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● 09.04.22

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● Links 04/09/2022: The GNU Hackers’ Meeting 2022 Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 3:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How To Install Apache Tomcat on Rocky Linux 9 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Tomcat on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Apache Tomcat is an open-source web server that allows you to run web applications written in Java. Apache Tomcat software powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the FApache Tomcat on Rocky Linux. 9.

=> ↺ GNOME Extensions in Ubuntu and Other Linux: Install and Usage

• Here’s how you can install and use GNOME Extensions in Ubuntu and other Linux distros.

• GNOME Shell Extensions are the code written by third-party developers for extending the GNOME desktop user experience. The extensions are similar to Firefox, and Chrome’s “Add on” which you may already be aware of.

• There is a huge library of shell extensions available on the GNOME extension website. By installing those, you can extend your desktop experience to any level using the GNOME extensions in Ubuntu and other GNOME-based desktops such as Fedora workstations.

• Now, there are two ways you can install the GNOME Extensions. An easy and modern way. And the old and difficult way.

=> ↺ How to Make Console Your Default Terminal App on Ubuntu – OMG! Ubuntu!

• Ubuntu developers have decided not to make GNOME’s Console the default terminal emulator in the upcoming Ubuntu 22.10 release, but that doesn’t meant you can’t.

• Console is billed as a “simple user-friendly terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop” and, by all accounts, that’s exactly what it is. Functionally speaking, it’s not as avanced as GNOME Terminal, which is the VTE Ubuntu and most Linux distros that ship the GNOME desktop environment use.

• But honestly? Speaking as a Linux user who uses the terminal daily for package management, system monitoring, and playing around with awesome command line tools like ncdu, mapscii, and musikcube, I’m yet to encounter anything Console can’t do.

=> ↺ url redirect tracer with curl

=> ↺ Replace ‘Activities’ with Current Workspace Name in Ubuntu 22.04 / Fedora 36 | UbuntuHandbook

• This simple tutorial shows how to set custom names for your desktop workspaces, and replace “Activities” in the top-left with the current workspace name you specified.

• Today’s desktop operating systems mostly have multiple desktops to group app windows in different screen. These virtual desktops in GNOME (default desktop environment in Ubuntu/Fedora Workstation) are called workspaces. And, each workspace can have its own name.

=> ↺ NixOS specific feature: specialisations

=> ↺ My BTRFS cheatsheet

• I recently switched my home “NAS” (single disk!) to BTRFS, it’s a different ecosystem with many features and commands, so I had to write a bit about it to remember the various possibilities…

=> ↺ E85: Tech Talk: Hugo Website Builder, I’ve Reach My YouTube Ceiling, Plex Breach – Invidious

• Tech Mentorship! Please enjoy the video and if you have any questions, leave a comment down below. My goal is to expand the Linux community.

=> ↺ Plex Media Server | Install on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – Invidious

• What’s up, guys!!! In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through installing Plex Media Server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Plex is a streaming media server that lets you organize your video, music, and photo collections and stream them to all of your devices at any time and from anywhere.

Games

=> ↺ 15 Video Games to Try If You Don’t Play Games

• Some of the titles we’ve highlighted below are available on most modern smartphones, including both Android and iPhone. If you have a tablet like an iPad, there are often optimized versions available for that hardware too. Others are available to play on a computer running Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Evolution Email Client Now Uses a Headerbar/CSD

• I checked in with the latest development builds of Evolution ahead of the GNOME 43 release just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything major and guess what? I was missing something major: the introduction of header-bars!

• I don’t feel like header bars are as controversial now as they were a few years back, but such is the path of progress: people don’t a change, get used to a change, adopt the change as a new baseline normal, and then kick when things change again — rinse, repeat, ad infinitum

=> ↺ Welcome to Pitivi GSoC Update 4

• Hey everyone, hope you are doing fine. This is my fourth update related to Pitivi GSoC, and this time I got a bit late at publishing, more details later on in this blog, so keep reading

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

=> ↺ “OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems” Status Report

• Why have I spent months on five chapters? Because everything in the core storage system of any Unix is intertwined to a nearly unholy degree. To understand filesystems you must understand partitioning, but to understand why Unix uses partitions as it does you need to understand filesystems. I have to meticulously disentangle facts so that I can start explanations at the bottom of the storage stack, but add in enough higher-level details exactly when you need them so you can make sense of why the bottom layers work as they do.

• Otherwise, you’d look at computers and think “Wow, this whole thing is stupid.” Don’t get me wrong, the whole thing IS stupid, but it’s your job to understand the stupidity and I don’t need to be rubbing your nose in it.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ openSUSE in 2022 | Continues to be Awesome – CubicleNate’s Techpad

• I have been pretty quiet here on CubicleNate.com for a few months, not because of any lack of interest in what I do but rather that there have been life things that have gotten in the way. I have many incomplete blatherings that are waiting for me to finish writing them up. The one thing I can say with absolute certainty is my passion for openSUSE hasn’t gone anywhere. I have been, in fact, continually and increasingly happy with what has been coming out of the project.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Selling your old Android phone? Follow these steps to keep data safe – Hindustan Times

=> ↺ Top 25+ Best Screen Recorder Apps for Android Devices in 2022

=> ↺ The top 10 Android party games

=> ↺ Google Will Provide Support To Android Phone Makers For Satellite Connectivity / Digital Information World

=> ↺ 5 simple tips to manage notifications on your Android phone

=> ↺ Turn Your Android Into a Google Home and More. Here’s How – CNET

=> ↺ Warning for all Android users – watch out for three ‘battery killer’ mistakes | The US Sun

=> ↺ Urgent Android warning for BILLIONS of users – ignoring this message could cost you dearly | The Sun

=> ↺ Google Pixel 6a Review: For those Intense about Tensor and Android Updates – TechPP

=> ↺ 7 Easy Ways to Transfer Files from Your Computer to Your Android

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

GNU Projects

=> ↺ The GNU Hackers’ Meeting 2022 is less than one month away – 2022-09-04 20:21 (last update: 2022-09-04 20:37)

• The GNU Hackers’ Meetings are a venue to discuss technical topics related to GNU and free software. GNU Hackers’ Meetings have been taking place since 2007: you may want to look at the pages documenting most past editions which in many cases also include presentation slides and video recordings.

• The event atmosphere is always friendly and informal. Anybody is welcome to register and attend, including newcomers.

• The next GNU Hackers’ Meeting will take place in İzmir, Turkey on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd October 2022.

• We updated the GHM 2022 web page with information about the venue, accommodation and transportation.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ The Commoditization of Large Language Models: Part 2

• Since I wrote Commoditization of Large Language Models almost two months ago, things have progressed much faster. There are now two serious competitors to DALL-E: Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. DALL-E pricing hasn’t changed, but GPT-3 is now cheaper.

• [...]

• The cost moat is nearly gone – new models are trained cheaper, on non-proprietary data, on commodity hardware. Access to these models is trending open rather than closed.

=> ↺ Things tech recruiters look for in your resume and first interview part 3

• Have you applied to 10s of tech jobs and never heard back from anyone? Are you sure that your resume does its main job of getting that first call from the recruiter? Do you want to know what tech recruiters look for in the initial call? If any of your answers were yes, you must read this post.

• In this piece, you will hear from three amazing tech recruiters from Sydney’s popular companies reveal the secrets behind a great resume and acing that initial call with the recruiter. Stay tuned!

=> ↺ Robust Poisson regression in medical biostatistics

• Log-binomial and robust (modified) Poisson regression are common approaches to estimating risk ratios in medical biostatistics [1].

• I have discussed log-binomial regression in a previous post about generalised linear models. The conceptual basis for using log-binomial regression to estimate risk ratios is straightforward – it is natural to specify a binomial (Bernoulli) distribution for a binary outcome, and a log link puts the parameter estimates on the risk ratio scale.

• Robust Poisson regression, on the other hand, seems harder to justify. Under the usual parametric view of generalised linear models, it seems to assume a Poisson distribution for a binary outcome, which is incorrect, as a Poisson-distributed variable can take any non-negative integer value, but the outcome can only either happen or not.

=> ↺ Data Science Challenges in R Programming Language | R-bloggers

• Data Science Challenges in R Programming Language, Take-home challenges in data science will force you to step outside of your comfort zone.

• But guess what?

• That’s advantageous because it’s the one area where you’ll actually learn stuff. Both novice and expert R programmers must learn to master the take-home problems, but the challenges you’ll tackle will differ greatly depending on your degree of expertise.

=> ↺ Training and Testing Data in Machine Learning | R-bloggers

• If you are interested to learn more about data science, you can find more articles here finnstats.

• Training and Testing Data in Machine Learning, The quality of the outcomes depend on the data you use when developing a predictive model.

• Your model won’t be able to produce meaningful predictions and will point you on the wrong path if you are using insufficient or incorrect data.

=> ↺ What are the algorithms used in machine learning? | R-bloggers

• If you are interested to learn more about data science, you can find more articles here finnstats.

• What are the algorithms used in machine learning?, In less than a minute, this article will explain some of the most popular machine learning algorithms, making them easier to understand for everyone.

=> ↺ Laurence Tratt: A Week of Bug Reporting

• If you use software regularly, and have your wits about you, you will often realise that you’ve encountered a bug — in other words, that the software has done (or not) something that it shouldn’t (or should have). When this happens, the vast majority of people moan to the nearest bystander about how incompetent the people behind the software are and then carry on with whatever they were doing — often stumbling into the same bug repeatedly. Only a minority of people think of reporting bugs and, if they do think of it, they often fail to do so either because they think it’s too time-consuming or that they might end up looking silly.

• It’s unfortunate that so few people report bugs. First, surprisingly few bugs affect a single person: by the time someone does report a bug, it can have affected hundreds or thousands of other people. We can’t all be freeloaders — someone has to take the plunge and report the bug. Second, bugs frequently appear in contexts unfamiliar to the software’s developers [1]. Most obviously, we all have slightly different software installations, and those variations can cause odd effects. Less obviously, users often use software in ways unimagined by its creators, such that some previously untested combinations of operations work incorrectly [2]. Either way, we cannot assume that the software’s developers will encounter the same bugs that we do: in many cases, if we don’t report bugs, the developers simply won’t know they exist.

=> ↺ Giving Names to Things • Buttondown

• First of all, new post: Software Mimicry! It’s about a thing I’ve seen in a lot of software tools and products that I was trying to capture in a single term, so I could share it and explore what it actually means for things. It’s also a rewrite and expansion of one of my very first newsletters: on emulation. I find myself fascinating with terms. Mimicry is something I see in a lot of different places, and I’ve seen people identify particular instances of it, but not connect the dots and discuss the abstract concept of mimicry. Is “articulating” mimicry into a distinct term useful? I think so! By having a term for something you can discuss it as a thing instead of being forced to gesture vaguely at it through examples.

• Take, for example, “side effect”. A side effect is when a function changes the outside world in addition to computing a value. Changing a global value is a side effect. Allocating or freeing memory is a side effect. Updating the cache, advancing the RNG, and making a POST request are all side effects. Side effects are generally something that increases software complexity, so are often implicitly avoided, or explicitly embedded in software constructs like monads and algebraic effects.

=> ↺ Measuring demand for a feature: An economics approach

• How bad do users want a feature in your software?

• What if we could use good ole economics to answer the question? The supply of new features you can provide in your software is limited, so measuring the demand accurately is vital.

• Let’s think about how we could measure the demand for a feature…

• We could ask users what they want. Interview or survey them. Take a poll and give them a few options. Or scrape forums and social media to see what they’re already asking for. Maybe even show them a mockup and get their feedback. Do they say they can’t live without it? These are all standard methods in a user researcher’s toolbox.

• The economics term for this is stated preference, what someone says they want. The problem is that stated preference often does not align with revealed preference, that is, what someone’s actions reveal to be their preference. To put simply, just because a user says they want a feature doesn’t mean they will actually use it. I’ve even written about my own experience where these did not align: When users never use the features they asked for.

Python

=> ↺ Free Python Tutorial For Beginners: Learn Python – Python Land

• Are you looking to learn Python? Look no further. This free Python tutorial contains 100+ carefully crafted, free Python articles full of information, practical advice, and Python practice! We’ll dive into the basics and work our way up to advanced concepts. I’ll provide you with many examples to explain all the concepts clearly.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Handwritten HTML sites

• It’s comforting knowing that it’s still possible to use a plain text editor to create a page, then upload it, and have it viewable by people around the world.

=> ↺ Running Unix commands in real life

Leftovers

=> ↺ ongoing by Tim Bray – Long Links

• Matt Stoller is a full-time anti-monopoly activist and offers an interesting look at a proposed mega-merger in the big-publishing world, characterizing it as Free Speech on Trial. I think he’s 100% right.

=> ↺ Rubenerd: Switching to black coffee/tea as we get older

• “Optimised”… I just made coffee sound like software.

=> ↺ Echo reply (an incomplete update on things)

• For the record, I’m still here. I’m still pissed off at the state of affairs in my country, and I’m still taking my usual summer break, so there’s been no writing.

• I appreciate that several people have checked in, naturally.

Science

=> ↺ 3D artificial pneumatic muscles for future “makers” – iiTalk

• The research has been published in Science Robotics. One of the first demonstrations is that of a pneumatic hand made using a simple 3D printer

=> ↺ 3D Printing Process Created by Rutgers Researchers Is Faster and More Precise Than Conventional Methods | Rutgers University

• Known as Multiplexed Fused Filament Fabrication, the technique “could be a game changer for the 3D-printing industry,” says lead author of study

=> ↺ The Animal Translators – The New York Times

• The naked mole rat may not be much to look at, but it has much to say. The wrinkled, whiskered rodents, which live, like many ants do, in large, underground colonies, have an elaborate vocal repertoire. They whistle, trill and twitter; grunt, hiccup and hiss.

• And when two of the voluble rats meet in a dark tunnel, they exchange a standard salutation. “They’ll make a soft chirp, and then a repeating soft chirp,” said Alison Barker, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, in Germany. “They have a little conversation.”

• Hidden in this everyday exchange is a wealth of social information, Dr. Barker and her colleagues discovered when they used machine-learning algorithms to analyze 36,000 soft chirps recorded in seven mole rat colonies.

=> ↺ New algorithm uncovers the secrets of cell factories – Chalmers

• Drug molecules and biofuels can be made to order by living cell factories, where biological enzymes do the job. Now researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have developed a computer model that can predict how fast enzymes work, making it possible to find the most efficient living factories, as well as to study difficult diseases.

• Enzymes are proteins found in all living cells. Their job is to act as catalysts that increase the rate of specific chemical reactions that take place in the cells. The enzymes thus play a crucial role in making life on earth work and can be compared to nature’s small factories. They are also used in detergents, and to manufacture, among other things, sweeteners, dyes and medicines. The potential uses are almost endless, but are hindered by the fact that it is expensive and time consuming to study the enzymes.

• “To study every natural enzyme with experiments in a laboratory would be impossible, they are simply too many. But with our algorithm, we can predict which enzymes are most promising just by looking at the sequence of amino acids they are made up of”, says Eduard Kerkhoven, researcher in systems biology at Chalmers University of Technology and the study’s lead author.

Hardware

=> ↺ Before Chromebooks: The 2009 “litl webbook”

• There are some bits of technology that never quite find their place in the market… hardware and software that are, perhaps, a bit before their time. (Or, perhaps, are just a bit… too weird.)

• Ones which, despite being considered a “flop”, go on to inspire some of the most successful and widespread technology in the world.

• The failed trailblazers who, all too often, fade from our collective memories.

• Such is the case with the — ill fated — Litl webbook from 2009.

=> ↺ [Old] New hardware offers faster computation for artificial intelligence, with much less energy | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Engineers working on “analog deep learning” have found a way to propel protons through solids at unprecedented speeds.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Eating more ultra-processed foods associated with increased risk of dementia

• People who eat the highest amounts of ultra-processed foods like soft drinks, chips and cookies may have a higher risk of developing dementia than those who eat the lowest amounts, according to a new study published in the July 27, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers also found that replacing ultra-processed foods in a person’s diet with unprocessed or minimally processed foods was associated with a lower risk. The study does not prove that ultra-processed foods cause dementia. It only shows an association.

=> ↺ Daily Exposure to ‘Forever Chemicals’ Costs United States Billions in Health Costs | NYU Langone News

• Daily exposure to a class of chemicals used in the production of many household items may lead to cancer, thyroid disease, and childhood obesity, a new study shows. The resulting economic burden is estimated to cost Americans a minimum of $5.5 billion and as much as $63 billion annually.

• The new work revolves around per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of more than 4,700 manmade chemicals that experts have detected for decades in the blood of millions of people. The chemicals are used, for example, in the production of water- and oil-resistant clothing, electronics, and nonstick cookware, and people are thought to ingest them as food comes into contact with packaging. The substances are believed to disrupt the function of hormones, signaling compounds that influence many bodily processes.

Security

=> ↺ Large scale Internet SSH brute force attacks seem to have stopped here

• The last time I paid attention to what happened when you exposed an SSH port on the Internet was years and years ago, when I gave up being annoyed by log messages and either stopped paying attention or firewalled of my SSH ports from the general Internet. Back then, it was received wisdom (and my general experience) that having an SSH port open drew a constant stream of SSH brute force attacks against a revolving cast of whatever logins the attackers could come up with.

• Recently I set up a Grafana Loki setup that captures our systemd logs. As part of getting some use out of it (beyond questions about how server clocks drift), I built a Grafana dashboard that reports on SSH authentication failures across our Ubuntu fleet (among other things). What I saw surprised me, because what our exposed SSH servers experience today seems to be nothing like it was in the past.

=> ↺ Railway interest in IoT devices growing

• Industrial IoT has amazing potential. But in the words of Mikko Hyppönen, anything smart is vulnerable. Implementation will be key.

=> ↺ Ransomware attacks: 75 percent spike in attacks on Linux OS users in first half of 2022

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Pegasus Row: Why Initial Global Outrage Didn’t Translate into Appetite for Accountability

• For years, there had been lingering concern about the use of NSO group’s Pegasus software. But, the controversy over the military-grade cyber weapon erupted a year ago with the publication of the collaborative global investigation known as the Pegasus Project, led by Forbidden Stories and 16 other media organisations.

• It led to an immediate reaction from most of the countries involved or were impacted through the use of Pegasus spyware. The NSO Group has denied the allegations of abuse of the spyware and asserted that it only licenses the powerful software to national governments.

• The Wire has tracked the twists and turns in the diplomatic consequences of the Pegasus project in the last year.

=> ↺ One Year After Pegasus Project Revelations, the State of Israel Continues to Evade Scrutiny

• In the 1980s, when the State of Israel was the main arms supplier to the apartheid regime in South Africa, no one believed Israel’s denials and attempts to remove responsibility from itself to private Israeli companies.

• Since September 1979, Israel’s representative to the United Nations repeatedly announced in written statements that the State of Israel was complying with the UN Security Council’s arms embargo on South Africa.

• For decades, Israel followed its policy of silence. For example, the deputy director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hanan Bar-On, wrote in his telegram to the ministry director, David Kimchi, on August 29, 1984, “The Israeli policy … is that we do not in any way admit [such sales] to an Israeli or to a foreign actor and certainly not to an American Congressman, even if he is considered a friend and the relationship with him is supposedly intimate.”

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ An ‘imposter Christianity’ is threatening American democracy

• Three men, eyes closed and heads bowed, pray before a rough-hewn wooden cross. Another man wraps his arms around a massive Bible pressed against his chest like a shield. All throughout the crowd, people wave “Jesus Saves” banners and pump their fists toward the sky.

• At first glance, these snapshots look like scenes from an outdoor church rally. But this event wasn’t a revival; it was what some call a Christian revolt. These were photos of people who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, during an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Finance

=> ↺ Inflation as a Political Power Play Gone Wrong – Project Syndicate op-e – Yanis Varoufakis

=> ↺ Ujjwala: Over 9 million beneficiaries did not refill cylinder last year, Centre admits

• Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) connections distributed to women under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) are gathering dust. Beneficiaries have not been able to fill cylinders due to high prices of LPG. The Centre has itself admitted this. Rameshwar Teli, minister of state for petroleum and natural gas told the Rajya Sabha August 1, 2022 that 9.2 million customers did not take any refill in 2021-22. He added that 10.8 million customers took only one refill (Refills being given with connections). Thus, 20 million of the 93.4 million beneficiaries of PMUY took a maximum of one refill.

=> ↺ 88% of Over 9,000 Punjab Farmers Who Died by Suicide in 18 Years Were Debt-Ridden: Study

• The Panjab Agriculture University study examined deaths by suicide among farmers between 2000 and 2018 in six districts of the state.

=> ↺ You gotta pay the troll toll to get in! – Michael West

• With road tolls about to hike with inflation, Victorian and NSW governments face motorist anger heading into their respective state elections. Michael West reports on the upshot of privatisations which have left one company, Transurban, with a monopoly of monopolies.

=> ↺ For whom the toll bells: Transurban’s profits, motorists’ losses and looming toll hikes – Michael West

• With road tolls about to hike with inflation, Victorian and NSW governments face motorist anger heading into their respective state elections. Michael West reports on the upshot of privatisations which have left one company, Transurban, with a monopoly of monopolies.

• Over in the UK, they are calling it the “Poonami”. Rivers polluted beyond legal limits, holiday-makers told they can’t swim at beaches because of the sewage. And they are pointing the bone at the privatisation of Britain’s water companies. The profits are going to shareholders rather than things like fixing leaking pipes. The water bosses are making out like bandits, enjoying a 20% surge in pay last year while companies are busy charging as much as they can and slotting the excess cash to their shareholders rather than stopping human effluent draining into the waterways.

=> ↺ The Origin of Student Debt: The Danger of Educated Proles

• WITH THE vociferous debate over President Joe Biden’s announcement that the federal government will cancel a portion of outstanding student debt, it’s important to understand how Americans came to owe the current cumulative total of more than $1.6 trillion for higher education.

• In 1970, Ronald Reagan was running for reelection as governor of California. He had first won in 1966 with confrontational rhetoric toward the University of California public college system and executed confrontational policies when in office. In May 1970, Reagan had shut down all 28 UC and Cal State campuses in the midst of student protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. On October 29, less than a week before the election, his education adviser Roger A. Freeman spoke at a press conference to defend him.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Drinks on Albo as he brings up his century on a tame wicket – Michael West

• Anthony Albanese celebrated 100 days as prime minister with an address to the National Press Club on Monday and perhaps a quick skull of a foaming frostie.

• In cricketing terms, his century means he gets to take fresh guard, assess the field settings, and strike out to greater things as the opposition wilts under the onslaught.

• The two-day Jobs and Skills Summit on Thursday and Friday is looking encouraging. The Better Off Overall Test will be a focus. Despite the lowest jobless figures in 48 years, there are massive challenges in the vital sectors of the workforce. But there are indications that employers and unions will try to make the government’s life easier as it grapples with the shortage of skilled workers in vital sectors.

=> ↺ Slaughter on Batman Avenue: Victoria gets election result three months early – Michael West

• If the Victorian election were a boxing match, the ref would have stopped the fight. Except that the election isn’t until November 26. The fact that Melburnians suffered one of the world’s longest lockdowns under Covid won’t be enough to stop Premier Daniel Andrews gaining a third term. Last weekend Andrews basked in the favourable publicity generated by his announcement of free university places for nursing students. As feelgood stories go, this was a ripper. Meanwhile The Weekend Australian proclaimed on its front page: ”The Andrews era to live on”. The paper’s Newspoll gave Labor a lead of 56-44 (two-party preferred) over the Coalition led by Matthew Guy. The Liberals live in a world of pain caused by an internal scandal that has overshadowed Labor’s own internal scandals. Under Guy they ceded the plumb seat of Hawthorn in 2018, and now another stronghold, Kew, is likely to fall to a Teal independent.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ The ends of justice: a case of Bilkis Bano

• A lone woman’s painful struggle for justice, and the recent remission granted to 11 convicts who had assaulted her during the 2002 Gujarat riots, sits, disturbingly, at the centre of this poem

=> ↺ Role of Muslims in India’s Freedom Struggle | NewsClick

• For all patriotic Indians, it is the worst of times, it is the age of foolishness, it is the epoch of incredulity, it is the season of darkness, it is the winter of despair, we have nothing before us, to paraphrase an epic description of the revolutionary tumult of the French Revolution, by Charles Dickens in his novel The Tale of Two Cities. However, the current situation in India is not about a revolutionary tide. The torrents that India faces today are intensely counter-revolutionary.

• The forces of Hindutva and its allies are ensconced in power and are hell-bent on overturning the Indian constitution and its Preamble. Their chief picking is to undermine secularism. And to do so, they have chosen to demonise the Indian Muslims.

• As you read this article, hundreds and thousands of Indians are being fed the communal pie through WhatsApp University about the inherent ‘anti-nationalism’ of the Indian Muslims. However, even a cursory glance at history would reveal that Indian Muslims not only played a stellar role in the freedom struggle but happily laid down their lives at the altar of the anti-colonial national struggle.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ EGILMRY Wordo: UNCAP

=> ↺ The joy of not knowing

• Somewhere between seeing something for the first time and knowing everything about it lies a wonderful time of figuring things out, and gaining fluency.

• Not just technical things. I love finding myself getting lost in Central Park, even though I’ve been down every path many times. The occasional feeling of ‘oh-oh, where the **** am I’ is a true joy in my life.

Technical

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ The Viability of Sneakernets

• ew0k pondered yesterday whether a sneakernet is useful in free, developed countries.^ It seems a modern sneakernet is a solution to a non-existent problem, assuming the activities it supports are not illegal or socially unacceptable.

• Is this actually the case? I think the issue is not so black and white. The degree to which a society is free and a nation is developed is a major factor in my opinion.

• First, a point of pedantry. The title of ew0k’s post refers to free and developed societies, but in the article, the phrase “democratic countries in the developed world” is used. I don’t see free countries and democratic countries as being synonymous. It’s certainly possible for democratic countries not to be free: the majority may choose to give up freedoms for the sake of safety or civil order, or may strip freedoms from the minority for profit or to enforce societal norms. Conversely, free societies may not be democratic: a hypothetical anarchist society has almost unlimited freedom at the level of the individual, but does not have a central government, democratic or otherwise.

=> ↺ limiting the connection

• Continuing on the theme of the ideal Internet experience*, I contemplated the possibility of periodically unplugging the Internet from the computer, perhaps using an offpunk browser**, but most importantly, experiencing that disconnection. The feeling of stepping away from the hustle and bustle, of hiding in a cave instead of staying non-stop in the center of a big city. I even wrote recently in my tinylog that I miss the limited access to the net from the days when every minute cost money.

=> ↺ Setting a Gopher hole

• As the beginning of the 2021 came through as setting a Gemini capsule, the beginning of the 2022 is coming through as setting a Gopher hole. I’ve decided to sign up for sdf.org account, because there is a big gopher community and I didn’t want to stuck in as some pioneer somewhere else. So it should be easy thing to set up Gopher hole there. No it wasn’t so obvious.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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