’re most likely to encounter during engagements are Windows, with a fair share of Linux, too.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Encrypt all the messages — across all the platforms

• It should be clear to everyone now: E2EE is beneficial and desirable to support a rights-respecting society. If E2EE is desirable, then conceptually, it’s also desirable to make secure messaging interoperable across major communications platforms. I’ll explain why.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ The global dangers of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

• The internet was abuzz yesterday after news broke that Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter had gone through. Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has made it clear that he believes Twitter overzealously moderates content and that he favors an approach with fewer takedowns, open algorithms, and “authentication of all humans.” In announcing the agreement, he said: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ According to Wikipedia, AAA has a bad record of supporting measures that harm motorists and car owners. – BaronHK’s Rants

• It’s always nice to find out that an organization you pay membership dues to every year is lobbying to foist reduced speed limits that rack up more fines from the state, speed trap and red light cameras that were the center of another Illinois bribery and corruption scandal, which increase car accidents but are kept as a license to rip off the public, a federal 55 mph speed limit that existed in my lifetime that nobody paid attention to and went mostly unenforced in many states because even the cops thought it was so stupid, and billing people a VMT tax on top of the gas tax on top of the registration fees.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Third Party

• As I write this post, I am frustrated. Why am I frustrated? Because I found a little old site that had but one functionality: you input a Twitter user into the single search field and get all their media. And then I lost the tab. You’re probably thinking without the fatty JS it would be Nitter which is indeed great; except that wasn’t it because it was way simpler than Nitter.

• These days when you stumble upon a humble Web 1.0 or even 2.0 site that’s still up and runnning chances are it’s a no-nonsense, no-BS website that does exactly what it says on the tin. You can’t say the same of all the sites hawking automation tools for this or that or meant to pump up search results.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ “A Sword was Seen in the Sky”: A True and Wonderful Narrative (1763) – The Public Domain Review

• So opens the first of two accounts detailing unusual phenomena seen in the skies over Riga and Kirschberg (near Gdansk) in 1763. Published by Mannheim-born Philadelphia printer Anton Armbruster the following year, this short pamphlet was a translation of a German broadside titled Zwei wahrhafte von gantz besondrn Himmels–Zeichen. Why this translation for Philadelphia? Such strange news from Prussia would have likely appealed to the city’s many German immigrants, but there was maybe more to Armbruster’s publication. Despite occurring across the other side of the world, such ominous signs from a wrathful God unhappy with a wayward populace, could speak to the citizens of the much-embattled Pennsylvania Province.

• The year of 1764 was a troubled time for Philadelphia. After Armbruster’s former business partner Benjamin Franklin had, in early February, turned back the Paxton Boys vigilante mob on their way to murder Susquehannock Indians, a pamphlet war broke out in the City of Brotherly Love. Nearly a quarter of the seventy-plus pamphlets either excoriating or apologizing for the Paxton gang’s violence were printed on the press owned by Benjamin Franklin and operated by Armbruster. Did the latter then take a break from the ongoing provincial war of words to issue a transcendental warning to Philadelphians?

=> ↺ Trade Edition of Affinities Now Available for Pre-order – The Public Domain Review

• This time last year we were in the heady whirl of the crowdfunding campaign for Affinities, our very special book of images made to celebrate 10 years of The Public Domain Review. A whopping 2800 of you ended up buying a copy and — after a long and patient/impatient wait — they have finally started arriving to doors, hands, and eyes over this last week or so.

• If you missed out on a copy through the crowdfunder, some good news — there will be a trade edition published by Thames and Hudson! It has a different cover and subtitle to the clothbound Volume edition, but the glorious insides are exactly the same. We are super excited that people who missed out first time round will be able to get a copy — and that it can sit in real-life bookshops and reach a wider audience beyond the PDR faithful.

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