● 01.29.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 29/01/2023: GNOME 43.3 Fixes and Lots About Games

Posted in News Roundup at 9:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Applications

=> ↺ MPV Media Player 0.35.1 is now available, with bug fixes from 0.35

• MPV Media Player 0.35.1 is now available, with several bug fixes from 0.35 to make the user experience even smoother and more enjoyable.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How To Switch Ubuntu Desktop Language to Korean

• This tutorial will help you switch Ubuntu operating system language into Korean (한국어, hangugeo). This will change English words into Korean in the menu, calendar, tray, application names, windows, and everything else. Good luck!

Games

=> ↺ FPS Game Engine Built In Ancient Macintosh HyperCard Software

• Wolfenstein 3D and Doom are great examples of early FPS games. Back in that era, as Amiga was slowly losing its gaming supremacy to the PC, Apple wasn’t even on the playing field. However, [Chris Tully] has used the 90s HyperCard platform to create an FPS of his own, and it’s charming in what it achieves.

=> ↺ Valve fixed up Dead Space on Steam Deck

• For those of you waiting for news on Dead Space becoming more playable on Steam Deck — Valve have already delivered.

=> ↺ Humble’s Survival Instinct Bundle looks like a good deal

• Want some more survival games? Humble’s Survival Instinct Bundle has a few good picks in it and far cheaper than buying individually.

=> ↺ Steam Deck and Steam Beta fix on-screen keyboard, Gyro improvements, Linux input fix

• More goodies coming to the Steam Deck and Steam Desktop Beta, as Valve sure do like to work quickly to solve bugs and add features.

=> ↺ Watch Dogs: Legion from Ubisoft arrives on Steam, playable on Steam Deck

• Here’s yet another Steam release from Ubisoft, as they continue dumping their older titles on Steam. Watch Dogs: Legion is here and playable on Steam Deck.

=> ↺ The new Dead Space is sadly a great big mess on Steam Deck

• Dead Space got a remake that was released today and I was incredibly excited by it but sadly it’s just a mess.

=> ↺ Steam Deck now in stock across Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan

• Komodo PR sent word that there’s no longer a reservation queue to purchase a Steam Deck across Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan.

=> ↺ The overlooked gorgeous pixel-art Lila’s Sky Ark is now on GOG

• Here’s a fresh chance for me to tell you to take a look at the overlooked gem that is Lila’s Sky Ark, as it’s now on GOG.

=> ↺ Trackmania heads to Steam and the devs say it’s playable on Steam Deck

• Trackmania, the 2020 remake, is heading to Steam and the developers have started answering questions like — will it run on Steam Deck?

=> ↺ Rhythm adventure Hi-Fi RUSH from Tango Gameworks gets a surprise release

• Tango Gameworks, developer of The Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo, along with publisher Bethesda just stealth released their latest game called Hi-Fi RUSH.

=> ↺ 4A Games release a full Metro Exodus SDK for modders

• 4A Games have done something quite awesome. They’ve released a SDK for people to make full game modifications of Metro Exodus.

=> ↺ Developer of point and click adventure Splittown looking at Linux support

• Love your adventure games? Here’s one to keep an eye on. The developer of Splittown has mentioned they’re looking into Native Linux support.

=> ↺ Might and Magic 6, 7 and 8 get an open source reimplementation with OpenEnroth

• Want to play Might and Magic 6, 7 and 8 on modern systems with an updated game engine? Well, OpenEnroth looks mighty promising.

=> ↺ NVIDIA Vulkan Beta Driver 525.47.06 out now

• NVIDIA has released another fresh update to their Vulkan Beta Driver, with version 525.47.06 rolling out now.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME 43.3 Brings Minor Fixes to GNOME Maps and GNOME Software

• GNOME 43.3 was released only a month after GNOME 43.2 so you can imagine that it doesn’t include big changes. In fact it’s a small update, but I wanted you to know that it’s officially out and it’s coming soon to your distro’s repositories in the coming days.

• GNOME 43.3 brings bug fixes to the GNOME Maps app, for the blurry shape layers issue on zoom, as well as for the accuracy of the user location marker positioning. Various other bugs were also fixed, but no details were provided, so if you’re using GNOME Maps regularly, keep an eye on this update.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Do Linux Mint users really need Antivirus protection

• Since its inception in the market, Linux Mint has proven to be one of the most secure operating systems. It is among the only operating systems to function without any substantial risk. Even though you don’t need to set up an antivirus on Linux Mint, it does not mean that you cannot do anything to keep your Linux Mint system safe. To secure your system, ensure you regularly update your installed software, especially the ones you often use. It is also recommended that you set up software from the secured official software store of Linux Mint. An important thing to note in Linux Mint is that a virus or rootkit cannot install itself in your Linux Mint OS unless you let it. By allowing it, we mean for anything to install itself on Linux Mint, it will need your root password, and for that reason, you cannot install it, meaning you are always safe unless you decide not to.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ HarmonyOS Vs Android Vs iOS Main Differences- Gizchina.com

=> ↺ Xiaomi 11T and Poco F4 are receiving Android 13-based MIUI 14 – comments

=> ↺ Android Chrome Users Can Now Lock Their Incognito Tabs | PCMag

=> ↺ BharOS: 5 free open-source mobile OSes to try on your Android smartphone | Technology News,The Indian Express

=> ↺ 5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week – Android Apps Weekly

=> ↺ Top 8 Ways to Fix Waze Not Working on Android Auto – Guiding Tech

=> ↺ Google Introduces AI Music System “MusicLM” – Lock Incognito Sessions on Android Now Available

=> ↺ People are only just realizing there’s an Android setting that fixes annoying ‘sound problem’ | The US Sun

Leftovers

=> ↺ Toroidal Propellers Make Drones Less Annoying

• Despite being integral to aviation for more than a century, propellers have changed remarkably little since the Wright Brothers. A team at MIT’s Lincoln Lab has developed a new propeller shape that significantly reduces the noise associated with drones. [PDF via NewAtlas]

=> ↺ My Nhan, Half Moon, Pokey, Midnight Mass, Navasky

=> ↺ LED Air Vent Gauges Are A Tasteful Mod For The Mazda Miata

• Anyone in the JDM scene can tell you, round air vents are prime real estate for round analog gauges. If you want a gauge but don’t want to block your vent, you could consider building these LED vent gauges from [ktanner] instead.

=> ↺ The Times They Are A-Chaining

• If [Bob Dylan] had seen [Pgeschwi]’s bike chain clock, it might have influenced the famous song. The clock uses a stepper motor and a bike chain to create a clock that has a decidedly steampunk vibe. Despite the low-tech look, the build uses 3D printing and, of course, a bike chain.

Science

=> ↺ An Atomic Pendulum Clock Accurate Enough For CERN

• That big grandfather clock in the library might be an impressive piece of mechanical ingenuity, and an even better example of fine cabinetry, but we’d expect that the accuracy of a pendulum timepiece would be limited to a sizable fraction of a minute per day. Unless, of course, you work at CERN and built  “the most accurate pendulum clock on the planet.”

Education

=> ↺ Judge Orders Washington State Private Special Education School to Turn Over Records

• A King County judge ruled last week that a private special education school that has been the subject of a recent Seattle Times and ProPublica investigation has to comply with public information laws and release records to the Times.

• The ruling has the potential to shed light on an obscure part of Washington’s special education system, in which school districts send students with disabilities to private programs at taxpayer expense. Few other legal rulings have defined how the state’s public records laws apply to private organizations that assume the functions of government agencies.

Hardware

=> ↺ Speak To The Machine

• If you own a 3D printer, CNC router, or basically anything else that makes coordinated movements with a bunch of stepper motors, chances are good that it speaks G-code. Do you?

=> ↺ Cut Your Own Gears With This DIY Machine

• You can buy gears off the shelf, of course, and get accurately machined parts exactly to your chosen specification. However, there’s something rugged and individualist about producing your own rotating components. [Maciej Nowak] demonstrates just how to produce your own gears with a homemade cutting tool.

=> ↺ Hackaday Podcast 203: Flashlight Fuel Fails, Weird DMA Machines, And A 3D Printed Prosthetic Hand Flex

• This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Managing Editor Tom Nardi meet up virtually to talk about all the hacks that are fit to print. This week’s episode starts off with a discussion about the recently unveiled 2023 Hackaday.io Low-Power Challenge, and how hackers more often than not thrive when forced to work within these sort of narrow parameters. Discussion then continues to adding a virtual core to the RP2040, crowd-sourced device reliability information, and mechanical Soviet space computers. We’ll wrap things up by wondering what could have been had Mattel’s ill-fated ThingMaker 3D printer actually hit the market, and then engage in some wild speculation about the issues plaguing NASA’s latest Moon mission.

=> ↺ Reverse-Engineering The Conditional Jump Circuitry In The 8086 Processor

• As simple as a processor’s instruction set may seem, especially in a 1978-era one like the Intel 8086, there is quite a bit going on to go from something like a conditional jump instruction to a set of operations that the processor can perform. For the CISC 8086 CPU this is detailed in a recent article by [Ken Shirriff], which covers exactly how the instructions with their parameters are broken down into micro-instructions using microcode, which allows the appropriate registers and flags to be updated.

=> ↺ A Single-Resistor Radio Transmitter, Thanks To The Power Of Noise

• One of the great things about the Hackaday community is how quickly you find out what you don’t know. That’s not a bad thing, of course; after all, everyone is here to get smarter, right? So let’s work together to get our heads around this paper (PDF) by [Zerina Kapetanovic], [Miguel Morales], and [Joshua R. Smith] from the University of Washington, which purports to construct a low-throughput RF transmitter from little more than a resistor.

=> ↺ 3D-Printed Servo Motor Has 360 Degrees Of Rotation

• Hobby servos are nifty and useful for a wide range of projects. There’s nothing stopping you from building your own servos though, and you can even give them nifty features like 360-degree rotation In fact, that’s exactly what [Aaed Musa] did!

=> ↺ Illuminate Your Benched Things With This Death Stranding Lamp

• [Pinkman] creates a smart RGB table lamp based off of the “Odradek device” robot arm from the video game “Death Stranding”.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Scientific Heretic Rupert Sheldrake on Morphic Fields, Psychic Dogs and Other Mysteries

• Sheldrake—I think even his most adamant critics will agree–is a fascinating scientific figure. I was thus delighted when he agreed to the following email interview.

• Horgan: I admit that I’m still not sure what morphic resonance is. Can you give me a brief definition?

Proprietary

=> ↺ AI Lawyer Has A Sad: Bans People From Testing Its Lawyering After Being Mocked

• Well, a lot has happened since I first started looking into the “World’s First Robot Lawyer,” from DoNotPay. First, Joshua Browder, DoNotPay’s CEO, reached out to me via direct message (DM) and told me he would get me access to my documents by 2 PM the next day – Tuesday, January 24th – saying that the delay was caused by my account being locked for “inauthentic activity,” a term he did not explain or define. Then, Josh claimed he was going to pull out of the industry entirely, canceling his courtroom stunt and saying he would disable all the legal tools on DoNotPay.com. He said he was doing it because it was a distraction, but the fact that he cited exactly the same two documents that I was waiting to receive seemed like a hell of a coincidence.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Surveillance Tech Firm Sued By Meta For Using Thousands Of Bogus Accounts To Scrape Data

• About a half-decade ago, major social media companies finally did something to prevent their platforms from being used to engage in mass surveillance. Prompted by revelations in public records, Twitter and Facebook began cutting off API access to certain data scrapers that sold their services to government agencies. Twitter blocked both Dataminr and Geofeedia from accessing its “firehose” API. Facebook did the same thing to Geofeedia, denying it access to both its core service and Instagram.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Russian Defense Ministry says a Ukrainian strike on a hospital in annexed Luhansk has killed 14 — Meduza

• The Russian Ministry of Defense claims that Ukrainian troops used a HIMARS rocket launcher to shell a regional hospital in the village of Novoaidar, in a Russian-annexed area of Ukraine’s Luhansk region.

=> ↺ The Inspiring Outrage of Norman Finkelstein

• As I was reading Norman Finkelstein’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom, I thought early on of Obama’s joke at the expense of Rahm Emanuel: “he’s one of a kind, and thank god he’s one of a kind.” Finkelstein, too, is very much one of a kind. But the analogy with Emanuel fails, because in fact one Rahm Emanuel is far too many whereas one Finkelstein is not nearly enough. We need hundreds of him. That is to say, we need hundreds of left intellectuals with the courage and intelligence to think for themselves and never sell out, to refuse to compromise—even to risk alienating fellow leftists by publicly repudiating woke culture and the more vacuous forms of identity politics in favor of an unstinting adherence to class politics. Nor would it hurt to have more writers who are as eloquent and hilarious as him.

=> ↺ Bryansk schools ordered to prepare to accommodate Russian military personnel — Meduza

• Russian investigative outlet iStories reports that the regional administration in Bryansk, Russia, has ordered at least six elementary schools to prepare to host Russian troops.

=> ↺ Russian authorities are investigating a Moscow resident, allegedly the owner of a popular Telegram channel, for posting calls to terrorism — Meduza

• The Moscow Investigative Committee is reviewing Telegram channel Nexta Live for posting calls to terrorist activities, report both state broadcasting corporation RBC and online news outlet Baza.

=> ↺ History of the Vietnam War Holds Lessons for Ukraine Today

=> ↺ Patrick Lawrence: The Shadows Descend in Ukraine

• By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost Two of my favorite New York Times words are “shadowy” and “murky.” They are brilliantly suited to the Manichean version of our world the Times inflicts daily upon its unsuspecting readers. When The Times terms someone or some society or some chain of events shadowy or murky it […]

=> ↺ Sinema’s Democratic Challenger Ruben Gallego Opposes Cutting Pentagon Spending

=> ↺ Creative Vandalism The KITT Way

• It’s probable that most of us have at some time dreamed up a witty and subversive way to deface our city, but that few of us will have followed through on the idea. [Matt Gray] then is something of a modern-day urban hero for doing just that. Who couldn’t walk past Knightrider Court, EC4, in the City of London, without thinking of the 1980s TV series featuring David Hasselhoff and a talking car? [Matt] couldn’t, and so of course he simply had to upgrade the street sign with the signature LED scanner.

=> ↺ Ukraine’s Zelensky Sends Love Letter to US Corporations, Promising ‘Big Business’ for Wall Street

• In a video address to a US corporate lobby group, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky thanked companies like BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Starlink, insisting “everyone can become a big business by” investing in Ukraine, where “we are defending freedom and property”.

=> ↺ Fired Memphis Cops Charged With Second-Degree Murder for Killing Tyre Nichols

• “The video must be that bad,” said law professor Sherrilyn Ifill. “But fired does not prevent rehiring elsewhere, and charged does not mean convicted. But more important than all, none of this brings back Tyre Nichols.”

=> ↺ Released Footage Shows Five Memphis Cops Brutally Beating Tyre Nichols

=> ↺ ‘Sheer Brutality’: Released Footage Shows Fired Memphis Cops Beating Tyre Nichols

• “Charging or jailing the killers is not enough,” said the national director of the Working Families Party. “Justice is changing the conditions so no one dies during a traffic stop.”

=> ↺ Memphis BLM Activist: Tyre Nichols’ Killing Is Part of Police Brutality Crisis Facing Black Residents

• Amid nationwide protests, prosecutors have charged five former Memphis police officers with murder in the death of Tyre Nichols, who died January 10 of kidney failure and cardiac arrest after a vicious beating three days earlier during a traffic stop. Memphis and other cities across the U.S. are expecting mass protests against police violence over the weekend, with body-camera footage of the deadly traffic stop set to be released Friday evening. We go to Memphis for an update from community organizer Amber Sherman, a member of the Memphis chapter of Black Lives Matter, who says police brutality is nothing new for many residents. “It’s literally just being caught on camera,” Sherman says. “We have experienced this same kind of violence over and over and over again in our communities.”

=> ↺ Black Cops, White Justice?

• Let’s acknowledge that the summary firing and subsequent indictment of five Memphis police officers for the brutal murder-by-beating of Tyree Nichols, a young Black man, is a good measure of justice – as pointed out by lawyer Ben Crump, an example that will give less cover to the police chiefs and prosecutors who almost invariably give a free pass to murderous cops.

• Let’s also not pretend that the five charged police officers aren’t Black themselves. How convenient is it to make an example out of them, while the murderers of Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Stephon Clark and thousands of others have not been held accountable?

=> ↺ Tyre Nichols’ Parents Remember Son as “Beautiful Soul” & Describe Video of Beating by Memphis Police

• A day after prosecutors charged five former Memphis police officers with murder over the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, we speak with his parents, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, about their drive to seek justice for their son. “He had a beautiful soul, and he touched everyone,” RowVaughn Wells says of her son. Nichols was a 29-year-old Black father, amateur photographer and longtime skateboarder who died January 10 from kidney failure and cardiac arrest, three days after he was brutally beaten by the five officers during a traffic stop. The officers were fired earlier this month and indicted on Thursday with second-degree murder, kidnapping and other charges for their role in Nichols’s death. We also speak with civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family.

=> ↺ Russian government proposes allowing items confiscated by authorities to be donated to Defense Ministry — Meduza

• The Russian government has submitted a bill to the State Duma that would allow items seized by authorities to be donated as “humanitarian aid” to the Defense and Emergency Situations ministries rather than being destroyed.

=> ↺ Ukraine Expects to Get All the Western Weapons It Wants

• After getting tanks, Ukraine wants fighter jets and longer-range missiles.

=> ↺ It Is 90 Seconds to Midnight

• This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.

=> ↺ North Korea promises to ‘always be in the same trench’ with Russia — Meduza

• North Korea “will always be in the same trench with the service personnel and people of Russia” in the struggle against “the imperial forces” of the U.S. and the West, says Kim Yo-jong, sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

=> ↺ Protests Erupt Across US After Memphis Releases Video of Ex-Cops Beating Tyre Nichols

=> ↺ ‘Just the Next Step’ Toward Justice for Tyre Nichols: Memphis Police Shutter SCORPION Unit

• The family of Tyre Nichols and others appalled by his death—for which five fired Memphis cops now face murder charges—welcomed the police department’s decision on Saturday to disband a unit created in 2021 to patrol high-crime areas.

=> ↺ Ukrainian Foreign Ministry demands a ‘frank conversation’ with Hungary after Viktor Orban calls Ukraine a ‘no man’s land’ — Meduza

• The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on Hungary’s Ambassador to Ukraine, István Íjgyártó, to have a “frank conversation,” following recent remarks by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

=> ↺ War With China Could Come as Soon as 2025, Predicts ‘Untethered’ US General

• Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan struck a Dr. Strangelove pose in urging the troops under his command to be ready to fight China in two years.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents All At Once: A Conversation With John Kiriakou

=> ↺ Nearly Half of All Sheriffs in Louisiana Are Violating Public Records Laws

• Nearly half of Louisiana sheriffs are in violation of a state law regulating the preservation and destruction of public records, according to documents provided by state officials.

• The disclosure follows an article this month by Verite, also published by ProPublica, on accusations that the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office illegally destroyed documents in a lawsuit involving an autistic boy who died in custody. It also comes on the heels of increased scrutiny on the outsize power wielded by Louisiana sheriffs.

Environment

=> ↺ No False Solutions! Citizens Rise Up to Resist Dangerous Carbon Pipelines in the Midwest

• Iowa is the battle ground where the fate of world’s largest proposed carbon capture and storage pipeline is being decided. Summit Carbon Solutions intends to build a 2,000-mile pipeline to carry CO2 captured from ethanol plants across five states, to eventually inject and store it underground in North Dakota to supposedly reduce carbon emissions. But who truly stands to gain if the pipeline is built? A November 2022 report from the Oakland Institute, The Great Carbon Boondoggle, unmasked the billion-dollar financial interests and high-level political ties driving the project—despite opposition from a large and diverse coalition of Indigenous groups, farmers, and environmentalists.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Chevron More Than Doubled Its Profits Last Year as Gas Prices Squeezed Wallets

=> ↺ Lone Democrat Jared Golden Joins House GOP in Passing Massive Big Oil Handout

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Elephant Poop, Tasmanian Snails and Other Links From the Brink

Finance

=> ↺ How Concentrated Wealth and Corporate Power Nurtures the Greed of Thieves

• What makes for a thieving culture? An overabundance of pickpockets? Tsunamis of burglary and shoplifting?

=> ↺ Why It’s Okay for Progressives to Enjoy Sam Bankman-Fried’s Downfall

• Political fortunes are always waxing and waning, but few roller-coaster rides have been as dizzying as the rapid ascent and precipitous fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, who went in a matter of weeks from being a billionaire savior clasped to the bosom of the Democratic Party establishment to a bankrupt pariah facing criminal charges. On August 4, 2022, Politico swooned over SBF (as he is commonly known) as the Democratic Party’s newest “megadonor.” Only 30 years old, he had already amassed vast personal wealth—estimated in the neighborhood of $26 billion—as a cofounder of the Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Starting in 2020, with donations totaling more than $5 million to Joe Biden’s election run, SBF was quickly anointed a donor-class princeling. His stature rose even higher in the 2022 election cycle, when he gave more than $40 million to Democratic campaigns and offshoots. This lavish endowment made SBF second only to George Soros as a party benefactor. Politico breathlessly cited SBF’s promise that in the event of a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024, he would kick in upwards of $1 billion to ensure a Democratic victory.1

=> ↺ HBO Max Jacks Up Prices After Cheapskate Executives Trash Popular Shows, Refuse To Pay Artist Residuals

• We’ve already noted how HBO and Discovery executives keep demonstrating the immense, pointless harm of media megamergers. You’ll recall AT&T’s $200 billion acquisition of Time Warner and DirecTV wound up being a hot mess, forcing AT&T to take a huge loss and run for the exits after laying off more than 50,000 employees.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Billionaire’s Lawsuit Against O’Rourke May Stifle Criticism of Money in Politics

=> ↺ Unauthorized Disclosure: Kicking Off A 10th Season

=> ↺ Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jason Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud

• The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork.

=> ↺ Omar, Schiff and Swalwell Blast McCarthy for Stripping Them From Committees

=> ↺ It Was the Workers Who Brought Us Democracy, and It Will Be the Workers Who Establish a Deeper Democracy Yet

• Democracy has a dream-like character. It sweeps into the world, carried forward by an immense desire by humans to overcome the barriers of indignity and social suffering. When confronted by hunger or the death of their children, earlier communities might have reflexively blamed nature or divinity, […]

=> ↺ How the Arizona Attorney General Created a Secretive, Illegal Surveillance Program to Sweep Up Millions of Our Financial Records

• New records obtained by the ACLU shed light on the scope of a mass surveillance program keeping tabs on Americans’ financial data.

=> ↺ Arizona Republicans Exempt Themselves From Open Records Rules

=> ↺ Uzbekistan to open embassy in Budapest, Orbán receives president of Turkic Investment Fund

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Ron DeSantis’s Attack on Black Studies Is Textbook Proto-Fascism

=> ↺ Omsk governor calls proposed public art project ‘LGBT propaganda’ — Meduza

• Mayor of Omsk Sergey Shelest has criticized a project that would install statues of pigeons painted in various colors along the Irtysh River embankment.

=> ↺ Why Content Moderation on Mastodon Isn’t the Train Wreck Some on Twitter Say It Is

• Last week, when working on an article for FOSS Force I wanted to embed a toot, which is what Mastodon calls tweets. That’s easy to do in Twitter, but I wasn’t sure that Mastodon had that capability. I looked around briefly, didn’t find the answer, so I dashed off a quick toot for help.

• “Help! How do I link to a particular toot?”

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ The Chris Hedges Report: Will Julian Assange Ever Be Free?

• Chris Hedges speaks with film producer and brother of Julian Assange, Gabriel Shipton, on his new film about his family’s journey to get Julian free.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Far Right Supreme Court Ready to Gut Unions (Again) as Workers Die on the Job

• By Eve Ottenberg / CounterPunch One of the first dead giveaways for fascism is animosity toward trade unions. That’s not to say all anti-union businesspeople are fascist, but simply that that hatred is a first step on the primrose path to a polity of utterly oppressed wage slaves and strictly limited civil rights, a step […]

=> ↺ “Restore Roe” Is Not the Answer to the Abortion Access Crisis

• As abortion rights supporters commemorated the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade this month, we were inundated with calls to action from elected leaders saying that we need to “restore Roe,” “codify Roe,” and pass the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA).

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Biden Administration Declares War On The Internet, Clears Path For Offensive Hacking Efforts By Federal Agencies

• It’s impossible to be the “aggressor” of the free world. Those words just don’t make sense together. “Defender of the free world,” maybe. If you’re going on the offensive, it seems unlikely you’re there to protect anyone’s freedoms.

=> ↺ New Dumb Attack Against Gigi Sohn Tries To Shame Her For Being On The EFF’s Board

• We’ve explained how telecom and media giants have pulled out all the stops trying to block Gigi Sohn from being seated at the FCC. That has involved a sleazy smear campaign, seeded in the press by non-profits linked to companies like News Corporation, AT&T, and Comcast, falsely accusing Sohn of being a radical extremist who hates Hispanics, rural Americans, cops, puppies, and freedom.

=> ↺ Brazil’s Telecom Operators Made Strides and Had Shortcomings in Internet Lab’s New Report on User Privacy Practices

• In this seventh annual assessment of Brazil’s providers, InternetLab evaluated six companies, and looked at both their broadband and mobile services. Operators assessed include Oi fixed and mobile broadband; Vivo (Telefónica) fixed and mobile broadband, TIM fixed and mobile broadband,Claro/NET (América Móvil), Brisanet fixed and mobile broadband, and Algar (broadband only). The operators were evaluated in six categories, including providing information about their data protection policies, disclosing guidelines for law enforcement seeking user data, defending user privacy in courts, supporting pro-privacy policies, publishing transparency reports, and notifying users when the government requests their data.

• This year, Oi broke into the top and tied with TIM in receiving the highest scores—each company garnered  full credit in four out of six categories. Every company in the report received full credit for challenging privacy-abusive legislation and government requests for user data except Algar, which received half credit. While Brisanet improved its overall standing, earning full credit in this category, it received the least amount of credit among its peers, echoing last year’s report.

• With Brazilian providers steadily improving transparency and customer data protection over the years, methodological changes were made in this edition to raise the bar for achieving credit in a few categories. Specifically, assessing companies’ compliance with data protection legislation has been expanded to include more requirements for transparency about data sharing with third parties. New criteria for measuring transparency around customers’ rights,  data handovers to authorities, and cybersecurity protocols were also added.

Monopolies

=> ↺ The Latest Antitrust Case Against Google Is, By Far, The Most Serious

• There have been a whole bunch of antitrust lawsuits filed against Google over the last few years. The DOJ filed one in October of 2020 that was pathetically weak. That one seemed like it was Attorney General Bill Barr appeasing then President Trump with what Trump hoped would be an election-boosting attack on “evil woke big tech.” Then, in December of that year, a bunch of states, lead by Texas’ Ken Paxton filed another antitrust lawsuit, which we noted got some fairly basic things completely wrong, but had some potential to be legit depending on what was behind a bunch of redactions. That case has plodded along, and the amended complaint filed last year was much stronger than the original complaint and looked pretty damning to us. Then there was another antitrust lawsuit from a bunch of other states.

Patents

=> ↺ Time for a Showdown With Big Pharma: Chairman Sanders vs. Sky-High Drug Prices

• It is showdown time. Senator Bernie Sanders, new chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee versus Big Pharma.

Copyrights

=> ↺ MPA & ACE Need OSINT Investigators to Track Down IPTV Pirates

• The MPA’s Global Content Protection team and the connected Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment are on a mission to disrupt video content piracy and those behind it. Job listings reveal openings at the MPA for OSINT investigators, with one position stating a strong preference for a candidate with IPTV experience.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: ACSILOG Wordo: FREON

=> ↺ Side Effects

• I’ve been diagnosed with psoriasis about two years ago. Around the age of 25, I noticed an uncontrollable itch in the lower back, the buttocks and the gluteal fold, especially after exercise or prolonged periods of sitting. It went away after some time, and I assumed it’s just some random skin irritation. Around my 26th birthday, I noticed I have some bald spots in my beard, around the chin. My wife’s aunt, a well-regarded naturopathy practitioner with clients all over the country, said it looks like alopecia areata and must be related to stress. She gave me some custom-made homeopathic potion, which didn’t work, and I decided to finally go to a skin doctor, to solve both problems.

=> ↺ Most things are not worth it

• Most things are not worth your attention you give to them!

=> ↺ Strange High Pressure Weather 2023-01-29 (Fairbanks, AK, US)

• From what I’ve read and observed, usually when a high-pressure bubble develops in the winter, then you get clear skies and colder temperatures. But the opposite is the case: we have overcast skies and warm weather, and snow. Also, humidity is quite high: late yesterday evening, about 4pm AKST, we had frost suddenly form on all our parked vehicles. And that appears to be the NOAA forecast continuing for the next few days: warm temps, cloudy skies, and steady snow.

=> ↺ Show notes

• This week was a busy week. On monday, the plan was to have a look around St Joseph’s Church, but it was closed, so we wandered down Wangfujing and ended up outside the Theatre Museum of Beijing People’s Art Theatre. We weren’t sure exactly what it was, but it looked interesting, so we headed inside.

• It turns out that it’s not just a theatre museum, it is also a theatre. We’d headed into the box office, where the staff offered us a choice of plays to buy tickets for. After we’d established we were looking for a museum, they made some phone calls and we found our way to the museum.

=> ↺ back to the internet

• I stumble around with all these static site generators so often, but actually what i want is to be able to write. I don’t want to faff with a command line. Things don’t work. Installing jekyll breaks. This post is the post i write most often because i’m too caught up in the means to the end than in the end in itself. I think of something that i want to share with my own place on the internet and yet i cannot because my place is a shambles.

=> ↺ Trumpet, Illness and a Leap of Faith

• I’m adopting a new belief system, or joining what appears to be the winning side of a paradigm shift. I’m learning the Maggio System. For me, it’s a completely new way to play the trumpet, after 23 years.

• As a kid, my trumpet teacher taught me to smile to play higher, but keep the corners of the mouth tight. The lip is a string, he said, and you need a thin string that vibrates freely, to play high. Like many trumpet players, I also learned that I need to press harder to increase the vibration and produce louder and fuller notes, especially when I play high.

=> ↺ Hakuho’s Retirement Ceremoney

Politics

=> ↺ Investment Times, Hargreaves Lansdown

• Average house price: £296,000 Average discount on the asking price: 4% Average first time buyer ager 2021: 32 Average time it takes to sell: 18 weeks Proportion of sellers who’ve cut the asking price: 25% Average gain in price since the onset of the pandemic: £69,000 Average first time buyer deposit 2021: £53,935

=> ↺ RE: Are you ok?

• I’m not okay, no. And the world around me isn’t, either. I mean the entire reason I CAN go out and touch grass is because the snow that’s supposed to be covering it, isn’t. In January in the Midwestern US.

• My finances are shit. I’m about a week away from bankruptcy at any given moment.

Technical

=> ↺ Maintaining Simplicity While Acknowledging FOMO

• As people can see from the “Gemini Helpers” section on my home page, I spent quite some time figuring out the best way to layout and structure my capsule and especially the gemlog.

=> ↺ Pavlov’s dog receives e-mails

• I’m a natural zero-inboxer. So from the first e-mail box, I am acting what I read afterward as inbox zero rules. All unwanted messages are flagged as spam. All quick matters are dealt with on the spot. The rest things are marked to deal with them at the proper time (invoices, birthday reminders, etc.).

Science

=> ↺ Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space

• Given the theme of Gemini, I just remembered an old DOS game I played in the early 1990s. It’s called “Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space” and let players re-play the race into space from a US or Soviet point of view. It was released to the public domain years ago, so it’s free to play.

Programming

=> ↺ Validate email address using Regex in C++

• Qucik one. Something I want to write down before I forget. Validating email addresses have been a constant pain for software developers. The RFC spec for a valid email is complex. No, it’s not simply ^\S+@\S+\.\S+$. For example. The spec prohibits email addresses on TLD. Thus bob@example is not valid. There’s a very helpful post on the internet that shares how to validate on using regex.

=> ↺ Tools: redo (part 6) The yacc/bison problem: one call produces two artifacts

• One of the things any build system must do for me, is the build of hoc, the “Higher Order Calculator” as presented in “Kernighan, Pike — The Unix Programming Environment” published in 1984. There is this one detail: a call to bison produces two targets from one prerequisite file. bison should not be called twice during the build — even though in the case of hoc this is an affair of seconds.

=> ↺ Tools: redo (part 7) The N artefact problem, a minimal example

• I wanted to have something to simulate a call to a code generator, which will produce a number of artefacts, which in turn are needed to build a (generated) hello world executable. And I wanted to build this thing using redo. How hard can it be?

• This was not overly complicated. The generator comes in at 71 lines of code. This comes in a bit smaller than the 73 lines of code I needed in all .do snippets together.

=> ↺ Configure syncthing to sync a single file

• Quick blog entry to remember about something that wasn’t as trivial as I thought. I needed to use syncthing to keep a single file in sync (KeePassXC database) without synchronizing the whole directory.

• You have to use mask exclusion feature to make it possible. Put it simple, you need the share to forbid every file, except the one you want to sync.

• This configuration happens in the .stignore file in the synchronized directory, but can also be managed from the Web interface.

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=> Techrights

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