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● Links 10/01/2023: Yet More Security Issues in Rust

Posted in News Roundup at 9:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Daniel Pocock: Cardinal George Pell: a brief tribute

• While Cardinal Pell was known for his skepticism about climate change, I will always be grateful for donations of surplus fileservers from the dioecese for me to recycle with Debian GNU/Linux.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Linux Mint MATE 21.1 – Invidious

• This video looks at the new Linux Mint MATE edition, kernel, RAM, software, and other considerations.

=> ↺ ChatGPT | The Revolutionary AI Chatbot That Will Transform Your Life! – Invidious

• What’s up, Linux Community! In this video, I’ll introduce ChatGPT, the revolutionary AI chatbot that uses advanced language processing to deliver engaging, personalized conversations.

=> ↺ Coding Is Easy #programming #coding – Invidious

=> ↺ Vanilla OS – The Future Of Linux Part 2 | Immutable – Solid – Invidious

• A video covering the newest release of Vanilla OS. Like my previous video covering Nitrux OS, Vanilla OS brings a lot of enhancements to the table to make this Linux distro almost unbreakable. Take a look and let me know what you think in the comments below.

=> ↺ OpenMandriva Lx ROME 23.01 overview | ROME, the OpenMandriva rolling edition – Invidious

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of OpenMandriva Lx ROME 23.01 and some of the applications pre-installed.

=> ↺ The SMART Home is a DUMB idea, and a privacy and security NIGHTMARE – Invidious

=> ↺ HDR Gaming Is Coming To Linux Right Now!! – Invidious

• I made a video a short while ago about HDR coming to Linux and I didn’t think we’d see much else about it for at least a few months, oh how wrong I was because Valve is on the case.

Applications

=> ↺ Converseen 0.9.10.0 with Improved WebP Support – Fasterland

• Converseen, the cross-platform image converter, and resizer, has now been updated to version 0.9.10.0, by adding some improved WebP features, and now it’s also possible to remove EXIF metadata after every conversion or change of format process.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ APIban MySQL client – TelecomsXChange (TCXC) Blog

• APIBAN helps prevent unwanted SIP traffic by identifying addresses of known bad actors before they attack your system. Bad actors are collected through globally deployed honeypots and curated by LOD/APIBAN.

=> ↺ Deploy Nagios Core as a Docker Container – kifarunix.com

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to deploy Nagios Core as a Docker container.

=> ↺ How to easily locate your mouse pointer in Ubuntu and other GNOME-based Linux distributions

• If you have trouble locating your mouse pointer in Linux, this little tip will give you some much-needed relief.

=> ↺ Linux filels: creating, listing, updating, and more | Network World

• Linux provides a number of handy commands for managing file permissions, understanding who has access to the files and checking on file content.

=> ↺ 4 Ways to Check Whether cron Is Working on Linux

• cron is a job scheduler and process automation utility for Linux. Here’s how you can check if cron is working properly on your system.

=> ↺ How to deploy MariaDB and PhpMyAdmin using Docker

• In this short post, you will learn how to deploy MariaDB and PhpMyAdmin using Docker. These are some simple images without so many additives, so you can by yourself edit it and improve it to your liking.

=> ↺ Copy, Cut And Paste On The Command Line With Clipboard – Linux Uprising Blog

• Clipboard is a new command line tool to cut, copy and paste text, files and folders. The software works on Linux, Windows, macOS, Android and *BSD.

• This tiny yet powerful command line utility can be useful to both new and power users. Besides allowing you to cut, copy and paste anything from a terminal, it can show the clipboard contents, clear the clipboard, and there’s also support for multiple (infinite) clipboards.

=> ↺ How to install WPS Office 2019 on KDE Neon – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at how to install WPS Office 2019 on KDE Neon.

=> ↺ How To Install AppImage on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install AppImage on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, AppImage is a package format for distributing portable software on Linux. It is a single executable file that contains all the necessary dependencies and libraries required to run the software, making it easy to run on any Linux distribution.

• AppImages are self-contained and do not need to be installed in the traditional sense. Instead, they can be run directly from the file manager or terminal by making the file executable and then run it. This makes it easy to use AppImages on systems where you don’t have administrator privileges or don’t want to modify the system libraries.

• One of the main advantages of using AppImages is that they allow you to run software that might not be available in your distribution package manager. This can be particularly useful for running newer or specialized software on older or niche distributions.

• AppImages are also portable, meaning that you can easily move them between different systems and run them without any additional setup. This makes it easy to use the same software on multiple systems, even if they have different package managers or libraries installed.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the AppImage on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

=> ↺ How to install Blender 3.4.1 on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Blender 3.4.1 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

=> ↺ How to install Ghostery Dawn on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install Ghostery Dawn on a Chromebook.

=> ↺ How to install Kali Linux on Apple Silicon Macs | ZDNET

• I’ve had messages from a number of people asking me for information on how to install Kali Linux on Macs running the M1 and M2 Apple Silicon chips.

=> ↺ How To Write Javanese Script Hanacaraka on Ubuntu Computer

• This tutorial will help you writing one of Indonesian traditional scripts, Javanese, also known as Aksara Jawa (ꦲꦏ꧀ꦱꦫꦗꦮ) or Hanacaraka (ꦲꦤꦕꦫꦏ), on Ubuntu computer. This is the real Javanese language spoken by Javanese people in Java island and not a programming language with similar name. We will show you that you can type Javanese using Firefox browser, Text Editor, LibreOffice, Gimp, Inkscape and Scribus. Now let’s exercise.

=> ↺ How to Encrypt Files in Linux with Tomb – Make Tech Easier

• Tomb is a simple shell script that allows you to encrypt files in Linux. Unlike full disk encryption, Tomb enables you to only include the files and folders that you want to encrypt. Here we show you how to install and use Tomb on Ubuntu.

=> ↺ How to Install easypanel on Ubuntu 22.04

• Easypanel is a server control panel software that you can use to deploy many apps on your website.

• In this tutorial you will learn how to install easypanel on Ubuntu 22.04.

Games

=> ↺ Godot Engine – Dev snapshot: Godot 4.0 beta 11

• With the end-of-the-year celebrations past us, we are ready to get back to work and continue our regular Godot 4.0 beta releases. Over the course of the last four months the engine has seen many changes, making it more stable and feature complete, and it’s getting very close to the state that we would be happy with.

• We took a bit longer to prepare this beta as there were a number of fairly big GDScript refactoring PRs (needed to fix many bugs), which we wanted to merge all at once. As such we expect that this beta 11 might introduce some new GDScript regressions, which we’ll aim to fix for beta 12 next week. Be sure to report anything that stops working as expected in your scripts.

=> ↺ 6 Linux and Open-Source Technologies That Made the Steam Deck Possible

• While Steam’s user interface isn’t open source, nor are most of the games, the experience wouldn’t be possible without an entire stack of free and open-source technology underneath. Valve knows this, and they’re paying numerous developers to improve the technologies they depend on.

• So what are the technologies that the Steam Deck utilizes to deliver an experience that has impressed much of the gaming world?

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME 42.8 Enables Atomic Mode-Setting for NVIDIA/GBM, Improves Wayland and AMDGPU Support

• GNOME 42.8 is a pretty small update for those still using the GNOME 42 desktop on their GNU/Linux distribution. However, it brings an updated Mutter window and composite manager that disables client modifiers when the open-source AMDGPU driver is in use and enables atomic mode-setting for the NVIDIA graphics driver with GBM support.

• Previous GNOME 42 releases denied using the atomic mode-setting with the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver because the mode-setting device was initiated before attempting to initialize the renderer because EGLStream-based page flipping is not compatible with atomic mode-setting.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Endless OS 5.0 Beta Is Here with a New Desktop Interface and Wayland Support

• Endless OS 5.0 is finally here in a beta variant that you can download and try on your personal computer if you want to enjoy the new desktop interface built on top of the GNOME 41 desktop environment, the revamped App Center that no longer features hard-coded lists of apps, as well as support for the next-generation Wayland display server protocol.

• Endless OS 5.0 also promises improved multi-GPU support as the system UI and most apps now use the integrated graphics card by default to save battery life on laptops. GPU-demanding apps like video games or 3D graphics software, such as Blender, are automatically started with the discrete graphics card.

=> ↺ Mabox Linux is a throwback to old-school Linux with a new-school look and feel | ZDNET

• I’ve run the gamut of Linux distributions, from the incredibly simple to the overly complex, from modern interfaces to old-school throwbacks.

• I’ve used Fvwm95, CDE, KDE, Xfce, AfterStep, Blackbox, Enlightenment, Cinnamon, Mate, GNOME, and nearly every desktop that has ever been available to Linux. I’ve also used Ubuntu-based, Fedora-based, Arch-based, and just about any distribution based on nearly any other distribution. The combinations have been staggering over the years. Needless to say, I’ve experienced it all since I started using Linux in 1997.

• Because of using so many Linux distributions over the years, very little surprises me these days. But when I spun up a virtual instance of Mabox Linux, I couldn’t help but smile. Why? Because it reminded me of my early days using Linux, only with a bit of a modern, user-centric twist.

• You see, back in the early days, Linux wasn’t so user-friendly. Quite the opposite in fact. Linux was hard in its infancy. So, when I see a Linux distribution that reminds me of those days but manages to make it easy on users without years of experience under their belts, it reminds me how far the open-source operating system has come.

• Such is the case with Mabox Linux.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Schedule for Tuesday’s FESCo Meeting (2023-01-10)

=> ↺ CentOS Board Meeting Recap, December 2022

Debian Family

=> ↺ Utkarsh Gupta: FOSS Activites in December 2022

• Here’s my (thirty-ninth) monthly but brief update about the activities I’ve done in the F/L/OSS world.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Linux Format 298

• Get your hot Pi projects here! Grab your Pis, Picos, soldering iron and start building cool maker projects from IoT smart home devices, tracking planes, create a live currency converter, discover NeoPixel control, choose a perfect case, get faster SD cards and more!

=> ↺ What to expect from the Raspberry Pi Foundation in 2023

• Welcome to 2023.  I hope that you had a fantastic 2022 and that you’re looking forward to an even better year ahead. To help get the year off to a great start, I thought it might be fun to share a few of the things that we’ve got planned for 2023.

=> ↺ This interactive art installation is a study in magnetism | Arduino Blog

• Art is inherently subjective and its meaning varies from one person to the next. But many pieces have widespread appeal as they tap into some emotion we all share. Interactive art pieces tend to stimulate our senses of curiosity and wonder. Niklas Roy’s “Visitors Magnet” installation harnesses the mystique of magnetism to provide that wonder.

=> ↺ Tracking sleep quality with embedded ML and the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense | Arduino Blog

• Ensuring adequate and restful sleep is vital for maintaining good health, as decreases in sleep quality have been proven to cause a whole host of problems. University of Toronto students Zongyan Yao and Xilin Liu recognized this vital aspect to well-being and wanted to build an inexpensive device that could classify the various stages of sleep as well as report the resulting data wirelessly.

• Clinical sleep evaluation is performed by taking polysomnograms, which are essentially measurements of brain, heart, respiratory, and other physiological features. Zongyan and Xilin decided on using an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense to classify single-channel EEG values with a lightweight machine learning model due to its relatively fast processor and available RAM. Training data for the model was sourced from the Sleep-EDF Expanded Database that contains several hours of sleep telemetry, including EEG, EOG, airflow, and body temperature, although only the EEG data was kept.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Android 13 QPR2 Beta 2 can force-theme all icons on your home screen

=> ↺ Android 13 arrives on the Galaxy A71 5G, marking its final major update – PhoneArena

=> ↺ 5 features the iPhone needs in 2023 for me to ditch Android | Digital Trends

=> ↺ 5 Android gestures you need to try today

=> ↺ How we test and review products at Android Police

=> ↺ How to Use the Privacy Dashboard on Android

=> ↺ Exclusive: Google warns Android growth in India will stall due to antitrust order | Reuters

=> ↺ India’s antitrust order will stall Android’s progress in the country, Google warns • TechCrunch

=> ↺ This New Android Feature Actually Excites Me

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Content Management Systems (CMS)

=> ↺ WordPress is Turning 20: Let’s Celebrate! – WordPress News

• 2023 marks the 20th year of WordPress. Where would we all be without WordPress? Just think of that! While many technologies, software stacks, and fashion trends have come and gone throughout the past two decades, WordPress has thrived. This is due to the fantastic work and contributions of the WordPress community, comprised of thousands of contributors; and millions of users who have embraced the four freedoms of WordPress and the mission to democratize publishing.

Funding

=> ↺ Some business graphs for 2022

• Hello! I like looking at other independent authors’ business graphs, so I thought I’d share some percentages and graphs of my own this year. Hopefully some of this is useful to other writers who run internet businesses.

• All of the graphs are about Wizard Zines’ business selling zines – I don’t do sponsorships or consulting or commissions or anything.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Daniel Lange: Happy tenth birthday, dear Thunar bug

• Thunar, the Xfce4 file manager, has a bug that is underflows the time remaining for a file copy since ten years now (bugzilla, gitlab). Happy birthday!

Python

=> ↺ PEP 703: Making the Python global interpreter lock optional [LWN.net]

• In late 2021, LWN covered a plan to eliminate the Python global interpreter lock (GIL), thus improving the language’s thread-level concurrency. This plan has now been codified as PEP 703, which includes an extensive discussion of the changes that would be made.

Rust

=> ↺ The Rust Programming Language Blog: Security advisory for Cargo (CVE-2022-46176)

• The Rust Security Response WG was notified that Cargo did not perform SSH host key verification when cloning indexes and dependencies via SSH. An attacker could exploit this to perform man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.

Leftovers

=> ↺ IoT Archaeology Leads To API Resurrection

• What happens when someone’s personal project is turned into a startup which becomes something of a publicity darling, then collapses with very little product shipped and takes all its customers’ money with it?

=> ↺ Human-Powered Strandbeest

• Once you’ve seen a strandbeest, it’s hard to forget the mesmerizing movement of its mechanical limbs. [Adam Savage] built a pedal-powered strandbeest in (more than) one day in full view of the public at the San Francisco Exploratorium.

Education

=> ↺ “We’ll have to see what’s going to happen” – Navracsics on the exclusion of foundation-run universities from Erasmus programs

=> ↺ Free Speech and Academic Freedom in the American Corporate University

• Free speech and academic freedom  are under attack in American higher education.

• From the right the allegation is that wokeness and political correctness  have taken over, articulating  a political agenda that is  anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-capitalism, and pro LGBTQ.  From the left  the indictment is that schools continue to replicate stereotypes in their curriculum that perpetuate discrimination against marginalized groups.

Hardware

=> ↺ Wipe On, Wipe Off: Make Your Own Rain Repellent

• Once upon a time, we drove an old six-volt VW Beetle. One sad day, the wiper motor went out, and as this happened before the Internet heyday, there were no readily-available parts around that we were aware of. After briefly considering rubbing a potato on the windshield as prescribed by the old wives’ tale, we were quite grateful for the invention of Rain-X — a water-repelling chemical treatment for car windshields.

=> ↺ Clever Mechanism Makes A Linear Control From A Rotary Hall Sensor

• Every once in a while we stumble across something so simple yet so clever that we just have to call it out. This custom linear Hall effect sensor is a perfect example of this.

=> ↺ Vintage aircraft instrument becomes an USB peripheral

• The completed and assembled board. The board features a USB 2.0 Type C connector, a PIC16F1459, four MCP41HV31 digital potentiometers, and a screw terminal strip to connect to power and the indicator.

=> ↺ Making a magnetic cocoa stirrer

=> ↺ Dracula Sucks Indoor Light to Power IoT Devices

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Texas Lawsuit Against Planned Parenthood Challenges Medicaid Reimbursements

=> ↺ The Case for “U.S. Out of Africa,” and the High Childbirth Mortality Rate of African American Women – The Project Censored Show

Security

=> ↺ Microsoft Releases January 2023 Security Updates | CISA

• Microsoft has released updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

=> ↺ CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

• CISA has added two new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise. Note: To view the newly added vulnerabilities in the catalog, click on the arrow in the “Date Added to Catalog” column, which will sort by descending dates.

=> ↺ Microsoft: Kubernetes clusters hacked in malware campaign via PostgreSQL

=> ↺ Adobe Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products | CISA

• An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

=> ↺ CISA Releases Two Industrial Control Systems Advisories | CISA

• CISA released two Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on January 10, 2023. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ „AI Act“: German government in favour of facial recognition, but against lie detectors

• A proposed EU regulation provides for rules against profiling that are worldwide unique. Now it is up to the EU Parliament to save essential points from deletion.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ 1,500 Bolsonaro Backers Detained After Far-Right Coup Attempt in Brazil

• Brazilian Justice Minister Flávio Dino said Monday that “about 1,500″ people have been arrested since supporters of Brazil’s far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro attacked government buildings in Brasília the previous day.

=> ↺ ‘Bolsonaro Must Not Be Given Refuge in Florida,’ Say US Lawmakers

• Prominent U.S. lawmakers said Sunday that Jair Bolsonaro should not be given safe harbor in Florida after his supporters—animated by the far-right former president’s election lies—launched a massive attack on Brazil’s main government buildings, an assault that came a week after leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was inaugurated.

=> ↺ Watchdog Says Social Media Giants ‘Directly Aided’ Fascist Insurrection in Brazil

• The fascist attack on Brazil’s main government complex was “directly aided” by major social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and Telegram, the global watchdog group SumOfUs said Monday as the country’s authorities continued their cleanup efforts, investigation, and arrests of suspects involved in the anti-democratic assault.

=> ↺ ‘Horrid’: Steve Bannon Rebuked for Celebrating Brazilian Fascists as ‘Freedom Fighters’

• “Freedom fighters” is what Steve Bannon, the far-right propagandist and former top aide to Donald Trump, called the supporters of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil who on Sunday launched a violent assault on the nation’s government offices in the capital of Brasilia.

=> ↺ Brazil’s Fascist Right Attack Lula’s Pro-Worker, Pro-Democracy Agenda

• Far-right election deniers cut short the celebration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s remarkable political comeback with violent attacks in the country’s capital yesterday. Echoing the assault on the U.S. Capitol two years ago, supporters of defeated ex-President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the Brazilian Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace.

=> ↺ Bolsonaro Backers Storm Government Buildings in January 6-Style Attempted Coup

=> ↺ Cruel and Not at All Unusual

=> ↺ Armenia refuses to hold CSTO exercises on its territory — Meduza

• Armenian authorities have notified the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) that Yerevan considers holding the organization’s exercises in the country to be inappropriate. Interfax reported this news, citing Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

=> ↺ Officials in Samara region refuse to publish list of killed and injured in Makiivka attack — Meduza

• Alexey Vdovin, military commissar of the Samara region, announced that the government would not be publishing the list of those who were killed and injured in the New Year’s attack in Makiivka.

=> ↺ We’re Exceptional! And It’s Horrible to Witness

• Let me start with a confession: I no longer read all the way through newspaper stories about the war in Ukraine. After years of writing about war and torture, I’ve reached my limit. These days, I just can’t pore through the details of the ongoing nightmare there. It’s shameful, but I don’t want to know the names of the dead or examine images caught by brave photographers of half-exploded buildings, exposing details — a shoe, a chair, a doll, some half-destroyed possessions — of lives lost, while I remain safe and warm in San Francisco. Increasingly, I find that I just can’t bear it.

=> ↺ Plane crash in Russia’s Nenets Autonomous Okrug reportedly kills two — Meduza

• A plane carrying ten passengers and two crew members crashed in Russia’s Nenets Autonomous Okrug on Monday. First responders reported that the incident was a result of icy conditions.

Environment

=> ↺ UN Report Shows Ozone Layer Recovery Effort ‘Sets a Precedent for Climate Action’

• An assessment released Monday by leading science agencies highlights the effectiveness of an international treaty intended to protect the stratospheric ozone layer as well as the power of taking action now to limit global heating driven by human activity.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ The Intricacies Of Creating Fuel For Nuclear Reactors

• All nuclear fission power reactors run on fuel containing uranium and other isotopes, but fueling a nuclear reactor is a lot more complicated than driving up to them with a dump truck filled with uranium ore and filling ‘er up. Although nuclear fission is simple enough that it can occur without human intervention as happened for example at the Oklo natural fission reactors, within a commercial reactor the goal is to create a nuclear chain reaction that targets a high burn-up (fission rate), with an as constant as possible release of energy.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystem Council Sue Forest Service to Stop Cabinet-Yaak Grizzly Bear Habitat Destruction

• There’s no other way to put it, the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly population is going downhill fast – which is the opposite of the agency’s legal mandate to recover, not extinguish, endangered species.  In 2018 the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service counted 54 grizzlies in its monitoring report.  In 2019 only 50, down to 45 in 2020 and the 2021 estimate is only 42 bears. That’s a stunning crash of nearly one-quarter of the population in only four years!

• Given the precipitous population loss – and the increasing threat of irreversible inbreeding – the Alliance and Native Ecosystems Council felt we had no choice but to file a lawsuit on January 6th to overturn the Kootenai National Forest’s approval of the massive Black Ram logging and road-building project.

Finance

=> ↺ “The Rent Is Too High”: Warren, Bowman Ask Biden to Fight Crushing Housing Costs

=> ↺ Bowman, Warren Push Biden to Protect Renters From Corporate Price Gouging

• A pair of progressives in Congress on Monday led four dozen other lawmakers in calling on U.S. President Joe Biden “to pursue all possible strategies to end corporate price gouging in the real estate sector and ensure that renters and people experiencing homelessness across this country are stably housed this winter.”

=> ↺ How Congress Ended “Syndicated Conservation Easement” Tax Scams

• After six years of failed efforts by the IRS, Justice Department and lawmakers, new legislation is expected to prevent the worst abuses of a tax-avoidance scheme that has cost the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars. Tucked into the massive, $1.7 trillion government spending bill signed into law by President Joe Biden on Dec. 29, a provision in the law seems poised to accomplish what thousands of audits, threats of hefty penalties and criminal prosecutions could not: shutting down a booming business in “syndicated conservation easements,” which exploit a charitable tax break that Congress established to preserve open land.

• Under standard conservation easements, landowners give up development rights for their acreage, often an appealing, bucolic space. In return, they receive a charitable deduction equal to the property’s development value, and the public benefits by the preservation of the land, which in some cases is made available as a park.

=> ↺ When Big Pharma Spends More on Stock Buybacks Than R&D

• The 14 largest publicly-traded pharmaceutical companies spent $747 billion on stock buybacks and dividends from 2012 through 2021 — substantially more than the $660 billion they spent on research and development. So argue economists William Lazonick, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, and Öner Tulum, a researcher at Brown University, in a new paper.

=> ↺ Contrary to the NYT, the Problem in An Aging Society is Income Distribution

• The New York Times had a major article reporting on how many people in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan are being forced to work well into their seventies because they lack sufficient income to retire. The piece presents this as a problem of aging societies, which will soon hit the United States and other rich countries with declining birth rates and limited immigration.

• While the plight of the older workers discussed in the article is a real problem, the cause is not the aging of the population. The reason these people don’t have adequate income to retire is a political decision about the distribution of income.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Progressives Call Out House Republicans, Whose First Bill Adds Over $100 Billion to Deficit

• Progressive U.S. lawmakers on Monday took House Republicans to task after the Congressional Budget Office said the erstwhile deficit hawks’ first bill before the 118th Congress—a measure critics say is meant to “protect wealthy and corporate tax cheats”—will swell the federal deficit by more than $100 billion.

=> ↺ Congressional Union Vows to Fight ‘Anti-Worker Attack’ by House GOP

• After House Republicans passed a rules package that contains union-busting language aimed at preventing Capitol Hill staff from exercising their right to organize and collectively bargain for better wages and conditions, the Congressional Workers Union pledged Monday to keep fighting for more workplace democracy.

=> ↺ 29 teachers in Szentgotthárd school begin practicing indefinite civil disobedience

=> ↺ Kevin McCarthy’s First Order Of Business: Waste A Ton Of Time Misleading The Public Over The Bogus Twitter Files

• It took a week of nonsense, in which we got to see just how dysfunctional this session of the House of Representatives will be, but late last week, Kevin McCarthy sold just enough of what was remaining of his soul to get the Speaker of the House gavel. And, apparently, part of the many favors he doled out to convince the nonsense peddlers who were demanding “concessions” was to create a panel to investigate the incredibly misleading nothingburgers of the Twitter Files.

=> ↺ What Did McCarthy Promise GOP Extremists in Backroom Deals?

=> ↺ ‘What Did McCarthy Promise?’ Concerns Raised Over Backroom Deals With GOP Extremists

• Rep. Kevin McCarthy finally seized the House speaker’s gavel in the early hours of Saturday morning, capping off a chaotic week of voting and heated floor confrontations that were nationally televised and closely documented by reporters stationed at the U.S. Capitol.

=> ↺ At Summit in Mexico, AMLO Urges Biden to End U.S. “Disdain” for Latin America

• We go to Mexico City for an update on the North American Leaders’ Summit, where the presidents of Mexico, the United States and Canada are discussing migration, the economy, trade and security. The summit comes just days after Biden announced that the United States will start to block migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba from applying for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. We speak with Elías Camhaji, Mexican journalist and reporter with the Spanish newspaper El País, and Erika Guevara-Rosas, human rights lawyer and Americas director for Amnesty International.

=> ↺ George Santos Hit With Campaign Finance Complaint 2 Days After Being Sworn In

=> ↺ GOP Congressman Santos Hit With Four Campaign Finance and Ethics Complaints

• Serial liar and Republican U.S. Congressman George Santos was the subject of four complaints filed Monday by advocacy groups alleging campaign finance and ethics violations, including an alleged scheme to hide the true and unknown source of over $700,000 in campaign funds.

=> ↺ Lauren Boebert Says Republicans Will Push for Term Limits in Congress

=> ↺ Biden’s Expansion of Title 42 Takes Us Further From Humane Border Policy

=> ↺ Title 42, “Safe” Third Countries and Bipartisan Hypocrisy

• President Biden recently announced changes to US immigration rules that will effectively embed two Trump-era policies, one of which the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has temporarily refused to halt: Title 42. It is a measure ostensibly intended to curtail the spread of COVID-19 by expelling or refusing entry to migrants from Central America. The other is the so-called “safe third country” policy, which requires migrants to apply for asylum in a country through which they transit on their way to the southern border. They must show that the request was denied before attempting to make an asylum claim in the United States.

• Employing these measures displays the hypocrisy of both major political parties when it comes to asylum seekers and refugees. Also, defending these indefensible rules is often done with the aid of lies and misinformation.

=> ↺ Putin introduces bill on denouncing Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, leaving GRECO — Meduza

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has introduced a bill on denouncing the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption and terminating Russia’s membership in the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO), the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body.

=> ↺ In ‘Act of Fascism and Supremacy,’ Israel Bans Palestinian Flags in Public Spaces

• After protests in which tens of thousands of Israelis marched “together against fascism and apartheid,” Israel’s far-right security minister on Sunday ordered police to tear down Palestinian flags wherever they are found in public.

=> ↺ GOP, Right-Wingers Filed Nearly 100 Anti-Voter Lawsuits in 2022: Report

• The Republican Party, GOP candidates and voters, and aligned groups filed 93 anti-voter lawsuits in 2022, and although most were unsuccessful, the trend underscores how right-wing attacks on ballot access and election administration are taking place in courtrooms as well as state legislatures nationwide.

=> ↺ Georgia Grand Jury Completes Final Report on Trump’s Efforts to Overturn Election

=> ↺ United Russia uses ‘AI and special algorithms’ to purge war critics from party database — Meduza

• Russia’s ruling political party, United Russia, has conducted a “thorough purge” of its database of supporters in advance of the upcoming election cycle, removing anybody who doesn’t support the war against Ukraine, Vedomosti reported on Monday.

=> ↺ Journalist Eva Merkacheva: Putin’s secret decree pardoned convicts prior to their joining Wagner Group — Meduza

• Russian journalist and member of the Presidential Human Rights Council Eva Merkacheva has told RIA Novosti that convicts recruited by the Wagner Group for the war in Ukraine had been pardoned prior to leaving the penal colony — not six months later, as stated by the military company’s founder Evgeny Prigozhin. Citing Merkacheva, RIA Novosti reports that their pardon was legalized by a classified decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.

=> ↺ Is the US Headed for a Breakdown

• The governing structures of the United States seem to be on the verge of some sort of national nervous breakdown. The symptoms are in our face.

• The inability of the House Republican majority to elect a speaker, in its 13th round of voting as of this writing, is the latest, most visible sign. A group of hardcore, ideologically committed right-wing representatives has frustrated the bid of Kevin McCarthy to succeed Nancy Pelosi as House speaker. Whatever the outcome, they will extract concessions that will make it difficult to govern the body, and run the federal government as a whole.

=> ↺ On the Chopping Block

• Those who value Montana’s Constitution are concerned—terrified, actually—of what the Legislature’s supermajority (and its new Freedom Caucus) are going to try to do to it this session.

• Here’s how it can happen:  Article XIV of our Constitution sets forth how it can be revised…

=> ↺ ‘No one here tells you how to live’: The anti-war Russians who have made Latin America their new home — Meduza

=> ↺ The Political Hubris of Long-Term Plans

• Few sights are more absurd or unreal than political leaders announcing their long-term plans for radical changes benefitting millions or their intention to reform giant institutions in a year or two. Grandiose pledges to create a better world trip off the tongue and they pretend to have a degree of control over events that they must know they do not possess.

• I always liked the caustic remark of French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau when told in 1918 about President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points for ending the First World War and for establishing a lasting peace. “Why does he need 14 points?” asked Clemenceau derisively. “Even the Good God only had 10.”

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ TV Rain receives broadcast license in the Netherlands — Meduza

• The Dutch authorities have issued a TV broadcast license to the independent Russian news outlet TV Rain, which had its Latvian license revoked in December.

=> ↺ ‘A retaliatory media operation’ Not even Russian pro-war Telegram channels believe Moscow’s claims about its attack on Kramatorsk — Meduza

• Early on January 8, hours after Moscow’s Orthodox Christmas “ceasefire” ended, the Russian military launched seven missile strikes on the city of Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, damaging at least two buildings. Russia’s Defense Ministry announced afterwards that the attack had been a “retaliatory operation” in response to Ukraine’s deadly New Year’s Day strike on a Russian barracks in Makiivka. Moscow says it killed more than 600 Ukrainian soldiers in the Kramatorsk strike, but Ukrainian officials and international journalists on the ground have been unable to find evidence of even a single casualty. The evidence they’ve provided to the contrary has led several of the invasion’s loudest cheerleaders on Telegram to criticize Russia’s own military leadership.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Appeals Court Hands Immunity To TSA Agents Who Forced Man To Delete His Recording Of Them

• Yeah, this is not great. This is yet more case law basically saying don’t bother suing federal agents because, unless they’ve very specifically done the same thing other federal agents have been held accountable for, they’re just going to walk away from lawsuits.

=> ↺ Moscow police charge publisher with violating ‘LGBT propaganda’ ban, marking first case under new legislation — Meduza

• Moscow police have filed misdemeanor charges against Popcorn Books, a publishing company whose novels address “uncomfortable” topics such as “self-identification, racism, and sexism,” according to its own website. The company stands accused of violating the authorities’ newest anti-LGBT law, which bans materials that promote “non-traditional” relationships among people of any age.

=> ↺ “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free”: Civil Rights Leader Ben Jealous on His New Memoir

• We speak with civil rights leader Ben Jealous about his new memoir, “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” which examines his long career as an activist and organizer, and growing up the son of a white father and a Black mother. He discusses the lessons he drew from his mother, Ann Todd Jealous, and his grandmother, Mamie Todd, about the racism they experienced in their lifetimes. Jealous has led the NAACP and the progressive advocacy group People for the American Way, and is set to be the next executive director of the Sierra Club.

=> ↺ Rosewood Massacre: Families Mark 100 Years Since White Mob Razed Black Town & Killed Black Residents

• As ceremonies mark the 100th anniversary of when a white mob attacked and burned down the Black town of Rosewood, Florida, we look at the largely untold story of how a racist mob murdered at least six Black residents and forced the rest of the town to flee. Many eyewitnesses said the true death toll was far higher. The bloodshed began after a white woman accused a Black man of assault, resulting in several days of violence by the white mob that ultimately destroyed the once-thriving community. We speak with Jonathan Barry-Blocker, whose late grandfather, Reverend Ernest Blocker, was a survivor of the 1923 massacre.

=> ↺ 7,000 New York Nurses Go on Strike, Decrying “Unimaginable” Working Conditions

=> ↺ As 7,000+ Nurses Strike in NYC, ‘Greedy Hospitals’ Told to Approve Fair Deal

• More than 7,000 unionized nurses at two of New York City’s largest hospitals began a strike on Monday morning “for fair contracts that improve patient care.”

=> ↺ AI Lawyer Will Represent Client In Traffic Court, Threatening Nonexistent Market For Traffic Court Lawyers

• It’s the rise of the lawbots, something not even foretold by Futurama, which allowed a “simple hyper-chicken from a backwoods asteroid” to perform much of the series’ criminal justice work.

=> ↺ Italy Must Revoke New Decree That Facilitates Death of Migrants at Sea

• The latest migration decree by Italy’s government represents a new low in its strategy of smearing and criminalizing nongovernmental organizations saving lives at sea. The government’s goal is to further obstruct the life-saving work of humanitarian groups, meaning that as few people as possible will be rescued in the central Mediterranean.

=> ↺ Two men died in custody in Braunschweig and Berlin, police investigate the cause

• Both were not found to have been subjected to violence, the police said. For the 38-year-old man who died in Lower Saxony, an anonymous posting on Instagram states otherwise.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Amateur Radio Log 2023-01-10 Mid-day (Fairbanks, AK, US)

• During the lunch break (12:00 AKST) I was able to spend some time at the beginning of Yak road on Chena Ridge doing mobile radio. Radio was an ICOM IC-746PRO with a 3-foot 20-meter mag-mount antenna attached to the top of my SUV. I had tuned the antenna for 14.250 Mhz.

Technical

=> ↺ Wholesomedonut’s Gemlog: – RISC-V and Toki Pona

• I’m taking a course on RISC-V.

• It’s the LFD-110X course as offered by the Linux Foundation, and hosted by edX.

• You can get in on it too for free by taking the Audit track of the course. You don’t get a certification (though you do have an option to upgrade to getting one later and paying for the exam like everyone who did it originally); and you still get access to all the non-graded course content.

=> ↺ 4:3 isn’t bad

• I’ve used 4:3 for about one week. It isn’t bad at all, I can see why many people enjoy this aspect ratio, in the future if I get a monitor I’ll probably try to get a 4:3 one. It’s comfortable, and cozy.

• Although, on my laptop it looks good, on my desktop monitor it looks blurry because of the sheer size of the screen itself, which is not that pleasant. I still find I enjoy it like that, although 16:9 is better in some tasks, or just in having crisp text in my case.

=> ↺ New Year, New Blog

• I started blogging around this time two years ago and one of the things I’ve found is that having just a little pressure to have something interesting to share can be a good motivator in getting things done. With my final semester of school just now starting and wanting to finish strong, one of the things I’ve been thinking about stepping up is my blogging efforts. This is just an experiment and I’ll start to back off if it gets to be too much, but I’m hopeful that setting goals to share more will be a good motivator.

=> ↺ Winamp 2023

• I was browsing the snap store and came across Foobar2000, a music player that quite closely resembles the old, original Winamp. Being an old nerd, I was curious and decided to install the snap; however, the installer is currently stuck at around 24%, which I attribute to the installation of Wine. Regardless of that, I was reminded that every (six months, year, two years?) I inevitably look to the winamp.com website. For YEARS they promised goodness and great things to come, that the company was working hard on bringing it back…so I stuck with it and went back to the website every now and then. I didn’t sign up for the mailing list simply because I just didn’t want to get more spam.

Science

=> ↺ Embracing Degrowth

• I’m utterly exhausted – I haven’t been sleeping well, work has been kicking my butt, and I’ve been preparing to go to a con in a few days, but I wanted to write this as a precis of a more detailed post to come.

• I’ve historically viewed capitalism, while flawed, as a basically reformable system. That has increasingly become impossible for me. In particular, the excesses of consumer culture, both inside my industry and outside of it, are horrifying. The incentive structure of capitalism rewards mass ecological destruction, labor exploitation, and waste on an astounding scale. These factors are intimately linked with racism, sexism, and other forms of structural oppression. I have increasingly realized that while those problems are easiest for me to see in my own industry, they are ubiquitous to the capitalist system.

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