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● 10.11.22

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● Links 11/10/2022: VirtualBox 7.0 Released and Half of PCs Cannot Run Vista 11

Posted in News Roundup at 5:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ TUXEDO Computers releases TUXEDO OS – Linux Magazine

• The Linux hardware vendor, TUXEDO Computers has announced the official release of its Ubunutu-based TUXEDO OS to the general public.

• TUXEDO Computers is well-known for selling Linux-powered laptops that ship with their own, Ubuntu-based, in-house operating system, known as TUXEDO OS. However, recently the company made that operating system available to the general public, which can be downloaded and installed on just about any computer.

• Although TUXEDO OS was designed specifically for TUXEDO hardware, it does work on general hardware and even as a virtual machine. The OS uses a customized version of KDE Plasma and allows for running in live mode, dual booting, or a standard installation.

• The installation of TUXEDO OS is fairly standard, however, when you install it on non-TUXEDO hardware, you will get a warning that states software like Tomte or the TUXEDO Control Center will not work.

=> ↺ The Best USB Bluetooth Dongle for Linux

• Bluetooth has evolved since the days of mono ear pieces people paired with their cell phones in the early 2000s. It has earned a place in the workplace, at home, and on the go, whether paired with a PC, tablet, or mobile phone. While it is common to find Bluetooth built-in in most mobile devices, it isn’t regularly built-in in desktop PCs, leaving users to purchase a USB dongle or add-in WiFi card that supports Bluetooth.

• When KDE Connect was initially announced, I jumped on getting a USB Bluetooth dongle for my workstations at home and at work so I could pair my Android phone with my desktops. Since I now had Bluetooth on my workstations, I tried other Bluetooth-enabled devices over the years such as headphones, mice, and keyboards. I still use a Bluetooth mouse for my daily work, so having a Bluetooth dongle for my workstation has been a necessity.

Server

=> ↺ PostgreSQL: CloudNativePG 1.17.1, 1.16.3 and 1.15.5 Released!

• The CloudNativePG Community has released a new update for the supported 1.17, 1.16 and 1.15 versions of the CloudNativePG Operator.

=> ↺ Understanding Role-Based Access Control in Kubernetes – Container Journal

• This iconic quote from 2001: A Space Odyssey is a great place to start if you want to understand authorization in Kubernetes. In the movie, of course, HAL is a rogue artificial intelligence; imagine for a moment that he was instead a simpler, rules-based system responsible for allowing or denying requests. An astronaut might ask HAL to perform a task, like “turn off the lights” or “pressurize the airlock.” HAL, operating in (hopefully) the best interests of the astronauts and their spacecraft, must decide whether the request is reasonable and if the action should be taken. HAL needs to evaluate each request against a set of internal rules that define who is authorized to execute what actions that impact which resources. This is “authorization” in a nutshell: a system of rules designed to determine whether or not something is allowed.

=> ↺ Confidential Containers brings TEE support to Kubernetes • The Register

• Red Hat is backing a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) project that aims to improve the security of containers in Kubernetes clusters by running them inside hardware-enforced enclaves.

• A company blog post says Red Hat is investing in Confidential Containers, which is a relatively new project from the CNCF-backed Confidential Computing Consortium.

• Confidential Containers, or “CoCo” for short (which should nicely irritate any fans of the old TRS-80 Color Computer), has just put out its first release, version 0.1.0. The very low version number is meant to be a warning: this is new tech, and definitely not ready for prime time. Appropriately, its documentation is also not yet very comprehensive.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 198 – Late Night Linux

• Stadia is finally dead, Valve has shipped a million Steam Decks, Canonical tries to win back the community, Debian votes for common sense, acres of RISC-V laptops, KDE Korner, and more.

=> ↺ 297: Interviewing Kee Jefferys of Session, Private – Encrypted Messenger – Destination Linux – TuxDigital

• On this week’s episode of Destination Linux, Kee Jefferys is joining us for an interview about, the encrypted messenger app, Session to talk about how it helps preserve your privacy and freedom. Plus, we have our tips/tricks and software picks. All this and more coming up right now on Destination Linux to keep those penguins marching!

=> ↺ KDE PLASMA 5.26: Bigscreen, animated wallpapers, rebind mouse buttons… – Invidious

=> ↺ Xorg Apologist Tries Wayland… And Loves It – Invidious

• I’m very openly in favour of Wayland I do think it is the future of the Linux desktop and Xorg will eventually fade away but not everyone is in this camp, some people think Xorg will be with use forever and Wayland probably isn’t ready, this is one such person.

=> ↺ Satisfying Terminal Emulator #shorts – Invidious

• Using the terminal is kinda satisfying

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Even Linus Torvalds sometimes has PC problems | ZDNET

• For most people, hardware problems and slow deliveries annoy them. But if you’re the person behind the operating system that underpins much of the cloud, Android and IoT, your problem could easily become a problem for lots of other people too.

• Linux creator Linus Torvalds told a kernel contributor on Sunday that he’s doing merges “very slowly” from one of his laptops as he waits for “new ECC memory DIMMS to arrive”.

Applications

=> ↺ VirtualBox 7.0.0

=> ↺ VirtualBox 7.0 Released with DXVK and Secure Boot Support, Full Encryption, and More

• Highlights of VirtualBox 7.0 include initial support for fully encrypted virtual machines via command-line (including the configuration logs and saved states), new 3D support based on DXVK for GNU/Linux, Solaris, and macOS hosts, Secure Boot support when using EFI boot, support for IOMMU devices (Intel and AMD variant), as well as support for virtual TPM 1.2 and TPM 2.0 devices.

=> ↺ Oracle releases VirtualBox 7.0.0 with full Windows 11 support

=> ↺ Ghostwriter is a Spookily Good Distraction Free Writing App for Linux – OMG! Ubuntu!

• If you’re looking for a smart, distraction free text editor for Windows, macOS, or Linux, check in with Ghostwriter.

• Ghostwriter is now part of the KDE app family proper, and for good reason: it’s a supremely competent, straightforward word processor with markdown support, including a toggle-able rich preview so that you can see your formatting in-situ, as you type.

• This app also auto-saves work as you type (so you can work with some ease of mind) and it has several advanced ‘distraction free’ features that help you tune out on what you’re doing. Oh — can I get a woo, please — have I mentioned that it’s open source too?

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

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

=> ↺ Open Source Free Hospital Management System for Small Hospitals

• Django is a popular Python open-source full-stack web development framework. It can be used to build a solid web apps with a powerful backend structure.

• It is already proven in many enterprise, medical and healthcare related projects.

• Today, we bring you a quick app that is build with Django as a hospital management system, which can be used to manage medical records, appointments and more.

=> ↺ BHIMA: Open Source Basic Hospital Information System

• BHIMA or Basic Hospital Information Management Application, is a free and open-source hospital information system that is designed for rural hospitals in Africa.

• It is created and released as an open-source project by an international team located in Democratic Republic of the Congo.

=> ↺ nnn: A Powerful, Terminal-Based File Manager for Linux Power Users

• Want a highly customizable file manager for your system? nnn is a powerful yet lightweight file manager that works inside the Linux terminal.

• There are a lot of terminal-based programs that cater to power users on Linux, and the file manager nnn is one of them. It’s a deceptively simple-looking but extremely configurable program. Here’s how to install and use it.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Wireshark: Specifying a Protocol Stack Layer in Display Filters

• Specifying a protocol stack layer is one of the new syntax features. But let me first explain what the problem is, and then we can talk about the solution that the new syntax brings.

=> ↺ Day 11: space-separated functional color notations

• It’s time to get me up on speed with modern CSS. There’s so much new in CSS that I know too little about. To change that I’ve started #100DaysOfMoreOrLessModernCSS. Why more or less modern CSS? Because some topics will be about cutting-edge features, while other stuff has been around for quite a while already, but I just have little to no experience with it.

=> ↺ On Web Clipping

• The lack of success in web clippers may be because of Chrome’s locked-down extension policy. It is hard to balance a browser security model that lets users inject clipping code into arbitrary websites without having some sites use it nefariously (for tracking) – see the programmable web. Chrome eventually shipped a tangentially related feature, which would highlight a phrase that you searched for on the target site.

=> ↺ Set filedate on photo according to EXIF

• The EXIF information is a set of data that your camera or smart phone has put into the JPG file. One of the elements of this set is the actual date and time you made the photo.

• So, if we can extract that information we can restore the right date and time for our photo file.

=> ↺ How to Install GNU Emacs 28 on Linux Mint 21 LTS

• GNU Emacs is a widely used and popular text editor that has been around for over three decades. The latest release, GNU Emacs 28, brings several new features and improvements, including better support for Python and JavaScript, improved performance, and a more user-friendly interface. In addition, GNU Emacs 28 makes it easier to customize the editor to suit your individual needs. Whether you’re a longtime user of Emacs or just getting started, you’ll find that GNU Emacs 28 has everything you need to make your text editing experience more efficient and enjoyable.

• The following tutorial will teach you how to install Emacs on Linux Mint 21 LTS release series using a LaunchPAD APT PPA or Flatpak with the command line terminal.

=> ↺ How to Install Element Matrix Client on Linux Mint 21 LTS

• Element is a free and open-source software instant messaging client implementing the Matrix protocol. It supports end-to-end encryption, groups, and sharing of files between users on this platform! If you’re looking for an open-source, encrypted messaging client that offers group chats and file-sharing functions, then Element is one of the best options. The client is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, so you can use it on any device you own.

• One of the great things about Element is that it’s backed by a large community of developers constantly working to improve the software. So if you encounter any bugs or problems while using Element, you can rest assured that they’ll be fixed quickly. In addition, all of your data is stored securely on your device, so you don’t have to worry about it being accessed by anyone else. If security and privacy are important to you, then Element is worth checking out.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to Install Riot Desktop or better known as Element now, on Linux Mint 21 LTS release series using the command line terminal to import the Riot or better known as Element.io official repository and gpg key and install the desktop chat client editor, along with how to maintain and remove the software if required in the future.

=> ↺ How to Enable the Ubuntu Multiverse Repository – Pi My Life Up

• The multiverse repository is one of the four official package repositories. It contains software that is restricted by copyright or legal issues.

• Basically, the Ubuntu multiverse repository adds software that adds support for software that is covered under patents or is considered non-free.

• An example of a package included within the “multiverse” repository is unrar. Unrar allows you to extract archives that were compressed using the proprietary “rar” format.

• Due to licensing issues, the packages provided in this repository may not be considered legal in your country.

• Over the next few sections, we will show you how you can add the multiverse repository on Ubuntu using the terminal or desktop interfaces.

=> ↺ How to Install Snap in Arch Linux

• Snap is a universal package format designed by Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu. Some people do not like Snap, but it has some advantages.

• Often, some applications are only available in the Snap format. This gives you a good enough reason to enable snap in Arch Linux.

• I know that AUR has a vast collection of applications but the snap apps often come directly from the developers.

• If you want to be able to install Snap applications in Arch Linux, you need to enable snap support first.

=> ↺ How to Install Nginx, MariaDB, and PHP on AlmaLinux 9

• This step-by-step guide walks you through installing and configuring Nginx, MariaDB, and PHP (LEMP Stack) on AlmaLinux 9.

• The LEMP software stack consists of a group of server-side software that serves dynamic web pages and web applications. It is an acronym representing four separate components: (L) Linux OS, (E) Nginx Web Server, (M) MySQL/MariaDB Database, and (P) PHP Scripting Language.

=> ↺ How to Install SeaMonkey Internet Suite on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

• SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netscape 7. The SeaMonkey project intends to deliver a complete, seamless integration of Internet applications in one easy-to-use package. Included are a browser, email- and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and simple HTML editing – all your Internet needs in one application.

• Unlike other integration attempts, such as Microsoft’s Active Desktop or Apple’s iTools, SeaMonkey delivers on its promise. Installation is painless, and once you get used to its interface, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything you can’t do with it. For anyone who wants an easy way to access all their favorite internet applications, SeaMonkey is the only choice.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install SeaMonkey on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish desktop with the official Ubuntuzilla Repository APT repository using the command line terminal and instructions on how to update and remove the software in the future if required.

=> ↺ How to Install Linux Kernel 6.0 on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS

• Linux Kernel 6.0 has been released recently, with many features, including support for the newest generation of processors from Intel and AMD and security updates to improve performance on various hardware devices! For end-users, the most significant change will likely be new capabilities added alongside stability improvements. As always, it is crucial that users carefully evaluate any risks involved in upgrading to a new kernel before doing so.

=> ↺ How to Install Julia Programming Language on Ubuntu 22.04

• This article guide takes us through the necessary steps needed to install and configure Julia programming language on Ubuntu 22.04/20.04 systems. The article also demonstrates how to get started with Julia by running a simple Julia program.

• Julia is a considerably new, fast, and high-level programming language intended to unriddle scientific and highly advanced computation problems. It is famous in scientific research, machine learning, data science, visualization, and also for more general-purpose application building.

=> ↺ How to install and enable OpenSSH on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | FOSS Linux

• You can use various methods to connect to a remote system from your local machine. One of the most popular methods today used to connect to remote machines is Secure Shell (SSH). SSH came to replace the insecure rlogin and rsh that could send users’ passwords over a network ‘unencrypted.’ The daemon program responsible for running the SSH client is called OpenSSH.

• The Ubuntu desktop and Ubuntu server minimal do not come with OpenSSH installed by default. However, you can easily install this utility from the command line. This post will provide a comprehensive guide on installing and enabling OpenSSH on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS.

=> ↺ How to fix “dd unrecognised operand error” when trying to create a bootable USB

• One of the useful commands in disk management is the dd command. This command also allows you to quickly and easily make bootable drives with a simple command. However, it can give error at some point of using it. Here’s how to fix dd unrecognised operand error when trying to create a bootable USB drive.

=> ↺ How to Install Vivaldi Browser on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS

• Vivaldi is a unique web browser designed specifically for power users. It offers a host of features that are not available in other browsers, including an advanced tab management system, built-in note-taking capabilities, and a customizable interface. Vivaldi also includes several privacy-oriented features, such as built-in ad and tracker blockers. These features make Vivaldi an ideal choice for users who value privacy and convenience.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Vivaldi Browser on Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS release series using the command line terminal and the option of Vivaldi stable or Vivaldi snapshot browser versions.

=> ↺ How to Install Ubuntu Restricted Extras

• The restricted extra package is a meta package that allows you to install several packages on Ubuntu at once that are considered restricted for various reasons.

• A meta package is a package that will install several others by marking them as dependencies. Another example of a meta-package is “build-essential”, which installs packages related to compiling code on your device.

• In the case of the Ubuntu restricted extras package, the packages it installs are commonly used media codecs and fonts.

• An example of one of the packages that might be installed is “intel-media-va-driver“, which is Intel’s media driver.

=> ↺ How to Integrate Applications and Scripts to a Linux Desktop

• On Linux, an application without a desktop file won’t integrate with your desktop environment. Most applications provide one, but occasionally you’ll need to create one. It’s quite easy, just follow these steps.

=> ↺ How to deploy the Redmine project management application with Docker

• Jack Wallen walks you through the process of deploying the Redmine project management tool with the help of Docker Compose.

• Redmine is an open-source project management platform you can install on your local LAN or to a third-party cloud host. This take on project management includes multiple project support, flexible role-based access control, flexible issue tracking, Gantt charts, calendars, news, documents and file management, feeds and email notifications, per-project wikis, and per-project forums.

=> ↺ How to Create And Delete OpenStack Project – kifarunix.com

• So next, let’s see how to create and delete OpenStack Project.

=> ↺ How To Install an FTP Server on Rocky/Alma Linux 9 With VSFTPD

• Vsftpd is a GPL licensed FTP server for UNIX systems, including Linux. It stands for Very Secure File Transfer Protocol Daemon. It is stable, secure and extremely fast. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol.

=> ↺ Yocto Project: quickest instructions to generate BeagleBone images – Bootlin’s blog

• Here are the quickest instructions (I hope) for having the Yocto Project build an embedded Linux image for BeagleBone boards based on the TI AM335x CPU…

=> ↺ How to Enable Automatic Updates for Rocky Linux | TechRepublic

• Operating system updates are a part of every admin’s daily routine. The problem is, sometimes, those updates can be pushed to the side for more important things. But, what’s more important than keeping your OSs up to date and secure? Sure, there are always crucial issues that regularly arise that you must deal with. However, those issues should never keep you from ensuring your operating systems are up to date.

Games

=> ↺ Decky Loader, get easy Steam Deck Plugins and make colours POP!

• Did you know you can extend the Steam Deck with various plugins? I’m going to show you how to do it, and some of what’s available using Decky Loader. This was mentioned by me some time ago but it has come a very long way since then.

=> ↺ The new Steam Mobile App is getting close to release

• A few updates later while in Beta and Valve has put out the first Release Candidate for their completely overhauled Steam Mobile App. Having a Release Candidate means they’re very close to releasing it for everyone, it just needs a bit more testing to see if any urgent issues appear.

=> ↺ GE-Proton 7-37 is out now fixing up more games for Steam Deck / Linux

• GE-Proton (also known as Proton GE) as a community-built version of the Proton compatibility layer to run Windows games, with a new release out now and FSR is back.

=> ↺ There’s now a dedicated website for Steam Deck boot videos

• Since Valve have made it official in the latest Steam Deck stable update to change your boot video, reddit user waylaidwanderer made a website where you can easily upload and download these quick clips.

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ Thunar: Image Preview and Hidden Preferences

• I haven’t had much time to actively contribute to Xfce in the past few months. Between mentoring Amrit for GSoC and completing my undegraduate thesis, I wasn’t able to write patches at my normal pace. Things have started to pick back up, now that I’ve finished my undegraduate studies. I still won’t be able to work on Xfce as much as I used to. In addition to starting my Master’s degree, I have joined the AI Research Team of the University of Athens. Nonetheless, I will continue to maintain Xfce Terminal and contribute to Thunar and other core Xfce components. Now that this is out of the way, let’s talk Thunar!

=> ↺ WOW! Thunar File Manager Just Got an Awesome Feature: Image Preview!

• Xfce is in the news lately.

• While the team is preparing for the Christmas release of Xfce 4,18, a bumper feature arrives in Thunar. If you work with a huge volume of image files, then the new image preview feature is definitely going to improve your workflow.

• How does it work?

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ MiTubo 1.4 adds feed folders | Mardy

• Exactly one month has passed since the previous release, just the right time needed to complete the feafure I’ve been working on since several weeks and to fix a few bugfixes introduced with the previous release.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Easiest Way to Open Files as Root in GNOME Files

• In Windows, you generally get an option to open a file or folder as “Open As Administrator” in the right-click context menu.

• That feature is part of the File manager, i.e. for Windows; it’s part of Windows Explorer. However, it is executed by the operating system and its permission control modules.

• In Linux distributions and file managers, the situation is a little different. The different desktop has their way of handling this.

• Since modifying the files and folders as admin (or root) is risky and may cause a broken system, the feature is not easily available to users via the GUI of file managers.

• Here’s the simplest way to access a file or directory as root in GNOME Files.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ How to choose the right Linux desktop distribution | ZDNET

• But one area the Linux desktop has yet to make much headway in is the desktop. That’s not because it’s not a viable option, as it very much is. I’ve been using Linux as my primary desktop operating system for decades and have never had a problem. It runs beautifully and offers me stability and flexibility no other operating system offers.

• That being said, why is it that Linux has had such a problem gaining more than a single-digit market share on the desktop?

Screenshots/Screencasts

=> ↺ KaOS 2022.10 Run Through

• In this video, we are looking at KaOS 2022.10.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Recordings now available for Nest with Fedora 2022! – Fedora Community Blog

• I am excited to announce the recordings for Nest with Fedora 2022 are now available on the Fedora YouTube Channel. There are 51 videos to watch full of the latest from your Fedora Friends. Search for the one you want or watch the whole playlist!

• This year’s Nest with Fedora was yet another great virtual event success for our community. The event attracted 1000+ registrations with a 75% turnout. The current average turnout for virtual events is around 40-50% so the turnout at Nest is an achievement and testament to folks’ engagement with the Fedora community. Although we didn’t double our numbers over the 2021 event (like we did 2021 over 2020), we still showed growth in a time where people’s virtual fatigue is at an all time high. I think we can call that a triumph!

=> ↺ RisiOS is the Fedora-based Linux distribution you’ve never heard of but should definitely try | ZDNET

• Fedora Linux is already a brilliant operating system that is as user-friendly as it is reliable. In fact, for the longest time, I would never have recommended Fedora to anyone who didn’t have a considerable amount of experience with Linux. Over the past few years, that has dramatically changed, to the point where I’d be just as comfortable recommending Fedora as I would Ubuntu.

• [...]

• First off, RisiOS includes something that every Linux distribution should offer. I’m talking about a welcome screen. Of course, this isn’t just any old welcome screen. Instead, the developers have created a RisiWelcome app to hold new users by the hand and help them with things like installing media codecs, setting up Flathub, installing apps with GNOME Software, installing web apps, customizing the desktop (with the RisiTweaks app — more on that in a bit), setting up audio, gaming, graphics, productivity, and video production, where to get help, and even how you can contribute to RisiOS.

=> ↺ Getting to know Prem Pavan, general manager for Red Hat Growth and Emerging Markets (GEMs)

• Pavan has extensive experience in the enterprise software space, with more than 23 years in IT across the Asia Pacific region. Prior to his current role at Red Hat, he served as vice president and general manager, Asia for LivePerson as well as vice president and general manager at Citrix, where he drove profitable growth across Asia, driving customer, partner and employee satisfaction. He also held leadership roles at Kofax and Software AG.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian is basically useless unless you use Firefox or Chromium | Hund

• I recently decided to install a Linux based operating system (on a virtual machine) on my wifes Apple MacBook Pro, to make it usable for me. I decided to use Debian, because it’s simple to install and requires little to no work to get going with.

• When I later had some issues with my web browser qutebrowser (that was related to Debian), I turned to their IRC-channel for some help.

• That’s when I was made aware of the fact that they basically don’t support any browser other than Firefox or Chrome, but they still choose to include various web browsers like qutebrowser, even though they are unsupported and are “affected by a steady stream of security vulnerabilities”.

=> ↺ diziet | Skipping releases when upgrading Debian systems

• I have three conventionally-managed personal server systems (by which I mean systems which aren’t reprovisioned by some kind of automation). Of these at least two have been skip upgraded at least once:

• The one I don’t think I’ve skip-upgraded (at least, not recently) is my house network manager (and now VM host) which I try to keep to a minimum in terms of functionality and which I keep quite up to date. It was crossgraded from i386 (32-bit) to amd64 (64-bit) fairly recently, which is a thing that Debian isn’t sure it supports. The crossgrade was done a hurry and without any planning, prompted by Spectre et al suddenly requiring big changes to Xen. But it went well enough.

• My home “does random stuff” server (media server, web cache, printing, DNS, backups etc.), has etckeeper records starting in 2015. I upgraded directly from jessie (Debian 8) to buster (Debian 10). I think it has probably had earlier skip upgrade(s): the oldest file in /etc is from December 1996 and I have been doing occasional skip upgrades as long as I can remember.

• And of course there’s chiark, which is one of the oldest Debian installs in existence. I wrote about the most recent upgrade, where I went directly from jessie i386 ELTS (32-bit Debian 8) to bulleye amd64 (64-bit Debian 11). That was a very extreme case which required significant planning and pre-testing, since the package dependencies were in no way sufficient for the proper ordering. But, I don’t normally go to such lengths. Normally, even on chiark, I just edit the sources.list and see what apt proposes to do.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Xubuntu 22.10: Top New Features

• A list of new features in Xubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu (upcoming), which brings two years worth of features, bug fixes and many more.

• This includes updated applications, core module updates, new icon sets and many more. Here’s a round up of the features.

=> ↺ New Ubuntu Linux Kernel Security Updates Fix 16 Vulnerabilities, Patch Now

• The new Ubuntu Linux kernel security updates come about three weeks after the previous security update and patch a total of 16 vulnerabilities for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa), Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), and Ubuntu 16.04 ESM (Xenial Xerus).

=> ↺ The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 756

=> ↺ Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 756

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 756 for the week of October 2 – 8, 2022.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Maker Pi Pico Mini adds battery, buzzer, GPIO LEDs to Raspberry Pi Pico (W) – CNX Software

• The board is offered in standalone (MAKER-PI-PICO-MINI-NB) for people who want to solder their own Raspberry Pi board, as well as fitted with Raspberry Pi Pico (MAKER-PI-PICO-MINI) or Raspberry Pi Pico W (MAKER-PI-PICO-MINI-W) and CircuitPython pre-loaded.

• The board also supports Arduino and MicroPython if CircuitPython is not your thing… Cytron sent us the MAKER-PI-PICO-MINI-W model which ships with three Grove to JST-SH (Qwiic / STEMMA QT) cables, and two 20-pin make headers.

=> ↺ Installing Tailscale to the Raspberry Pi – Pi My Life Up

• Tailscale is software that allows you to set up a zero-configuration VPN on your Raspberry Pi in minutes.

• Designed to remove the complexity of setting up your own VPN, Tailscale doesn’t even require you to open any ports in your firewall for it to operate.

• Being built on top of Wireguard also has its benefits. Tailscale gives you a fast, secure, and private connection to your device.

=> ↺ Keropunk Part 1: Lanterns

• This may seem a slightly odd series of posts for me. I normally talk about solar, electronics, and associated technologies. Why delve back into the archaic technologies of inefficient combustion light and heat?

• Because the electrical grid is a mess, is getting worse, and if you’re not in agreement, the grid just keeps finding ways to prove the point – and “after things have gone black for a while” is not the time to be trying to obtain tools to help you out.

=> ↺ DIY out-of-band management: remote power button

• I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to make it possible to push a PC’s power button remotely via MQTT by wiring up an ESP32 microcontroller, a MOSFET, a resistor, and a few jumper wires.

• While a commercial solution like IPMI offers many more features like remote serial, or remote image mounting, this DIY solution feels really magical, and has great price performance if all you need is power management.

=> ↺ Acorn Archimedes A3010: Restoration Part 3

• I’ve been testing various things with the Archimedes A3010 (which I have been calling “Archie”) and noticed a problem. When it is switched off for over half an hour the CMOS settings get lost. But I have an RTC battery in, what gives?

=> ↺ Simple CNC Gear Production With Arduino

• We’ve seen plenty of people 3D printing custom gears over the years, but [Mr Innovative] decided against an additive process for his bespoke component. He ended up using a simple CNC machine that makes use of several components that were either salvaged from a 3D printer or produced on one. Using a small saw blade, the machine cuts gear teeth into some plastic material and — presumably — could cut gears into anything the saw blade was able to slice into, especially if you added a little lubrication, cooling, and dust removal.

=> ↺ Can Arduino be Repaired

• Arduino boards are widely used around the globe for educational purposes. Arduino targets many students, engineers, and teachers. Working with Arduino is super easy when it comes to user friendly IDE and highly compatible boards. But the real trouble for users begins when a single wrong wiring connection leads to shutting down the Arduino board. Once the damage is done to the Arduino, the first question which comes to mind is can the Arduino be repaired. This guide will be the answer to this question.

=> ↺ Film camera tester helps you tune your rig | Arduino Blog

• By their very nature, digital cameras are always measuring the amount of light hitting their sensors and use that information to adjust exposure times. But film cameras require adjustment to get the proper exposure for a particular setup and even swapping lenses can change that. Traditional calibration equipment is expensive, but this DIY film camera tester kit is an affordable alternative.

• To perform the tests needed to calibrate a film camera, you want a precision light source and an accurate exposure sensor. An exposure sensor alone does work for some tests and the kit has provisions for those, but a calibrated light source helps to configure light meters built into cameras. This kit provides both light source and exposure sensor options, with different modules available for common camera types. The full kit allows for both time-based and light-accumulation calibration tests for film cameras.

=> ↺ Asus mini PC features Ryzen 6000H series processors

• Asus recently announced the ExpertCenter PN53 mini PC which features AMD Ryzen processors from the 6000H series. Some notable features of this mini PC include quad 4K displays, Wi-Fi6E/BL5.2, one 2.5GbE LAN ports and up to 32GB DDR5. 

=> ↺ This ESP32 CAN!

• Since modern cars use the CAN bus for so many of their functions, it’s unsurprising that it’s a frequent object of interest for those in our community. Some people go no further than commercial plug-in analysers, while others build their own CAN devices. This is what [Magnus Thomé] has done, with his RejsaCAN microcontroller board.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ The 7 Best Free Photo Editing Apps for Android

=> ↺ 5 Best Wallpaper Apps To Customize Your Android Phone

=> ↺ Google’s archaic Pixel 4 is still around, fetching an unbeatable price with Android 13 (brand new) – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy Watch5 review: Best Android smartwatch in the market

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

=> ↺ Curl’s resolve Option

• Someone at the BruCON conference told me that curl has a better option to handle the issues I talked about in my diary entry “Downloading Samples From Takendown Domains”.

• It’s the –resolve option (more solutions can be found in “Name resolve tricks”).

Mozilla

=> ↺ An unexpected revival of Firefox OS

• The dream of an HTML-based operating system is nothing new, and in fact, something we have seen since the early 2000s. With the Internet exploding in popularity and complexity, it has always been tempting to think of browsers as convenient graphical renderers, and CSS as the ultimate markup language for designing complex UI elements.

• However, reality has often clashed with this view. Many projects proposing an HTML5 or JavaScript desktop UI have historically shown bottlenecks even on high-spec machines, and although a subset of CSS is finally being used in the majority of “traditional” toolkits such as Qt, Cocoa, and GTK, the adoption of JavaScript logic to control desktop frontends is still lagging behind. Aside from Google’s Chrome OS, Electron, and many other projects, the whole GNOME Shell frontend runs on top of a JavaScript interpreter… and sometimes it shows.

=> ↺ Best Firefox Add-ons to Improve Productivity in Linux

• In this guide, we take a look at the 18 most used Firefox add-ons to enhance your productivity in Linux desktops.

• Despite having lost its market share and popularity over the years to other browsers such as Google Chrome and Safari, Firefox still enjoys significant patronage from users who use it for one reason or another.

• And just like other browsers, Firefox provides a rich set of add-ons or extensions, which provides added functionality to make browsing the web much more fun, faster and safer.

• The add-ons can be classified into various categories such as language & support, search tools, appearance, alerts & updates, and so on.

=> ↺ Firefox Nightly: PiP subtitles, screenshots in ‘about’ pages & more – These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 125

=> ↺ Hacks.Mozilla.Org: Improving Firefox responsiveness on macOS

• If you’re running Firefox on macOS you might have noticed that its responsiveness has improved significantly in version 103, especially if you’ve got a lot of tabs, or when your machine is busy running other applications at the same time. This improvement was achieved via a small change in how locking is implemented within Firefox’s memory allocator.

• Firefox uses a highly customized version of the jemalloc memory allocator across all architectures. We’ve diverged significantly from upstream jemalloc in order to guarantee optimal performance and memory usage on Firefox.

• Memory allocators have to be thread safe and – in order to be performant – need to be able to serve a large number of concurrent requests from different threads. To achieve this, jemalloc uses locks within its internal structures that are usually only held very briefly.

• Locking within the allocator is implemented differently than in the rest of the codebase. Specifically, creating mutexes and using them must not issue new memory allocations because that would lead to infinite recursion within the allocator itself. To achieve this the allocator tends to use thin locks native to the underlying operating system. On macOS we relied for a long time on OSSpinLock locks.

Education

=> ↺ I have come to bury the BIOS, not to open it: The need for holistic systems

• The approach that we’re taking at Oxide is radically different: instead of merely relying on marginally better implementations of dated abstractions, we are eliminating the abstractions entirely. Rather than have one operating system that boots another that boots another, we have returned the operating system to its roots as the software that abstracts the hardware: we execute a single, holistic system from first instruction to running user-level application code. This has, of course, been technically challenging, as it has required us to incorporate the lowest levels of machine initialization. But that our small team has prevailed also shows its viability: this is delicate, but it isn’t impossible — and indeed, having been to the mountaintop, we believe that not only is the holistic artifact more robust, the path was in fact faster than relying on a proprietary initialization layer.

=> ↺ Research Unix V7′s (comparatively) long time gap from V6

• Today for reasons outside the scope of this entry I found myself looking at the release dates for the various editions (versions) of Research Unix up through the pivotal V7 release. This made something about the timeline jump out at me.

=> ↺ RC Week 3: Returning to Math

• I’m also really proud of anode-kv so far. The core architecture is based on what I read in Architecture of a Database System, and it seems to be effective! Right now it can pass 1.7 GB/s through it in my test environment, contrasting with 360 MB/s for redis (with durability off, for a more fair comparison). The bulk of the time is spent in network syscalls and memory allocation/deallocation. I think there’s room to speed things up, but also… there will be more pressing, more important performance problems after implementing durable storage.

GNU Projects

=> ↺ Report on the GNU Hackers’ Meeting 2022 – 2022-10-11 00:30

• “The GNU Hackers’ Meetings or ‘GHMs’ are a venue to discuss technical topics related to GNU and free software” says the web site. And GHMs are in fact events structured as technical conferences, with presentation slides and all. But if we attend every year since 2007 or so, and organise, it is mostly for the fun of spending time with our GNU friends in a relaxed environment.

• After many years in which GNU Hackers’ Meetings took place in Europe for no particular reason other than we GHM regulars living in Europe, we opted to hold GHM 2022 in Turkey.

• I organised the talks, schedule, web site and most of the remote communication with participants; E., a more practical person than I am who speaks the language and knows the region, dealt with the hotel and restaurants. She also proposed the dates and the place: October, when the weather is more comfortable; and İzmir, a large university city on the Mediterranean coast.

• Turkey has the advantage of being reasonably easy to reach not only from Europe but also from several countries in the Middle East, from which one can enter Turkey without a visa — visas for Europe, on the other hand, are notoriously difficult to obtain from the Middle East. In fact since the beginning we were thinking about one specific friend and GNU contributor from Iran, that we would have really liked to finally meet in person.

• And then of course the main reason: reaching out to new people. Local people in Turkey who might see the announcement about a GNU meeting nearby and attend out of curiosity; and then maybe become friends, and contribute to some common project.

Licensing / Legal

=> ↺ Meta Open Sources An AI Inference Engine That Works On Both NVIDIA & AMD GPUs

• In order to address these industry challenges, Meta AI has developed AITemplate (AIT), a unified open-source system with separate acceleration back ends for both AMD and NVIDIA GPU hardware technology.

=> ↺ The Rise of Open Source Licensing. A Challenge to the Use of Intellectual Property [sic] in the Software Industry

• Open source software – from Linux to Firefox and MySQL database – has changed software business as we knew it. New start-ups have challenged industry heavyweights from Microsoft to Oracle with innovative copyright licensing strategies and courageous anti-patent policies. Almost every major software company has been forced to react to the commodification trend. The overall argument of the book is that open source licensing has indeed changed the ways the software industry thinks of and actually uses intellectual property [sic].

• The thesis further argues that the implications of open source to the management of intellectual property are twofold. First, intellectual property infringement risks must be taken more seriously when open source software is used. This is because open source increases the negative effects from the continuous expansion of intellectual property [sic] rights [sic]. Second, “Internet-businesses” are finally breaking through into software markets. This means that the value of intellectual property [sic] increases from sharing but also becomes more complex to appropriate.

• Finally, this book argues that open source can have relevant implications on intellectual property [sic] rights [sic] policy. First, openness balances commercial regulation. Open licensing systems have proved how potential drawbacks from overregulation can be fixed without state intervention. Second, open source also emphasizes a more material study of intellectual property [sic] rights [sic]. When a substantial number of right holders in a given industry decide not to enforce their core intellectual property rights – relying on economic-rational arguments – the premises of the policy discussion can be seen in a new light.

=> ↺ Dual Licensing in Open Source Software Industry

• This paper analyses how several open source companies use dual licensing: both open source and proprietary licenses for one product. Three case studies based on the experiences of companies Sleepycat Software Inc., MySQL AB, and TrollTech AS illustrate the issue. Especially the legal and economic requirements of dual licensing are identified.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ What to be more agile? PeopleOps is the key

• Skill shortages and high turnover rates have made IT organizations realize that employees cannot be treated as easily replaceable resources. And Gen Z workers refuse to be treated as a commodity: they value work-life balance much more than previous generations, often even above pay. They also seek agency and expect to be listened to.

• As the business environment becomes more unpredictable and the need for rapid innovation expands, organizations are seeking ways to increase their agility, including changing their culture and how they treat employees. They are making sure that the people and skills they need are in place when they are needed.

=> ↺ Wayland Support on Linux

• Recently we have been working on native Wayland support on Linux.

• Wayland is now enabled for daily builds and if all goes well, it will be enabled for Blender 3.4 release too.

=> ↺ Get Thousands of Icons for React Project for Free with React Icons

• React Icons is a free source that collect and organize all React icon packages in a simple browsable and searchable directory.

• It contains all the popular icon sets that you can include easily in your project by installing and adding react-icons package.

• Many of the included icon packages are free and open source. And that means, you can use them freely in your project without worrying about commercial license.

• However, some may offer extended packages with more enterprise commercial icons, so you can check their website if you actually need their pro version.

=> ↺ How I Started Programming, and How You Can Too | TheEvilSkeleton

• I am writing this article on my birthday to give my thanks and appreciations to those who helped me start and continue my journey with programming. I want to return the favor by explaining how I started programming, for those who are struggling with getting started with programming, finding the right resources, etc.

• I’ve had a lot of trouble getting started with programming. About 6 years ago, I tried reading free books and documentation online all by myself. The complications and assumptions from them caused me to lose motivation very quickly. I tried this approach several times every couple of months, but the results were consistent – it always ended with me giving up.

• Last year, I tried a completely different approach: taking a course from Harvard University, and then contributing to free and open source projects. This approach was really effective and got me to a point where I joined the Bottles project, and later became a member of the GNOME Foundation.

• [...]

• With the knowledge I gained from my experience with Bottles, I started to contribute to other GTK projects, be it code contributions or not. I ported Fractal and Workbench to the new About window (AdwAboutWindow). At the time of writing this article, I am helping rework the user interface of Tubefeeder.

=> ↺ ML models must also think about trusting trust

• The answer is yes. The trick is for the compiler to recognise what sort of model it’s compiling – whether it’s processing images or text, for example – and then devising trigger mechanisms for such models that are sufficiently covert and general. The takeaway message is that for a machine-learning model to be trustworthy, you need to assure the provenance of the whole chain: the model itself, the software tools used to compile it, the training data, the order in which the data are batched and presented – in short, everything.

=> ↺ Static HTML comments

• The big idea is to write the comments as static HTML, only when comments change, instead of doing a database query to display them every time. This prevents the “hug of death” if you get a burst of traffic.

• I’ve been doing it this way for over six years, and it works great. Here’s the recipe, using Ruby as the glue, though you could use any scripting language.

=> ↺ cst

• This is a small, inflexible li’l Unix filter that reads a single sexp from stdin and prints out Graphviz’ Dot language.

• It features different fonts for strings vs symbols (which you can change with -l and -g respectively).

=> ↺ Map any region in the world with R – Part I: The basic map

• When you prepare for a job interview one of the questions they always tell you to prepare is “What are you most proud of?”. Personally I’ve never been asked that question in a job interview but it kept me thinking. Some years ago I developed the R code for the creation of maps of infrastructure for a Political Sciences project, and I can say that this is one of the projects I’m most proud of. However, it is also true what they say to developers, that nobody cares about how you did it. The final user only cared about what was done, while the research team about what are the possibilities. Due to the confidentiality agreement of the client, I also cannot share a git repository.

=> ↺ $100 billion later, autonomous vehicles are still a car-wreck

• Chafkin calculates that the global R&D budget for AVs has now exceeded $100 billion, and demonstrates that we have next to nothing to show for it, and that whatever you think you know about AV success is just spin, hype and bullshit.

• Take the much-vaunted terribleness of human drivers, which the AV industry likes to tout. It’s true that the other dumdums on the road cutting you off and changing lanes without their turn-signals are pretty bad drivers, but actual, professional drivers are amazing. The average school-bus driver clocks up 500 million miles without a fatal crash (but of course, bus drivers are part of the public transit system).

=> ↺ Exploring Portainer As A Tool For Managing Docker Containers

• As a developer managing containerized applications can be daunting especially when it comes to using a command-line interface; administrating docker containers, writing complicating, and having to learn the various commands can be intimidating.

• Depending on where you land on the spectrum, you might have no problem using a command-line interface; but for many folks, it’s a challenge.

=> ↺ Record destructuring with brev

• Since brev’s defines are just me hacking in matchable support in the define headers, and I didn’t know matchable that well at first, I’m always discovering new things that this means for brev’s define.

=> ↺ How To Install Eclipse with WindowBuilder on Ubuntu

• This tutorial will help you install Eclipse with its visual development tool Window Builder. With this, you can develop computer applications in Java programming language rapidly by drag and drop aside from writing code and produce high quality Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications. Now let’s install it!

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ Class::Plain supports Role using Role::Tiny

• Class::Plain was released at at 2022-09. This time, Class::Plain supports role using Role::Tiny at version 0.05.

=> ↺ Rakudo Weekly News: 2022.41 On Your Phone

• Jonathan Lane (aka Space MOOSE) blogged about their experience building Rakudo on Termux (an Android App) (/r/rakulang comments). Cool Stuff! This should probably be added to the Rakudo documentation somewhere!

=> ↺ Frankfurter Perl Workshop 2022 – 6.11.2022 | Max Maischein [blogs.perl.org]

• we hold the Frankfurter Perl Workshop on the 06. November 2022 in Frankfurt am Main. This is mostly a German-language event, so I’ll just repost the German announcement…

Python

=> ↺ Kushal Das: Introducing pyarti, python module for the Tor Project

• pyarti is a Python module written in Rust using Arti from the Tor Project. Right now pyarti is in the initial stage, and you can create a SOCKS5 proxy object, and pass any Python connection via it. The following example creates a default proxy at port 9150 , and then verifies that the connection works. Finally we fetch a web page and print the text.

=> ↺ How to Execute Shell Commands in Python – ByteXD

• Shell commands help perform routine tasks, including system troubleshooting, system monitoring, backup & data loss recovery, etc. We can automate routine tasks on our system by executing the Linux shell commands inside the programs. Most people think we can only run shell commands in a bash or batch file. Fortunately, we execute shell commands in a Python environment.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to run shell commands in Python.

Qt

=> ↺ Qt Educational Licenses For Students and Teachers

• Are you a student or a teacher?

• Would you like to get access to Qt’s commercial, professional-level features at no cost?

• If you answered yes to both questions, we have some great news for you: the new automated Qt Educational License process and license packages are here!

Java

=> ↺ Groovy vs Java: Connecting a PostgreSQL database with JDBC | Opensource.com

• Lately, I’ve been looking at how Groovy streamlines the slight clunkiness of Java. This article examines some differences between connecting to a PostgreSQL database using JDBC in Java versus Groovy.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Cheating on the rise.

• So while anti cheat detection is enhanced so is the cheater and while drugs are banned yearly – many new ones are invented. This drive to cheat for some reason is seemingly increasing and I still don’t know why.

=> ↺ Product vs. Technology

• Every so often, I have a conversation with someone, and we end up in a sub-conversation around the differences between products and technologies. This phenomenon frequently happens to me because I consider a product and a technology two completely different things. At the same time, many people use them interchangeably when discussing IT products and technologies.

• I think this distinction’s value is clearly distinguishing the solutions that are resilient to a single entity failure and those that are not. Suppose the producer of a product goes out of business or, for any reason, will not do additional business with you. In that case, you lose the ability to buy that product and, sometimes, even use it completely. This limitation does not apply to a technology since you should be able to access it, regardless of the specific vendor.

=> ↺ The Death and Life of My Father, Donald S. Kelley

• I had only one job to do—write the obituary. His wife, Freddia, arranged the church service in Boston, and my sister, Makani, took care of everything else. She flew from Jackson, Miss., to Albuquerque to identify the body, arrange his cremation, pay bills, close accounts, pack up his things, clean out his apartment, and inform friends and family that our father had transitioned. None of our father’s other three children went to New Mexico to help out, myself included. Writing his obituary was to be my contribution.1

=> ↺ Merritt Paulson Must Go

• US Women’s National Team captain Becky Sauerbrunn turned heads last week when she said, “Every owner and executive and US Soccer official who has repeatedly failed the players…should be gone.” The words were especially powerful coming from a stalwart player for the National Women’s Soccer League’s Portland Thorns, since one person who “has repeatedly failed the players” is Thorns owner Merritt Paulson. (Yes, he’s the son of George W. Bush’s bank bailout secretary Hank Paulson. Yes, we find it amusing that this child of profound privilege is named “Merritt.”) US soccer megastar Megan Rapinoe spelled it out: “I don’t think that Merritt Paulson is fit to be the owner of that team, and I don’t think Arnim [Whisler] is fit to be the owner of Chicago. And we need to see those people gone.”1

Hardware

=> ↺ Amateur Rocket Aims For The Kármán Line, One Launch At A Time

• When it comes to high-powered rocketry, [BPS.space] has the unique distinction of being the first to propulsively land a solid-fueled model rocket. How could he top that? Well, we’re talking about actual rocket science here, and the only way is up! All the way up to the Kármán line: 100 km. How’s he going to get there? That’s the subject of the video below the break.

=> ↺ Power Loss Recovery Might Make 3D-Printed Blobs

• [Geek Detour] had a mystery to solve. A round part he was printing had a distinct pattern of blobs. If you’ve been 3D printing for any length of time, you know that pauses in printing can cause blobs like this. He also showed a perfectly-printed version of the same part and claimed it was from the same printer with the same material and even slicer settings. So what was causing the blobs? You can find the answer in the video below.

=> ↺ Compensating For Your TVs Backlight

• [Pekka Väänänen] has a Panasonic TV with a broken backlight that creates an uneven pink/green color. While it isn’t a huge deal for most films, black-and-white films tend to show the most effect. So, by modeling the distortion as a function, [Pekka] set out to find an inverse function that corrects the distortion before it gets to the TV.

=> ↺ Lithium-Ion Battery Circuitry Is Simple

• By now, we’ve gone through LiIon handling basics and mechanics. When it comes to designing your circuit around a LiIon battery, I believe you could benefit from a cookbook with direct suggestions, too. Here, I’d like to give you a collection of LiIon recipes that worked well for me over the years.

=> ↺ Global PC shipments take a big hit during third quarter

• Global shipments of PCs fell by 18% during the third quarter of 2022 to 69.4 million units, the technology analyst firm Canalys says, attributing this drop to high inflation, rising interest rates and bloated channel inventories.

• Another analyst firm, IDC, put the drop at 15%, adding that shipment volumes were above pre-pandemic levels when the drivers were commercial refreshes due to the looming end of support for Windows 7. IDC counts traditional PCs, which include desktops, notebooks, and workstations and do not include tablets or x86 Servers.

• Canalys said in a statement notebook shipments were the worst hit, with 54.7 million units shipped, a year-on-year decline of 19%.

• Desktop shipments, being less reliant on consumer spending, fell 11% year-on-year, with 14.7 million units being shipped.

=> ↺ Cores, Clocks, And Caches Cranked With Latest NEC Vector Engines

• Whenever a process shrink is available to chip designers, there are several different levers they can pull to make a more powerful compute engine. With the latest “Aurora” Vector Engine accelerators from NEC, long-time supercomputer maker NEC is pulling on a bunch of levers at the same time – and apparently to varying degrees to keep the chips from getting too hot.

• We say apparently there because NEC’s announcement was pretty thin on the details. We have reached out with some specific questions about the new VE30, the third generation of Vector Engine accelerators to come out of NEC in the past five years and the latest in a long, long line of vector machines that stretches back as far as we can remember. But thus far, NEC has not responded.

• In the meantime, as has happened before with Vector Engine announcements, we will tell you what we know and infer a little to try to fill in some gaps.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ The Real Star of MAS*H

• The second problem was that the book was one of the first popular novels to emphasize the connection between smoking and lung cancer. In 1963, Americans smoked 523 billion cigarettes—more than they ever had before or ever would again. The Surgeon didn’t exactly bomb at the bookstores, but it never became the bestseller it probably deserved to be. Neither reviewers nor book-buyers were able to figure out if it was a novel or nonfiction. In an author’s note, Heinz only added to the confusion. It begins: “This book, which the publisher has decided to call a novel, was not intended to be a fictional portrayal of a surgeon of our time.”

=> ↺ The political purgatory of the COVID dead

• These were the words that a 43-year old mother of three shared on a video clip she posted to Facebook shortly before her death from COVID-19 in August of 2020. Messages like hers are not hard to find; Google-searching for phrases like “coronavirus last words video” will uncover plenty of them, often packaged in the form of quick, somber segments from local news channels. One such story from October of 2021 recounted a vaccinated woman’s last words before being hooked up to a ventilator and then passing away. She had placed a phone call to a local TV news channel from her hospital bed to tell them that “I just want people to know that even though I took all the [precautions]… we still cannot be too careful. It might not have helped me, but I hope it helps somebody else.” These last words are still floating around the [Internet], months and years now after their authors have passed away. What does it mean that such warnings typically go unheeded?

=> ↺ T700 and My Apology

• Lockdowns are a mess in China. It’s absolutely destroying the electronics market in China and my hometown had been placed in quarantine for close to a month in August/September. Shenzhen was also placed in quarantine and only reopened this month. My friends and suppliers are all telling me that part pricing have skyrocketed and even international shipping has been affected. Shipping is thus subject to availability but for now, it’s in the clear.

=> ↺ Congress Can Help Prevent Health Coverage Disruptions and Lock in Recent Gains

=> ↺ Opinion | Biden’s Marijuana Pardons Are a Big Deal

• Fulfilling a high-profile campaign pledge, President Joe Biden recently announced that his office will be issuing pardons to several thousand Americans with federal convictions for marijuana possession offenses.

=> ↺ Safe Tap Water Should Be a Human Right

• From Michigan to Mississippi to Tribal communities in the West, millions of Americans don’t have it.

Proprietary

=> ↺ iTWire – Apple deserves a Nobel prize for stinginess

• One thing Apple has never lacked — except for a period in the late 1990s — is money. The green stuff. The American dollar. The company has cash reserves far in excess of the budget balances of a large number of countries.

• Given that, it is really puzzling why Apple acts like Ebenezer Scrooge on steroids when it comes to paying its employees fairly. It is not a good look to be stingy after all the platitudes and motherhood statements enunciated by its executives at every possible opportunity.

• The Age reported on Monday that Apple, under duress, had agreed to hold more consultations with unions who are trying to negotiate a pay deal for its 4000 Australian staff.

• According to the report, the Australian Services Union and the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association claimed to have aborted what they described as a “substandard” employee agreement for the Apple Australian workforce.

=> ↺ How Ransomware Is Causing Chaos in American Schools

=> ↺ More than 4 in 10 PCs still can’t upgrade to Windows 11

• Nearly 43 percent of millions of devices studied by asset management provider Lansweeper are unable to upgrade to Windows 11 due to the hardware requirements Microsoft set out for the operating system.

Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

=> ↺ Fireside chat with Mike Linksvayer

=> ↺ Open Source Initiative is a Shameless Megaphone and Advocate for Microsoft’s Proprietary Software (GitHub). It Also Encourages Copyright and GPL Violations (Plagiarism Disguised as ’AI’)

Security

=> ↺ The Most Important Things you Can do to Quickly Secure Ubuntu Linux

• While Linux is a secure operating system by default, its ability to be customized allows for a multitude of ways to make it more secure. Making Linux more secure is something that anyone, not just cybersecurity experts, can and should do for the best and safest experience.

=> ↺ An introduction to Kali Linux – Help Net Security

• Kali Linux is a specialized Linux distribution developed by Offensive Security, designed for experienced Linux users who need a customized platform for penetration testing.

• Kali Linux also comes with several hundred specialized tools for carrying out penetration testing, security research, computer forensics, reverse engineering, vulnerability management, and red team testing.

=> ↺ iTWire – Singtel’s ‘old data’ first posted on dark web in Feb 2021: researcher

• Data stolen during an attack on Singapore’s multinational telecommunications conglomerate Singtel, which the company says was exfiltrated on 20 January last year, has been lying on the dark Web since February 2021 and was reposted to a clear Web forum on 7 October, a security professional says.

• Brett Callow, a senior security researcher with the New Zealand-based Emsisoft, told iTWire that the data had been originally posted on the dark web site of the Windows ransomware group, Cl0p.

• “In February 2021, Cl0p posted data that it claimed was stolen from Singtel, and it’s that data which Singtel states is now being shared via the forum in question,” he said. [A screenshot he took at the time is below.]

• Callow’s statement appears to refute a claim made the Guardian Australia which read: “Singtel informed those affected, but the post on the data leak forum is believed to be the first time the data has purportedly been posted online.”

=> ↺ Kolide gives you real-time fleet visibility across Mac, Windows, and Linux, answering questions MDMs can’t

• Kolide is an endpoint security solution that gives IT teams a single dashboard for all devices, regardless of their operating system.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Singtel’s second unit faces cyber attack weeks after Optus data breach

• Singapore Telecommunications Ltd said on Monday its unit Dialog faced a cyber attack that potentially affected 1,000 current and former employees and fewer than 20 clients, weeks after a massive data breach at another Australian unit – Optus.

• The breach at Optus, Australia’s second-largest mobile operator, late last month compromised data of up to 10 million customers, triggering an overhaul of consumer privacy rules to facilitate targeted data sharing between telecommunication firms and banks.

=> ↺ The Chinese surveillance state proves that the idea of privacy is more “malleable” than you’d expect

• As Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin argue in their new book Surveillance State, out last month, the Chinese government has managed to build a new social contract with its citizens: they give up their data in exchange for more precise governance that, ideally, makes their lives safer and easier (even if it doesn’t always work out so simply in reality).

• MIT Technology Review recently spoke with Chin and Lin about the five years of reporting that culminated in the book, exploring the misconception that privacy is not valued in China.

=> ↺ ByteDance faces tough sell abroad in bid to commercialise TikTok

• The company’s growth, bolstered by advertising revenue in China that last year surpassed 200 billion yuan (S$40.3 billion) – more than double that of Tencent Holdings Ltd. and second only to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s 316.4 billion yuan – is now facing headwinds both at home and abroad. Beijing’s year-long crackdown on what is sees as a wayward tech sector and Washington’s heightened scrutiny and restrictions on Chinese businesses due to their perceived national security risk are taking their toll.

=> ↺ When Roller Coasters Are Too Intense For iPhones – Invidious

• Apples Crash Detection Feature is supposed to call EMS in the event of a severe car crash, but it also likes to call them whenever you ride a roller coaster, it also tends to fail with detecting crashes if the vehicle is stationary

=> ↺ iPhone 14′s new Crash Detection reportedly kicks in if you’re on a roller coaster

• In one example, a woman was carrying an iPhone 14 Pro while riding a roller coaster at an amusement park in Cincinnati, the report said. When she checked her phone after the ride, she noticed several missed calls and voice messages from an emergency dispatcher.

• The woman learned that while she was on the roller coaster the phone’s Crash Detection feature triggered and automatically called 911, the report said.

=> ↺ iPhone 14′s Crash Detection Mistaking Roller Coaster Rides for Car Crashes

• In response to a test done by The Wall Street Journal in a junkyard where the ‌iPhone‌ failed to notice some car crashes, Apple said the testing condition did not provide the ‌iPhone‌ with enough factors to trigger an alert. Apple said the iPhones were not connected to Bluetooth or CarPlay and may not have traveled enough distance before impact for the device to register the crash. Crash Detection is available on the ‌iPhone 14‌, ‌iPhone 14 Pro‌, Apple Watch SE, Apple Watch Series 8, and Apple Watch Ultra.

=> ↺ iPhone 14’s Car Crash Detection is calling 911 from roller coasters – has your Pixel?

• This week’s report cites at least six calls from Kings Island amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Car Crash Detection on iPhone 14 devices has called 911 automatically with the message “the owner of this iPhone was in a severe car crash.” In a statement responding to the false positives, Apple said that the feature is “extremely accurate in detecting severe crashes,” and that the company “optimized it for getting users help while minimizing false positives.”

=> ↺ Roller coasters are triggering iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Crash Detection, here’s a workaround

• Reported by WSJ’s Joanna Stern and Coaster101, in the last several weeks, Kings Island and Dollywood amusement parks have noticed a trend stemming from customers with an iPhone 14 or a new Apple Watch.

• Kings Island has seen Crash Detection triggered falsely by the park’s roller coasters at least six different times.

• And Dollywood has seen the issue enough that it is putting out signs asking people to not bring the devices on rides or power them down.

=> ↺ Apple’s Crash Detection Feature Repeatedly Mistakes Rollercoaster Rides For Car Crashes: Report

• Separately, as per BBC, a few drivers have also described instances where the crash detection system was triggered because phones were dropped while their vehicle was moving.

=> ↺ Rollercoaster rides trigger emergency calls from new iPhones

• The phone uses a number of sensors to detect a crash, including sound, changes in air pressure caused by airbags deploying, motion sensors and GPS.

=> ↺ iPhone 14 Crash Detection Calls 911 on Roller Coasters

• Apple may be able to update the detection to differentiate a roller coaster from a car crash, but in the meantime iPhone owners can prevent it from being triggered by either putting their iPhone 14 in Airplane Mode or disabling Crash Detection before getting on the coaster (Settings -> Emergency SOS -> Call After Severe Crash toggle). Just remember to turn it back on afterwards.

=> ↺ Apple’s iPhone 14 crash detector is calling police when people ride roller coasters

• “Cell phones and other devices should not be brought aboard any attraction,” the signs read. “Due to the dynamic movement you will experience on this ride, Apple Watches and similar devices may activate their emergency call function. To prevent your device from making unintended 911 calls, please turn it off or enable airplane mode.”

=> ↺ ‘WhatsApp has been a surveillance tool for 13 years’. Telegram founder Pavel Durov urges all to stay away from app

• Recently, Telegram founder Pavel Durov took to his Twitter account to share his thoughts about WhatsApp and privacy concerns. CEO Pavel Durov in a revelation claimed that WhatsApp has been a surveillance tool for the past 13 years.

• Durov in a Telegram post on Durov’s Channel said that [crackers] could potentially have full access to everything on the smartphones of WhatsApp users. He said that it was possible through a security issue which was disclosed by WhastApp itself last week.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ It’s the 21st century. Why is Hungary looking towards Moscow?

• Seven months ago, Kyiv was threatened by a Russian military encirclement operation, but by now the occupiers have been pushed back far to the east. At the President’s office, we still enter a room full of sandbags for a security check before we meet one of Ukraine’s most influential politicians, Mykhailo Podolyak. In the office of Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser, a photo of the defenders of Azovstal hangs on the wall and a book called Journalists at War lies on the desk. He says that Russia is a colossus on feet of clay, and that after the war the Ukrainian government could quickly sit down with the Hungarian government to discuss their disputes. He adds that he doesn’t think Putin would use nuclear weapons. We interviewed the Ukrainian presidential adviser in Kyiv.

=> ↺ Merchants of death

• As despair, debilitating poverty, wars, climate change and environmental disasters become more frequent, more and more people will feel they have no other choice but to resort to the traffickers – and a percentage of them will be lost along the way. But aside from horror and anathema, the “increased or decreased flow” that depends on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political whims, do we have anything else to contribute to this discussion?

=> ↺ Pro-Russian [crackers] claim responsibility for knocking U.S. airport websites offline

• The group posted a list of airports on Telegram, urging hackers to participate in what’s known as a DDoS attack — a distributed denial-of-service caused when a computer network is flooded by simultaneous data transmissions.

=> ↺ US airport websites knocked offline by Russian-speaking [attackers]

• “ATL’s website (atl.com) is up and running after an incident early this morning that made it inaccessible to the public,” the airport said in a now deleted tweet. “An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway. At no time were operations at the airport impacted.”

=> ↺ More than 1,300 Ukrainian towns and villages left without electricity following Russian missile attacks — Meduza

• At least 1,307 residential locations in Ukraine were without electricity as of 9 p.m. local time on October 10. This was reported by Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. Power outages are due to the power grid disruption caused by today’s massive shelling all across Ukraine.

=> ↺ ‘Countries of the West send in their scum to die as mercenaries’ How the Kremlin tells propagandists to talk about the war and to minimize the Crimean Bridge blast — Meduza

• Once again, Meduza has gained access to the Kremlin-issued guidelines for Russian propagandists. This time, it’s a memo on how the pro-Kremlin media should talk about the recent Crimean Bridge blast. The Russian President’s Office instructed the state-controlled media and bloggers to present the explosion as something that has “split the American establishment on the question of supporting the terrorist Ukrainian state.” Meduza’s special correspondent Andrey Pertsev reports on how the Russian state would like its citizens to think of the security failure on the bridge.

=> ↺ Khanna and Blumenthal Propose Bill to Cut All Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia

=> ↺ Khanna, Blumenthal Propose Bill to ‘Immediately Halt All US Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia’

• In an op-ed for Politico, Khanna (D-Calif.), Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld argued that OPEC and Russia’s move to cut oil production by two million barrels per day starting in November will “worsen global inflation, undermine successful efforts in the U.S. to bring down the price of gas, and help fuel Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.”

=> ↺ EXPOSED: Before Ukraine blew up Kerch Bridge, British spies plotted it

=> ↺ What’s Worse Than Risking Nuclear Apocalypse?

• If you want war criminals held accountable, ask the U.S. government to support the International Criminal Court and the rule of law for all, including Americans, exactly as Chief U.S. prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson promised at Nuremberg. But don’t risk Armageddon.

=> ↺ Can the Democrats Stop the MAGA Threat?

=> ↺ The Dangers of a MAGA Wave Election

• If polls are to be trusted, Democrats are on the verge of defying history by blunting the normal loss of congressional seats during a midterm election when they hold the presidency. Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010 both oversaw major losses for the Democrats in backlash midterms that severely curtailed their ability to pursue a legislative agenda. Earlier this year, it looked like Joe Biden was destined for the same fate, with the rocky economy and plummeting presidential approval ratings threatening to create a third red wave. But right now, thanks to the new salience of abortion, an array of inept GOP candidates, and improved economic conditions, things look better for the Democrat.

=> ↺ Moscow responds to the Crimean bridge blast Russian missile strikes rock cities throughout Ukraine — Meduza

• On October 10, just two days after an apparent attack on the only bridge linking Russia to Crimea, Russian launched missile strikes in at least a dozen cities throughout Ukraine. According to Ukrainian authorities, Moscow’s goal was to damage Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov called the attacks “part of the special [military] operation.” Here’s what we know about the strikes so far.

=> ↺ Who is ‘General Armageddon?’ The new commander leading Russia’s forces in Ukraine is reportedly a proponent of targeting civilian infrastructure — Meduza

• On October 8, the same day a large explosion hit the bridge connecting Crimea and Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that General Sergey Surovikin had been appointed the new commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine. The announcement marks the first time an individual has been officially declared to be in charge of the war effort; previously, only the commanders leading specific groups of forces were named publicly by the ministry. Surovikin, who Russian media has referred to as “General Armageddon” for his ability to act “brutally” in war, first made headlines during the failed 1991 Soviet coup, when three protesters were killed under his command. A summary of what we know about the new leader of Russia’s troops in Ukraine.

=> ↺ 12-Year-Old Succumbs to Injuries as Israeli Forces Kill Four Palestinian Teens

• Middle East Eye reports Mahmoud Mohammad Samoudi, 12, succumbed to wounds sustained on September 28, when Israeli forces shot him in the stomach with live ammunition during an Operation Break the Wave raid on the Jenin refugee camp, where armed resistance to the occupation has mounted in recent months.

=> ↺ Opinion | Surviving the Killing Fields, a Worldwide Challenge

• Awaiting discharge from a hospital in Cairo, Adel Al Manthari, a Yemeni civilian, faces months of physical therapy and mounting medical bills following three surgeries since 2018, when a U.S. weaponized drone killed four of his cousins and left him mangled, burnt and barely alive, bedridden to this day.

=> ↺ UN Chief Decries ‘Unacceptable Escalation of the War’ in Ukraine

• “As always, civilians are paying the highest price.”

=> ↺ Remember Haiti: Think US Military Intervention

• Masses of Haitians have protested intermittently and countrywide since August. They are reacting to high costs – thanks to the International Monetary Fund – and to shortages of food and fuel. Banks and stores are closed. Students are involved. Labor unions have been on strike.

=> ↺ The civilian deaths and destruction wrought by Russia’s ‘high-precision’ missile strikes Among the ‘targets’ claimed to have been ‘reached’ are a Kyiv office building, a cycling bridge, playgrounds, and apartment blocks — Meduza

• On the morning of October 10, Kyiv and 14 other Ukrainian regions were subjected to massive shelling. According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Russia fired more than 80 missiles into Ukrainian cities. Half of those missiles were shot down by air defense systems. The Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the shelling was in response to the Crimean Bridge explosion on October 8. Russia attributed the explosion to the work of Ukraine’s security service, accusing Kyiv of terrorism. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, today’s strikes targeted military, communications, and energy facilities in Ukraine. Meduza has compiled a list of known civilian casualties, numbers of people injured, and the actual districts, objects, and structures that have been damaged or destroyed by the shelling. Based on open sources, media reports, statements issued by authorities, and photo-evidence, our list details the “targets” Russia claims to have “reached” by what it calls a “high-recision” missile attack.

=> ↺ Explosions hit Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in apparent missile strikes — Meduza

• On the morning of October 10, multiple explosions rocked Kyiv, Dnipro, and other Ukrainian cities. Local Telegram channels reported that at least five blasts were heard in Ukraine’s capital city and that air defense forces were activated.

=> ↺ Russia Bombs Kyiv and Other Major Cities in Massive Attack on Ukraine

• In a video released Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the deadly blast on the 12-mile strategic bridge “an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure.”

=> ↺ How to Create a Nuclear Weapons Policy for the People

• Russia’s war in Ukraine raises the stakes of nuclear weapons policy in 2022 to heights not seen since the Cold War. In the midst of this global crisis, the Biden administration has completed a classified version of its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) which lays out the administration’s approach to nuclear weapons. The unclassified version is now expected to be released sometime this fall. Since the first NPR in the 1990s, no administration has meaningfully engaged with the human and environmental costs of nuclear weapons or reckoned with the question of whether nuclear weapons actually make anyone safer. Nor has the government addressed the inherently white supremacist, imperialist, patriarchal nature of these weapons, which perpetuate a clear power differential not just between government and citizen but also between the nuclear powers and the rest of the world.

=> ↺ Russia’s hawkish Dmitry Medvedev is now on Ukraine’s wanted list Earlier, he blamed Ukraine for the Crimean Bridge explosion, urging ‘extermination’ — Meduza

• The Russian shelling of Ukraine’s cities and civilian infrastructure on October 10 was the Kremlin’s response to the Crimean Bridge explosion that took place earlier, on October 8, damaging Russia’s critical link to the annexed peninsula. In the aftermath of the explosion, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, called it a “terrorist act” of the “criminal regime” in Kyiv. Following Medvedev’s aggressive statements, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) added his name to Ukraine’s official “Wanted” database.

=> ↺ Putin and Russian Defense Ministry satisfied with ‘high-precision’ missile strikes on Ukraine’s civilians — Meduza

• “The strike’s aim has been reached. All targeted objects have been attained,” reported the Russian Defense Ministry on today’s missile strikes across Ukraine.

=> ↺ Lukashenko announces deployment of ‘regional grouping’ combining Russian and Belarusian forces — Meduza

• The President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to establish a joint regional grouping of Russian and Belarusian troops, Belta reports.

Environment

=> ↺ William Shatner says his trip to space ‘felt like a funeral’ for Earth

• It took Shatner several hours to realize what he was experiencing: “great grief … for the planet.” The actor, now 91, had been involved in environmental causes for years. But his Oct. 13 trip aboard the Blue Origin spaceship, which made him the oldest human to visit space, gave that work new urgency, he said. Juxtaposing its “cold, dark, black emptiness” with “the warm nurturing of Earth below” filled him with deep despair and sparked a realization.

=> ↺ How climate change is shifting the water cycle

• Warmer temperatures are heating the lower atmosphere and increasing evaporation, adding more water vapor to the air. More water in the air means a greater chance of precipitation, often in the form of intense, unpredictable storms. Conversely, increased evaporation can also intensify dry conditions in areas prone to drought, with water escaping into the atmosphere rather than staying on the ground where it’s needed.

• A recent study by researchers at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, illustrated how climate change is accelerating the cycle by analyzing ocean surface salinity, which increases as water evaporation intensifies.

Energy

=> ↺ Bitcoin and economic nihilism

• I want to start out by saying that I am not a neutral party here. I have been anti-blockchain to the point of toxicity for a long time. I have also been harmed by the Mt. Gox exit scam. When that happened, I was in college. My father was paying a lot of my college tuition by selling the Bitcoin he had mined back when the project was brand new and CPU mining was viable (I think he mined like 4 blocks or something). He used Mt. Gox to exchange that Bitcoin for USD to pay the school. The exit scam happened while I was at college. Thankfully it didn’t happen just before one of the quarter due dates, but I’m pretty sure it was a large part of the reason why I ended up having to drop out of college. That and unmedicated ADHD, but that’s a story for another day.

=> ↺ Ukraine to pause energy exports to EU, due to Russian missile strikes — Meduza

• The Ukrainian Energy Ministry has announced that it’ll pause Ukraine’s energy exports to the European Union starting on October 11. This is due to the Russian shelling of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and a number of its power plants.

=> ↺ CSIRO to aid regions, sectors that find it tough to cut emissions

• Australia’s national science CSIRO has kicked off a new initiative named Towards Net Zero Mission to help halve emissions by 2035 in regions and sectors that find it difficult to effect greenhouse gas reductions.

• In a statement, the organisation said an initial sum of $90 million would be used to bring together research, industry, government, and communities in this endeavour.

• The sectors being targeted include steel and agriculture.

• CSIRO chief executive Dr Larry Marshall said transitioning these industries would be tackled by turning the problem into new economic growth by building national capability and re-imagining how we live and work.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Conserving biodiversity means limiting human numbers

• Below we reprint our published response to the letter. You can see that unlike our detractors, we avoided personal criticisms. But in this less formal venue, we raise the question of whether the authors of that letter have a commitment to preserving biodiversity strong enough to meet the threats to it. We don’t think they would have advanced such obviously weak arguments if the issue was protecting something they really cared about. Once again, we invite your comments!

=> ↺ Autumn migration of birds proceeding as usual

• Last weekend and early this week saw some spectacular autumn migration. Arctic white-fronted geese have been migrating on a daily basis, with most of them making their way across Finland. The busiest migration was on Monday, when 175,000 migrating geese were reported from Kitee, including a large number of tundra geese.

=> ↺ Trading in Forest Stewardship?

• Many paper products around the world carry the FSC logo, signifying compliance with the Forest Stewardship Council’s standards. At the moment, this logo means that FSC-certified companies are not allowed to commercially plant genetically engineered trees. However, FSC is preparing to revisit its prohibition on GE trees.

=> ↺ A Survival Guide for Humans Learned From Marine Mammals

• “Drowning” is a word we hear a lot these days. At the root are concerns that go to the heart of who we are and how we live. How do we take a breath? Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals draws on the practices of marine mammals—they are the experts, after all, in not drowning. (The harbor seal can slow its breath to about four beats per minute.) The book is part of adrienne maree brown’s “Emergent Strategy Series” at AK Press and landed Gumbs the 2022 Whiting Prize for nonfiction.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ Evolution and Overshoot

• “But wait,” some will protest. “Surely MTI society has ‘evolved’ beyond such primitive considerations!” Not at all—they perfectly describe the trap we have set for ourselves. Anatomically modern humans have been around for at least 200,000 years, but for 99.9% of this period, our numbers were held in check at local carrying capacities by natural negative feedback. Our population did not reach its first billion until the early 1800s; then, in just two centuries—1/1000th as much time—we ballooned to 7 billion (and will hit 8 billion in 2022). The Scientific and Industrial revolutions had finally freed the genie of exponential growth from its bottle. Improving population health contributed, but the human explosion was mostly made possible by fossil fuel (FF). Coal, oil, and natural gas provided the fuel by which MTI society could produce/acquire all the food, fiber, and mineral resources needed to grow the human enterprise.

Finance

=> ↺ Is open source the common denominator in EU’s digital ID wallet debate?

• Patrick Breyer, a German member of the European Parliament and the Pirate Party, stands solidly against some proposals for digital ID strategies (unique personal ID numbers, personal data in government hands, lack of anonymity rights, etc.) that are acceptable to a good many people in the digital ID community.

• But Breyer has issued a statement saying any planned wallet must use open source code. The document is a summary of important amendments he wants to see to the European digital ID that is being hashed out.

• Van Huffelen similarly says she is working on an open-source strategy to present to other EU nations.

• “Everything should be open,” she says, if people believe in the digital economy and society. Few are the areas in which digital ID wallets cannot be improved with an open-source mindset.

=> ↺ Opinion | Can the US Labor Movement Rise Again?

• On August 4, hundreds of Amazon warehouse workers in Tilbury, Essex, England, organized their own wildcat strike. Angry at a paltry raise offer—thirty-five pence (forty-seven cents) an hour, when the U.K. inflation rate is currently more than 10 percent—the workers, most of whom are not union members, sat down in one of the canteens at the warehouse, demanding to speak to a supervisor.

=> ↺ Top Fed Official Says Corporate Price Hikes Are Fueling Inflation

• “The retail margin for motor vehicles sold at dealerships has increased by more than 180% since February 2020.”

=> ↺ Opinion | The Good News About the Economy the Media Isn’t Reporting On

• The media keep telling us that the economy is a losing issue for Democrats. I know that this is the Republicans’ talking point, but that is not what the data show.

=> ↺ How the West’s Sanctions on Russia Boomeranged

• This second war, in contrast to the situation on the battlefield, has not been going well and the West suffered a serious setback this week when the Opec+ group, which includes Russia, decided to cut its crude exports by two million barrels a day in order to force up prices. The decision came despite intense lobbying of Saudi Arabia by the US where President Joe Biden is desperate to prevent the price Americans pay for petrol at the pump going up just before the midterm congressional elections in November. Reacting furiously to the news, the White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that it was “clear” that Opec+ was “aligning with Russia”.

=> ↺ Noam Chomsky & Vijay Prashad: U.S. Must Stop Undermining Negotiations with Russia to End Ukraine War

• Russia has launched its largest strikes on Ukraine in months, attacking civilian areas in Kyiv and nine other cities just two days after President Vladimir Putin had accused Ukraine of blowing up a key bridge connecting Russia to Crimea. As the war continues to escalate in Ukraine, we feature an interview recorded earlier this month with world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky in Brazil and political writer Vijay Prashad. Chomsky discusses why he thinks there is no major U.S. peace movement in response to the Ukraine war, and talks about the dangerous U.S. Senate policy on China and Taiwan, which he says, along with Ukraine, could end in a “terminal war.” Prashad also examines the destruction wrought in the Global South by Western so-called humanitarian invasion in the name of democracy, from Haiti to Libya. “You can’t bring democracy by warfare,” says Prashad. “You have to let people develop their own dignified histories.”

=> ↺ ‘A Huge Deal’: Major Rail Union Rejects White House-Brokered Contract Proposal

• “The result of this vote indicates that there is a lot of work to do to establish goodwill and improve the morale that has been broken by the railroads’ executives and Wall Street hedge fund managers.”

=> ↺ Cash Is Never Neutral: A Conversation on the Politics of Money

• When it comes to understanding the nature of money, times of political tranquility can prove deceptive. The relatively stable order of things gives money the appearance of being natural and neutral—somehow beyond politics. Yet in his new book, The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money From Aristotle to Keynes, Stefan Eich, an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University, shows how economic crises reveal the inherently political nature of money. As an example, Eich points to the 2008 financial crisis, which gave birth to the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Initially, TARP contained a clause that promised the purchase of toxic assets from a number of economic actors, including homeowners. Within days, however, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson—a former CEO of Goldman Sachs—and Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke ditched the clause and pumped billions of dollars into failing banks to bail out the financial sector. The same banks then turned around and foreclosed on mortgages across the United States, particularly in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, on an unprecedented scale. The decision to create money and to direct it to certain interests, Eich argues, is an inescapably political calculation made by powerful elite actors and groups. In times of crisis or peace, money remains a political tool.1

=> ↺ The Vultures at Alden Capital Want Us to Believe Their Neutrality Is in Good Faith

• Less than a month out from a midterm election that will determine the viability of America’s flailing democracy, the nation’s second-largest newspaper chain weighed in with a curious announcement: It will refrain from endorsing candidates for national and statewide office. That’s right: Alden Global Capital, the avaricious hedge fund that now controls more than 200 newspapers, has spurned the notion that it might employ its outsize market role to aid public deliberation during one of the most consequential midterm cycles in our history.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ CHIP WAR: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology

• Taiwan is the Mount Olympus of silicon chips. At its summit is Morris Chang, master of economic diplomacy; founder of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and its incomparable chip fabrication plants (“fabs”); and, at 91, the globally acknowledged Zeus of Chipworld. Having grown up peripatetic in China and British Hong Kong during the Second Sino-Japanese War, he crossed the ocean, completed an engineering degree at M.I.T. (and, later, a Ph.D. at Stanford), and, in 1958, landed at Texas Instruments, where he set his mind to improving the chip-making machinery, which had become (and remains) as much of a site of innovation as silicon chips themselves.

=> ↺ Steve Jobs Lost Interview 1990 (Full Transcript)

• Steve Jobs: I remember reading an article when I was about twelve years old. I think it might have been Scientific American where they measured the efficiency of locomotion for all these species on planet earth. How many kilocalories did they expend to get from point A to point B? And the Condor 1 came in at the top of the list, surpassed everything else. And humans came in about a third of the way down the list which was not such a great showing for the crown of creation. And — but somebody there had the imagination to test the efficiency of a human riding a bicycle. A human riding a bicycle blew away the Condor, all the way off the top of the list. And it made a really big impression on me that we humans are tool builders. And that we can fashion tools that amplify these inherent abilities that we have to spectacular magnitudes. And so for me, a computer has always been a bicycle of the mind. Something that takes us far beyond our inherent abilities.

• And I think we’re just at the early stages of this tool. Very early stages. And we’ve come only a very short distance. And it’s still in its formation, but already we’ve seen enormous changes. I think that’s nothing compared to what’s coming in the next hundred years.

=> ↺ Who are Iran’s hated morality police?

• In Iran morality policing arrived later, after the revolution of 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shia cleric who then came to power, sought to rein in the behaviour of citizens after a period of secularism. The country’s current morality force, the Guidance Patrols, was established in 2005 and contains many thousands of officers, of whom a minority are female. Some young men complete mandatory military service in its ranks. In the year to March 2014 the morality police reported almost 3m women for not wearing their hijab properly.

=> ↺ Iranian and Turkish Moves to Join Shanghai Cooperation Organization Raises Its Profile

• After the Soviet collapse, more IOs were created to manage the independence of new states, globalization, and regional cooperation. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), created in 1991, attempted to coordinate military, economic, and political policies between post-Soviet states. The European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU), created in 1993 and 2002, respectively, bound member states more forcefully to common economic and political norms. Other IOs, like the Arctic Council (1996) and Asia Cooperation Dialogue (2002), aimed to foster broader regional cooperation.

=> ↺ Election Deniers May Have Paved the Way for Future GOP Success in Wisconsin

=> ↺ Columbus Day Sonnet

=> ↺ Kevin Cooper: The Truth

• Kevin Cooper reflects on American history, Christopher Columbus’ real legacy, and Indigenous Peoples Day.

=> ↺ [rewind] Indigenous Peoples Day: CANCEL COLUMBUS!

• [Editors note: This edition of the Scheer Intelligence podcast was first broadcast in September, 2016 on KCRW. We are reposting here for Indigenous Peoples Day.] UCLA history professor Benjamin Madley’s book An American Genocide: The United States and the California Catastrophe 1846-1873 details the killing of tens of thousands of Native Americans as the state was being settled […]

=> ↺ Why is the US Condemning Honduras for Fighting Corruption?

• The Biden administration has argued that corruption is one of the largest barriers to development in Central America. The Biden administration’s “U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America” promises to “[p]rioritize an anticorruption agenda .…” But when this goal conflicts with others, like promoting US investment, which is more important? A recent report from the State Department criticizing President Castro for eliminating the ZEDE law suggests that private interests take priority over public transparency and accountability.

=> ↺ Truss’s Chief of Staff Lobbied for Company Powering ‘Green’ North Sea Oil Rigs

• The news comes as the government begins issuing a new round of drilling licences, in a move slammed by climate campaigners.

=> ↺ The Liz Truss Disaster Show

• The ailing British pound received another battering on October 5 after Truss’s speech at the Conservative Party conference.  It had risen relative to the US dollar on October 3 in response to the decision to abandon the policy of removing the top 45p tax rate, only to suffer another precipitous decline.

=> ↺ The Chaotic Conservative Party Conference

• All Starmer had to do was demarcate himself from Truss, who has done a fantastic impersonation of a kamikaze politician in the short time she has been in office.

=> ↺ The Never-Ending Impact of a Forgotten Blitzkrieg Against the American Left

• How might the United States be different today if, a century ago, the leadership of this country had not acted both so ruthlessly and in such an eerily Trumpian way?

=> ↺ Drawing Thousands at Rallies Across PA, Fetterman Says Oz Makes Time Only for Fundraisers

• As the Democratic lieutenant governor addressed more than 1,230 people in Bucks County on Sunday, Oz posted several images of himself with a small group of people in Philadelphia, saying he’d drawn “so much energy” in the city.

=> ↺ Sanders Says Dems Ignoring Economy Before Midterms ‘Would Be Political Malpractice’

• “I believe that if Democrats do not fight back on economic issues and present a strong pro-worker agenda, they could well be in the minority in both the House and the Senate next year.”

=> ↺ Republicans Go Full Racist on Crime. Will It Matter?

• Conventional wisdom says that strong Democratic candidates, including Mandela Barnes, running for the Senate in Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania senatorial contender John Fetterman, are losing their leads because Republicans are hitting them hard for being “soft on crime.” Most of the attacks are garbage: Barnes is being unfairly blamed for the 2020 rioting in Kenosha after police shot an unarmed black man, Fetterman for proposing eliminating life sentences for murderers—which he does not. The lieutenant governor advocates eliminating mandatory life sentences without parole for second-degree murder, which wouldn’t eliminate a judge’s discretion to impose such a sentence anyway.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Lufthansa bans Apple AirTags, says ‘danger to flight’

• But, the claim that the airline is making about ICAO guidelines is completely wrong, the report said.

• Specifically, the regulation that Lufthansa is citing specifically talks about lithium-ion battery regulations, such as those used in larger devices like a MacBook Pro.

• First, an AirTag uses a battery that is too small to be considered an issue under the guidelines.

• Secondly, the AirTag uses CR2032 cells that aren’t lithium-ion batteries and as such, not covered under the regulation.

=> ↺ TikTok Is a Misinformation Minefield. Don’t Get Tripped Up

• It’s a troubling vulnerability considering the volume of short-form videos flooding every major platform, with huge players like Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram and Google’s YouTube embracing the format as a means to compete with rapidly growing TikTok. As more videos proliferate on these platforms, there’s a higher risk that these bite-size clips could be filled with misleading or false claims.

=> ↺ PayPal Says It Won’t Fine Users $2,500 for Misinformation, but It Will Fine Them for ‘Intolerance’

• Efforts to police misinformation are prone to significant error and overreach. Governments, media organizations, and tech platforms have all made serious attempts to limit the spread of misinformation by cracking down on speech they thought was wrong or dangerous—but time and time again, these measures have resulted in censorship of legitimate discourse.

=> ↺ PayPal Says Misinformation Fine Policy Update Sent in Error

• PayPal said Monday it has no plans to fine customers for using its service to spread misinformation, adding that an earlier policy update outlining a plan to fine users $2,500 for such an act was issued in error.

=> ↺ PayPal won’t fine users for misinformation posts, policy posted “in error”

• State of play: The news caused a stir on Saturday after Lightspark CEO David Marcus — former president of PayPal — said on Twitter that the new policy “goes against everything I believe in.”

• “A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Insanity,” he added.

=> ↺ PayPal Faces Backlash Over ‘Mistakenly Published’ Policy that Prohibited Misinformation With a Fine of $2,500

• On Friday, conservative outlet The Daily Wire published a story on a planned update to PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy or AUP that said it was fining people $2,500 per offense for “promoting misinformation” that could “present a risk to user safety or wellbeing.”

• Users would not be able to promote, “hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory.”

=> ↺ PayPal Still Threatens $2500 Fines for Promoting “Discriminatory” “Intolerance” (Even if Not “Misinformation”)

• But it appears that the policy continues to be in effect for other speech, according to PayPal’s official Acceptable Use Policy, last updated Sept. 20, 2021: [...]

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Patton Oswalt, Whitney Cummings, more cheer Ariel Elias’ response to beer-throwing MAGA heckler

• “I can tell by the fact that you’re still talking when nobody wants you to that you voted for Trump,” Elias responds, without missing a beat.

• More words are exchanged and Elias moved on with her set, but the heckler wasn’t quite done being the worst when a can of beer comes hurtling across the room, hitting the wall behind Elias.

• [...]

• “Ariel did a phenomenal, phenomenal job. For her being here only the second time, she did amazing. What a perfect ‘screw you’ when she opens the beer and drinks it. She did a great job and I apologized up and down,” Ibelli says, noting that Uncle Vinnie’s has been around for 19 years and “never had an incident like that happen before.”

=> ↺ Iranian human rights group: Iranian forces open fire on Mahsa Amini protesters

• Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, an Iranian human rights group, Saturday said Iranian security forces shot at protesters in at least three cities. The group’s Twitter page follows on-the-ground progress of protests in the wake of the death of Mahsa Amini. According to Iran Human Rights, the nationwide protests have resulted in the death of at least 185 people. The situation is rapidly evolving.

=> ↺ Promising Journalism Student Already Self-Censoring To Parrot Corporate Talking Points

• Finding it impressive that a young and largely inexperienced writer could create such professional work, journalism professors at Northwestern University reportedly praised a promising student Monday for his proficiency in parroting corporate talking points. [...]

=> ↺ The Tragic Reason Mad Max Was Banned In New Zealand

• [...] New Zealand’s Chief Censor banned Mad Max on the 9th August 1979, thanks to the original movie’s depictions of “violence and anti-social behavior,” according to the Censor’s daybooks. It’s thought that an attempt by gang members to set one Sergeant Charles O’Hara on fire also led to this ban, as police reports claimed that criminals in the country attempted to burn the officer and his car in a way that supposedly bore a resemblance to Goose’s Mad Max death. [...]

=> ↺ “Censorship by detention”: New campaign spotlights the imprisonment of human rights defenders

• Dozens of countries worldwide are increasingly putting human rights defenders behind bars under fabricated charges as part of a broader effort to silence any form of dissent, like in Belarus, where detained activist Ales Bialiatski just won the Nobel Peace Prize. To attract attention to this alarming trend, the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) starts today a campaign profiling five emblematic activists detained in Vietnam, Russia-occupied Crimea, Egypt, Morocco/Western Sahara, and Saudi Arabia.

=> ↺ Turkey admits it murdered academic and journalist Nagihan Akarsel

• At the opening ceremony of a visa office in Hewlêr, the Turkish government representative was asked by a journalist in front of live cameras what he thought about the allegations that Turkey was responsible for the murder of Akarsel. Güney replied: “We attach more importance to Iraq’s sovereignty than some elements in the country itself. (…) Iraq has always been our neighbour, friend and brother. Security, stability and prosperity are our priorities in Iraq. Our goal is to maintain our bilateral relations as two sovereign states free from terrorist organizations. Hence, our sensitivity and expectation in the fight against terrorism. PKK-oriented and PKK-related targets are at the center of our attention.”

=> ↺ The Importance of Academic Freedom in a Cancel Culture Obsessed with Curtailing Curricula and Banning Books – The Project Censored Show

• Notes: Betsy Gomez is coordinator for the national Banned Books Week Coalition. Nico Perrino is Executive Vice-President at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, formerly known as the Foundation for Individual Rights In Education. Nolan Higdon is a university lecturer in media studies and history. He’s also the author of The Anatomy of Fake News, Let’s Agree to Disagree, and other books on media and society.

=> ↺ Mapping the Rising Internet Shutdowns in India Since 2016

• On June 17, 2020, the Index on Censorship magazine published an interview of a Kashmiri journalist’s experience of the internet shutdowns enforced by the government in the region.

• Bilal Hussain, a business journalist, who lives in Srinagar, recounted that he had to access the internet on the government-run computers at a ‘media facilitation centre’ for several months due to internet restrictions. He added that he had to create a new email id to communicate with his editors, as there was no privacy, and he was forced to work under constant surveillance in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Hacking Justice: Julian Assange film screening and panel discussion

• Amnesty International UK 25 New Inn Yard London EC2A 3EA United Kingdom

=> ↺ Julian Assange ‘tests positive for Covid’

• News of the Covid infection emerged over the weekend, as thousands of people staged demonstrations in London, Washington DC and Melbourne to demand Assange’s release from prison.

=> ↺ Julian Assange tests positive for COVID-19

• Just months before the pandemic, over 100 doctors signed an open letter to the British government warning that Assange’s life was at risk while he was kept in HMP Belmarsh—the UK’s top-security prison. When COVID-19 began to spread rapidly throughout Britain, one of the lead signatories, Dr Stephen Frost, told the World Socialist Web Site, “Given what we know about this case, Mrs Assange is right to be concerned. Julian Assange, because he is immuno-compromised, following years of arbitrary detention first in the Ecuadorian Embassy and latterly in Belmarsh prison, is necessarily at higher risk of contracting any viral or bacterial infection, including infection by coronavirus.

• “He should be released on bail immediately, so that he can access the health care which he urgently requires. The UK government is effectively playing Russian roulette with Julian Assange’s life.”

=> ↺ Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, has COVID in U.K. prison, wife says

• Thousands of people formed a human chain around the U.K. parliament in London on Saturday to demand Assange’s release from London’s Belmarsh prison.

=> ↺ Opinion | The Puppets and the Puppet Masters

• This is the speech given by Chris Hedges outside the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. on Saturday October 8 at a rally that called on the U.S. to revoke its extradition request for Julian Assange.

=> ↺ The Spontaneous Expression of Joyous Defiance

• Saturday’s Hands Around Parliament event for Assange was massively uplifting. We hoped for 5,000 and feared we would fall short and fail to link the chain due to transport strikes. But in fact 12,000 people showed up for what became a glorious celebration of dissent and a festival of mutual support.

=> ↺ Assange supporters form human chain at UK parliament

• Hundreds of protesters, including Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, gathered in a line which stretched from parliament’s perimeter railings and snaked across nearby Westminster Bridge to the other side of the River Thames.

• Stella Assange, who is married to the Australian-born activist, said the British government should speak to authorities in the United States to end the extradition bid which was launched in 2019.

• “It’s already gone on for three-and-a-half years. It is a stain on the United Kingdom and is a stain on the Biden administration,” she said.

=> ↺ De Vries murdered for “putting his nose where it doesn’t belong”: suspect in tapped call

• Christopher W. is one of the suspects in the 26Hendon investigation into the people who orchestrated De Vries’s murder. According to EenVandaag, from prison, he regularly spoke and gave orders to suspects Gerower M. (26) and Erickson O. (27). They are accused of filming De Vries’s shooting and posting the footage on social media to increase the impact of the crime.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Native Land Digital

• This map does not represent or intend to represent official or legal boundaries of any Indigenous nations. To learn about definitive boundaries, contact the nations in question.

=> ↺ Iran Protests: At Least Two Teens Dead in Mahsa Amini Protests

• Teenage girls are on the front lines of Iran’s protest movement over the death in Tehran police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, also known by her Kurdish name, Jina. Advocacy group Iran Human Rights estimates that 19 children have died among 185 total in the last three weeks of protest. This past week, the deaths of Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh, both 16, made headlines.

=> ↺ Young People Are Being Criminalised For Content

• Project Alpha is a police project targeting serous gang violence inspired by social media. The rationale is that disrupting online activity will also disrupt gang violence – led by the National Police Chief Council. The project involves looking at what young people are posting on social media, including music videos, such as “drill” videos, which have been perceived as a signifier of violence and gang culture. Under this project, the police can order the tech platforms to remove the content.

• The most worrying aspect of Project Aplha has been the admission that the Metropolitan Police, as stated in its original data protection impact assessment, would be profiling children’s data on a mass scale and focusing on young men aged 15-21.

=> ↺ HDP MP undergoes surgery after brutal police attack in Yüksekova

• Habip Eksik, an HDP deputy who was injured by police violence during a planned demonstration in Yüksekova district of Hakkari to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the international plot against Abdullah Öcalan on 9 October 1998, has undergone surgery. According to the hospital in Ankara, the operation had to be carried out because of a double leg fracture. The Kurdish politician suffered a double leg fracture on Sunday due to targeted blows with batons. He was also injured by blows to the face.

=> ↺ I’ve Protested for Women’s Rights in Iran Since 1979: This Movement Is Different

=> ↺ Nika Shakarami: Videos show Iran teenager protesting before death

• Nika Shakarami, 16, is seen standing on a dumpster and burning her headscarf in Tehran on 20 September, as others chant slogans against the Islamic Republic.

• She later disappeared after telling a friend she was being chased by police.

=> ↺ Iran’s Hijab Protests Are of Raisi’s Own Making

• Over the past three weeks, Iran has witnessed episodes unprecedented in their dreadfulness: An elite university in Tehran where students had staged protests came under siege for a half a day, and the government’s minister of science, research, and technology, Mohammad Ali Zolfigol, rushed to the campus to brandish disciplinary action against student activists; security forces have unleashed violence against random people on the streets and beat them with batons; at least 40 journalists have been detained just for doing their jobs; a traumatizing internet blackout has cut people off from their loved ones and the outside world; and more.

=> ↺ My Childhood Was Stolen, Says Linda Raye Cobe, Indian Boarding School Survivor

=> ↺ After 18 Months, Striking Warrior Met Miners and Families Hold the Line

=> ↺ Kevin Cooper: My Experience with the Death Penalty

• Kevin Cooper, a wrongfully convicted Black man on San Quentin’s death row, recounts his experience with the death penalty as he was almost four hours away from being executed.

=> ↺ UN Experts Say Abolishing Death Penalty ‘Is the Only Viable Path’

• “A growing trend of imposing the death penalty on those exercising their right to peaceful political protest is deeply worrying.”

=> ↺ Developers Loom As Boy Scouts Sell Thousands of Acres to Compensate Sexual Assault Victims

=> ↺ Remembering Indigenous Actress Sacheen Littlefeather, Who Was Mocked & Threatened at Oscars in 1973

• On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we remember the Indigenous actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather, who died last week at the age of 75, not long after she received an apology 50 years after she spoke at the Oscars in protest of Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans. In 1973, she accepted an Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando, who boycotted the ceremony, only to face boos from the crowd, threats of physical violence from the actor John Wayne and mocking by Clint Eastwood. The speech derailed her acting career, but she never stopped speaking out. “It was critical for the psyche of all our relations to bring awareness to and interrupt the negative interpretation and representation of Native American people by the film television and sports industries,” said Littlefeather, reflecting on her speech at the Oscars in September, just three weeks before her death.

=> ↺ [rewind] Kevin Sharp: It’s Time to Free Leonard Peltier, America’s Longest Serving Political Prisoner

• The Native American activist’s attorney tells Robert Scheer why Peltier’s imprisonment is one of the worst miscarriages of justice this country has ever seen in a Scheer Intelligence rewind for Indigenous Peoples Day.

=> ↺ Indigenous Resistance, Every Day

=> ↺ Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Legendary Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie Calls for Repeal of Doctrine of Discovery

• On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we speak with legendary Indigenous musician and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, who has written and sung about the struggles of Native American and First Nations peoples for decades. “My take on Indigenous Peoples’ Day is that there’s an awful lot of work yet to be done,” says Sainte-Marie. She discusses the violent legacy of the U.S. Doctrine of Discovery, the derogatory appropriation of Indigenous peoples as mascots in U.S. sports, and the importance of implementing positive representations of Indigenous figures and culture in the education system.

=> ↺ 911 Call Reveals Abuse at Choate

• She heard other voices, laughing and taunting, then a female voice said, “You want me to break your other finger?”

=> ↺ The Pentagon’s Abortion Policy Is an Empty Gesture

• In significant parts of this country, the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade returned Americans to a half-century-old situation in which hundreds of thousands of women, faced with unwanted pregnancies, were once forced to resort to costly, potentially deadly underground abortions. My spouse’s employer, the Pentagon, recently announced that its own abortion policy, which allows military insurance to cover the procedure when a pregnancy results from rape or incest, or poses a threat to the mother’s life, still holds.

=> ↺ People with albinism have names – ombudsman – Truth, for its own sake.

• Ombudsman Basilius Dyakugha says hateful names and slurs further contribute to the violation of the right to dignity of the people with albinism. He said this during the launch of the report on issues faced by the people with albinism in Namibia in Ongwediva yesterday.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Hollywood and Netflix Report Top Piracy Threats to US Govt

• The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has sent its latest overview of notorious piracy markets to the US Government. The Hollywood group, which also represents Netflix, lists a broad variety of online piracy threats. Aside from traditional pirate sites, it also includes domain registries, hosting providers, advertisers, and apps.

=> ↺ Telegram Piracy: Police Target 545 Channels & Eight Suspected Admins

• Italian authorities have announced an operation to disrupt mass piracy on Telegram. Technology fraud specialists executed a seizure order against 545 channels and conducted physical searches in five regions. Eight channel administrators are suspected of criminal copyright infringement offenses. TorrentFreak has identified several of the channels and how they were monetized.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Eternally in Repose

• It’s Kindle’s birthday! Hooray! Why do I remember this? Well, my carefully worn metal file of a human, I remember this because it’s the day before I pulled my foetal self out from the tipped-over test tube. What is Kindle doing during these tilted days? I’d imagine that Kindle is busy being happy ensconced within a family. Oouh, baby! Congratulations, Kindle! You are part of the mainstream. You made it. Yes! We all want to be like you. As that old song goes:

=> ↺ Confusion reigns in the rain in Japan

• The race started in the rain. Everyone went for intermediate tyres, not full wets, so they thought it wasn’t that wet. Leclerc had the best start, but Verstappen judged the grip in the first corner much better and went round the outside of him. Then Sainz went off so there was a safety car. Gasly had a heart-stopper when he passed a recovery tractor on the track. It had come to retrieve Sainz’s car, but Gasly didn’t know and was passing at almost full speed in the rain. Given that Bianchi was killed by hitting a tractor in the rain at this track a few years back, you have to wonder how that was allowed to happen. A simple radio message to drivers so that they know it’s there would be enough.

• While the safety car was still out, there was a red flag and a long, long wait. When the race started again, everyone was told to use the full wet tyres, but almost immediately Vettel and Latifi went to intermediates and were fast, and the rest followed. Verstappen built a huge lead and won easily.

=> ↺ Linen finish cards are bad

• Out of all the kinds of playing cards that are out there, “linen finish” are deceptively bad. They look and feel so nice and classy but they become really hard to shuffle, and they’re not very durable.

=> ↺ 2022 Week 40: Thoughts and Photos

• I weighed myself for the first time in three weeks yesterday. My weigh-ins happen first thing in the morning when I wake up, after using the bathroom and before I’ve had anything to eat or drink. This tells me what my “base” weight is, and it ensures consistent weighing conditions each time. Two weeks ago I was out of town and didn’t have access to a bathroom scale to do the weigh-in, and last week I was constantly drinking huge amounts of warm water to ease my sore throat, which threw off the weight. My weight has increased by more than 15 pounds from my all-time low earlier this year, but I’ve lost two pounds since my last weigh-in, so I’m at least moving in the right direction again.

Technical

=> ↺ Boredom land with NixOS

• I like to tinker with systems, push their limits, see how to misuse them and have fun doing unusual setups.

• However, since I mostly switched all my computers to NixOS, there is a statement that repeats again and again in my head: NixOS is boring

=> ↺ work that is not the work

• attempting to make a profit is hard.

• [...]

• to save money, i buy used and commodity hardware.

• now i spend my time figuring out server rails and how to get rid of fiber channel.

• when i’d like to be spending my time debugging interactions between nomad consul and vault

Science

=> ↺ Battery time

• In my last post I talked a little bit about the newly installed solar panels, and a lot about home automation. Since then, the solar install has been completed, although the scaffolding is still up (grumble grumble). I have nine panels on the roof, and today was a new generation record – 17.1kWh, with 4kWh of import from the grid!

=> ↺ Non-terrestrial calendars

• The Martian Business Calendar [1] describes a hypothetical calendar for Mars. It’s only marginally more complex than the Gregorian calendar we currently use and the tradeoffs made are interesting to read about (it includes a “leap week” instead of our “leap day” and the reasons for it is both rational and irrational at the same time, depending upon your point of view). But what I would like to see is a Venusian calendar—what tradeoffs have to be made as the Venusian day is longer than the Venusian year.

Programming

=> ↺ quasiwalk

• Quasiwalk is a tree-map that respects quote, quasiquote, and unquote. It’s for metaprogramming.

=> ↺ How to make a histogram…in python

• Now that I’m able to track the views on my site I thought I might as well pretty up the data a little bit. Being an embedded developer by trade, I’ve been a firm believer in finding 3rd party libraries, ignoring them and reinventing the wheel. Why use pip to install a package when I can just write the single function I actually need.

=> ↺ An answer to my question about unit tests

• That is not a bad answer for C. In fact, it’s probably not a bad answer for several different languages. The only clarification I can see being made is to only test non-static functions (functions that have visibility outside the file they’re defined in) and not have specific tests for static functions (functions that only have visibility to code in the C file) to allow greater flexibility in implemenation and prevent tests from breaking too often.

=> ↺ They All Live in Their Own Limbo

• In my “relearning python” sendero, I just performed a Project Euler calculation involving the Fibonacci Sequence. No big deal, vole! Everyone knows how to create a Fibonacci sequence, but the whole episode, as easy as it turned out to be, brought me back to sitting on that futon-type couch in Tuzla toying with the music-making live-coding apparatus that used to (and may still) exist in Clojure. Does it? Ah, yes. It is called overtone, which is a suitable name, and upon a quick search I found it is closely related to Emacs. During the epoch of my life when I sat in on that futon-type couch in Tuzla, I was still an Emacs user. A few years later, however, I migrated to Vim and more recently to Neovim. I don’t know if overtone is also suitable for use in Vim / Neovim, but after my nightmarish experiences with Supercollider and Neovim, I have no patience to try it.

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