● 11.16.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 16/11/2022: Big Changes at IGEL, Offpunk 1.7 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 5:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ How Linux Changed My Life (My Linux Journey)

• At the risk of sounding cliche, the statement “Linux changed my life” isn’t said lightly. It has changed not only the course of my career but also changed the way I think and taught me quite a few things about myself.

• I never made it through high school. In fact, until recently I haven’t been to school since I was 15. I’m 31 now. But a few years back while working at an Iron foundry I met someone who was an advocate of open-source software and Linux. He ran a non-profit on the side which taught Linux. He used Slackware, which is what I started with at first. He even gave me a laptop with Slackware Linux on it.

• With a lot of patience, and when I say a lot I mean more than most people have the sanity for, this man did his best to teach me the terminal and bash scripting, from the simple to the advanced, he tried his best. I wouldn’t say I’m a bad student, just a student with a thicker skull who 8 out of 10 times has to just learn things the hard way.

• So I wouldn’t suggest Slackware being the first distro to start with. But starting with it was like sink or swim rather than starting at the shallow end and learning slowly, it was more like being tossed into the deep end. But every Sunday I went to the non-profit and learned what I could and practiced throughout the week.

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ ‘Dream Come True’: IGEL Exits Hardware Business | CRN

• IGEL, a maker of well-engineered thin client hardware devices for two decades, is exiting that business as part of an all-out drive to make its popular Linux secure edge operating system the standard for Windows workspace computing across any device or cloud.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Install Snap/Snap-Store on Fedora 37/36/35

• By default, Fedora does not come with Snap or Snap Store installed as this is a feature that was built by developed by Canonical as a faster and easier way to get the latest versions of software installed on Ubuntu systems, and Snap packages are installed from a central SNAP server operated by Canonical. Snap can be installed and, for the most part, work with most packages on Fedora-based systems that are currently actively supported.

=> ↺ Day 37: cascade layers

• Let’s say we’re using a combination of a tag and an attribute selector for styling e-mail input fields. This declaration is part of our base stylesheet and comes early in the stylesheet. Later in the document, we want to use a class to overwrite parts of the base styling: [...]

=> ↺ It’s useful to think about a ‘ground up’ recovery of your environment

• One of the things that many system administrators don’t like to think about is a total loss scenario for their entire environment. For people who run physical hardware, what you’d do if your machine room or data center had a fire; for people with virtual hardware, what you’d do if your entire cloud (short of your ‘offsite backups’) was wiped or deleted. Often we push this off as Disaster Recovery and then punt on it, because a real DR plan is both a lot of detailed work and also something that often doesn’t survive contact with reality unless you really, really care about DR (care enough to budget for it and test your plans and so on). However, I’d like to advocate for the exercise of thinking through what it would take in your environment.

=> ↺ How to search Mastodon by date & time

• I’m trying to build something similar for the Mastodon social network. Yes, I know it is new to you – but some of us have been there for several years.

• So here’s how to search Mastodon for posts made on specific dates!

=> ↺ How to Install qView on Fedora 37/36/35

• qView is a free, open-source image viewer designed to be minimal and space-efficient with super-fast opening images. The image viewer features no cluttered interface, just your image with a title bar containing features such as animated GIF controls for easy viewing on any device. For more information about what qView features and looks like before installing it, visit the qView website, which features some great examples of the image viewer in action.

• In the following small tutorial, you will learn how to install qView on Fedora 37/36/35 Linux desktop using the command line terminal with tips about installing the alternative development version and removing the application if required in the future.

=> ↺ How to Find the PID of a Linux Process With pidof or pgrep

• Working with a Linux process often means knowing its process ID, or PID. It’s a unique number given to each piece of running software. Here are two ways to find out what it is.

=> ↺ How to use errexit | Network World

• In this Linux tip, we’re going to look at a bash option that will cause a script to exit any time it encounters an error. It’s called “errexit.”

=> ↺ How to Install Latest Python 3.11 in Ubuntu

• Python is the fastest-growing major general-purpose programming language. There are a number of reasons attributed to this, such as its readability and flexibility, ease to learn and use, reliability, and efficiency as well.

• There are two major Python versions being used – 2 and 3 (the present and future of Python); the former will see no new major releases, and the latter is under active development and has already seen a lot of stable releases over the last few years. The latest stable release of Python 3 is version 3.11.

=> ↺ How to install and use MongoDB Compass | FOSS Linux

• MongoDB Compass is an excellent tool for anyone who does not know how to analyze and alter data using command-line queries. MongoDB Compass is simple to download and install on major operating systems. It is a simple procedure that takes little time.

• This article will explain how to install and use MongoDB Compass and discuss its essential features. Furthermore, it will walk you through the MongoDB Compass Windows, Linux, and macOS installation processes. To effectively utilize MongoDB Compass on your desktop environment, follow the simple and quick procedures provided in this article. Continue reading to learn about the functions and benefits of installing MongoDB Compass on your OS.

=> ↺ How to Install Wike on Fedora 37/36/35

• Wike is a lightweight and open-source Wikipedia reader app for Linux-based GNOME desktops and uses the MediaWiki API to fetch content from Wikipedia. The app has a minimalist interface, with just a search bar and a sidebar for navigation, and articles are displayed in a simple, easy-to-read format. Wike also supports dark mode, so you can easily read articles at night or in low-light conditions.

• The following tutorial will teach you how to install Wike on Fedora 37/36/35 Linux using a COPR repository using the command line terminal with cli commands for those looking for a fast and lightweight way to view Wikipedia articles on their Linux desktop.

=> ↺ How to Install CMake on Fedora 37/36/35

• CMake is a well-known compiler that has gained much popularity in recent years. The main reason for its popularity is that it is open-source and cross-platform, so developers can use it on any operating system they want and don’t have to worry about licensing fees. Additionally, CMake can generate wrappers and executables in any combination, making it very versatile. Given Fedora is an upstream-focused distribution on a six-month release schedule, most often, the latest CMake version is available to install, making the installation for developers requiring the latest packages very straightforward compared to some other Linux Distributions.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install CMake on Fedora 37/36/35 Linux workstation or server using the command line terminal with two methods: dnf package manager with the native app-stream or compile method.

=> ↺ How to Install PlayOnLinux on Fedora 37/36/35

• When running Windows applications on Linux, Wine is a popular software many people use. However, one of the issues with Wine is that it can be pretty time-consuming and prone to errors when setting up required configurations for each application. Thankfully, a great program called PlayOnLinux can make your life much easier by providing automated installation of popular apps. This can be a massive benefit for those new to using Linux or who don’t want to spend a lot of time setting things up. Fedora is one distribution that makes it easy to install PlayOnLinux with the application being available in the default repositories.

=> ↺ How to get the latest stable version of Opera on Ubuntu 22.04 / Linux Mint 21

• Today you will learn how to get the latest stable version of Opera on Ubuntu 22.04 This web browser is one of the most advanced you can find out there.

• Opera is a powerful web browser based on Chromium that tries to differentiate itself from its competitors with interesting new features that make it very appealing to advanced users. As you can expect, Opera has versions for many operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Games

=> ↺ Mixing factory management, Tower Defense and RTS – Mindustry 7.0 is out now

• Easily one of the best open source games around, Mindustry from AnukenDev just had a MASSIVE new release out that took quite some time to make. This update was in development for over a year!

=> ↺ Popular Half-Life 2 mod Entropy : Zero 2 is getting full Linux support for Steam Deck

• Entropy : Zero 2 is a very popular and well reviewed Half-Life 2 mod, and the developer has recently announced the public testing of Native Linux support and Steam Input gamepad support. Available now in the “deck-testing” opt-in Beta, you can try it for yourself!

=> ↺ Steam Deck Client update out fixing up more Big Picture Mode issues

• Valve has rolled out a small stable Steam Deck Client update, mainly focused on fixing up the New Big Picture Mode. This is where you actually run it in desktop mode, with the “-gamepadui” launch setting.

=> ↺ Spider-Man: Miles Morales gets Steam Deck Verified ahead of release

• Hello web slingers! Good news for you, as Spider-Man: Miles Morales has been formally Steam Deck Verified ahead of the release later this week. Yes, it’s releasing this week (November 18th), and I didn’t realise it was that close either. Going to say goodbye to my backlog for a while again I think.

=> ↺ Of Blades & Tails is a fresh turn-based action-RPG now in Early Access

• Looking for your next action RPG with turn-based combat? Inspired by the classic Point & Click Adventure Inherit the Earth, Of Blades & Tails is out in Early Access.

=> ↺ YoYo Games open source the GameMaker HTML5 runtime

• Here’s a fun one for open source fans and game developers, as YoYo Games have open sourced their HTML5 runtime.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ TinyCPM – CP/M on a Tiny 2040

• I’ve been using the RC2014 as a a CP/M development machine, especially while developing a cross-platform Rogue-like game. I love it. And whilst it’s a hell of a lot more portable than carrying a Osborne 1 or a Amstrad CPC 6128, it’s not something I can keep in the laptop bag and just pull out at the coffee shop (Both the RC2014 Mini with CP/M upgrade and the Extreme Kits RC2040 are ideally suited for this).

=> ↺ The smallest CP/M microcomputer ever #CPM #VintageComputing #RaspberryPi @Hascksterio @Raspberry_Pi

• Designed with a minuscule footprint, this fully-functional CP/M computer build uses just two main components: a Tiny 2040 and an Adafruit microSD reader.

=> ↺ Haiku Activity & Contract Report, October 2022

• This report covers hrev56505 to hrev56564.

BSD

=> ↺ EuroBSDCon 2022 Trip Report: Muhammad Moinur Rahman | FreeBSD Foundation

• The FreeBSD Foundation was generous enough to sponsor my trip to EuroBSDCon, and I am extremely appreciative for the ability to attend this event in-person. EuroBSDCon 2022 is the first BSD conference I have attended, and it will certainly not be my last. I have been submitting patches for the ports tree since 2003 and have been an avid ports committer since 2014. I am maintaining over 800 ports and recently have grown keen interest in the src tree. I have started working with the Foundation staff to bring Pre Commit CI (Continuous Integration) to the src tree. I am being mentored by Li-Wen. Recently I have ported Cirrus-CI CI pipeline for the src tree which is still pending review. And my purpose for attending the Conference was to present these updates and get feedback to better understand the developer’s expectation for such a system. Then I can utilize those concepts/expectations in our CI system.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Fedora 37 Speeds Along With Dev-Focused Features, Brand-New Editions

• The latest release is sure to please serious Linux tinkerers, with new minimal CoreOS and Cloud editions, plus the new GNOME 43 desktop.

=> ↺ Fedora Linux 37 is out now with official Raspberry Pi 4 support

• After a bit of a delay due to security issues with OpenSSL, Fedora Linux 37 is officially out now with all the usual assortment of major software updates.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Take part in the Hour of Code

• Launched in 2013, Hour of Code is an initiative to introduce young people to computer science using fun one-hour tutorials. To date, over 100 million young people have completed an hour of code with it.

=> ↺ The industrial IoT is getting the IT treatment

• Before your eyes glaze over wondering why I’m spending so much time on a networking chip, bear with me. This isn’t just a chip announcement; it’s a milestone indicating that the differences in operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) are finally converging. And once they converge it’s all going to be IP. The result will be a huge market for traditional IT vendors up and down the stack. It will also put traditional OT vendors on the defense.

=> ↺ SB Components introduces SquaryPi & SquaryFi for portable embedded apps

• Last week, SB Components released the SquaryPi and SquaryFi embedded platforms which are based on the RP2040 silicon and the ESP-12E respectively. Both devices feature a 1.54” LCD display along with various interfaces. The company is also offering an expansion PCB board to add and mix these embedded devices.  

=> ↺ Elkhart Lake 3.5” SBC equipped dual 2.5GbE LAN and PCIe x4 slot

• The WAFER-EHL from ICP is a 3.5” Single Board Computer built around the low-power 2.0 GHz Intel Celeron J6412. The SBC is available with dual 2.5GbE RJ45 ports, triple display support, 1x M.2 socket, 1x PCIe Gen3 x4 among other peripherals.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ How to Setup Encrypted Chat on Librem Devices – Purism

• Whether on a Librem 14 laptop or a Librem 5 phone, using Matrix is one of the best free software solutions for communication. It offers end-to-end encryption where the keys are fully in your control; In other words, Matrix servers can’t read your encrypted messages at all. Recently our Librem 5 chat application, Chats, announced official support for Matrix and in this guide we’ll walk you through creating your own Matrix account and configuring Chats to use it.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Giveaway Week 2022 winners announced! – CNX Software

=> ↺ Here’s how predictive back navigation will work on Android 14

=> ↺ Samsung Android 13 update: What devices will get the upgrade?

=> ↺ Samsung brings Android 13 to more devices in the United States

=> ↺ Nokia 5.3 Android 12 update bricking some units and other issues

=> ↺ I use these three apps to make my Android homescreen stand out, and you should too

=> ↺ Hidden ‘tap trick’ instantly makes your Android phone faster – and it’s totally free | The Sun

=> ↺ LumaFusion hands-on: Best editing suite on Android or ChromeOS

=> ↺ Now TV arrives on Google TV and Android TV

=> ↺ Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is Android’s Next Flagship Processor

=> ↺ In-Display Fingerprint Scanner Not Working on Android? Try These Fixes

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Mastodon Comes To The IBM PC | Hackaday

• Elon Musk has bought Twitter for an eye-watering sum, and his live adventures in chaotic mismanagement of a social media company have become a compelling performance for the rest of us. As we munch on our tasty popcorn and enjoy the show, many Twitter users have jumped ship for the open-source alternative Mastodon. It offers much to the escapee including instances tailored to particular communities, but aside from all that it’s got something Twitter never had. You can now use a Mastodon client on an IBM PC.

• Many of you are no doubt looking askance at us, as you have been Tooting for years from behind the keyboard of a PC. But it’s likely that the PC you’re using is a generic modern x86 machine running an up-to-date operating system such as a GNU/Linux flavour or Microsoft Windows, by contrast here we’re referring to the original, the daddy of them all. Because the client we’re talking about is DOStodon, designed to run on a real IBM PC as though it’s the early 1980s again.

=> ↺ The Man Behind Mastodon Built It for This Moment

• Since Musk took over Twitter, Rochko has been working long hours to keep his own server, Mastodon.Social, running, while also preparing a major upgrade to Mastodon, but he took time to videochat with WIRED from his home in Germany. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

=> ↺ Scaling Mastodon is Impossible

• In light of recent events at Twitter a lot of the people that I follow (or used to follow) on that platform have started evaluating (or moved) to Mastodon. And I also have a Mastodon account now. But after a few days with this thing I have a lot of thoughts on this that are too long for a Tweet or Toot. Since some of my followers asked though I decided do a longform version of this and explain my dissatifaction with Mastodon a bit better.

• The short version of this is that I believe that Mastodon — more specifically federation and decentralization won’t work out.

=> ↺ The Fediverse is Inefficient (but that’s a good trade-off)

• Let’s address the mammoth in the room: the fediverse, the network of mastodon servers, is very inefficient.

• In this post I’ll show why it is inefficient and why that isn’t a problem.

• A great analogy to explain this with is growing food.

=> ↺ On the Mastodon Experiment

• Users don’t want to host their own servers. Even the most technical ones. SaaS is the optimal solution. I’m an avid believer in running open-source software and controlling your own destiny, but for the vast majority of services, I don’t want to manage it.

• Moderation and user experience vary from instance to instance. It’s hard to sustain at scale. In practice, decentralized moderation ends up as a series of fiefdoms without accountability (e.g., if you don’t like it, find another server).

=> ↺ Offpunk 1.7 : Offpunk and Sourcehut

• Releasing Offpunk 1.7 today which fixes a handful of crashes and brings some nice features.

=> ↺ Blender Builds LEGO Models

• Blender is a free and open source computer graphics package that’s used in the production of everything from video games to feature films. Now, as demonstrated by [Joey Carlino], the popular program can even be used to convert models into LEGO.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Firefox will now copy non-breaking spaces from HTML and that can be a problem

• For many years, Firefox’s copy and paste had a limitation or bug, which is that if you selected something that contained non-breaking spaces and copied it, the non-breaking spaces turned into regular spaces when you pasted. This was traced in bug #359303 and then bug #1769534. In recent Firefox Nightly builds, Mozilla (finally) changed this behavior, but the change has created a new issue for some people, me included. At least on Unix, there are a number of things that don’t consider non-breaking spaces to be spaces (or whitespace).

=> ↺ Mozilla Open Policy & Advocacy Blog: Mozilla Comments on FTC’s “Commercial Surveillance and Data Security” Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

• Like regulators around the world, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is exploring the possibility of new rules to protect consumer privacy online. We’re excited to see the FTC take this important step and ask key questions surrounding commercial surveillance and data security practices, from advertising and transparency to data collection and deceptive design practices.

• Mozilla has a long track record on privacy. It’s an integral aspect of our Manifesto, where we state that individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional. It’s evidenced in our products and in our collaboration with others in industry to forge solutions to create a better, more private online experience.

• But we can’t do it alone. Without rules of the road, sufficient incentive won’t exist to shift the rest of the industry to more privacy preserving practices. To meet that need, we’ve called for comprehensive privacy legislation like the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), greater ad transparency, and strong enforcement around the world. In our latest submission to the FTC, we detail the urgent need for US regulators and policymakers to take action to create a healthier internet.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ “How do I test X” is almost always answered with “by controlling X”

• First, there is the question: “can I control X?”. Because if you cannot, testing it becomes impossible. When X is some external service, or tool, for example a payment provider or email-server, and there is no way to control it, you cannot (, and therefore should not) test it.

=> ↺ On Launching

• Consumer products lend themselves more to feature creep, which is the enemy of PMF. It’s never been easier to create software, which means faster MVPs, but also the possibility to build more out before you even reach your users.

=> ↺ Why middleware may not be the right abstraction for your data policies.

• Every frontend developer knows, or at least suspects, that backends are hard. But why would that be?

• There is nothing intrinsically difficult with the business logic of backends: after all, it’s just code and algorithms. A fizzbuzz is a fizzbuzz: equally useless on the backend as it is on the frontend.

=> ↺ More Evidence for Problems in VM Warmup

• VMs start programs running in an interpreter where they observe which portions run frequently. Those portions are then compiled into machine code which can then be used in place of the interpreter. The period between starting the program and all of the JIT compilation completing is called the warmup time. Once warmup is complete, the program reaches a steady state of peak performance.

• At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen: our work showed that, on widely studied small benchmarks, it often doesn’t. Sometimes programs don’t hit a steady state; sometimes, if they do reach a steady state, it’s slower than what came before; and some programs are inconsistent in whether they hit a steady state or not. A couple of examples hopefully help give you an idea. Here’s an example of a “good” benchmark from our dataset which starts slow and hits a steady state of peak performance: [...]

=> ↺ Making a Go program 42% faster with a one character change

• If you read the title and thought “well, you were probably just doing something silly beforehand”, you’re right! But what is programming if not an exercise in making silly mistakes? Tracking down silly mistakes is where all the fun is to be had!

• I’ll also state the usual benchmarking caveat up front: the 42% speedup was measured while running the program on my data on my computer, so take that number with a big old pinch of salt.

=> ↺ Promoting the Use of R in Mali

• The R Consortium recently caught up with Fousseynou Bah of the Bamako Data Science Group (also on Facebook) and talked about the budding R community in Mali. Online events allowed the group to broaden its horizons and invite international speakers to present at their events. They hope to host hybrid events in the future to make the most out of both online and physical event formats.

Python

=> ↺ Are you sure your Python ABI is actually stable?

• The age of Python’s packaging ecosystem also sets it apart: among general-purpose languages, it is predated only by Perl’s CPAN. This, combined with the mostly independent development of packaging tooling and standards, has made Python’s ecosystem among the more complex of the major programming language ecosystems. Those complexities include: [...]

=> ↺ Who controls parallelism? A disagreement that leads to slower code

• If you’re using NumPy, Polars, Zarr, or many other libraries, setting a single environment variable or calling a single API function might make your code run 20%-80% faster. Or, more accurately, it may be that your code is running that much more slowly than it ought to.

• The problem? A conflict over who controls parallelism: your application, or the libraries it uses.

• Let’s see an example, and how you can solve it.

Leftovers

=> ↺ EV Sales Sticking Point: People Still Want Manual Transmissions

• Call me crazy, but I’m ride or die for manual transmissions. I drove enough go-karts and played enough Pole Position as a kid to know that shifting the gears yourself is simply where it’s at when it comes to tooling around in anything that isn’t human-powered. After all, manuals can be roll-started. A driver has options other than braking and praying on slippery roads. Any sports car worth its rich Corinthian leather (or whatever) has a manual transmission, right? And you know that Rush’s Red Barchetta ain’t no automatic. Face it, shifting gears is just plain cooler. And it’s not a chore if it gets you more, although the fuel efficiency thing is a myth at this point.

=> ↺ Masters of adaptation András Tóth-Czifra explains how the war on Ukraine is reshaping Russia’s digital underground — Meduza

=> ↺ The Limits of Language

• it was something about the bounce in my step, in the rippling jiggle of my belly & breasts, something about the periwinkle painted pinkies, the purple pointers, the chipping its own kind of fashioning, something about the bend of the wrist, of the flick, about the way it shares the blunt, something about passing, breaths falsetto’d, about the difficulty of altitudes— & maybe less how & why, more when & where— all of the comings in & out, something about pride with a sibling fear of my own body, someone checking the clock, how a sentence shivers, something about my sentient shivering, everything about how i’m too sensitive sometimes, too sensual, something suspect & censured, something to do with attunement, with pulses in the blood, something about water & thickness & viscosity, something more like nectar, yeah, like golden honey, like golden bees & their buzzing geographies—the gut brain in the hive mind, something closer to how land shifts & water waves & waves, something like the supple becoming of flora & fungi, then, of drifting pollen, yeah, reaching closer to something in how limbs can reach & how nails reach in that reach like a camera eye zooming in, out, in, all a single take

=> ↺ Rapid Prototyping To Measure Turbidity In Rapids

• [RiverTechJess] is in the process of getting a PhD in environmental engineering and has devoted a chapter to creating a turbidity sensor for river network monitoring. Environmental sensing benefits from being able to measure accurately and frequently, so providing low cost devices helps get more data and excuse the occasional device loss that’s bound to happen when deploying electronics out in the wild. Towards this end, [RiverTechJess] has created a low cost turbidity sensor that rivals the more expensive alternatives in cost and accuracy.

=> ↺ Wearable Sensor Trained To Count Coughs

• There are plenty of problems that are easy for humans to solve, but are almost impossibly difficult for computers. Even though it seems that with modern computing power being what it is we should be able to solve a lot of these problems, things like identifying objects in images remains fairly difficult. Similarly, identifying specific sounds within audio samples remains problematic, and as [Eivind] found, is holding up a lot of medical research to boot. To solve one specific problem he created a system for counting coughs of medical patients.

=> ↺ Reaching the Hacker News Front Page

• As you may have seen, last night I wrote about my experience using Arc Browser. I then submitted this blog post to Hacker News. Usually this gets a tiny bit of attention. But this time, it managed to get on to the front page. The highest I saw it was at 12, although the bulk of the views were once I went to sleep, so who knows, it could have been higher.

• Nevertheless, it’s been common to write a post to analyse the impact of being on the Hacker News front page, so since it’s now dropped to the second page after around 14 hours, I thought I’d write about the impact it had.

=> ↺ .io domains considered harmful

• [...] but what people may not know is that the .io domain name has an annoying history.

=> ↺ Why do we call it “boilerplate code?”

• Now that Twitter is on a downward spiral I’m rewriting my favorite tweetstorms in a more permanent medium, so here’s the first: why do we have the term “boilerplate code”? It comes from the peculiar interplay of two industrial revolution technologies: steam engines and hot metal typesetting.

=> ↺ Next Twitter Announcements – A Bingo Card

• Since I was joking about this with two friends over text message about the poor decisions that the new head of Twitter is making, and I asked “Is there a bingo card?” and one said “You should absolutely make one!”

=> ↺ Five real-world arcologies under construction

• The individual casinos themselves have many arcological features too, including careful climate control, isolation from the traditional day/night cycle, and careful management of scarce resources. It differs from many of the other projects in this list, however, by its lack of any real commitment to sustainability or environmental factors. In fact, in many ways it stands as the antithesis of those principles.

=> ↺ Web3 is in FTX’s blast radius

• Web3, at its heart, is all about using blockchains and [cryptocurrency] tokens as tools for organizing decision-making, governance and financial incentives in every realm of human endeavor — from virtual world-building to social networking and from accounting to art-making.

=> ↺ US military’s X-37B space plane lands, ending record-breaking mystery mission

• The robotic X-37B touched down at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida today (Nov. 12) at 5:22 a.m. EST (1022 GMT). The winged vehicle had spent 908 days in orbit — more than four months longer than any previous X-37B flight.

=> ↺ Ken Burns, US and the Holocaust

• That said, it would be fair for one to assume that with thirty-five films in the can (and six new efforts on the way) his perpetually expanding cannon would have a reasonable number of miscues, or lackluster projects. But I must say, although I have not experienced all his titles, Burns, in my opinion, has been rather consistent in delivering a sustained level of quality and integrity, in his bare-knuckled approach to filmmaking.

• Notwithstanding superb gems like, The Civil War, Baseball, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, Jazz, Unforgiveable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, The Dust Bowl and Hemingway, his latest endeavor, The U.S. and the Holocaust is the most compelling film Burns has delivered. The touching three-part documentary befittingly takes the United States (and its WWII allies) to task, for their negligent response to Germany’s inhumane assault on the European Jewish community. Full disclosure, my grandfather, Jerome (Jerry) Netburn, who I did not have the pleasure of meeting, was a Russian Jew who fought in World War II, but one does not have to be born of Jewish ancestry to voice displeasure in the loss of, approximately, six million innocent lives…

Science

=> ↺ Multi-ciphertext security degradation for lattices

• Abstract. Typical lattice-based cryptosystems are commonly believed to resist multi-target attacks. For example, the New Hope proposal stated that it avoids “all-for-the-price-of-one attacks”. An ACM CCS 2021 paper from Duman–Hövelmanns–Kiltz–Lyubashevsky–Seiler stated that “we can show that AdvIND-CPA PKE ≈ Adv(n,qC )-IND-CPA PKE ” for “lattice-based schemes” such as Kyber, i.e. that one-out-of-many-target IND-CPA is as difficult to break as single-target IND-CPA, assuming “the hardness of MLWE as originally defined for the purpose of worst-case to average-case reductions”. Meanwhile NIST expressed concern regarding multi-target attacks against non-lattice cryptosystems.

• This paper quantifies the asymptotic impact of multiple ciphertexts per public key upon existing heuristic analyses of known lattice attacks. The qualitative conclusions are that typical lattice PKEs asymptotically degrade in heuristic multi-ciphertext IND-CPA security as the number of ciphertexts increases. These PKE attacks also imply multi-ciphertext IND-CCA2 attacks against typical constructions of lattice KEMs. This shows a contradiction between (1) the existing heuristics and (2) the idea that multi-target security matches single-target security.

• The asymptotic heuristic security degradation is exponential in Θ(n) for decrypting many ciphertexts, cutting a constant fraction out of the total number of bits of security, and exponential in Θ(n/ log n) for decrypting one out of many ciphertexts, for conservative cryptosystem parameters. Furthermore, whether or not the existing heuristics are correct, (1) there are flaws in the claim of provable multi-target security based on MLWE, and (2) there is a 288-guess attack breaking one out of 240 ciphertexts for a FrodoKEM-640 public key.

=> ↺ The Blood Factory: New Research May Open The Door To Artificial Blood

• There were news stories afoot this week with somewhat breathless headlines that suggested a medical breakthrough was at hand: “In a 1st, two people receive transfusions of lab-grown blood cells.” A headline like that certainly catches the eye, especially as the holidays approach and the inevitable calls for increased blood donations that always seem to happen this time of year as the supply gets pinched. Does a headline like that mean that someone is working on completely artificial blood?

Education

=> ↺ Reflections on SREcon EMEA 2022

• Though I’ve been involved with SREcon EMEA many times before, this time was unique for two reasons: firstly and most importantly, we hadn’t been physically together since late 2019, and secondly, I was program co-chair (alongside Daria Barteneva) – a new experience for me. With the freshness of the experience still in mind, I thought it was the perfect moment to write up my reflections.

=> ↺ Missouri’s Sheltered Workshops Have a 2.3% Graduation Rate

• One weekday morning in July, Kerstie Bramlet was at her workstation inside the Warren County Sheltered Workshop near St. Louis, Missouri, putting plastic labels on rabbit-meat dog chews one by one.

• The 30-year-old, who wore a St. Louis Cardinals shirt and a blue-and-white tie-dye hat, is autistic and has intellectual disabilities. She was on dog-chew assignment that day with a dozen or so coworkers, who are also disabled. As they chatted excitedly about an upcoming bocce ball tournament — part of a local Special Olympics event — Bramlet and her coworkers formed an assembly line of sorts, some counting the dog chews using a gridded piece of paper to ensure they reached the right total before handing them off to a supervisor for shrink-wrapping.

=> ↺ Was This Professor Fired for Having Tourette Syndrome?

• In January 2020, Dutchess Community College in New York banned a photography professor named Lowell Handler from its property and declared him unqualified to continue teaching there. Handler, the school claimed, had touched students “in a sexual manner” without their consent and peppered his classes with suggestive comments. “Students have a right to an educational environment free of sexual harassment and forced touching,” wrote then-president Pamela Edington.

Hardware

=> ↺ Getting To The Heart Of A Baofeng

• In amateur radio circles, almost no single piece of equipment serves as more of a magnet for controversy than the humble Baofeng handheld transceiver. It’s understandable — the radio is a shining example of value engineering, with just enough parts to its job while staying just on the edge of FCC rules. And at about $25 a pop, the radios are cheap enough that experimentation is practically a requirement of ownership.

=> ↺ An Oscilloscope with ARM+FPGA+ADC scheme CNX Software

• The FNIRSI 1013D is a dual-channel flat-panel oscilloscope with a rich set of features. It is cost-effective and useful to people in the maintenance and R&D industries. Although it has been on the market for a few years, I purchased one, and I decided to introduce it and disassemble it to check out the hardware design.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Using functional analysis to model air pollution data in R

• The data comes from DEFRA’s (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN), which reports the level of nitrogen dioxide (among other pollutants) in the air every hour at 164 different locations. For this analysis, we considered data recorded between November 6, 2018 to November 6, 2022.

• The data can be downloaded from uk-air.defra.gov.uk/data/data_selector_service.

=> ↺ Her miscarriage left her bleeding profusely. An Ohio ER sent her home to wait

• Holeyman, Zielke’s husband, says hospital staff seemed “hesitant.” The two of them wondered at the ER if that was because of Ohio’s new six-week abortion ban. “I wish someone had come out and said, ‘Hey, this is a state law, this is what we’re afraid of,’ and was a little more frank,” he says. Instead he says, paraphrasing what he heard: “It was, ‘Well, we don’t know if this [pregnancy] is viable, this could still be viable. This is the information you got in D.C., but we need to confirm it.”

=> ↺ Walmart agrees to pay $3.1 billion over sale of opioids at its pharmacies

• The retail giant’s announcement follows similar proposals on Nov. 2 from the two largest U.S. pharmacy chains, CVS Health and Walgreen Co., which each said they would pay about $5 billion.

• Most of the drugmakers that produced the most opioids and the biggest drug distribution companies have already reached settlements. With the largest pharmacies now settling, it represents a shift in the opioid litigation saga. For years, the question was whether companies would be held accountable for an overdose crisis that a flood of prescription drugs helped spark.

=> ↺ The scary chemicals you don’t want to see in your food

• UPFs are foods that are industrially altered to a high degree using techniques and ingredients not available in the home; think ready meals, sweet and savoury packaged snacks, soft drinks, confectionery, breakfast cereals and packaged bread.

• UPFs now account for almost 60 per cent of all the calories eaten in the UK. And they all come with a hefty dose of additives; artificial colours and sweeteners, emulsifiers and other chemicals designed to enhance the appearance, taste, texture and shelf life of manufactured food. But are all these additives safe?

=> ↺ A Florida Fund for Injured Kids Raided Medicaid. Now It’s Repaying $51 Million.

• Florida’s long-troubled compensation fund for infants born with catastrophic brain injuries has resolved one of its thorniest disputes: the claim that it avoided hundreds of millions in health care costs by raiding the safety net for impoverished Floridians.

• The Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association, or NICA, settled a three-year-old whistleblower complaint that alleged the program grew assets of nearly $1.7 billion partly by dumping health care and caregiving costs onto Medicaid, the state-federal insurer for poverty-stricken and disabled Floridians.

Microsoft Security Failures and Lies

=> ↺ Microsoft Says China Is Abusing Vulnerability Disclosure Requirements To Hoard Exploits

• Plenty of countries have vulnerability disclosure requirements in place. This is supposed to increase the security of all users by requiring notification of affected platforms or software of exploits that may be used by malicious entities.

=> ↺ Why do university IT systems drive staff round the bend?

• The University of Edinburgh was recently brought to a near standstill by a switchover to a new payments system, with PhD students going unpaid, contracts cancelled and the overseers of multimillion-pound research projects unable to order basic necessities such as paper.

• While an extreme example, the case demonstrated what many who work in higher education have known for years: the systems universities rely on to function on a day-to-day basis are often apparently not fit-for-purpose.

=> ↺ Medibank sticks by [ransomware] ransom call

• But Mr Wilkins said paying a $US9.7m ransom was never an option and would have supercharged the [ransomware] industry.

=> ↺ Cyber attack to cost Medibank up to $35m

• “Based on our current actions in response to the cybercrime event, we currently estimate $25 million to $35 million of pre-tax non-recurring costs will impact earnings in the first half of 2023,” Chief Executive David Koczkar will say in his address at Wednesday’s annual general meeting in Melbourne.

=> ↺ Top Zeus Botnet Suspect “Tank” Arrested in Geneva

• Vyacheslav “Tank” Penchukov, the accused 40-year-old Ukrainian leader of a prolific cybercriminal group that stole tens of millions of dollars from small to mid-sized businesses in the United States and Europe, has been arrested in Switzerland, according to multiple sources.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Apple Sued After Another Study Finds Its Well-Hyped Privacy Standards Are Often Theatrical

• Last week yet another study indicated that Apple’s heavily hyped new dedication to privacy was somewhat hollow, with the company’s apps often extensively tracking user behavior despite claims that doesn’t happen. It was the latest in a series of studies showcasing how Apple’s pivot to a privacy-dedicated company is often a bit performative once you dig a centimeter or two beneath the surface.

=> ↺ Public Records Expose Indian Government’s Full Access To Nation’s Internet Traffic

• The government of India continues to increase its monitoring of residents’ day-to-day lives. Like pretty much every other country in the world, India relies on the internet to handle communications, data, and multiple services used by residents.

=> ↺ Google to pay record $391m privacy settlement

• The technology giant tracked the location of users who opted out of location services on their devices, 40 US states said.

• Google has been told to be transparent about location tracking in the future and develop a web page telling people about the data it collects.

• It is the largest privacy-related multi-state settlement in US history.

=> ↺ Google pays out US$391.5m to settle privacy case in US

• The lawsuit was filed in 2018 after an article by the Associated Press noted that the check-box for “Location History” could not control location history across an entire Google account. The article also pointed out that many features associated with location-tracking were controlled by a second check-box with the name “Web & App Activity.”

• The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took Google to the Federal Court over the same issues in October 2019 and won its case.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ FBI head: China has ‘stolen more’ US data ‘than every other nation combined’

• “They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose or to control software on millions of devices, which gives the opportunity to potentially tactically compromised personal devices,” Wray said of the problems posed by TikTok.

=> ↺ Hungarian government “outraged” over accusations of using the Russian narrative on EU sanctions – Szijjártó

=> ↺ ‘This Isn’t Good’: Explosion in Poland Near Ukraine Border Sparks Fears of War Escalation

• This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates…

• Two people are reportedly dead after a Tuesday afternoon explosion at a Polish grain processing facility near the Ukrainian border that an unnamed U.S. intelligence official and Polish media attributed to a Russian missile strike, sparking fears of an escalation of the Ukraine war.

=> ↺ G7 leaders convene, Ukraine requests F-16s, and Warsaw mulls NATO Article 4 How global leaders are responding to the missile strike in Poland — Meduza

• On November 15, two missiles landed on Polish territory while the Russian army was carrying out missile strikes throughout Ukraine. The missiles landed in Przewodów, a village in the Lublin province, about five kilometers (three miles) from the Ukrainian border. According to preliminary reports from the Polish radio station ZET, the missiles landed on a farm, killing two people.

=> ↺ Polish media reports two people dead in apparent Russian missile strikes, though Biden says rockets probably weren’t fired from Russia — Meduza

• ZET, a Polish radio station, reports that two missiles fell on Polish territory on November 15. 

=> ↺ On day one of the G20 summit, Russia resumed missile strikes on Ukrainian cities Kyiv calls the situation in Ukraine ‘critical’ — Meduza

• On November 15, the first day of the G20 summit taking place now in Bali, the Russian military conducted a series of missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and their energy infrastructure. Air defense alerts have been posted across the country.

=> ↺ Kremlin on UN resolution for Russian reparations to Ukraine: ‘This is formalized plunder of our gold reserves’ — Meduza

• Russia is categorically against the adoption of the UN General Assembly’s resolution to compel Russian reparations for war damages in Ukraine. Commenting on the resolution, the Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said:

=> ↺ Retreating Russians released hundreds of convicts from Kherson detention center — Meduza

• When retreating from Kherson, the Russian army released 457 prisoners from a local detention center.

=> ↺ Two Russian children with progressive brain disease die after parents unable to obtain lifesaving medication — Meduza

• Two Russian children with the rare, progressive brain disorder epileptic encephalopathy have died in the past day, the Russian media outlet Sota reported on Tuesday. Both deaths were the result of the families’ inability to obtain the medication Ganaxolone, which is made in the U.S. and is not registered in Russia. Five more children with the disease could reportedly die in the next three weeks.

=> ↺ Three people dead after shelling in Russia’s Belgorod Region — Meduza

• Three people are reported dead as a result of shelling in Shebekino, a town in Russia’s Belgorod region, located close to the Ukrainian border.

=> ↺ Blowback: Italian police bust Azov-tied Nazi cell planning terror attacks

=> ↺ How to End the War in Ukraine? Sit Down and Talk. It’s Time.

• It might be time to give diplomacy a chance in the Ukraine war.

=> ↺ The Fuse Is Burning

=> ↺ The Experiment

• We generally don’t see Paris as a city scarred by war. It is not like London and Berlin, where the drab modern architecture of the urban centers offers silent reminders of past aerial bombardment. It is not like Warsaw and Frankfurt, where the “old towns” are modern re-creations, erected over cleared fields of corpse-filled rubble. Despite revolutions, sieges, World War I shelling, and World War II bombings, Paris still possesses a remarkable architectural unity. The city’s center looks much as it did in the late 19th century. But while the scars are not immediately visible, they are there, and the worst of them are self-inflicted: the product of a single hideous week in May 1871. This was the week that the Paris Commune died.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Come on Mr Attorney-General, transparency is more than a cry for opposition benches – Michael West

• Has the government forgotten who employs it? Everyone should get their Freedom of Information requests dealt with in a reasonable time, writes former senator and transparency warrior Rex Patrick.

• When Ralph Nader coined the phrase, “information is the currency of democracy”, he was talking about timely information and information beyond what government actively decides to share.

• And if you agree with the US consumer and transparency advocate’s proposition, then last week’s examination of the Information Commissioner’s (IC) performance at Senate Estimates by Greens Senator David Shoebridge would cause serious concern.

• Last financial year the IC received 1956 applications to reviews agencies’ Freedom of Information (FOI) access refusals. That’s up 60% from the previous year. And of those, the IC only got through 1377. That’s a deficit of 579 reviews.

Environment

=> ↺ Opinion | Neoliberal Investor-State System Is a Threat to Democracy and Planet

• In advance of the global climate negotiations taking place in Egypt, several countries announced important actions to curb the power of the fossil fuel industry.

=> ↺ Vanessa Nakate Condemns Fossil Fuel Lobbying at U.N. Climate Talks as Global Warming Devastates Africa

• At the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, we speak with prominent Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate about the impact of the climate crisis on the continent of Africa. Earlier today she spoke at a COP27 event and blasted world leaders for not doing more. She describes the need for wealthy nations gathered at the U.N. climate conference, particularly the U.S., to finance loss and damage for poorer nations in the Global South. “For the current and historic emitters, they need to take responsibility for the climate crisis, and they need to pay for this crisis,” says Nakate.

=> ↺ It’s Not Just Coca-Cola: Corporations Have Co-Opted the UN Climate Talks

• COP27 is covered with logos. But that’s just the start of companies’ influence.

=> ↺ ‘Back Off’: African Climate Groups Decry Europe’s Dash for Gas at COP27

• Waving giant euro banknotes splattered with the words “blood money”, African protesters at U.N. climate talks in Egypt demanded European governments halt a “dash” for the continent’s natural gas.

• German, Italian and other companies have been scouring Africa for alternatives to Russian supplies in the wake of the February invasion of Ukraine, raising fears that new projects will lock Africa into long-term dependence on fossil fuels.At least nine gas deals have been struck so far on the sidelines of the negotiations – known as COP27 – five involving Africa. In the run-up to the summit, Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding with Germany to expand liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity by 2050. Last week, Tanzania committed to a $40 billion LNG deal with Equinor and Shell, while Germany and the United States agreed to finance Egyptian renewables to “free up” gas for export.“European companies should not be here in Africa,” said Dean Bhekumuzi Bhebhe, a South Africa-based campaigner for the Don’t Gas Africa coalition of advocacy groups, which rallied dozens of protesters in a designated space at the tightly-marshalled venue in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday.

=> ↺ Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Gather at COP27 as Climate Crisis Devastates Africa

=> ↺ Hossam Bahgat on the “Full-Scale Human Rights Crisis” in Egypt as Country Hosts COP27

• Broadcasting from COP27, the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, we speak to leading Egyptian human rights advocate and journalist Hossam Bahgat about how authorities have launched a widespread crackdown on political dissent. Hundreds have been arrested, including lawyers and journalists, and police have been stopping people randomly on the streets of Cairo and other cities to search the contents of their phones. Meanwhile, imprisoned British Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has sent a letter notifying his family that he has stopped his hunger strike and asked for them to visit on Thursday. Bahgat disagrees with calls to boycott COP27, and gained entry through asking a foreign environmental group to include him. “Sustained engagement with the Egyptian government in public and private about its catastrophic human rights record can actually lead to some change,” says Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

=> ↺ Opinion | Urgent Climate Action Is Needed and Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer

• Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted Europe’s dangerous dependence on fossil fuels, increasingly frequent and intense climate-driven weather events are highlighting the death and destruction that fossil-fuel dependence has wrought. Understandably, political and public pressure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, move away from insecure primary energy supplies, and develop new, reliable, secure, and affordable energy sources is at an all-time high. But rather than rushing ahead, we need to consider carefully which options are most realistic, and how they will be deployed and operate in the real world.

=> ↺ Major Media Outlets From 20+ Nations Demand Windfall Profits Tax on Big Oil

• More than 30 major media outlets from countries on nearly every continent published an editorial Tuesday calling on governments to impose a windfall profits tax on fossil fuel giants that have made a killing as poor nations face devastating climate impacts and people worldwide struggle to heat their homes, feed their families, and pay rent.

• “As a bare minimum, a windfall tax on the combined profits of the largest oil and gas companies—estimated at almost $100bn in the first three months of the year—needs to be enacted,” reads the editorial, which appeared at The Guardian in the U.K., The Nation and Rolling Stone in the U.S., The Hindu in India, Camunda News in Angola, El Espectador in Colombia, and dozens of other publications.

=> ↺ Vanessa Nakate Slams World Leaders for Perpetuating Deadly Fossil Fuels

• Ugandan climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate denounced world leaders Tuesday for continuing to support new coal, oil, and gas projects despite overwhelming evidence that extracting and burning more fossil fuels will exacerbate deadly climate chaos.

• “You are sowing the wind and frontline communities are reaping the whirlwind.”

Energy

=> ↺ Collapsed [Cryptocurrency] Exchange FTX Could Owe More Than 1 Million Creditors

• The firm’s founder and chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, announced his resignation when the bankruptcy papers were filed on Friday in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. Mr. Bankman-Fried had agreed to step aside at around 4:30 a.m. that day, the new filing said, after consulting with his own legal team.

• He handed control to John J. Ray III, a veteran of corporate crises. Since then, Mr. Ray and other FTX officials have worked “around the clock” to get the company in order, according to the bankruptcy filing. The firm halted trading and responded to a “cyberattack” reported late on Friday night, the filing said.

=> ↺ FTX

• The FTX story seems truly remarkable. From being founded only in 2017 it rose to be a “partner organisation” of the World Economic Forum and the second largest donor to Biden and the Democrat’s mid-term election campaign. It has now gone completely bust, taking every penny of its depositors money with it.

• That is some trajectory.

• The World Economic Forum has deleted its FTX page, but the Wayback machine has it: [...]

=> ↺ Exclusive: At least $1 billion of client funds missing at failed crypto firm FTX

• The exchange’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried secretly transferred $10 billion of customer funds from FTX to Bankman-Fried’s trading company Alameda Research, the people told Reuters.

• A large portion of that total has since disappeared, they said. One source put the missing amount at about $1.7 billion. The other said the gap was between $1 billion and $2 billion.

=> ↺ Between $1 billion and $2 billion of FTX customer funds have disappeared, SBF had a secret ‘back door’ to transfer billions: Report

• Both Reuters and The Wall Street Journal found that Bankman-Fried, now the ex-CEO of FTX, transferred $10 billion of customer funds from his crypto exchange to the digital asset trading house, Alameda Research.

• Alameda, also founded by Bankman-Fried, was considered to be a sister company to FTX. Those cozy ties are now under investigation by multiple regulators, including the Department of Justice, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is probing how FTX handled customer funds, according to multiple reports.

=> ↺ SBF built bespoke ‘backdoor’ to outwit FTX compliance systems: Reuters

• He used bespoke software that was designed so that even external auditors would not be notified of changes to FTX books, the report said. It meant that no red flags were raised when $10 billion of funds were moved to FTX’s sister trading arm Alameda.

=> ↺ Why the FTX collapse is turning up the heat on Congress

• Washington policymakers are under growing pressure to write new rules for the cryptocurrency industry and crack down on fraud after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.

• The federal government’s failure to find common ground on cryptocurrency regulation blew up in its face last week with the downfall of one of the industry’s most prominent and politically connected firms. As regulators pick up the pieces of what happened, lawmakers are going back to the drawing board to find a path forward — and point fingers.

=> ↺ FTX partnership with Ukraine is latest chapter in shady Western aid saga

=> ↺ It’s Time to Cut Off Arms Sales to the Saudi Regime

• Last month’s decision by the members of OPEC+ to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day sparked outrage in Washington. Prominent Democrats were furious, arguing that Saudi Arabia sought higher oil prices in order to weaken US-led sanctions on Russian fossil fuels, and also to benefit Republicans by inflating the cost of gasoline before the midterms.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ There are now 8 billion people on Earth, according to a new U.N. report

• The world reached 7 billion people in 2011 and the U.N. predicts it will not reach 9 billion for another 15 years.

=> ↺ Overpopulation hitting the poorest as family planning remains contentious in Nigeria

• If current trends continue, the country is projected to become the third most populous nation in the world by 2050.

=> ↺ World population hits 8 billion, UN says

• It is also the result of higher fertility rates, particularly in the world’s poorest countries — most of which are in sub-Saharan Africa — putting their development goals at risk.

=> ↺ New Study Warns Declining Sperm Counts ‘Could Threaten Mankind’s Survival’

• While it may sound like a plot element from a dystopian novel like The Children of Men or The Handmaid’s Tale, an alarming study published on Tuesday found that worldwide sperm concentrations and counts have fallen by more than half since the 1970s, an accelerating crisis that experts say could pose an existential threat to humanity if not promptly addressed. 

• “The key point that needs to be made is that this is desperately bad news for couple fertility.”

Finance

=> ↺ ‘Workers Win’ as Illinois Passes Pro-Labor Constitutional Amendment

• Labor advocates on Tuesday applauded the passage of an Illinois state constitutional amendment enshrining what one proponent called “the strongest worker protections in the nation.”

• “Illinois is and always will be a workers’ rights state. This victory is a historic moment for our workers and our entire state.”

=> ↺ Foreign tax crooks nab hospitals, nursing homes, electricity – now aim to gut Origin Energy too – Michael West

• Australia’s electricity grid, hospitals, nursing homes. All off to Caribbean tax havens. What the blazes are we doing allowing a bunch of tax cheats to gut our essential services? What’s the scam?

• The scam is that if you are a financial engineering tax grifter from overseas and don’t pay corporate income tax in Australia, you have a 30% advantage over local companies when it comes to winning takeover bids. And these guys from Brookfield are pinning their ears back. Origin Energy is their latest target.

• And why not? They must be quietly thinking Australia’s politicians and policy-makers are a bunch of supreme numpties.

• A couple of years ago, Brookfield bought 41 private hospitals via the Healthscope takeover. These essential services are now controlled in the Cayman Islands. Then it bought a slather of aged care assets when it bought Aveo. Took that to Bermuda. Then it won AusGrid in an $18bn takeover bid early this year.

=> ↺ Billionaire babies: how James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch kept their eyes on the prize – Michael West

• Billionaire media scions Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer have a close friendship which has endured the ups and downs of mega-deals including Australia’s ‘Super League’ war, the collapse of One.Tel, the rise of Realestate.com.au and failure of Channel Ten – some of the best and worst moments of Lachlan’s career. This edited extract from Paddy Manning’s new biography of Lachlan Murdoch sheds new light on their tumultuous business history.

=> ↺ IMF Warns of ‘Wave of Debt Crises’ Coming in Global South, With War, Interest Rate Hikes, Overvalued Dollar

• The IMF said a “wave of debt crises” may be coming in the Global South, and “the global economy is headed for stormy waters,” due to war, rising US interest rates, and many currencies depreciating against the dollar.

=> ↺ Biden May Extend Student Loan Payment Pause Again Amid Court Battles

=> ↺ Secrecy Enabled by Rich Countries Lets Corporations Dodge $90 Billion in Taxes Per Year

• An analysis released Tuesday finds that rich countries are allowing multinational corporations to dodge at least $89 billion in taxes every year by not requiring firms to publicly disclose how much of their profits they are shifting to tax havens.

• The Tax Justice Network’s latest assessment of the state of global taxation castigates the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—often described as “the rich countries’ club”—for failing to uphold basic tax transparency standards in the decade since the G20 directed OECD nations to collect and disclose country-by-country data on corporate profit shifting.

=> ↺ Opinion | Asking the Right Post-Election Questions in a Nation Adrift

• Britons mourned the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II, and understandably so. The outpouring of affection for their long-serving monarch was more than commendable, it was touching. Yet count me among those mystified that so many Americans also professed to care. With all due respect to Queen Latifah, we decided way back in 1776 that we’d had our fill of royalty.

=> ↺ Tenants Demand Emergency Measures From White House as Rents Skyrocket

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Musk Takes Over Twitter

• So half the staff was canned at Twitter— And in a way that made them bitter. They say this wealthy retrofitter Treats people as just so much litter.

=> ↺ The Trolling of Twitter Continues – Invidious

=> ↺ How Elon Musk is changing Twitter, from mass layoffs to check marks – Vox

• Elon Musk has only been in charge of Twitter since late October. But already, he’s turned the company and its platform upside down.

=> ↺ New Techdirt Policy: No More Embedded Tweets

• I sent this notice around internally here at Techdirt, but figured it might be useful to state this publicly. Historically, Techdirt would often embed tweets using the embed feature from Twitter. This was always somewhat risky for a few reasons, including that people could (and often did) delete tweets. Though Twitter’s embed feature had a somewhat graceful failstate, where deleted tweets would still show the missing text.

=> ↺ Trump’s TikTok ban might have been right after all – Vox

• He recently co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post that called for the app to be banned, and he’s planning to introduce a bill that would do just that.

=> ↺ The birdsong persists

• As wave after wave of flocks fled the roost, each of the other roosts found themselves with more and more friends. The birds sang in harmony forever on. Still welcoming those fleeing the failing roost to this day.

=> ↺ FBI Says It has ‘National Security Concerns’ About TikTok

• Speaking during a U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee hearing on “worldwide threats to the homeland,” Wray said the FBI’s concerns about TikTok include “the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users.”

• There is also concern, Wray said in response to a question, that the Chinese government could “control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations … or to control software on millions of devices, which gives the opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices.”

• In written testimony, Wray called the foreign intelligence and economic threat from China “the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s ideas, innovation, and economic security.”

=> ↺ Twitter’s archive doesn’t have alt text – but Mastodon’s does!

• You can fix Twitter’s missing alt text using Hannah’s Alt Text Archive Tool. That’ll get you a JSON file full of your alt text, which you can use to recreate your archive.

=> ↺ Elon Musk Doesn’t Understand Twitter’s Real Value

• The confluence of events is revealing of social media’s broader arc over the past 15 years. What started as a space for banalities quickly evolved into a space for connection and political organizing. The Arab Spring was not the only social movement to use sharing platforms to raise international awareness of their cause. Movements like #BlackLivesMatter in the United States, #BringBackOurGirls in Nigeria, and #MyDressMyChoice in Kenya used Twitter to bring their local messages to the world. In Kenya and Senegal, groups used Twitter to crowdsource parallel vote tallying and independent election monitoring, improving election outcomes. But while the future of the platform has always been precarious—its growth long ago outpaced its owners’ understanding of how it should function—Musk represents a new, urgent threat to the company.

=> ↺ Tech layoffs in 2022: A timeline

• Here are some of the most prominent technology layoffs the industry has experienced recently.

=> ↺ Amazon staff laid off as tech giants cut costs, according to LinkedIn posts

• Earlier this week it was reported that the company is planning to cut 10,000 jobs, roughly 3% of its office staff.

• Amazon did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.

=> ↺ Tech layoffs are soaring this month

• Details: The Amazon layoffs will be focused on those in corporate roles, including people working on Amazon devices, its retail division and human resources, according to Karen Weise’s reporting in NYT.

=> ↺ Face It, Elon: Twitter’s Goose Is Cooked

• The only way I can wrap my head around Musk’s conduct is to psychoanalyze it thusly: He isn’t serving as CEO so much as he is playing the part of a CEO. Similar to the way Donald Trump comported himself while in the Oval Office, Musk seems to be less interested in reviving the company than he is doing anything possible to create drama that yields something even more important to him than revenue: attention.

• And no company can survive this kind of insanity. Not that I think Twitter is literally going to cease to exist. While speculation is rampant right now that its state of technical disrepair will see the platform combust in a puff of smoke any day now, I think we’re about to be watching something worse: Twitter’s inevitable fade over the course of multiple years. More whimper than bang.

=> ↺ Hungarian Constitutional Court rules that the way Academy of Sciences’ research network was taken away violates property rights

=> ↺ Another Election Denier Loses as Katie Hobbs Defeats Kari Lake for Arizona Governor

• Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State, has defeated Republican Kari Lake in the battleground’s closely watched gubernatorial race, scoring the latest victory over a Trump-backed candidate who openly embraced the former president’s lies about the 2020 election.

• “Democracy is worth the wait,” Hobbs tweeted after the Associated Press called the race in her favor late Monday following nearly a week of vote counting. “Thank you, Arizona. I am so honored and so proud to be your next governor.”

=> ↺ Right-Wing Dark Money Flooded the Midterm, But Young Voters Beat the Red Wave

=> ↺ Democratic Myopia About Rural America Cost the Party a House Seat It Could Have Won

• In a midterm election year where Democrats were looking at a tough map of US House contests, Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District shaped up as something of a bright spot. A rural, small-town, and small-city district with a long history of sending Democrats to Congress, the third was set in 2022 for an open-seat contest between a noisy conservative Republican named Derrick Van Orden, who won 48 percent of the vote in 2020, and Democrat Brad Pfaff, a state senator with a track record of leadership on farm issues.

=> ↺ Opinion | Now Comes the Hard Part for Progress: What the Midterm Election Taught Us

• The winds blowing in Washington and many communities post-election just might be a sigh of relief. The red wave, or red tsunami as Ted Cruz boasted, evaporated. “There wasn’t even a red splash,” as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie put it.

=> ↺ Voters Didn’t Buy the ‘Crime Panic’ Narrative. Democrats Should Take Note

• Americans around the country were unmoved by tough-on-crime rhetoric, and instead voted in a string of reform-minded candidates. The results show that it’s time for Democrats to rethink their approach on public safety.

=> ↺ Democrats Urged to Embrace Agenda to Combat Crisis of ‘Corporate Power’ in US

• The economic justice group Fight Corporate Monopolies on Tuesday said the Democratic Party must take note of the midterm electoral victories of a number of progressive candidates who have been outspoken about their plans to fight corporate greed, and enact a legislative agenda to combat what the group called a “corporate power crisis” in the United States.

• “Legislators have the next two years to enact an economic populist, pro-democracy agenda—one that breaks through partisan divides—that would rebalance power away from monopolies, corporate special interests, and Wall Street,” said the organization as it unveiled its Corporate Power Agenda.

=> ↺ Omar, AOC Lead Letter Urging Biden to Extend Marijuana Pardons to Immigrants

• More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden Tuesday urging him to pardon all simple marijuana possession offenses—regardless of immigration status—and to prioritize decriminalizing marijuana and reopening the immigration cases of people deported for possession of the drug.

• Last month, Biden issued a “full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all current United States citizens and lawful permanent residents” convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law. The move affected more than 6,500 people, but noncitizen immigrants were excluded from relief and remain vulnerable to deportation for the same offense.

=> ↺ Trump-Backed Election Denier Kari Lake Loses Arizona Gubernatorial Race

=> ↺ ‘He grasps things very quickly’: Evgeny Prigozhin’s covert bid for power in an unstable Russia — and what he learned from Alexey Navalny — Meduza

=> ↺ Devin Nunes Learns That If He’s Going To Sue For Suggesting His Family Hired Undocumented Workers, Part Of The Lawsuit Is Finding Out If The Workers Are Documented

• Well, well, well. As you may recall, back in 2019 Devin Nunes and his bumbling lawyer Steven Biss sued Esquire magazine and reporter Ryan Lizza because Nunes really did not like this article about Nunes’ parents and their family farm, which is actually in Iowa, rather than California as many people believed. It’s an interesting article, in large part because of the way the town sort of freaked out when they realized Lizza was working on an article. The headline of the article talks about a “politically explosive secret,” and I took it to mean the fact that the farm that Nunes’ regularly talked about had (very quietly) moved to Iowa, rather than staying in California. But, there is at least a vague suggestion that the farm might hire undocumented workers, since that was standard practice for farms in that part of Iowa. Lizza’s article doesn’t come out and say that, but it does note this:

=> ↺ Sanders: Democrats Must Curb Billionaires’ Grip on Elections to Save Democracy

=> ↺ Billionaire-Funded “Anti-Science” Campaigns Are Causing Unnecessary Deaths

=> ↺ New York State Cost Democrats Control of Congress. Will Anyone Be Held Accountable?

• It was up to you, New York. And you blew it.

=> ↺ Why Democrats Lose When They Ignore the Native Vote

• It was Friday night before the midterm elections when I wandered into Bruno’s, a dive bar in south San Antonio, Tex., asking the bartenders and bar-goers if they knew any Natives in town.

=> ↺ Pence Condemns Trump for January 6 Attack as Both Prep for Presidential Runs

=> ↺ Trump Hit With Campaign Finance Complaint a Day Before Expected 2024 Launch

=> ↺ Opinion | New Revelations on UAE Interference in US Politics

=> ↺ Trump Expected to Announce Third Presidential Run Despite Bad Polling

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ TikTok Builds Itself Into an Ads Juggernaut

• Many advertisers have concerns about TikTok and its Chinese owners, its struggles with content quality and its problems with bot traffic. But companies keep flocking to the app, which says it has more than one billion users, because it appears to have reach and cultural cachet, particularly among young adults.

• TikTok’s users spend an average of 96 minutes a day on the app — nearly five times what they spend on Snapchat, triple their time on Twitter and almost twice as much as their time on Facebook and Instagram, according to the data analytics company Sensor Tower.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Director got death threats over film poster featuring Hindu goddess. Now she’s getting a protest screening | CBC News

• Film pulled from Toronto university series after Leena Manimekalai tweeted poster of goddess Kali smoking

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Vietnam Using Jail to ‘Silence’ Human Rights Journalist, Lawyer Says

• Kurtulus Bastimar, an international human rights lawyer representing Trang, believes the legal case against his client is an attempt to stifle her.

• “In order to silence Pham, the government is trying to give the impression that her detention is related to state security issues and making ‘anti-state propaganda,’ when this is not true,” Bastimar said in a phone interview with VOA.

=> ↺ Two RFE/RL Correspondents Released From Police Custody In Moscow

• [...] Yury Lebedev and Yelizaveta Movchan were taken to a police station after a person whom the reporters wanted to interview called the police. [...]

=> ↺ Israel Refuses to Cooperate With US Probe Into Palestinian-American Journalist’s Killing

• The family of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh expressed hope Tuesday that the FBI’s newly announced investigation into her death will bring them “closer to justice,” as Israeli officials said they will not cooperate with the FBI and condemned the U.S. for opening a probe at all.

• Israeli Foreign Minister Benny Gantz suggested the Biden administration should accept the “professional, independent investigation” already conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which concluded that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank in May was too damaged to determine who had fired it.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ White Nationalist Hate Is Infiltrating Our Police

• It would be the first time the government has endeavored to do so, despite plenty of studies finding that the issue is a major problem. Over 140 years after Reconstruction saw slave patrols reform as Southern police departments, a 2006 FBI report warned of a new tide of “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement.” Hate groups, the paper noted, have long found police departments to be fertile recruitment grounds, but there was now evidence of “self-initiated efforts by…those already within law enforcement ranks, to volunteer their professional resources to white supremacist causes.” Three years later, a Department of Homeland Security report predicted that the white backlash to a Black president might become “the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States”; the report was rescinded in the face of conservative outrage. By 2015, an internal FBI counterterrorism guide admitted that agency investigations of white supremacist and other domestic terrorist groups “often have identified active links to law enforcement officers.”

=> ↺ Amazon is building robots at scale in Massachusetts

• Amazon has built a fleet of robots to help workers get packages from its warehouses to your door, and on Thursday it showed off two new ones. The first is Sparrow, a machine designed to pick up items (not packages) from a container and place them in a different container. The second is a concept for a new delivery drone called the MK30.

=> ↺ Taliban bans Afghan women from gyms, public baths

• Activists have said the increasing restrictions on women are an attempt to stop them from gathering to organise opposition to the Taliban’s rule.

=> ↺ Iran charges more than 750 over ‘riots’, issues first death sentence

• Authorities have denied claims by rights groups abroad that about 15,000 people have been detained in the ensuing unrest.

=> ↺ How It Feels to Visit an Apartheid Country

• Racial profiling in Israel is rampant. Abuse and invective are normal. This is the daily machinery of separating Jews from Arabs and justifying it in traditional colonial terms.

=> ↺ Inside an Anti-Abortion Meeting With Tennessee’s GOP Lawmakers

• When state Sen. Richard Briggs voted “yes” on Tennessee’s total abortion ban, he never thought it would actually go into effect.

• It was 2019, and Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. His vote seemed like a political statement, not a decision that would soon impact people’s lives.

=> ↺ Democrats Should Use This Moment to Codify Roe v. Wade

• I guess “Roevember” really was a thing. Lots of factors played a role in the Republicans’ underperformance in the midterm elections, but it sure seems like the decision by conservative justices on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade was a major one. The United States Senate might have been handed back to Democrats by Samuel Alito and his extremist ruling—signed, of course, by all five of the other conservatives.

=> ↺ Inter-American Commission Hears Landmark Case of Torture and Killing by US Border Patrol

• Anastasio Hernández Rojas’s widow, Maria de Jesús Puga, testified that her “whole family, we have all been bearing this pain, 12 years, 12 years of pain and anguish not knowing why, why they killed my husband.”

=> ↺ ‘Chilling’ Video Footage Shows Asylum-Seeker Being Force-Fed in ICE Detention

• Human rights advocates on Tuesday renewed calls for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop force-feeding detained people and end its reliance on mass detention after The Intercept obtained and published footage of a hunger-striking asylum-seeker being force-fed in 2019.

• The video depicting nurses forcibly inserting a tube into the nose of Indian asylum-seeker Ajay Kumar in an El Paso, Texas detention center marks the first time the U.S. public has ever seen the federal government force-feed someone, according to The Intercept.

=> ↺ College Degrees Help Incarcerated People Take the Next Step to Freedom

• Since 2013, the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons initiative, or NJ-STEP, has helped hundreds of individuals earn degrees. What’s next for the program?

=> ↺ Kiribati’s Disorder in the Court

• David Lambourne sat in the bare airport departure lounge in Kiribati, a nation of islands in the middle of the Pacific, and watched a curious standoff play out before him.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Who controls the internet? A look at diversity of authoritative NS records in gTLD

• But while the DNS root servers are known to be distributed, I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at the immediate levels up from the root, and so I went to analyze the diversity or centralization of the authoritative nameservers for the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and the second-level domains in those gTLDs.

Monopolies

Trademarks

=> ↺ In-N-Out Trademark Tourism Allows It To Keep Mark For ‘Double-Double’ In Canada

• In-N-Out is In-N-At it again. In our many posts on the burger chain, we’ve discussed the company’s habit of what I’ll call trademark tourism. In posts that have focused primarily on its trademarks in Australia, we’ve detailed out how In-N-Out will conduct a popup restaurant in these countries that it otherwise has zero brick and mortar presence in, usually once a year or so, simply to satisfy the use-in-commerce requirements to retain its registered trademarks. This allows the company to lock up language and branding in a country it refuses to operate in generally, other than these bullshit events designed solely to allow it to keep these trademarks active and registered.

Copyrights

=> ↺ VPN Restrictions Are Problematic, App Association Tells U.S. Government

• The App Association is concerned about restrictive policies in countries such as Russia and China, that ban VPN usage. The industry organization shared its concerns with the US Trade Representative for the forthcoming Foreign Trade Barriers report. Recent actions regarding Iran already show that the U.S. is well aware of the value of VPNs.

=> ↺ Man Used Stolen Netflix Credentials to Acquire Content For Torrent Site

• A man who used hacked Netflix credentials to obtain content before uploading it to a torrent site has been sentenced in Denmark. The 34-year-old DanishBytes user was a staff member for two months, offering tech support to the site’s users. The stolen credentials allowed him to obtain content from legal streaming services using other people’s accounts.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Russell up a win 🏁🇧🇷

• I didn’t write about the Mexican GP. It wasn’t very exciting. Verstappen won, but got in a snit because a TV reporter said that Hamilton was “robbed” of the championship last year. I agree that he was robbed, nobody suggested that Verstappen stole it. Verstappen can be an arse sometimes.

• So we arrive in Brazil at a track that everyone likes. As usual, it rained and fastest in qualifying was Kevin Magnussen, who was delighted. His team mate, (son of) Schumacher, was slowest, so Haas had two amazing results.

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