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● 09.05.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 05/09/2022: OpenMandriva Approaches Big Release

Posted in News Roundup at 6:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Manage containers on Fedora Linux with Podman Desktop – Fedora Magazine Manage containers on Fedora Linux with Podman Desktop

• Podman Desktop is an open-source GUI application for managing containers on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

• Historically, developers have been using Docker Desktop for graphical management of containers. This worked for those who had Docker Daemon and Docker CLI installed. However, for those who used Podman daemon-less tool, although there were a few Podman frontends like Pods, Podman desktop companion, and Cockpit, there was no official application. This is not the case anymore. Enter Podman Desktop!

• This article will discuss features, installation, and use of Podman Desktop, which is developed by developers from Red Hat and other open-source contributors.

=> ↺ How to build Super Mario 64 natively on Linux

• Super Mario needs no presentations: it is one of the most beloved video games characters. Super Mario 64 was originally released for the Nintendo64 console in 1996, and represented the first 3D episode of the Mario franchise. Thanks to a github project, which achieved the full decompilation of the game, it is now possible to build a native Linux port and play it without the need of a Nintendo64 emulator. In order to compile the port, an original, and legally obtained “.z64” rom of the game is needed.

• In this tutorial we see how to compile and launch the Super Mario 64 Linux port on some of the most used distributions.

=> ↺ Introduction to the OverlayFS

• The OverlayFS pseudo-filesystem was first included in the Linux kernel 3.18 release: it allows us to combine two directory trees or filesystems (an “upper” and a “lower one”) in a way that is completely transparent to the user, which is able to access files and directories on the “merged” layer just like he would do on a standard filesystem.

• In this tutorial we learn the basic concepts behind OverlayFS, and we see a demonstration of its usage.

=> ↺ How to connect to a remote computer using VNC in Linux | Enable Sysadmin

• The Wayland protocol is the latest graphical server software for Linux computers, and it has replaced the X11 system in most major distributions. Old tricks like X Forwarding over SSH and logging in through xhost are on the way out, and remote access is now provided by the remote frame buffer protocol and Virtual Network Computing (VNC).

=> ↺ How to send desktop notifications using notify-send

• Every desktop environment on Linux has its own notification system which implements the Freedesktop notifications specifications. Some of them, like GNOME or KDE, use their own built-in notification systems which cannot be replaced; others like Xfce or Mate, use more modular components (Xfce notification daemon and Mate notification daemon, respectively). Desktop-independent notification systems also exist (dunst, for example): most of the time they are used on minimal setups (e.g. when using a plain window manager instead of full blown Desktop environments).

• In this tutorial we learn how to send desktop notifications from the command line using the notify-send utility.

=> ↺ How To Install Unrar on Fedora 36 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Unrar on Fedora 36. For those of you who didn’t know, The GNU unrar is a freeware used to extract compressed files in RAR format. In addition, it offers several features for manipulating archives, such as the ability to list the contents of an archive or extract only specific files.

• 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 Unrar decompress on a Fedora 36.

=> ↺ How to Change the Default Browser in Ubuntu – TecAdmin

• You probably know that Chrome is the default browser in Ubuntu. But did you know that you can change this? There are several other browsers that come pre-installed with Ubuntu, such as Firefox and Midori. If you’re not a fan of Chrome or if you prefer to use another browser for your browsing needs, changing the default browser from Chrome to Firefox, for example, is pretty straightforward.

• This tutorial will show you how to change the default web browser on Ubuntu and other versions of Linux Mint.

Distributions and Operating Systems

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

=> ↺ ROME Silver Candidate – OpenMandriva

• Not yet a ROME candidate release, still approaching. These ISO images now receiving updates from rolling Update channel.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX fanless embedded box PC features four HDMI input ports – CNX Software

• The BOXER-8256AI ships with two wall mount brackets, a screw package, and a power connector. It supports NVIDIA Jetpack 4.6.2 or above, which should include the recently released Ubuntu 20.04-based Jetpack 5.0.2 SDK.

=> ↺ Ubuntu Blog: The State of IoT – August 2022

• Welcome to the August edition of the monthly State of IoT series.

• Let’s dive straight into the most prominent news across the IoT landscape from the last month.

=> ↺ Why Ubuntu 22.04 is so fast (and how to make it faster)

• If you’ve upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04 then you probably noticed how smooth the GNOME experience is. If you haven’t noticed then try comparing it to an older Ubuntu release or even the latest Fedora. The main enhancement responsible for this is the introduction of triple buffering in Ubuntu.

=> ↺ Best practices to publish open-source software operators | Ubuntu

• Running or operating applications requires several tasks throughout their lifecycle: scaling instances, checking the health, integrating with other applications, running backups, and applying updates – to name a few examples. It’s a time and labour-intensive process. To automate these tasks, developers can implement scripts for repeated execution. This is where the software operator comes in. Software operators are a design pattern, a proven and acknowledged approach by the software community. Software operators lift automation to a new level. They don’t only automate the deployment of application workloads, they also encode the expertise required to manage and operate them. In other words, they offer a secure and reliable way to operate applications.

• [...]

• Canonical has developed Juju and the Charmed Operator SDK to develop and run operators in an open-source way. Operators written to run on Juju are called Charmed Operators, or Charms for short. Developers can publish their operators on our app store: Charmhub.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android TV boxes feature Amlogic SoCs and support Android 11.0

• The Tanix X4 and the TX8 Pro are two TV Box devices powered by Amlogic’s SoCs recently launched in the market. Both devices offer similar features including 4K resolution, ethernet and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connectivity.

• The Tanix X4 TV Box features the Amlogic S905X4 SoC which combines an ARM-G31 MP2 GPU and a quad-core ARM-A55 processor (up to 2.0GHz). Similarly, the TX8 Pro accommodates the Amlogic S905W2 chipset featuring the same GPU (Mali-G31 MP2) along with a quad-core Cortex-A35 processor (up to 1.8GHz). 

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

Chromium

=> ↺ Google removes malicious Chrome extensions with 1.4 million users

• Extensions hijacking browsers in order to plaster the web with even more ads is nothing new. It’s the fact that these extensions appeared on the Chrome Web Store, ostensibly with Google’s seal of approval, that allowed them to affect such a wide array of users. You can admonish users for being careless all you want, but if Google hosts the extensions and presents them directly to users, the company bears some of the responsibility. But initial testing and scans can only do so much, especially when popular extensions can be sold to less-scrupulous new owners.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ USB4 leaps ahead of Thunderbolt with 80Gbps standard

• The USB Promoter Group announced USB4 Version 2.0 on Thursday, a specification that will allow for up to 80Gbps to be transferred over the USB-C connector that is commonly in use on PCs and smartphones. The standard will be backwards compatible with USB4 Version 1.0, USB 3.2, USB 2.0, and Thunderbolt 3 — but not USB 1.0 or Thunderbolt 4.

• The USB Promoter Group said that the new standard will be published in November, meaning the first products should debut sometime thereafter.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Smartphone app accurately detects Covid infection in people’s voices

• Its overall accuracy was 89 per cent, its ability to correctly detect positive cases was 89 per cent, and its ability to correctly identify negative cases was 83 per cent.

=> ↺ ‘These Kids Are Dying’ — Inside the Overdose Crisis Sweeping Fort Bragg

• Disney’s memorial service was in July. “We were getting ready to go into the chapel,” Bowman says, and Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, came into the room and personally informed her that the results of a toxicology report were in. The cause of death was acute fentanyl intoxication.

• [...]

• A staggering total of 109 soldiers assigned to Fort Bragg, active and reserve, lost their lives in 2020 and 2021, casualty reports obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show. Only four of the deaths occurred in overseas combat operations. All the rest took place stateside. Fewer than 20 were from natural causes. All the rest were preventable. This is a seemingly unprecedented wave of fatalities on a modern U.S. military installation.

Hardware

=> ↺ GP2040: A Configurable Game Pad Firmware

• [feralAI] and fellow GitHub contributors present for your viewing pleasure GP2040: an open source game pad firmware for RP2040-based hardware. The dual-core RP2040 is a good platform to use for gaming inputs, as there is plenty of CPU grunt to get sub-1 ms USB polling time, regardless of any other tasks the controller may be performing. Currently the firmware supports PC, Android, RPi, Nintendo Switch, PS3, PS4 (legacy mode), and the sweet MiSTer FPGA-based retro-gaming platform.

=> ↺ This Vintage Alphanumeric Display Was Huge, Hot, Heavy, And Expensive

• It’s easy to take display technology for granted nowadays, but the ability to display data in a human-readable way was not always easy. This is demonstrated well by the Pinlite 30003 Alphanumeric Display Module, a four-character display that was pure luxury for its time.

=> ↺ Magnetic Maniac Manages Mangled Memory

• Ahh, floppy disks. Few things carry nostalgia quite like a floppy — either 3 1⁄2 or 5 1⁄4, depending on which generation of hacker you happen to be. (And yes, we hear you grey-beards, 8-inch floppies were definitely a thing.) The real goodies aren’t the floppies themselves, but what they carried, like Wolfenstein 3d, Commander Keen, DOS, or any number of other classics from the past. Unfortunately a bunch of floppy disks these aren’t carrying anything anymore, as bit rot eventually catches up with them. Even worse, on some trashed floppies, a format operation fails, too. Surely, these floppies are destined for the trash, right?

=> ↺ 2022 Cyberdeck Contest: The Black Beast Will Help You Survive A Robot Apocalypse

• With AI systems getting smarter every day, one might wonder if they might someday evolve into a sentient Skynet-like system and try to take over the world. We’re not sure how close we are to such a situation, but we do know that if the robot apocalypse were to happen, we would want to stay close to [LordOfAllThings], who would likely be carrying the Black Beast. This scary-sounding machine is in essence a Raspberry Pi-based portable computer built inside an outdoor carrying case, with a wide range of unusual peripherals that make it the digital equivalent of a Swiss army knife. In other words, it’s a cyberdeck built for end times — and whatever comes after.

=> ↺ The 7805 Is Dead! Long Live The 7805!

• The 78XX series of regulators are very handy to use. If you need, say, a 5V regulator, you grab a 7805, add a capacitor for stability, and send in enough voltage for the regulator to work with. Cheap and easy. However, the part is not without its faults.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ EPA Administrator Faces Lawsuit for Exempting Coal Ash Dumps From Regulation

=> ↺ Opinion | Rising Up Down South: A Strategy for Radical Togetherness

• With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the institutional tentacles of a deeper regressive and anti-democratic movement are now very clear.

=> ↺ Focusing on “Learning Loss” Obscures How Much We’ve Truly Lost in the Pandemic

Proprietary

=> ↺ Why it Matters that I just saw a Google Nest Hub control an Apple HomeKit smart plug

• That’s exactly what Eve was demonstrating at IFA. The Matter specification hasn’t been finalized yet, so none of the devices were running their final Matter-enabled firmware, but it was enough to see the kinds of functionality we might be able to expect when Eve’s devices get updated to support it.

=> ↺ Apple wasn’t fooling when it said it wanted to make Macs more secure

• Federighi characterized Apple as being in an enduring battle against malware on the Mac. He also explained that between May 2020 and May 2021 the company identified 130 types of Mac malware that infected 300,000 systems.

=> ↺ Microsoft Blames Ubuntu Update DNS Problems for Azure Services Outage

• The problem specifically affected customers “running Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) VMs [that were] recently upgraded to systemd version 237-3ubuntu10.54,” Microsoft’s alert indicated. Microsoft also confirmed the problem in this Azure Support Twitter post.

Security

=> ↺ Violence-as-a-Service: Brickings, Firebombings & Shootings for Hire

• A 21-year-old New Jersey man has been arrested and charged with stalking in connection with a federal investigation into groups of cybercriminals who are settling scores by hiring people to carry out physical attacks on their rivals. Prosecutors say the defendant recently participated in several of these schemes — including firing a handgun into a Pennsylvania home and torching a residence in another part of the state with a Molotov Cocktail.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Class Action Lawsuit Accuses Oracle of “Global Surveillance,” Creating Detailed Profiles of Five Billion People

• A class action lawsuit is accusing Oracle of conducting global surveillance, essentially attempting to create detailed shopping and spending profiles of the world’s entire population.

• The suit accuses Oracle of creating profiles for five billion people worldwide, attaching things like purchase records and GPS locations to their name and contact information. While social media platforms usually dominate the conversation about global surveillance, the Oracle Data Marketplace and the company’s BlueKai service have quietly become one of the world’s largest sources of the sort of personal information that “data brokers” sell for targeted advertising purposes.

=> ↺ Class-Action Lawsuit Accuses Oracle of Tracking 5 Billion People

• This claim is backed up by a video on the ICCL website(Opens in a new window) of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison describing how the company’s real-time machine learning system collects this information and confirms the 5 billion profiles stored in the “Oracle Data Cloud.” The profiles are referred to as a “Consumers Identity Graph.”

=> ↺ Oracle Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Tracking 5 Billion People

• The filing claims that Oracle has created “proxies” for sensitive data that other data brokers and advertisers have agreed not to track. Case in point, Facebook made it more difficult to target users based on race in certain advertising categories several years ago, but Oracle’s Identity Graph helped advertisers achieve the same results. It did this without acquiring any user consent, and even common sense measures like blocking third-party cookies are not enough to stop Oracle’s sophisticated data collection.

=> ↺ Class action against Oracle’s worldwide surveillance machine

• Oracle’s dossiers about people include names, home addresses, emails, purchases online and in the real world, physical movements in the real world, income, interests and political views, and a detailed account of online activity: [4] for example, one Oracle database included a record of a German man who used a prepaid debit card to place a €10 bet on an esports betting site.[5]

• Oracle also coordinates a global trade in dossiers about people through the Oracle Data Marketplace.

=> ↺ Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget’

• Sold by Virginia-based Fog Data Science LLC, Fog Reveal has been used since at least 2018 in criminal investigations ranging from the murder of a nurse in Arkansas to tracing the movements of a potential participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The tool is rarely, if ever, mentioned in court records, something that defense attorneys say makes it harder for them to properly defend their clients in cases in which the technology was used.

• The company was developed by two former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security officials under former President George W. Bush. It relies on advertising identification numbers, which Fog officials say are culled from popular cellphone apps such as Waze, Starbucks and hundreds of others that target ads based on a person’s movements and interests, according to police emails. That information is then sold to companies like Fog.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ The BBC’s perfectly sealed thought system

• Deech, a former Oxford University law lecturer, wrote that “it is absolutely unacceptable to respond to comments with murder or violence,” and that Atwan’s comments “could amount to glorifying terrorism,” a crime under English law.

• The BBC dismissed her complaint, insisting that inviting Atwan to comment was “editorially justified” and that “if extreme views are expressed on the BBC we would always seek to challenge them.”

=> ↺ Peer attacks BBC for ‘glorifying terrorism’

• The BBC has refused to back down after a former Governor of the corporation said its coverage of the Salman Rushdie attack “could amount to glorifying terrorism”, the JC can reveal.

• Baroness Ruth Deech, a crossbench peer, wrote to Director General Tim Davie after a British-Palestinian commentator appeared to express sympathy for the Rushdie assailant’s extremism on the BBC News Channel.

=> ↺ In full: Baroness Deech’s letter to the BBC

• It was wrong for the BBC to have given him this airtime. His comments about Rushdie could amount to “glorifying terrorism” under the Terrorism Act 2006. It is absolutely unacceptable to respond to Sir Salman’s writing or comments, no matter how offensive they might seem to some, with murder or violence, and any attempt to explain or justify violence committed against him should be challenged vigorously, not least by the presenter. No direct challenge was made on the programme when Mr Atwan spoke about this topic.

=> ↺ Horror of Love Jihad Strikes India Again

• The liberal ecosystem within India is not dissimilar to the United States or other western theaters which are remarkably easy to buckle under cries of ‘Islamophobia’ if suspects, assailants, perpetrators of any crime happen to be Muslim.

• Despite its pluralism, and the fact that the majority religion (Hinduism) lives peacefully with the minority religions of Islam and Christianity, there are frequently shrill cries from media, academia and the chattering classes whenever any aspect of Hindu culture is seen to usurp Islamic hegemony.

Environment

=> ↺ Parent Participation in Climate Justice Efforts Is on the Rise

=> ↺ Opinion | How a ‘Green Amendment’ Can Boost Environmental Justice

• According to locals, two different types of odors emanate from the 366-acre High Acres Landfill, which sits just outside Rochester, New York. 

Energy

=> ↺ Hackaday Prize 2022: Drying Clothes With Ultrasound

• Clothes dryers are great, and a key part of modern life, but they do use a lot of energy. [Mike Rigsby] decided to see if there was a more efficient method of drying clothes that could compete with resistive heating for efficiency. Thus, he started work on an ultrasonic clothes dryer.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Animal Welfare in the Bible

• So I decided to ask some Christian activists, scholars, and theologians — who are concerned with animal ethics — whether they thought the Old Testament had more to say on the subject than the New Testament, and whether they viewed this as a problem. Here’s what they said.

=> ↺ How to Green Our Parched Farmlands and Finance Critical Infrastructure

• There are, however, other ways to finance these essential projects. “A work-around,” says Tucker, “is so-called off-balance sheet money creation.” That was the approach taken in the 1930s, when commercial banks were bankrupt and the country faced its worst-ever economic depression; yet the government succeeded in building infrastructure as never before.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Google put Parler’s app back in the Play Store

• Parler, which advertises itself as a platform for free speech, agreed to moderate posts that show up in the Play Store app, according to a Bloomberg report. The company previously told The Verge that it has a similar deal that allows it to remain on the App Store — “Anything allowed on the Parler network but not in the iOS app will remain accessible through our web-based and Android versions.” (The Android version was, at the time, available via side-loading and therefore did not have to conform to Google Play policies.) The company also said that its algorithm could detect violent content that violates its guidelines.

=> ↺ Twitter had a new plan to fight extremism — then Elon arrived

• Instead, researchers hoped to identify people who were about to engage with harmful tweets, and nudge them toward healthier content using pop-up messages and interstitials. “The pilot will allow Twitter to identify and leverage behavioral — rather than content — signals and reach users at risk from harm with redirection to supportive content and services,” read an internal project brief, viewed by The Verge.

• Twitter researchers partnered with Moonshot, a company that specializes in studying violent extremists, and kicked off a project called Redirect, modeled after work that Google and Facebook had done to curb the spread of harmful communities. At Google, this work had resulted in a sophisticated campaign to target people searching for extremist content with ads and YouTube videos aimed at debunking extremist messaging. Twitter planned to do the same.

=> ↺ Twitter’s edit button is a big test for the platform’s future

• Whether Twitter should have an edit button is still a fun and controversial debate. Will some users abuse the feature, creating (or manufacturing) viral tweets and then changing them to something problematic that lots of users see? You betcha. Do most people want an edit button to do totally valid, normal, platform-improving things? Yep. Can Twitter do enough to track and mitigate the abuse, so that the vast majority of users — who just want to correct typos, re-phrase things that are being misinterpreted, and update their tweets as things change — can use it for its intended purpose? That’s the real question.

=> ↺ Why Gorbachev Was One of the Greatest Failures in History

• A myth has since grown up that the Soviet Union was in a state of collapse when Gorbachev took the helm, but this is not correct. It was politically and economically dead in the water, but it was not falling apart and the Government faced no serious challenge to its authority. It might have continued in this semi-moribund state for decades – like the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century – if its leadership had so wished.

=> ↺ Gorbachev Rode the Tiger and Ended Up Inside It

• This destructive process of sweeping away all the institutions of state socialism via radical privatization did not give birth to the free market capitalism that the ideologues of the IMF and their Russian acolytes desired. Instead, it gave way to a system where privatized assets passed into a few hands that had mastered the system of pirate capitalism.

=> ↺ Where Does Russia Receive Its Aid From?

• Even most of Russia’s key post-Soviet allies belonging to its international organizations, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), have avoided supporting Moscow. Kazakhstan, for example, a member of both institutions, took steps in July to begin exporting its oil across the Caspian Sea, bypassing Russian-controlled oil pipelines. This directly undermines the Kremlin’s strategy of restricting oil to Europe to compromise the region’s energy security. The key exception among post-Soviet states has been Belarus. Over the last decade, President Alexander Lukashenko has steered Belarus further into Russia’s orbit. Enticed by cheap Russian oil and gas and lucrative transit fees as both these commodities continue on to Europe, Lukashenko has also increasingly relied on Russian security forces to enforce his rule—notably evident during the 2020 Belarusian protests

=> ↺ Biden Adviser’s Lobbying Firm Is Undermining Democratic Party Priorities

=> ↺ The Story of Ted Hall, the Atomic Spay

• Joseph Allbright and Marcia Kunstel, former Moscow correspondents and authors of the book on Ted Hall, Bombshell (1997), appear on numerous occasions in the film to offer expert historical commentary on the Hall narrative. Photos of Hiroshima and an interview with the pilot of Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, provide historical evidence of the nuclear devastation that Ted Hall helped create and wished to end. Well-chosen music evokes past events.

=> ↺ Trump Calls Biden ‘Enemy of the State’ in ‘Fully Unhinged’ Speech

• “What Trump did by calling Biden an ‘enemy of the state’ to his poorly educated crowd is literally threatening the president.”

=> ↺ Washington Post Ripped for ‘Neocolonial’ Editorial Against Chile’s New Constitution

• “Green or not, energy for the North continues to trump democracy in the South.”

=> ↺ Antiwar Activists Decry Saudi Arabia’s “Sportswashing” Golf Tournament

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ On Salman Rushdie: Reading and speaking to thwart those who would silence us

• Purchasing the book and using it as a prop at my commencement was an act of resistance to censorship and terrorism, for sure; yet it was amusing that, like most of those threatening or criticizing Rushdie, I had not read the book, either.

=> ↺ Cloudflare blocks Kiwi Farms due to an ‘immediate threat to human life’

• Concerns about Kiwi Farms grew after transgender YouTuber and Twitch streamer, Clara Sorrenti (Keffals), had been targeted by a dangerous harassment campaign by users from the site. Last month, Kiwi Farms users waged a swatting attack against Sorrenti, otherwise known as the act of providing a false tip to police that someone’s planning on carrying out a violent crime, resulting in police swarming the victim’s home.

• Sorrenti later went into hiding and started a #DropKiwifarms campaign that urged Cloudflare to stop serving Kiwi Farms. Users across Twitter shared the hashtag, also with some revealing the harassment they’ve experienced at the hand of Kiwi Farms’ users.

=> ↺ Blocking Kiwifarms

• We have blocked Kiwifarms. Visitors to any of the Kiwifarms sites that use any of Cloudflare’s services will see a Cloudflare block page and a link to this post. Kiwifarms may move their sites to other providers and, in doing so, come back online, but we have taken steps to block their content from being accessed through our infrastructure.

• This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare’s role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with. However, the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike we have previously seen from Kiwifarms or any other customer before.

=> ↺ The Chris Hedges Report: Ukraine and the Crisis of Media Censorship

• Throughout the Ukraine war, Western news outlets have mindlessly parroted the opinions of a ruling elite and overseen a public discourse that is often unhinged from the real world. 

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Saudi Arabia investigates video of men attacking orphaned women and girls

• ALQST, a British-based rights group which focuses on Saudi Arabia, said in a statement that the attack was a retaliation against women staging a sit-in and strike over living conditions inside the facility.

=> ↺ Telework still largely regulated at company level in Europe

• Access to telework and working arrangements when working from home are still largely determined at company level in most EU Member States, with just France, Lithuania and Portugal currently enshrining the right to request telework in legislation. While some common ground exists, there are varying standards and practices in place with regards to telework in the EU, which can be regulated through legislation or collective agreements.

=> ↺ Telework in the EU: Regulatory frameworks and recent updates

• Ten countries adopted new regulation on telework since the beginning of the pandemic, underlining the importance of further developing capacity building for social dialogue. In Member States with a relatively weak culture of social dialogue, implementing national-level regulation at company level and protecting employees teleworking is especially challenging.

• A significant number of collective agreements on telework were introduced during the pandemic at company and sectoral levels, particularly in sectors with existing arrangements, such as in financial services, manufacturing and information and communications. New agreements were developed in the public services and administration, education, and health and social work activities sectors, highlighting how telework is fast becoming an established way of work organisation across the EU.

=> ↺ Sharia law returns to Afghanistan as Taliban confirms public whippings

• The Taliban has been enforcing Sharia law for a while since seizing power by ousting the government last summer.

• However, although there have been unconfirmed reports of similar punishments being carried out elsewhere in the country, this is the first time the Taliban has officially said public whippings are being used.

• It came just days after Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s leader, ordered all existing laws to be scrapped and submitted a series of six new articles for how the country should be governed in accordance with Sharia law.

=> ↺ Opinion | ‘Water Is Dignity,’ Say Jackson, Mississippi Activists as Crisis Continues

• As of September 2, the vast majority of the residents of the city of Jackson, Mississippi—over 150,000—still have no access to safe drinking water. The Jackson water crisis began on August 30 when flooding caused the pumps at the main water treatment facility, O.B. Curtis, to fail. This left most residents without clean water and many with no water at all due to low water pressure. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves warned residents on August 31, “Do not drink the water from the pipes if you can avoid it.” 

=> ↺ Opinion | America Needs a Civic Group to Oppose a Cashless Society

• The most perceptive ancient historians and philosophers could not have foreseen a time when a certain type of mass convenience and abundance becomes a threat to democracy, justice and dispersed power. Welcome to the incarcerations of the credit card payment systems Gulag and the corporate state’s drive to stop consumers from paying with cash.

=> ↺ How About a Civic Group to Oppose a Cashless Society?

• If you are in the lower 20% of the income scale, unbanked and outside the Gulag, consumer protections are really weak. Rip-off practices such as pay-day loan rackets and check cashing gouges proliferate.

=> ↺ By Refusing to Prioritize Drivers’ Safety, UPS Risks Major Strike

• It’s not just cookies and steaks that are baking in the trucks. Drivers are collapsing and dying from the extreme temperatures.

=> ↺ Labor Day: Unions Have a Stake in Ending Minority Rule in the United States

• The assault on labor has contributed greatly to soaring income inequality and stagnant living standards for workers in the United States. From 1979 to 2019, productivity (the income generated from an hour of labor) has grown by 60 percent; yet the typical worker’s real (inflation-adjusted) compensation rose by just 14 percent. But wages used to rise with productivity: from 1948 to 1979, productivity rose by 118 percent, and real compensation increased by 108 percent.

=> ↺ America’s New Moment of Labor Mobilization

• It comes on the back of a wave of successful efforts to mobilize at Starbucks and Amazon. The growth of unionized stores at Starbucks in particular has been stunning. Since baristas in Buffalo, New York, became the first at the chain to unionize in December 2021, colleagues at a further 234 outlets have followed suit in recent months.

=> ↺ On Labor Day, Let’s Celebrate 2022 as a Pivotal Year for Independent Unions

=> ↺ ‘We’ll Come Back Stronger,’ Vows Chilean Left After Plebiscite Loss

• “We resisted for 500 years and will continue to do so.”

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ How dumb Social Media rules punished me for a Lovecraftian parody of Billy Joel

• I never heard anything back about this. The video was never restored to Twitter.

=> ↺ Pirate IPTV: Couple Sold Illegal Subscriptions & Laundered Money

• A man has gone on trial in Sweden accused of selling pirate IPTV subscriptions and pre-configured set-top boxes. A two-year investigation led to the seizure of almost $93,000 in cash and a Tesla. After claiming she was unaware of her partner’s activities, a woman faces money laundering charges.

=> ↺ Google Received DMCA Takedown Notices For 4 Million Unique Domains

• Google has reached a new milestone. Over the past several years, copyright holders have asked the search engine to remove URLs from four million unique domains. These include some egregious pirate sites but The White House, the FBI, and the Vatican have also been flagged as infringers.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Summer Retrospective

• Summer is coming to an end. The temperatures are dropping below 30°C. To think that when I was young we expected a few days only of 30°C and more. Summer is coming to an end and my summer break is coming to and end at the end of September. As always, the prospect of going back to work is not very enticing. I’m looking forward to a future were we mostly entertain each other and the basic necessities of life are free.

Technical

=> ↺ Dream XI

• I got a new computer.

• It looked strange.

• There was a detachable screen. And a leather seat. One that you could find in a car.

• On the left side of the leather seat, was an embedded keyboard, on the right, a touchpad. They had the same leather finish as the rest of the seat.

• It felt like sitting in a car. But it wasn’t a car. It was a computer. The screen hovered in front of me. It had no mounting point or base to rest on. It moved along with my head. The keyboard was nice and easy to use.

• 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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