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● 09.29.22

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● Links 29/09/2022: Linuxfx 11.2 and Progress on GNOME 43

Posted in News Roundup at 7:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ The Linux Writing Contest 2022: Final Results Announced! | HackerNoon

• The Linux Writing Contest by Linode and HackerNoon has come to an end. It’s time to celebrate the final round winners. This contest slowly took momentum, and we received a good amount of high-quality stories in the third (and final) round of the contest.

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ System76 gives the Oryx Pro a big refresh with an OLED 4k display

• The Linux flagship NVIDIA laptop from System76 has been given a major overhaul, making it something of a beast. Pricey though, with you needing to dig deep into your wallets with a base price of $2,199.

=> ↺ System76 Upgrades Its Oryx Pro Linux Laptops

• The July upgrade also brought the option for purchasers to configure Oryx Pro with either NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti with 6144 CUDA Cores or NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti with 7424 CUDA Cores dedicated graphics cards, configured so that users can switch between the laptop’s integrated Intel GPU and the dedicated NVIDIA graphics directly through the graphics profiles in Pop!_OS, the Linux distribution that System76 builds in-house, and which is installed by default on its machines (although purchasers can opt for the latest and greatest LTS Ubuntu release if they wish).

=> ↺ Coming soon – my book Linux for the rest of us – Real Linux User

• In recent blog posts, I have hinted that I have been writing my own book for quite some time. My goal for this book has always been, much like through this website, to bring Linux closer to normal users by providing easy-to-understand tutorials and background information in an accessible way. Because of the many articles I have written for reallinuxuser.com, I had a lot of material at my disposal as a good foundation for writing this book. And now it is almost time that, after about 2 years of research and writing, I can proudly share that I have completed my book.

• In the coming weeks, my book “Linux for the rest of us” will be available through Amazon KDP in paperback and Kindle eBook format. I am now busy with the final preparations and administrative actions to be able to publish the book. In approximately 370 pages in 6 by 9 inches format, the book helps novice Linux users, doubters, and potential switchers, to understand what Linux is, what choices to make and how, to properly choose the right distribution, where to find Linux distributions, how to create a Linux live USB media, how to make sure you have a secure download to start with, how to install Linux, how to get the system working optimally for different hardware types, how to find and install beautiful applications, and it also offers many more interesting topics that will help you further in your Linux journey. The book will help anyone who is not really interested in the most in-depth technical aspects but wants to use a computer for productive purposes, to understand, set up, and use their new Linux system in an effective way, according to a logical step-by-step approach.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ FLOSS Weekly 700: The Linux Kernel Gets Rusty – Jonathan Corbet, RUST and the Linux Kernal [sic] Development

• Jonathan Corbet of LWN tells Doc Searls and Shawn Powers what’s happening with the Linux Kernel, including the ascendence of Rust, the role of companies that employ developers and maintainers, the needs for more maintainers, plus diversity, and the growing role of the Linux Foundation. Great discussion on FLOSS Weekly.

=> ↺ GTA 6 Hacker “Teapot” Has Been Arrested in the UK – Invidious

• The teenage hacker most recently known as teapot (also goes under other aliases like white, and SigmA) was arrested in Oxford shire UK on suspicion of hacking and is currently held in police custody.

=> ↺ How to install Notepadqq on Linux Mint 21 – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Notepadqq on Linux Mint 21.

=> ↺ Arch Linux Finally Puts An End To Python 2!! – Invidious

• Python 2 was put to rest by it’s developers all the back in 2020 but it’s still been sticking around in the FOSS world and distros like Arch linux still had packages available in places like Debian and RHEL it’s even still shipped by default.

=> ↺ BSD Now 474: EuroBSDcon 2022

• Deploying FreeBSD on Oracle Cloud, A Tale of 300,000 Imaginary Friends, EuroBSDcon 2022 recap, OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems” Status Report, OpenBGPD 7.6 Released, immutable userland mappings, Portable OpenSSH commits now SSH-signed, and more.

=> ↺ Stellarium: Using a Linux Star Chart – Invidious

=> ↺ The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 973

• Joe hates hunger games.

=> ↺ Akademy 2022 Interview: In conversation with Hector Martin – Kockatoo Tube

=> ↺ Akademy 2022 Interview: In conversation with Hector Martin – Kockatoo Tube

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Linux 0.0.1 compiling on Ubuntu 64

• You might need some packages first

=> ↺ Avoid Linux locking up in low memory situations using earlyoom

• Within operating system kernels, at least for Linux and the BSDs, there is a mechanism called “out of memory killer” which is triggered when the system is running out of memory and some room must be made to make the system responsive again.

• However, in practice this OOM mechanism doesn’t work well. If the system is running out of memory, it will become totally unresponsive, and sometimes the OOM killer will help, but it may take like 30 minutes, but sometimes it may be stuck forever.

• Today, I stumbled upon a nice project called “earlyoom”, which is an OOM manager working in the user land instead of inside the kernel, which gives it a lot more flexibility about its actions and the consequences.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ NVIDIA put out new Vulkan Beta Driver with Vulkan Video updates

• NVIDIA has released a new version of their Vulkan Beta Driver, with new extensions supported and updates to their support of the newer Vulkan Video. What is Vulkan Video? It’s the attempt to add in hardware accelerated video compression and decompression into the Vulkan API.

Applications

=> ↺ Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Apple Photo Booth – LinuxLinks

• Photo Booth is a software application for taking photos and videos with an iSight camera. iSight is a brand name used by Apple to refer to cameras on various devices. The software offers live filters and the ability to replace backgrounds.

• Photo Booth is not available for Linux. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How To Install KeePassXC on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

• In this guide, we will show you how to install KeePassXC on Ubuntu systems.

• KeePassXC is a free and open-source password manager. It started as a community fork of KeePassX (itself a cross-platform port of KeePass).

=> ↺ How to Install Code::Blocks IDE on Fedora 36 Linux

• Code::Blocks is free and open-source software highly extensible Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the C, C++, and Fortran programming languages. It features support for a wide range of compilers, parallel builds, and multi-target projects and also provides an interface with GNU GDB. The code editor in Code::Blocks features syntax highlighting, code folding, a tabbed interface, code completion, a class browser, and smart indenting.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Code::Blocks on Fedora 36 Linux desktop with either DNF or Flatpak package manager using the command line terminal and instructions on how to update and remove the software in the future if required.

=> ↺ How to Setup Metabase and Nginx to proxy traffic on Rocky Linux 9

• Metabase is an open-source business intelligence tool. Metabase lets you ask questions about your data, and displays answers in formats that make sense, whether that’s a bar chart or a detailed table. You can save your questions, and group questions into handsome dashboards.

=> ↺ How to Modify Ban Time Fail2ban | Mark Ai Code

• Fail2ban is an open-source log parsing program that guards against brute-force assaults on your system. It parses log files and blacklists IP addresses with a high number of authentication failures.

• This commonly happens when a person tries to log in through trial and error. Fail2ban then takes action, such as modifying the firewall rules to ban that IP address for a set amount of time, which is usually 10 minutes or 600 seconds. To avoid locking off innocent users who may have frequently mistyped their passwords, the blocked IP address is automatically unbanned after 10 minutes.

• This post will teach you how to adjust the ban time in fail2ban and, if desired, how to permanently ban an IP address.

=> ↺ How To Install OpenToonz on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

• OpenToonz is a 2D Animation Program based off of Toonz Developed by Digital Video in Italy. It’s open source animation production software to develop and create all together.

• OpenToonz has been customized by Studio Ghibli, and used for the creation of its works for many years. Dwango has launched the OpenToonz project in cooperation with Digital Video and Studio Ghibli.

=> ↺ How To Install Peek on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Peek in Ubuntu systems.

• Peek is a computer software program for Linux to create simple animated GIF file based on the GIF89a file format. A screencast is created from a user-defined screen area. Peek is optimized for generating animated GIFs, but can also directly record to WebM or MP4.

• Peek is not a general purpose screencast app with extended features but rather focuses on the single task of creating small, silent screencasts of an area of the screen for creating GIF animations or silent WebM or MP4 videos.

=> ↺ How To Install Code Blocks on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

• Code::Blocks is a free, open-source cross-platform IDE that supports multiple compilers including GCC, Clang and Visual C++. It is developed in C++ using wxWidgets as the GUI toolkit. Using a plugin architecture, its capabilities and features are defined by the provided plugins. Currently, Code::Blocks is oriented towards C, C++, and Fortran. It has a custom build system and optional Make support.

=> ↺ Install OpenShot on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

• In this guide, we will show you how to install OpenShot on Ubuntu systems

• OpenShot Video Editor is a free and open-source video editor for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Chrome OS. The project started in August 2008 by Jonathan Thomas, with the objective of providing a stable, free, and friendly to use video editor.

• The program supports Windows, macOS, and Linux ever since version 2.1.0 (released in 2016). OpenShot added support for Chrome OS in version 2.6.0 (released in 2021). There is an unofficial portable version beginning in 2020.

=> ↺ How to Use Picture in Picture Mode in Brave Browser

• Brave is an excellent Chrome-like and yet Chrome alternative web browser.

• Firefox and Brave are two browsers I like using on my Linux system. Both have different advantages.

• There is one thing that Firefox does better than Brave and it is the picture-in-picture (PIP) mode that works on YouTube, Netflix and most streaming sites.

• Brave too has picture-in-picture mode but it’s so hidden that you feel like there is no PIP support at all.

• The built-in picture-in-picture works on some websites (like YouTube) but may not work on others (like Prime Video). Worry not! you can use a dedicated extension for that.

• Let me show both methods in this tutorial.

=> ↺ List all packages in Ubuntu/Debian that no package depends on

=> ↺ How to install and Secure Redis on Ubuntu 22.04 – RoseHosting

• In this tutorial, we are going to explain in step-by-step detail how to install and secure Redis on Ubuntu 22.04.

• Redis is a shortcut for a remote dictionary server and an in-memory data structure store. It is used as an option for a distributed in-memory key-value database with durability. Redis server is written in C language and supports a huge range of data types such as strings, hashes, lists, and many more.

• Installing and securing Redis on Ubuntu 22.04 is a straightforward process that may take up to 15 minutes. Let’s get things working!

=> ↺ The Siren Song of Set It and Forget It

• The truth is I work with a lot of clients, many of which should know better, whom rely almost exclusively on legacy applications, operating systems and platforms to handle their work on a day to day basis. What makes matters worse is that these legacy tools have been integrated into workflows that they now consider to be sacrosanct despite the fact that over the last decade or two, far superior and far more efficient replacements have been developed.

• But replacing these tools generally requires that end users change or adapt their workflows and they really don’t want to do that as I discussed back in 2021′s post “Spock Was Wrong: In Tech is is Easier to Create than to Destroy”: [...]

=> ↺ Reaching past our firewalls with WireGuard (some thoughts)

• The appeal of WireGuard for this is that it’s a lightweight service that requires little configuration or operation, and is now supported across all of our Ubuntu fleet. This creates two obvious options, depending on how much work we want to do on these external machines. The first option is to run WireGuard in a non-routed, “point to point” mode on each of the internal machines that have services we want to provide access to. The internal machine would expose its service(s) on an private WireGuard network as well as its normal IP address (in many cases this requires no service changes), and external machines would reach the service by talking to the internal machine’s private WireGuard IP address. The one drawback to this is that it requires configuring each external machine to use the appropriate magic WireGuard IPs for these services, instead of the hostnames we normally use.

=> ↺ Day 2: logical properties

• Logical properties are a new way of working with directions and dimensions, one that allows you to control layout through logical, rather than physical mappings. This is especially useful, if you’re dealing with websites that are presented in different languages and writing modes, like right-to-left.

=> ↺ Day 3: logical property shorthands

• If you use a shorthand property like margin with all 4 values, the properties will always be applied in the direction top – right – bottom – left, no matter the reading direction.

=> ↺ Simple Group Theory

• The formal definition of a group and a short proof: A group is a set G with a binary operation on G that satisfies these four axioms1:

• Associativity: For all a,b,c in G (a • b) • c = a • (b • c)

• Identity: There exists an element e in G such that, for each a in G e • a = a and a • e = a

• Inverse: For each a in G there exists an element b in G such that a • b = e and b • a = e, where e is the identity element.

• Closure: For each a, b in G, a • b and b • a are contained in G.

=> ↺ Getting Started With Rootless Container Using Podman

• Are you deploying software using containers? Are you using Podman? Do you want to up your security game by running containers with as little privilege as possible? Boy, do I have an article for you!

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

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Audacity on Fedora 36. For those of you who didn’t know, Audacity is a free and open-source digital audio editor and recording application. The software includes many features that allow users to edit and record quickly, mix audio files, and support a variety of audio file formats, as well as VST plug-ins. It is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and other Unix-like 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 the Audacity audio editor on a Fedora 36.

=> ↺ How to Install Docker Swarm on Debian 11

• Docker Swarm is a container orchestration built on Docker Engine. It allows you to create and deploy a cluster of Docker nodes with multiple servers.

=> ↺ How to Transfer Files from a Remote Server to Local Machine – ByteXD

• This tutorial walks you through transferring files from a remote server to a local machine using…

=> ↺ How to install Scartchin’ Melodii on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Scartchin’ Melodii 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.

=> ↺ TCP/IP Basics by Math | Linux.org

• The TCP/IP Protocol is essential for accessing the Internet. This is the only protocol used for the Internet, so it is important to have some understanding.

• Before we get to the math, let’s look at some basics.

Games

=> ↺ Terraria: Labor of Love update is out now

• Terraria: Labor of Love, another major update for the popular crafting and survival game is officially out now. There’s a ridiculous amount (as usual) that’s new, here’s the biggest stuff to look out for.

=> ↺ Free evolution sim ‘Thrive’ adds a new part to let organisms spew mucilage

• What I can only describe as some form of microscopic fart-cannon, the free and open source evolution sim Thrive has added what they call a Mucilage Jet for your creatures in version 0.5.10.

=> ↺ Manage games and people in Roller Drama with full Linux / Steam Deck support

• Roller Drama is an upcoming hybrid of a sports team management sim, along with visual novel elements too and it sounds like a great idea for a game. Just recently, the developer also noted it will have full Native Linux support along with controls nicely tweaked and set ready for the Steam Deck directly.

=> ↺ Steam Deck got another Beta update focused on Steam Input and FlickStick

• Seems Valve snuck out another Steam Deck Beta update while I was asleep, this time focused on improvements to Steam Input after the smaller bug fix earlier.

=> ↺ Valve give update on official Steam Deck Dock, Valve excited for SteamOS on more devices

• In a new interview with IGN, Valve has given a few more little details about their thoughts on how things with the Steam Deck are going along with notes on the official Steam Deck Dock and SteamOS on more devices. The full interview is worth a read but here’s a few choice notes for you.

=> ↺ Steam drops the Lunar New Year Sale, we’re getting a big Spring sale instead

• Valve has announced some changes to their major seasonal sales, along with the Lunar New Year Sale being dropped.

=> ↺ Mazter Game: A Maze in Your Linux Terminal

• Mazter is a fun and interesting game, and the rules are simple. On each level, it will put you in a random maze and you need to find your way out of this maze.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDE: Making it easier to submit bug reports

•  A persistent complaint KDE faces is that it’s too hard to submit bug reports. One obstacle was the giant scary list of products at https://bugs.kde.org/enter_bug.cgi. Well, no longer! This page is now organized into logical categories with user-friendly text, so it should be much easier to find the right place for your bug report if that’s your entry point. This has been rolled out already and is available immediately…

• There are also other entry points; for example all KDE apps have a “Report a bug” menu item that will take you to the right place automatically. However two prominent ones did not: System Settings and Plasma. In System Settings, the menu item took you to the generic product, not the specific component for the page you’re on. And Plasma had no functionality like this at all.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Progress Update For GNOME 43 – Chris’s Design – Development

• GNOME 43 is out the door now, and I want to use this post to share what I’ve done since my post about my plans.

• [...]

• Since my post in April, Loupe has received many changes. Allan Day provided a new set of mockups for me to work from, and I’ve implemented the new look and a sidebar for the properties. There are some open questions about how the properties should be shown on mobile sizes, so for now Loupe doesn’t fit on phones with the properties view open.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

=> ↺ Linuxfx 11.2 22.04.3 LTS WxDesktop 11.7

• It is with great pleasure that we announce the release of Linuxfx version 11.2 22.04.3. This release is now based on Ubuntu 22.04.3 Jammy Jellyfish. Support for .exe and .msi applications has been improved with Wine 7.18, kernel 5.15 is also present in this release, improving support for more modern hardware. We updated KDE and the entire application base, which is now downloaded directly from the Neon repositories. WxDesktop, all its tools and themes have also been updated. Support for android games and apps has been improved. There are several new features and improvements, so we recommend downloading this version immediately!

Fedora Family / Red Hat / IBM

=> ↺ Fedora Community Blog: Contribute to the Fedora Project during Hacktoberfest 2022

• Allow us to wake you up when September ends because Hacktoberfest is (nearly) here. And you can contribute to the Fedora Project while participating in Hacktoberfest 2022! This event is an excellent opportunity to advocate for free and open-source software, all while giving back to the community with the contribution of your choice. Hacktoberfest includes low and non-code contributions. You can diversify your contributions to include writing docs, creating designs, running tests, mentoring folks, and much more. This global event is open for anyone, from students to professionals. People of all backgrounds and skill levels are encouraged to join us.

=> ↺ How Podman packaging works on Linux | Opensource.com

• Over the past few months, the Podman project has been reworking its process for generating Debian and Ubuntu packages. This article outlines the past and present of the Debian packaging work done by the Podman project team. Please note that this article does not refer to the official Debian and Ubuntu packages that Reinhard Tartler and team created and maintain.

=> ↺ New Ebook: 10 resources to make you a better communicator | The Enterprisers Project

• Are you desperate for advice on fostering healthy conflict in your organization? Have you been stressed out by the prospect of endless meetings with a new remote workforce? What are the best ways to enhance your EQ in the modern workplace? Especially in this time of hybrid work, IT leaders need to know how to make connections across the globe.

=> ↺ IT talent: 6 tips for success in an SRE role

• A career in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) can be very promising. LinkedIn named the Site Reliability Engineer one of the 25 fastest-growing job titles over the past five years. As the need for more SRE professionals grows, so does the need for specific skills.

=> ↺ Using a GraphQL endpoint from an Ansible playbook

• I recently had to call a GraphQL API from an Ansible playbook, and considering I had never done that before and there is little to no documentation about this online, it was a bit tricky.

• In the end, I got everything working, and figured I would share here for posterity (and myself, when I have to do this again in the future!)

• A GraphQ API call consists of either one or two parts: the actual query or mutation and optionally a set of variable as input to the query or mutation.

=> ↺ The benefits and limitations of flexible array members | Red Hat Developer

• Discover how flexible array members offer convenience and improve performance, and how compiler complexities are mitigated.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Comet Lake based PC available in barebone and customizable options

• The Mitac E410-13CMI is an industrial grade embedded system powered by the Intel Comet Lake 10th Gen processor. This fanless PC provides support for dual 4K displays, up to 64GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.1 and several other peripherals.

=> ↺ Reclaiming Digital Privacy

• The advancements of the digital age has gifted us with the ability to search and access world’s information sources within a few seconds. However, Big Tech companies still make it hard for users to control their own privacy when accessing digital products and services.

• The problem is deeper for our kids or elderly parents, who are bombarded with all kinds of content without the ability to control their security preferences easily. It’s like driving a car on the free way (or the highway) without its brakes working properly. They need secure devices that safeguard their privacy from the get-go.

• When Founder and CEO, Todd Weaver, saw his kids interact with digital devices, he was concerned about their privacy online. He decided to start the movement of respectful technologies for the next generation. After a lifetime of work as an engineer, developer, architect, and advocate for Free and Open Software, it was his role as father that solidified his next business mission. Purism started in 2014, with the focused intent to build secure products that respect digital freedom.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ When the Push Button Was New, People Were Freaked @JSTOR_Daily

• The doorbell. The intercom. The elevator. Once upon a time, beginning in the late nineteenth century, pushing the button that activated such devices was a strange new experience. The electric push button, the now mundane-seeming interface between human and machine, was originally a spark for wonder, anxiety, and social transformation.

=> ↺ When the Push Button Was New, People Were Freaked

• Ultimately, the idea that electricity was a kind of magic would triumph over a more hands-on, demystifying approach.

=> ↺ Crack combination locks with this nifty robot

• This cracking process works thanks to the mechanics of combination padlocks. While the combination lock on something like a bank vault is very sophisticated, these padlocks have limited space for their mechanisms. They also tend to be cheap. For those reasons, one can feel the mechanisms engaging when stress is on the shackle.

=> ↺ Adafruit ENS160 MOX Gas Sensor

• We’ve of course broken out all the pins to standard headers and added a 3.3V voltage regulator and level shifting to allow you to use it with either 3.3V or 5V systems such as the Arduino Uno, or Feather M4.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Amlogic POP1-G octa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor shows up in Amazon Fire TV Cube 2022 – CNX Software

=> ↺ Geniatech unveils SMARC 2.1 compliant Rockchip RK3568 system-on-module – CNX Software

=> ↺ How to Set an SD Card as Default Storage in Android

=> ↺ Square working on iPhone-like ‘Tap to Pay’ for Android merchants

=> ↺ Android apps getting ‘major’ Google TTS quality upgrade

=> ↺ New Android Games: Best New Android Games This Week

=> ↺ Best Security Apps For Android In 2022-23

=> ↺ 9 Ways to Fix Android Wi-Fi Not Turning On [2022] – TechPP

=> ↺ Galaxy S22 Ultra Almost Got Android 13 From Verizon, But Didn’t

=> ↺ Android 12L Issues That Google Must Fix Now- Gizchina.com

=> ↺ The Razer Edge 5G is a new handheld Android gaming console with support for 5G

=> ↺ Samsung’s Galaxy S22 is the first Android phone to get October 2022 security update – SamMobile

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ 5 Best Free Self-Hosted Music Streaming Software

• This article shows you the five best music streaming services you can install for free and fully control your music collection.

• If you’re a music lover looking for free and open-source music server software to build your own self-hosted live streaming audio server for your extensive music collection, you’ve come to the right place.

• Setting up your own music server with media server software is simple. But services like Spotify already offer similar functionality. So, why build your own?

=> ↺ Nibble Stew: “Why is it that package managers are unnecessarily hard?” – or are they?

• At the moment the top rated post in In the C++ subreddit is Why is it that package managers are unnecessarily hard?. The poster wants to create an application that uses fmt and SDL2. After writing a lengthy and complicated (for the task) build file, installing a package manager, integrating the two and then trying to build their code the end result fails leaving only incomprehensible error messages in its wake.

• The poster is understandably frustrated about all this and asks a reasonable question about the state of package management. The obvious follow-up question, then, would be whether they need to be hard. Let’s try to answer that by implementing the thing they were trying to do from absolute scratch using Meson. For extra challenge we’ll do it on Windows to be entirely sure we are not using any external dependency providers.

=> ↺ James Bottomley: Paying Maintainers isn’t a Magic Bullet

• Open Source is often portrayed as a “disrupter” of the market, but it’s not often appreciated that a huge part of that disruption is value destruction. Consider one of the older Open Source systems: Linux. As an operating system (when coupled with GNU or other user space software) it competed in the early days with proprietary UNIX. However, it’s impossible to maintain your margin competing against free and the net result was that one by one the existing players were forced out of the market or refocussed on other offerings and now, other than for historical or niche markets, there’s really no proprietary UNIX maker left … essentially the value contained within the OS market was destroyed. This value destruction effect was exploited brilliantly by Google with Android: to enter and disrupt an existing lucrative smart phone market, created and owned by Apple, with a free OS based on Open Source successfully created a load of undercutting handset manufacturers eager to be cheaper than Apple who went on to carve out an 80% market share. Here, the value isn’t completely destroyed, but it has significantly reduced (smart phones going from a huge margin business to a medium to low margin one).

• All of this value destruction is achieved by the free (as in beer) effect of open source: the innovator who uses it doesn’t have to pay the full economic cost for developing everything from scratch, they just have to pay the innovation expense of adapting it (such adaptation being made far easier by access to the source code). This effect is also the reason why Microsoft and other companies railed about Open Source being a cancer on intellectual property: because it is. However, this view is also the product of rigid and incorrect thinking: by destroying value in existing markets, open source presents far more varied and unique opportunities in newly created ones. The cardinal economic benefit of value destruction is that it lowers the barrier to entry (as Google demonstrated with Android) thus opening the market up to new and varied competition (or turning monopoly markets into competitive ones).

=> ↺ Hippotat (IP over HTTP) – first advertised release

• The result is that, in practice, currently Hippotat has to be built with (a) a reasonably recent Rust toolchain such as found in Debian unstable or obtained from Rust upstream; (b) dependencies obtained from the upstream Rust repository.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ New Alpha Release: Tor Browser 12.0a3 (Android, Windows, macOS, Linux)

• Tor Browser 12.0a3 updates Firefox on Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux to 102.3.0esr.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL Anonymizer 1.1: Privacy By Default For Postgres

• PostgreSQL Anonymizer is an extension that hides or replaces personally identifiable information (PII) or commercially sensitive data from a PostgreSQL database.

• The extension supports 3 different anonymization strategies: Dynamic Masking, Static Masking and Anonymous Dumps. It also offers a large choice of Masking Functions such as Substitution, Randomization, Faking, Pseudonymization, Partial Scrambling, Shuffling, Noise Addition and Generalization.

=> ↺ Data Visualization Tools for SQL

• SQL is a high-in-demand programming language used in domains like business analytics to interact with relational data. Professionals widely use it for tasks such as data manipulation, data analysis, and data visualization.

• Interacting with data is one thing, but to be able to translate that data into meaningful information is a challenge in itself.

• Data visualization is the art of converting information from data into visual contexts to make it easier and understandable for the human brain. Data visualization may include creating maps, graphs, and charts so that it is easy to pull meaningful insights from the data.

=> ↺ Surprise! People are shelling out for IoT subscriptions

• IFTTT, which lets users link connected devices and web services to other connected devices and web services, has achieved $6 million in annual recurring revenue from 150,000 subscribers two years after it announced a subscription plan. Linden Tibbets, the CEO and co-founder of IFTTT, told me the company has reached break even on its revenue and that, going forward, it plans to focus solely on paid subscriptions from users.

Education

=> ↺ Walled Culture, the book, now freely available: what that means, and how you can help

• Much of the book draws on the interviews that have appeared on the blog over the last year, and on blog posts. But it is supplemented by a huge array of additional material. Testimony to that are the book’s 750 references to further information online. For all the digital versions, there are live hyperlinks to allow readers to check details and pursue further research on topics and ideas of interest.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Break Statement in C

• “To remove the program control from the loop, we utilize the C language term “break.”The loop’s iterations cease as immediately after the break statement is detected inside the loop, and control is instantly handed onto the first statement following the break.

• In this tutorial, we will practically implement the break statement to execute various example codes in C.”

=> ↺ How to Declare Variables in C

• “A variable is simply a name that is assigned to a storage space so it will be easy for users to access or read in the program. The size, layout of a variable’s memory, and the range of values or set of different operations that can be implemented on the variable are all recognized by the type of variable, and each variable is unique in C programming language. It is understandable that the variable declared in a program can be edited anywhere in the code. You can assign the variable names as any number, letter, or character. Because C is a case-sensitive language, so the uppercase and lowercase characters are separate.

• C programming language allows us to define various data types such as Integer, float, char, string, etc., which we will learn with various examples.”

=> ↺ Talking Trojan: Analyzing an Industry-Wide Disclosure

• Talking Trojan: Analyzing an Industry-Wide Disclosure tells the story of what happened after we discovered the Trojan Source vulnerability, which broke almost all computer languages, and the Bad Characters vulnerability, which broke almost all large NLP tools. This provided a unique opportunity to measure software maintenance in action. Who patched quickly, reluctantly, or not at all? Who paid bug bounties, and who dodged liability? What parts of the disclosure ecosystem work well, which are limping along, and which are broken?

TeX

=> ↺ How to Make a Multiline Equation in LaTeX

• Sometimes, we need to break some long equations in a document into multiple lines to make it easy to understand. In lengthy derivations, breaking the equations is essential to explain everything step by step.

• That’s why LaTeX also provides some ways to break the equations. Still, many new users don’t know how to create multiline equations. In this tutorial, we will give you a complete information on how to write the multiline equations in LaTeX.

=> ↺ How to Underline a Text in LaTeX

• Underlining a text is not limited to only showing a website hyperlink. We underline a text to make the reader notice some specific words in a document. Underlined text attracts the reader’s attention to it. If you write any technical paper, underlining a text can highlight it for the readers.

• That’s why LaTeX provides a simple way to highlight the text. However, many users don’t know the ways to underline a text. If you want to learn the approach to underlining a text, read this tutorial thoroughly.

=> ↺ How to Use a Box Text in LaTeX

• A text box can be useful when you want to move a text around in the document. It can emphasise the specific text on a research paper. We can use the \makebox to create a boxed text on a page in LaTeX.

• However, many LaTeX users are still unaware of the ways to add a boxed text in the technical document. If you don’t know how to do it, read this tutorial thoroughly. We will explain the various ways to add and use a boxed text in LaTeX.

=> ↺ How to Write and Use a Floor Symbol in LaTeX

• Mathematically, the floor function is denoted by the floor ⌊x⌋ symbol and the floor (x). The shape of the floor symbol looks like a square bracket ⌊x⌋ with no tops. From programming to mathematics, the floor symbol plays a vital role in showing a specific function.

• Many users add the floor function while creating the technical document in any document processor. However, a floor function requires the correct use of the source code to create it. If you want to learn how to write and use a floor symbol in LaTeX, this tutorial is for you. Let’s get started!

Python

=> ↺ Fibonacci Numbers in Python Language

• Fibonacci numbers are a particular sequence where the first value is pre-declared as 0 and the second value is pre-declared as 1. The rest of the numbers are produced from these two by adding the previous two numbers. All Fibonacci numbers are positive integers, beginning from 0.

=> ↺ ICYMI Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Retrofitting old computers, Pinguin and much more! #CircuitPython #ICYMI @micropython @Raspberry_Pi

• In about a month, there will be a new yearly release of Python: version 3.11. The main feature for this version is a significant increase in speed. People are testing the new version and their results are stunning. Extrapolating keeping at this pace, Python 3.14 will be faster than C++. To be exact, the loop time will be -0.232 seconds, so it will be done just before you want to do the calculation – Towards Data Science.

=> ↺ Rounding in Python

• In software engineering, there are two principles that often come into conflict. The first one is the principal of least surprise. The second one is doing the right thing. These come into conflict when the usual thing that people do is in fact the wrong thing. A particular example of this is the behavior of rounding.

• In school we were taught that rounding is always done in one particular way. When you round a number it goes toward the nearest hole number, but if it ends in 5, than it goes toward the higher one. For example, 1.3 rounds to 1, and 1.7 rounds to 2. And we were taught that 1.5 rounds to 2, and 2.5 goes to 3.

• Because this is the way that we were taught rounding works, it can be quite surprising when rounding works differently. In fact, there are a number of different ways to round numbers. The Wikipedia article on rounding gives no fewer than 14 different methods of rounding. Fortunately, with computers, we expect fewer: The IEEE 754 standard for floating point numbers defines five rounding rules.

Java

=> ↺ The Trouble with Checked Exceptions: Part 2

• Java’s Checked Exceptions are problematic, and it’s not due to their ergonomics, but rather because they are in conflict with abstraction and OOP. Also, few people care about typed exceptions (unless they are happy path results, not errors).

Rust

=> ↺ This Week In Rust: This Week in Rust 462

Leftovers

=> ↺ Mining And Refining: Sulfur

• When you think of the periodic table, some elements just have a vibe to them that’s completely unscientific, but nonetheless undeniable. Precious metals like gold and silver are obvious examples, associated as they always have been with the wealth of kings. Copper and iron are sturdy working-class metals, each worthy of having entire ages of human industry named after them, with silicon now forming the backbone of our current Information Age. Carbon builds up the chemistry of life itself and fuels almost all human endeavors, and none of us would get very far without oxygen.

=> ↺ The 1337 PNG Hashquine

• A hashquine is a fun way to show off your crypto-tricks — It’s a file that contains its own hash. In some file types it’s trivial, you just pick the hash to hit, and then put random data in a comment or other invisible field till you get a collision. A Python script that prints its own hash would be easy. But not every file type is so easy. Take PNG for instance. these files are split into chunks of data, and each chunk is both CRC-32 and adler32 checksummed. Make one change, and everything changes, in three places at once. Good luck finding that collision. So how exactly did [David Buchanan] generate that beautiful PNG, which does in fact md5sum to the value in the image? Very cleverly.

=> ↺ Hungarian girl completes most brutal trail in the United States

Science

=> ↺ AI Dreaming Of Time Travel

• We love the intersection between art and technology, and a video made by an AI (Stable Diffusion) imagining a journey through time (Nitter) is a lovely example. The project is relatively straightforward, but as with most art projects, there were endless hours of [Xander Steenbrugge] tweaking and playing with different parts of the process until it was just how he liked it. He mentions trying thousands of different prompts and seeds — an example of one of the prompts is “a small tribal village with huts.” In the video, each prompt got 72 frames, slowly increasing in strength and then decreasing as the following prompt came along.

=> ↺ Asteroid Diversion? Earth Is Still “Careening Headlong into Climate Catastrophe,” Says NASA Scientist

• NASA successfully crashed a robotic spacecraft into an asteroid this week, a first-of-its-kind test of technology that could prevent a comet or asteroid from hitting the Earth, though the chances of such a catastrophe are low. We speak with NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who calls the successful mission “bittersweet.” “We’re doing these amazing missions like redirecting asteroids, and yet with all that technology, with all that knowledge, somehow it’s not translating into stopping what is clearly the biggest threat facing humanity, which is global heating,” says Kalmus.

=> ↺ Artificial intelligence reduces a 100,000-equation quantum physics problem to only four equations

• The formidable problem concerns how electrons behave as they move on a gridlike lattice. When two electrons occupy the same lattice site, they interact. This setup, known as the Hubbard model, is an idealization of several important classes of materials and enables scientists to learn how electron behavior gives rise to sought-after phases of matter, such as superconductivity, in which electrons flow through a material without resistance. The model also serves as a testing ground for new methods before they’re unleashed on more complex quantum systems.

Education

=> ↺ Los Angeles Teachers Are Burned Out and Priced Out of Living in Their City

=> ↺ Inside the dark world of student sex work

• University students have been supporting their studies with sex work for decades. Jay-Z rapped about ‘chicks wishin’ they aint have to strip to pay tuition’ in Hard Knock Life in 1998 (the year tuition fees were first introduced in the UK). Belle de Jour (Brooke Magnanti), a research scientist, wrote a best-selling book, The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, in 2005, about her secret life as an escort after she ran out of money in the final stages of her PhD thesis at Sheffield University.

• But the subject really came to the fore last November when Durham University was identified as offering training sessions to support students involved in sex work.

Hardware

=> ↺ What Intel Learned When an Elevator Smashed Into Its Supercomputer Chips

• He didn’t say how many were ruined, but the loss stung because they were initial samples used to test performance and look for problems. “Every one of them at that stage is expensive,” Koduri said in an interview. With hundreds of manufacturing steps, it takes months to make a single advanced chip.

• The elevator door wasn’t just a one-off bummer. It actually revealed a problem that stood in the way of Intel’s effort to reclaim its processor manufacturing leadership: human error.

=> ↺ The appeal of small computers

• I just read an article about the MNT Pocket Reform at the IEEE Spectrum website and the comments about it at HN. Often when I dive deep into threads about small devices, my attention is drawn to bad comments. People asking who would want such device?, or $SOME_PAST_DEVICE did it first and failed, etc. You get the gist: people projecting their dislike about someone else’s vision disguised as unquestionable facts.

=> ↺ Recycling Junk E-tags Into A LoRaWAN AQI Sensor

• [Aduecho] had seen those cheap eBay deals of e-paper-based pricing tags, and was wondering if they could be hacked to perform some other tasks. After splitting the case open, the controller chip was discovered to be a SEM9110, with some NFC hardware support but little else. [aduecho] was hoping to build some IoT-connected air quality indicator (AQI) units but the lack of a datasheet for SEM9110 plus no sensors in place meant the only real course of action was to junk the PCB and just keep the E-paper display and the batteries. These units appeared to be ‘new old’ stock, so there was a good chance that both would be fresh and ripe for picking.

=> ↺ The First Microcomputer: The Q1

• Quiz time, what was the first commercially available microcomputer? The Altair 8800? Something obscure like the SCELBI? The Mark-8 kit? According to [The Byte Attic], it was actually the Q1, based on the Intel 8008 processor. The first Q1 microcomputer was delivered in December of 1972, making it the first, as far as he can tell. Later revisions used the Z80 processor, which is the model pictured above that [The Byte Attic] has in his possession. It’s a beautiful little machine, with a striking orange plasma display.

=> ↺ A Look Inside An Old-School Synchroscope

• There’s nothing quite like old-school electrical gear, especially the stuff associated with power distribution. There’s something about the chunky, heavy construction, the thick bakelite cases, and the dials you can read from across the room. Double points for something that started life behind the Iron Curtain, as this delightful synchroscope appears to have.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Don’t have a cow, but there’s a major butter shortage

• According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, the quantity of butter in cold storage recently hit its lowest level since 2017, thanks to a combination of worker shortages and lowered dairy outputs across U.S. farms. As a result, the price of butter has skyrocketed, climbing 24.6% in the last 12 months. As the demand for butter increases during the holiday baking season, these tight supplies (and their accompanying costs) aren’t going anywhere.

=> ↺ Northcape 4000

• The Northcape event has been held for several years, and while it always ends on the North Cape, the route there varies. Last years’ route went through the Baltics, but this years’ was perhaps as direct as possible – taking us through Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, the Czech republic, Germany again, Sweden, Finland and finally Norway.

=> ↺ Kaiser Permanente Therapists Keep Striking, Citing Dangerous Delays for Patients

=> ↺ Experts Sound Alarm Over ‘Growing Threat’ of Genetically Engineered Trees

• “The convenience of trees that can survive glyphosate will likely result in the use of more glyphosate, more often.”

=> ↺ Jackson Mississippi’s Poisoned Water

=> ↺ ‘Habitual Offender’ Laws Imprison Thousands for Small Crimes — Sometimes for Life

• Data obtained by The Appeal show nearly 2,000 people in Mississippi and Louisiana are serving long—and sometimes life—sentences after they were labeled “habitual offenders.” But most are behind bars for small crimes like drug possession.

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ Open Source Initiative expands its role to AI and machine learning

=> ↺ OSI has shifted into a Microsoft front and GPL violations enabler

• As part of this, the OSI is putting more emphasis on its [Microsoft] ClearlyDefined project.

Security

=> ↺ Only Download Krita From Trusted Places

• Third party download sites are outside our control, and can be compromised!

=> ↺ Never-before-seen malware has infected hundreds of Linux and Windows devices

• SSH infections using password brute-forcing and stolen keys also allow Chaos to spread from machine to machine inside an infected network.

=> ↺ Optus CEO’s spin not exactly the best way to handle breach

• One wonders what exactly drove Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin to front a media session last Friday, in a bid to spin her way through a damaging development at the telco.

• Had she been proficient in the technical aspects of data breaches and was willing to level with people, then it may have done a world of good. Or she could have brought along a technically competent person and let him/her explain things correctly.

• But Bayer Rosmarin tried to paint the breach as a sophisticated attack, something that even a politician like Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil was able to shoot it down.

=> ↺ [Crackers] breach tech magazine, send racist push notifications to iPhones

• [Attackers] breached the content management system of Fast Company, a monthly business and tech magazine, on Tuesday evening.

• The [crackers] reportedly sent two obscene and racist push notifications to followers of the magazine in Apple News.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Unique Identifier

• As more and more things are moving online, two problems became apparent to our collective consciousness:

• 1. How do you know someone is really a person?

• 2. How do you know someone is who they say they are?

• Initially, the “person” thing wasn’t a big issue, the [Internet] was used for low-stake amicable activities, and impersonation, bots, and alternative accounts weren’t a big deal. As for the second issue, well, we used usernames and passwords.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Digital identity: What the World Bank won’t talk about – Access Now

• On October 10, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund will hold an annual summit to discuss the challenges and opportunities that will determine the course of their work on inclusivity and sustainable development all over the world. Unfortunately, this is the second year in a row that they have kept digital identity programs off the agenda, even as civil society organizations continue to press for answers about their responsibility in developing systems that further human rights abuse, exclusion, marginalization, and surveillance.

• The push to implement digital identification systems remains a priority for the World Bank and other international organizations, as it is viewed as integral for reaching UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.9, “legal identity for all.” However, attempting to reach that goal this way is both short-sighted and treacherous, as many different digital identity programs the World Bank has funded or promoted demonstrate.

=> ↺ U.S. Congressional briefing: what overturning Roe v. Wade means for digital rights – Access Now

• Today, September 28, Access Now hosted the U.S. Congressional Briefing, Your body, your data: data-veillance and reproductive rights in a post-Roe world to unpack what the Supreme Court ruling means for human rights and digital safety, and what’s next for collective action.

• “When the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, it didn’t only obliterate reliable access to abortion services for women and people who birth — and demolish any sense of agency we had over our own bodies — it threw the right to privacy of all people across the country into jeopardy,” said Willmary Escoto, U.S. Policy Analyst at Access Now. “The threat to privacy is even more dangerous for Black and Latina women, the disabled, immigrants, LGBTQ+, low-income people, and other communities that have been historically discriminated against and exploited.”

=> ↺ DoT mandates IMEI registry before 1st sale or import of mobiles

• The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has mandated smartphone manufacturers and importers to register the IMEI number of smartphones before the first sale or before the import of the device on a new portal in operation from 2020.

• In a gazette notification, the DoT on Monday, amended the prevention of tampering of the Mobile Device Equipment Identification Number, Rules, 2017 to enforce smartphone manufacturers to register the IMEI number of every mobile manufactured in India with the Indian Counterfeited Device Restriction Portal (ICDR) maintained by the DoT.

=> ↺ Plans for more data exchange: EU agreement with Interpol delayed

• So far, only EU states and Europol are allowed to access databases at Interpol, but soon Frontex and the new public prosecutor’s office will be allowed to do so as well. The EU Parliament has drawn red lines for the negotiations.

=> ↺ Amazon doesn’t need a phone. Alexa will be everywhere.

• Amazon launched a profusion of sensor-filled speakers, cameras, and televisions as well as services from its Eero Wi-Fi business and Ring security business on Wednesday as it doubled down on its idea of ambient intelligence. Basically, Amazon is making sure everything it releases can act as a sensor providing as much information about the environment to Alexa, its digital assistant.

=> ↺ Prosecutors charge ex-CEO of [cracked] therapy firm Vastaamo

• The Helsinki-based company’s database was breached on at least two separate occasions — in November 2018 and March 2019 — leading to extortionists demanding payment of nearly half a million euros for the data’s return in October 2020.

• When the company refused to pay, the sensitive patient information was leaked onto the dark web.

=> ↺ DHS planning to collect social media info on all immigrants

• Homeland Security’s inspector general published a report earlier this year concluding that DHS pilot programs for using social media to screen immigration applicants “lack criteria for measuring performance to ensure they meet their objectives.”

=> ↺ Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Abortion Access. Here’s How Policymakers Can Mitigate the Risk

• Police can also attach ALPRs to their patrol cars, then capture all the cars they pass. In some cities police are taught to do “gridding,” where they drive up and down every block of a neighborhood to capture data on what cars are parked where. There is also a private company called Digital Recognition Network that has its own contractors driving around, collecting plate data, and they sell that data to law enforcement.

=> ↺ EFF Urges FTC to Address Security and Privacy Problems in Daycare and Early Education Apps

• “Parents find themselves in a bind: either enroll children at a daycare and be forced to share sensitive information with these apps, or don’t enroll them at all,” EFF’s letter to Khan said. “Paths for parents to opt a child out of data sharing are, with rare exception, completely absent.”

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Iowa man who was one of the first Jan. 6 [insurrectionists] to enter Capitol found guilty on 7 charges

• Doug Jensen was found guilty of all charges he faced, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, including felony charges of assaulting, resisting or impeding a law enforcement officer; obstruction of an official proceeding; interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a dangerous weapon; and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a dangerous weapon.

=> ↺ Chomsky: US Must Join Global Call for Negotiations as Russia Escalates Actions

=> ↺ The US Military Is the Enemy of Climate Mitigation

• On October 1, the US military will start spending the more than $800 billion Congress is going to provide it with in fiscal year 2023. And that whopping sum will just be the beginning. According to the calculations of Pentagon expert William Hartung, funding for various intelligence agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, and work on nuclear weaponry at the Energy Department will add another $600 billion to what you, the American taxpayer, will be spending on national security.

=> ↺ Russian military commissar says mistakenly drafted Russians have themselves to blame — Meduza

• In a video address published Wednesday, Altai Krai military commissar Marat Usmanov said that Russians who are conscripted by mistake are themselves to blame for the error.

=> ↺ ‘Fighting in the war against Ukraine is a crime’ Philosopher Arseny Kumankov on why Russians have a moral duty to evade the draft — Meduza

• Participating in the war against Ukraine is a moral crime. For this reason, we have an obligation to do everything possible to avoid becoming complicit in this aggressive, unjust war. There are a number of reasons to regard Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its subsequent mobilization this way. The first reason is that the Russian government has violated its social contract with its people. The second reason is that people are being sent to war by an illegitimate power that is playing on a false sense of patriotism. And the third reason is that the war itself is a criminal act of aggression against the citizens of Ukraine. The last reason is the primary one. But I’ll begin with the points that apply directly to Russians.

=> ↺ Governor reports 14 injured by munitions accident in Belgorod — Meduza

• Belgorod Regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported Wednesday that “munitions were detonated” in the city’s Valuysky District. The explosion, which reportedly injured 14 people, was caused by “the human factor,” Gladkov said. According to the Telegram channel Mash, a grenade launcher was unintentionally fired during military training.

=> ↺ ‘The model of “one deciding for all” isn’t working’ Filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev explains his resignation from the Russian Oscar Committee — Meduza

• On Sept. 26, Russia’s Oscar Committee announced that it would not be nominating a feature film for this year’s Academy Awards. Nikita Mikhalkov, head of the Russian Cinematographers’ Union, said that “it would be senseless” to submit a film under current circumstances.

=> ↺ ‘Honestly, they’re all going to die’ What Russian soldiers who have already fought in Ukraine think about Putin’s mobilization effort — Meduza

=> ↺ Heads of the self-proclaimed ‘LNR’ and the Russian-occupied Kherson region appeal to ‘join Russia’ following the ‘referendums’ — Meduza

• Vladimir Saldo, head of the Russian-installed administration of the occupied Kherson region, has appealed to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, requesting that the Kherson region be joined to Russia. RIA Novosti reports that Saldo published his appeal on Telegram.

=> ↺ Russian State Duma Speaker says border guards keeping lists of draft evaders — Meduza

• Russian border authorities are keeping lists of citizens who leave the country, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said at a session of the body on Wednesday, according to Interfax.

=> ↺ Head of self-proclaimed ‘DNR’ ‘promises new phase of combat operations’ after ‘becoming part of Russia’ — Meduza

• Denis Pushilin, who heads the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic,” has said that after the “DNR” “becomes part of Russia” following a “referendum,” a “new phase of combat operations” will begin.

=> ↺ Highland Park Victims Sue Gun-Maker, Stores Over Negligence and Deceptive Practices

• Along with the company—which plaintiffs argue violated a consumer protection law—the families and victims sued online retailer Bud’s Gun Shop, local gun store Red Dot Arms, shooting suspect Robert Crimo III, and Robert Crimo, Jr., the suspect’s father.

=> ↺ NC Dems Plead for Cash as Beasley Deadlocked With GOP Opponent in Decisive US Senate Race

• “National Democrats are making a big mistake if they’re not paying attention to North Carolina.”

=> ↺ ‘Yeah, Right’: Pentagon Report Claiming US Military Killed Just 12 Civilians Last Year Met With Skepticism

• “They were targeting people. It was intentional.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Poll Shows Majority in US Want Harder Diplomatic Push to End Ukraine War

• Nearly 60 percent of Americans would support the United States engaging in diplomatic efforts “as soon as possible” to end the war in Ukraine, even if that means Ukraine having to make concessions to Russia, according to a new poll. 

=> ↺ Opinion | The Big Lie, Media Complicity, and the Science of Propaganda

• Donald Trump is still insisting he won the 2020 election, despite having lost by about 7 million votes and being wiped out in the Electoral College.

=> ↺ Sanders, Kaine Hail US Senate’s Passage of Brazil Election Resolution

• “With this vote, the Senate sent a powerful message.”

=> ↺ Sanders, Raskin Want Congress to Get Serious About Averting a Coup in Brazil

• Polls from Brazil show that President Jair Bolsonaro, the Donald Trump–like authoritarian who has run the country disastrously since his election in 2018, is trailing far behind his leftist challenger, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the run-up to the first round of voting on Sunday. But Bolsonaro is claiming that if he doesn’t win by a landslide, it will be because “something abnormal” happened with the voting process—echoing Trump’s false narrative from before he lost the 2020 election in the United States.

=> ↺ Brittney Griner Gets No Support From Former Coach Kim Mulkey

• Sports coaches love military allegories, so here is one for legendary LSU basketball coach Kim Mulkey: Leave no person behind. But that’s exactly what the three-time national champion did to Brittney Griner, a player who brought Mulkey to a national title when the coach was at Baylor. The superstar led Mulkey’s Baylor squad to a 40-0 regular season and championship in 2012.

=> ↺ We Like the Idea of Asylum Seekers, but Not the Real Thing

• Little Amal, the 12-foot-tall puppet of a Syrian refugee girl, went looking for her mother in Brooklyn last week, as she has done all over the world. She was greeted enthusiastically by crowds of children and adults who were charmed by her lifelike movements and huge, blinking eyes, and by the grace with which the puppeteers made her move, dance, peer into windows, and even reach out for a hug.

=> ↺ NYT Op-Ed Criticizes Biden for Not Being Hawkish Enough

• You know you’re living in a profoundly sick society when the world’s most influential newspaper runs propaganda for World War III while voices pushing for truth, transparency and peace are marginal…

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Snowden’s Russia Citizenship: Establishment Response Illustrates Why He Hasn’t Returned Home

Environment

=> ↺ The Senate Just Quietly Passed a Major Climate Treaty

• What if the Senate passed an international climate treaty—a pact so powerful that it could avert nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit of global warming—and nobody noticed?

• That’s more or less what happened a week ago. Last Wednesday, the Senate ratified the Kigali Amendment, a treaty that will phase out the world’s use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, a climate pollutant used as an industrial refrigerant and in sprayable consumer products. Because HFCs are hundreds of thousands of times more potent at capturing heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, the Kigali Amendment, which has already been adopted by 137 countries, is the most significant environmental treaty that the United States has joined in at least a decade.

=> ↺ ‘I’ve always wanted to be a tree’: Human composting starts to catch on

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom this month signed a bill that requires state regulators to create a program allowing “natural organic reduction” by 2027. It will become the fifth state to pass legislation permitting what providers often call “human composting” or “terramation.”

• The process, which is essentially the controlled decomposition of a human body by a funeral service provider, takes about two months. Processing a person’s remains creates 1-2 cubic yards of compost — enough to nearly fill the bed of a pickup truck, which can then be used in gardens or conservation projects.

=> ↺ Manchin’s Big Oil Deal Scrapped From Budget Bill in Victory for Climate Movement

=> ↺ Opinion | Defeat of Manchin’s Dirty Deal Is a Win for Environmental Justice and Health Equity

• Facing fierce resistance from frontline communities and concerned citizens across the country, Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) withdrew his so called “permitting reform” provision from the must-pass government funding bill Tuesday.

=> ↺ ‘We’ll Beat You Again,’ Say Climate Advocates as Biden Eyes New Path for Manchin’s Dirty Deal

• In a statement after Manchin (D-W.Va.) asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to remove the permitting overhaul from the government funding bill, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made clear that President Joe Biden doesn’t intend to let the measure die despite fresh warnings over its potentially disastrous emissions impacts.

=> ↺ Ben & Jerry’s Pilot Project Aims to Halve Ice Cream Emissions by 2024

• Christopher Bonasia reports that the iconic ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s will work with 15 dairy farms to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2024.

=> ↺ Fresh Demands for ‘Climate Emergency Declaration’ as Monster Hurricane Ian Comes Ashore

• The hurricane, which killed at least two people in Cuba and left the entire country without power before causing major flooding in the Florida Keys Tuesday night, approached the state’s coast as a Category 4 storm and was expected to strengthen to a Category 5 before making landfall.

=> ↺ Tampa Update on Hurricane Ian: Millions Prepare for Cat. 5 Storm Fueled by the Climate Crisis

• As Hurricane Ian is set to strengthen into a Category 4 or 5 storm and make landfall Wednesday afternoon south of Tampa Bay, the storm already knocked out power in Cuba and killed at least two people Tuesday. Communities across Central Florida are preparing for a “very strong storm,” says Seán Kinane, news and public affairs director at Tampa community radio station WMNF, and many acknowledge the strength of the hurricane is “definitely impacted by climate disruption.”

=> ↺ Hydrogen Lobby Targeting Labour Conference with ‘False Solutions’, Say Campaigners

• Labour has made climate and energy its central policy agenda, and its conference in Liverpool this week has touted the slogan “A Fairer, Greener Future”. However, the hydrogen industry has had an outsized presence at the event compared to cleaner alternatives.

=> ↺ 2022 Hackaday Prize: Congratulations To The Winners Of The Climate-Resilient Communities Challenge

• Holy humanitarian hacking, Batman! We asked you to come up with your best climate-forward ideas, and you knocked it out of the ionosphere! Once again, the judges had a hard time narrowing down the field to just ten winners, but they ultimately pulled it off — and here are the prize-winning projects without much further ado.

Energy

=> ↺ Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

• Note: monthly consumption figures are the sum of daily consumption figures calculated by assuming constant power usage over 24 hours at the daily best-guess estimate of Bitcoin’s network power demand. The cumulative consumption is the sum of monthly totals since the start of the model on July 18th 2010. A separate analysis that ignores profitability considerations suggests that the cumulative consumption for the period between January 2009 and July 2010 has only amounted to 4.74 megawatt-hours (MWh), or 0.00000474 TWh – a mere rounding error. It is therefore safe to assume that the cumulative consumption figure listed above provides a robust estimate of Bitcoin’s total consumption since its inception in 2009.

=> ↺ Inside the Fight Over the ‘Pulp Fiction’ NFT

• January was a heady time for the Secret Network. The two-year-old platform had launched a cryptocurrency – SCRT – and was preparing to make a big splash in Hollywood. Teaming up with Quentin Tarantino, the network was preparing to auction an NFT based on the screenplay for “Pulp Fiction.”

=> ↺ Is Ethereum a Dumb Pipe?

• Commoditized protocols (especially decentralized ones) often create value but have a different entity capture most of it. See examples of email (Gmail) or git (GitHub). Who captures the value? Scaling layers? On-ramps/off-ramps? Regulated exchanges?

=> ↺ What is ‘dead pool’ and what does it mean for Colorado River?

• The Colorado River supports more than two dozen tribes, seven U.S. states, and Mexico, but Americans living outside the Western region benefit, too. The river preserves national parks and produces winter vegetables, shipped countrywide.

• Yet a long-term rise in demand – and increasingly arid conditions linked to climate change – have resulted in a dire river reality. Lake Mead and Lake Powell, major reservoirs, could reach “dead pool,” with levels of water so low that the river can’t flow below the dams.

=> ↺ Oil is Bankrupt (If We Want It) : Alberta’s Oil Companies Are the Walking Dead.

• Albert’s oil-patch is a zombie, the walking dead. The companies that extract oil there owe more money than they can pay, more than they can borrow, more than they can earn. If they were made to pay their lawful debts, they would all go bankrupt, and, in so doing, would end the extraction of one of the dirtiest, worst sources of oil…

=> ↺ Bill McKibben: The End of Manchin’s Pipeline Deal Is a Grassroots Victory

=> ↺ Bill McKibben: Victory Over Big Oil as Sen. Manchin Forced to Drop “Hideous Deal” on Energy

• Democratic Senator Joe Manchin abandoned his own energy permitting proposal Tuesday that would have fast-tracked the federal review of energy projects, including the contested Mountain Valley Pipeline. Following intense pressure from a range of climate justice and Appalachian organizers, Manchin asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to drop the permitting reforms from a funding bill after it became clear he did not have the votes to pass the proposal. 350.org founder Bill McKibben says Manchin may try to partner with the GOP to revive the proposal later this year, but still says the news represents an “impressive win by grassroots environmentalism.”

=> ↺ Apparent Sabotage of Nord Stream Pipelines Risks ‘Unprecedented’ Climate Nightmare

• One early estimate from Jean-Francois Gauthier, vice president of measurements at the satellite firm GHGSat, indicates that the Russian gas pipelines were unleashing more than 500 metric tons of methane per hour when they were first damaged.

=> ↺ 11 Million Without Electricity in Cuba as Hurricane Ian Knocks Out Power Grid

• Around a million people lost power Tuesday as Hurricane Ian lashed the island with heavy rain and wind, tearing off people’s roofs, devastating farms, and reportedly killing at least two people. By late Tuesday, Cuba’s entire power grid had collapsed, leaving roughly 11 million without electricity.

=> ↺ Explosions Cause Major Damage to Both Nord Stream Pipelines

• A Polish member of European Parliament suggested the US was responsible.

=> ↺ iTWire – On World EV Day, Victoria is proudly taxing owners of EVs

• On World Electric Vehicle Day, Victoria can celebrate the fact that it charges people who use EVs a tax. The same Victoria that calls itself the education state. It also touts itself as progressive.

• When most of the world is trying to push the use of electric vehicles, Victoria has its foot firmly on the brake. No, make that both feet on the brake.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Alarming Report Warns 1 in 8 Bird Species Now Facing Extinction

• “If we give nature a chance, it can recover.”

=> ↺ Countering Anti-Science Rhetoric — With Squid Facts

Finance

=> ↺ Apple to cut back on iPhone 14 production as demand drops: claim

• Apple has decided to drop its plans to increase production of the iPhone 14 due to an anticipated increase in demand not eventuating, a report claims.

• A Bloomberg report on Wednesday said the cutback would amount to about six million units less being produced in the second half of 2022.

=> ↺ Nlnet Grant Application for Domain – First Update: Questions and Answers

• This is the first update to our NLnet Grant Application for Domain.

=> ↺ 85% of the World Will Likely Live Under “Deadly” Austerity Measures Next Year

=> ↺ Truss’ Tories Plan to Slash Public Spending While Clinging to Chaos-Causing Tax Cuts

• “What was intended as mere bribery has turned out to be a gigantic financial bomb.”

=> ↺ Top Central Banks Told to Stop ‘Bankrolling’ Deforestation

• “It betrays the mission that all three central banks have to act in the wider public good.”

=> ↺ ‘Obscene,’ Says Sanders After CBO Reports Richest 1% Now Owns Over 1/3 of US Wealth

• “A society cannot sustain itself when so few have so much while so many have so little.”

=> ↺ “Billionaires Cannot Have It All” – Sanders Calls for Redistribution of Wealth

=> ↺ Opinion | California AB 257 Is Tip of the Iceberg When It Comes to ‘Workplace Fissure’

• California Governor Gavin News has signed AB 257—a bill championing workers’ rights in the fast food industry—into law. Despite being a huge step forward for workers, tens of millions of dollars will be spent trying to kill it. Before anyone has a chance to vote on it via a possible ballot measure, it’s key that people understand the bigger picture of just how damaging, pervasive, and exploitative “workplace fissuring” is throughout almost every industry.

=> ↺ 85% of Global Population Set to Live Under ‘Deadly’ Austerity Measures Next Year

• With countries across the globe facing major costs-of-living crises and looming recessions as prices remain high and central banks rush to slow economic demand, an analysis published Wednesday estimates that 85% of the world population will be living under austerity measures by next year as tens of millions face hunger, homelessness, and health crises.

=> ↺ For the First Time, the Federal Government Will Help Poor Families Get Diapers

• For the first time, the federal government is directly addressing diaper need, which leaves one in three American families struggling to afford enough diapers for their children. To start chipping away at the problem, the Department of Health and Human Services just announced the creation of the Diaper Distribution Pilot to hand out diapers to low-income families. The Administration for Children and Families will give $8 million in grants to six states—Arizona, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, and Virginia—and one tribal consortium, the South Puget Intertribal Planning Agency, in Washington State. Recipient agencies will work with existing diaper banks and social service agencies to get diapers into the hands of parents struggling to afford them.

=> ↺ New Report Reveals How 13 US States ‘Shield the Fortunes of the World’s Richest People’

• “The wealth of nations is hidden in states like Wyoming, Delaware, Nevada, and South Dakota.”

=> ↺ Imperialism and Capitalism Are ‘Bleeding the World Dry’: At UN, Nicaragua Calls for Global Rebellion

• At the United Nations General Assembly, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government called for a global rebellion against the “imperialist and capitalist system” that is “bleeding the world dry.” Condemning …

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Palestinian Islamic Scholar Issam Amira: Nurture In Your Children The Hatred Of Britain Like Mothers Breastfeed Babies; Britain Is Responsible For All The World’s Crises

• Palestinian Islamic scholar Issam Amira said in a speech posted to the Al-Aqsa Call YouTube channel on September 18, 2022 that Britain is the “mother of all crimes and disasters.” He blamed Britain for the Palestinian nakba, for the “humiliation” the Palestinians are suffering, and for the world’s crises throughout history. He criticized the leaders of Muslim countries for offering their condolences over the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II, and recalled a visit to the British Museum in which he realized that everything in the museum had been stolen from nations. He added: “May Allah curse Britain.” It is noteworthy that Amira recently gave a recorded speech at the Hizb-ut Tahrir conference in Britain (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 9749).

=> ↺ EXCLUSIVE: Amid Alleged Islamisation Agenda, Nigerian Police Academy Commandant, Ahmad Accused Of Replacing Christian Personnel With Muslims

• Ahmed was alleged to have illegally transferred some Christian personnel out of the institution and replaced them with Muslims.

=> ↺ Freedom of speech in universities: is there a problem and does the Free Speech Bill help?

• Does the Bill present an opportunity for the Higher Education sector to take reasonable steps to secure freedom of speech on university campuses, is it entirely unnecessary, or will it even make free speech more difficult to maintain?

=> ↺ Federalist Society v Corporate Personhood

• When tech monopolies used their market power to sew up all the public forums for discourse and then kicked off Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones, key figures on the right became highly selective trustbusters, dedicated to curbing the power of tech monopolies.

• The ideological cover for this is thin to nonexistent: diehard Federalist Society types like Ted Cruz don’t even bother to try articulating a theory of “good” monopolies and “bad” monopolies. A “good” monopoly is one that helps Ted Cruz and his pals. A “bad” monopoly is one that gets in their way.

• The latest ideological flipflop from the right comes in its relationship to corporate personhood. For a generation, the right has insisted that corporations are people, and, more importantly, corporations are the kinds of people who have free expression rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

=> ↺ I’ve said it all before but here we go again

• But trying to get rid of me isn’t going to solve their problem. For one thing, it’s not working. More importantly, everyone can see that nothing useful is coming out of particle physics, it’s just a sink of money. Lots of money. And soon enough governments are going to realize that particle physics is a good place to save money that they need for more urgent things. It would be in particle physicists’ own interest to listen to what I have to say.

• And I have said this all many times before but I hate long twitter threads, so let me just summarize it in one blogpost: [...]

=> ↺ Poll: Most People Want Certification Process Updated to Prevent Another Jan. 6

=> ↺ Indian Legislators Want The Government To Be Able To Intercept Encrypted Messages

• India is still a democracy. Or so it pretends. But it’s becoming indistinguishable from autocratic regimes, like those found in some of its nearby neighbors, China, Turkey, and Pakistan.

=> ↺ Staffers for Andy Levin Unanimously Vote to Form First-Ever Congressional Union

=> ↺ How to Vote in Person or by Mail

• First things first: Have you confirmed your voter registration yet? You’ll need to be registered in order to vote by mail or in person.

=> ↺ They come to Hungary for work, only to find out that life is no bed of roses here either

=> ↺ Russian Patriarch Kirill awards Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Semjén

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Facebook takes down Russian network impersonating European news outlets

• It involved more than 60 websites pretending to be legitimate, high-profile European news organizations, including the U.K.’s The Guardian and Daily Mail, Germany’s Der Spiegel and Bild, and Italian news agency ANSA.

• The spoofed websites were built with care, Nimmo said, under the apparent theory that imitating a big brand would draw a big audience. They copied the layouts of outlets’ real sites and imitated their web addresses. In some cases they used bylines and photos of real journalists and included working links to other news articles.

=> ↺ Russian online propaganda? Meta says yes, shuts down network.

• The operation involved more than 60 websites created to mimic legitimate news sites including The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom and Germany’s Der Spiegel. Instead of the actual news reported by those outlets, however, the fake sites contained links to Russian propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine. More than 1,600 fake Facebook accounts were used to spread the propaganda to audiences in Germany, Italy, France, the U.K., and Ukraine.

• The findings highlighted both the promise of social media companies to police their sites and the peril that disinformation continues to pose.

=> ↺ Twitter’s Shoddy Fakery

• Watch these three clips very carefully, focusing on the count on the retweet symbol. Do you see what is wrong?

=> ↺ This One Thing Made Alex Jones Stop Lying

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Will Muslims Kill More Innocent People Because Charlie Hebdo’s Latest Cartoon Hurt Their Feelings

• On September 21, the French satirical weekly magazine, Charle Hebdo, published its latest cartoon, “230th anniversary of the proclamation of the French republic”.

=> ↺ Kentucky Court Tells Anonymous Covington Students They Can’t Sue For Defamation If They’re Anonymous

• You all remember the media shit-storm around kids from Covington Catholic High School and a run-in with folks in Washington DC that became a sort of Rorshach test demonstrating your political viewpoints based on how you viewed the encounter. The main character from Covington Catholic was Nick Sandmann, who sued a bunch of media orgs over their characterization of the events. While a few publications settled — for what it seems was clearly a tiny “nuisance fee” — Sandmann lost all of his other cases against the media, because there was no defamation at all.

=> ↺ Tom Engelhardt on the Corporate Equivalent of Book Burning

• Tom Engelhardt offers a deeply personal look at how two progressive publishing houses where he worked as an editor found that there simply was no place for them in mainstream publishing.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Opinion | Policies That Center Community Voices Are Key to Solving the Local-News Crisis

• Over the past 15 years, the United States has lost more than half the newspaper reporters covering state and local beats. Runaway media consolidation, mismanagement, new technologies and changing consumer habits have led to widespread job losses and newsroom closings. The decimation of local news has disproportionately harmed low-income communities, people of color, rural communities, and immigrants. And as news deserts expand, disinformation proliferating online has filled the void.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Nobody survives with oppression

• It has been more than ten days since my people in Iran have started protesting against injustices they are suffering from, triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young girl reportedly killed by morality police.

• The government has shut down the [Internet] again and killed almost all messengers and communication services people used and access to any server located outside the country is very much restricted. This has been a common way for the regime to oppress protesters.

=> ↺ Iran Riot Police Confronting Protesters in Tehran Over Death of Woman

• The protests have spread to at least 80 cities and towns throughout Iran. Security police have used tear gas, clubs and, in some cases, live ammunition to quell the protests calling for the end of the Islamic establishment’s more than four decades in power.

=> ↺ Iran’s Brutal Crackdown on “Women, Life, Freedom”

• Iran’s “morality police” murdered Jîna Emînî, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, for wearing an “improper hijab.” They killed her because she was Kurdish and because she was a woman. The hashtag #MahsaAmini is trending, but we should address this injustice appropriately: by the name Jîna’s family gave her. Mahsa is the name imposed on her by the Islamic Republic, a government that oppresses minority groups such as the Kurds and bans the use of Kurdish names in many cases. Jîna’s identity as a Kurdish woman should not be erased. “Jin Jîyan Azadî,” or “Women, Life, Freedom” in Kurdish, has become the slogan of the movement in Iran, but Western media has failed to honor its full significance. It’s a demand for women’s liberation emerging from the Kurdish Freedom Movement.

=> ↺ In Iran, Women Are at the Vanguard of Transformative Change Once Again

• Vrinda Narain and Fatemeh Sadeghi unravel the roots of women’s uprisings in Iran in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s death.

=> ↺ “I’m the same as Mahsa. And I want my freedom”: anger at Iran’s regime spills onto the streets

• What happened to Mahsa has happened to many girls. Often they come for girls who are alone in the street and put them in their vans. Then no one knows where they are. That has happened to so many friends of mine. It doesn’t matter to the police if your hijab is problematic or not. They just get you and then ask you to pay them money. And you have to pay them. If they catch me in the market, they can ask me for 3m rial (about $70). If they question me and I don’t answer, I’ll have to pay more. Once they stopped me in Isfahan and asked me for my phone number. They warned me that if they caught me three times, I’d end up in prison. And I wasn’t even wearing a “bad” hijab. I’d just come from university where we have to wear a proper black hijab.

=> ↺ The Islamic Republic: Shaken to its Core

• The government has ended Internet service in parts in Tehran, and ended access to WhatsApp and Telegram. Despite this, the protesters still manage somehow to meet up and come out in force, and in ever larger numbers, across the country.

=> ↺ France: Islamists spread photos of Muslim women not wearing headscarves in schools on social networks to put them under social pressure

• Screenshots of these accounts and quotes from the social networks support this finding. One user wrote: “School is not a legitimate excuse for taking off the veil and delaying prayer.” On August 23, 2022, an Islamist influencer with 47,500 followers posted a video on TikTok urging young women of the Muslim faith to ” (…) put a sash over the abaya [long dress worn over the regular dress, note]”.[…]Le Point

=> ↺ Myanmar OnlyFans model sentenced to six years jail

• In such areas – and under state of emergency laws renewed by the Myanmar junta government earlier this year – those charged with crimes are tried in a military court where they’re denied rights like access to a lawyer.

=> ↺ Demanding Broad Reforms, Thousands of Inmate Workers on Strike at Alabama Prisons

• The work stoppage began Monday after about three months of planning and organizing by inmates, with help from groups including Alabama Prison Advocacy and Incarcerated Families United.

=> ↺ The U.S. Sees an Unprecedented Investment in Policing Alternatives

• Since 2021, around $500 million in new federal, state, and philanthropic funding has been directed toward initiatives that fall under the umbrella of so-called “community violence intervention,” or CVI

=> ↺ In Washington State, Incarcerated Organizers Build Community With Youth To Fight For Releases

• At Washington’s Stafford Creek Corrections Center, a group of incarcerated organizers have built community with local youths to fight for sentencing reforms, grappling with what it means to organize through an abolitionist lens from inside.

=> ↺ “Lady Justice”: Dahlia Lithwick on Women Who Used the Law to Fight Racism, Sexism Under Trump & Won

• We speak with Dahlia Lithwick, who covers the courts and the law for Slate, about women who fought the racism, sexism and xenophobia of Trump’s presidency. She profiles many of them in her new book, “Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America.” “Law is slow and takes a long time, but at its best, it really can make us all freer and safer and restore dignity to those that have been harmed,” says Lithwick.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Who Owns the Internet?

• What is the Internet, and who owns it? These are not simple questions; their boundaries are muddy. Most people would agree that the Internet encompasses physical infrastructure and physical networks—the satellites, radio towers, and fiber-optic cables, aboveground and underwater, that connect our devices—but does it not also refer to the content they carry? And how can one meaningfully distinguish between that content and the servers that host it; the software that translates it into legible form; the eyes and ears that consume it; the hands that build and maintain it? US Senator Ted Stevens was once mocked for describing the Internet as “a series of tubes,” but his metaphor was about as accurate as one could hope for in so few words. The only trouble is that it’s hard to say where the tubes begin and end.

=> ↺ Five things to know about the UN telecoms agency

• Here is a look at the oldest agency in the United Nations fold, which behind the scenes sets the global standards underlying mobile phones, television and the [Internet].

=> ↺ US Treasury Department Moves To Protect Internet Access For Iranian Citizens

• Information wants to be free and it is never freer than when it traverses the internet. That’s why so many autocratic leaders strive to shut down this essential connection. It allows governments to control narrative and control citizens. Limiting their communication options means it will be the government’s view that prevails.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Mozilla: Apple, Google, and Microsoft lock you into their browsers

• Mozilla researchers found each platform maker “wants to keep people within its walled garden” by steering mobile and desktop users to Apple Safari, Google Chrome, or Microsoft Edge. “All five major platforms today (Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft) bundle their respective browsers with their operating systems and set them as the operating system default in the prime home screen or dock position,” Mozilla wrote in a 66-page report.

=> ↺ Five Walled Gardens: Why Browsers are Essential to the Internet and How Operating Systems Are Holding Them Back

• Mozilla has published new research into how consumers across a number of different countries and continents install and use browsers. It shows the importance of web browsers to consumers, with the vast majority of people surveyed using them each day. It also shows that although many people report knowing how to install a browser in theory, lots of people never actually install an alternative browser in practice. A similar trend can be seen between the number of people reporting to know how to change their default browser versus the number who do this in practice. Crucially, people raise concerns about privacy and security, but they similarly fail to act on these concerns.

=> ↺ Five Walled Gardens: Why Browsers are Essential to the Internet and How Operating Systems are Holding Them Back

• This report has two purposes: first, to present Mozilla’s research (both recent surveys and years of knowledge) into consumer interaction with browsers. Secondly, to highlight the foreclosure of browser engines and independent browsers by operating systems. Part 1 of the paper is about operating systems, browsers, browser engines and how consumers behave. Part 2 highlights the online choice architecture practices by operating system providers which we believe have shaped consumer browser usage away from independent browsers.

• The research we are releasing with this report paints a complex picture with many paradoxes: people say they know how to change their browser, yet many never do. Many people believe they can choose their browser, yet they have a bias towards software which is pre-installed, set to default and difficult to change. In fact, their browser choice on desktop computers has been thwarted for many years, and it has never truly existed on mobile devices. Our research corroborates what many regulators have already noticed: software can be designed to influence or even manipulate consumer outcomes. And operating systems are designed to maximize usage of their affiliated browsers.

=> ↺ Rep. Ken Buck’s Irrational Spite Of Tech Companies May Have Screwed Up Another Antitrust Bill

• It’s kinda weird how the GOP’s pure hatred and spite towards tech companies, and their desire to exact maximum punishment rather than make good policy, keeps blowing up bills that might otherwise pass. We’ve talked plenty about how Republicans have effectively torpedoed the big tech antitrust bill by insisting that it must include provisions that will be used to sue tech companies over antitrust for… suppressing disinformation. And then there was Ted Cruz (at least temporarily) blowing up a (terrible) journalism antitrust bill by bringing content moderation into it.

=> ↺ Google Tries To Fend Off Telecom Backed ‘Big Tech Tax’ In EU

• We just got done noting how the European Union, prompted by regional telecom monopolies, has been seriously pushing for a new tax on big tech to fund broadband. For decades, telecom giants have lustfully eyed big tech ad revenues. They’ve then convinced politicians that the best way to fix the “digital divide” (lack of broadband) is by taxing tech giants, which telecom giants (falsely) claim get a “free ride.”

Copyrights

=> ↺ Hollywood Learned All the Wrong Lessons From Avatar

• That is a myopic reaction considering the fact that the biggest hit of all time was a wholly original film. Sure, Avatar’s story of a human interloper ingratiating himself with an alien tribe is reminiscent of earthbound epics like Dances With Wolves or The Last of the Mohicans, but Cameron’s movie isn’t directly adapted from any prior work. And yet Hollywood has mined every avenue of intellectual property imaginable over the past decade-plus, surely thinking that the better-known the title, the less risk there is sinking hundreds of millions into making and marketing it. I’ve always been amused at the ironic notion that Avatar had no cultural impact because nobody can name its main character; maybe that’s because the story hasn’t been crammed down viewers’ throats year after year since its release.

=> ↺ Teen’s Destiny 2 Cheat Strategy Gifts Bungie Unlimited Lawsuit Ammo

• A teenager who allegedly threatened staff at Bungie and cheated in Destiny 2 is facing fierce opposition as he attempts to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the developer. Bungie says the defendant doesn’t understand the scope of the DMCA and by declaring Bungie’s software license void due to his age, even more copyright claims are on the way.

=> ↺ Liverpool and Manchester United Team Up to Beat Counterfeiters

• Liverpool and Manchester United are arch rivals on the field but in U.S. federal court they have teamed up to fight a common enemy. Together with Tottenham Hotspur, the English football clubs are taking a stand against counterfeiters selling infringing products through Alibaba, Amazon, eBay, Wish, and other stores, seeking millions in damages.

=> ↺ UNESCO MONDIACULT2022: A Starting Point for Open Culture

• It was in 1982 that the Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies defined a path for culture to become a fundamental pillar of development. 40 years on, culture now underpins all 17 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and calls are being made to make culture a sustainable development goal in itself. We agree with UNESCO that “culture is the bridge between peoples and countries… and the key to unlocking mutual understanding and reinforcing global action based human rights and respect for diversity.”

Gemini* and Gopher

Politics

=> ↺ My Chrissy Teigen Moment

• I have no idea who Chrissy Teigen is and I’m not interested to know. As Saayaa put it, it’s the whole point of calling this kind of moment : realizing you have missed some news and that you are happy about it!

• [...]

• I’m a knowledge freak. I want to know it all about everything. All the time. As soon as I learn about a subject that I didn’t know previously, I will spend at least one hour exploring it, reading wikipedia pages about it just to get a big picture of said subject, trying to find a reference book and ordering it.

=> ↺ The Party of Fiscal Responsibility

• The GOP a.k.a. Republicans are lying about being “small government” and “fiscally responsible”.

• “Fiscal” means related to managing a country’s financial resources.

• The GOP is the party of enriching the ultra-rich at the expense of the working poor and even the middle class (and while, contrary to the “working class MAGA” popular perception, GOP-voting households average higher income than supposedly “elite” Democrat voting households, the difference is only around 15% meaning that these families are getting just as exploited by the lobbyists and PACs).

Technical

=> ↺ A Mod For OpenTTD

• Thankfully this can be amended by writing a mod of a type called NewGRF (New Graphic Resource File). There are several tools available for doing this. The first I tried was TrueGRF, which is a web based tool with a lovely and usable interface. It really was a joy to work with.

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Re: Re: Sneakernets

• I read ew0k’s post about Sneakernets and it made me think about the wonderful time I happened to grow up in.

• In middle school I was connecting to a local BBS (Cherryland BBS in Sturgeon Bay, Wi). I had to sneak over to my grandfather’s construction company at night to get access to his better phone system, he had free long distance while we did not. Dialed in, read some posts, sent some messages and started the download of a game or app and let the system run through the night as it was sloooooow.

• 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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