This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2022/11/08/kde-plasma-5-26-3/.

● 11.08.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 08/11/2022: KDE Plasma 5.26.3 and VLC 3.0.18

Posted in News Roundup at 12:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ Linux laptop crew Tuxedo releases Stellaris AMD Gen 4 • The Register

• Tuxedo Computers offers an unusual machine: a Linux-based laptop with, of all things, a mechanical keyboard.

• The Bavaria-based company offers a range of guaranteed Linux-compatible laptops (and a few desktops, which tend to be a bit easier in compatibility terms: it’s easier to swap bits in and out ’til it all works). We mentioned the release of Tuxedo Computers’ new AMD-powered laptop and the company’s external liquid-cooling system in the summer.

• The company asked us if we would be interested in getting a review model of one of the machines, and with a handful of models with mechanical keyboards, our interest was piqued.

=> ↺ What stickers are on your laptop?

• Having just switched work laptops last December, I realized how much I love applying stickers to my work machines. Sometimes the stickers are souvenirs from past events, others are from projects that I am passionate about, and some are just for fun!

• Curious to know what others had on their laptops, I asked!

=> ↺ ChromeOS Redesigned shows us a possible future of Google’s Linux-based operating system

• Google’s ChromeOS is incredibly popular, particularly among students. It’s easy to see why as it’s lightweight, fast, and secure.

• There is a slight learning curve to it though, especially if you’ve been using a different operating system for years, like Windows or macOS.

=> ↺ Lunduke’s Normal Computing News – Nov 2, 2022

=> ↺ Lunduke’s Weird Computing News – Nov 6, 2022

• Ladybird web browser now can run Linux in a PC emulator in Javascript

• In “That’s Awesome!” news: The Ladybird web browser — the completely from-scratch web browser that originated as part of the Serenity OS project — is now advanced enough that it can run JSLinux.org… a Javscript PC emulator that runs Linux.

• Think about how awesome that is for a web browser that was developed… from scratch.

• So… you can run Linux… in a from-scratch web browser… running on a from-scratch operating system. The future is now.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Ubuntu Server is Perfect for a Minimal “Window Manager” Installation – Invidious

• I often get asked about installing standalone window managers on Ubuntu. What’s the best way to go about this? Well, the method that I have used in the past is installing Ubuntu Server, and then installing a window manager and needed utilities on top of that.

=> ↺ The Entropy Centre First Impressions – Invidious

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 202

• Mastodon usage explodes in the wake of Musk ruining Twitter, AI training fair use is about to be legally tested, Signal tries to be Snapchat, KDE Korner, and more.

Applications

=> ↺ Apt++? Nala is Like Apt in Ubuntu but Better – It’s FOSS

• For decades Debian and Ubuntu users used apt-get commands. When its simpler form apt was released, people liked how it showed a progress bar while installing packages.

• Irrespective of the progress bar, the packages get installed the same with apt-get and apt commands.

• But the progress bar enhances the user experience (UX) and today if I don’t see the green progress bar at the bottom, I feel something is amiss.

• Why am I telling you all this? Because I got an apt-get vs apt feeling when I used Nala, a Python-based front end for APT.

=> ↺ VLC 3.0.18 is Out! How to Install in Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04 | UbuntuHandbook

• The classic VLC media player got a new release after more than half a year of development. Here’s the changes and how to install guide.

• VLC 3.0.18 is probably the last release of the 3.0.x series, as VLC 4.0 is under developing now.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Moving past TCP in the data center, part 1

• TCP is an amazing protocol that was designed 40 years ago when the [Internet] looked rather different than it does today; it is surprising that it has lasted as long as it has with the changes in the network over that span. Even today, it works well for wide-area networks, but there were no data centers when TCP was designed, “so unsurprisingly it was not designed for data centers”. Ousterhout said that he would argue that every major aspect of the TCP design is wrong for data centers. “I am not able to identify anything about TCP that is right for the data center.”

=> ↺ How to analyze time-series data with Python and InfluxDB | Enable Sysadmin

• Relational databases don’t work well with time-series data. This tutorial shows you how to use InfluxDB to analyze data that is gathered over time.

=> ↺ How to Install TeamViewer on Manjaro – Linux Nightly

• TeamViewer is a remote access and control program, mostly used to share your desktop or use a computer remotely. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install TeamViewer in Manjaro.

=> ↺ How to Install Flatpak Apps in Ubuntu and Other Linux

• A beginner’s guide on how to install Flatpak in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.

=> ↺ How SQL Shapes the Customer Journey

=> ↺ Device Tree phandle: the C code point of view – Bootlin’s blog

• In this blog post, we’ll discuss the phandle properties used in Device Tree. These properties are used to describe a relationship between components described in the Device Tree. Many blog posts describe this property from the Device Tree source point of view (you can for example have a look at https://elinux.org/Device_Tree_Mysteries#Phandle for details related to Device Tree source). In this blog post, we want to take a different approach, and discuss how to handle this type of property from the Linux kernel C code point of view.

=> ↺ Bootlin at Capitole du Libre 2022: sponsor, booth and talks – Bootlin’s blog

• Capitole du Libre is a free-software/open-source conference with a local/regional scope organized in Toulouse, France, since ~2012. As one of the Bootlin offices is also located in Toulouse, Bootlin has often participated to this event by giving talks or simply by attending.

=> ↺ GNU Linux – how to – Extract AAC Audio from MP4

=> ↺ How to Disable or Enable IPv6 in RHEL, Rocky – AlmaLinux

• This guide explores how to disable IPv6 on RHEL, Rocky Linux, and AlmaLinux distributions.

• In computing, there are two types of IP addressing; IPv4 and IPv6.

• IPv4 is a 32-bit address that contains 4 octets segmented by three periods. It is the most widely used IP addressing scheme and supports up to 232 IP addresses. There is a good chance that your device is using IPv4 addressing to connect to any network – wired or wireless.

=> ↺ How to install Telegram on Kali Linux – Linux Shout

• Telegram messenger, a popular cloud-based alternative to WhatsApp is a cross-platform application that we can install on Kali Linux as well as other operating systems to Chat and access groups & Channels.

• Kali Linux which is mainly used by security experts and other users who are learning hacking and penetration testing can also benefit from the Telegram Linux Desktop app; which also claims to be one of the safest ways to chat because of strong message encryption.

=> ↺ How to Install Signal on Manjaro – Linux Nightly

• This tutorial will show you how to install Signal on Manjaro Linux via pacman (command line), and GUI methods.

=> ↺ How to Set Up an NFS Mount on Rocky Linux

• This article guide walks users through the installation and configuration of NFS (Network File System) on Rocky Linux 9/8 distributions. Users will also understand the footprints behind NFS like setting up an NFS server (on Rocky Linux) and sharing/accessing files via an NFS client.

• NFS (Network File System) is attributed as both a client and server application, which allows browsing and sharing of files between remote Linux hosts over a network and accesses these files as though they are mounted locally.

Games

=> ↺ Surprising probably no one, most people use the Steam Deck as a handheld

• Recently, I ran two different polls to find out how people with a Steam Deck used their device (or if they didn’t much) and the results are out now.

=> ↺ American Truck Simulator – Texas releases on November 15th

• SCS Soft have announced the big American Truck Simulator – Texas DLC will be releasing on November 15th.

=> ↺ Comedy point and click adventure Plot of the Druid is now in Early Access

• The point and click adventures just keep coming! Plot of the Druid has released featuring some more sarcastic British humour and classic, hand-drawn art. It’s currently in Early Access, with Native Linux support. Another that was funded via Kickstarter, with the developer receiving $32,303 to help make it real.

=> ↺ Cemu emulator for Wii U now provides an AppImage

• Want to get the Wii U emulator Cemu working on Linux? It’s now a little easier, as they’ve providing an AppImage with the latest release.

=> ↺ GE-Proton 7-39 released improving Overwatch 2 for Steam Deck & Linux

• GE-Proton is the community-maintained version of the Windows compatibility layer Proton, not endorsed by Valve but it can get more games running on Steam Deck and Linux desktop. A new release version GE-Proton7-39 is out now.

=> ↺ The Good and Bad of Random

• A little prep goes a long way Before I learned of random generation, I thought that blorby play was impossible. “Sure, you can prep a dungeon, but what if the characters go the the other way?” The second tier of truth fixes that problem. You can prep vast realms in a few pages.

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ LXQt 1.2.0: Top New Features & Wayland Updates

• Within ~6 months of the prior LXQt 1.1.0 release, the LXQt 1.2.0 arrives with new features and performance improvements. This release sees some critical updates, such as Wayland and others.

• LXQt is perhaps the most lightweight and fast desktop environment today in Linux. Hence it’s critical for many use cases where you need a low-resource footprint desktop environment.

• Let’s take a look at what the new additions in this point release are.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDE Plasma 5.26.3 Continues to Improve the Plasma Wayland Session, Fixes Various Issues

• Coming two weeks after KDE Plasma 5.26.2, the KDE Plasma 5.26.3 update is here to further improve the Plasma Wayland session by addressing issues that users encountered with the Steam app, as well as other XWayland-using apps when using the default setting of “Legacy apps scale themselves.” With this update, these apps are now correctly scaled at the expected size.

• Also for the Plasma Wayland session, the KDE Plasma 5.26.3 update addresses an issue encountered by Firefox users when clicking and dragging something in the web browser, which caused the cursor to get stuck in its “grabby hand” state until you dragged a tab.

=> ↺ KDE Plasma 5.26.3, Bugfix Release for November

• Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.26.3.

• Plasma 5.26 was released in October 2022 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

• This release adds two weeks’ worth of new translations and fixes from KDE’s contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include…

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ CachyOS: The Brand-New Friendly, Performance-Tuned Arch Linux Derivative

• Arch Linux has become popular among Linux experts because of its customizability and use of the latest software, but it also has a reputation for being difficult to install.

• CachyOS is an Arch-based distribution that aims for both performance and user-friendliness. Is CachyOS for you? Let’s find out.

• Based on Arch, CachyOS comes with a couple of key modifications. The most noticeable is that it actually installs a desktop environment by default. The default choice is KDE Plasma, but others are available.

New Releases

=> ↺ Stable Clonezilla live 3.0.2-21 Released

• The underlying GNU/Linux operating system was upgraded. This release is based on the Debian Sid repository (as of 2022/Nov/3).

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ openSUSE site Aligns with Upstream Documentation

• The history of documentation as it relates to operating systems and software development has a rich history that expands decades.

• The founding of manual pages, or manpages for short, were a way to onboard new technology users at a time when household computers were nonexistent.

• To gain knowledge of programs, standards, abstract concepts and conventions, a person needed computer access and to enter the man command to display documentation in a green text encoding standard about the computer program on the system.

Fedora and Red Hat

=> ↺ Community Blog monthly summary: October 2022 – Fedora Community Blog

• This is the latest in our monthly series summarizing the past month on the Community Blog. Please leave a comment below to let me know what you think.

• [...]

• In October, we published 17 posts. The site had 10,946 visits from 6,735 unique viewers. 4,559 visits came from search engines, while 484 came from Twitter and 69 came from the WordPress Android App.

=> ↺ Cockpit 279 – Cockpit Project

• Cockpit now switches to a dark theme when system dark mode is enabled.

• While many people just think it looks cool, dark mode is also an accessibility setting which helps people with various eyesight conditions and migraines. Dark mode can be easier to use in a dark environment as well.

=> ↺ Digital transformation: 5 questions to reinspire your efforts

• As the world moves out of the pandemic and settles into a new way of working, executives are tasked with leading their organizations into a transformed, digitally native future. From cloud migration to SaaS optimization, digital transformation has been the topic of discussion for every board meeting globally for the last several years.

• But after several cycles of innovation and as employees transition to new roles, new solutions enter the market, and business goals change, the driving force behind the digital transformation can become muddy and often needs redirection to get back on track.

=> ↺ More chances to catch AlmaLinux: SuperCompute ‘22, and OLF ‘22 – AlmaLinux OS Blog

• We had a chance to attend All Things Open last week, and it was an absolute blast for us! In case you haven’t heard, All Things Open is a conference specifically designed around education and aimed at coming together to learn some of the hardest and deepest lessons in tech. It’s just full of everyone from college students to CIOs and CTOs trying to make the best decisions for their futures. Meeting so many new people is always a blast, but the highlight for us is the people who are using AlmaLinux to solve their problems every day.

• One of the best conversations I got to have was a group of folks from a university who are using AlmaLinux in a INCREDIBLE experiment that will absolutely drive future waves of innovation around how we interact with the universe. They said they were going to share details about it soon, and I can’t wait to share those with all of you, as well.

=> ↺ An introduction to debug events: Learn how to use breakpoints

• In previous articles on Red Hat Developer, I introduced you to the GNU Debugger (GDB) and explained what every developer should know about debuginfo. This article begins a series that will cover the expansive topic of debug events—that is, all the events to which GDB can respond. These include signals, breakpoints, watchpoints, syscalls, exceptions, and more. I’ll be covering the commands and convenience variables and functions that will aid you in your endeavors to stop GDB at the right place at the right time.

=> ↺ A visual guide to deploying JBoss EAP on AWS | Red Hat Developer

• Red Hat recently launched a new offering for Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP), an efficient and comprehensive Java platform on the Amazon Web Services marketplace. This offering allows you to deploy certified Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) equipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (fully supported by Red Hat) and JBoss EAP.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Titan Linux Review: A Blend of Debian Stable and KDE Plasma Desktop

• We review Titan Linux – a rising star in the Linux distro space and bring Debian stable with KDE Plasma flavour with its unique tools.

• Titan Linux is a Debian-stable based Linux distribution which features the KDE Plasma desktop. It is a fairly new distribution that aspires to be user-friendly and minimal. Developed by a two-member team, Titan Linux brings a unique experience to Debian’s experience by eliminating several packages and giving out-of-the-box hardware support.

• Moreover, it uses a different installer than Debian uses and brings some nifty in-house utilities.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Charmed Kubeflow now integrates with MindSpore

• On 8 November 2022, at Open Source Experience Paris, Canonical announced that Charmed Kubeflow, Canonical’s enterprise-ready Kubeflow distribution, now integrates with MindSpore, a deep learning framework open-sourced by Huawei.

=> ↺ A hands-on guide to work with MindSpore on Kubeflow

• Looking at the report that Gartner did in 2022 regarding top technology trends, AI engineering represents an important pillar in the near future. It is composed of three core technologies: DataOps, MLOps and DevOps.The discipline’s main purpose is to develop AI models that can quickly and continuously provide business value. For instance, models that enable cross-functional collaboration, automation, data analysis, and machine learning. AI engineering shortens the development and deployment processes.

=> ↺ An odd error I encountered with ZFS snapshots on Ubuntu 18.04

• You won’t see this error message from a more recent Linux kernel. These days you’ll get the usual ‘no such file or directory’ error (at least with more recent versions of OpenZFS; I haven’t tried it with older ones).

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ An RP2040 Powered Pick And Place

• Pick and place machines are a wonder to behold, as they delicately and accurately place part after part. Unfortunately, they have to have a similarly wondrous price tag. Luckily, they aren’t too difficult to make yourself as they share many properties of a 3D printer with some extra constraints. [Stargirl Flowers] released Starfish, an open-source pick-and-place control board based around an RP2040 to help people make their own.

=> ↺ Welcome Opta, our first-ever micro PLC with Industrial IoT capabilities | Arduino Blog

• We can finally tell you all about the new product we had announced for SPS! Today, we are excited to expand the Arduino Pro range with Opta, our first micro PLC with Industrial IoT capabilities.

• We designed it specifically with PLC engineers in mind: supporting standard languages including LD (Ladder Logic Diagram) and FBD (Function Block Diagram), it allows professional users to scale up industrial and building automation projects leveraging our signature open-source, easy-to-use, anti-vendor-lock-in approach.

• We partnered with none other than Finder — a leader in the field of mission-critical electromechanical and electronic components with 65+ years of excellence and expertise to its name — to create the most durable, reliable, secure and high-performance component possible, while still maintaining our signature flexibility and ease of deployment in production.

=> ↺ Arduino Uno Pinout Guide

• Arduino platform provides a variety of the microcontroller boards also known as Arduino boards that come with different specifications. Before using any Arduino board, one must know the specification of the boards and most importantly the pinout of the boards. So, we have explained the pinouts of the Arduino Uno board and the use of each pin in detail.

=> ↺ Creating A Custom Yocto Layer

• After having built the reference Linux image from a SoM, SoC or terminal maker and having run it on the board, we must inevitably custom-tailor this image to our needs. We must create our own Yocto layer. We must remove all the unnecessary packages and make our core application start automatically on power-up. Here is a step-by-step guide how to turn the application layer for a Toradex Verdin iMX8M Plus board into our own custom layer. The guide should also work for other boards.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ ODROID-N2L is a smaller, low-cost variant of ODROID-N2+ Arm SBC – CNX Software

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3, Fold4, Flip3, and Flip4 receive November 2022 Android security patch – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Best sports apps available for sports enthusiasts on Android

=> ↺ The Best Survival Games for Android – Android Headlines

=> ↺ Xiaomi 12 Pro Finally Gets Android 13 Stable Update

=> ↺ Nokia G60 5G receiving new Android 12 build + October Security update 2022 now – Nokiapoweruser

=> ↺ Every Android phone owner told to check five settings – don’t risk ignoring them | The US Sun

=> ↺ How to quickly crop a video on your Android phone or tablet

=> ↺ Now finally comes to Android TVs and devices, plus Google TV

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Mastodon: What is it, how to use it and more details about Twitter’s alternative

• The app has user managed servers. They are themed on country, city or interest – gaming, social and more. Each server on Mastodon has a description about the particular community. Mastodon will also show you the number of people who have joined a particular server. Users can migrate to other servers by making changes in the setting section.

=> ↺ What is Mastodon, the social network users are leaving Twitter for? Everything you need to know

• You can even start your own server if you want to set the rules yourself. Otherwise, there’s a list of servers which focus on specific locations or topics of interest. The servers on that list have all signed up to the “Mastodon covenant” which promises “active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia”.

• Whichever Mastodon server(s) you sign up for, however, you can follow users on a different one with no problem.

• Oh, and as this is a volunteer-run system, there are no paid-for ads in your feed.

=> ↺ Mastodon struggles to keep up with flood of Twitter defectors

• “I don’t think Mastodon or the fediverse has ever received this much attention before,” Rochko wrote on his account two days ago. “It’s a great opportunity for people to finally see that social media can be done differently, that it can be a protocol not under control of any single company.”

• Searches for Mastodon spiked on Google following the Twitter acquisition, especially in Europe where the social network is based. All of the new interest has caused strain on the platform, with Rochko saying he was overstretched. “While it’s nice to see your work finally taken seriously in the mainstream, the 12-14 hour workdays I’ve had to pull to handle everything is anything but,” Rochko posted on October 31.

=> ↺ How to get started with Mastodon, the open source social networking site

• Mastodon gives you more control over what you want to see. It doesn’t leave the decisions to a company, algorithm, or billionaire.

=> ↺ What is Mastodon, and why is it surging amid all the chaos at Twitter?

• But while Twitter and Facebook are controlled by one authority — a company — Mastodon is installed on thousands of computer servers, largely run by volunteer administrators who join their systems together in a federation.

• People swap posts and links with others on their own server — or Mastodon “instance” — and also, almost as easily, with users on other servers across the growing network.

=> ↺ Cleaning Up After LSP-Mode

• One thing I do extensively is that I use LaTeX to make my slides for college class slides and class assignments. That means I have hundreds of directories with presentations, assignments and other documents. Each time I enter a directory for a class it will spawn an LSP session for that set of LaTeX files.

Events

=> ↺ Kiwi TCMS – Call for participation: Testing and Automation devroom, FOSDEM’23

• Attention testers! On behalf of Testing and Automation devroom we’d like to announce that call for participation is now open.

=> ↺ LibreOffice Technology DevRoom at FOSDEM 2023: Call for Papers

• After two virtual events, FOSDEM 2023 will be in person, taking place on Saturday, February 4, and Sunday, February 5. LibreOffice Technology DevRoom is scheduled for the afternoon of Saturday, February 4, from 3PM to 7PM.

=> ↺ Month of LibreOffice, November 2022 – First week results!

Funding

=> ↺ Cloud Hypervisor Project welcomes AMD as a Member of the Advisory Board

=> ↺ AMD becomes a ‘Diamond’ sponsor of OBS Studio

• The team behind OBS Studio announced that AMD have become a Diamond Sponsor of the OBS Project, helping fund future development. Great to see, as OBS Studio is easily one of the most popular free and open source applications around and something I use near-daily.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Emacs Advent of Code helper

• Grab your input like a pro

• One step in solving the Advent of Code challenges is to grab the puzzle input. This step is easily automated within Emacs.

• The following function reads the year and day from the input and then inserts the contents of the url into the current buffer. This works quite nicely.

=> ↺ How to Call C++ from Python

• Combining the interactive nature of Python with the power of C++, for both legacy or new projects, is a great idea. Fortunately, it’s not as hard as it might seem.

=> ↺ AI Should Compliment and Not Replace Humans, Says Stanford Expert

• Artificial intelligence should be developed primarily to augment the performance of, not replace, humans, said Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, at a Wednesday web event hosted by the Brookings Institution.

• AI that complements human efforts can increase wages by driving up worker productivity, Brynjolfsson argued. AI that strictly imitates human behavior, he said, can make workers superfluous – thereby lowering the demand for workers and concentrating economic and political power in the hands of employers – in this case the owners of the AI.

=> ↺ 5 Reasons Why Fortran is Still Used

• Fortran is a language that is specialized for high-performance computing. Believe it or not, it’s still alive and evolving.

=> ↺ How We Make It Easy to Deploy Mayhem for Code on Your Premises

• Mayhem for Code can help you find and fix vulnerabilities in your code.

=> ↺ Khronos Unveils Kamaros as the name for the Embedded Camera System API and Working Group

• Khronos has officially adopted ‘Kamaros’ (pronounced Kam-ă-ross) as the name for the Embedded Camera System API and the associated working group. Jointly promoted by Khronos and the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA), the Kamaros™ API Working Group is developing an open, royalty-free standard for controlling camera system runtimes in embedded, mobile, industrial, XR, automotive, and scientific markets.

• Work on the Kamaros API specification started in March 2022. This effort builds on an extensive exploratory process that involved over seventy companies working together from March to December 2021 to forge a strong industry consensus on the need, terminology, scope, requirements, and design methodology for a new open standard camera system API. The resulting Camera System API Scope of Work document is now being used to guide the direction of the Kamaros Working Group and API specification.

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ Perl is out of the list of dependencies

• Starting with Qt version 6.5, you no longer need Perl to build Qt from sources. The utilities that used Perl have been replaced with a small application written in C++ that speeds up the pre-scanning process of header files.

R

=> ↺ Use data from data.gouv.fr

• Using GIS data directly from data.gouv.fr : railways network of France.

=> ↺ Use data from Openstreetmap

=> ↺ Opening a spatial subset with {sf}

=> ↺ Map any region in the world with R – Part II: Obtaining the coordinates | R with White Dwarf

• This is the second part of the series to create a map of any region of the world with R.

• We are creating maps of data showing changes over a span of time for different countries and pointing at all kinds of cities. That basically means that we need to map any region of the world with R. Today there are all kinds of packages and techniques to do that. I will share the strategy I used with ggplot2 and maps packages, using support of Open Street Map to obtain the coordinates of cities and finally making it interactive with shiny. The project is quite long for a single post, so my idea is to split it into a few smaller blog posts.

=> ↺ Form and File: estimating running form in R – quantixed

• There are lots of ways for runners and cyclists to analyse training data. A key question most fitness enthusiasts want to know is “how am I doing?”.

• “How you are doing” is referred to as form.

• Unsurprisingly, form can be estimated in many ways. One method is using training stress scores (acute training load and chronic training load) to assess form as training stress balance. The acronyms for these terms are apparently copyrighted(!) by TrainingPeaks. So I will refer to acute training load as fatigue, chronic training load as fitness and the training stress balance as form. Some notes on how these are calculated can be found lower down.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Inktober 2022, birds!

• This year I once again participated to Inktober, the yearly challenge where you draw one drawing a day each day of October. The Inktober web site provides a “prompt list”: a list of words for each day, which you can (but are not forced to) follow.

=> ↺ Michael Fox

=> ↺ Martine Syms’s Portrait of Art School Alienation

• The African Desperate begins at the end: We meet Palace Bryant at the final in-studio critique of her MFA program. The crit is exactly what you might expect in a film about a tall, tattooed Black woman marooned at a liberal arts college in upstate New York: as equally unctuous as it is pathologizing. “You’re afraid of your own appetite. I see it. It’s all a bit polite, isn’t it?” an instructor named “M,” played by the artist A.L. Steiner, remarks at one point. What’s not quite as expected is that the camera doesn’t just cut away after Palace ushers the last of the tribunal out of her studio space. Instead, it lingers with her. It watches her toss back the wine she’d set out for them and captures the tear racing down her cheek as she nervously rolls a joint. “I like to show the stuff that we don’t see a lot,” the film’s director, Martine Syms, told me on a recent afternoon.

Science

=> ↺ Researchers Show How Network Pruning Can Skew Deep Learning Models | NC State News

• Computer science researchers have demonstrated that a widely used technique called neural network pruning can adversely affect the performance of deep learning models, detailed what causes these performance problems, and demonstrated a technique for addressing the challenge.

• Deep learning is a type of artificial intelligence that can be used to classify things, such as images, text or sound. For example, it can be used to identify individuals based on facial images. However, deep learning models often require a lot of computing resources to operate. This poses challenges when a deep learning model is put into practice for some applications.

=> ↺ ‘Planet killer’ asteroids nearly a mile long detected after being hidden by the sun’s brightness

• Astronomers have detected three asteroids in close proximity to Earth, two of which pose a potential threat as “planet killers” because of their larger and hazardous size, but don’t worry, says a NASA expert, they aren’t expected to hurt us.

=> ↺ Boston-based quantum computer QuEra joins Amazon’s cloud for public access

• Quantum computer startup QuEra, born from researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said on Tuesday its computer is now accessible to the public through Amazon.com (AMZN.O) cloud’s quantum computer service Braket.

• While there are various technologies for creating so-called quantum bits or qubits where the computations happen, QuEra’s qubits use neutral atoms in a vacuum chamber and use lasers to cool and control them. It is the first neutral atom quantum computer to join Braket, which offers five other quantum computers on the cloud – Rigetti Computing, IonQ, D-Wave, Xanadu Quantum Technologies and Oxford Quantum Circuits.

• The 256-qubit computer is called Aquila and is physically based in Boston, said Alexander Keesling, CEO of QuEra. “One of the great things about this machine is that you can program the qubit layout so you don’t have to use all of them…You can build different mini clusters of different atoms to parallelize the computation even further,” said Keesling about Aquila.

=> ↺ Algorithm for 2D-to-3D Engineering Integrates Art, Nature and Science – Penn Engineering Blog

• Penn researchers have developed a universal algorithm that allows 2D materials to retain mechanical strength after conversion into 3D structures.

• The algorithm is the subject of a recent study in Science Advances led by Shu Yang, Joseph Bordogna Professor and Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), along with MSE postdoctoral fellows Lishuai Jin and Young-Joo Lee and collaborators Michael Yeager and Daniel J. O’Brien of the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory.

• The team’s work takes inspiration from kirigami, an East Asian papercutting art, to create a mathematically sound method of cutting and stacking flat materials into durable curved objects.

=> ↺ Nearly One in Ten Americans Reports Having Depression

• Increases in depression without commensurate increases in treatment are widespread, reports a study conducted at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and City University of New York. In 2020, past 12‒month depression was prevalent among nearly one in ten Americans and almost one in five adolescents and young adults. The findings are published online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

• Data were drawn from the 2015−2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a nationally representative study of U.S. individuals aged 12 years and older. Major depression is the most common mental disorder in the U.S. and is the strongest risk factor for suicide behavior. Previous findings show an increase in depression in the U.S. population from 6.6 percent in 2005 to 7.3 percent in 2015.

• “Our study updates the depression prevalence estimates for the U.S. population through the year 2020 and confirms escalating increases in depression from 2015 through 2019, reflecting a public health crisis that was intensifying in the U.S. even before the onset of the pandemic,” said Renee D. Goodwin, PhD, an adjunct professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, professor of epidemiology at The City University of New York, and lead author. “The net effect of these trends suggests an accelerating public health crisis and that parity and public-service announcement efforts have not achieved equity in depression treatment.”

Education

=> ↺ Prop. 28 Appears Poised to Pass With Entertainment Industry Backing

• Supporters of the measure argue that only 1 in 5 schools in the state has a full-time arts or music program and that such programs ought to be spread more equitably. Beutner argues that the initiative will be particularly helpful in improving the diversity of the entertainment industry.

Hardware

=> ↺ How Those NES DIP Chips Were Reduced To QFNs

• The world of console modding leads us to some extremely impressive projects, and a recent one we featured of note was a portable NES produced by [Redherring32]. It was special because the original NES custom DIP chips had been sanded down to something like a surface-mount QFN package. Back when our colleague [Arya] wrote up the project there wasn’t much information, but since then the full details have been put up in a GitHub repository. Perhaps of most interest, it includes a full tutorial for the chip-sanding process.

=> ↺ M.2 For Hackers – Cards

• Last time, I’ve explained everything you could want to know if you wanted to put an M.2 socket onto your board. Today, let’s build M.2 cards! There’s a myriad of M.2 sockets out there that are just asking for a special card to be inserted into it, and perhaps, it’s going to be your creation that fits.

=> ↺ Commodore Datasette Does Its Own Calibration

• Ah, the beloved Commodore 64. The “best-selling computer system of all time”. And hobbyists are keeping the dream alive, still producing software for it today. Which leads us to a problem with using such old equipment. When you get your copy of Petscii Robots on cassette, and try to fastload it, your machine might just consistently fail to load the program. That’s fine, time to pull out the cue-tips and rubbing alcohol, and give the read heads a good cleaning. But what if that doesn’t do the job? You may just have another problem, like tape speed drift.

=> ↺ Dosimetry: Measuring Radiation

• Thanks to stints as an X-ray technician in my early 20s followed by work in various biology labs into my early 40s, I’ve been classified as an “occupationally exposed worker” with regard to ionizing radiation for a lot of my life. And while the jobs I’ve done under that umbrella have been vastly different, they’ve all had some common ground. One is the required annual radiation safety training classes. Since the physics never changed and the regulations rarely did, these sessions would inevitably bore everyone to tears, which was a pity because it always felt like something I should be paying very close attention to, like the safety briefings flight attendants give but everyone ignores.

=> ↺ The US Chips and Science Act of 2022 and Its Impacts on China’s Semiconductor Industry

• This article was distributed by a Chinese government accepted source, but we believe it is worthy of a wider audience because it provides documentation of important ongoing dialogue within top circles in China unavailable elsewhere.

=> ↺ Smelting Solar Style

• If you attended the 2022 Supercon, you might have heard the story about the SMD soldering challenge table nearly catching on fire. A magnifying lamp caught the sun just right and burned a neat trench into another lamp’s plastic base. While disaster was averted, [Jelle Seegers] does this on purpose using a huge 5-meter lens to smelt metal.

=> ↺ Overengineered Fume Extractor, Version 2

• We all know the temptation of adding one more feature to your latest project. [Arnov Sharma] didn’t resist the urge. Building on his 3D-printed fume extractor, he developed a new version made of PCB material.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ ‘Very Harmful’ Lack of Data Blunts U.S. Response to Outbreaks

• After a middle-aged woman tested positive for Covid-19 in January at her workplace in Fairbanks, public health workers sought answers to questions vital to understanding how the virus was spreading in Alaska’s rugged interior.

• The woman, they learned, had underlying conditions and had not been vaccinated. She had been hospitalized but had recovered. Alaska and many other states have routinely collected that kind of information about people who test positive for the virus. Part of the goal is to paint a detailed picture of how one of the worst scourges in American history evolves and continues to kill hundreds of people daily, despite determined efforts to stop it.

• But most of the information about the Fairbanks woman — and tens of millions more infected Americans — remains effectively lost to state and federal epidemiologists. Decades of underinvestment in public health information systems has crippled efforts to understand the pandemic, stranding crucial data in incompatible data systems so outmoded that information often must be repeatedly typed in by hand. The data failure, a salient lesson of a pandemic that has killed more than one million Americans, will be expensive and time-consuming to fix.

=> ↺ The accelerating war on science-based medical regulation

• Add this as another chapter to a series that I really should have called “Everything Old Is New Again”, even if the title grates a bit, coming across as, “I told you so”. I’ve long written about how there’s a war against science-based regulation of doctors’ practice by the states, just as there’s a war against science-based policies regarding drug approval, vaccine mandates, and public health. This war predates the pandemic, and not by a little. For example, previously I wrote about how autism and cancer quack Dr. Rashid Buttar had mobilized public support to neuter the North Carolina Medical Board and prevent it from disciplining doctors who practice quackery associated with “integrative medicine”. This happened 13 years ago. Since then, this war on the regulation of medicine has only accelerated, as I’ve described before a number of times. Unfortunately, last week it became increasingly clear that this war is only accelerating, and it involves old school antivax physicians who have taken advantage of the rise of what I like to refer to as the “new school” antivaxxers who only started promoting antivaccine propaganda after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines nearly two years ago. It’s gotten to the point where “new school” antivaxxers are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from “old school” antivaxxers.

Proprietary

=> ↺ After Twitter, Meta Succumbs to Mass Layoffs

=> ↺ Musk Fires Half of Twitter’s Workforce; Rights Orgs Urge Boycott of “Superspreader of Misinformation”

• Alarm is growing over how the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, is changing Twitter after he spent $44 billion to buy the influential social media platform. Musk fired nearly half of Twitter’s workforce in a mass layoff Friday that gutted teams dedicated to human rights, artificial intelligence ethics and combating election misinformation, just days before Tuesday’s midterm election. This comes after he met with over half a dozen civil rights groups amid concerns he will let misinformation and hate speech go unchecked. We speak with leaders from two of those groups: Nora Benavidez of Free Press and Free Press Action Fund, and Rashad Robinson of Color of Change. “Self-regulated companies are unregulated companies,” says Robinson, who along with Benavidez says Musk has exacerbated already toxic conditions at Twitter and failed to see the “real and porous relationship between the online world and this offline real world.” Both groups are urging advertisers to boycott Twitter unless Musk takes dramatic actions to safeguard rights on the platform.

=> ↺ The world was promised ‘cloud magic’. So much for that fairy tale

• Last week, AWS and Microsoft admitted that their customers have realized their cloud costs are out of control. Some of Microsoft’s customers may even be ready to walk because the software giant admitted that helping them to control costs will enhance long-term loyalty. AWS blamed a slowdown in growth on customers wanting to get out of commitment to cloudy resources.

• Each cloud’s admission was made in the context of a quarterly earnings announcement. That makes the confessions all the more important because they represent disclosures to investors that customers have changed behavior in ways likely to have material impact on financial performance.

=> ↺ Microsoft hints at low-cost Windows 11 PCs powered by advertising and subscriptions

• According to the job listing, Microsoft wants to build “low-cost PCs powered through advertising and subscriptions”. This seems to indicate that consumers will be able to buy low-cost PCs, but they will see more ads within the operating system. In addition to subscriptions, this could also be a new revenue stream for the tech giant.

=> ↺ Microsoft working on affordable Windows 11 PCs dominated by ads and subscriptions

=> ↺ Microsoft is now pushing ads and promos in Windows 11 Start menu, but you can disable them – Neowin

• If you have been following Microsoft news for a while on Neowin or elsewhere, you are probably familiar with Microsoft’s (bad) habit of pushing ads and promos of its various features on Windows. While Microsoft is well within its rights to promote its other products inside one of its own products, it can be an annoying and a pestering experience for users.

• So far, this year, the company has been found testing such ads and promos in File Explorer (later disabled) and Microsoft Store on Windows 11. And now, it looks such a thing could be coming to the Windows 11 Start menu as well.

=> ↺ What Happens to Infra Engineers?

• If companies continue to outsource all their infrastructure work to the cloud providers, does infrastructure engineering as a skill set become much rarer?

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Smart cities should focus on sustainability not safety

• Cities adopt technology for two primary reasons: safety and cost savings. Both of these are driven by a need to please constituents who want lower taxes and the perception of safer streets. Thus, we’ve seen cities adopt LED lighting to save on energy costs, and services such as Shot Spotter, which listens for gunfire and reports the location to police.

=> ↺ EU governments open the door for biometric mass surveillance in public spaces

• Today, the EU Council Presidency’s proposal for a regulation on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was leaked. Patrick Breyer, German Pirate Member of the European Parliament, warns that the proposal would open the door for biometric mass surveillance in public spaces on a broad scale: [...]

=> ↺ While Putin denies war crimes in Ukraine, a Russian soldier confesses to executing a civilian

• “People were filming a lot,” said resident Anatoly Boyko, “and that was the first thing the Russians were looking for. If you walk with a phone, you could be tortured and then executed. They look through your Facebook because it can incriminate you, and then they know more about you.”

• As word spread, residents quickly erased videos and social media links. Boyko managed to survive, but several other Andriivka residents weren’t so lucky. The mayor, Anatoly Kibukevych, lost three of his relatives.

=> ↺ China’s Secret Police Stations in Europe

• China has allegedly established dozens of police stations abroad, including many in Europe. Beijing has sought to play down the reports, but one dissident in Europe recounts how he has been constantly harassed by staff members of one such office.

=> ↺ Greece to ban sale of spyware amid wiretapping scandal

• Greece will soon ban the sale of spyware, the government said on Monday, after a newspaper report that more than 30 people, including ministers and business people, had been under state surveillance via phone malware.

• A list of persons whose phones were allegedly infected with the Predator malware was published on Sunday by left-wing Documento newspaper, which cited two sources who played a role in the surveillance on behalf of the conservative government.

=> ↺ EU calls for spyware moratorium, but no ban to protect human rights – Access Now

• Today, the European Parliament’s Pegasus committee is calling for an immediate moratorium on the sale, acquisition, transfer, and use of spyware. Access Now reviewed an early copy of the committee’s draft report via Politico — the preliminary conclusions of its investigations — that outlines detailed recommendations that would significantly increase the protections against the use of spyware and ensure further accountability. Notably, however, it just does not demand the prohibition of technologies that are incompatible with human rights. To right this wrong, Access Now is calling on the special committee to recognise a need for a ban to strengthen its stance on these dangerous tools, and urges other EU institutions to take the necessary steps to implement the committee’s recommendations both in law and practice.

• “A call for prohibition would have been a key indicator that the European Parliament has the fortitude to stand up against the spyware industry and abusive governments. Hungary and other examples highlight the painful gaps the EU still needs to fill to protect democracy, rule of law, and fundamental rights,” said Fanny Hidvegi, Europe Policy and Advocacy Director at Access Now. “The special committee’s report rightly shows that national security is a political excuse not a legal constraint, and EU institutions have the means and obligations to fulfill their role as the guardian of the EU treaties.”

=> ↺ WiFi security flaw lets a drone track devices through walls | Engadget

• WiFi’s friendliness to other devices might pose a significant threat in the wrong circumstances. University of Waterloo researchers have discovered a security flaw in the networking standard that lets attackers track devices through walls. The technique identifies the location of a device within 3.3ft just by exploiting WiFi devices’ automatic contact responses (even on password-protected networks) and measuring the response times. You can identify all the connected hardware in a room, and even track people’s movements if they have a phone or smartwatch.

=> ↺ Post-Quantum Cryptography: Anticipating Threats and Preparing the Future

• The new report published by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) explores the necessity to design new cryptographic protocols and integrate post-quantum systems into existing protocols.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Democracy Is on the Ballot. But Will It Decide the Election?

• As the midterm results come in on Tuesday and in the following days, we’ll get a sense of whether the Democrats made a wise gamble in playing up the threats to democracy. If they fall short, the lesson should not be that they should avoid talking about democracy in the future. The GOP in its current form is genuinely hostile to democracy—and that has to remain an issue. But Democrats might need to reformulate their case by arguing not just for democracy but also making clear all the harmful policies that an autocracy can enact. The threat to democracy is not just an abstract matter of civic procedures or of threats to government officials. It also has very real consequences for the economic and social issues that shape everyday life for ordinary people. That’s the message that the Democrats haven’t yet been willing to make.

=> ↺ NATO aspirant Sweden wants to move towards Ankara in Kurdish policy

• The new Swedish government wants to extract an endorsement from the Turkish regime for its aspired NATO accession by making concessions on anti-Kurdish policies. Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said in a radio interview on Saturday about the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party (PYD) and the People’s Defence Units (YPG) active in Rojava (northern Syria) that their links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were “too close to be good for relations between us and Turkey”. His government’s main goal, he said, was Sweden’s NATO membership. Billström thus signalled his willingness to add a new dimension to the criminalisation policy against the Kurdish people that has been in place in the Nordic country for decades.

=> ↺ Stoltenberg: Finland, Sweden fulfilling Türkiye’s demands for NATO membership

• “Sweden is passing new legislation prohibiting participation in terrorist organizations, including the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party]. And strengthening the tools on terrorist financing.

• “More extraditions and expulsions are taking place. And restrictions on arms sales to Türkiye have ended.”

=> ↺ U.S. Review Envisions Using Nuclear Weapons Against Non-Nuclear Attacks

• Stephen Young, of the Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program, said the new nuclear review “abandons the pledge Biden made on the campaign trail to support a ‘no first use’ policy and declare that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks on the United States and its allies.”

• Since Clinton, each presidential administration has conducted a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) to assess the role nuclear weapons play in U.S. security strategy. The latest released October 27 says, “The United States affirms that its nuclear forces deter all forms of strategic attack . . . nuclear weapons are required to deter not only nuclear attack, but also a narrow range of other high consequence strategic-level attacks.”

=> ↺ Ksenia Sobchak, journalist and former presidential candidate returns to Russia after reportedly fleeing arrest — Meduza

• Socialite and journalist Ksenia Sobchak has returned to Russia, Russian state media reported on Monday, citing witnesses who saw Sobchak enter the Pskov region.

=> ↺ 30 Penza women demand military prosecutor call their conscripted relatives back from Ukraine — Meduza

• A group of women from Penza have reportedly demanded that their regional military prosecutor call their mobilized relatives back from the front line.

=> ↺ Cuba’s Victory at the UN

• Cuba has withstood the blockade for 60 years, a duration equal to one-fourth of the years of U.S. national existence.  Cuba has lacked the resources and powerful allies that would have been necessary to force the U.S. government to backtrack.

• Cuba has relied on ideals, high principles, and supportive consensus, as epitomized by the yearly votes in the General Assembly. These majorities have attested to the blockade’s cruelty, immorality, unfairness, and illegality under international law. An opportunistic and powerful U.S. ruling class does not budge.

=> ↺ Opinion | Our Democracy Under Attack

• A friend of mine recently said “I am at the point where I think a dose of real fascism might be the only way to teach the MAGA crew.” Certainly tongue in cheek, but in Wisconsin and nationally, as the possible outcome of next week’s mid-term elections come into focus, we may be getting closer to a real dose of fascism than we know.

=> ↺ Putin to meet with Russians to discuss support for mobilized soldiers — Meduza

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said he will “meet with people” to discuss the issues of resources and support for mobilized soldiers. He mentioned the plan during a meeting with Tver Governor Igor Rudenya, a video of which was posted by the Kremlin’s official Telegram channel.

=> ↺ Kherson annexation authorities announce end of ‘evacuation’ to left bank of river — Meduza

• Representatives of the Russian-backed annexation administration of Kherson region announced the end of the “organized evacuation” from the right bank of the Dnipro River, where Kherson is located.

=> ↺ ‘Undesirable but likely’ How the Putin administration plans to sell a Russian retreat from Kherson to the public — Meduza

• On November 7, the Russian-backed occupation authorities in Kherson announced that the evacuation of the city’s civilian residents to the left bank of the Dnipro River was complete. Moscow’s claims the measure was necessary because Ukraine is planning an attack on the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, which would likely cause massive flooding, though according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr, it’s Russian forces themselves who have mined the power station. In reality, Moscow fears that a large-scale Ukrainian counteroffensive on the city may be imminent — and has begun laying the groundwork to explain a Russian retreat to the public if need be. Meduza has obtained two new documents prepared by the Putin administration that outline how Russia’s propaganda outlets should cover the situation in Kherson. We also spoke to multiple sources close to the Russian authorities about the Kremlin’s plans — and contingency plans — in southern Ukraine.

=> ↺ I am sure that if Orbán showed willingness for a visit, he would be welcomed in Kyiv

=> ↺ Zelensky administration says they ‘never refused’ to negotiate with Russia — rather they would only do so after Russian troops withdraw from Ukraine — Meduza

• Ukraine has never refused to negotiate with Russia, says presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak.

=> ↺ Opposition politician Ilya Yashin’s arrest extended to November 26 — Meduza

• A Moscow court has granted prosecutors’ request to extend the arrest of opposition politician Ilya Yashin until November 26, according to TASS. Yashin was charged with spreading “disinformation” about the Russian army in July.

=> ↺ ‘Lena, I might be executed by our own today.’ 21 Russian conscientious objectors are held captive in a basement in the Donetsk region. Their wives and mothers plead desperately for help. — Meduza

• 21 Russian conscripts, who were mobilized this fall and are refusing to fight in Ukraine, are held captive in Zavitne Bazhannia, a village in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. The Insider, a Russian media project, has reported this, citing a letter from the wives and mothers of the unlawfully detained servicemen.

=> ↺ ‘I’m spoiled by my Ukrainian love of freedom’ In a bitter echo of Stalinist deportations, Russia’s mobilization is forcing Crimean Tatars into exile — Meduza

=> ↺ St. Petersburg resident who left note on grave of Putin’s parents released from house arrest — Meduza

• On October 6, 60 year old Irina Tsybaneva left a note on the grave of the Russian president’s parents. The note read: “Parents of a serial killer, take him, we have so much pain and misery from him, the whole world prays for his death [illegible]. Death to Putin, you raised a freak and a killer.”

Environment

=> ↺ Few governments have done much about the climate this year

• The modellers estimate that if every national climate goal for the end of this decade were met, including those conditional on money promised by rich countries actually turning up, then average global temperatures would rise by 2.4°C by 2100. If mid-century net-zero pledges are met, it could mean just 1.8°C of warming, but the report’s authors warn repeatedly that this is “currently not credible” (see chart). Existing climate policies—real action on the ground, not just promises—equate to 2.8°C of warming by 2100. These findings are consistent with a similar analysis by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the main forum for international climate talks.

• Climate models suggest that, to avoid more than 1.5°C of warming, greenhouse-gas emissions must peak before 2025 and then fall by 43% from 2019 levels by 2030. Systems Change Lab, a conglomerate of environmental organisations and think-tanks, has translated these reductions into 40 indicators, each with a 2030 target. In its report, the State of Climate Action 2022, it finds not a single one of them on track for 1.5°C. Five are heading in the wrong direction entirely. For example, the share of electricity generated by “unabated fossil gas” (natural gas burned without capturing the resulting carbon dioxide) has actually risen in recent years. Similarly, the amount of CO2 generated for each unit of steel produced has increased, and food production is emitting more than it did five years ago.

=> ↺ Barbados PM Condemns Lack of ‘Simple Political Will’ to Deliver Climate Action

• Addressing international leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt at the 27th United Nations Conference of the Parties, the annual global summit on the climate crisis, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Monday said that only “political will” stands in the way of ending fossil fuel emissions and mitigating the resulting extreme weather, melting glaciers, and other impacts felt disproportionately by the Global South.

• “We have the collective capacity to transform,” Mottley said. “We’re in the country that built pyramids. We know what it is to remove slavery form our civilization. We know what it is to be able to find a vaccine within two years when a pandemic hits us. We know what it is to put a man on the moon and now we put a rover on Mars.”

=> ↺ The United Nations Issues Its Starkest Climate Warning Yet

• Juan Cole examines a UN report that presents further evidence that human-caused global heating is accelerating rapidly and dangerously.

=> ↺ Frida Berrigan: Living in a Tipping-Point World

• Frida Berrigan considers what Generations Z and Alpha need for their future on this planet earlier generations have wreaked havoc on.

=> ↺ US Giving $32 Billion Less Than Its Annual ‘Fair Share’ to Help Poor Nations Survive Climate Crisis

• Despite being most culpable for the climate emergency as the world’s largest historical emitter of heat-trapping gases, the United States has contributed far less than its “fair share” to meet wealthy nations’ legal obligation to help poor countries ramp up clean energy and fight extreme weather, according to an analysis published Monday.

• “This is an absolute scandal.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Yes, There’s Hope to Be Found at COP27

• Following a year of horrific and deadly heat waves, floods, droughts and storms, global leaders will converge this week on Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, for the 27th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The looming question for COP27 is whether nations will strengthen their pledges enough to get us on a path that averts catastrophic climate disruption.

=> ↺ Opinion | The People Must Protect the Planet When the Courts Refuse

• In the 2007 Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA, the state of Massachusetts successfully sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require it to address greenhouse gas [GHG] pollution under the Clean Air Act. In this summer’s West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency case the Supreme Court forbade the EPA to implement just the kind of climate protection that followed from Massachusetts v. EPA. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held that the EPA did not have authority to implement emissions caps that would shift power generation from coal to renewables like wind and solar energy.

=> ↺ Global Heating Has Made Ice-Free Summers in Arctic Inevitable by 2050

• A new report released at the 2022 United Nations Conference of the Parties on Monday revealed that some level of total Arctic sea ice loss in summer months is now unavoidable, regardless of whether policymakers are able to drastically reduce planet-heating fossil fuel emissions.

• Even an ambitious emissions-cutting agenda—one that slashes emissions by at least 50% by 2030, which experts say would put the planet on the path to a peak global temperature rise of 1.6°C to 1.8°C—”will not prevent at least one ice-free summer before 2050,” reads the annual State of the Cryosphere report.

=> ↺ Report: US Only Paid 19 Percent of International Climate Funding Target in 2020

=> ↺ GOP Has Already Filed a Deluge of Lawsuits to Challenge and Invalidate Ballots

Energy

=> ↺ Zaporizhzhia plant no longer connected to Ukraine grid

• Ukraine has four nuclear power plants with a total of 15 units. They produce 50-60% of the electricity in the national grid, according to the state energy company Ukrenergo.

• The plant in Zaporizhzhia is the largest not only in Ukraine, but also in the whole of Europe. It has six power units with a total capacity of 6,000 MW. And it generated almost half of the electricity produced by Ukraine’s nuclear power plants before the Russian attack, according to Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear power plant operator Energoatom.

=> ↺ Single Billionaire Produces a Million Times More Emissions Than Average Person: Oxfam

• With the United Nations Climate Change Conference underway in Egypt, Oxfam on Monday released a report highlighting how billionaires’ investments produce massive amounts of planet-heating emissions that must be reined in to ensure a habitable planet.

• “These few billionaires together have ‘investment emissions’ that equal the carbon footprints of entire countries like France, Egypt, or Argentina.”

=> ↺ U.S. Seizes Over 50K Bitcoin Worth $3.3 Billion Linked to Silk Road Dark Web

• The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday said it seized 50,676 Bitcoin in November 2021 that was stolen in the 2012 hack of the now-defunct Silk Road dark web marketplace.

• The bitcoin, which was obtained in 2012 and valued at $3.36 billion when it was discovered last year, is now worth $1.04 billion. Additionally recovered were $661,900 in cash, 25 Casascius coins with an approximate value of 174 Bitcoin, and gold- and silver-colored bars.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Dolphins ‘dumbing down’ language to adapt to din

• Noise pollution from ships, speedboats and other human activities is taking a toll on the communications of aquatic mammals, the Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation has warned.

• According to a long-term study in Greece’s seas, dolphins and other cetaceans that rely on a series of sophisticated signals to communicate with each other, travel in groups and hunt are having to “dumb down” their communications so they can be heard over the human din.

=> ↺ Why Scientists Are Rallying to Save Ponds

Finance

=> ↺ I Fought The PayPal And I Won

• I called, emailed, and waited on hold, but never got a straight answer from PayPal’s customer service drones. They endlessly repeated that I had violated PayPal’s acceptable use policy as if it were some mantra. If I asked for any detail whatsoever, their response had the tone of a schoolteacher frustrated at having to explain repeatedly to the same kid that crayons should not be shoved up one’s nose. I knew what I did to get my account deleted, apparently. If I wanted to hear it from them, I’d need a court order.

• I took inventory of my options.

• Here is what I did not have: money in the account, any serious reliance on it, or any wisp of nostalgia for the 14 years we shared.

• Here is what I did have: too much free time and a whole heap of pettiness to propel things forward.

• So I made a crazy decision. I read PayPal’s User Agreement.

=> ↺ Job leaving rituals in the WFH era

• We used to have ceremonies for leaving jobs. Everyone gathering around your desk, a few cheesy words from your boss about how they wouldn’t cope without you, maybe a card & small gift. People would pat you on the back, you’d exchange personal phone numbers – even if you had no intention of ever speaking to Jane from accounts again. You’d hand over your ID badge, hand over laptop to an IT support person who’d scowl at all the stickers you’d peppered it with. As you walked out of the building, you’d turn around for one last look at the office, sigh, and wonder if you were making the right decision. Perhaps the team might decant to a pub for valedictory drinks where someone would drunkenly let rip about how they were secretly in love with Jane from accounts.

=> ↺ Mass layoffs in tech spread to Meta, corporate parent of Facebook

• The mass layoffs at Meta/Facebook follow by several days the jobs massacre at Twitter in which half the staff of 7,500 was eliminated by the billionaire and wealthiest man in the world Elon Musk shortly after he assumed private ownership of the microblogging platform. The layoffs were precipitated by a previously existing financial crisis that was exacerbated when advertisers began pulling out of Twitter after Musk took over the company and fired its executive leadership and board of directors.

• According to a Crunchbase News summary, 45,000 tech jobs had been eliminated before the cuts at Twitter were announced. Among the tech firms to announce layoffs recently include the rideshare company Lyft (650 jobs or 13 percent), payment processor Stripe (1,120 jobs or 14 percent), Shopify (1,000 jobs or 10 percent), Snap (cutting 1,000 jobs or 20 percent) and Coinbase (1,100 jobs or 18 percent).

=> ↺ An Economist’s Chart Goes Viral: Shows Main Source of Inflation

• Included in the blog post was a graph showing that corporate profits account for 53.9 percent of the recent rise in inflation versus an average of 11.4 percent for the period 1979 through 2019. (See above chart.)

• Bevins’ chart made it into the hands of Congresswoman Katie Porter, who blew it up into a giant poster and explained its significance during a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy on September 22. The hearing was titled: “Power and Profiteering: How Certain Industries Hiked Prices, Fleeced Consumers, and Drove Inflation.” Armed with the chart, Porter said this during the hearing: “This is another really important point when we talk about inflation – what consumers are experiencing. Prices are not going up just because of supply chain or labor or some other invisible market forces, they are going up because powerful executives are making deliberate choices to maximize their profits at the expense of the rest of us.”

=> ↺ Report: Big Shipping Companies’ Profits Increased 30,000 Percent Amid Inflation

=> ↺ Boomer Bonus: “Downsizer” the only Budget item of superannuation substance – Michael West

• Superannuation lurks and perks are now so large they are nearing the entire cost of Australia’s aged pension, and Budget 2022 adds just a little bonus to the suite of Baby Boomer bonuses.

• This Budget has very little in the way of super-related announcements. In fact the extension of the Downsizer Super Contribution to those aged 55 – 59 is about the only super measure of any significance in the whole Budget.

• And yes, by far the cohort with the highest ability to shelter wealth in low-taxed super from this initiative will be wealthier property owners who can now, from age 55 onwards, move up to $600k a couple into super tax-free (it is effectively after-tax so called ‘Non Concessional Contributions) on top of the regular $110,000 NCC limit per person per year, says financial adviser Harry Chemay.

=> ↺ Herman Daly: A Economist Who Future Economists — and Societies — Will Dare Not Ignore

=> ↺ Opinion | Winter Is Coming: A Recession Created by the Fed’s Disdain for Workers

• Winter is coming and with it a very likely economic contraction in 2023. Its roots lie beyond just the pandemic’s effects on the economy. To be sure, Covid acted as a catalyst exposing much deeper structural deficiencies related to a highly unequal distribution of wealth along class lines, state capture by huge MNCs and financial interests, and the waning influence of organized labor over the last 40 or more years. The weaknesses in the globalization of supply chains and “just in time” production were on full display as soon as supply bottlenecks manifested during the shutdowns. Compounding this is the war in Ukraine that is making itself felt in both energy and food markets. Finally, climate change is disrupting global food markets in every country on earth in the form of droughts, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Why Do Billionaires Love Owning Newspapers?

=> ↺ ‘That’s Oligarchy’: Sanders Rips Billionaires for Trying to Buy Midterm Victories

• Rallying for Pennsylvania congressional candidates Summer Lee and John Fetterman in Philadelphia on Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders ripped U.S. billionaires for pumping record-breaking sums of cash into the midterm elections in an effort to sway the results in their favor.

• “It is not just Trump and his allies who are trying to undermine American democracy,” Sanders (I-Vt.) told the crowd gathered at Franklin Music Hall Sunday night. “You are living right now under a corrupt political system which allows billionaires to buy elections.”

=> ↺ Helping Create Peace at the Polls

• Yet this tense year, things in some places may be rather different. A security guard is now visible at the early voting site in the public library near me. I’m reading articles that detail threats against election officials and poll workers, as well as intimidation at ballot drop boxes.

• Despite all this, if we’re prepared, we can ensure our Election Day is still a fun civic event. We all can play a role in preventing or de-escalating tensions at our polling places.

=> ↺ Attorney General Formally Bans The Collection Of Journalists’ Records During Leak Investigations

• The early months of 2021, following Trump’s loss at the polls and the subsequent raid of the Capitol building by his supporters, were periodically punctuated by disturbing revelations about the DOJ under the former reality show star.

=> ↺ DEA’s Rainbow Fentanyl Moral Panic Is Making Broadcasters, Politicians Stupider Than They Already Are

• Some news outlets engage in journalism. Others just engage in hype. The latter tend to repeat press releases verbatim, only ask for statements from law enforcement when law enforcement screws up, and otherwise cater to the “if it bleeds, it leads” maxim that has allowed mass media to portray America as a criminal dystopia despite crime levels in most of the nation still bottom-feeding on historical lows.

=> ↺ Money flowed to [blockade] protesters through envelopes of cash, cryptocurrency campaign, inquiry hears

• The Public Order Emergency Commission heard evidence this morning about donations to the protest made through e-transfers, cryptocurrency and fundraising platforms like GiveSendGo and GoFundMe.

• Despite raising millions of dollars to support their cause through crowdsourcing sites, [blockade] organizers were prevented by court orders from accessing most of those funds.

=> ↺ Facebook parent company Meta plans mass layoffs — report

• Meta Platforms Inc — the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp — is reportedly preparing to lay off thousands of employees as the social media giant reels from a poor financial outlook for the coming year.

• The measures could be announced as early as Wednesday, the US newspaper the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg already said in October that the company’s staff of around 87,000 may shrink by the end of 2023.

=> ↺ Federal government advised to pause Twitter ads after mass layoffs at company

• Cossette’s guidance said the layoffs prompted increased concern about the effectiveness of Twitter’s moderation and brand safety — which essentially means ensuring that advertising placed next to content does not negatively impact the reputation of the advertiser.

=> ↺ Twitter suffers “massive drop in revenue,” Elon Musk says

• Last Tuesday, more than 40 civil rights and civil society groups urged Twitter’s top 20 advertisers to suspend ads on the platform, too.

=> ↺ Groups Urge Boycott of Twitter If Musk Allows Misinformation to Go Unchecked

=> ↺ Elon Musk Has Put Twitter’s Free Speech in Danger

• BEFORE BECOMING TWITTER’S CEO, owner, and “Chief Twit,” Elon Musk had often lobbed criticism at the platform for its approach to content moderation, even going so far as to target the company’s former policy chief Vijaya Gadde. But while Musk has expressed his concern about “liberal bias” on the platform, many activists, journalists, and advocates outside the US—where the majority of Twitter’s users reside—have begun to worry about how Twitter, now without a board or shareholders and led by a CEO with multiple business entanglements, will respond to authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning governments that have long sought to control public opinion.

• “How he treats pressure from countries like Saudi Arabia and India—I think those are key indicators of where he’s going with the platform,” says David Kaye, former UN special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression and clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine.

• While Twitter does not boast nearly as many users as Meta-owned Facebook or Instagram, it is widely used by activists, civil society groups, journalists, and politicians—all of whom are influential in shaping public policy and opinion. The platform has also proved crucial for those organizing protests in places like India, Nigeria, and Argentina, and has provided an avenue for those living in highly controlled societies like Saudi Arabia to voice criticism of their governments.

=> ↺ Twitter Suspends Comedian Kathy Griffin After She Mocks Elon Musk

=> ↺ The Elon Speedrun Continues; Apparently Comedy Is Not Quite Legal On The New Twitter

• Last week, we posted a cheat sheet on how to speedrun the content moderation learning curve. It went a bit viral, but I don’t think Elon got to check it out. In the meantime, he seems to be doing his actual speedrunning in public.

=> ↺ Kathy Griffin Defies Twitter Ban by Using Late Mother’s Account, Calls Elon Musk an ‘A–hole’ and a ‘Hack’

• Kathy Griffin logged into her late mother’s Twitter account to continue trolling Elon Musk after he banned her main account for impersonating him. Griffin changed her original Twitter name to “Elon Musk,” which ended up getting her thrown off the social media platform. Musk followed up Griffin’s ban by announcing, “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended.”

=> ↺ Twitter Halts Plans to Institute Subscription Model for Verification Check Marks Until After Election Day

• The planned changes to the verification system have been met by strong criticism from users, experts and company employees, particularly for their potential to exacerbate the spread of misinformation in final hours ahead of the midterm elections on Tuesday. Twitter first introduced verified accounts in 2009; the check mark serves as a visual signifier to show that significant users, such as celebrities, politicians and news organizations, are authentic — not fake or parody accounts.

=> ↺ Emoji for U.S. presidents

• Content warning: something here to offend almost everyone

• A while back I complained that there were no emoji portraits of U.S. presidents. Not that there a Chester A. Arthur portrait would see a lot of use. But some of the others might come in handy.

• I couldn’t figure them all out. I have no idea what a Chester Arthur emoji would look like. And I assigned 🧔🏻 to all three of Garfield, Harrison, and Hayes, which I guess is ambiguous but do you really need to be able to tell the difference between Garfield, Harrison, and Hayes? I don’t think you do.

=> ↺ Twitter, cut in half

• Eight days into Musk’s ownership of Twitter, many pundits have begun to predict that this is the beginning of the end. No one can quite imagine a world without Twitter, but no one can quite imagine this version of Twitter surviving, either.

=> ↺ Twitter suspends users for imitating Elon Musk in early test of his free speech stance

• Musk’s team on Friday laid off roughly half the workforce in a bid to cut costs, rattling veteran employees and riveting much of Silicon Valley. The changes to the platform, combined with the reduction of Twitter’s workforce, left some people worried that the service will have trouble enforcing its rules against misinformation and impersonation.

=> ↺ Musk

=> ↺ Carlsberg won’t put ads on Twitter anymore following Elon Musk’s buyout

• Denmark’s sixth largest publicly traded company confirmed the news to the Financial Times, but didn’t mention if it would stay away forever or just for some time.

=> ↺ Time Magazine Enlists New CEO

• Sibley was most recently COO at Forbes, and before that held executive stints at The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Condé Nast. Felsenthal has been Time’s editor in chief since 2017 and took on the additional role of CEO in 2018.

=> ↺ 20 Examples of Johnson Amendment Violations, Experts Say

• The endorsement of political candidates by religious leaders from the pulpit has grown increasingly brazen, aggressive and sophisticated in recent years.

• ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have found 20 apparent violations in the past two years of the Johnson Amendment, a law that prohibits church leaders from intervening in political campaigns. Two occurred in the last two weeks as candidates crisscross Texas vying for votes. The number of potential violations found by the news outlets is greater than the total number of churches the IRS has investigated for intervening in political campaigns in the past decade, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

=> ↺ Voters to Decide on Abortion, Marijuana, Ranked-Choice Voting & Prison Labor in 2022 Midterm Ballot Initiatives

• Across the United States, local voters will decide critical ballot initiatives related to reproductive freedom, voting rights, marijuana and slavery in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Chris Melody Fields Figueredo of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center says the initiatives like abortion could surprise some people, and says the recent Kansas vote to protect abortion shows reproductive health can transcend party lines. Fields Figueredo also explains how slavery is still enshrined in some state constitutions as a form of punishment, which she says has “led to mass incarceration of Black and Brown communities.”

=> ↺ Why Is AIPAC Spending Millions to Beat Summer Lee, a Democratic Socialist Running for Congress in PA?

• With Democrats at risk of losing both the House and Senate in Tuesday’s midterms, we speak with Justice Democrats spokesperson Waleed Shahid about the progressives favored to win congressional seats. Texas city councilmember and former labor organizer Greg Casar, Illinois state Representative Delia Ramirez and Pennsylvania community organizer Summer Lee have all been endorsed by Justice Democrats, who are best known for helping catapult members of the Squad to victory in 2018. “I think that we’ll continue to see these progressives expand the horizon on issues that working-class communities care about,” says Shahid, who critiques the Democratic Party for weak messaging on the economy. Shahid also discusses how the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC is pouring money into defeating progressive candidates like Summer Lee.

=> ↺ Can Gen Z Save the Midterms for Democrats?

• This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation strengthening coverage of the climate story.

=> ↺ How Democrats Should Have Talked About the Economy

• As the 2022 midterms enter the final stretch, there has been broad agreement that Democratic candidates have lost tremendous ground on economic issues, and never hit upon a sustained and coherent plan to regain it. For the most part, this line of argument has devolved into counterproductive zero-sum infighting within Democratic policy and campaign circles, pitting the issue of “the economy” against campaign pitches around abortion rights in the post-Roe era or the fate of democracy in the still-rampaging Trump one.

=> ↺ A Rabbi’s Tales

• And it’s all amplified by the yelling of fire in the omnipresent American theater of social media, worsening by far its destructive ramifications spread by the flames.

• For Rabbi Schwab, it’s the growing enmity against Jews. He didn’t have to label it in addressing another Jew in a long, tormented, sorrowful email. He was my rabbi for several years in Santa Fe, N.M., not long ago.

=> ↺ The Head of the Secretariat of the 20th Party Congress Speaks About Amendment to CPC Constitution

• This article was distributed by a Chinese government accepted source, but we believe it is worthy of a wider audience because it provides documentation of important ongoing dialogue within top circles in China unavailable elsewhere.

=> ↺ Chasing a Mirage: How Israel Arab Parties Validate Israeli Apartheid

• Israel was established on a problematic premise of being a homeland of all Jews, everywhere – not of Palestine’s own native inhabitants – and on a bloody foundation, that of the Nakba and the destruction of historic Palestine and the expulsion of its people.

• Such beginnings were hardly conducive to the establishment of a real democracy, perfect or blemished. Not only did Israel’s discriminatory attitude persist throughout the years, it actually worsened, especially as the Palestinian Arab population rose disproportionally compared to the Jewish population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

=> ↺ Opinion | On Election Day, the Sum of All Fears

• Vote! For a day or two, forget all things large and small that you as a progressive may dislike about the Democratic Party, Congress, and the Biden administration. You can pick up where you left off later in the week. Right now, there’s too much at stake to not make yourself heard.

=> ↺ ‘This Is Important’: DOJ to Step Up Poll Monitoring for Midterms

• Amid mounting fears of voter intimidation and political violence on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections, federal officials on Monday announced plans to monitor polls in 64 communities across two dozen states.

• “We’ve seen… in Arizona in recent weeks, people surveilling drop boxes, videotaping. People taking pictures of their license plates.”

=> ↺ Washington Post Claims Voters Want Cuts in Social Security and Medicare

• While the paragraph is awkward, it implies that voters are demanding big cuts to spending, which could be met by cutting Social Security and Medicare, but it may be possible to appease them with smaller cuts to some of the programs pushed through by President Biden. The Post does not present any evidence that a substantial segment of the population would be happy with cuts to Social Security and Medicare, which polls consistently show enjoy strong support across the political spectrum.

• The piece also does not tell readers how it has determined that cuts to the budget would be a “shift to fiscal responsibility.” At the moment, most economists are quite concerned that the economy is headed towards a recession. It is hard to see how cutting spending as an economy heads into recession is fiscally responsibe. It is obviously bad for the economy, almost certainly making a recession worse.

=> ↺ ‘You Will All Be Executed’: Arizona Poll Workers Endure Right-Wing Midterm Threats

• Election workers in a hotly contested Arizona county have endured more than 100 violent threats and intimidating messages leading up to Tuesday’s crucial midterms, most of them based on thoroughly disproven lies about Democratic voter fraud that former President Donald Trump and his allies have repeated ad nauseam for the past two years.

• “We’re going to continue to find it more and more difficult to get the job done when no one wants to work for elections.”

=> ↺ ‘They’re Looking for Every Advantage’: GOP Sues to Block Thousands of Ballots in Key States

• National and state-level Republicans are engaged in a coordinated legal effort to disqualify thousands of absentee and mail-in ballots in key battleground states ahead of Election Day, a mass voter suppression campaign that—if successful—could swing the results of close races.

• In states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, right-wing organizations and Republican groups animated by former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” have filed lawsuits seeking to toss ballots on technical grounds, potentially disenfranchising thousands of voters for failing to put a date on the outer envelope of a ballot or other small mistakes.

=> ↺ Opinion | It’s Not Too Late! How to Crush the Thieving, Lying GOP in the Midterms

• Will Democrats save themselves and the country?

=> ↺ Opinion | To Improve US Democracy in the Future, We Must Defend It Right Now

• “You’ve got to have the foundations on which this country was built solidly in place in order for all the other things to happen.”—MSNBC’s Alex Witt on why voters should care about “democracy”

=> ↺ The Problem With Jihad, Rehab Isn’t Filmmaker Meg Smaker’s Color or Religion

• The first word you hear when watching the documentary Jihad, Rehab is “Meg.”

=> ↺ Labor Rights Are on the Ballot

• Seventy-one percent of Americans now say they feel favorably about unions, the highest level of support for organized labor since the 1960s. Unfortunately, in much of America, workers who would love to be in a union face barriers to organizing, getting first contracts, and collectively bargaining. Even in historically pro-union states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, legislators have passed anti-labor “right-to-work” laws. Backed by corporate interests, these laws prevent employees from obtaining necessary representation in the workplace and deny workers opportunities to amplify their voices in political debates.

=> ↺ Youth Turnout Will Decide the Fate of the Midterm Elections

• Historically, the midterm elections in the United States receive far less attention than the, admittedly more exciting, presidential races. In 2014, the midterm election had the lowest turnout of any race since World War II, when just 36 percent of eligible voters participated. But two years into the Trump presidency, there was an exception to this trend. National turnout in 2018 reached 53 percent—a four-decade high for midterm engagement. “Young adults ages 18 to 29—the age group that voted most strongly Democratic—saw a rise in their turnout rate by 16 percent from 20 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2018,” wrote William H. Frey in Brookings.

=> ↺ What, Her Worry? Iowa’s Kim Reynolds Is Running a Dishonest and Nasty Campaign

• Iowa City—The painting American Gothic, by Grant Wood, depicts a stern and stoic white couple, their lips pinched, wearing a prim apron and sturdy overalls as they stand in front of a frame house in Eldon, Iowa. The painting has been parodied hundreds of times—including several in Mad magazine featuring Alfred E. Neuman in overalls.

=> ↺ Legal Experts Say Trump’s Admission at Rally May Be Admissible Evidence in Court

=> ↺ Georgia’s Governor Deputized GOP Vigilantes to Challenge 149,000 Voters

=> ↺ Examining US – The Voters and Drop-Out Voters

• Set the above aside and reflect on the unused citizen power, given wholesale, to 535 members of Congress. Our sovereign power starts with the preamble to our U.S. Constitution – that is “We the People.” Not “We the Congress.” Not “We the Corporations.” As a Republic, we then delegate power to Congress to define, enable and fund the activities of the Executive and Judicial branches.

• If you don’t like what your Senators and Representatives are doing, elections are supposed to give you a chance to say “Stop, Go, Listen or Leave.” The problem is that the monied interests corrupt our elections, from pressing their own choice of candidates, financing them, directing them and backing them with nonstop television/radio/social media propaganda, and using front groups to promote lies and coverups.

=> ↺ Political Analyst: It’s Possible Dems Could Control Congress After Midterms

=> ↺ Chomsky: Midterms Could Determine Whether US Joins Ominous Global Fascist Wave

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Turkey’s New Disinformation Law Spells Trouble For Free Expression

• Troublingly, the vaguely-worded law, passed by parliament on October 13, prescribes three years’ imprisonment for anyone who publishes “false information” with the intent to “instigate fear or panic” or “endanger the country’s security, public order and general health of society.”

• This latest law is one of many attempts by the country to restrict its citizens’ internet usage. Dubbed an “enemy of the internet” by Reporters Without Borders several times, Turkey’s government censors thousands of websites and frequently shows up on social media companies’ transparency reports for demanding content removals. The country is also among the world’s top jailers of journalists.

• In 2020, at a time when the internet was more vital than ever for citizens the world over, Turkey passed a copycat law reminiscent of Germany’s NetzDG that required large social media companies to appoint a local representative and take down offending content within 48 hours. The law also introduced new powers for courts to order internet providers to throttle social media platforms’ bandwidth by up to 90%, which would effectively block access to those sites in the country.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Doctors send open letter to British and US governments demanding Assange’s freedom

• The doctors’ organisation, which has campaigned in defence of Assange since late 2019, explains that it is now composed of psychiatrists, psychologists and other respected and highly qualified healthcare professionals from more than 35 countries. They write that they are “deeply concerned” that the ongoing extradition of Assange from Britain to the US, and his related imprisonment in London, “threatens not only the health of Julian Assange, but also the health of our democracy.”

=> ↺ Philippine Prisons Chief Charged in Journalist’s Killing

• The complaints were filed against Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag, who has been suspended from his post, prisons security official Ricardo Zulueta and other key suspects in the October 3 fatal shooting of Percival Mabasa. The journalist had fiercely criticized Bantag and other officials for alleged corruption and other anomalies.

=> ↺ Three Egyptian journalists start hunger strike to free dissident

• Three Egyptian journalists said Monday they had begun hunger strikes to demand authorities free Alaa Abdel Fattah, a jailed political dissident who has been refusing food and now water too.

• British-Egyptian Abdel Fattah, 40, a major figure in the 2011 revolt that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak, stopped drinking water on Sunday to coincide with the opening of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

=> ↺ EFF Award Winner: Alaa Abd El-Fattah

• The EFF Awards is a new ceremony dedicated to the growing digital rights communities whose technical, social, economic, and cultural contributions are changing the world. We can feel the impact of their work in diverse fields such as journalism, art, digital access, legislation, tech development, and law.

• All are invited to attend the EFF Awards ceremony! The celebration will begin at 6 pm. PT, Thursday, November 10 at The Regency Lodge, 1290 Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco. Register today to attend in person. At 7 pm PT, the awards ceremony will stream live and free on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

• We are honored to present our three winners of this year’s EFF Awards: Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Digital Defense Fund, and Kyle Weins. But before the awards kick off, we want to take a closer look at each of our winners. First up: Alaa Abd El-Fattah, EFF Awards for Democratic Reform Advocacy:

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ The NBA’s Hypocrisies Are Sabotaging Its Response to Kyrie Irving

• The Brooklyn Nets have decided that Kyrie Irving is “not fit to associate” with their team for five games because he posted an anti-Semitic video called Hebrews to Negroes. Following Irving’s apology on Instagram—after he failed to apologize to the media twice—the team laid out a set of conditions for him to return that seem designed to ensure that if he refuses, it could mean the end of his career. I wrote about the politics of the film—and, more importantly, the white supremacist forces celebrating Kyrie—last week. But suffice it to say, seeing the film, which denies the Holocaust and claims that Jews worship Satan, atop Amazon’s charts has Nazi message boards in a tizzy of joy. It’s like a giggling popularity contest between boosters of Elon, Tucker, Kanye, and Kyrie.

=> ↺ Extradition Clouds: The Duggan Case and the Chinese Angle

• On October 21, Duggan was arrested by Australian authorities in the New South Wales town of Orange at the request of Washington. He appeared in Orange Local Court and was refused bail.

• After his formal tenure as a military pilot, Duggan moved into the field of aviation consultancy, running AVIBIZ Limited, “a comprehensive consultancy company with a focus on the fast growing and dynamic Chinese Aviation Industry.” He moved to Australia in 2005, where he founded Top Gun Tasmania, providing customers flights in the British military jet trainer, the BAC Jet Provost, and the CJ-6A Nanchang, a Chinese propeller-driven trainer. His staff consisted of former US and UK military pilots.

=> ↺ White Christian Supremacists Try To Cancel Kyrie Irving

• As an aside, my embrace of vaccine mandates was my darkest day as a leftist. I wasn’t alone but I will take complete responsibility for my mistakes. What an awful thing to promote. To throw people out of their livelihood. I want to apologize to all those hurt by my words and I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart all those who called me out on it. You made me better and you made society better.

• The left does have to account for why we did not side with the working class. However, one thing I will not be doing as many have is to declare that I am no longer a leftist. I don’t blame the left for what I said. I take full responsibility. The left has always been the place for positive and radical change and it continues to be. To abandon the leftist project is to give up on changing the world. To all those who have stuck it out amidst divisive times, I thank you too.

=> ↺ Jackson Issues First Dissent Over Supreme Court Refusal to Hear Death Row Appeal

• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Monday in her first U.S. Supreme Court opinion—a dissent—that she would have heard the appeal of a man facing execution following a trial in which the prosecution likely suppressed evidence.

• Jackson’s dissent from the high court’s refusal to hear the appeal of Davel Chinn—an Ohio death row inmate convicted of shooting and killing a man named Brian Jones during an attempted robbery in 1989—was joined by left-wing Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

=> ↺ Migrant Defenders Demand Italy Allow All Asylum-Seekers Off Rescue Ships

• Human rights defenders on Monday urged authorities in Italy to allow all asylum-seeking migrants aboard several rescue ships in and near southern Italian ports to immediately disembark, while a German charity said it would sue Italy’s new far-right government for refusing to designate a safe port for humanitarian vessels.

• “Italian authorities must urgently allow all people on ship to disembark as soon as possible.”

=> ↺ The Obscured and Forgotten History of Black Communist Women

• At a time when organizing by leftists, particularly Black women, faces numerous challenges in politics, public schools, and the media, it can feel as though a dark history is repeating itself. Concerns about the rising alt-right, police violence, anti-trans legislation, book banning, and the erasure of “uncomfortable” histories are colliding with reinvigorated anti-racism and pro-labor movements. This year alone, we saw what Amazon union organizer Chris Smalls called the “Hot Labor Summer”: an ongoing wave of strikes and unionization efforts from giant corporations such as Starbucks, to museums, rail yards, and coal mining facilities. While seemingly newly urgent, the fights for racial justice, gender equity, and workers’ rights began decades ago. A new collection of Black women’s writing—Organize, Fight, Win—brings to light to the theories and tactics activists used to build successful coalition movements at the beginning of the 20th century, and their enduring relevance in today’s political climate.

=> ↺ Voting from Antarctica

• It’s a bit confusing – it wasn’t clear to me whether I needed to re-register with the state, or just update my existing registration. I clarified this with the city: turns out that since I was already registered to vote, all I had to do was update my existing record.

=> ↺ Supreme Court’s ‘sleeper’ case is major clash over Native American adoptions

• “It is a sleeper case,” said Mary Kathryn Nagle, a Native rights attorney who filed an amicus brief in the case. “For Indian country, it is maybe one of the most important cases that has ever gone before the Supreme Court.”

=> ↺ New Iran Protests Erupt in Universities, Kurdish Region

• New protests erupted in Iran on Sunday at universities and in the largely Kurdish northwest, keeping a seven-week anti-regime movement going even in the face of a fierce crackdown.

• The protests, triggered in mid-September by the death of Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly breaching strict dress rules for women, have evolved into the biggest challenge for the clerical leadership since the 1979 revolution.

=> ↺ Americans Overwhelmingly Support Protesters in Iran

• “When we traditionally think of Iranians, we think of how they took hostages at the U.S. embassy [in Tehran], or how they shot down a [Ukrainian] passenger plane [in 2020],” she told VOA. “But what America is finally seeing is that this is a regime that commits those same atrocities against its own people — a regime that attacks its own universities and shoots its own women in the streets.

=> ↺ Fight to Repair Daily: Friday October 28, 2022

• Starting next week, we will be changing from the Fight to Repair Daily to the Fight to Repair Weekly with one email on Thursdays

=> ↺ ‘Are you a tyrant?’ Viral video shows Florida police arrest legally blind 61-year-old for holding cane

• According to arresting documents, deputies in Columbia County saw James “Jim” Hodges, 61, cross a street despite a crosswalk indicator telling him to wait, then stopped him when they spotted a metal object they thought was a weapon in his back pocket. (Mr Hodges, who says he’s legally blind, carries a foldable metal cane for help walking.)

=> ↺ Florida deputies arrest blind man for carrying cane

• Hodges tells the second deputy that he has ID but does not need to show it to the deputies because he hasn’t been detained and is not suspected of a crime. At that point, both deputies move to place Hodges in handcuffs. While in handcuffs, Hodges repeatedly asks for the deputies’ names and badge numbers. He also explains that he was walking in the dark to get to jury duty, which is why he was carrying the cane. When he once again asks them to identify themselves, the supervisor says “You know what? Put him in jail for resisting.”

• The 61-year-old Hodges was booked into Columbia County Jail on Halloween morning and was not released until 10:30 a.m. the next day. The only charge on his booking is resisting an officer. Retaliatory arrest — a.k.a arresting someone because they’ve made a cop angry — is illegal under the US Constitution, though recent decisions by the conservative Supreme Court have cast that idea into doubt.

=> ↺ Florida cops arrest legally blind man for carrying cane

• Lake City’s Jim Hodges was taken into custody by the North Florida cops after a tense interaction with local authorities. In a video that has since gone viral on Twitter, Hodges is accosted by one of the deputies who spotted his folded cane in his back pocket.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Usage Caps Coming To Starlink As Capacity Crunch Rears Its Head

• We’d noted a few times how Elon Musk’s Starlink isn’t really as disruptive as it pretends to be. For one, the service keeps getting more expensive thanks to price hikes, and with a $710 first month price tag ($600 hardware fee, $110 a month) it’s too expensive for the struggling rural Americans it’s purportedly aimed at. Then there’s the year long waitlist and the complete lack of customer service.

=> ↺ Fourth Circuit Goes On The Attack Against Section 230 In A Lawsuit Over Publication Of Third Party Data

• Prior to the turn of the century, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a formative decision that helped craft the contours of Section 230 immunity. The case — Zeran v. America Online — dealt with a tricky question: whether or not a platform’s failure to moderate content (in this case, posts that contained Zeran’s phone number and oblique accusations he approved of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing) made the platform liable for the user-generated content.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Opinion | Netflix’s Failed Adaptation of “All Quiet on the Western Front”

• As a work of art, Edward Berger’s highly anticipated Netflix adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” certainly deserves all the praise and accolades it has garnered for fine filmmaking, cinematographic excellence, production design, and stunning performances by an impressive ensemble cast of German-speaking actors.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Z-Library Aftermath Reveals The Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

• Late last week, Z-Library lost control over its main domain names. All signs suggest that the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI are behind the action, a theory supported by an updated seizure banner. While Z-Library remains operational through the Tor network, new details show that more than a hundred domains were affected by the action, including the ‘GLOBAL Electronic library.’

=> ↺ The Czech Republic’s proposed version of upload filters has a bad idea that could become a great one – Walled Culture

• A clear demonstration that the EU Copyright Directive is a badly-drafted law is the fact that it has still not been implemented in national legislation by all the EU Member States three years after it was passed, and over a year after the nominal deadline for doing so. That’s largely because of the upload filters of Article 17. The requirement to block copyrighted material without authorisation while fully preserving users’ rights is probably impossible to put in place in any straightforward way. As a result, national legislators have had to come up with various kinds of approximations when drawing up their local laws.

• Over on the Communia blog, Paul Keller has a good exploration of how the Czech Republic is tackling the issue. The current Czech proposal is particularly interesting because it is one of the first to be available after the EU’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), brought a little clarity on the safeguards that need to be included in national implementations of Article 17.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: GYLRTUI Wordo: ADOP

=> ↺ Lunar Eclipse 2022-11-08 (Fairbanks, AK, US)

• I woke a little before midnight and observed the lunar eclipse from the start of the partial phase, which was shortly after midnight (AKST) to the beginning of totality, which I observed to occur at about 1:15am AKST.

=> ↺ Quick update

• Not much has happened other than planning a trip and playing Guild Wars 2. My ex-employer still owes me $65.44 for mileage, and I am just petty enough to hound them over it. I’ll give it a little more time (i.e. until about Thursday) and then get after them for it.

Politics

=> ↺ Diegetic mechanics

• Interacting with NPCs and the environment, items, levers, floor tiles, drawers etc through direct conversation with NPCs and through saying what your character does “I lift the rug, is there anything under there?” is not hand-waving.

• It’s, uh, let’s call it “diegetic mechanics”, and things like dice rolls, attack checks, HP, fate counters, numbers on a sheet etc, those are “symbolic mechanics”.

• My own preference is to do everything diegetically if it can be done diegetically, which means… probably fighting and disease and stuff like that, climbing, all kinds of actually physically dangerous stuff, that I wanna leave to remain on the symbolic layer only.

Technical

=> ↺ copilot and Free Software

• I’ve always been more than a little sceptical about “Microsoft loves open source”, but seeing them not only embrace the (A)GPL, but extend it to all copilot users as well takes liberating software to a whole new level.

• I mean, that’s logically what they’re doing: they mash all source available under a Free Software license together which means the whole must be published under the license with the strictest subset of licence term compatibility, which would be the (A)GPL.

• As for “fair use”: it’s not about the output of quoting a few literal lines of outliers like the fast inverse square root, it’s about taking sourcefiles as input wholesale, of which apparently about 20% is (A)GPL licensed.

• [...]

• Long live Microsoft, and long live Embrace, Extend, Extinguish!

=> ↺ A Linux laptop on Chromebook for my student

• Recently one of my students came up to me and talked to me about the difficulty she is having accessing a computer with Processing, which we use in the class I’m teaching. She doesn’t have her own computer and she told me she didn’t qualify for a school loaner laptop.

• If I found a cheap or free laptop that could be a potential solution. I told her I would look for a laptop and try to locate one within a week. I have a few old Raspberry Pi’s around, but that wasn’t the right fit. I asked friends for suggestions, and I received a suggestion to look in local thrift stores for old Chromebooks. Unfortunately, that’s not really a viable option in NYC. There are few thrift stores around, and those that do generally do not sell electronics, much less old Chromebooks.

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ A Tribe without Tribalism

• @rusty@sonomu.club tooted the album that I’m listening to as I begin to scribe today’s entry. It may be this week’s entry, actually, as I’ve been slacking on my blog writing duties. I laughingly call them “duties”. As if I owe words anything. What have words ever done for me? Absolutely nothing! They only suck up time and energy as they bombard me from every angle – acute, obtuse and metaphorical. Unfortuntely, to fit into any clan at all and be somewhat comfortable in said clan’s bubble, one must aguantar the barrage. I’d say I’ve got exponentially better at withstanding the hail of palabras, sometimes jailed in phrases, sometimes not, over the epochs, and especially since living in Spain. However, I still attest to the fact that they are mostly flying debris. One must fling oneself widely and wildly to catch relevant ones (almost always jailed in phrases).

=> ↺ The Twitter invasion

• I’m sure we’re all aware by now that not everyone is happy about Elon Musk owning Twitter. For those of us on the Fediverse we had the pleasure this week of having a lot of our instances overrun by a huge influx of new accounts. It seems that someone, actually a number of someones, suggested that Mastodon is a great place to move to from Twitter, and the people came. The instance where my account lives saw a doubling of accounts in about two days, before the admin prudently shut down new registrations.

• The problem is, as quickly as our admin acted, he probably wasn’t quick enough. That second day of the mass influx the server was obviously under a torture test and the hardware must have been running literally flat out to keep up with demand, a task that it was very much failing at as posts on everyone’s timeline were running six to eight hours behind. More, in the case of federated content. And our instance was only one of the many that was having issues, with some of them being hit much harder.

• Now, as a Geminaut, I’m used to back and forth communication taking a slower pace.

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

=> Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.