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● 01.14.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 14/01/2023: Dortmund Moving to Free Software

Posted in News Roundup at 10:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ System76 teasing new fully AMD powered Pangolin Linux laptop

• System76 saw your many comments and they’re going to deliver. The Pangolin is making a return, powered by all AMD.

Server

=> ↺ Startup’s eBPF APM tools turn up heat on Datadog | TechTarget

• Lemonade plans to put tools from eBPF startup Groundcover in production this year in a bid to reduce instrumentation work and other overhead for its small DevOps team.

Applications

=> ↺ exa: The Linux ls Replacement That’s a Little Bit Extra

• The ls command does its job well. But is there a better and more powerful utility for listing files and folders on Linux?

• The Linux ls command is something most users use all the time, but they never seem to think it could be improved upon.

• exa aims to replace this venerable command with a colorful appearance and new features. Will it replace ls for you? Let’s find out!

=> ↺ GStreamer: GStreamer 1.21.90 pre-release (1.22 rc1)

• The GStreamer team is excited to announce the first release candidate for the upcoming stable 1.22 release series.

• This 1.21.90 pre-release is for testing and development purposes in the lead-up to the stable 1.22 series which is now feature frozen and scheduled for release very soon. Any newly-added API can still change until that point, although it is extremely unlikely for that to happen at this point.

• Depending on how things go there might be more release candidates in the next couple of days, but in any case we’re aiming to get 1.22.0 out as soon as possible.

• Preliminary release notes highlighting all the new features, bugfixes, performance optimizations and other important changes will be made available in the next few days.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Joystick not detected after installing Amiga Emulator fsuae snap package

• After installing the Amiga Emulator fsuae via snap, I noticed that the Joystick was not detected. Because snap packages are containerised and isolated from the rest of the system, you need to allow access for the Joystick by viewing the connections list and updating the slot.

=> ↺ Bypass with hexencoding, dump /etc/passwd

=> ↺ How to install Vanilla OS | DIRECTLY on Computer, VirtualBox and GNOME Boxes! (NEW DISTRO) – Invidious

=> ↺ How to Install Wine on Linux Mint 21/20

• Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows applications on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It allows users to run many Windows-based programs on Linux without needing to install a Windows operating system. Wine translates Windows system calls into POSIX-compliant system calls, allowing Windows applications to run on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install and configure Wine on Linux Mint 21 or Linux Mint 20 release series using the command line terminal by importing the official WineHQ repository and installing the latest stable, which is still at this current time, 7.0 or the staging or development releases which are currently featuring 8.0 onwards.

=> ↺ Troubleshooting the Application not found error in Flatpak

• The Application not found error may occur in Flatpak on your Linux system for a variety of reasons. This typically happens when the application you are trying to open is not actually installed, or if the installation has been damaged through moving system files or some other means. In this tutorial, we will look at several ways to troubleshoot the Application not found error in Flatpak.

=> ↺ How to add repository using Flatpak

• To get started installing software with Flatpak, you will first need to add one or more software repositories. Flatpak uses these repositories (“remotes” in Flatpak terms) to search for and install software from centralized locations. This behavior should seem familiar to Linux users, as it is exactly how traditional package managers work as well.

• Developers can create their own Flatpak repos to allow access to their software across all major Linux distros, since Flatpak is distribution independent. You may find yourself in need of adding a Flatpak repo in order to gain access to software not available in your default system repositories, or to subscribe to application download and updates from a particular developer that has chosen to release their software through Flatpak.

• In this tutorial, we will take you through the step by step instructions to add a repository to Flatpak on a Linux system. Then, we will show how to search the newly configured repository for software that can be installed.

=> ↺ How to remove repository using Flatpak

• Flatpak uses remote repositories (usually just called “remotes”) in order to search for and download software. If at any point you decide that you no longer wish to download applications that come from a particular repository, you can always remove it from Flatpak. This will prevent Flatpak from querying the specified repo for future software searches and updates.

• It is recommended to only keep Flatpak remotes that you plan to use. Otherwise, your Flatpak configuration can get convoluted with metadata and other irrelevant settings and files that you will not need. The only caveat to keep in mind is that applications which were installed from a removed remote will no longer receive updates, unless it is possible to receive those updates from a different repository that you have added to Flatpak. Previous apps that have been installed from the removed repo will not be uninstalled from your system.

=> ↺ How to install Flatpak on CentOS

• Flatpak is a package manager that is available for installation on CentOS Linux and all other major Linux distros. Flatpak offers CentOS users an alternative to the official repos and default dnf package manager as a source of software installation. Many applications available in Flatpak currently do not reside in official CentOS repos, making this a big benefit of installing Flatpak.

• To use Flatpak on CentOS, we simply need to install the program, add the repos that contain the flatpak packages you wish to install, and then search for and install the packages. Flatpak will also let us manage and update the apps that we install. Flatpak works the same across all Linux distros, so you will only need to learn the command syntax once. The applications in Flatpak are also distribution independent.

• In this tutorial, you will see how to install Flatpak package manager on CentOS Linux. Then, we will take you through some basic usage of Flatpak so you can get started with adding repositories and installing custom software of your choice.

=> ↺ What You Need to Know About the rm Command in Linux and Its Advanced Syntax – TREND OCEANS

• The rm (remove) command is one of the most important Linux utilities that every beginner to advanced Linux user should understand how it works and how to use it.

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

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FreeTube on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, FreeTube is an open-source software application that provides a more privacy-friendly alternative to YouTube. FreeTube is an open-source software application that provides a more privacy-friendly alternative to YouTube. It prevents Google from tracking your browsing activity with its cookies or JavaScript code so that you can enjoy a stress-free online experience.

• 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 FreeTube 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.

=> ↺ First bootup 2-letter language asked in initrd

• The method used to translate the scripts in the initrd has varied over the years. At one stage, I tried the gettext method. Prior to now, it has been the “sss” method; “simple string substitution”, in which the strings in a script are completely replaced, resulting in a non-English script.

• The latter method is clumsy, for various reasons. For example, if you want to change the scripts to a different language, copies of the original scripts in English have to be kept — though, I have implemented a devious method of translating the non-English script back to English, then to another language. There are other problems also.

=> ↺ How to Install RPM Fusion on Rocky Linux EL9/EL8

• RPM Fusion is a helpful resource for Linux users, providing a comprehensive repository of packages not found in official repositories. Packages span everything from multimedia codecs to proprietary drivers and non-open-source software.

• The following tutorial will teach you how to install RPM Fusion on Rocky Linux 9 or Rocky Linux 8 workstation desktop or headless server so you can install additional open-source or proprietary packages utilizing the command line terminal.

=> ↺ How to Fix Docker: Unable to Prepare Context: Unable to Evaluate Symlinks in the Dockerfile Path – TREND OCEANS

• Let’s jump right into the resolution section, where you’ll learn how to fix the “unable to prepare context: unable to evaluate symlinks in Dockerfile path errors” on your Windows or Linux machine.

=> ↺ How to install Docker on Fedora | FOSS Linux

• Docker is one essential and robust version of technologies that is very important for developers and sysadmins these days. This tool allows you to create, deploy and manage lightweight, stand-alone packages known as containers. The containers have the required code, runtime, libraries, system settings, and dependencies to run an app.

• Docker allows you to categorize apps from your infrastructure to deliver software faster. Using this app, you may manage your infrastructure the same way you do your apps. Take advantage of Docker’s shipping, testing, and deploying code methodologies. You can, by large, do away with or minimize the time between code writing and running it in production.

=> ↺ How to properly uninstall MySQL Server in Ubuntu | FOSS Linux

• Ubuntu’s package management system makes it very simple to install, upgrade, or remove the software from the system. However, some software packages have many configuration directories and need extra effort to uninstall.

• The MySQL Server is one such piece of software frequently used in Ubuntu. We cannot use the standard apt purge command to remove the MySQL server from the system entirely. Certain actions must be taken to ensure that MySQL and its components are appropriately removed from the Ubuntu system.

• We may frequently encounter problems while attempting to start the MYSQL server on a Linux system. There might be several explanations for this. First, sometimes an old configuration file exists in the system and is not correctly erased after uninstalling. Therefore, we must manually remove the MYSQL server and configuration file in that scenario.

=> ↺ How to install and use Vim on Ubuntu | FOSS Linux

• Vim is a powerful text editor that is preinstalled on most Linux distributions. Ubuntu includes Vim, vi, nano, Gedit (GUI), and numerous other text editors. Vim is an improvised version of the vi text editor. Ubuntu comes with Vim preinstalled. However, the preinstalled version is very basic.

• To get the full version, we shall use the apt-get or apt command to install it on our Ubuntu operating system. Vim is capable of editing all types of plain text. It is beneficial for editing configuration files and programs written in shell, Python, Perl, C/C++, and other languages. This tutorial will demonstrate how to install and use the vim text editor on Ubuntu Linux.

• We are utilizing Ubuntu 22.04, the most recent version of Ubuntu. Installation requires executing fundamental Linux commands on the Ubuntu command line (terminal). We used various methods for installing Vim. You may utilize any of these options that you deem fit.

=> ↺ How to completely uninstall Linux Mint from your PC | FOSS Linux

• Linux Mint is a community-driven Ubuntu-based Linux distribution packed with various free and open-source software. It can give complete multimedia capability out-of-the-box for those who opt to incorporate proprietary software such as multimedia codecs. So you decided to try out Linux by installing Linux Mint alongside Windows?

• And for some reason, you’ve decided to undo everything, including uninstalling Linux Mint, cleaning up grub (bootloader), and reverting your PC to its previous Windows-only state? Since I’m a Linux enthusiast, I’m assuming you’re starting over because something went wrong when you were experimenting with Linux, and you want to start from scratch.

WINE or Emulation

=> ↺ Wine Reviews : Wine development release 8.0-rc4 is now available for Linux FreeBSD and macOS

• The Wine development release 8.0-rc4 is now available.

• What’s new in this release:

• • Bug fixes only, we are in code freeze.

• The source is available now. Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

Games

=> ↺ Google to release a tool to enable Bluetooth on the Stadia Controller

• Google is getting ready to shut down Stadia now, their cloud gaming service, but they have some good news for those with the Stadia Controller.

=> ↺ Deep Rock Galactic sold 2.3 million copies last year and I’m not surprised – it’s awesome

• Deep Rock Galactic is a game about a bunch of Dwarves going mining, and there’s lots of creepy-crawlies that want to get in the way. It seems to only be getting more popular as time goes on too.

=> ↺ The next release of 0 A.D. will have experimental Vulkan API support

• 0 A.D. is an in-development free and open source RTS, one that’s very promising and looks pretty good and the next Alpha version will also feature experimental Vulkan support.

=> ↺ New Steam Linux & Steam Deck Beta fixes up a major bug

• Recently Valve put up a Beta for Steam desktop and Steam Deck, which unfortunately came with a huge bug that people found but a new release fixes it and adds some more fixes too.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ This week in KDE: Well just look at all these pictures

• This one is pretty juicy in the eye candy department as we ramp up in the new year! Check out all this goodness…

• You can now show the Hebrew Calendar in your Digital Clock popup’s calendar if you want…

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

=> ↺ 5 Factors When Considering FreeBSD vs. Linux: Packages

• A package manager helps with finding, downloading, installing, configuring, updating, and removing third-party applications in a Unix system. This is not too different when looking at Linux vs. FreeBSD packages.

• A typical invocation starts with the package manager’s name (for example, apt or pkg), followed by a subcommand detailing the action to perform. Package managers typically maintain a local cache of available packages and their current versions, which they periodically synchronize with the package repository.

• This allows the user to find and install new software, perform simple version upgrades of existing packages, and maintain compatibility with operating system libraries and other dependencies for a specific version of the OS.

=> ↺ /etc/rc.local.d now an option – DragonFly BSD Digest

• DragonFly now checks both /etc/rc.d and /etc/rc.local.d during boot and shutdown, so you don’t have to mix system-installed and local rc scripts.

=> ↺ NetBSD ASCII flag for the bootloader | Frederic Cambus

• As mentioned in my “Customizing NetBSD boot banners” article, it’s really easy to customize NetBSD boot banners using the boot.cfg configuration file.

• In a previous life, I used to draw ASCII art (mostly in the pre-2000 era) and more precisely a type of ASCII art referred as newschool ASCII in the artscene. By taking advantage of the extended character set (the 128 to 255 range) of the IBM PC’s code page 437, it was possible to achieve great detail and really smooth curves. Some examples can be found at the bottom of my online gallery.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

=> ↺ Introducing OpenMandriva Lx ROME: The Rolling-Release Edition of OpenMandriva Linux – LinuxWizardry

• The OpenMandriva team has announced the general availability of OpenMandriva Lx ROME, their rolling-release edition of this independently developed GNU/Linux distribution descendant from Mandriva Linux. This distribution is aimed at bleeding-edge users who want to have the latest and greatest GNU/Linux technologies without upgrading or reinstalling.

• OpenMandriva Lx ROME is a unique and independent distribution, not based on any other Linux distribution. A direct descendant of Mandriva Linux, it was the first Linux distribution to utilize the LLVM compiler. This release continues to use the entire LLVM toolchain, which completes the work that began in 2015, even before Android switched its compilers.

• Powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.1 kernel series (Clang-compiled, of course), OpenMandriva’s rolling-release edition is available in two spins featuring the popular KDE Plasma and GNOME desktop environments. The Plasma spin comes with the KDE Plasma 5.26.4 desktop environment, which is accompanied by the KDE Frameworks 5.101 and KDE Gear 22.12 software suites, modified to handle the new JPEG-XL file format. On the other hand, the GNOME spin features the latest GNOME 43.2 desktop environment on top of Wayland.

Rocky Linux, Fedora, and Red Hat

=> ↺ How to Run Metabase and Nginx as a Reverse Proxy on Rocky Linux 9 – LinuxWizardry

• Metabase is a user-friendly and open-source business intelligence tool that allows you to analyze data. It is widely used for sharing automated reports, live dashboards, and business questions with many organizations.

• This tutorial will explain how to set up Metabase using a jar file and configure Nginx for a reverse proxy on Rocky Linux 9.

=> ↺ How To Install Nmap on Rocky Linux 9 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nmap on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Nmap is a powerful tool that is widely used by network administrators and security professionals to scan networks and perform security assessments. It is available for various platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS.

• 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 Nmap Network Scanner on Rocky Linux. 9.

=> ↺ An Introduction to Flatpak App Bundles

• Ordinarily, Flatpak is utilized by querying online repositories for software to download and install. Installing an application from a repository (like FlatHub) means that it is very easy to maintain updates for the application and others that have been installed via Flatpak. However, Flatpak also gives us the option to install individual applications with the .flatpak extension.

• This can be useful in situations where a developer has created some software that can be installed with Flatpak, but has not yet uploaded the application to a central repository for distribution and organized updates. These individual installations are distributed in what is called single-file bundles.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to get started with Flatpak app bundles by seeing how to create an app bundle and install it with Flatpak on a Linux system.

=> ↺ Flatpak vs FlatHub: A Comparison of Linux App Installers

• Flatpak is a universal package management tool for Linux systems, which is meant to streamline the process of searching for and installing applications regardless of what Linux distro you are using. Despite making things easier, there is a small learning curve to getting started with Flatpak, partly because of the lingo that gets tossed around with “remotes” and external repos like FlatHub. For users that are brand new to Flatpak, you may be wondering how FlatHub fits into the equation.

• In this tutorial, you will learn about the difference between Flatpak and FlatHub, and how both technologies work together to provide you with a big catalog of software applications that can be installed regardless of what Linux distribution you are running. We will also look at how Flatpak differs from some other popular distribution independent package installers, like Snap.

=> ↺ Enable Libvirt rw socket on RHEL9

=> ↺ Red Hat Announces General Availability of Malware Detection Service | SecurityWeek.Com

• Red Hat announced on Tuesday the general availability of a malware detection service for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems.

• The Insights service, created in partnership with IBM X-Force, scans RHEL systems for malware using a database of more than 180 signatures associated with known Linux malware. Users can obtain aggregated results for all their systems or results for individual system scans.

• RHEL 8 and 9 hosts are supported. Scans can be run manually, but they can also be scheduled or automated.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Evaluating suspend battery use with systemd – anarcat

• This is a quick hack that will allow you to do some (manual) computations on power usage during suspend on your laptop, using systemd hooks.

• It might be possible to use a similar hack on non-systemd systems of course, you just need something that fires a hook on suspend and resume.

=> ↺ bibata cursor theme is available on Debian (unstable) – ひとりしずかに。

• Recently bibata cursor theme is available on Debian (unstable)

=> ↺ Antoine Beaupré: 20 years blogging

• Many folks have woken up to the dangers of commercialization and centralisation of this very fine internet we have around here. For many of us, of course, it’s one big “I told you so”…

• [...]

• The best years in terms of numbers are the first two years (2005 and 2006, I didn’t check the numbers on earlier years), but I doubt they are the best in terms of content. Really, the best writing I have ever did was for LWN. I dare hope I have kept the quality I was encouraged (forced?) to produce, but I know I cannot come anywhere close to what the LWN editors were juicing out of me. You can also see that I immediately dropped to a more normal 27 article in 2019, once I stopped writing for LWN…

• [...]

• Interestingly, I wrote a lot in 2022. People sometimes ask me how I manage to write so much: I don’t actually know. I don’t have a lot of free time on my hand, and even less than before in the past two years, but somehow I keep feeding this blog.

=> ↺ Rebooting… – Matt Brown

• After nearly 7 years of dormancy, I’m rebooting this website and have a goal to write regularly on a variety of topics going forward. More on that and my goals in a coming post…

• For now, this is just a placeholder note to help double-check that everything on the new site is working as expected and the letters are flowing through the “pipes” in the right places.

=> ↺ diziet | SGO (and my) VPN and network access tools – in bookworm

• Recently, we managed to get secnet and hippotat into Debian. They are on track to go into Debian bookworm. This completes in Debian the set of VPN/networking tools I (and other Greenend) folks have been using for many years.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi’s new 12-megapixel camera modules provide powered autofocus | Engadget

• Raspberry Pi has launched the Camera Module 3 with big improvements, including higher resolution, infrared, HDR, autofocus and more..

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi Camera Module v3 Review: A New Angle on Photography

• The latest camera from Raspberry Pi brings autofocus, HDR and a new wide angle lens that captures every angle.

=> ↺ Raspberry Pi Produced 10 Million RP2040s in 2021, More Pi Stores Likely

• In a recent episode of Tom’s Hardware: The Pi Cast, Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton revealed that 10 million RP2040 chips have been made since 2021 and that there could be more Raspberry Pi stores opening in the future.

=> ↺ Mice explore virtual worlds with a Raspberry Pi-powered VR headset

• A Raspberry Pi 4 runs the Godot video game engine inside the headset, and the mice view the output through a dual-SPI display. Researchers created virtual scenes in Godot to test the ability of mice in various scenarios, such as avoiding VR cliffs and reacting to looming objects of various sizes coming towards them at different speeds.

=> ↺ ESP32 compact board integrates Walkie-Talkie module

• LILYGO recently launched a tiny ESP32-S3 device equipped with a Walkie-Talkie module and other peripherals such as an OLED display, a speaker and a mic and a 18650 battery holder. The company also featured an ESP32 device with a touch-screen LCD display equipped with a stylus pen.

=> ↺ Arduino Library Brings Rtl_433 To The ESP32

• If you have an RTL-SDR compatible radio there’s an excellent chance you’ve heard of the rtl_433 project, which lets you receive and decode signals from an ever-expanding list of supported devices in the ISM radio bands. It’s an incredibly useful piece of software, but the fact that it requires an external software defined radio and a full-fledged computer to run dictated the sort of projects it could realistically be used for.

=> ↺ 433 MHz is not dead! Using an ESP32 board with LoRa module to talk to 433 MHz sensors – CNX Software

• Everyone is talking about Matter, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Zwave, but before these complex communication technologies, we had one simple, robust one that our sensors and devices used to leverage: 433MHz. It may be too simplistic to talk about 433 MHz as a technology as there are different and various usages of this frequency. You can find it being used in numerous devices around your home, from your outdoor temperature sensors, and security sensors to the tire pressure sensors in your car.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ FiiO M11S: Digital audio player launches with Android 10 and Snapdragon 660 SoC – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ New Sony Walkman music players feature stunning good looks, Android 12 | Ars Technica

=> ↺ Nothing Phone (1) gets second Android 13 beta – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Android 13 QPR2 Beta may add the ability to change Pixel lockscreen shortcuts – PhoneArena

=> ↺ New Android Build makes Nokia T20 more stable | Nokiamob

=> ↺ Motorola Moto G Play (2023) review: Limited reach – Android Authority

=> ↺ ChromeOS 109 rolling out with a tweak to how Android apps launch

=> ↺ Google reiterates: CCI is ‘bad’ for Android smartphone users in India – Times of India

=> ↺ Google says Android smartphones will get expensive, warns of threat to user security: here’s why – India Today

=> ↺ 7 Best Journal Apps for Android | Track Your Daily Life

• Journaling has always been a popular activity for people looking to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a more structured and meaningful way. With the proliferation of Android devices, like smartphones and tablets, it is now easier to keep a journal on the go. Thanks to the numerous journal apps available for Android users. This kind of app makes journaling convenient and efficient. This article will explore some of the best journal apps for Android, which will help you live more organized and meaningfully.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Keeping the wolves out of wolfSSL

• The vulnerabilities mark a milestone for the fuzzer: They are the first vulnerabilities found using this tool that have a far-reaching impact. We can also confidently say that this vulnerability would not have been easy to find with classical bit-level fuzzers. It’s especially intriguing that on average, the fuzzer took less than one hour to discover a vulnerability and crash.

=> ↺ Is Mastodon Development Sustainable?

• At the time of this writing Mastodon has over 3.400 open issues, and over 200 open pull requests.

• We need a better way to keep Mastodon development moving forward.

• Who gets to decide which of the 200 open PRs are worthy of being included in the main distribution? How do we find the resources to go through all those open issues?

=> ↺ Derek Powazek – A community isn’t a garden, it’s a bar.

• I’ve been writing about social media since it was called virtual community, and in that time, the most common metaphor I’ve used is gardening. It’s a good metaphor, because it demands a delineation between what you want to grow and what you don’t, and it emphasizes nurturance, perhaps the most important quality of a community manager.

• But it’s almost 2023 now. The world is different, the online world is very different, and I’m pushing 50. So I think it’s time we all start talking about online gathering places with a more apt metaphor: bars.

• [...]

• The parallels to online behavior are easy to see. Online, people are much more willing to type things that they’d never say in person. How many times have we found out the hard way that a celebrity really cannot handle having a Twitter account? Drunk on the feedback loop, they can be goaded into saying more and more extreme things.

• In a virtual space, when everyone is being noisy, you have to be even louder to get noticed. This is what leads to the loudest, most aggressive people gaining the most attention online.

• Online or off, you have to speak above the din just to be heard, and that inevitably coarsens the conversation. Which brings us to the people there to protect us from the loud and stupid.

Government

=> ↺ A new step towards Open Source for Dortmund

• It is through the working group on Free Software that the initial recommendation for a Coordination body for Open Source was suggested in October last year. Mentioned in the “Roadmap Memorandum zur Digitalisierung 2020 – 2025” of the city, this suggestion builds upon a declaration of the German Ministry of Interior on the need for stronger digital sovereignty. This Coordination Unit will first conduct some research work on how to best implement Open Source solutions in the city administration. This unit will be responsible for developing open source governance as a cross-sectional task of the city administration, in cooperation with the Kommunale Gemeinschaftsstelle für Verwaltungsmanagement (KGSt).

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Chromium

=> ↺ Chrome Releases: Stable Channel Update for ChromeOS / ChromeOS Flex

• The Stable channel is being updated to 109.0.5414.94 (Platform version: 15236.66.0) for most ChromeOS devices and will be rolled out over the next few days.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Architecture diagrams should be code

• For the past few years I’ve been the most senior developer on my teams in Atlassian, in both position (Principal Engineer) and time (almost 9 years) – this means I usually take on the responsibility of managing our software architecture.

• Architecture is the relationships between systems, which can be fairly tricky to talk about. Probably the best form of communication is a diagram, with boxes representing systems (or components) and lines representing relationships between them. This can still have issues.

=> ↺ Epochalypse

• The signed 32-bit integer that is historically used to keep unix epoch time has already exhausted of all possible values.

=> ↺ Introduction – Just Programmer’s Manual

=> ↺ Makefiles for Web Work – Ross Zurowski

• A set of recipes for using Makefiles for web development.

=> ↺ What Happens When A CPU Starts

=> ↺ How to store your app’s entire state in the url

• I’m working on a flowchart editor that runs in the browser, and I wanted a way for people to use it without having to sign in, or store any data on our server. I wanted to give them control over their data and to be able to store it locally to open and edit later. And also easily share it with other people. It’s easy to do this by supporting file upload/download, but I wanted something simpler, like the ability to share by sending a url. I also didn’t want to store anything on the backend (at least for the free tier).

• [...]

• Everything after the /g/a# is a stringified version of a json object that contains all the information about the flowchart. It gets stringified, then compressed, then Base64 encoded. I update the url on every graph edit, so copying the graph state is as simple as copying the url in your browser bar.

=> ↺ What causes flaky tests

• A flaky test is a test that passes sometimes and fails sometimes, even though no code has changed.

• In other words, a flaky test is a test that’s non-deterministic.

• A test can be non-deterministic if either a) the test code is non-deterministic or b) the application code being tested is non-deterministic, or both.

=> ↺ Care is needed to use C++ std::optional with non-trivial objects

• It is possible for an optimizing compiler to elide some or all of the superfluous constructions, especially if you can inline the functions, so that the compiler can see the useless work and prune it. However, in general, you may encounter inefficient code.

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ The Perl Toolchain Summit is back in 2023! | BooK [blogs.perl.org]

• After a three years pandemic-induced hiatus, it is my pleasure to announce that the Perl Toolchain Summit is happening again!

• This year, for the thirteenth edition, we will be gathering again in Lyon, from Wednesday April 27 to Sunday April 30 2023, in the hotel Campanile Lyon Centre Part-Dieu. Participants will stay at the hotel, and work in the meeting rooms dedicated for the event.

• [...]

• The summit provides dedicated time to work on the critical systems and tools, with all the right people in the same room. The attendees hammer out solutions to thorny problems and discuss new ideas to keep the toolchain moving forward.

• Given the important nature of the attendees’ work and their volunteer status, we try to pay for all expenses (travel, lodging, food, etc.) through sponsorship. If you’re interested in helping sponsor the summit, please get in touch with Philippe Bruhat at book at cpan.org.

Python

=> ↺ I scanned every package on PyPi and found 57 live AWS keys | Tom Forbes

• After inadvertently finding that InfoSys leaked an AWS key on PyPi I wanted to know how many other live AWS keys may be present on Python package index.

Java

=> ↺ A 4-minute guide to Java loops

• A while loop performs a set of tasks for as long as some predefined condition is true. This is considered a control structure that directs the flow of a program. It’s a way for you to tell your code what to do by defining a condition that it can test, and take action based on what it finds. The two kinds of while loops in Java are while and do while.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Senate Democrats Demand Answers From Southwest About Holiday ‘Meltdown’

• A group of 15 U.S. senators on Thursday demanded answers from Southwest Airlines’ CEO regarding the company’s management of the disastrous 2022 holiday season, when thousands of travelers were stranded in airports amid nearly 16,000 flight cancelations.

=> ↺ Still Waiting for Freedom: A Review of P. Sainath’s The Last Heroes

• Here’s one possible trajectory for ambitious print journalists. After making your name with aggressive reporting at a smaller newspaper, move up the ladder until you are at a top paper with a prestige beat. Go on the television talk shows to pontificate. Maybe snag a regular column. Offer analyses that seem critical but make sure never to challenge the conventional wisdom. Hire an agent who can get you handsome speaking fees on the lecture circuit.

=> ↺ Norman Fruchter Was a Giant in the Fight for Education Equity

• Norman Fruchter, who died on January 4 from complications after being struck by a car while walking his dog, was a civil rights activist, community organizer, novelist, filmmaker, and for over five decades a giant in the education equity movement. He was 85.

=> ↺ Babylon, Streaming Residuals, and the Boss’s Hollywood

• Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is a clash of nostalgias. It’s where the #TCMparty crowd of Singin’ in the Rain meets the #TCMorgy fans of Kenneth Anger’s wallow in grime and degradation, Hollywood Babylon. Chazelle’s Babylon stars Diego Calva as Manny Torres, a young studio fixer and eventual studio boss; Margot Robbie as a self-invented star who becomes an actual star, Nellie LaRoy; and Brad Pitt as Jack Conrad, the reigning king of silent Hollywood. Conrad talks excitedly and vapidly about silent film and wanting to reinvent the form; then the monkey’s paw curls and gives him talkies.

=> ↺ An E-Ink Progress Bar For Your Unborn Child

• Having a child is a major milestone in a person’s life, and there’s a long list of things to get done before that little bundle of joy kicks and screams its way into the world. What better way to make sure you’ve still got time to paint the nursery and assemble the crib than to have an automated loading screen that shows just how far along the organic 3D printing process is?

Science

=> ↺ Eye movement science is helping us learn about how we think

• For most of human history if you wanted to know what was going on behind someone’s eyes you had to make your best guess. But since the 1960s scientists have been studying the way eye movements may help decode people’s thoughts. The ability to eavesdrop on the details of people’s daydreams and internal monologues is still science fiction. But research is helping us learn more about the connections between our eyes and our mental state.

• Most recently, research in Germany showed eye tracking could help detect where someone is at in their thinking process.

Education

=> ↺ BongoHive, a Zambian Tech innovation hub is hosting a webinar for Zimbabwean businesses small and large.

• BongoHive, a Zambia Technology Innovation hub is hosting an information-sharing webinar in partnership with the World Bank and Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises. The webinar will be taking place on Friday the 13th of January 2023 at 2pm and is open for anyone to attend.

Hardware

=> ↺ A Medieval Gothic Monastery Built Using CAD / CAM

• Just because you’re a monk doesn’t mean you can’t use CAD. The Carmelite monks of Wyoming are building a grandiose Gothic Monastery, and it’s awe inspiring how they are managing to build it.

=> ↺ DIY Fiber Laser Adds Metal Cutting To The Mix

• Sadly, the usual CO2-powered suspects in the DIY laser cutter market are woefully incapable of cutting metal. Sure, they’ll cut the heck out of plywood and acrylic, and most will do a decent job at engraving metal. But cutting through a sheet of steel or aluminum requires a step up to much more powerful fiber laser cutters. True, the costs of such machines can be daunting, but not daunting enough for [Travis Mitchell], who has undertaken a DIY fiber laser cutter build that really caught our eye.

=> ↺ Swap The Clock Chip On The Mac SE/30 With An ATTiny85

• As [Phil Greenland] explains in the first part of his excellent write-up, the lithium battery used to keep the real-time clock (RTC) going on the Macintosh SE/30 has a nasty habit of exploding and leaking its corrosive innards all over the board. Looking to both repair the damage on a system that’s already had a battery popped and avoid the issue altogether on pristine boards, he started researching how he could replace the battery with something a bit more modern.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Commentary: Cory Doctorow: Social Quitting

• Today, it’s getting harder to believe that these networks will last forever. In the blink of an eye, they’ve gone from unassailable eternal mountains to shifting sands that might blow away at any time. Users are scrambling to download their data and tell their friends where they can be found if (when?) the service disappears.

• How did these systems go from permanent to ephemeral? How did it happen so quickly?

• Here’s my theory.

=> ↺ ‘We’re Fighting Back’: California Sues Pharma Giants Over Insulin Price Gouging

• The California Justice Department on Thursday sued three large pharmaceutical companies as well as several major pharmacy benefit managers for unlawfully coordinating to drive up the cost of insulin, a lifesaving medication that patients in the United States are often forced to ration due to high prices.

=> ↺ California Sues Pharma Giants Over Inflated Insulin Prices

=> ↺ Alexey Navalny visited by head of tuberculosis hospital — Meduza

• On January 13, Ivan Kolotushkin, head of Tuberculosis Hospital no. 1 in Vladimir Colony no. 3, visited Alexey Navalny, who has reportedly fallen ill in the punishment cell of Penal Colony no. 6. This, according to Navalny lawyer Vadim Kobzev.

=> ↺ Wisconsin Republicans Refuse to Consider Legalizing Recreational Cannabis Use

=> ↺ NYC Nurses’ Deal Is Just a Start — Health Care Advocates Demand Major Reforms

=> ↺ Detecting Algal Blooms With The Help Of AI

• Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) can have negative consequences for both marine life and human health, so it can be helpful to have early warning of when they’re on the way. Algal blooms deep below the surface can be especially difficult to detect, which is why [kutluhan_aktar] built an AI-assisted algal bloom detector.

=> ↺ Immunology 101

Proprietary

=> ↺ Shopify encourages employees to say no to meetings

• The successful switch to full-time remote work as a result of the pandemic would not have been possible without virtual meeting technology.

• Technology like Webex, Zoom and Microsoft Teams enabled distributed teams to stay connected and collaborate with each other.

• But meeting tech is far from a silver bullet – over meeting and back to back video calls have become a major issue. It has caused so-called ‘Zoom fatigue’ and distracted employees from focused, productive work.

=> ↺ Microsoft to offer unlimited time off for US staff

• Microsoft is to allow US staff to take unlimited time off in a policy change that is supposed to give them more flexibility but, unsurprisingly, will also have a cost benefit to Redmond.

• “How, when, and where we do our jobs has dramatically changed,” wrote Kathleen Hogan, chief people officer at Microsoft in a memo to staff, reported first by The Verge. “And as we’ve transformed, modernizing our vacation policy to a more flexible model was a natural next step.”

• Starting next week, the Windows giant is saying goodbye to its four-weeks-a-year policy for US-based salaried employees. Workers will be given 10 days of corporate holidays, alongside unlimited leave. They will also be allowed leave for sickness, mental health issues, bereavement and jury services.

• New Microsoft employees will not need to wait to accrue holidays.

• Anyone with unused holiday entitlement will receive a one-time payment for this in April, Microsoft confirmed. Contractors paid by the hour will not be subject to this policy.

• The move isn’t unique: it brings Microsoft in line with LinkedIn, which it purchased for $26.6 billion in 2016, and a raft of other big businesses including Oracle, Salesforce, Goldman Sachs, and Netflix.

=> ↺ Microsoft messes up security upgrade for Japan, China, Korea

=> ↺ This industry in India was ‘most targeted’ by hackers in 2022

• Check Point Research (CPR) says that these cyberattacks were driven by smaller, more agile hackers and ransomware gangs. The cybercriminals focused on exploiting collaboration tools used in work-from-home environments and targeted education institutions that shifted to online learning post-Covid-19.

=> ↺ Global cyberattacks up by 38%, healthcare most targeted in India: Report

• The report said that hackers like to target hospitals because they perceive them as short on cyber security resources with smaller hospitals particularly vulnerable, as they are underfunded and understaffed to handle a sophisticated cyberattack.

=> ↺ Chinese [Crackers] Exploit Citrix Vulnerabilities

• U.S. federal authorities and Citrix both are urging users to patch the flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-27518.

• “These vulnerabilities are known to be actively exploited by a Chinese state-sponsored advanced persistent threat,” says the Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center in an alert issued Friday.

=> ↺ Attack of the Chatbots: Screenwriters’ Friend or Foe?

• Is ChatGPT a sign that automation is coming to film and TV writing? As far-fetched as it sounds, the arrival in November 2022 of a free prototype of the AI-powered chatbot — which has jolted observers with the sophisticated, fluid writing it can produce when prompted, even in the form of poems, essays and, yes, short scripts — has set off alarm bells about the disruption that the chatbot could wreak on the work of entertainment scribes. Still, top film and TV writers are skeptical that the technology in its current state imperils their livelihoods in any way, even as they remain cautious about the potential for future advancements.

Security

=> ↺ Most Cacti Installations Unpatched Against Exploited Vulnerability | SecurityWeek.Com

• The vast majority of internet-exposed Cacti installations are vulnerable to a critical-severity command injection vulnerability already exploited in attacks.

=> ↺ Farewell to an Era: Linux Kernel 4.9 Ends Its 6-Year Support Cycle – LinuxWizardry

• The Linux 4.9 kernel series has finally reached its end of life with the release of the 4.9.337 update, which was announced earlier this morning by renowned kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman. This marks the end of a six-year journey for Linux kernel 4.9, which was first released on December 11th, 2016.

• The 4.9 kernel series brought with it a plethora of new features and improvements such as support for shared extents and copy-on-write support on the XFS file system, a hardware latency tracer to detect firmware-induced latencies, support for the Greybus bus from Project Ara, a more efficient BPF profiler, a new optional BBR TCP congestion control algorithm, virtually mapped kernel stacks, and more.

• Due to its long-term support (LTS) status, Linux kernel 4.9 was widely used on mass-production devices by big companies that produce hardware powered by a Linux-based operating system. However, with the release of newer kernels that include all the features of Linux kernel 4.9 and more, it is time for users to upgrade their systems.

=> ↺ Urgent: Patch Ubuntu Linux Vulnerabilities with Latest Kernel Security Updates – LinuxWizardry

• It is imperative that all Ubuntu Linux users take note of the recent kernel security updates that have been made available for all supported releases of the operating system. These updates are aimed at addressing an even greater number of vulnerabilities and security issues to ensure that your machines are as secure as possible.

• The new kernel security updates come just a week after the previous batch, which was a significant release that addressed over 20 vulnerabilities. These updates are available for Ubuntu 22.10, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, as well as Ubuntu 16.04 ESM and Ubuntu 14.04 ESM systems.

• One of the main vulnerabilities addressed in these kernel updates are two Bluetooth flaws, specifically CVE-2022-42896 and CVE-2022-45934. The first vulnerability, discovered by Tamás Koczka, includes multiple use-after-free vulnerabilities in the Bluetooth L2CAP handshake implementation. The second vulnerability, an integer overflow vulnerability, was discovered in the Bluetooth subsystem. These vulnerabilities affect all supported Ubuntu releases and could potentially allow a physically proximate attacker to cause a denial of service (system crash) or even execute arbitrary code.

Twitter

=> ↺ Musk to reveal Twitter code as users unable to login via third party apps

• Musk said that Twitter will publish tweet recommendation code and make account/tweet status visible no later than next month.

=> ↺ Latest Twitter Problem: Its API Has Been Down And No Info Has Been Provided

• Last night, I saw a bunch of folks complaining that the various apps through which they accessed Twitter, were no longer working. People using Tweetbot, Twitteriffic, Tweeten, and others all noted that they were blocked from actually using those services to read Twitter. It quickly became clear that Twitter’s API was completely down. There was plenty of speculation that (in a repeat of an earlier era when Twitter greatly limited its API access out of a fear of losing control of the service to third party developers) that Elon Musk was doing this on purpose to try to stop third party app developers from offering ad-free access to Twitter. However, that still seems like pretty broad speculation.

=> ↺ New Study: No, Of Course Russian Twitter Trolls Didn’t Impact The 2016 Election

• Right after the 2016 election that saw Donald Trump elected President, there was this collective wail among many who were unable to comprehend how this could have happened, searching for someone to blame. Two targets quickly emerged: social media and Russia. Often the two were combined into “Russian trolls on social media.” As we’ve noted, those Russian trolls certainly existed, and certainly were trying to influence the election, but it seemed dubious to us that they had any real effect. As we noted the day after the election, it was silly to claim that social media magically made people vote for Trump.

=> ↺ Walking Back the Russian Troll Scare

• None of the news outlets that helped spread suspicion about Russian Twitter trolls helping Trump win the 2016 U.S. election is owning up to their hype or catching any flak.

=> ↺ The Anti-Twitter Files: January 6th Committee Report Shows How Twitter Leaned Over Backwards To Protect Trump & Conservatives

• For all the talk of the “Twitter Files,” as we’ve detailed, they’ve mostly been, at best, misleading, and frequently actively wrong. One of the big reveals, we were told, was that the Files were going to expose the political machinations of how Twitter banned former President Trump. And, indeed, Bari Weiss’s “Part Five” of the Twitter Files, back in mid-December, purported to reveal the big secret reckoning. But if you haven’t heard much about it since then, it’s because… they were a complete flop when it came to anything of interest. Basically, it was exactly what some of us said the day it happened: a difficult decision with a number of competing factors going into it. One that could have gone either way, but recognizing the gravity of what happened on January 6th, and the genuine concern that Trump would continue to whip his fans into an insurrectionist frenzy, one that you can see a reasonable argument for making.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ NYT Worries Big Brother Is Not Watching You

• A recent guest essay in the New York Times (12/28/22) concluded a searing takedown of “our technology overlords” with the sentence:

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Russian Defense Ministry says Soledar under Russian control — Meduza

• According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s daily briefing, the Russian military has established full control over the town of Soledar. The town has seen fierce fighting over the last few weeks.

=> ↺ After Soledar With the capture of a Ukrainian mining town, Evgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group has a fine prize for Putin. But what’s next? — Meduza

• With the Russian army’s recently intensified offensive toward Bakhmut, the city (together with the adjacent salt-mining town of Soledar, whose name translates as “salt giver”) emerged as Russia’s main objective in the Donbas. On January 8, right after a 36-hour “ceasefire” announced unilaterally by Russia but observed by no one, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke of the area around Bakhmut as “one of the bloodiest places on the frontline.” The following day, the Wagner Group launched a “powerful assault” on Soledar itself, where Russian troops were “literally advancing over their own soldiers’ dead bodies,” in the words of Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar. As of January 12, Wagner detachments seemed to have seized the greater part of Soledar — Prigozhin claiming sole credit for the Wagner Group, while Russia’s Defense Ministry kept conspicuously silent about the operation. The offensive itself, meanwhile, still eludes full rational explanation, like much else in Russian military strategy. Meduza’s podcast host Vladislav Gorin and military analyst Dmitry Kuznets tried to make sense of the Bakhmut offensive and its place in the war’s big picture. Anna Razumnaya recaps how Dmitry Kuznets understands the military situation and what it foreshadows for the next phase of the war.

=> ↺ How Safe Can We Really Be in a Nation Such as This?

• It was the guacamole’s fault!

=> ↺ Phishing scam invites Russian Telegram users to check ‘conscription lists’ to see if they’ll be drafted in February — Meduza

• Russian Telegram users were targeted by a mass mailing of malicious messages inviting them to view a list of people allegedly pre-registered for enlisting in the Russian army on February 1–3, 2023. This was reported by In2Security, a Russian Telegram channel covering information security.

=> ↺ Russian airline regulator tells airlines to keep crew members from swearing on intercom — Meduza

• The Russian federal airline regulator Rosaviatsia has instructed airlines to keep pilots and crew members from using obscenities while on the aircraft intercom. The regulator’s letter to Russian airlines prompted doubts about the officials’ industry competence.

=> ↺ Actor Artur Smolyaninov and others declared ‘foreign agents’ — Meduza

• The Russian Ministry of Justice has expanded its list of “foreign agents.”

=> ↺ What It Means for Hunger to Burn Through the Pentagon’s Ranks

• Andrea Mazzarino describes in all-too-devastating detail that the over-funded military-industrial complex is stealing from the hungry.

=> ↺ The Winds of the New Cold War Are Howling in the Arctic Circle

• With members of the Arctic Council refusing to work with Russia since the start of the Ukraine War, the future of the Arctic and its indigenous inhabitants (who are most affected by climate change and mining interests) is at stake. Geopolitical tensions in the region began more than a decade ago when Arctic Council states began to jockey for control over the area, not to stem the dangers of climate change, but to exploit minerals, metals, and fossil fuels within the Arctic Circle.

=> ↺ Israel Fascist?

• Israel’s sharp turn to the extreme right has startled American Jews.

=> ↺ A Pentagon Report on China Fuels a Military Spending Frenzy in the US

• How the media is misrepresenting what’s in the document.

=> ↺ An Appeals Court Wants to Bring Back Bump Stocks, Beloved by Mass Shooters

• The conservative judges who now occupy large swaths of the federal judiciary are pro-gun extremists. They’re so deep in the thrall of the gun lobby that their anti-regulatory opinions are now incompatible with mainstream American views on gun safety. Conservative judges have even lurched to the right of the Republican presidents who appoint them. The proof of that came this week when the hyper-conservative US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit threw out a Trump-era gun safety rule. The culture of violence embraced by these Federalist Society–approved judges is a greater threat to peace and personal safety than all the violent video games and Hollywood movies could ever be.1

=> ↺ The Failures of the January 6 Report

• The American government has developed a unique ritual for healing national traumas: the convening of investigatory commissions tasked with assembling thick tomes to explain why bad things happen to good nations. This was the response after the race riots of 1919, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Kennedy’s assassination, the race riots of the 1960s, 9/11, and other collective tragedies.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ CIA Pushes For Dismissal Of Lawsuit Against Alleged Spying On Assange Visitors

Environment

=> ↺ Biggest Carbon Footprint

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Zimbabwe’s unreliable electricity supply makes it the biggest adopter of solar systems in Africa

• In a survey done of 34 African countries, only 43% of households enjoyed an electricity supply that is available all the time or most of the time. Only 4 countries in Africa enjoy 100% availability of electricity and these are Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. As for the survey, of those 34 countries, Zimbabweans are the biggest adopter of solar for backup electricity as a percentage of the total number of households.

=> ↺ Staff at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant in War-Torn Ukraine Awarded for Heroism

• A U.S.-based group on Friday recognized the “heroic” Ukrainian staff at a Russian-controlled nuclear power plant, highlighting concerns about the facility nearly 11 months into Russia’s invasion.

=> ↺ NY Agency Sued Over Cryptomining Operation That Could Increase Emissions by 3,500%

• Three climate action groups said Friday that New York’s decision to allow a Canadian cryptocurrency mining company to control a fracked gas power plant is a clear violation of the state’s landmark climate protection law as they sued a state commission in Albany County Supreme Court.

=> ↺ ‘This Is Corruption’: Manchin Chief of Staff Now Chief Lobbyist for Big Oil

• The top aide of Sen. Joe Manchin, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, is leaving the West Virginia Democrat’s office to work directly for Big Oil as a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, one of the most powerful influence-peddling organizations in the United States.

=> ↺ Increasing PV Solar Cell Efficiency Through Cooling

• An unavoidable aspect of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels is that they become less efficient when they warm up. [Tech Ingredients] explains in a new video the basic reason for this, which involves the input of thermal energy affecting the semiconductor material. In the subsequent experiment, it is demonstrated how cooling the backside of the panel affects the panel’s power output.

=> ↺ Manchin’s Chief of Staff to Become Top Lobbyist at American Petroleum Institute

Finance

=> ↺ As Debt Ceiling Alarm Sounded, GOP Accused of Plotting ‘Terrorist Attack on the Economy’

• As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Friday that the United States is likely to reach its arbitrary borrowing limit next week, progressives denounced congressional Republicans for threatening to use a debt ceiling standoff to force cuts to popular federal programs including Medicare and Social Security.

=> ↺ New GAO Report Confirms Trump Tax Cuts Were Massive Corporate Giveaway

• The tax cuts signed into law by former President Trump at the end of 2017 were a boon for profitable corporations, according to a new report released by the Government Accountability Office. It finds the average effective federal income tax rate paid by large, profitable corporations fell to 9 percent in the first year that the Trump tax law was in effect, and the share of such companies paying nothing at all rose to 34 percent that year.

=> ↺ 34% of Big, Profitable US Corporations Paid $0 in Federal Taxes in 1st Year of Trump Tax Law

• A study released Friday by the Government Accountability Office found that more than a third of large, profitable corporations in the United States paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2018, the year the regressive Trump-GOP tax cuts took effect.

=> ↺ How Student Loan Cancellation Helps Asian Americans

• When policy-makers and advocates talk about uplifting minority communities, the concerns of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities are often left out of the discussion—especially when critiquing our current student debt system. Part of this can be tied to the “model minority” myth—a harmful stereotype that assumes widespread socioeconomic success and high achievements for the AAPI population.

=> ↺ Watchdog Calls for Investigation Into IRS Over Repeated Failure to Audit Trump

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ GOP-Led Missouri House Strips Women Lawmakers of ‘Right to Bare Arms’ With New Dress Code

• Missouri state lawmakers can bear arms in the legislative chamber but if they’re women, they can no longer show their bare arms under new dress code rules passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Friday.

=> ↺ Postcard From the Edge

=> ↺ Did ‘Every Conspiracy Theory’ About Twitter Turn Out To Be True?

• Twitter began transparently labeling accounts associated with any government, whether it be a politician or a state-run media outlet. It also pledged to Congress to “rapidly identify and shut down all state-backed covert information operations & deceptive propaganda.”

=> ↺ Former High-Level US Officials Warn Time Is Not on Ukraine’s Side in the Conflict – News From Antiwar.com

• Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned in an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Saturday that “time is not on Ukraine’s side” as its economy is in shambles and the country is entirely reliant on foreign aid.

=> ↺ Dominic Perrottet’s Nazi uniform brings tears to the pokies lobby … tears of joy – Michael West

• Dominic Perrottet’s Nazi uniform prank is good news for ClubsNSW and the pokies lobby. The NSW Premier had held firm on a cashless gaming card but now is fighting for his political life.

=> ↺ House GOP Scraps Consumer Protection Panels in ‘First of Many Gifts’ to Wall Street

• The U.S. committee tasked with overseeing the financial sector on Thursday “dispelled any doubt of their intent to do the bidding of the financial industries over the interests of everyday families,” said a government watchdog group as the panel signaled it will significantly scale back its efforts to push for consumer protections on Wall Street.

=> ↺ Trump Organization Ordered to Pay Maximum Penalty of $1.6M for Fraud

• A New York Supreme Court judge on Friday ordered the Trump Organization, former President Donald Trump’s real estate empire to pay the maximum criminal penalty for charges including tax fraud.

=> ↺ Trump Organization Hit With Maximum Fine of $1.6 Million for Tax Evasion Scheme

=> ↺ Peruvians Tell Unelected President to ‘Stop This Massacre,’ Resign Immediately

• Thousands of people hit the streets of Peru’s capital Lima on Thursday in a peaceful protest against the national government, which has been led for over a month by unelected President Dina Boluarte.

=> ↺ Fortress Europe Is Cruel, Misguided, and Doomed to Fail

• It’s time to rethink EU migration policy. New walls are being built in Europe, but they will not solve the present crisis – and the money could be far better spent.

=> ↺ 24 People Face Trial for Giving Life-Saving Assistance to Migrants in Europe

=> ↺ The Crisis of Missing Migrants: Tens of Thousands of People Have Disappeared on Their Way to Europe

• Twenty-four volunteer rescue workers connected to the group Emergency Response Centre International face trial for human smuggling in Greece for giving life-saving assistance to thousands of migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, fleeing violence, poverty and persecution. A European Parliament report described the trial as Europe’s “largest case of criminalization of solidarity.” We’re joined by New Yorker staff writer Alexis Okeowo. Their latest piece, “The Crisis of Missing Migrants,” covers the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean and the tens of thousands of people who have gone missing en route to Europe. “It’s so inhumane, the way people are being forced to cross to Europe. And that is, by the way, because there are not safer migrant crossings. There are not more open migrant routes. We are forcing migrants to do this,” Okeowo says.

=> ↺ GOP Destruction of House Ethics Committee Tells You Everything You Need to Know

• They came to Washington last week ready to represent the constituents who had given them the honor of serving in Congress. They were 39 freshman Republican House Members.

=> ↺ In Biden Documents Story, Stenography and Scandal Take Center Stage

• Many outlets focused on what each party had to say about the story—rather than what the general public ought to understand about it.

=> ↺ Legendary Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo on “Argentina, 1985” and Why Democracy Is at Risk Today

• Former Argentine prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, who served as deputy prosecutor in Argentina’s Trial of the Juntas and later as the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is portrayed in the film “Argentina, 1985,” which won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture in a Non-English Language this week. The film dramatizes the efforts of Argentina’s civilian court to prosecute the country’s former military leaders for brutal crimes committed during the U.S.-backed right-wing military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. Ocampo spoke to Democracy Now! recently about that landmark trial, the new film and why “democracy is at risk everywhere.”

=> ↺ “Argentina, 1985”: Oscar-Shortlisted Film Depicts Historic War Crimes Trial of U.S.-Backed Generals

• We speak with director Santiago Mitre about “Argentina, 1985,” his dramatization of the Trial of the Juntas, when a civilian court prosecuted Argentina’s former military leaders for brutal crimes committed during the U.S.-backed right-wing military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. The film just won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture in a Non-English Language and is also shortlisted for an Oscar for best international film. Mitre talks about following the landmark trial in Argentina as a boy, just a short time after the end of the dictatorship, and why he felt compelled to tell the story as a filmmaker. “The decision of the government to do this trial was very brave and very important, and it founded the basis of the new democracy,” says Mitre.

=> ↺ Fiery Flying Roll

• Bad luck on Friday the thirteenth, at least in 1650, because on that day, 13 January 1650, Abiezer Coppe was transferred from a prison in Warwick to one in Coventry and then some time later to London and Newgate prison.  Coppe was imprisoned for “putting forth,” or publishing, A Fiery Flying Roll: A Word from the Lord to all the Great Ones of the Earth.

• It was a revolutionary time.  Less than a year earlier, 30 January 1649, the King, Charles I, was decapitated, and shortly thereafter Parliament replaced monarchy with a commonwealth.  This put an end to the divine right of kings.  At the same time the Levellers with their principle of political equality and the Diggers with their principle of  commoning land were defeated.  These defeats cleared the way forward for capitalist conditions of exploitation by the thorough separation of workers from the means of production, especially land.  Slavery or prison became the future.

=> ↺ Will This Be the Year Dianne Feinstein Finally Retires?

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Google warns court against changing liability shield for [Internet] companies

• In a defense brief filed to the US Supreme Court Thursday, Google warned that altering Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — which protects internet-based companies from being sued for content created by their users — would “upend the [Internet].”

• [...]

• The Gonzalez family argues that the algorithms that Google and YouTube use to target certain content to users are the creations of the companies themselves, not users or other third parties, and as such are essentially editorial functions for which they are responsible — and so the algorithms are not protected by Section 230.

=> ↺ NATO vs Erdoğan

• The Erdoğan dictatorship wants Sweden to ban completely normal things such as protests and journalism.

=> ↺ Verdict for Şansal for ‘insulting President with Gollum’ overturned by Regional Court

• The 2nd Penal Chamber of the Istanbul Regional Court of Justice has overturned a prison sentence for Barbaros Şansal. In the previous sentence, Şansal was convicted to one year and two months in prison for retweeting a photo comparing President Erdoğan to Lord Of The Rings character Gollum.

• The regional court has overturned the decision for Şansal as there are pending case files about the defendant for the same crime.

=> ↺ In ‘No Bears’, a banned filmmaker takes bold aim at Iranian society

• It’s a brilliant movie — an intricate and layered drama that somehow manages to be funny, angry, playful and despairing by turns. Panahi is as incisive a social critic as ever, and here he targets the misogyny and religious fundamentalism that hold sway across Iran — issues that led to the violent unrest currently gripping the country.

=> ↺ Internet Safe Harbors, Antisemitism, And Online Jewish Activity

• In early December 2022, a former Israeli Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, three other retired Israeli generals, a former Commissioner of the Israeli Police, and a former head of the Mossad’s Intelligence Directorate filed an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzalez v. Google arguing that Internet platforms should be civilly liable for third party content that encourages terrorist activity. In their filing, they claimed that the wave of terror in Israel in 2015–2016 “became known as the ‘Facebook intifada’ and the #stab! Campaign due to the essential role social media played in inciting the perpetrators to attack civilians.” The Anti-Defamation League also filed a brief in the case, similarly arguing that Internet platforms should have legal accountability for violence against Jewish Americans and other vulnerable communities encouraged by these platforms’ recommendation engines. So, too, the Zionist Organization of America asserted that Internet platforms should not be immune from liability “when they target specific users and recommend and direct them to new content that helps fan the flames of hatred and violence against the Jewish community.”

=> ↺ Appeals Court Judge Suggests Hate Speech Shouldn’t Be Protected In Decision Against Students Expelled For Bigoted Social Media Posts

• Last year, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in a school free speech case that came down squarely, if very narrowly, on the side of the student. The student suing over being kicked off the cheerleading squad for sending a snapchat message saying “fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything” prevailed, with the nation’s top court finding her speech, however crude, was protected by the First Amendment.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ David Sirota on Accountability Journalism

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ ‘The government killed him’: A tribute to activist and programmer Aaron Swartz 10 years after his death

• As a computer programmer, Swartz changed the internet forever and fiercely fought against the privatization of knowledge. The federal government persecuted him for it until his death by suicide in 2013.

=> ↺ Labor, Rights Groups Praise Biden Policy Boosting Migrant Worker Protections

• Migrant workers and advocates on Friday applauded a Biden administration policy to help protect noncitizen employees who are victims or witnesses of labor rights violations “from threats of immigration-related retaliation from the exploitive employers.”

=> ↺ Many workers barely recall signing noncompetes, until they try to change jobs

• Researchers estimate that one in five workers in the U.S. — some 30 million people — have signed noncompete agreements, prohibiting them from taking jobs at similar businesses or starting a rival business of their own within a certain time period, typically six months to two years.

=> ↺ After 132 Years, Wounded Knee Artifacts Come Home

• Part 1 of this series looked at the circumstances leading to a massacre of Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890. In November, a museum in Barre, Massachusetts, repatriated more than 150 objects believed to have been looted from the massacre site. VOA dug through historic records and archives to trace how and when they were obtained, how they made their way to New England, and more than a century later, back to the Lakota.

=> ↺ Lakota Descendants Remember Ancestors Killed at Wounded Knee

• In the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, the U.S. government set aside 233,000 square kilometers west of the Missouri River for the “absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota tribes, collectively known as the Sioux.

• When Lieutenant General George Custer and his 7th Cavalry confirmed there was gold in the Black Hills of that area, prospectors rushed in. By 1875, the Bureau of Indian Affairs ordered the tribes to move. When they resisted, the U.S. government sent in troops, setting off armed conflict that would see Custer defeated.

=> ↺ Iran executes British-Iranian dual national for spying

• BBC Persian on Wednesday aired an audio message it said was from Akbari in which he said he was tortured and forced to confess on camera to crimes he did not commit.

=> ↺ Alireza Akbari: Iran executes British-Iranian dual national

• Mr Akbari alleged that he was “interrogated and tortured” by intelligence agents “for more than 3,500 hours”.

=> ↺ ‘They’re Trying to George Floyd Me’: Teacher and Cousin of Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Killed by LAPD

• Harrowing video footage released this week shows officers with the Los Angeles Police Department forcibly restraining and repeatedly using a Taser on 31-year-old Keenan Anderson—a high school teacher and cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors—following a traffic accident.

=> ↺ Keenan Anderson, Cousin of Black Lives Matter Cofounder, Killed by LAPD

=> ↺ The Supreme Court Is About to Eviscerate the Right to Strike

=> ↺ Civil Society’s second opinion on a UHI prescription

• The National Health Authority (NHA) released the Consultation Paper on Operationalising Unified Health Interface (UHI) in India on December 14, 2022. The deadline for submission of comments was January 13, 2023. We collaborated with the Centre for Health Equity, Law & Policy, the Centre for Internet & Society, & the Forum for Medical Ethics Society to submit comments on the paper.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Senators Say The FCC’s New Maps Still Suck, Overstate Coverage

• We’ve noted more than a few times that U.S. taxpayers have spent nearly $400 million on mapping U.S. broadband, yet the FCC still somehow routinely produces maps that greatly overstate broadband coverage, and greatly understate the obvious impact of monopolization and stunted broadband competition.

=> ↺ Laws of technology and remote work : Dissociated Press

• A laptop’s cabling will always be located on the maximally inconvenient side. Especially power cords with bulky connectors.

• [...]

• After troubleshooting a system or application extensively it will turn out that the problem is a faulty cable or coincidental internet glitch. However, you are likely to have introduced a new, unrelated problem in an attempt to fix the symptoms.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ The DRM Future of Subscription Based Cars

• In this video I discuss the growing subscription based model of motor vehicles where people are having to pay an additional monthly fee or large one time fee to unlock heated seats or heated steering wheels when these features already exist in the cars.

Monopolies

Trademarks

=> ↺ Luka Doncic’s Trademark Dispute With His Mother Settles

• Over the summer, we discussed what looked to be a fascinating trademark dispute between NBA superstar Luka Doncic and his mother, Mirjam Poterbin. As a quick summary, Doncic consented to have trademarks referring to him registered to his mother, as he’d become a star overseas at age 13. That itself isn’t all that odd. But now Doncic has his own company managing his name and likeness rights, Luka77, which applied for trademarks at Doncic’s request, only to have them refused as being too similar to the marks held by Poterbin. From there, Luka77 petitioned the USPTO to cancel Poterbin’s marks, with Doncic asserting he no longer wanted his mother to control them.

Copyrights

=> ↺ RIAA’s Pirate Domain Name Policing Efforts Are Unspectacular

• The RIAA is designated as a “trusted notifier” by domain name registry operator Identity Digital, which oversees hundreds of TLDs. The partnership allows the music group to flag piracy domains, but transparency reports show absolutely no recent activity on this front.

=> ↺ Four Genshin Impact Leakers Targeted in New Set of DMCA Subpoenas

• After targeting Ubatcha, one of the most popular and prolific Genshin Impact leakers, publisher Cognosphere has several new targets on its radar. DMCA subpoena applications obtained by TorrentFreak reveal that users of the popular ‘House of Daena’ Discord channel are among the targets

=> ↺ Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty wins music rights

• Following a 50-year legal battle, the founding member of Creedence Clearwater Revival now owns the global publishing rights to the iconic rock band’s songs.

• It came after Mr Fogerty, 77, bought a majority stake in the rights to the band’s catalogue from Concord Records, which has owned the rights since 2004.

• “As of January this year, I own my own songs again,” he wrote on Twitter.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: AEHIRYW Wordo: AMITY

Technical

=> ↺ Free software worth checking out. Vol. II

• It’s been two years since the first “Free software worth checking out,” can you believe it? Well, I’ve had two years to discover new cool stuff, so here’s what I can sell. There’s a lot of cool free (as in freedom) software out there!

=> ↺ RE: DNS oddity

• Saw JBanana’s gemlog yesterday about a weird phenomenon with DNS. Namely in the logs, the IP address 127.0.0.1 got logs as some Brazillian domain name. And the resolver runs in a NAT so no external entity could access it. Thus there mush be some issue somewhere.

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

=> Techrights

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